“Likely—­likely,” agreed Cap’n Amazon.  “But you intimated that you was the a’nt of a party by the name of Grayling.  I happen to be her uncle myself.  Her mother was my ha’f-sister.  I don’t remember—­jest who’d you say you was, ma’am?”

“I am her father’s own sister,” cried the lady in desperation.

“Oh, yes!  I see!” murmured Cap’n Amazon.  “Then you must be her A’nt ’Phemie.  I’ve heard Louise speak of you.  Tubbesure!”

“I am Mrs. Conroth,” said Mrs. Euphemia Conroth haughtily.

“Happy to make your acquaintance,” said Cap’n Amazon, bobbing his head and putting forth his big hand.  Mrs. Conroth scorned the hand, raised her lorgnette and stared at the old mariner as though he were some curious specimen from the sea that she had never observed before.  Cap’n Amazon smiled whimsically and looked down at his stained and toil-worn palm.

“I see you’re nigh-sighted, ma’am.  Some of us git that way as we grow older.  I never have been bothered with short eyesight myself.”

“I wish to see my niece at once,” Mrs. Conroth said, flushing a little at his suggestion of her advancing years.

“Come right in,” he said, lifting the flap in the counter.

Mrs. Conroth glared around the store through her glass.  “Cannot Louise come here?” She asked helplessly.

“We live back o’ the shop—­and overhead,” explained Cap’n Amazon.  “Come right in, I’ll have Betty Gallup call Louise.”

Bristling her indignation like a porcupine its quills, the majestic woman followed the spry figure of the captain.  Her first glance over the old-fashioned, homelike room elicited a pronounced sniff.

“Catarrh, ma’am?” suggested the perfectly composed Cap’n Amazon.  “This strong salt air ought to do it a world of good.  I’ve known a sea v’y’ge to cure the hardest cases.  They tell me lots of ’em come down here to the Cape afflicted that way and go home cured.”

Mrs. Conroth stared with growing comprehension at Cap’n Amazon.  It began to percolate into her brain that possibly this strange-looking seaman possessed qualities of apprehension for which she had not given him credit.

“Sit down, ma’am,” said Cap’n Amazon hospitably.  “Abe ain’t here, but I cal’late he’d want me to do the honors, and assure you that you are welcome.  He always figgers on having a spare berth for anybody that boards us, as well as a seat at the table.

“Betty,” he added, turning to the amazed Mrs. Gallup, just then appearing at the living-room door, “tell Louise her A’nt ’Phemie is here, will you?”

“Say Mrs. Conroth, woman,” corrected the lady tartly.

Betty scowled and went away, muttering:  “Who’s a ‘woman,’ I want to know?  I ain’t one no more’n she is,” and it can be set down in the log that the “able seaman” began by being no friend of Aunt Euphemia’s.

It was with a sinking at her heart that Louise heard of her aunt’s arrival.  She had written to her Aunt Euphemia before leaving New York that she had decided to try Cape Cod for the summer and would go to her mother’s relative, Captain Abram Silt.  Again, on reaching the store on the Shell Road, she had dutifully written a second letter announcing her arrival.