l letters to persons in her native town, which letters,
although she did not say so, were supposed by the captains to deal with
the care of her property while she was away. Having apparently relieved
her mind by this method, and evidently considering the marriage question
postponed for the present, she settled down to nurse the sick man and to
keep house as, in her opinion, a house should be kept. The captains knew
nothing of her past history beyond what they had gathered from stray
bits of her conversation. She evidently did not consider it necessary to
tell anything further, and, on the other hand, asked no questions.

In her care of Baxter she was more like a sister than a hired nurse. No
wife could have been more tender in her ministrations or more devotedly
anxious for the patient's welfare.

In her care of the house, she was neatness itself. She scoured and swept
and washed until the rooms were literally spotless. Order was Heaven's
first law, in her opinion, and she expected everyone else to keep up to
the standard. Captain Perez and Captain Eri soon got used to the change
and gloried in it, but to Captain Jerry it was not altogether welcome.

"Oh, cat's foot!" he exclaimed one day, after hunting everywhere for his
Sunday tie, and at length finding it in his bureau drawer. "I can't git
used to this everlastin' spruced-up bus'ness. Way it used to be, this
necktie was likely to be 'most anywheres 'round, and if I looked out in
the kitchen or under the sofy, I was jest as likely to find it. But now
everything's got a place and is in it."

"Well, that's the way it ought to be, ain't it?" said Eri. "Then all
you've got to do is look in the place."

"Yes, and that's jest it, I'm always forgittin' the place. My shoes is
sech a place; my hankerchers is sech a place; my pipe is sech a place;
my terbacker is another place. When I want my pipe I look where my shoes
is, and when I want my shoes I go and look where I found my pipe. How a
feller's goin' to keep run of 'em is what _I_ can't see."

"You was the one that did most of the growlin' when things was the old
way."

"Yes, but jest 'cause a man don't want to live in a pigpen it ain't no
sign he wants to be put under a glass case."

Elsie's influence upon the house and its inmates had become almost as
marked as Mrs. Snow's. The young lady was of an artistic bent, and the
stiff ornaments in the shut-up parlor and the wonderful oil-paintings
jarred upon her. Strange