e still
water bathing as well as that in the surf."

"Exactly," answered Betty. "That's why mamma and I decided on it. I like
still water myself."

"So do I," murmured Amy.

"I don't! I want the boiling surf!" declared Mollie, who was an
excellent swimmer.

They drove up to the cottage, finding new delights every moment, and
when the carriage stopped within the fence, at the side porch, the whole
party waited a moment before alighting to admire the place.

"It _is_ nice," decided Mrs. Nelson. "I had forgotten part of it, but I
like it even better than I thought I should."

"It's sweet!" declared Grace.

"Horribly fascinating, as Percy Falconer would say," mocked Mollie.

"Don't!" begged Betty, making a wry face.

As they were alighting, a quaint figure of an old man, bent and
shuffling, with gnarled and twisted hands, and a face almost lost in a
bush of beard, yet in whose blue eyes twinkled kindliness and good
fellowship, came around the side path.

"Wa'al, I see ye got here!" he exclaimed in hoarse tones--his voice
seemed to be coming out of a perpetual fog.

"Yes, we've arrived," Mr. Nelson said.

"Glad ye come. Ye'll find everything all ready for ye! 'Mandy has a fire
goin', an' th' chowder's hot."

"Who is he?" asked Mrs. Nelson, in a whisper.

"Old Tin-Back," replied her husband. "He's a lobsterman and a
character. I engaged his wife to clean the cottage, and be here when you
arrived."

"Yes, I'm Old Tin-Back," replied the man with a gruff but not unpleasant
laugh. "Leastways they all calls me that. I'll take them grips," he went
on, as the girls advanced, and into his gnarled hands he gathered the
valises.

"Oh, what a delicious smell!" exclaimed Mollie, as they went up the
steps.

"That's th' chowder," chuckled the old lobsterman. "I reckoned it'd be
tasty. Plenty of quahogs in _that_."

"What?" gasped Amy.

"Quahogs--big clams, miss," he explained. "Old Tin-Back dug 'em this
mornin' at low tide. Nothin' like quahogs for chowder, though some folks
likes soft clams. But not for Old Tin-Back."

"Is--is that really your name?" asked Amy.

"Wa'al not _really_, miss. It's a sort of nickname. You see, I sell
clams, lobsters and crabs, but I don't never sell no tin-back crabs, and
so they sorter got in the habit of callin' me that."

"What are tin-backs?" asked Amy, but before the lobsterman could answer,
Betty, from within the cottage, called to her chums:

"Come, girls, and select your