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      "I hope, Cap'n Kendrick, that you won't think there was any—ah—anything personal in our mistaking you for a tramp the other day. Of course there wasn't. Oh, dear, no!"

      The captain hesitated. He was wondering just what answer he was supposed to make to this speech. Did the lady wish him to infer that it was the Fair Harbor custom to consider all male strangers tramps until they were proven innocent? Or—but Mrs. Chase saved him the trouble of reply.

      "Elviry," she demanded, "what are you and him whisperin' about? Why don't you talk so's a body can hear you? He's Cap'n Kendrick, ain't he? Have you told him who we be, same as you said you was goin' to?"

      Miss Snowden, after looking at the rotund Aurora as if she would like to bite her, smiled instead and began a rather tangled explanation to the effect that she and Mrs. Chase had felt that perhaps they had been a—ah—they might have seemed "kind of hasty—you know, Cap'n Kendrick, in what—in speaking as we did that time, and so—and so I told her if we ever did meet you—if we ever should, you know—— But we haven't really met yet, have we? Shall we introduce ourselves? I don't see why not; neighbors, you know. Cap'n Kendrick, this is Mrs. Aurora Chase, widow of the late Cap'n Ichabod Chase. No doubt, you knew Cap'n Chase in the old days, Cap'n Kendrick."

      And then Aurora, who had been listening with all her ears, and hearing with perhaps a third of them, broke in to say that her husband was not a captain. "He was second mate when he died," she explained. "Aboard the bark Charles Francis he was, bound for New Bedford from the West Indies with a load of guano."

      Miss Snowden, favoring the veracious Aurora with another look, hastily introduced herself and began to speak of the beauties of the day, of the surroundings, and particularly of the select and refined joys of life at the Fair Harbor.

      "We have our little circle there," she said. "We live our lives, quiet, retired, away from the world——"

      Mrs. Chase broke in once more to ask what she was talking about. When the substance of the Snowden rhapsody was given her, she nodded—as well as her several chins would permit her to nod—and announced that she agreed.

      "We like livin' at the home first-rate," she declared. Elvira flushed.

      "It is not a home," she said, sharply. "It is a select retreat, that is all. It is not a home in any sense of the word. Every one knows that it is not. Aurora, I wish to goodness you—— But of course Cap'n Kendrick doesn't want to hear about us all the time. He is interested in his own new quarters. Do you like it here, Cap'n Kendrick? I—ah—understand you are, so to speak, a guest of Mr. Cahoon's. He is—ah—a relation of yours?"

      Sears explained the acquaintanceship between Judah and himself. Miss Snowden nodded comprehension.

      "That explains it," she said. "I thought he could hardly be a relation of yours, Cap'n Kendrick. He is—he is a little bit queer, isn't he? I mean eccentric, you know. Of course I've never met him, and I'm sure he's real good-hearted, but——"

      She paused, leaving the rest of the sentence to be inferred. Captain Sear's answer was prompt and crisp.

      "Judah Cahoon is one of the best fellows that ever lived," he said.

      "Yes, I know. I am sure he is. I didn't mean that. I meant is he—is he——"

      And then Judah himself, at work in the garden behind the screen of bushes, too busy to hear or even be aware of the conversation at the gate, chose this untoward moment to burst into song, to sing at the top of his voice, and the top of Judah's voice was an elevation from which sound traveled far. He sang:

      "Oh, Sally Brown was a bright mulatter,

       Way, oh, roll and go!

       She drinks rum and chews terbacker,

       Spend my money on Sally Brown.

       Whee—yip!"

      Miss Elvira's thin figure stiffened to an exclamation point of disapproval. Captain Kendrick turned uneasily in the direction of the singer. Mrs. Chase, aware that something was going on and not wishing to miss it, cupped her ear with her hand. And Judah began the second verse.

      "Oh, Sally Brown, I'll surely miss you,

       Way, oh, roll and go!

       How I'd love to hug and kiss you!

       Spend my money on Sally Brown.

       Whee—yip!"

      "Judah!" roared the captain, who was suffering acute apprehension. "Judah!"

      "Oh, Sally Brown——"

      "Judah!"

      "Eh? What is it, Cap'n Sears?"

      "Shut up."

      "Eh! Shut up what? What's open?"

      "Stop that noise."

      "What noise?"

      "That noise of yours. That singin'."

      "Eh? Oh, all right, sir. Aye, aye, Cap'n, just as you say."

      Captain Sears, relieved, turned again to his visitors. But the visitors were rapidly retreating along the path, the lines of Miss Elvira's back indicating disgust and outraged gentility. Mrs. Chase, however, looked back. Obviously she still did not know what it was all about.

      Sears, although he chuckled a good deal over the affair, was a trifle annoyed, nevertheless. It was a good joke, of course, and he certainly cared little for the approval or disapproval of Miss Elvira Snowden. But when he considered what the prim spinster's version of the happening was likely to be and the reputation her story was sure to confer, inside the Fair Harbor fences at least, upon him and his household companion, he was tempted to wish that that companion's musical talent had been hidden under a napkin, or, better still, a feather bed. He—Kendrick—was to live, for a time indefinite, next door to the Fair Harborites, and it is always pleasant to be on good terms with one's neighbors. True, those neighbors might be, the majority of them, what Mr. Cahoon called them—which was whatever term of approbrium he happened to think of at the moment, "pack of old hens" being the mildest—but the captain knew that one, at least, was not an "old hen." "That Berry girl," which was his way of thinking of her, was attractive and kind and a lady. They had met but once, it is true, but she had made a most favorable impression upon him. He had caught glimpses of her on two occasions, in the Fair Harbor grounds, and once she had waved a greeting. She was a nice girl, he was sure of it. If she thought at all of the cripple next door he would like her to think of him in a kindly way, as a decent sort of hulk, so to speak. It was provoking to feel that she would next hear of him as a dissipated ruffian, friend and defender of another ruffian who howled ribald songs in the presence—or at least in the hearing—of ladies.

      He questioned Judah concerning the Fair Harbor, its founder and the dwellers within its gates. Judah told him what he knew of the story, which was very little more than the captain already knew, his knowledge gained from his sister's letters. Captain Sylvanus Seymour had had but one child, his daughter Lobelia. At his death she, of course, inherited all his property. According to Bayport gossip, as reported by Mr. Cahoon, the old man had died worth anywhere from one half a million to three or five millions. "Richer'n dock mud, I cal'late he was," declared Judah. "Made a lot of money out of his Boston shippin' business and a lot more out of stocks and city real estate and one thing or 'nother." For years after Captain Sylvanus died Lobelia lived alone in the big house. Then she had married. Judah could tell little about the man she married.

      "He was a music teacher that come to town here one winter, that's about all I can swear to," said Judah. "Down here for his health, so he said, and taught singin' school while he was gittin' healthy. His last name was Phillips, which is all right, but he had the craziest fust name ever I heard. Egbert 'twas. Hoppin', creepin' Henry! Did you ever hear such a name? Egbert! Jumpin' prophets! Boys round town, they tell me, used to call him 'Eg' behind his back. Some of 'em, them that didn't like him, called him 'Soft biled.' Haw, haw! See what they meant, don't you, Cap'n Sears? Egbert, you know, that's 'Eg' for short, and then 'Soft

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