see. You
would as soon expect a needle to go through a camel's eye, as the saying
is."

There was a slight interval of embarrassment after this outburst. The
majority of those present realized that the speaker had gotten her
proverb twisted, but, she being Miss Tryphosa Taylor, no one felt like
venturing to set her right. Mrs. Captain Godfrey Peasley relieved the
situation; she had a habit of relieving situations--when she did not
make them tenser. She had gotten into the Shakespeare Reading Society
purely by persistence and the possession of adamantine self-confidence.
From that shot-proof exterior snubs, hints and reproofs glanced like
blown peas from the hull of a battleship. "Heaven knows," confided Mrs.
Captain Wingate to Miss Taylor and the Reverend Mrs. Dishup, "why Amelia
Peasley ever wanted to join the Society. She doesn't know whether
Shakespeare is a man or a disease." Which may or not have been true,
the fact remaining that Mrs. Peasley _had_ wanted to join the Society
and--joined.

Now, while others hesitated, following Miss Tryphosa's little blunder,
she spoke.

"I think," she declared, with conviction, "that Sears Kendrick ought to
be ashamed of himself. _I_ think such actions are degradatin'--yes,
indeed, right down degradatin'."

After that, further comments upon the captain's conduct would have
seemed like anti-climaxes. Therefore the Society proceeded to read
"Cymbeline." Mrs. Peasley had something to say about "Cymbeline," also.

Captain Sears himself merely grinned when told of the sensation his
conduct was causing.

"All right," he said, "let 'em talk. If they aren't talkin' about me
they will be about somebody else."

Judah, to whom this remark was made, snorted.

"Humph!" he growled. "They _be_ talkin' about somebody else. Don't you
make no mistake about that, Cap'n Sears."

"That so, Judah? Who's the other lucky man?"

"Me. Jumpin', creepin'---- Why, some of them womenfolks seem to cal'late
I lammed you over the head with a marlinspike and then towed you up here
by main strength; seems if they did, by Henry! And some of the men ain't
a whole lot better. Makes me madder'n a sore nose. I was down to the
store--down to 'Liphalet's--and there was a crew of ha'f a dozen there
and they all wanted to know how you was gittin' along.

"'Well, he ain't dead yit,' says I. 'He was lively enough when I left
him. I ain't come to buy no spade to bury him with.'

"You'd think that would satisfy