dders--none on
'em!"

I knew to what he referred, what gratitude was moving in his breast.

"Wal, thar now, Cap'n Pharo Kobbe! ain't Vesty Kirtland worthy?"

"Vesty!" said the captain, undismayed--"Vesty 's an amazin' gal, but
she ain't nowheres along o' major!"

"Wal, I must say! I wonder whatever put you in such a takin' to major."

He did not say.

We travelled vaguely, gazing from house to house, and then the road
over again, without discovering any sign of the basket.

"By clam! it 's almost enough to make an infidel of a man," said the
captain, furiously relighting his pipe.

"Cap'n Pharo Kobbe, you're all'as layin' everything either to women or
religion."

"Don't mention on 'em in the same breath," said the captain; "don't.
They hadn't never orter be classed together!"

Fortunately at this juncture we saw Mrs. Lester afar off at a fork of
the roads standing and waving her arms to us, and we hastened to join
her, but imagine the captain's feelings when from the circle-basket she
took out a large, plump blueberry pie, or "turnover," for each of us,
with a face all beaming with unconscious joy and good-will.

"How do you feel now, eatin' Miss Lester's turnover, after what you've
been and said?" said his wife.

"What'd I say?" said the captain boldly, immersed in the joys of his
blueberry pie; for a primitive, a generic appetite attaches to this
region: one is always hungry; no sooner has one eaten than he is
wholesomely hungry again.

"Do you want me to tell what you said, Cap'n Pharo Kobbe?"

"Poo! poo!" said the captain, wiping his mouth with a flourish.

[Illustration: Music fragment: 'Or as the morning flow'r, The blighting
wind sweeps o'er, she--'"]

"You'd ought to join a concert," said his wife, at the stinging height
of sarcasm, for the captain's singing was generally regarded as a
sacred subject.

But there was one calm spirit aboard, my companion, Mrs. Lester. Ah
me! if I might but drive with her again! Her weight was such, settling
the springs that side, that I, slender and uplifted, and tossed by the
roughness of the road, had continually to cling to the side bars, in
order to give a proper air of coolness to our relationship.

But when it came to the pie I had to give up the contest, and ate it
reclining, literally, upon her bosom.

"I'm glad I didn't wear my dead-lustre silk," said she tenderly; "it
might 'a' got spotted. I'm all'as a great hand to spot when I'm eatin'
blue