“Poor creeter!” thought Captain Ben.  “How she will enjoy getting into my pantry.  Lyddy never complained that she didn’t have enough of every thing to do with”

And in the full ardor of his intended benevolence, he went right in and opened the subject at once.  But, to his astonishment, Mrs. Davids refused him.  She sighed, but she refused him.

“I’ve seen trouble enough a’ready, without my rushing into more with my eyes wide open,” sighed she.

“Trouble?  Why, that is just what I was meaning to save you!” exclaimed the bewildered widower.  “Pump right in the house, and stove e’enamost new.  And Lyddy never knew what it was to want for a spoonful of sugar or a pound of flour.  And such a handy buttery and sink!  Lyddy used to say she felt the worst about leaving her buttery of any thing.”

“Should thought she would,” answered Mrs. Davids, forgetting to sigh.  “However, I can’t say that I feel any hankering after marrying a buttery.  I’ve got buttery-room enough here, without the trouble of getting set up in a new place.”

“Just as you say,” returned the rejected.  “I ain’t sure as you’d be exactly the one.  I was a thinking of looking for somebody a little younger.”

“Well, here is Persis Tame.  Why don’t you bespeak her? She is younger, and she is in need of a good home.  I can recommend her, too, as the first-rate of a cook,” remarked Mrs. Davids, benevolently.

Miss Tame had been sitting a little apart by the open window, smiling to herself.

But now she turned about at once.  “Hm!” said she, with contempt.  “I should rather live under an umbrella tied to a stake, than marry for a hum.”

So Captain Ben went home without engaging either wife or housekeeper.

And the first thing he saw was Captain Jacob Doolittle’s old one-eyed horse eating the apples Loizah Mullers had strung and festooned from nails against the house, to dry.

The next thing he saw was, that, having left a window open, the hens had flown in and gone to housekeeping on their own account.  But they were not, like Mrs. Davids, as neat as a new cent, and not, also, such master hands to save.

“Shoo! shoo!  Get out.  Go ’long there with you!” cried Captain Ben, waving the dish-cloth and the poker.  “I declare for ’t!  I most hadn’t ought to have left that bread out on the table.  They’ve made a pretty mess of it, and it is every spec there is in the house too.  Well, I must make a do of potatoes for supper, with a bit of pie and a mouthful of cake.”

Accordingly he went to work building a fire that wouldn’t burn.  Then, forgetting the simple matter of dampers, the potatoes wouldn’t bake.  The tea-kettle boiled over and cracked the stove, and after that boiled dry and cracked itself.  Finally the potatoes fell to baking with so much ardor that they overdid it and burnt up.  And, last of all, the cake-jar and pie-cupboard proved to be entirely empty.  Loizah had left on the eve of baking-day.