were lulled and she came to accept the new
superintendent's presence as a relief and a benefit.

"He is so very gentlemanly, Elizabeth," she told her daughter. "And so
willing to learn. At first, as you know, I couldn't see why the poor
dear judge appointed him, but now I do. He realized that I needed an
assistant. In many ways he reminds me of your father."

"But, mother," exclaimed her daughter, in surprise, "Cap'n Kendrick
isn't nearly as old as father was."

"Oh it isn't the age that reminded me. It's the manner. He has the same
quick, authoritative way of making decisions and saying things. And it
is so very gratifying to see how he defers to my judgment and
experience."

Captain Sears did defer, that is he seldom opposed. But, when each
conference was over, he went his own sweet way, using his own judgment
and doing what seemed to him best. With Elizabeth, however, he was
quite different. When she offered advice--which was seldom--he listened
and almost invariably acted upon it. He was daily growing to have a
higher opinion of her wisdom and capabilities. Whether or not it was the
wisdom and capabilities alone which influenced that opinion he did not
attempt to analyze. He enjoyed being with her and working with her, that
he knew. That the constant companionship might be, for him, a risky and
perhaps dangerous experience, he did not as yet realize. When he was
with her, and busy with Fair Harbor affairs, he could forget the
slowness with which his crippled legs were mending, and the increasing
longing--sometimes approaching desperation--for the quarter deck of his
own ship and the sea wind in his face.

He worked hard for the Harbor and did his best to justify his
appointment as manager, but, work as he might, he knew perfectly well
that such labors would scarcely earn his salary. But, on the other hand,
he knew that the man who appointed him had not expected them to do so.
He had been put in charge of the Fair Harbor for one reason alone and
that was to be in command of the ship when the redoubtable Egbert came
alongside. Judge Knowles had as much as told him that very thing, and
more than once. Egbert Phillips had been, evidently, the judge's pet
aversion and, in his later days illness and fretfulness had magnified
and intensified that aversion. When Sears attempted to find good and
sufficient reasons for belief that the husband of Lobelia Seymour was
any such bugbear he was baffled. He asked Judah more qu