FRANCES LEE PRATT.

(BORN, 1830.)

* * * * *

CAPTAIN BEN’S CHOICE.

An old red house on a rocky shore, with a fisherman’s blue boat rocking on the bay, and two white sails glistening far away over the water.  Above, the blue, shining sky; and below, the blue shining sea.

“It seems clever to have a pleasant day,” said Mrs. Davids, sighing.

Mrs. Davids said every thing with a sigh, and now she wiped her eyes also on her calico apron.  She was a woman with a complexion like faded sea-weed, who seemed always pitying herself.

“I tell them,” said she, “I have had real hard luck.  My husband is buried away off in California, and my son died in the army, and he is buried away down South.  Neither one of them is buried together.”

Then she sighed again.  Twice, this time.

“And so,” she continued, taking out a pinch of bayberry snuff, “I am left alone in the world. Alone, I say! why, I’ve got a daughter, but she is away out West.  She is married to an engineer-man.  And I’ve got two grandchildren.”

Mrs. Davids took the pinch of bayberry and shook her head, looking as though that was the “hardest luck” of all.

“Well, everybody has to have their pesters, and you’ll have to take yours,” rejoined Miss Persis Tame, taking a pinch of snuff—­the real Maccaboy—­twice as large, with twice as fierce an action.  “I don’t know what it is to bury children, nor to lose a husband; I s’pose I don’t; but I know what it is to be jammed round the world and not have a ruff to stick my head under.  I wish I had all the money I ever spent travelling,—­and that’s twelve dollars,” she continued, regretfully.

“Why in the world don’t you marry and have a home of your own,” sighed Mrs. Davids.

“Well, I don’t expect to marry.  I don’t know as I do at my time of life,” responded the spinster.  “I rather guess my day for chances is gone by.”

“You ain’t such a dreadful sight older than I am, though,” replied Mrs. Davids, reflectively.

“Not so old by two full years,” returned Miss Tame, taking another smart pinch of snuff, as though it touched the empty spot in her heart and did it good.  “But you ain’t looking out for opportunities yet, I suppose.”

Mrs. Davids sighed, evasively.  “We can’t tell what is before us.  There is more than one man in want of a wife.”

As though to point her words, Captain Ben Lundy came in sight on the beach, his head a long way forward and his shambling feet trying in vain to keep up.

“Thirteen months and a half since Lyddy was buried,” continued Mrs. Davids, accepting this application to her words, “and there is Captain Ben taking up with just what housekeeper he can get, and no housekeeper at all.  It would be an excellent home for you, Persis.  Captain Ben always had the name of making a kind husband.”