"I've been wanting to get just this quartet together," remarked the
captain, when his brother-in-law had cooled off and was lying
comfortably stretched along a mossy knoll.
"Go ahead, Jack, we are ready to listen. Your plans are always
interesting," Mr. Birch replied. "What now?"
"In the first place," began the captain, "I want you people to
understand that the person who has had least fun out of this absence of
yours is the young woman before you."
"O Uncle Ray!" protested Celia, instantly. "Haven't I had as much fun as
you?"
"Hardly. Between Mrs. Fields and Miss Ellen Donohue I don't know when
I've been so enlivened. I hardly know which of the two has afforded me
more downright amusement, each in her way. But Celia, I tell you,
Roderick and Helen, has been one brave girl, and that's all there is of
it."
"You'll find no dissenting voice here," Celia's father declared, and her
mother added:
"Nobody who knows her could expect her to be anything else."
Celia looked away, her cheeks flushing.
"So now I want her to have her reward," said Captain Rayburn. "Let me
take her with me for the year abroad.
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