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“I had to say somethin’,” responded the housekeeper, promptly.

“Well, well!” and a suppressed laugh shook the captain like an earthquake. He was suddenly set free from his enemies, while an hour before he had been hemmed in on every side.

They had a cheerful supper, and Ann French cut a pie, and said, as she passed him more than a quarter part of it, that she thought she should give up when she was baking that morning, and saw the look on his face as he handed her the post-card.

“You’re fit to be captain of a privateer,” acknowledged Captain Asaph Ball, handsomely. The complications of shore life were very astonishing to this seafaring man of the old school.

Early on Monday morning he had a delightful sense of triumph. Captain Allister, who was the chief gossip of the waterside club, took it upon himself–a cheap thing to do, as everybody said afterwards–to ask many questions about those unvalued relatives of the Balls, who had settled long ago in New York State. Were there any children left of the captain’s half-brother’s family?

“I’ve got a niece living–a great-niece she is,” answered Captain Ball, with a broad smile–“makes me feel old. You see, my half-brother was a grown man when I was born. I never saw him scarcely; there was some misunderstanding an’ he always lived with his own mother’s folks; and father, he married again, and had me and Ann thirty year after. Why, my half-brother ‘d been ‘most a hundred; I don’t know but more.”

Captain Ball spoke in a cheerful tone; the audience meditated, and Captain Allister mentioned meekly that time did slip away.

“Ever see any of ’em?” he inquired. In some way public interest was aroused in the niece.

“Ever see any of ’em?” repeated the captain, in a loud tone. “You fool, Allister, who’s keepin’ my house this minute? Why, Ann French; Ann Ball that was, and a smart, likely woman she is. I ain’t a marryin’ man: there’s been plenty o’ fools to try me. I’ve been picked over well by you and others, and I thought if ‘t pleased you, you could take your own time.”

The honest captain for once lent himself to deception. One would have thought that he had planned the siege himself. He took his stick from where it leaned against a decaying piece of ship-timber and went clicking away. The explanation of his housekeeping arrangements was not long in flying about the town, and Mrs. Captain Topliff made an early call to say that she had always suspected it from the first, from the family likeness.

From this time Captain Ball submitted to the rule of Mrs. French, and under her sensible and fearless sway became, as everybody said, more like other people than ever before. As he grew older it was more and more convenient to have a superior officer to save him from petty responsibilities. But now and then, after the first relief at finding that Mrs. French was not seeking his hand in marriage, and that the jiggeting girl was a mere fabrication, Captain Ball was both surprised and a little ashamed to discover that something in his heart had suffered disappointment in the matter of the great-niece. Those who knew him well would have as soon expected to see a flower grow out of a cobble-stone as that Captain Asaph Ball should hide such a sentiment in his honest breast. He had fancied her a pretty girl in a pink dress, who would make some life in the quiet house, and sit and sing at her sewing by the front window, in all her foolish furbelows, as he came up the street.