Why, when you come to think of it,
it's a providence it turned out that way. Me and Perez are bachelors,
and we'd be jest green hands. But you're a able seaman, you know what it
is to manage a wife."

"Yes, I do," groaned Captain Jerry lugubriously. "Durn it, that's jest
it!"

Captain Eri was chuckling as, lantern in hand, he passed around the
corner of the little white house on the way to the barn. He chuckled
all through the harnessing of Daniel, the venerable white horse. He was
still chuckling as, perched on the seat of the "truck wagon," he rattled
and shook out of the yard and turned into the sandy road that led up to
the village. And an outsider, hearing these chuckles, and knowing what
had gone before, might have inferred that perhaps Captain Eri did not
view the "matching" and the matrimonial project with quite the deadly
seriousness of the other two occupants of the house by the shore.

CHAPTER II

THE TRAIN COMES IN

There is in Orham a self-appointed committee whose duty it is to see the
train come in. The committeemen receive no salary for their services;
the sole compensation is the pleasure derived from the sense of duty
done. Rain, snow, or shine, the committee is on hand at the station--the
natives, of course, call it the "deepo"--to consume borrowed tobacco
and to favor Providence with its advice concerning the running of the
universe. Also it discusses local affairs with fluency and more or less
point.

Mr. "Squealer" Wixon, a lifelong member of this committee, was the first
to sight Captain Eri as the latter strolled across the tracks into the
circle of light from the station lamps. The Captain had moored Daniel to
a picket in the fence over by the freight-house. He had heard the clock
in the belfry of the Methodist church strike eight as he drove by that
edifice, but he heard no whistle from the direction of the West Orham
woods, so he knew that the down train would arrive at its usual time,
that is, from fifteen to twenty minutes behind the schedule.

"Hey!" shouted Mr. Wixon with enthusiasm. "Here's Cap'n Eri! Well, Cap,
how's she headin'?"

"'Bout no'theast by no'th," was the calm reply. "Runnin' fair, but with
lookout for wind ahead."

"Hain't got a spare chaw nowheres about you, have you, Cap'n?" anxiously
inquired "Bluey" Batcheldor. Mr. Batcheldor is called "Bluey" for the
same reason that Mr. Wixon is called "Squealer," and that reason has
been forgotten for years.

Capta