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“I was stopping with some friends that had a letter from some o’ the minister’s folks here, and they told how bad off you was,” said Mrs. French, modestly. “I was out of employment, an’ I said to myself that I should feel real happy to go and do for that Captain Ball. He knows what he wants, and I know what I want, and no flummery.”

“You know somethin’ o’ life, I do declare,” and the captain fairly beamed. “I never was called a hard man at sea, but I like to give my orders, and have folks foller ’em. If it was women-folks that wrote, they may have set me forth more ‘n ordinary. I had every widder and single woman in town here while Ann lay dead, and my natural feelin’s were all worked up. I see ’em dressed up and smirkin’ and settin’ their nets to ketch me when I was in an extremity. I wouldn’t give a kentle o’ sp’iled fish for the whole on ’em. I ain’t a marryin’ man, there’s once for all for ye,” and the old sailor stepped toward the door with some temper.

“Ef you’ll write to the young woman, sir, just to put off comin’ for a couple or three weeks,” suggested Mrs. French.

” This afternoon, ma’am,” said the captain, as if it were the ay, ay, sir, of an able seaman who sprang to his duty of reefing the main-topsail.

Captain Ball walked down to the fish shop with stately steps and measured taps of his heavy cane. He stopped on the way, a little belated, and assured two or three retired ship-masters that he had manned the old brig complete at last; he even gave a handsome wink of his left eye over the edge of a glass, and pronounced his morning grog to be A No. 1, prime.

Mrs. French picked up her gown at each side with thumb and finger, and swept the captain a low courtesy behind his back as he went away; then she turned up the aforesaid gown and sought for one of the lamented Miss Ann Ball’s calico aprons, and if ever a New England woman did a morning’s work in an hour, it was this same Mrs. French.

“‘T ain’t every one knows how to make what I call a chowder,” said the captain, pleased and replete, as he leaned back in his chair after dinner. “Mis’ French, you shall have everything to do with, an’ I ain’t no kitchen colonel myself to bother ye.”

There was a new subject for gossip in that seaport town. More than one woman had felt herself to be a fitting helpmate for the captain, and was confident that if time had been allowed, she could have made sure of even such wary game as he. When a stranger stepped in and occupied the ground at once, it gave nobody a fair chance, and Mrs. French was recognized as a presuming adventuress by all disappointed aspirants for the captain’s hand. The captain was afraid at times that Mrs. French carried almost too many guns, but she made him so comfortable that she kept the upper hand, and at last he was conscious of little objection to whatever this able housekeeper proposed. Her only intimate friends were the minister and his wife, and the captain himself was so won over to familiarity by the kindness of his pastor in the time of affliction, that when after some weeks Mrs. French invited the good people to tea, Captain Ball sat manfully at the foot of his table, and listened with no small pleasure to the delighted exclamations of the parson’s wife over his store of china and glass. There was a little feeling of guilt when he remembered how many times in his sister’s day he had evaded such pleasant social occasions by complaint of inward malady, or by staying boldly among the wharves until long past supper-time, and forcing good Miss Ann to as many anxious excuses as if her brother’s cranky ways were not as well known to the guests as to herself.