bet! Well, that's pride; that's what that is. I prided myself
on hangin' to the Bayport twang through thick and thin. Among all the
Spanish 'Carambas' and 'Madre de Dioses' it did me good to come out with
a good old Yankee 'darn' once in a while. Kept me feelin' like a white
man. Oh, I'm a Whittaker! _I_ know it. And I've got all the Whittaker
pig-headedness, I guess. And because the old man--bless his heart, I
say now--told me I shouldn't BE a Whittaker no more, nor live like a
Whittaker, I simply swore up and down I would be one and come back here,
when I'd made my pile, to heave anchor and stay one till I die. Maybe
that's foolishness, but it's me."

He puffed vigorously at the pipe which had taken the place of the
Snowflake cigar, and added:

"Take this old settin' room--why, here it is; see! Here's dad in his
chair and ma in hers, and, if you go back far enough, granddad in his,
just as you say, Bailey. And here's me, a little shaver, squattin' on
the floor by the stove, lookin' at the pictures in a heap of Godey's
Lady's Book. And says dad, 'Bos'n,' he says--he used to call me 'Bos'n'
in those days--'Bos'n,' says dad, 'run down cellar and fetch me up a
pitcher of cider, that's a good feller.' Yes, yes; that's this room as
I've seen it in my mind ever since I tiptoed through it the night I
run away, with my duds in a bundle under my arm. Do you wonder I was
fightin' mad when I saw what that Howes tribe had done to it?"

Superintending the making over of the old home occupied most of Captain
Cy's daylight time that summer. His evenings were spent at Simmons's
store. We have no clubs in Bayport, strictly speaking, for the sewing
circle and the Shakespeare Reading Society are exclusively feminine in
membership; therefore Simmons's store is the gathering place of those
males who are bachelors or widowers or who are sufficiently free from
petticoat government to risk an occasional evening out. Asaph Tidditt
was a regular sojourner at the store. Bailey Bangs, happening in to
purchase fifty cents' worth of sugar or to have the molasses jug filled,
lingered occasionally, but not often. Captain Cy explained Bailey's
absence in characteristic fashion.

"Variety," observed the captain, "is the spice of life. Bailey gets talk
enough to home. What's the use of his comin' up here to get more?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Josiah Dimick, with a grin, "we let him do some
of the talkin' himself up here. Down at the boardin' house