"Well, I was finishin' up Cap'n Pennel's best pantaloons," said Miss
Roxy; "and I've got 'em along so, Ruey can go on with 'em; and I told
Mis' Pennel I must come to you, if 'twas only for a day; and I fetched
the little girl down, 'cause the little thing's so kind o' lonesome
like. I thought Sally could play with her, and chirk her up a little."

"Well, Sally," said Mrs. Kittridge, "stick in your needle, fold up your
sheet, put your thimble in your work-pocket, and then you may take the
little Mara down to the cove to play; but be sure you don't let her go
near the tar, nor wet her shoes. D'ye hear?"

"Yes, ma'am," said Sally, who had sprung up in light and radiance, like
a translated creature, at this unexpected turn of fortune, and
performed the welcome orders with a celerity which showed how agreeable
they were; and then, stooping and catching the little one in her arms,
disappeared through the door, with the golden curls fluttering over her
own crow-black hair.

The fact was, that Sally, at that moment, was as happy as human creature
could be, with a keenness of happiness that children who have never been
made to turn sheets of a bright afternoon can never realize. The sun was
yet an hour high, as she saw, by the flash of her shrewd, time-keeping
eye, and she could bear her little prize down to the cove, and collect
unknown quantities of gold and silver shells, and starfish, and
salad-dish shells, and white pebbles for her, besides quantities of well
turned shavings, brown and white, from the pile which constantly was
falling under her father's joiner's bench, and with which she would make
long extemporaneous tresses, so that they might play at being mermaids,
like those that she had heard her father tell about in some of his
sea-stories.

"Now, railly, Sally, what you got there?" said Captain Kittridge, as he
stood in his shirt-sleeves peering over his joiner's bench, to watch the
little one whom Sally had dumped down into a nest of clean white
shavings. "Wal', wal', I should think you'd a-stolen the big doll I see
in a shop-window the last time I was to Portland. So this is Pennel's
little girl?--poor child!"

"Yes, father, and we want some nice shavings."

"Stay a bit, I'll make ye a few a-purpose," said the old man, reaching
his long, bony arm, with the greatest ease, to the farther part of his
bench, and bringing up a board, from which he proceeded to roll off
shavings in fine satin rings, which perfec