Joe and Fuz were almost as red as the lobsters, and Mrs. Foster’s face looked as severe as it could, but that is not saying a great deal.  The Kinzer family knew all about those cuffs and collars, and Ham Morris and the younger ladies were trying hard not to laugh.

“Joe,” said Fuz, half snappishly, “can’t you take a joke?  Annie’s got the laugh on us this time.”

“I?” exclaimed Annie, indignantly.  “No, indeed.  That’s some of Ford’s work and Dabney’s.  Mr. Kinzer, I’m ashamed of you.”

Poor Dab!

He muttered something about “those being all the vegetables he had,” and retreated to the kitchen.  Joe and Fuz were not the sort to take offense easily, however, and promptly helped themselves liberally to lobster.  That was all that was necessary to restore harmony at the table; but Dab’s plan for “punishing the Hart boys” was a complete failure.  As Ford told him afterward,

[Illustration:  “VEGETABLES?” “WHY, THEY’RE LOBSTERS!”]

“Feel it?  Not they.  You might as well try to hurt a clam with a pin.”

“And I hurt your sister’s feelings instead of theirs,” replied Dab.  “Well, I’ll never try anything like it again.  Anyhow, Joe and Fuz aint comfortable.  They ate too many roasted clams and too much lobster.”

CHAPTER XXII.

Ham Morris did not linger long at the dinner-table, and Dab would have given more than ever for the privilege of going with him.  Not that he felt so very charitable, but that he did not care to prolong his stay at Mrs. Foster’s, whether as “cook” or otherwise.  He had not lost his appetite, however, and after he had taken care of that, he slipped away “on an errand for his mother,” and hurried toward the village.  Nearly everybody he met had some question or other to ask him about the wreck, and it was not to have been expected that Jenny Walters would let her old acquaintance pass her without a word or so.

Dab answered as best he could, considering the disturbed state of his mind, but he wound up with: 

“Jenny, I wish you’d come over to our house by and by.”

“What for?”

“Oh, I’ve got something to show you.  Something you never saw before.”

“Do you mean your new baby,—­the one you found on the bar?”

“Yes; but that baby, Jenny!”

“What’s wonderful about it?”

“Why, it’s only two years old and it can squall in two languages.  That’s more’n you can do.”

“They say your friend, Miss Foster, speaks French,” retorted Jenny.  “Was she ever shipwrecked?”

“In French?  May be so.  But not in German.”

“Well, Dabney, I don’t propose to squall in anything.  Are your folks going to burn any more of their barns this year?”

“Not unless Samantha gets married.  Jenny, do you know what’s the latest fashion in lobsters?”

“Changeable green, I suppose.”