o match her."

"You're right there!" Celestina assented cordially. "She's one in a
hundred, in a thousand. She has the sweetest way in the world with
her, too. A body couldn't see her an' not love her. I guess there's
many a young feller along the Cape thinks so too, or I'm much
mistaken," added she slyly. "She must have a score of beaux."

"Beaux!" snapped Zenas Henry, wheeling abruptly about. "Indeed she
hasn't. Why, she's nothin' but a child yet."

"She's most twenty. You said so yourself just now."

"Pooh! Twenty! What's twenty?" Zenas Henry cried derisively. "Why,
I'm three times that already an' more too, an' I ain't old. So are
you, Tiny. Twenty? Nonsense!"

"But Delight is twenty, Zenas Henry," persisted Celestina.

"What of it?"

"Well, you mustn't forget it, that's all," continued the woman softly.
"Many a girl her age is married an'----"

"Married!" burst out the man with indignation. "What under heaven are
you talkin' about, Celestina? Delight marry? Not she! She's too
young. Besides, she's well enough content with Abbie an' the three
captains an' me. Marry? Delight marry! Ridiculous!"

"But you don't mean to say you expect a creature as pretty as she is
not to marry," said Celestina aghast.

"Oh, why, yes," ruminated Zenas Henry. "Of course she's goin' to get
married sometime by an' by--mebbe in ten years or so. But not now."

"Ten years or so! My goodness! Why, she'll be thirty or thirty-five,
an' an old maid by that time."

"No, she won't. I was forty-five before I married, an' it didn't do me
no hurt or spoil my chances."

"You might have been livin' with Abbie all them years, though."

"I know it."

He paused thoughtfully.

"Yes," he reflected aloud, "I've often thought what a pity it was Abbie
an' I didn't have our first youth together. It took me half a lifetime
to find out how much I needed her."

"You wouldn't want Delight should do that," ventured Celestina.

"Delight? We ain't discussin' Delight," retorted Zenas Henry, promptly
on the defensive. "Delight's another matter altogether. She's nothin'
but a baby. There's no talk of her marryin' for a long spell yet."

Peevishly he kicked the turf with the toe of his boot.

Although he said no more, it was quite evident that he was much
irritated.

"Well," he presently observed in a calmer tone, "I reckon I'll go round
an' waylay Willie."

Celestina, leaning against the door frame, watched the