“It is quite the same,” he said; “I require you to be obedient and respectful to your mamma; and impertinence to her is something I will by no means allow or fail to punish whenever I know of it.  Sorry as I am to deprive you of an anticipated pleasure, I repeat that you must stay at home; and go immediately to your room and resume the dress she directed you to wear to-day.”

So saying he took Grace’s hand and led her to the carriage, Max following after one regretful look at Lulu’s sorely disappointed face.

Grace, clinging about her father’s neck as he lifted her up, pleaded for her sister.  “Oh, papa, do please let her go; she hasn’t been naughty for a long while, and I’m sure she’s sorry and will be good.”

“Hush, hush, darling!” he said, wiping the tears from her eyes, then placing her by Violet’s side.

“What is wrong?” inquired the latter with concern; “is Gracie not feeling well?”

“Never mind, my love,” the captain answered, assuming a cheerful tone; “there is nothing wrong except that Lulu has displeased me, and I have told her she cannot go with us to-day.”

“Oh, I am sorry!” Violet said, looking really pained; “we shall all miss her.  I should be glad, Levis, if you could forgive her, for—­”

“No, do not ask it,” he said hastily; adding, with a smile of ardent affection into the azure eyes gazing so pleadingly into his; “I can scarcely bear to say no to you, dearest, but I have passed sentence upon the offender and cannot revoke it.”

The carriage drove off; the others had already gone, and Lulu was left alone in the house, the one maid-servant left behind having already wandered off to the beach.

“There!” cried Lulu, stamping her foot with passion, then dropping into a chair, “I say it’s just too bad!  She isn’t old enough to be my mother, and I won’t have her for one; I sha’n’t mind her!  Papa had no business to marry her.  He hardly cares for anybody else now, and he ought to love me better than he does her; for she isn’t a bit of relation to him, while I’m his own child.

“And I sha’n’t wear dowdy, old-womanish dresses to please her, along with other girls of my size that are dressed up in their best.  I’d rather stay at home than be mortified that way, and I just wish I had told him so.”

She was in so rebellious a mood that instead of at once changing her dress in obedience to her father’s command, she presently rose from her chair, walked out at the front door and paraded through the village streets in her finery, saying to herself, “I’ll let people see that I have some decent clothes to wear.”

Returning after a little, she was much surprised to find Betty Johnson stretched full length on a lounge with a paper-covered novel in her hand, which she seemed to be devouring with great avidity.

“Why, Betty!” she exclaimed, “are you here?  I thought you went with the rest to the ‘squantum.’”