With a bound he sprang to the ground just as Jeff came darting out with an umbrella and opened the carriage door. On the walk were pools of water, and Mark’s feet splashed in them as he stepped to the side of Jeff just as one of the ladies put her head from the door and then, with a cry of dismay, drew back. “I can never go through all that water; it is actually a pond,” she said, and Mrs. Taylor, who was holding a lamp in the door, felt sure that the voice belonged to the matron of the party. “Let me assist you,” Mark said, and, taking her in his arms, he ran up the walk with her and deposited her in the hall. A second foot was on the carriage step when he went back,—a very small foot,—though to which of the young ladies it belonged he could not tell. He had seen neither distinctly at the station, it was raining so hard, but he felt intuitively that it was Miss Helen whom Jeff was advising to keep still till Mr. Hilton came to fetch her. “Oh, thanks; don’t drop me, please,” she said, putting her arms around his neck as if afraid of falling. He felt her breath through the dampness of the night, and as Mrs. Taylor just then held her lamp higher, he caught sight of two bright, laughing eyes, and if he held her a little closer than he had held the older woman, it was not strange. He was young, and she was young, and would have flirted in her coffin had she life to do it. “I hope you are not very wet. It is a nasty night,” he said, as he put her down by her mother. “Not wet at all, thanks to your kindness; but please go back for Alice,” the lady said, as he showed signs of having forgotten there was another to be cared for. Alice didn’t need him. Jeff was attending to her. “I don’t want to be lifted. I’m not afraid of a little wetting; but hold the umbrella over me. I shouldn’t like to spoil my hat,” she said, and, gathering up her dress, she ran swiftly into the house, followed by a girl, presumably the maid, as she carried several bags and began to talk to the ladies in what to Jeff was an unknown tongue. Mrs. Mason’s rooms were on the other side of the hotel, but Craig was in the office when the carriage drove up, and saw Mark carrying two of its occupants into the house, and saw a third dashing like a sprite through the rain under the cover of Jeff’s umbrella, while the fourth followed more leisurely. Bidding Uncle Zach goodnight, he went to his mother’s room and said to her: “The Tracys have come.” CHAPTER VII. THE TRACYS.