"Well, Toby who kept the loon, lived in a little hut on one of
the principal streets. He was a widower, and lived with his six
grandchildren who were all quite small and went to school. They were
his daughter's children. She had died a few years before of a disease
quite common in Pokonoket, and almost always fatal. It had a long name
which the doctors had given it, which really meant, 'wanting light.'

"Toby was rather feeble and rheumatic, and it was about all he could
do to knit stockings for his grandchildren, and make soup for their
dinner. Almost all day, except when he was stirring the soup, which
he made in a great kettle set into a brick oven, he was sitting on a
little stool in his doorway, knitting, and the loon sat on a perch at
his right hand. The loon who was a very large bird, was crazy, and
thought he was a bobolink. _Link, link, bobolink!_' he sang all day
long, instead of crying in the way a loon usually does. His voice was
not anywhere near the right pitch for a bobolink's song, but that made
no difference. _Link, link, bobolink!_ he kept on singing from morning
till night.

"Toby did not mind knitting, but he did not like to make the soup. It
had never seemed to him to be a man's work, and besides, it hurt his
old, rheumatic back to bend over the soup-kettle. That was what put
it into his head to get married again. He thought if he could find a
pleasant, tidy woman, who would stir the soup while he sat in the
door beside the loon, and knit the stockings, he could live much more
comfortably than he did.

"Now Toby thought he knew of just the one he wanted. She was a widow
who lived a few squares from him. She was as sweet-tempered as a dove,