favor to me."

"But how can I--like this? We haven't even settled the question of
rent. And you know nothing whatever about me."

He seemed to reflect. Then he asked:

"Your daughter don't sing like a windmill, does she?"

Barbara's eyes and mouth opened. "Why, Mamma!" she exclaimed,
indignantly.

"Hush, Babbie. Sing like a--what? I don't understand, Mr.
Winslow."

The captain burst out laughing. "No wonder you don't, ma'am," he
said. "It takes the seven wise men of Greece to understand him
most of the time. You leave it to me, Mrs. Armstrong. He and I
will talk it over together and then you and he can talk to-morrow.
But I guess likely you'll have the house, if you want it; Jed
doesn't go back on his word. I always say that for you, don't I,
old sawdust?" turning to the gentleman thus nicknamed.

Jed, humming a mournful hymn, was apparently miles away in
dreamland. Yet he returned to earth long enough to indulge in a
mild bit of repartee. "You say 'most everything for me, Sam," he
drawled, "except when I talk in my sleep."

Mrs. Armstrong and Barbara left a moment later, the lady saying
that she and Mr. Winslow would have another interview next day.
Barbara gravely shook hands with both men.

"I and Petunia hope awfully that we are going to live here, Mr.
Winslow," she said, "'specially Petunia."

Jed regarded her gravely. "Oh, she wants to more'n you do, then,
does she?" he asked.

The child looked doubtful. "No-o," she admitted, after a moment's
reflection, "but she can't talk, you know, and so she has to hope
twice as hard else I wouldn't know it. Good-by. Oh, I forgot;
Captain Hedge liked his swordfish EVER so much. He said it was a--
a--oh, yes, humdinger."

She trotted off after her mother. Captain Hunniwell, after a
chuckle of appreciation over the "humdinger," began to tell his
friend what little he had learned concerning the Armstrongs. This
was, of course, merely what Mrs. Armstrong herself had told him and
amounted to this: She was a widow whose husband had been a
physician in Middleford, Connecticut. His name was Seymour
Armstrong and he had now been dead four years. Mrs. Armstrong and
Barbara, the latter an only child, had continued to occupy the
house at Middleford, but recently the lady had come to feel that
she could not afford to live there longer, but must find some less
expensive quarters.

"She didn't say so," volunteered Captain Sam, "but I judge she lost