your
manners?"

The whip cracked like a pistol shot, and the brown horse flung up his
heels again from sheer good will, and whinnied his excuses.

"Now you're talkin'!" said Calvin Parks. "And you'd better, little
hossy. I want you to understand right now that if you warn't the hossy
you are--and if two-three other things were as they ain't--summer
instead of winter, for one of 'em--it ain't ridin' I'd be takin' that
little woman, no sir! I'd get her aboard the Mary Sands, and we'd go
slippin' down along shore, coastwise, seein' the country slidin' past,
and hear the water lip-lappin', and the wind singin' in the
riggin,'--what? I tell you! there'd be a pair of vessels if ever the
Lord made one and man the other.

"Sho! seein' in that paper that Cap'n Bates was leavin' the Mary and
goin' aboard a tug has got me worked up, kind of. If it warn't that I
had sworn off rovin' and rollin' for ever more--I tell you! Jerusalem!
but I'd like to hear the Mary talkin' once more--never was a vessel had
a pleasanter way of speakin'--there again they're alike, them two. Take
her with all sails drawin', half a gale o' wind blowin', and if she
don't sing, that schooner, then I never heard singin,' that's all. And
even in a calm, just lying rollin' on a long swell, and she'll say 'Easy
does it! easy does it! breeze up soon, and Mary knows it!' and the water
lip-lappin', and the sails playin' 'Isick and Josh, Isick and
Josh,'--great snakes! Gitty up, hossy, or I shall take the wrong turn
and drive to Bath instead of Tinkham."

Spite of moonlight and good spirits, the way was long, and it was near
nine o'clock when Calvin drove in at the Widow Marlin's gateway. He
whistled, a cheerful and propitiatory note, as he drove past the house
to the barn.

"Presume likely they'll be put out some at me bein' late," he said; "but
you shall have your supper first, hossy, don't you be afeared! They
can't no more than kill me, anyway, and I don't know as they'd find it
specially easy to-night."

The house was ominously silent as Calvin entered. The kitchen was empty,
and he opened the door of the sitting-room, but paused on the threshold.
Miss Phrony Marlin was sitting in the corner, weeping ostentatiously,
with loud and prolonged sniffs. Her mother, a little withered woman like
crumpled parchment, cowered witch-like over the air-tight stove, and
looked at Calvin and then at her daughter, but said nothing.

"Excuse _me_!" said Calvin, steppin