"We'll have the European letters to-night," said Eunice, joyfully, as they sat down to the table. "Does it seem as if we'd been here two weeks? Mamma won't seem so far away, when we get the first letters."
"There was the cablegram," said Edna.
"That doesn't count," said Eunice. "It wasn't mamma's own dear handwriting."
"Papa writed it," chirped in Helen.
"No, he didn't, goosie," said Cricket. "The man here wrote it. Papa only sent it."
"I know!" exclaimed Zaidee. "Papa talked it into the box, and the man writed it down when he talked," confusing the telephone at home with the cablegram, which, directed to Miss Eunice Ward, as the eldest representative, had been the occasion of much excitement on its arrival.
After dinner the three girls started down on the beach, to sit down under the rocks till it should be cool enough, later, to go for a ride with the ponies.
"There comes the baby, all alone," said Cricket, presently, as that young man slipped out of the yard all by himself, and ran across the road and down towards the beach where the girls were. "Doesn't he look cunning? The darling!"
Kenneth, although he was nearly four, was still The Baby to the family. His broad-brimmed hat hung down his back, held around his chin by its elastic, and his golden hair was rampant. His blue eyes were dancing with mischief, and his hands were clasped behind his back.
"Dess what I dot?" he demanded, pausing at a safe distance, and looking up roguishly from under his long lashes.