"Oh, Alfred, isn't it horrid in them?" said the old lady.

"Darn 'em!" said the Captain.

"It makes me mad!" cried Mrs. North; then her spirit wavered. "Mary is
so foolish; she says she'll--she'll take me away from Old Chester. I
laughed at first, it was so foolish. But when she said that--oh _dear_!"

"Well, but, my dear madam, say you won't go. Ain't you skipper?"

"No, I'm not," she said, dolefully. "Mary brought me here, and she'll
take me away, if she thinks it best. Best for _me_, you know. Mary is a
good daughter, Alfred. I don't want you to think she isn't. But she's
foolish. Unmarried women are apt to be foolish."

The Captain thought of Gussie, and sighed. "Well," he said, with the
simple candor of the sea, "I guess there ain't much difference in 'em,
married or unmarried."

"It's the interference makes me mad," Mrs. North declared, hotly.

"Damn the whole crew!" said the Captain; and the old lady laughed
delightedly.

"Thank you, Alfred!"

"My daughter-in-law is crying her eyes out," the Captain sighed.

"Tck!" said Mrs. North; "Alfred, you have no sense. Let her cry. It's
good for her!"

"Oh no," said the Captain, shocked.

"You're a perfect slave to her," cried Mrs. North.

"No more than you are to your daughter," Captain Price defended himself;
and Mrs. North sighed.

"We are just real foolish, Alfred, to listen to 'em. As if we didn't
know what was good for us."

"People have interfered with us a good deal, first and last," the
Captain said, grimly.

The faint color in Mrs. North's cheeks suddenly deepened. "So they
have," she said.

The Captain shook his head in a discouraged way; he took his pipe out of
his pocket and looked at it absent-mindedly. "I suppose I can stay at
home, and let 'em get over it?"

"Stay at home? Why, you'd far better--"

"What?" said the Captain.

"Come oftener!" cried the old lady. "Let 'em get over it by getting used
to it."

Captain Price looked doubtful. "But how about your daughter?"

Mrs. North quailed. "I forgot Mary," she admitted.

"I don't bother you, coming to see you, do I?" the Captain said,
anxiously.

"Why, Alfred, I love to see you. If our children would just let us
alone!"

"First it was our parents," said Captain Price. He frowned heavily.
"According to other people, first we were too young to have sense; and
now we're too old." He took out his worn old pouch, plugged some shag
into his pipe, and struck a match under the mantel