to put Joshua off at the first port, when he tried to go
coasting. They said he talked them crazy with nothing.

"I 'll go into the house and see Aunt Lyddy," he said aloud. "I 'm
loafing, this afternoon."

"All right! all right!" said Joshua. "Lyddy 'll be glad to see you--that
is, as glad as she would be to see anybody," he added, reaching out for
a pole. "Now, I don't s'pose that sounds very well; but still, you know
how she is--she allers likes to hev folks to talk, and then she's allers
sayin' talkin' wears on her; but I ought not to say that to you, because
she allers likes to see you--that is, as much as she likes to see
anybody. In fact, I think, on the whole--"

"Well, I'll take my chances," said Eph, laughing; and he opened the gate
and went in.

Joshua's wife, whom everybody called Aunt Lyddy, was rocking in a
high-backed-chair in the kitchen, and knitting. It was currently
reported that Joshua's habit of endlessly retracting and qualifying
every idea and modification of an idea which he advanced, so as to
commit himself to nothing, was the effect of Aunt Lyddy's careful
revision.

"I s'pose she thought 't was fun to be talked deef when they was
courtin'," Captain Seth had once sagely remarked. "Prob'ly it sounded
then like a putty piece on a seraphine; but I allers cal'lated she 'd
git her fill of it, sooner or later. You most gin'lly git your fill o'
one tune."

"How are you this afternoon, Aunt Lyddy?" asked Eph, walking in without
knocking, and sitting down near her.

"So as to be able to keep about," she replied. "It is a great mercy I
ain't afflicted with falling out of my chair, like Hepsy Jones, ain't
it?"

"I 've brought you some oysters," he said. "I set the basket down on
the door-step. I just took them out of the water myself from the bed I
planted to the west of the water-fence."

"I always heard you was a great fisherman," said Aunt Lyddy, "but I
had no idea you would ever come here and boast of being able to catch
oysters. Poor things! How could they have got away? But why don't you
bring them in? They won't be afraid of me, will they?"

He stepped to the door and brought in a peck basket full of large,
black, twisted shells, and with a heavy clasp-knife proceeded to open
one, and took out a great oyster, which he held up on the point of the
blade.

"Try it," he said; and then Aunt Lyddy, after she had swallowed it,
laughed to think what a tableau they had made,--a man who had b