stop here with you, Cap'n Abe? Ma heard so."

"You tell your ma," Cap'n Abe said sternly, "that if she keeps on
stretchin' her ears that a-way, she'll hear the kambuoy over Bartell
Shoals in a dead calm!"

Cap'n Abe's bald poll began to shine with minute beads of perspiration.
He looked over the bib of his voluminous apron like a bewhiskered gnome
very busy at some mysterious task. Louise noticed that his movements
about the kitchen were remarkably deft.

"All hands called!" he called out at length. "I'm about to dish up."

"Shall I put on another plate, Cap'n Abe? You expected somebody else
to supper?"

"Nope. All set. I'm always ready for a messmate; but 'tain't often
one boards me 'cept Cap'n Joab now and then. His woman likes to git
him out from under foot. You see, when a woman's been useter seein'
her husband only 'twixt v'y'ges for forty year, I 'spect 'tis something
of a cross to have him litterin' up the house ev'ry day," he confessed.
"But as I can't leave the shop myself to go visitin' much in return,
Joab acks offish. We Silts was always bred to be hospitable. Poor or
rich, we could share what we had with another. So I keep an extry
plate on the table.

"I've had occasion," pursued the philosophical storekeeper, drawing up
his own chair across the table from the girl, "to be at some folks'
houses at meal time and had 'em ask me to set up and have a bite. But
it never looked to me as if they meant it 'nless there was already an