The voyage proved a speedy and prosperous one, continuous fair weather and favorable winds making it most enjoyable. One pleasant afternoon they entered Gloucester harbor, and before night were safely housed in their new temporary home, where they found the Dinsmores and Travillas awaiting them.
Mr. Croly too was there to join in the greetings. Domiciled with relatives who occupied a cottage but a few rods distant, he passed much of his time with Harold and Herbert, fishing, boating, bathing, riding, or driving; pleasures that were now shared by the other gentlemen and ladies and more or less by the children also; the captain, young uncles, and occasionally Mr. Croly caring for them when in bathing and seeing that they had a fair share of the pleasures of the older people.
There were many beautiful drives to be taken, some interesting spots to visit. One day they took a long drive, much of it through a pleasant wood, whence they emerged within a few hundred yards of the sea-shore, there very high and rocky. They fastened their horses in the edge of the wood, alighted, and walked out in the direction of the sound of the dashing, booming waves.
Stepping across a narrow fissure in the rocks, the gentlemen helping the ladies and children over, they could see that it widened toward the water and that the sea roared and foamed like a seething caldron about the base of the rocks, which were very steep and uneven, in many places great stones piled upon each other in a way that made them look as if it would take very little to send them toppling down into the roaring, fuming water below.
Grace clung to her father in affright. “O papa, please don’t let us go any nearer,” she said; “please hold me tight.”
“I will, my darling,” he answered soothingly. “We are in no danger here, and you can just stand and look, seeing all you need care to. Then I will take you back to mamma, over yonder where she is gathering flowers for Elsie and Ned, and you can stay with and amuse them while she comes here to take a look.”
“Yes, I’d rather be there,” she said, “for it seems so dangerous here. O papa, see! Lu is going so near the edge. I’m afraid she’ll fall in.”
“Uncle Harold has her hand,” he said; “still I do not like to see her venturing so near the edge. Lucilla,” he called, “come here, daughter.”