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Sister Ann was a princess among housekeepers, and for some time after her death the captain was a piteous mourner indeed. No growing school-boy could be more shy and miserable in the presence of women than he, though nobody had a readier friendliness or more off-hand sailor ways among men. The few intimate family friends who came to his assistance at the time of his sister’s illness and death added untold misery to the gloomy situation. Yet he received the minister with outspoken gratitude in spite of that worthy man’s trepidation. Everybody said that poor Captain Ball looked as if his heart was broken. “I tell ye I feel as if I was tied in a bag of fleas,” said the distressed mariner, and his pastor turned away to cough, hoping to hide the smile that would come. “Widders an’ old maids, they’re busier than the divil in a gale o’ wind,” grumbled the captain. “Poor Ann, she was worth every one of ’em lashed together, and here you find me with a head-wind every way I try to steer.” The minister was a man at any rate; his very presence was a protection.

Some wretched days went by while Captain Ball tried to keep his lonely house with the assistance of one Silas Jenkins, who had made several voyages with him as cook, but they soon proved that the best of sailors may make the worst of housekeepers. Life looked darker and darker, and when, one morning, Silas inadvertently overheated and warped the new cooking stove, which had been the pride of Miss Ball’s heart, the breakfastless captain dismissed him in a fit of blind rage. The captain was first cross and then abject when he went hungry, and in this latter stage was ready to abase himself enough to recall Widow Sparks, his sister’s lieutenant, who lived close by in Ropewalk Lane, forgetting that he had driven her into calling him an old hog two days after the funeral. He groaned aloud as he thought of her, but reached for his hat and cane, when there came a gentle feminine rap at the door.

“Let ’em knock!” grumbled the captain, angrily, but after a moment’s reflection, he scowled and went and lifted the latch.

There stood upon the doorstep a middle-aged woman, with a pleasant though determined face. The captain scowled again, but involuntarily opened his fore-door a little wider.

“Capt’in Asaph Ball, I presume?”

“The same,” answered the captain.

“I’ve been told, sir, that you need a housekeeper, owing to recent affliction.”

There was a squally moment of resistance in the old sailor’s breast, but circumstances seemed to be wrecking him on a lee shore. Down came his flag on the run.

“I can’t say but what I do, ma’am,” and with lofty courtesy, such as an admiral should use to his foe of equal rank, the master of the house signified that his guest might enter. When they were seated opposite each other in the desolate sitting-room he felt himself the weaker human being of the two. Five years earlier, and he would have put to sea before the week’s end, if only to gain the poor freedom of a coastwise lime schooner.

“Well, speak up, can’t ye?” he said, trying to laugh. “Tell me what’s the tax, and how much you can take hold and do, without coming to me for orders every hand’s turn o’ the day. I’ve had Silas Jinkins here, one o’ my old ship’s cooks; he served well at sea, and I thought he had some head; but we’ve been beat, I tell ye, and you’ll find some work to put things ship-shape. He’s gitting in years, that’s the trouble; I oughtn’t to have called on him,” said Captain Ball, anxious to maintain even so poorly the dignity of his sex.

“I like your looks; you seem a good steady hand, with no nonsense about ye.” He cast a shy glance at his companion, and would not have believed that any woman could have come to the house a stranger, and have given him such an immediate feeling of confidence and relief.