"Anyway, Dorcas," she remarked, "I think we can now say we
are square with all the world, and so let's go in and wash the
dishes."

"Yes," said Dorcas, "we're square."



CAPTAIN ELI'S BEST EAR


The little seaside village of Sponkannis lies so quietly upon a
protected spot on our Atlantic coast that it makes no more stir
in the world than would a pebble which, held between one's finger
and thumb, should be dipped below the surface of a millpond and
then dropped. About the post-office and the store--both under
the same roof--the greater number of the houses cluster, as if
they had come for their week's groceries, or were waiting for the
mail, while toward the west the dwellings become fewer and fewer,
until at last the village blends into a long stretch of sandy
coast and scrubby pine-woods. Eastward the village ends abruptly
at the foot of a windswept bluff, on which no one cares to build.

Among the last houses in the western end of the village stood
two neat, substantial dwellings, one belonging to Captain Eli
Bunker, and the other to Captain Cephas Dyer. These householders
were two very respectable retired mariners, the first a widower
about fifty, and the other a bachelor of perhaps the same age, a
few years more or less making but little difference in this