competition to the fat woman's race, and had never even been mentioned
as among those present!

We closed our cottage on August 24. That day all nature conspired to
make us feel sorry that we were leaving. A gentle breeze blew over the
lake and rasped its surface into dancing ripples that glittered in the
sun. Blueberry Island seemed to stand out clear and bold and
beckoning. White-winged boats lay over against the horizon and the
_chug-chug_ of a motor-boat came at intervals in a lull of the breeze.
The more tender varieties of the trees had begun to show a trace of
autumn coloring, just a hint and a promise of the ripened beauty of
the fall--if we would only stay!

Before the turn in the road hid it from sight we stopped and looked
back at the "Kee-am Cottage"--my last recollection of it is of the
boarded windows, which gave it the blinded look of a dead thing, and
of the ferns which grandma had brought from the big woods beyond the
railway track and planted all round it, and which had grown so quickly
and so rank that they seemed to fill in all the space under the
cottage, and with their pale-green, feathery fringe, to be trying to
lift it up into the sunshine above the trees. Instinctively we felt
that we had come to the end of a very pleasant chapter in our life as
a family; something had disturbed the peaceful quiet of our lives;
somewhere a drum was beating and a fife was calling!

Not a word of this was spoken, but Jack suddenly put it all into
words, for he turned to me and asked quickly, "Mother, when will I be
eighteen?"