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36 they were carried through to the back veranda, where Mr. Bowdoin dumped the little girls over the railing upon a steep grass slope, down which they rolled with shrieks of laughter that must have been most damaging to Mrs. Bowdoin's nerves. Dolly and Mercedes followed after; and the old gentleman settled himself on a roomy cane chair, his feet on the rail of the back piazza, a huge spy-glass at his side, and the "Boston Daily Advertiser" in his hand.

At the foot of the lawn was the cliff; and below, a lovely little pebble beach covered with the most wonderful shells. Never were such shells as abounded upon that beach!—tropical, exotic varieties, such as were found nowhere else. And then—most ideal place of all for a child—there was a fascinating rocky island in the sea, connected by a neck of twenty yards of pebble covered hardly at high water; and on one side of this pebble isthmus was the full surf of the sea, and on the other the quiet ripple of the waters of the bay. But such an island! All their own to colonize and govern, and separated from home by just a breadth of danger.