Jimmie Bacheldor liked the garret well enough, but imagination was not his strongest quality and the best parlor had more charms for him.  In that parlor were the trophies of Captain Shadrach’s seafaring days—­whales’ teeth, polished and with pictures of ships upon them; the model of a Chinese junk; a sea-turtle shell, flippers, head and all, exactly like a real turtle except, as Mary-’Gusta said, ’it didn’t have any works’; a glass bottle with a model of the bark Treasure Seeker inside; an Eskimo lance with a bone handle and an ivory point; a cocoanut carved to look like the head and face of a funny old man; a Cuban machete; and a set of ivory chessmen with Chinese knights and kings and queens, all complete and set out under a glass cover.

The junk and the lance and the machete and the rest had a fascination for Jimmie, as they would have had for most boys, but for him the parlor’s strongest temptation lay in the fact that the children were forbidden to play there.  Zoeth and the Captain, having been brought up in New England families of the old-fashioned kind, revered their parlor as a place too precious for use.  They, themselves, entered it not oftener than three times a year, and Isaiah went there only when he felt inclined to dust, which was not often.  Shadrach had exhibited its treasures to the children one Sunday morning when Zoeth was at church, but he cautioned them against going there by themselves.  “You’d be liable to break somethin’,” he told them, “and some of them things in there you couldn’t buy with money.  They’ve been brought from pretty much everywheres in creation, those things have.”

But, in spite of the warning, or because of it, Jimmie was, as Isaiah would have said, “possessed” to visit that parlor.  He coaxed and teased and dared Mary-’Gusta to take advantage of the steward’s stepping out of the house or being busy in the kitchen to open that parlor door and go in with him and peep at and handle the treasures.  Mary-’Gusta protested, but young Bacheldor called her a coward and declared he wouldn’t play with cowards and ’fraid-cats, so rather than be one of those detestable creatures she usually swallowed her scruples and followed the tempter.  It was a risk, of course, but a real adventure; and, like many adventurers, the pair came to grief.  They took David into the parlor and the cat wriggled from its owner’s arms, jumped upon the table, knocked the case containing the chessmen to the floor, and not only broke the glass but decapitated one of the white knights.

Even the mild Mr. Hamilton was incensed when Isaiah told the news at supper time.  And Captain Shad, who had bought those chessmen at Singapore from the savings of a second mate’s wages, lost patience entirely.

“Didn’t I tell you young-ones not to go into that parlor?” he demanded.

“Yes, sir,” admitted Mary-’Gusta, contritely.

“Yes, by fire, I did!  And you went just the same.”