“I say, friends! we can't stand this, you know,” says the anxious father. “We must part some time, and this is a favorable moment. Now I'll give you all this, if you don't come another step!” and he empties out to them, from the hand-bags he carries, the fragments of lunch which the frugal mind of Aunt Melissa had caused her to store there. Upon these the whooping-coughers hurl themselves in a body, and are soon left round the corner. Yet they would have been no disgrace to our party, whose appearance was now most disreputable: Frank and Lucy stalked ahead, with shawls dragging from their arms, the former loaded down with hand-bags and the latter with India-rubbers; Aunt Melissa came next under a burden of bloated umbrellas; the nurse last, with her hat awry, and the baby a caricature of its morning trimness, in her embrace. A day's pleasure is so demoralizing, that no party can stand it, and come out neat and orderly. [Illustration: “Frank and Lucy stalked ahead, with shawls dragging from their arms.”] “Cousin Frank,” asked Lucy, awfully, “what if we should meet the Mayflowers now?”--the Mayflowers being a very ancient and noble Boston family whose acquaintance was the great pride and terror of our friends' lives. “I should cut them dead,” said Frank, and scarcely spoke again till his party dragged slowly up the steps of their minute suburban villa. At the door his wife met them with a troubled and anxious face. “Calamities?” asked Frank, desperately. “O, calamities upon calamities! We've got a lost child in the kitchen,” answered Mrs. Sallie. “O good heavens!” cried her husband. “Adieu, my dreams of repose, so desirable after the quantity of active enjoyment I've had! Well, where is the lost child?” III.--THE EVENING “Where is the lost child?” repeats Frank, desperately. “Where have you got him?” “In the kitchen.” “Why in the kitchen?” “How's baby?” demands Mrs. Sallie, with the incoherent suddenness of her sex, and running halfway down the steps to meet the nurse. “Um, um, um-m-m-m,” sounds, which may stand for smothered kisses of rapture and thanksgiving that baby is not a lost child. “Has he been good, Lucy? Take him off and give him some cocoa, Mrs. O'Gonegal,” she adds in her business-like way, and with a little push to the combined nurse and baby, while Lucy answers, “O beautiful!” and from that moment, being warned through all her being by something in the other's tone, casts aside the matronly manner which she has worn during the day, and lapses into the comfortable irresponsibility of young-ladyhood. “What kind of a time did you have?” “Splendid!” answers Lucy. “Delightful, _I_ think,” she adds, as if she thought others might not think so. “I suppose you found Gloucester a quaint old place.” “O,” says Frank, “we didn't go to Gloucester; we found that the City Fathers had chartered the boat for the day, so we thought we'd go to Nahant.”