compact with herself to interfere before he
imperilled the _Virtuous Lady_. Hitherto, however, his wits had
unfailingly cleared to meet an emergency. While she could count upon
this, she knew herself competent to rule the ship in all ordinary weather.

"Help yourselves to cream," said Mr. Purchase, after giving them
good-morning. "Clever men tell me there's more nourishment in a pound o'
cream than in an ox. Now that may seem marvellous in your eyes?"
He paused with a wavering, absent-minded smile. "'Tis the most nourishing
food in the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdoms,--unless you count
parsnips."

"T'cht!" his wife put in briskly, banging down a couple of clean teacups
on the swing-table. "Children don't want a passel o' science in their
insides. Milk or weak tea, my dears?"

"I don't know," the skipper went on after another long pause, bringing his
Uncertain eyes to bear on Clem, "if you've ever taken note what
astonishing things folks used to eat in the Bible. There's locusts, and
wild honey, and unleavened bread--I made out a list of oddments one time.
Nebbycannezzar don't count, of course; but Ezekiel took down a whole book
in the shape of a roll."

Mrs. Purchase signed to Myra to pay no heed, and engaged Clem in a sort of
quick-firing catechism on the cabin fittings, their positions and uses.
The boy, who had been on board but once in his life before, stretched out
a hand and touched each article as she named it.

"The lamp, now?"

Clem reached up at once and laid his fingers on it, gently as a butterfly
alights on a flower.

"How does it swing?"

"On gimbals."

"Eh? and what may gimbals be?"

"There's a ring fastened here,"--the boy's fingers found it--"and swinging
to and fro; and inside the ring is a bar, holding the lamp so that it tips
to and fro crossways to the ring. You weight the bottom of the lamp, and
then it keeps plumb upright however the ship moves."

"Wunnerful memory you've got, to be sure--and your gran'father tells me
you can't even read!"

"But he knows his letters," Myra announced proudly; "and when the new
teacher comes he's to go to school with me. Susannah says so."

"How in the world did you teach'n his letters, child?"

"I cut them on the match-boarding inside the summer-house, and he traces
them out with his fingers. If you go up you can see for yourself--the
whole lot from A to Ampassy! He never makes a mistake--do you, Clem?
And I've begun to cut out