"What puzzled us most was what relation Lobelia was to the skipper. She
wa'n't his wife, 'cause he'd said so, and she didn't look enough like
him to be his mother or sister. But as we was being took off in the
Dutchman's yawl, Hammond thumps the thwart with his fist and says he:

"'I've got it!' he says; 'she's 'is mother-in-law!'

"''Course she is!' says I. 'We might have known it!'"





THE MEANNESS OF ROSY


Cap'n Jonadab said that the South Seas and them islands was full of
queer happenings, anyhow. Said that Eri's yarn reminded him of one that
Jule Sparrow used to tell. There was a Cockney in that yarn, too, and
a South Sea woman and a schooner. But in other respects the stories was
different.

"You all know Wash Sparrow, here in Wellmouth," says the Cap'n. "He's
the laziest man in town. It runs in his family. His dad was just the
same. The old man died of creeping paralysis, which was just the disease
he'd pick out TO die of, and even then he took six years to do it in.
Washy's brother Jule, Julius Caesar Sparrow, he was as no-account and
lazy as the rest. When he was around this neighborhood he put in his
time swapping sea lies for heat from the post-office stove, and the only
thing that would get him livened up at all was the mention of a feller