ms, and looked as
though he could be brave without it.

"Well, Madeline," said he, with a determined gaze fixed straight before
him on vacuity, and with a desperate affectation of spontaneity in his
tone--"Well, Madeline, mother and father have gone to Aunt Marcia's, _I_
suppose to spend a week, _I_ suppose--ahem!--ahem!--_I_ suppose so."

"You don't say so, Lovell!" exclaimed Madeline. "And what'll poor Robin
do now, Lovell? Oh, what'll poor Robin do now?"

"Yes," said he gravely; "that's what _they_ thought, ahem! _They_ thought
they should stay a week, _they_ thought so, certainly."

"Wall, I declar' for't, Lovell," said Grandma; "now's the time you'd
ought to have a wife. Jest to think how comf'table 'twould be fu ye, now,
instead of stayin' there all alone, if ye only had a nice little wife to
home, to cook for ye, and watch for ye, and keep ye company, and----"

"_I_ think so," exclaimed Lovell, giving a quick glance backward in the
direction of his gun. "Certainly, ahem! _I_ think so. _I_ do."

"Lookin' for game? Eh, Lovell?" inquired Grandpa.

"Pa," said Grandma, solemnly: "I wish you'd put another stick of wood in
the stove."

Grandpa was awake now, and a youthful and satanic gleam shone from under
his shaggy eyebrows; he glanced at me, too, as was his habit on such
occasions, as though I had a sort of sympathy for and fellowship with him
in his bold iniquities of speech.

But the guileless Lovell interpreted not the deeper meaning of Grandpa's
words.

"I think some of it, Cap'n," he answered unsmilingly, and then continued:
"It's been--ahem!--it's been a very mild winter on the--ahem!--I should
say on the Cape. It's been a very mild winter on the Cape, Miss
Hungerford."

Lovell's nervous glance falling again on his gun, took me in wildly on
the way.

I had been directing some letters that I expected to have an opportunity
to send that morning.

"I beg your pardon," I said, looking up. "Yes, you don't often have such
mild winters on the Cape, Mr. Barlow!"

"No'm, we don't," said Lovell, "not very often, ahem!" He moved his chair
a peg nearer the gun. "Quite a--ahem!--quite a little fall of snow we had
last night, Miss Hungerford."

"Any deer tracks? Eh, Lovell?" inquired Grandpa.

"Pa," said Grandma; "I wish you'd fill Abigail--seems to me she smells
sorter dry."

"She ain't, for sartin', ma," replied Grandpa, giving the tea-kettle a
shake to verify his assertions; "and Rachel's chock full