“I cal’late,” said Cap’n Ira, as they drove away, “that ’Rion must have eat sour pickles for breakfast to-day and nothing much else.  Yet he seemed perky enough last night at the sociable.  I wonder what’s got into him.”

“I’d like to get something out of him,” growled Tunis, to whom the remark was addressed.

“What’s that?”

“Some work, for one thing,” said the captain of the Seamew.  “He’s as lazy a fellow as I ever saw.  And his tongue’s too long.”

“Trouble is,” Cap’n Ira rejoined, “these trips you take in the schooner are too short to give you any chance to lick your crew into shape.  They get back home too often.  Too much shore leave, if ye ask me.”

“I’d lose Mason Chapin if the Seamew made longer voyages.  And I have lost one of the hands already—­Tony.”

“I swan!  What’s the matter with him?”

“His mother says Tony is scared to sail again with the Seamew.  Some Portygee foolishness.”

“I told you them Portygees warn’t worth the grease they sop their bread in,” declared Cap’n Ira.

The two on the rear seat of the carryall paid no attention to this conversation.

“I’m real pleased,” said the old woman, “that you are going to dinner with Lucretia Latham, Ida May.  Your mother thought a sight of her, and ’Cretia did of Sarah Honey, too.  Sarah was one of the few who seemed to understand Lucretia.  She’s so dumb.  I declare I can’t never get used to her myself.  I like folks lively about me, and I don’t care how much they talk—­the more the better.

“Lucretia Latham might have got her a good man and been happily married long ago, if it hadn’t been that when a feller dropped in to call on her she sat mum all the evening and never said no more than the cat.

“I remember Silas Payson, who lived over beyond the port, took quite a shine to Lucretia, seeing her at church.  Or, at least, we thought he did.  Silas began going down to Latham’s Folly of an evening, now and then, and setting up with Lucretia.  But after a while he left off going and said he cal’lated he’d join the Quakers over to Seetawket.  Playing Quaker meeting with just one girl to look at didn’t suit, noway.”  And the old woman laughed placidly.

“Tunis says he understands his aunt,” ventured the girl.

“Tunis has had to put up with her.  But he can say nothing a good deal himself, if anybody should ask ye.  That’s the only fault I’ve found with Tunis.  I’ve heard Ira talk at him for a straight hour in our kitchen, and all the answer Tunis made was to say ‘yes’ twice.”

The girl did not find the captain of the Seamew at all inarticulate later, as they crossed the old fields of the Ball place and walked down the slope into the saucerlike valley where lay Latham’s Folly.  She had never known Tunis to be more companionable than on this occasion.  He seemed to have gained the courage to talk on more intimate topics than at any time since their acquaintanceship had begun.