In one window hung a pot with “creeping Jew” and inchplant, the tendrils at least a yard long.  In the other window was a blowzy-looking canary in a cage.  A corpulent tortoise-shell cat occupied the turkey-red cushion in one generous rocking chair, There was a couch with a faded patchwork coverlet, several other chairs, and in a glass-fronted case standing on the mantlepiece a model of a brigantine in full sail, at least two feet tall.

“Sit down,” said Cap’n Abe heartily.  “Drop your dunnage right down there,” as Louise slipped the strap of her bag from her shoulder.  “Take that big rocker.  Scat, you, Diddimus! and let the young lady have your place.”

“Oh, don’t bother him, Uncle Abram.  What a beauty he is,” Louise said, as the tortoise-shell—­without otherwise moving—­opened one great, yellow eye.

“He’s a lazy good-for-nothing,” Cap’n Abe said mildly.  “Friends with all the mice on the place, I swan!  But sometimes he’s the only human critter I have to talk to.  ’Cept Jerry.”

“Jerry?”

“The bird,” explained Cap’n Abe, easing himself comfortably into a chair, his guest being seated, and resting his palms on his knees as he gazed at her out of his pale blue eyes.  “He’s a lot of comfort—­Jerry.  An’ he useter be a great singer.  Kinder gittin’ old, now, like the rest of us.

“Does seem too bad,” went on Cap’n Abe reflectively, “how a bird like him has got to live in a cage all his endurin’ days.  Jerry’s a prisoner—­like I been. I ain’t never had the freedom I wanted, Miss------?

“Louise, please.  Uncle Abram.  Lou Grayling,” the girl begged, but smiling.

“Then just you call me Cap’n Abe.  I’m sort o’ useter that,” the storekeeper said.

“Of course I will.  But why haven’t you been free?” she asked, reverting to his previous topic.  “Seems to me—­down here on the Cape where the sea breezes blow, and everything is open——­”

“Yes, ’twould seem so,” Cap’n Abe said, but he said it with hesitation.  “I been some hampered all my life, as ye might say.  ’Tis something that was bred in me.  But as for Jerry------

“Jerry was give to me by a lady when he was a young bird.  After a while I got thinkin’ a heap about him bein’ caged, and one sunshiny day—­it was a marker for days down here on the Cape, an’ we have lots on ’em!  One sunshiny day I opened his door and opened the window, and I says:  ’Scoot!  The hull world’s yourn!’”

“And didn’t he go?” asked the girl, watching the rapt face of the old man.

“Did he go?  Right out through that window with a song that’d break your heart to hear, ’twas so sweet.  He pitched on the old apple tree yonder—­the August sweet’nin’—­and I thought he’d bust his throat a-tellin’ of how glad he was to be free out there in God’s sunshine an’ open air.”

“He came back, I see,” said Louise thoughtfully.