“Well—­I’ll have plenty of house dresses when my trunks come.  I left my checks at the station for a man named Perry Baker.  They said he’d bring them over to-night.”

“He will,” Cap’n Abe assured her.  But he stopped a moment, stock-still in the middle of the room, and stared at her unseeingly.  Evidently his mind was fixed upon an idea suddenly suggested by her speech.  “He will,” he repeated.  Then: 

“I’ll get the fat kettle over an’ the fry-cage ready.  Amiel brought me a likely cod.  ‘Tain’t been out o’ the water two hours.”

“I love fish,” confessed Louise, following him to the kitchen door.

“Lucky you do, if you’re going to stay a spell on Cape Cod.  For that’s what you’ll eat mornin’, noon, and night.  Fish and clams, an’ mebbe a pot o’ baked beans on a Saturday, or a chicken for Sunday’s dinner.  I don’t git much time to cook fancy.”

“But can’t this woman who comes to do the work cook for you?”

“She can’t cook for me,” snorted Cap’n Abe.  “I respect my stomach too much to eat after Bet Gallup.  She’s as good a man afore the mast as airy feller in Cardhaven.  An’ that’s where she’d oughter be.  But never let her in the galley.”

“Oh, well,” Louise said cheerfully.  “I’m a dab at camp cooking myself, as I told you.  Uncle Amazon and I will make out—­if he comes.”

“Oh!  Ah!  ’Hem!” said Cap’n Abe, clearing his throat.  He stooped to pick up a dropped potlid and came up very red in the face.  “You needn’t borrow any trouble on that score, Cap’n Am’zon’s as good a cook as I be.”

Only twice did Cap’n Abe make forced trips into the shop.  The supper hour of Cardhaven was well established and the thoughtful housewives did not seek to make purchases while the fat was hot in Cap’n Abe’s skillet.  One of these untimely customers was a wandering child with a penny.  “I might have waited on him, Cap’n Abe,” Louise declared.

“Land sakes! so you might,” the storekeeper agreed.  “Though if he’d seen you behind my counter I reckon that young ’un of ’Liathel Grummet’s would have been struck dumber than nature made him in the fust place.”

The other customer was a gangling, half-grown youth after a ball of seine twine and the girl heard him say in a shocked whisper to Cap’n Abe: 

“Say! is it true there’s one o’ them movin’ picture actresses goin’ to stop here with you, Cap’n Abe?  Ma heard so.”

“You tell your ma,” Cap’n Abe said sternly, “that if she keeps on stretchin’ her ears that a-way, she’ll hear the kambuoy over Bartell Shoals in a dead calm!”

Cap’n Abe’s bald poll began to shine with minute beads of perspiration.  He looked over the bib of his voluminous apron like a bewhiskered gnome very busy at some mysterious task.  Louise noticed that his movements about the kitchen were remarkably deft.

“All hands called!” he called out at length.  “I’m about to dish up.”