Straight out of the ocean, with no summer fog to veil her coming, rises the great golden moon, and soon she is high enough to send a broad path of light shimmering across the water. And now she lights the way for Captain Murray's man Joe, trudging home from the village with the mail; and now she peers in through the dimity curtains of Nan's pretty room, making it bright as the day.
And what does she find there but something that never was there before; a bran new little trunk, with N.M. in black letters on the end toward the window, and no doubt she wonders if it can be possible that Nan is going away; little Nan, who never remembers having slept a night of her life out of sound of the sea. Travel on, old Moon, over the roof, until you can shine in at Sister Julia's window, and there you will discover two other trunks, which are ready for a start on the morrow, for you should know what every one else already knows—that Rex is going home, and Harry and Nan go with him to make a visit. Did you not discover as you sailed over the ocean the good ship Alaska drawing nearer and nearer, with Regie's papa and mamma on board? And do you not think, with your clear light to aid her, she will surely reach port by day after to-morrow?
But while we are so foolish as to stand out here in the cold, talking at the moon, Joe has reached the house and gone in with the mail, and among the other letters is a neat little package for Regie.
“Oh, here are the photographs!” he exclaimed; and right away there is such a solid little group, bending closely about him, that if it were not for the difference in the colour of hair you could hardly have told where one head commenced and the other ended. The children had been looking anxiously for these photographs for a week.
When Regie found from the proofs that the pictures that he had taken were satisfactory, he sent the plates up to New York, by express, to a photographer, who was accustomed to print his pictures for him, but he had heard nothing from them, and began to think they had gone astray.
It would have done your heart good to have heard Captain Murray's laugh as he looked at them. The one where the steamer was supposed to be coming to the relief of the shipwrecked mariners was, if possible, the funnier of the two. Nan was the only one who had fully entered into the spirit of the thing, and really looked as though something joyful was about to appear.. The others had smiled, as they were bid, but a heartless conventional smile is at the best a sorry affair, and doubly so on such pinched little faces as the Croxsons'.
But the pictures, as pictures, were good, and Rex had no need to be ashamed of his work. He imagined he could see Papa Fairfax now, and how much amused he would be by them.