help out a shipmate we've sailed with for years and
years. But you'd ought to have tried some of OUR cookin'. Tell her about
the sugar cake you made, Perez. The one that killed the yaller chicken."

So Captain Perez told it, and then their visitor set them all laughing
by relating some queer housekeeping experiences that she and a school
friend had had while camping at Chautauqua. Somehow each one felt at
home with her. As Captain Eri said afterwards, "She didn't giggle, and
then ag'in she didn't talk down at you."

As they rose from the table the young lady asked a question concerning
the location of the hotel. The Captain made no answer at the time, but
after a short consultation with the remainder of the triumvirate, he
came to her as she stood by the window and, laying his hand on her
shoulder, said:

"Now, Elsie--I hope you don't mind my callin' you Elsie, but I've
been chums with your grandpa so long seems's if you must be a sort of
relation of mine--Elsie, you ain't goin' to no hotel, that is, unless
you're real set on it. Your grandpa's here and we're here, and there's
room enough. I don't want to say too much, but I'd like to have you
b'lieve that me and Perez and Jerry want you to stay right in this house
jest as long's you stop in Orham. Now you will, won't you?"

And so it was settled, and Captain Perez harnessed Daniel and went to
the station for the trunk.

That evening, just before going to bed, the captains stood by the door
of the sick room watching Elsie and the lady from Nantucket as they sat
beside John Baxter's bed. Mrs. Snow was knitting, and Elsie was reading.
Later, as Captain Eri peered out of the dining-room window to take a
final look at the sky in order to get a line on the weather, he said
slowly:

"Fellers, do you know what I was thinkin' when I see them two women in
there with John? I was thinkin' that it must be a mighty pleasant thing
to know that if you're took sick somebody like that 'll take care of
you."

Perez nodded. "I think so, too," he said.

But if this was meant to influence the betrothed one, it didn't succeed,
apparently, for all Captain Jerry said was:

"Humph! 'Twould take more than that to make me hanker after a stroke of
palsy."

And with the coming of Elsie Preston and Mrs. Snow life in the little
house by the shore took on a decided change. The Nantucket lady having
satisfied herself that John Baxter's illness was likely to be a long
one, wrote severa