The good woman must have sent over most of the supper she had intended them to eat with her, and this, together with the good things sent in by other neighbors, so loaded the table that Mark declared it looked like a regular surprise-party supper.
A surprise-party it proved to be, sure enough, for early in the evening neighbors and friends began to drop in to say good-bye, until the lower rooms of the little house were filled.

As the chairs were all gone, they sat on trunks, boxes, and on the kitchen table, or stood up.
Mark and Ruth had their own party, too, right in among the grown people; for most of the boys and girls of the village had come with their parents to say good-bye, and many of them had brought little gifts that they urged the young Elmers to take with them as keepsakes.
Of all these none pleased Ruth so much as the album, filled with the pictures of her school-girl friends, that Edna May brought her.
Edna was the adopted daughter of Captain Bill May, who had brought her home from one of his voyages when she was a little baby, and placed her in his wife's arms, saying that she was a bit of flotsam and jetsam that belonged to him by right of salvage.

His ship had been in a Southern port when a woman, with this child in her arms, had fallen from a pier into the river.

Springing into the water after them, Captain May had succeeded in saving the child, but the mother was drowned.

As nothing could be learned of its history, and as nobody claimed it, Captain May brought the baby home, and she was baptized Edna May.