"but I guess her son's
too much for her: she's only Gardiner, and he's Gardiner and Mulbridge
both."

No one changed countenance, but a sense of Cap'n Billy's wit sparely
yet satisfyingly glimmered from the eyes of Cap'n George and the
storekeeper, and Cap'n Jabez closed his knife with a snap and looked up.
"Perhaps," he suggested, "she's seen enough of him to know beforehand
that there would be too much of him."

"I never rightly understood," said Hackett, "just what it was about him,
there in the army--coming out a year beforehand, that way."

"I guess you never will,--from him," said Cap'n Jabez.

"Laziness, I guess,--too much work," said old Cap'n Billy. "What he
wants is a wife with money. There ain't a better doctor anywhere.
I've heard 't up to Boston, where he got his manifest, they thought
everything of him. He's smart enough, but he's lazy, and he always was
lazy, and harder'n a nut. He's a curious mixtur'. 'N' I guess he's been
on the lookout for somethin' of this kind ever sence he begun practising
among the summer boarders. Guess he's had an eye out."

"They say he's poplar among 'em," observed the storekeeper thoughtfully.

"He's been pooty p'tic'lar, or they have," said Cap'n Jabez.

"Well, most on 'em's merried women," Hackett urged. "It's astonishin'
how they do come off and leave their husbands, the whole summer long.
They say they're all out o' health, though."

"I wonder," said old Cap'n Billy, "if them coaliers is goin' to make a
settled thing of haulin' inside before they signal a pilot."

"I know one thing," answered Cap'n Jabez, "that if any coalier signals
me in the channel, I'll see her in hell first" He slipped his smooth,
warm knife into his pocket, and walked out of the store amid a general
silence.

"He's consid'ble worked up, about them coaliers," said old Cap'n Billy.
"I don't know as I've heard Jabez swear before--not since he was mate of
the Gallatin. He used to swear then, consid'able."

"Them coaliers is enough to make any one swear," said Cap'n George. "If
it's any ways fair weather they won't take you outside, and they cut you
down from twenty-five dollars to two dollars if they take you inside."

Old Cap'n Billy did not answer before he had breathed awhile, and then,
having tried his cigar and found it out, he scraped a match on his
coat-sleeve. He looked at the flame while it burned from blue to yellow.
"Well, I guess if anybody's been p'tic'lar, it's been him. There