“Louise!  I shall never forget this—­never!” she declared haughtily, as Willy Peebles started the car and it rumbled on down the Shell Road.

Unable to face Cap’n Amazon just then for several reasons, Louise did not re-enter the store but strolled down to the sands.  There was a skiff drawn up above high-water mark and the hoop-backed figure of Washy Gallup sat in it.  He was mending a net.  He nodded with friendliness to Louise, his jaw working from side to side like a cow chewing her cud—­and for the same reason.  Washy had no upper teeth left.

“How be you this fine day, miss?” the old fellow asked sociably.  “It’s enough to put new marrer in old bones, this weather.  Cold weather lays me up same’s any old hulk.  An’ I been used to work, I have, all my life.  Warn’t none of ’em any better’n me in my day.”

“You have done your share, I am sure, Mr. Gallup,” the girl said, smiling cheerfully down upon him.  “Yours is the time for rest.”

“Rest?  How you talk!” exclaimed Washy.  “A man ought to be able to aim his own pollock and potaters, or else he might’s well give up the ship.  I tell ’em if I was only back in my young days where I could do a full day’s work, I’d be satisfied.”

Louise had turned up a fiddler with the toe of her boot.  As the creature scurried for sanctuary, Washy observed: 

“Them’s curious critters.  All crabs is.”

“I think they are curious,” Louise agreed.  “Like a cross-eyed man.  Look one way and run another.”

“Surely—­surely.  Talk about a curiosity—­the curiousest-osity I ever see was a crab they have in Japanese waters; big around’s a clam-bucket and dangling gre’t long laigs to it like a sea-going giraffe."’

Louise was thankful for this opportunity for laughter, for that “curiousest-osity” was too much for her sense of the ludicrous.

Like almost every other man of any age that Louise had met about Cardhaven—­save Cap’n Abe himself—­Washy had spent a good share of his life in deep-bottomed craft.  But he had never risen higher than petty officer.

“Some men’s born to serve afore the mast—­or how’d we git sailors?” observed the old fellow, with all the philosophy of the unambitious man.  “Others get into the afterguard with one, two, three, and a jump!” His trembling fingers knotted the twine dexterously.  “Now, there’s your uncle.”

“Uncle Amazon?” asked Louise.

“No, miss.  Cap’n Abe, I mean.  This here Am’zon Silt, ’tis plain to be seen, has got more salt water than blood in his veins.  Cap’n Abe’s a nice feller—­not much again him here where he’s lived and kep’ store for twenty-odd year.  ‘Ceptin’ his yarnin’ ’bout his brother all the time.  But from the look of Cap’n Am’zon I wouldn’t put past him anything that Cap’n Abe says he’s done—­and more.

“But Abe himself, now, I’d never believed would trust himself on open water.”