eading bread; "sure
enough, she does. Our house stands in such a lonesome place, and there
ain't any children. But I never saw such a quiet little thing--always
still and always busy."

"I'll take her down with me to Cap'n Kittridge's," said Miss Roxy, "and
let her play with their little girl; she'll chirk her up, I'll warrant.
She's a regular little witch, Sally is, but she'll chirk her up. It
ain't good for children to be so still and old-fashioned; children ought
to be children. Sally takes to Mara just 'cause she's so different."

"Well, now, you may," said Dame Pennel; "to be sure _he_ can't bear her
out of his sight a minute after he comes in; but after all, old folks
can't be company for children."

Accordingly, that afternoon, the little Mara was arrayed in a little
blue flounced dress, which stood out like a balloon, made by Miss Roxy
in first-rate style, from a French fashion-plate; her golden hair was
twined in manifold curls by Dame Pennel, who, restricted in her ideas
of ornamentation, spared, nevertheless, neither time nor money to
enhance the charms of this single ornament to her dwelling. Mara was her
picture-gallery, who gave her in the twenty-four hours as many Murillos
or Greuzes as a lover of art could desire; and as she tied over the
child's golden curls a little flat hat, and saw her go dancing off along
the sea-sands, holding to Miss Roxy's bony finger, she felt she had in
her what galleries of pictures could not buy.

It was a good mile to the one story, gambrel-roofed cottage where lived
Captain Kittridge,--the long, lean, brown man, with his good wife of the
great Leghorn bonnet, round, black bead eyes, and psalm-book, whom we
told you of at the funeral. The Captain, too, had followed the sea in
his early life, but being not, as he expressed it, "very rugged," in
time changed his ship for a tight little cottage on the seashore, and
devoted himself to boat-building, which he found sufficiently lucrative
to furnish his brown cottage with all that his wife's heart desired,
besides extra money for knick-knacks when she chose to go up to
Brunswick or over to Portland to shop.

The Captain himself was a welcome guest at all the firesides round,
being a chatty body, and disposed to make the most of his foreign
experiences, in which he took the usual advantages of a traveler. In
fact, it was said, whether slanderously or not, that the Captain's yarns
were spun to order; and as, when pressed to rel