oo, began to worship his daughter's husband as the daughter herself
did.

"He's a wonder," said the Captain. "I never saw such a fellow for money
matters. He's handled my stocks and things a whole lot better'n I ever
did. I used to cal'late if I got six per cent. interest I was doin'
well. He ain't satisfied with anything short of eight, and he gets it,
too. Whatever that boy wants and I own he can have. Sometimes I think
this consarned palsy of mine is a judgment on me for bein' so sot
against him in the beginnin'. Why, just look at how he runs this house,
to say nothing of the rest of it! He's a skipper here; the rest of us
ain't anything but fo'most hands."

Which was not the exact truth. Morley was skipper of the Cahoon house,
Ardelia first mate, her father a passenger, and the foremast hand
was Hephzy. And yet, so far as "running" that house was concerned the
foremast hand ran it, as she always had done. The Captain and Ardelia
were Morley's willing slaves; Hephzy was, and continued to be, a free
woman. She worked from morning until night, but she obeyed only such
orders as she saw fit.

She alone did not take the new skipper at his face value.

"I don't know what there was about him that made me uneasy," she has
told me since. "Maybe there wasn't anything; perhaps that was just the
reason. When a person is SO good and SO smart and SO polite--maybe the
average sinful common mortal like me gets jealous; I don't know. But
I do know that, to save my life, I couldn't swallow him whole the way
Ardelia and Father did. I wanted to look him over first; and the more I
looked him over, and the smoother and smoother he looked, the more sure
I felt he'd give us all dyspepsy before he got through. Unreasonable,
wasn't it?"

For Ardelia's sake she concealed her distrust and did her best to get
on with the new head of the family. Only one thing she did, and that
against Motley's and her father's protest. She withdrew her own little
fortune, left her by her mother, from Captain Barnabas's care and
deposited it in the Ostable savings bank and in equally secure places.
Of course she told the Captain of her determination to do this before
she did it and the telling was the cause of the only disagreement,
almost a quarrel, which she and her father ever had. The Captain was
very angry and demanded reasons. Hephzibah declared she didn't know that
she had any reasons, but she was going to do it, nevertheless. And
she did do it. For