ke it very much indeed. But I must
economize and the few hundred dollars I have scraped together won't--"

He was interrupted. Emily Howes appeared at the corner of the house
behind them.

"Supper is ready," she called cheerfully.

Both men turned to look at her. She was bareheaded and the western sun
made her profile a dainty silhouette, a silhouette framed in the spun
gold of her hair.

"John's comin', Miss Emily," answered the captain. "He'll be right
there."

Emily waved her hand and hurried back to the dining-room door. Mr.
Kendrick kicked the stone into the grass.

"I think I may as well remain here, for the present at least," he said.
"After all, there is such a thing as being too economical. A chap can't
always make a martyr of himself, even if he knows he should."

The next morning Mrs. Barnes, over at the village on a marketing
expedition, met Captain Bangs on his way to the postoffice.

"Oh, Cap'n," she said, "I've got somethin' to tell you. 'Tain't bad news
this time; it's good. Mr. Heman Daniels has changed his mind. He's goin'
to keep his room and board with me just as he's been doin'. Isn't that
splendid!"

The sewing circles and the club and the noon and evening groups at the
postoffice had two new subjects for verbal dissection during the next
fortnight. This was, in its way, a sort of special Providence, for
this was the dull season, when there were no more wrecks alongshore or
schooners aground on the bars, and the boarders and cottagers from the
cities had not yet come to East Wellmouth. Also the opening of the High
Cliff House was getting to be a worn-out topic. So Emily Howes, her
appearance and behavior, and John Kendrick, HIS behavior and his
astonishing recklessness in attempting to wrest a portion of the county
law practice from Heman Daniels, were welcomed as dispensations and
discussed with gusto.

Emily came through the gossip mill ground fine, but with surprisingly
little chaff. She was "pretty as a picture," all the males agreed
upon that point. And even the females admitted that she was "kind of
good-lookin'," although Hannah Parker's diagnosis that she was "declined
to be consumptic" and Mrs. Larkin's that she was older than she "made
out to be," had some adherents. All agreed, however, that she knew how
to run a boarding-house and that she was destined to be the "salvation"
of Thankful Barnes' venture at the Cap'n Abner place.

Certainly she did prove herself to possess ma