So, as she sat knitting, while Jim and his father sat, hats on heads and pipes in mouths, mending their nets, old Mrs. Starbuck had “made a plan.”  “Father,” said, she at last, “I’ve be’n thinkin’—­”

“Yay,” replied the old man gruffly but not unkindly—­“yay, I ’spect so.  Thee’s pooty nigh allus a-thinkin’ o’ suthin.  What is it neow?  Eout with it!”

“I’ve be’n thinkin’ that Jim’s all the child we’ve got—­”

“Wal, yay.  Hain’t had no other—­not’s I knows on.  What o’ that?”

“Well, I was a-thinkin’ that, that bein’ so, an’ Jim an’ Sairy thinkin’ so much o’ ‘nother, it wa’n’t o’ no use fur them ter keep waitin’ along year eout an’ year in fur a chance tu keep house by ‘emselves.  They’d best git married right off an’ come an’ live along o’ us.”

“W’y, ole woman!”

“W’y, mother!”

“Yay; I hear both on ye,” said the gentle old mother with a half smile.  “I s’posed likely ye’d think strange on’t at fust; but ye h’ain’t no need ter, fur it’s a sens’ble thing ter dew, an’ yell see’t so when ye’ve thought on’t a spell:  see if ye don’t.”

So well was the proposal liked that very soon the simple ceremony of the Friends made James and Sarah husband and wife; and for a while all seemed happiness in the humble cottage on the cliff—­cottage so humble that it scarcely deserved even that lowly name.

Sarah Macy’s father owned one of the largest dwellings on Nantucket—­a two-story “double house” with two rooms on each side of a broad hall running through the house from front to rear.  On one side of this hall was the “best bedroom,” ghostly with tightly-closed white shutters and long white dimity curtains to the “four-poster” and shining white sanded floor, and the “best-room,” terrible in its grandeur of cold white walls, straight hard sofa, “spider-legged” table, grenadier-like chairs and striped woolen carpet underlaid with straw.  In the rear, on the other side of the hall, was the kitchen with its big brick oven, its yawning fireplace overhung with corpulent iron pots or shining copper kettles depending from numerous gallows-like cranes; with its glittering copper, brass and pewter utensils arrayed on snowy-shelves; with its spotless tables, Its freshly-sanded floor and its heavily-beamed, whitewashed ceiling, from which hung many a bunch of savory herbs or string of red pepper-pods or bunch of seed-corn, or perhaps even a round-backed ham, to get a little browner in the smoke that would sometimes pour out from the half-ignited mass of peat.  In front of the kitchen was the “living-room,” in one corner of which stood a carved high-post bedstead—­glory of the Macys and envy of their neighbors—­with its curtains of big figured chintz, brown sunflowers sprawling over a white ground, drawn aside in the daytime to display the marvelous patchwork of the quilt beneath.  Fuel was scarce even then on the sandy isle; and economy compelled Mr. and Mrs. Macy to make use of this living-room