le enough a'ready, without my rushing into more with my
eyes wide open," sighed she.

"Trouble? Why, that is just what I was meaning to save you!" exclaimed
the bewildered widower. "Pump right in the house, and stove e'enamost
new. And Lyddy never knew what it was to want for a spoonful of sugar or
a pound of flour. And such a _handy_ buttery and sink! Lyddy used to say
she felt the worst about leaving her buttery of any thing."

"Should thought she would," answered Mrs. Davids, forgetting to sigh.
"However, I can't say that I feel any hankering after marrying a
buttery. I've got buttery-room enough here, without the trouble of
getting set up in a new place."

"Just as you say," returned the rejected. "I ain't sure as you'd be
exactly the one. I _was_ a thinking of looking for somebody a little
younger."

"Well, here is Persis Tame. Why don't you bespeak her? _She_ is younger,
and she is in need of a good home. I can recommend her, too, as the
first-rate of a cook," remarked Mrs. Davids, benevolently.

Miss Tame had been sitting a little apart by the open window, smiling to
herself.

But now she turned about at once. "Hm!" said she, with contempt. "I
should rather live under an umbrella tied to a stake, than marry for a
_hum_."

So Captain Ben went home without engaging either wife or housekeeper.

And the first thing he saw was Captain Jacob Doolittle's old one-eyed
horse eating the apples Loizah Mullers had strung and festooned from
nails against the house, to dry.

The next thing he saw was, that, having left a window open, the hens had
flown in and gone to housekeeping on their own account. But they were
not, like Mrs. Davids, as neat as a new cent, and _not_, also, such
master hands to save.

"Shoo! shoo! Get out. Go 'long there with you!" cried Captain Ben,
waving the dish-cloth and the poker. "I declare for 't! I most hadn't
ought to have left that bread out on the table. They've made a pretty
mess of it, and it is every spec there is in the house too. Well, I
must make a do of potatoes for supper, with a bit of pie and a mouthful
of cake."

Accordingly he went to work building a fire that wouldn't burn. Then,
forgetting the simple matter of dampers, the potatoes wouldn't bake. The
tea-kettle boiled over and cracked the stove, and after that boiled dry
and cracked itself. Finally the potatoes fell to baking with so much
ardor that they overdid it and burnt up. And, last of all, the cake-jar
and pie