was just my place to hev said an'thing about
gittin' married, to Ephraim, seein's--"

"Come, come, father," said Aunt Lyddy, "that'll do, now. You must let
Ephraim alone, and not joke him about such things."

Meanwhile Susan had hastily gone into the pantry to look for a pie,
which she seemed unable at once to find.

"Pie got adrift?" called out Joshua. "Seems to me you don' hook on to it
very quick. Now that looks good," he added, when she came out. "That
looks like cookin'! All I meant was, 't Ephraim ought not to be doin'
his own cookin'--that is--if you can call it cookin'--but then, of
course, 'tis cookin'--there's all kinds o' cookin'. I went cook myself,
when I was a boy."

After supper, Aunt Lyddy sat down to knit, and Joshua drew his chair up
to an open window, to smoke his pipe. In this vice Aunt Lyddy encouraged
him. The odor of Virginia tobacco was a sweet savor in her nostrils. No
breezes from Araby ever awoke more grateful feelings than did the
fragrance of Uncle Joshua's pipe. To Aunt Lyddy it meant quiet and
peace.

Susan and Eph sat down on the broad flag door-stone, and talked quietly
of the simple news of the neighborhood, and of the days when they used
to go to school, and come home, always together.

"I didn't much think, then," said Eph, "that I should ever bring up
where I have, and get ashore before I was fairly out to sea!"

"Jehiel's schooner got ashore on the bar, years ago," said Susan, "and
yet they towed her off, and I saw her this morning, from my chamber
window, before sunrise, all sail set, going by to the eastward."

"I know what you mean," said Eph. "But here--I got mad once, and I
almost had a right to, and I can't get started again; I never shall. I
can get a livin', of course; but I shall always be pointed out as a
jail-bird, and could no more get any footin' in the world than
Portuguese Jim."

Portuguese Jim was the sole professional criminal of the town, a weak,
good-natured, knock-kneed vagabond, who stole hens, and spent every
winter in the House of Correction as an "idle and disorderly person."

Susan laughed outright at the picture. Eph smiled, too, but a little
bitterly.

"I suppose it was more ugliness than anything else," he said, "that made
me come back here to live, where everybody knows I've been in jail and
is down on me."

"They are not down on you," said Susan. "Nobody is down on you. It's all
your own imagination. And if you had gone anywhere that you