“I don’t know about that,” Cap’n Billy replied, “but I guess her son’s too much for her:  she’s only Gardiner, and he’s Gardiner and Mulbridge both.”

No one changed countenance, but a sense of Cap’n Billy’s wit sparely yet satisfyingly glimmered from the eyes of Cap’n George and the storekeeper, and Cap’n Jabez closed his knife with a snap and looked up.  “Perhaps,” he suggested, “she’s seen enough of him to know beforehand that there would be too much of him.”

“I never rightly understood,” said Hackett, “just what it was about him, there in the army—­coming out a year beforehand, that way.”

“I guess you never will,—­from him,” said Cap’n Jabez.

“Laziness, I guess,—­too much work,” said old Cap’n Billy.  “What he wants is a wife with money.  There ain’t a better doctor anywhere.  I’ve heard ’t up to Boston, where he got his manifest, they thought everything of him.  He’s smart enough, but he’s lazy, and he always was lazy, and harder’n a nut.  He’s a curious mixtur’.  ‘N’ I guess he’s been on the lookout for somethin’ of this kind ever sence he begun practising among the summer boarders.  Guess he’s had an eye out.”

“They say he’s poplar among ’em,” observed the storekeeper thoughtfully.

“He’s been pooty p’tic’lar, or they have,” said Cap’n Jabez.

“Well, most on ’em’s merried women,” Hackett urged.  “It’s astonishin’ how they do come off and leave their husbands, the whole summer long.  They say they’re all out o’ health, though.”

“I wonder,” said old Cap’n Billy, “if them coaliers is goin’ to make a settled thing of haulin’ inside before they signal a pilot.”

“I know one thing,” answered Cap’n Jabez, “that if any coalier signals me in the channel, I’ll see her in hell first” He slipped his smooth, warm knife into his pocket, and walked out of the store amid a general silence.

“He’s consid’ble worked up, about them coaliers,” said old Cap’n Billy.  “I don’t know as I’ve heard Jabez swear before—­not since he was mate of the Gallatin.  He used to swear then, consid’able.”

“Them coaliers is enough to make any one swear,” said Cap’n George.  “If it’s any ways fair weather they won’t take you outside, and they cut you down from twenty-five dollars to two dollars if they take you inside.”

Old Cap’n Billy did not answer before he had breathed awhile, and then, having tried his cigar and found it out, he scraped a match on his coat-sleeve.  He looked at the flame while it burned from blue to yellow.  “Well, I guess if anybody’s been p’tic’lar, it’s been him.  There ain’t any doubt but what he’s got a takin’ way with the women.  They like him.  He’s masterful, and he ain’t a fool, and women most gen’ly like a man that ain’t a fool.  I guess if he ’s got his eye on the girl’s prop’ty, she’ll have to come along.  He’d begin by havin’ his own way about her answer; he’d hang on till she said Yes, if she did n’t say it first-off; and he’d keep on as he’d begun.  I guess if he wants her it’s a match.”  And Cap’n Billy threw his own into the square box of tobacco-stained sawdust under the stove.