land--each day brought something different.

To-day, it was the winter gulls. "They are coming down--lots of them
from the north," he told the Admiral as they drove through the quaint
settlement with its gray little houses, "the big ones----"

There was also the _gerardia_, pale pink and shading into mauve. He
had brought a great bunch to "The Whistling Sally," and had put it in a
bowl of gray pottery.

When Becky saw the flowers, she knew whom to thank. "Oh, Tristram,"
she said, "you found them on the moor."

Tristram, standing in the little front room of the Admiral's cottage,
seemed to tower to the ceiling. "The Whistling Sally" from the outside
had the look of a doll's house, too small for human habitation. Within
it was unexpectedly commodious. It had the shipshape air of belonging
to a seafaring man. The rooms were all on one floor. There was the
big front room, which served as a sitting-room and dining-room. It had
a table built out from the wall with high-backed benches on each side
of it, and a rack for glasses overhead. There was a window above the
table which looked out towards the sea. The walls were painted blue,
and there was an old brick fireplace. A model of a vessel from which
the figure-head in the front yard had been taken was over the mantel,
flanked by an old print or two of Nantucket in the past. There were
Windsor chairs and a winged chair; some pot-bellied silver twinkled in
a corner cupboard.

The windows throughout were low and square and small-paned and
white-curtained. The day was cool, and there was a fire on the hearth.
The blaze and the pink flowers, and the white curtains gave to the
little room an effect of brightness, although outside the early
twilight was closing in.

Jane came in with her white apron and added another high light. She
kissed Becky. "Did your grandfather tell you that Mr. Cope is coming
over to have chowder?" she asked.

It would be impossible to describe Jane's way of saying "chowder." It
had no "r," and she clipped it off at the end. But it is the only way
in the world, and the people who so pronounce it are usually the only
people in the world who can make it.

"Who is Mr. Cope?" Becky asked.

Mr. Cope, it seemed, had a cottage across the road from the Admiral's.
He leased it, and it was his first season at 'Sconset. His sister had
been with him only a week ago. She had gone "offshore," but she was
coming back.

"Is he young?" Becky