Just in front of the house was an old wharf, where fishing-boats were
moored, and nets spread for drying or mending. One morning, Bub and
Mandy were sitting on the log which guards the edge of the wharf,
watching their father and brother Jeff getting ready to spread the nets
for next night's "haul." Jeff was busy with the buoy lines and sinkers,
while the father bailed out the boat with an old tin pan. The children
were rather subdued--Bub wondering how long it would be before he could
"handle a boat" like Jeff and go out with his father? Mandy was
expecting every moment to hear her mother's voice calling from the
house. It was Monday morning, and Mandy knew her mother would soon be
starting for the Hillard's, where she "helped" on Mondays and
Saturdays.

These were the longest days of the week to Mandy, for then she had baby
to tend all by herself and he was "such a bother!"

Yes, there it was: "Mandy!--Mandy!--Mandy _Lewis_! don't you hear?"
Mandy kept her eyes gloomily fixed on the curve of her father's back,
as it bent and rose in the boat below, in time with the scra-a-a-pe,
swish, of the bailer.

"What's the use makin' b'l'eve you don't hear?" said Bub. "You know
you've got to go!"

"I just wish mother'd make _you_ tend baby once, and see how you'd like
it!"--and Mandy rose with an impatient jerk of her bonnet-strings and
slowly climbed the steep path to the house. Her mother, standing in the
door-way with baby on one arm, shaded her eyes from the sun as she
watched the cloudy face under the pink bonnet. It was always cloudy on
Mondays and Saturdays.