"Shutting an innocent canary-bird up in the same room with a healthy cat
is a more or less risky proposition for the bird. Same way, if you take
a pretty country girl who's been to sea with her dad most of the time
and tied to the apron-strings of a deef old aunt in a house three
miles from nowhere--you take that girl, I say, and then fetch along,
as next-door neighbor, a good-looking young shark like Allie, with a
hogshead of money and a blame sight too much experience, and that's a
risky proposition for the girl.

"Allie played his cards well; he'd set into a good many similar games
afore, I judge. He begun by doing little favors for Phoebe Ann--she was
the deef aunt I mentioned--and 'twa'n't long afore he was as solid
with the old lady as a kedge-anchor. He had a way of dropping into
the Saunders house for a drink of water or a slab of 'that delicious
apple-pie,' and with every drop he got better acquainted with Barbara.
Cap'n Eben was on a v'yage to Buenos Ayres and wouldn't be home till
fall, 'twa'n't likely.

"I didn't see a great deal of what was going on, being too busy with my
fishweirs and clamming to notice. Allie and me wa'n't exactly David and
Jonathan, owing, I judge, to our informal introduction to each other.
But I used to see him scooting 'round in his launch--twenty-five foot,
she was, with a little mahogany cabin and the land knows what--and
the servants at the big house told me yarns about his owning a big
steam-yacht, with a sailing-master and crew, which was cruising round
Newport somewheres.

"But, busy as I was, I see enough to make me worried. There was a good
deal of whispering over the Saunders back gate after supper, and once,