IT seemed to Lucinda Dell, standing before the looking-glass in her room, that everything was wrong with her that could be wrong. First, there was her suit, too neat and ordinary; and her Oxfords, too plain; and her hat, just a hat; and her freckles, six of them, that a bright sun had carelessly spatted on her nose. And besides, there were two things that did n't show in the glass; one was her name, Lucinda Dell, a combination of the old-fashioned and the rural, and the other was the town she lived in, only an unimportant little place in the middle West.

None of these things had ever bothered Lucinda acutely before; but now in less than half an hour she was going away on a trip to visit her aunt and uncle and cousins at their summer home on Puget Sound, and what had never seemed important before, now mattered very much. She was going to spend several months with her wonderful cousin Barbara, who undoubtedly did n't have freckles and had been abroad twice and wore white sport clothes and a smart hat with a pert brim. This last Lucinda knew from her picture. Oh dear! If it were n't for Aunt Jane, she said to herself, she just would n't go at all; but Aunt Jane would n't understand; and if she did, she would be hurt, so she must n't give way to the tears that were stealing into her eyes and threatening to splash over any minute. There were steps on the stairs and she knelt down to fasten her bag, with her face turned away from the door. Aunt Jane came into the room carrying something wrapped fatly in newspapers.

"Here, dear," she said, "don't close your bag until we put this in. It's a jar of quince honey. I just remembered how fond James used to be of quince honey when he was a little tad and spent his summers on the farm, and I thought to myself that it would be nice for you to take a jar along with you and give it to him. I've wrapped it up carefully, so none of it could possibly spill out."

She bent over to put it in the bag. "To Uncle James!" cried Lucinda. "Why, Aunt Jane, he has everything!"

"Not quince honey," said Aunt Jane; "or at least not this kind. This recipe has been in the family for generations."

Lucinda started to protest again, but some

thing held back the words on her lips. Dear Aunt Jane! How good and thoughtful she was! How kind she had been to Lucinda in the eight years since her parents' deaths! She must never hurt her feelings, although she was sure she could never offer a jar of quince honey to a man who had a million dollars and all kinds of cooks to make him some if he wanted it. But she would let Aunt Jane put it in her bag without saying anything more.

"Mr. Anders is waiting out front to drive you to the station," said Aunt Jane. "I sha' n't go down with you. Good-by, dear. You'll have a beautiful time, I know. Don't get homesick!"

Lucinda kissed Aunt Jane and ran down the stairs very fast to keep from crying. All the way to the station she blinked back the tears; but when she got on the train and felt it pulling away westward she went into the dressing-room and had her cry. Before long, however, she could call herself a silly, bathe her eyes in cold water, and go out on the observation-car to watch the landscape whirling past.

Out

The two days of her trip west were very pleasant to Lucinda, who had never traveled very much nor very far; but as they neared Seattle, where she was to meet her uncle, her aunt, and the beautiful Barbara, her heart sank again, and she had a panicky wish to run back home to Aunt Jane. wardly, however, she was very calm when she met them in the station. She had known them at once from their pictures. There was Uncle James, handsome and distinguished looking, with his brown Vandyke beard. There was Aunt Eleanor, beautiful and graceful, like a lovely flower on a tall, slender stalk. And there was Barbara, laughing and eager, in a green flannel dress and a small green felt. Lucinda tried not to think of her plain blue suit and the hat that was just a hat.

They were all very jolly and kind and chattered gaily as they threaded their way through the crowded station out to the place where the cars were parked. Here were her other cousins, James junior, known as Jimps, who was twenty and went to a famous school in the East, and Frederick, known as Ricky, who was sixteen, a year older than Lucinda

and his sister. The boys shook her hand warmly, asked her about the trip, and said they would "see her later." They went off at once and Barbara explained that they were driving the roadster down.

"And a good thing too," she added, "or we 'd never have a chance to get acquainted. They both talk so much and are such terrible teases. You'll have to be on my side, Lucinda. I never get any support."

Lucinda loved Barbara at once. She was so sweet and unaffected in spite of all the wonderful things she had had. Lucinda could but think how little she knew, how little she had seen and done, in comparison with her cousin. Barbara had always gone to boarding-school; Lucinda to a smalltown high school. Barbara talked a glib jargon of hockey and tennis tournaments and proctors and mid-terms and coming out; and Lucinda felt that there had been nothing in her meager life that could possibly interest a girl like Barbara Allyn.

It was almost dusk when they came, at the end of a long, dusty, tree-lined road, to a sign that said Silver Point. They got out of the car and walked down a dusky path that wound through a thick wood and brought them to a wide, rambling brown house, with a long sweep of porch, set back from the beach just far enough to avoid tidewater.

The boys had arrived ahead of them and greeted them with shouts of "Hurry up! Dinner 's ready and Nora 's in a stew."

"Should n't care for Nora in a stew, I 'm sure," said Uncle James. "Never particularly cared for stews, anyway."

"Well, Lu," said Jimps, "did Babby babble all the way down? A dreadful tongue that girl has-can't curb it."

"We all noticed how quiet it was without you," retorted Barbara.

Lucinda, who felt quite tongue-tied, wondered if she would ever know him well enough to answer him as easily as Barbara did.

Dinner was a merry meal. They ate out on the side porch where they could watch the water. and the passing boats.: Lucinda, who was arcustomed to.quiet suppers with Aunt Jane, was quite dizzy trying to follow everything that was said and done. The sight of jelly in a glass dish reminded her of the jar of quince honey for Uncle James that Aunt Jane had put in her bag. She grew quite hot and embarrassed at the very thought of handing it to him. She would

wait, she decided, until she knew them all much, much better.

After dinner, there was a friendly argument as to whether they should go canoeing or riding in the speed-boat. It was ended by Ricky, who "tossed up," and "heads" appearing, they all went out in the speedboat. It was more beautiful than Lucinda had imagined it could be, with the moon rising over the wooded hills on the opposite shore, and the phosphorus gleaming in the water. When they came back, Uncle James built a beach fire and they sat about and toasted marshmallows and talked. Jimps got his banjo and sang college songs in which the whole family joined. When it was time for bed, Aunt Eleanor and Uncle James kissed Lucinda good night, and Jimps admonished her to be firm with Barbara if she tried to talk all night.

"It's all right until four o'clock," he said. "I don't mind being kept awake that long; but when it begins to get dawn then I do demand some sleep."

"Don't pay any attention to him," said Barbara, loftily. "He's such a silly."

The room that Barbara and Lucinda were to share had windows all along one side, opening on the sound. Lucinda sat down on her bed and stared out on the moonlit water. "It's too bad to go to bed and leave it," she said. "But you

"Yes, is n't it," said Barbara. have weeks ahead of you and you can look at it every night."

"It does n't seem possible," said Lucinda, as though to herself.

She had a fleeting thought of the little house in the hot, middle-western town. She sent Aunt Jane a wish for sweet dreams and began to undress. Getting the things she needed out of her unpacked bag, she came upon the jar of quince honey. With a guilty feeling, she pushed it down to the bottom of the bag and put it in the closet.

The weeks that followed were among the happiest that Lucinda had ever known. Under the careful tutelage of Jimps and Ricky, she learned to swim and to paddle a canoe. She gradually lost her paralyzing shyness, though she did n't cease to consider them quite superior beings. It seemed to her that there was nothing that her cousins could n't do and had n't done. How she envied them their prowess in the water and their dexterity with sail-boats and canoes! Often they all got up with the sun and set off on a fishing expedition, although their

catch usually consisted of porgies, which could n't be eaten. When tides were low they went digging for clams, and Lucinda learned to find them by watching for the small geyser of water that they would send into the air, betraying their hiding-places.

"and Lucinda can discipline you." He looked solemnly at them all, and winked at Lucinda.

"Help!" cried Jimps, the irrepressible. "The iron rod-the fist of mail-and all that! Take me with you, Father! I sha' n't be able to bear up un

der it."

"Oh, she'll be easy," said Ricky, scornfully. "A peep out of either one of 'em and they can expect barnacles in their beds."

"I'll have a detailed report from Lucinda when we get back," said Uncle James, "and woe to any offenders! Mind now, she is in charge."

When Lucinda was teased she always blushed very violently and found no words for a reply. Not even a month's almost constant banter from Jimps and her uncle had cured her. Now at the suggestion that she was to take care of her three capable cousins, she turned very pink, as usual. It seemed quite impossible to imagine any situation in which she could naturally act as a leader.

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One day of exceptionally low tide they went down the beach a mile or two and dug for geoducks. Lucinda had never heard of them, and the idea of setting out duck-hunting with a pail and a shovel was very amusing. The geoduck, she found, was a gigantic clam that was quite delicious when Nora, the cook, had fried it in a batter.

The days slid past with lightning speed, and Lucinda tumbled into bed every night too tired to look out of her windows at the moon on the water. She never found time to be homesick, though always, just before sleep claimed her, she sent a little loving thought to Aunt Jane.

She had been at camp just a month when one day Uncle James returned from the village with a letter which called him to Seattle on business. Aunt Eleanor decided to go with him and leave "the gang," as they called themselves, at camp.

"Nora can feed you," said Uncle James,

Uncle James and Aunt Eleanor had been gone just three days when Nora got the toothache. It was no ordinary toothache, that one of Nora's, but a very painful one that sent her to bed groaning and swelled one side of her face to alarming proportions. The first day that Nora was in bed they got their own meals by the simple expedient of opening tin cans and heating the contents, and it was rather a lark. The next day the tooth was worse, and Jimps and Ricky decided to drive Nora to the nearest town to a dentist. They left the girls at camp and started out early in the morning..

Barbara and Lucinda, left to themselves, had a long lazy day on the water, and about five o'clock were out drifting along in a canoe in the dark shade of trees near the shore when they saw Ricky emerge suddenly from the woods and come running down the