h that name?"

"She was our old cook," Mrs. North explained; "this Flora is her
daughter. But you never saw old Flora?"

"Why, yes, I did," the old man said, slowly. "Yes. I remember Flora.
Well, good-bye,--Mrs. North."

"Good-bye, Alfred. Come again," she said, cheerfully.

"Mother, here's your beef tea," said a brief voice.

Alfred Price fled. He met his son just as he was entering his own
house, and burst into a confidence: "Cy, my boy, come aft and splice
the main-brace. Cyrus, what a female! She knocked me higher than
Gilroy's kite. And her mother was as sweet a girl as you ever saw!" He
drew his son into a little, low-browed, dingy room at the end of the
hall. Its grimy untidiness matched the old Captain's clothes, but it was
his one spot of refuge in his own house; here he could scatter his
tobacco ashes almost unrebuked, and play on his harmonicon without
seeing Gussie wince and draw in her breath; for Mrs. Cyrus rarely
entered the "cabin." "I worry so about its disorderliness that I won't
go in," she used to say, in a resigned way. And the Captain accepted her
decision with resignation of his own. "Crafts of your bottom can't
navigate in these waters," he agreed, earnestly; and, indeed, the room
was so cluttered with his belongings that voluminous hoop-skirts could
not get steerageway. "He has so much rubbish," Gussie complained; but it
was precious rubbish to the old man. His chest was behind the door; a
blow-fish, stuffed and varnished, hung from the ceiling; two colored
prints of the "Barque _Letty M._, 800 tons," decorated the walls; his
sextant, polished daily by his big, clumsy hands, hung over the
mantel-piece, on which were many dusty treasures--the mahogany spoke of
an old steering-wheel; a whale's tooth; two Chinese wrestlers, in ivory;
a fan of spreading white coral; a conch-shell, its beautiful red lip
serving to hold a loose bunch of cigars. In the chimney-breast was a
little door, and the Captain, pulling his son into the room after that
call upon Mrs. North, fumbled in his pocket for the key. "Here," he
said; "(as the Governor of North Carolina said to the Governor of South
Carolina)--Cyrus, she handed round _beef tea_!"

But Cyrus was to receive still further enlightenment on the subject of
his opposite neighbor:

"She called him in. I heard her, with my own ears! 'Alfred,' she said,
'come in.' Cyrus, she has designs; oh, I worry so about it! He ought to
be protected. He is very old, and