d take samples to friends who were yet to be
initiated. Pa and his crullers were becoming bywords, and they often
helped out, where meals at the boarding place failed and conversation
lacked humor.

As Mark stepped into the kitchen, not only his father, but Captain Billy
hailed him.

"Hello! Cap'n Billy," cried Mark, "come off fur a change, have ye?"

"Yes, yes," Billy replied through a mouthful of cruller, hot enough to
make an ordinary man groan with pain. "Yes, yes; I've come off t' see
the doin's."

"Well, there is considerable goin's on," Mark nodded, and calmly helped
himself to a cake that was still sizzling; "there don't seem t' be no
signs of lettin' up on us!"

"Now, Markie!" purred Pa from the stove, "that ain't puttin' the case
jest as it is. Looked at from some p'ints, we are the clutchers."

Pa was a mild little man with a round, innocent face, and flaxen hair
rising in a curly halo about it. His china-blue eyes had all the trust
and surprise of a newly awakened baby. Life had always been to Pa
Tapkins a mild series of shocks, and he parried each statement and
circumstance in order that he might haply recognize it if he ran across
it again, or, more properly speaking, if it struck him a smarting blow
again. Pa never ran at all. As nearly as any mortal can be stationary,
Pa was; but in the nature of things, passing events touched him more or
less sharply in their progress.

"It ain't all their doin's, Markie, now is it?"

"Like as not it ain't, Pa. Sold many crullers t'-day?"

"I've sold all I've made, up t' this batch, Markie, an' I've been
putterin' over the heat since the mornin' meal."

"Well, I'll lay the things on fur the noon meal, Pa, you tend t'
business."

"But you ain't slept, Markie. Up all night an' no sleep nex' day!
'T won't do, Markie, now will it?"

"I'll sleep, come night time." Mark seized his third almost boiling
cruller and turned to Billy.

"You ain't seen Janet, hev you?"

Billy looked guilty. "No, an' I ain't a-goin' t' this trip. Mark, how is
things at the Light?"

"Squally as t' Susan Jane. Seein' others spry while she's chained by
the stroke ain't addin' t' Susan Jane's Christian qualities."

"Stormin' at Janet?"

"Janet comes in fur her share, but David gets the toughest blasts. I
don't see how Davy weathers it, an' still keeps a song an' a smile."

"An' him doin' another man's stint, too," Pa put in, dropping a brown
ring on the floor, spearing it adroitl