oof of Becky Boozer's
housekeeping.

"Don't you have an icebox?" Chris asked, his mouth full.

"What may that be?" Becky asked sharply.

"To keep the food cool," Chris answered.

Becky stopped to consider this, her hands on her hips. "We have a
larder on the cool side of the house, if that be what you mean," she
told him, nodding. "Keeps the food pretty well up to April or May.
Then the heat makes everything go. Oh! This heat! Prosperity,
Maryland, where I come from, and on the sea coast as it is, was never
like this!"

A table with a wooden tub and dishes stacked nearby caught Chris's
eye. Buckets of water stood beneath the table, and presently Becky
Boozer took off a small pot of steaming water from a hook above the
fire, poured it in the tub, and dipped cold water from one of the
buckets into it.

What a system! Chris thought as he watched Becky busy with her dishes,
thinking of the neat white kitchen he knew at home.

Aloud he said: "If you had a little wooden trough that led from that
tub out through the window there, you could pull out a bung when you
were ready and the water would run outdoors. It would save you
carrying that great tub about, when you are in a hurry."

Becky Boozer rested her soapy hands on the edge of the tub and looked
at him admiringly over her shoulder.

"I would never have thought it," she said, "by the look of you. Never
in this world. You have brains, young lad, that's what you have. A
better idea than that I never heard! Indeed, it is just what I have
been a-needin' since years, and that simple I might have thought it
out myself! I shall set Master Cilley to work on it when he comes.
He's right handy with tools, is Ned Cilley."

At this moment a short knock sounded on the back door, and an instant
change came over Becky Boozer. It was impossible to imagine that
anyone as ponderous as Becky could be coy, but at the sound of the
knock, this is what she became. Wiping her hands hastily on one of
many petticoats, she pushed and pulled at her hat (which remained
immovable), straightened her fichu, and smoothing her dress, she
minced her huge bulk to the door with a welcoming smile.

A little man scarcely higher than Becky's barrel waist, with a rolling
sea gait and twinkling blue eyes, bounced into the room and strained
up on tiptoe toward Miss Boozer's blushing cheek. Chris, behind the
opened door, had not yet been perceived.

"Come now, Becky me love!" shouted Cilley the sail