Signal Hill were a bright green patch against the yellow grass. The sea
was a dark sapphire, with slashes of silver to mark the shoals, and
the horizon was notched with sails. The boats at anchor in front of the
shanties swung with the outgoing tide.

Then came Captain Eri, also smoking.

"Hello!" said Captain Jerry. "How is it you ain't off fishin' a mornin'
like this?"

"Somethin' else on the docket," was the answer. "How's matchmakin' these
days?"

Now this question touched vitally the subject of Captain Jerry's
thoughts. From a placid, easygoing retired mariner, recent events had
transformed the Captain into a plotter, a man with a "deep-laid scheme,"
as the gentlemanly, cigarette-smoking villain of the melodrama used to
love to call it. To tell the truth, petticoat government was wearing on
him. The marriage agreement, to which his partners considered him bound,
and which he saw no way to evade, hung over him always, but he had put
this threat of the future from his mind so far as possible. He had not
found orderly housekeeping the joy that he once thought it would be, but
even this he could bear. Elsie Preston was the drop too much.

He liked Mrs. Snow, except in a marrying sense. He liked Elsie better
than any young lady he had ever seen. The trouble was, that between
the two, he, as he would have expressed it, "didn't have the peace of a
dog."

Before Elsie came, a game of checkers between Perez and himself had been