“I shall be shamed to death!  I must accept the Perritons’ invitation.  I already have accepted it.  They will think you a very queer girl, to say the least.”

“I am,” her niece told her, the gray eyes smiling again, for Louise was soon over her wrath.  “Even daddy-prof says that.”

“Because of his taking you all over the world with him as he did.  I only wonder he did not insist upon your going on this present horrid cruise.

“No.  I have begun to like my comfort too well,” and now Louise laughed outright.  “A mark of oncoming age, perhaps.”

“You are a most unpleasant young woman, Louise.”

Louise thought she might return the compliment with the exchange of but a single word; but she was too respectful to do so.

“I am determined to remain here,” she repeated, “so you may as well take it cheerfully, auntie.  If you intend staying with the Perritons any length of time, of course I shall see you often, and meet them.  I haven’t come down here to the Cape to play the hermit, I assure you.  But I am settled here with Cap’n Amazon, and I am comfortable.  So, why should I make any change?”

“But in this common house!  With that awful looking old sailor!  And the way he talks!  The rough adventures he has experienced—­and the way he relates them!”

“Why, I think he is charming.  And his stories are jolly fun.  He tells the most thrilling and interesting things!  I have before heard people tell about queer corners of the world—­and been in some of them myself.  Only the romance seems all squeezed out of such places nowadays.  But when Cap’n Amazon was young!” she sighed.

“You should hear him tell of having once been wrecked on an island in the South Seas where there were only women left of the tribe inhabiting it, the men all having been killed in battle by a neighboring tribe.  The poor sailors did not know whether those copper-colored Eves would decide to kill and eat them, or merely marry them.”

“Louise!” Aunt Euphemia rose and fairly glared at her niece.  “You show distinctly that association with these horrid people down here has already contaminated your mind.  You are positively vulgar!”

She sailed out of the room, descended the stairs, and “beat up” through the living-room and store, as Betty Gallup said “with ev’ry stitch of canvas drawin’ and a bone in her teeth.”  Louise agreed about the “bone”—­she had given her Aunt Euphemia a hard one to gnaw on.

The girl followed Mrs. Conroth to the automobile and helped her in.  Cap’n Amazon came to the store door as politely as though he were seeing an honored guest over the ship’s side.

“Ask your A’nt ’Phemie to come again.  Too bad she ain’t satisfied to jine us here.  Plenty o’ cabin room.  But if she’s aimin’ to anchor near by she’ll be runnin’ in frequent I cal’late.  Good-day to ye, ma’am!”

Aunt Euphemia did not seem even to see him.  She was also afflicted with sudden deafness.