lls from the "barge,"
"we're coming. Well, good by, Captain Dott."

"Er--good by. Er--er--don't want anything to take along, do you? A nice
box of candy, or--or anything?"

"No, I think not. We stopped at the Emporium just now, and loaded up
with candy enough to last a week. Good morning."

"How are you fixed for sun hats and things? I've got a nice line of hats
and--well, good by."

"Good by."

The "barge" moved off. Daniel, standing dejectedly in the door,
remembered his manners.

"Hope you have a nice time," he shouted. Then he turned and moved
disconsolately back to the desk. He might have expected it. It was thus
in nine cases out of ten. The Emporium, Mr. J. Cohen, proprietor, was
his undoing in this instance as in so many others. The Emporium got the
trade and he got the good bys. Mr. Cohen was not an old resident, as
he was; Mr. Cohen's daughter was not invited to picnics by the summer
people; Mrs. Cohen was not head of the sewing circle and the Chapter of
the Ladies of Honor, and prominent socially, as was Mrs. Dott; but Mr.
Cohen bought cheap and sold cheap, and the Emporium flourished like a
green bay tree, while the Metropolitan Store was rapidly going to seed.
Daniel, looking out through the front window at the blue sea in the
distance, thought of the past, of the days when, as commander and
part owner of the three masted schooner Bluebird, he had been free and
prosperous and happy. Then he considered the future, which was bluer
than the sea, and sighed again. Why had he not been content to stick
to the profession he understood, to remain on the salt water he loved;
instead of retiring from the sea to live on dry land and squander his
small fortune in a business for which he was entirely unfitted?

And yet the answer was simple enough. Mrs. Dott--Mrs. Serena Dott, his
wife--was the answer, she and her social aspirations. It was Serena
who had coaxed him into giving up seafaring; who had said that it was
a shame for him to waste his life ordering foremast hands about when he
might be one of the leading citizens in his native town. It was Serena
who had persuaded him to invest the larger part of his savings in
the Metropolitan Store. Serena, who had insisted that Gertrude, their
daughter and only child, should leave home to attend the fashionable
and expensive seminary near Boston. Serena who--but there! it was all
Serena; and had been ever since they were married. Captain Daniel, on
board his schoon