“I mean to, of course,” declared Mrs. Barnes.  “Nobody shall starve at my table.  And please, Imogene, don’t call people ginks and guys.  That ain’t nice talk for a young woman.”

Imogene apologized and promised to be more careful.  But she thought a great deal and, at the end of the first week, she imparted her thoughts to Captain Obed.

“Say, Captain Bangs,” she said, “do you know what is the matter with the name of this place?  I tell you what I think is the matter.  It hadn’t ought to be the high Cliff House.  The cheap Cliff House would be a sight better.  Givin’ guys—­folks, I mean—­fifteen-dollar-a-week board for seven dollars may be mighty nice for them, but it’s plaguy poor business for Mrs. Thankful.”

The captain shook his head; he had been thinking, too, and his conclusions were much the same.

“You mustn’t find fault with Mrs. Barnes, Imogene,” he said.  “She’s a mighty fine woman.”

“Fine woman!  You bet she is!  She’s too plaguy fine, that’s the trouble with her.  She’s so afraid her boarders’ll starve that she forgets all about makin’ money.  She’s the best woman there is in the world, but she needs a mean partner.  Then the two of them might average up all right, I guess.”

Captain Obed rubbed his chin.  “Think she needs a business manager, eh?” he observed.

Imogene nodded emphatically.  “She needs two of them,” she declared.  “One to manage the place and another to keep that Parker man workin’.  He can eat more and talk more and work less than any guy ever I see.  Why, he’d spend half his time in this kitchen gassin’ with me, if I’d let him.  But you bet I don’t let him.”

The captain thought more and more during the days that followed.  At length he wrote a letter to Emily Howes at South Middleboro.  In it he expressed his fear that Mrs. Barnes, although in all other respects perfect, was a too generous “provider” to be a success as a boarding-house keeper in East Wellmouth.

She’ll have boarders enough, you needn’t worry about that, [he wrote] but she’ll lose money on every one.  I’ve tried to hint, but she don’t take the hint, and it ain’t any of my affair, rightly speaking, so I can’t speak out plain.  Can’t you write her a sort of warning afore it’s too late?  Or better still, can’t you come down here and talk to her?  I wish you would.  Excuse my nosing in and writing you this way, please.  I’m doing it just because I want to see her win out in the race, that’s all.  I wish you’d answer this pretty prompt, if you don’t mind.

But the reply he hoped for did not come and he began to fear that he had made a bad matter worse by writing.  Doubtless Miss Howes resented his “nosing in.”