“Perhaps you showed wisdom, Uncle Amazon,” laughed the girl.  “Still—­when you grow old——­”

“Oh! there’s plenty of sailors’ snug harbors,” he hastened to say.  “And time enough to worry about that when I be old.”

“I thought——­Why! you look younger than Cap’n Abe,” she said.

“Ain’t it a fact?  He’s let himself run to seed and get old lookin’.  That’s from stayin’ ashore all his life.  It’s the feel of a heavin’ deck under his feet that keeps the spring in a man’s wishbone.  Yes, sir!  Abe’s all right—­good man and all that—­but he’s no sailor,” Cap’n Amazon added, shaking his head.

“Now, here!” he went on briskly, “we ought to have breakfast, hadn’t we?  I left that woman Abe has pokin’ around here, to dish up; and it’s ’most six bells.  Feel kind of peckish myself, Louise.”

“I’ll run to see if the biscuits are done,” said the girl; and she hurried to the kitchen ahead of him.  Betty Gallup was waiting for her.

“What d’ye think of him?” she whispered anxiously.

“Why, he’s splendid!” the girl replied scarcely stifling her laughter.  “He’s a character!”

“Humph!  Mebbe.  But even if he is your uncle, I got to say right now he ain’t a man I’d trust.  Nothin’ a-tall like Cap’n Abe!”

“I think he seems a great deal like Uncle Abram.”

“Humph!  How long you knowed Abram Silt?  Come here yesterday for the fust time.  Lemme tell you, Miss Grayling, we’ve knowed Cap’n Abe around here for twenty year and more.  Course, he ain’t Cardhaven born; but we know him.  He’s as diff’rent from this pirate that calls himself Cap’n Am’zon Silt as chalk is from cheese.”

The mush was on the table, Louise called Cap’n Amazon from the store.  They sat down to the table just as she had sat opposite to Cap’n Abe the evening before.  She thought, for a moment, that Cap’n Amazon was going to ask a blessing as her other uncle had.  But no, he began spooning the mush into a rather capacious mouth.

Into the room from the rear strolled Diddimus, the tortoise-shell cat.  Louise tried to attract his attention; but she was comparatively a stranger to turn.  The cat went around to the chair where Cap’n Abe always sat.  He leaped into Cap’n Amazon’s lap.

“Well, I never!” said Cap’n Amazon.  “Seems quite to home, doesn’t he?”

Diddimus, preparing to “make his bed,” looked up with topaz eyes into the face of the captain.  Louise could see the cat actually stiffen with surprise.  Then, with a “p-sst-maow!” he leaped down and ran out of the room at high speed.

“What—­what do you think of that?” gasped Cap’n Amazon.  “The cat’s gone crazy!”

The girl was in a gale of laughter.  “Of course he hasn’t,” she said.  “He thought you were Cap’n Abe—­till he looked into your face.  You can’t blame the cat, Uncle Amazon.”

Cap’n Amazon smote his knee a resounding smack of appreciation.  “You got your bearin’s correct, Louise, I do believe.  I must have surprised the critter.  And Abe set store by him, I’ve no doubt.”