t vine washed up on this beach every day," he said
eagerly. "When I showed it to Granny--'If Heaven itself had spoken, boy,'
says she, 'I should be no surer it was a fair voyage waiting you than I
be now;' though I was thinking of something besides the voyage, teacher,
but it's all the same, it means good luck; and wouldn't you like to keep
it for us?"

[Illustration]

"Oh, no!" I answered, laughingly refusing the delicate talisman. "I
should blast its good intentions. I should stifle it with my cold
unbelief."

The Cradlebow tenderly replaced his treasure, and laughed with me
good-naturedly.

"It isn't your fault, teacher," said he, "that you weren't better brought
up. If you'd always lived with our people, down here, you'd be more
believing."

At all events, my severe and protracted mental exertions had proved quite
unnecessary, I thought, although after this there was, in some respects,
a tacitly admitted change in our converse with each other. A sort of
vague, venturesome house-building for the future, in which the Cradlebow
seemed to wish that I would oftener show an interest in the feminine
details within doors, while I had a grand and absorbing predilection for
constructing imaginary grades and turrets and mediaeval door-posts,
receiving any thoughtful suggestions as to tin-kettles and pantry-shelves
with gracious and smiling forbearance.

The Cradlebow seemed particularly pleased, when he came into the Ark of
an evening, if I chanced to be knitting on the scarlet stockings. I did
have a new and not unpleasant sense of housewifely dignity while engaged
at this task, and undoubtedly assumed an air calculated to serve as an
impressive exponent to my emotion. The poor scarlet stockings
lengthened, meanwhile, but it was a disheartening and almost
imperceptible growth. Where the article should have been most
voluminous, at the calf of the leg, it grew, in spite of me, more
alarmingly narrow at every round. This was after I had graduated from
under Grandma Keeler's tuition, and assumed my own responsibility in the
matter; so that I disdained to appeal to her for assistance in the
dilemma, but thoughtfully devised means of my own for widening the
stocking.

"I'll tell ye what it is, teacher," said Grandpa, who had been regarding
me with that wild look which sometimes visited the old man's face when a
problem seemed well nigh insoluble; "I'm afeerd, teacher, I'm afeerd that
that ere stockin' ain't a goin' to fi