"I was certainly surprised to see Fritz on the boat last evening. But he is like my own son, and if he has set his heart on going to Digby, we must not keep him away." "Oh, he's going around on the other coast, he and his friend." "Did you meet his friend?" "No, I heard Fritz call him 'Taps'--a perfectly ridiculous name. Do you know anything about him?" "Only what Fritz told me last evening--that he was a Freshman who had taken a violent fancy to him. Fritz said that he had agreed to travel with the boy this summer from a sense of duty." "A sense of duty!" "Yes; 'Taps,' as he calls him, has been trying to shake off some undesirable friends. He gave up a trip to Europe that he might avoid running across them, and Fritz, knowing the circumstances, thought that he could do no less than agree to take some other trip with him. It was only on the spur of the moment that they decided to come with us." "Fritz was terribly cut up to find that we did not care to have them." "Naturally--and indeed, Amy, if I had had a chance to talk frankly with him, we could have had them with us part of the time. His friend was a bright, honest-looking lad, hardly more than a schoolboy." "Oh, mamma, I thought him so dandified!--just the kind to be a nuisance in a party that intends to rough it." "Do you realize, Amy, that you use much more slang than before you went to college?" "That's another reason for not having Fritz with us; it is not _my_ college, but _his_, that twists my vocabulary." "Possibly, but I only hope that he is not offended. Well! well! Why, Priscilla, why, Martine, where have you been?" As she spoke two young girls came running up the steps, and one of them with a bound flung herself upon Mrs. Redmond's neck. "Oh, isn't it a perfect morning, so cool and salt-smelling! and it's almost as good as Europe to see a foreign flag floating from the hotel--even if it is only English. And isn't Yarmouth a dear sleepy old town, though it's said to be so American! Some one told me that it was the only place in Nova Scotia where they hustled. My, but I wish they could see Chicago! Then they'd know what 'hustle' means." "Yes, my dear," gasped Mrs. Redmond; "but would you move your arm--just a little? You almost choke me." "Please excuse me, but I feel so excited that I must hug somebody, and Priscilla and Amy never let me hug them." "Why, I'm sure--" began Amy. "Oh, no, you haven't said a word, that's quite true, and I've never even tried to embrace you, yet I'm perfectly sure that you would hate it, and so Mrs. Redmond--" "Is the victim," rejoined Amy. "Well, mamma _is_ amiable. Only, while we are travelling, do be careful not to squeeze too tightly; it rumples her stock. Mamma, you'll really have to put on a fresh one before we start out."