g all the time.
Swells! don't talk! We felt 'bout as much at home as a cow in a dory,
but we was there 'cause Ebenezer had asked us to be there, so we kept on
the course and didn't signal for help. Travelling through the rooms down
stairs where the folks was, was a good deal like dodging icebergs up on
the Banks, but one or two noticed us enough to dip the colors, and one
was real sociable. He was a kind of slow-spoken city-feller, dressed as
if his clothes was poured over him hot and then left to cool. His
last name had a splice in the middle of it--'twas Catesby-Stuart.
Everybody--that is, most everybody--called him "Phil."

Well, sir, Phil cottoned to Jonadab and me right away. He'd get us, one
on each wing, and go through that house asking questions. He pumped me
and Jonadab dry about how we come to be there, and told us more yarns
than a few 'bout Dillaway, and how rich he was. I remember he said that
he only wished he had the keys to the cellar so he could show us the
money-bins. Said Ebenezer was so just--well, rotten with money, as you
might say, that he kept it in bins down cellar, same as poor folks
kept coal--gold in one bin, silver half-dollars in another, quarters in
another, and so on. When he needed any, he'd say to a servant: "James,
fetch me up a hod of change." This was only one of the fish yarns he
told. They sounded kind of scaly to Jonadab and me, but if we hinted at
such a thing, he'd pull himself together and say: "Fact, I assure you,"
in a way to freeze your vitals. He seemed like such a good feller that
we didn't mind his telling a few big ones; we'd known good fellers afore
that liked to lie--gunners and such like, they were mostly.

Somehow or 'nother Phil got Cap'n Jonadab talking "boat," and when
Jonadab talks "boat" there ain't no stopping him. He's the smartest
feller in a cat-boat that ever handled a tiller, and he's won more races
than any man on the Cape, I cal'late. Phil asked him and me if we'd ever
sailed on an ice-boat, and, when we said we hadn't he asks if we won't
take a sail with him on the river next morning. We didn't want to
put him to so much trouble on our account, but he said: "Not at all.
Pleasure'll be all mine, I assure you." Well, 'twas his for a spell--but
never mind that now.

He introduced us to quite a lot of the comp'ny--men mostly. He'd see a
school of 'em in a corner, or under a palm tree or somewheres, and steer
us over in that direction and make us known to