e first time since his
return home. He had kindled a wood fire in the stove, just for the
sociability of it, and the crackle and glow behind the isinglass panes
only served to remind him of other days and other fires. The sitting
room had not been lonesome then.

He heard the depot wagon rattle by and, peering from the window, saw
that, except for Mr. Lumley, it was empty. Not even a summer boarder had
come to brighten our ways and lawns with reckless raiment and the newest
slang. Summer boarding season was almost over now. Bayport would soon be
as dull as dish water. And the captain admitted to himself that it WAS
dull. He had half a mind to take a flying trip to Boston, make the round
of the wharves, and see if any of the old shipowners and ship captains
whom he had once known were still alive and in harness.

"JINGLE! Jingle! JINGLE! Jingle! Jingle! Jing! Jing! Jing!"

Captain Cy bounced in his chair. That was the front-door bell. The
FRONT-door bell! Who on earth, or, rather, who in Bayport, would come to
the FRONT door?

He hurried through the dim grandeur of the best parlor and entered the
little dark front hall. The bell was still swinging at the end of its
coil of wire. The dust shaken from it still hung in the air. The captain
unbolted and unlocked the big front door.

A girl was standing on the steps between the lines of box hedge--a
little girl under a big "grown-up" umbrella. The wet dripped from the
umbrella top and from the hem of the little girl's dress.

Captain Cy stared hard at his visitor; he knew most of the children
in Bayport, but he didn't know this one. Obviously she was a stranger.
Portuguese children from "up Harniss way" sometimes called to peddle
huckleberries, but this child was no "Portugee."

"Hello!" exclaimed the captain wonderingly.

"Did you ring the bell?"

"Yes, sir," replied the girl.

"Humph! Did, hey? Why?"

"Why? Why, I thought--Isn't it a truly bell? Didn't it ought to ring? Is
anybody sick or dead? There isn't any crape."

"Dead? Crape?" Captain Cy gasped. "What in the world put that in your
head?"

"Well, I didn't know but maybe that was why you thought I hadn't ought
to have rung it. When mamma was sick they didn't let people ring our
bell. And when she died they tied it up with crape."

"Did, hey? Hum!" The captain scratched his chin and gazed at the small
figure before him. It was a self-poised, matter-of-fact figure for such
a little one, and, out there i