“I can’t somehow seem to stand it, Sam,” he said, solemnly.  “I can’t stay in that house alone any longer, it’s—­it’s too sociable.”

The captain, who had expected almost anything but that, stared at him.

“Sociable!” he repeated.  “You’re sailin’ stern first, Jed.  Lonesome’s what you mean, of course.”

Jed shook his head.

“No-o,” he drawled, “I mean sociable.  There’s too many boys in there, for one thing.”

“Boys!” Captain Sam was beginning to be really alarmed now.  “Boys!  Say—­say, Jed Winslow, you come along home to dinner with me.  I bet you’ve forgot to eat anything for the last day or so—­ been inventin’ some new kind of whirlagig or other—­and your empty stomach’s gone to your head and made it dizzy.  Boys!  Gracious king!  Come on home with me.”

Jed smiled his slow smile.  “I don’t mean real boys, Sam,” he explained.  “I mean me—­I’m the boys.  Nights now when I’m walkin’ around in that house alone I meet myself comin’ round every corner.  Me when I was five, comin’ out of the buttery with a cooky in each fist; and me when I was ten sittin’ studyin’ my lesson book in the corner; and me when I was fifteen, just afore Father died, sittin’ all alone thinkin’ what I’d do when I went to Boston Tech same as he said he was cal’latin’ to send me.  Then—­”

He paused and lapsed into one of his fits of musing.  His friend drew a breath of relief.

“Oh!” he exclaimed.  “Well, I don’t mind your meetin’ yourself.  I thought first you’d gone off your head, blessed if I didn’t.  You’re a queer critter, Jed.  Get those funny notions from readin’ so many books, I guess likely.  Meetin’ yourself!  What an idea that is!  I suppose you mean that, bein’ alone in that house where you’ve lived since you was born, you naturally get to thinkin’ about what used to be.”

Jed stared wistfully at the back of a chair.

“Um-hm,” he murmured, “and what might have been—­and—­and ain’t.”

The captain nodded.  Of all the people in Orham he, he prided himself, was the only one who thoroughly understood Jed Winslow.  And sometimes he did partially understand him; this was one of the times.

“Now—­now—­now,” he said, hastily, “don’t you get to frettin’ yourself about your not amountin’ to anything and all that.  You’ve got a nice little trade of your own buildin’ up here.  What more do you want?  We can’t all be—­er—­Know-it-alls like Shakespeare, or—­ or rich as Standard Oil Companies, can we?  Look here, what do you waste your time goin’ back twenty-five years and meetin’ yourself for?  Why don’t you look ahead ten or fifteen and try to meet yourself then?  You may be a millionaire, a—­er—­windmill trust or somethin’ of that kind, by that time.  Eh?  Ha, ha!”

Jed rubbed his chin.

“When I meet myself lookin’ like a millionaire,” he observed, gravely, “I’ll have to do the way you do at your bank, Sam—­call in somebody to identify me.”