is painted brown, a little, brown dwelling with a blue-legged
sailor man on poles in the dooryard, revolving in the breeze. The Cap'n is
a little brown man, for that matter. He is reconciled to a life ashore by
his pipe and his pension, and by his lookout built of weathered timber on a
grass-covered sand drift just abaft the kitchen door, whither he betakes
himself with his spy glass on clear days to see whether it is his old
friend Cap'n Perry down there on number two oyster bar, or how heavy the
traffic is to-day far out beyond the yellow beach line, where Block Island
rises like a blue mirage.

Cap'n Bradley boasts a garden, too. It is just across the lane from his
front door. There are three varieties of flowers in it--nasturtiums,
portulacas, and bright red geraniums. The portulacas grow around the
border, then come the nasturtiums, and finally the taller geraniums in the
centre. The Cap'n has never seen nor heard of those ridiculous wooden birds
on green shafts which it is now the fashion to stick up in flower beds, but
he has something quite appropriate, and, all things considered, quite as
"artistic." In the bow of his garden, astride a spar, is a blue-legged
sailor man ten inches tall, keeping perpetual lookout up the lane. For this
flower bed is planted in an old dory filled with earth. She had outlived
her usefulness down there in the Salt Pond, or even, it may be, out on the
blue sea itself, but no vandal hands were laid upon her to stave her up for
kindling wood. Instead, the Captain himself painted her a bright yellow,
set her down in front of his dwelling, and filled her full of flowers. She
is disintegrating slowly; already, after a rain, the muddy water trickles
through her side and stains the yellow paint. But what a pretty and
peaceful process! She might not strike you as a happy touch set down in one
of those formal gardens depicted in _The House Beautiful_ or _Country
Life_, but here beside the salty lane past Cap'n Bradley's door, gaudy in
colour, with her load of homely flowers and her quaint little sailor man
astride his spar above the bright geraniums, she is perfect. No boat could
come to a better end. She's taking portulacas to the Islands of the Blest!

Miss Maria Mills, in the next house, never followed the sea, and her idea
of a garden is more conventional. She grows hollyhocks beside the house,
and sweet peas on her wire fence. But at the lane's end, where the water of
the Salt Pond laps t