But Gertrude would not stop. She ignored her father utterly.

"Think what it would mean," she protested. "Think of your social position, Mother, the position we have worked so hard to attain."

Serena shook her head. "I don't care," she said firmly. "Our social position was good enough in Trumet."

"WHAT! Why, Mother! how often I have heard you say--"

"Never mind what I said. I have said a lot of foolish things, and done a lot, too. But I'm through. I'm sick and disgusted with it all. I'm going to be simple and comfortable and happy--yes, happy. Oh, Gertie, DON'T talk to me about society! There isn't a real, sincere person in it, not in the set we have been in. I hate Scarford and I hate society."

"Mother! how can you! And opportunity and advancement--"

"I hate them, too."

Gertrude gasped. "Why, Mother!" she exclaimed. "And it was you who first showed me the way. Who showed me how common and dull and unambitious I had been all my life? Think what leaving here would mean to me. What would Miss Dusante think? I had almost arranged to take dancing lessons of her. Think of Mr. Holway. Is there a young man like him in Trumet?

Think of Cousin Percy!"

That was quite enough. Serena rose, her eyes flashing.

"Stop!" she cried. "Stop this minute! Gertrude Dott, your father and I are going back to Trumet and you are going with us."

"Oh, no, I'm not. Why, Cousin Percy--"

"Don't you dare mention his name to me."

"Why not? He is very gentlemanly and very aristocratic. You told me that when I first came, Mother. You were always talking about him and praising him then. And I'm sure he moves in the highest circles; he says he does, himself."

"He is a good-for-nothing loafer. He has sponged upon your father--"

"You have often spoken of him as an honor to the family."

"A good-for-nothing, dissipated, fast--"

"Oh, a little dissipation is expected in society, isn't it?"

"I should think you would be ashamed!"

"Why? I haven't done a thing that you haven't done, Mother. That is, nothing which your friends don't do every day. They are ever so much more advanced than I am. I have only begun. No, indeed, I am not going back to plain, common, everyday old Trumet. I shall stay here and progress. You and your friends have shown me what is expected of a girl in my position and I shall take advantage of my opportunities. Why, Mrs.

Black says that, if I play my cards well, I may catch a millionaire, perhaps a foreign n.o.bleman. How would you like to be mother-in-law to a--well, to a count, for instance?"

Mrs. Dott did not answer this question. Instead she turned to her husband.

"Daniel," she cried, "are you going to stand this? Are you that girl's father, or aren't you? Are you going to make her mind, or not?"

Daniel would have spoken, but his daughter got ahead of him.

"Oh, Father doesn't count," she observed lightly. "No one minds what he says. He didn't want to move to Scarford at all. No one minds him."

Serena stamped her foot. "Daniel Dott," she cried, "do you hear that? I call upon you, as the head of this family, to tell that girl what she's got to do, and make her do it."

Captain Dan stepped forward. Gertrude merely laughed. That laugh settled the question.

"Gertie," ordered the captain, his voice, the old quarter-deck voice which had been law aboard the Bluebird, "you march your boots to your room and pack up. We're goin' to Trumet and you're goin' along with us.

March! or, by the everlastin', I'll carry you there and lock you in! You speak another word and I'll do it, anyway. Serena, I'll 'tend to her.

You're tired out; lie down and rest."

"But, Daniel--"

"Lie down and rest. I'm runnin' this craft. Well," wheeling upon his daughter, "are you goin'? Or shall I carry you?"

Gertrude looked at him and then at her mother. Her lips twitched.

"I'll go, Daddy," she said meekly, and went.

When Captain Dan descended to the lower floor he found Mr. Ginn in the library.

"h.e.l.lo!" hailed the latter, "you look kind of set-up and sa.s.sy, seems to me. YOU ain't had nothin' to drink, have you?"

"Drink? What do you mean by that? Has anybody around here had anything to drink?"

"I don't know. Some of 'em act as if they had. When I came into the kitchen a spell ago I found my wife and Gertie dancin' like a couple of loons."

"Dancin'?"

"Yes, sir, holdin' hands and hoppin' around like sand fleas in a clam bake. I asked 'em what set 'em goin' and they wouldn't tell me. I couldn't think of anything but liquor that would start Zuby Jane dancin'. I don't know's that would--I never tried it on her--but 'twas the only likely guess I could make."

CHAPTER XV

Captain Dan was seated in his old chair, at his old desk, behind the counter of the Metropolitan Store. His pipe, the worn, charred briar that he had left in the drawer of that very desk when he started for the railway station and Scarford, was in his mouth. Over the counter, beyond the showcases and the tables with their piles of oilskins, mittens, sou'westers, and sweaters, through the panes of the big front windows, he could see the road, the main street of Trumet. The road was muddy, and the mud had frozen. Beyond the road, between the shops and houses on the opposite side, he saw the bare brown hills, the pond where the city people found waterlilies in the summer--the pond was now a glare of ice--the sand dunes, the beach, the closed and shuttered hotel and cottages, and, beyond these, the cold gray and white of the wintry sea rolling beneath a gloomy sky. To the average person the view would have been desolation itself. To Captain Dan it was a section of Paradise. It was the picture which had been in his mind for months. And here it was in reality, unchanged, unspoiled, a part of home, his home. And he, at last, was at home again.

They had been in Trumet a week, the captain and Serena and Gertrude.

Azuba had been there two days longer, having been sent on ahead of the family to open the house and get it ready. Laban remained behind as caretaker of the Scarford mansion. His term of service in that capacity was not likely to be a long one, for the real estate dealer was in active negotiation with his client, and the dealer's latest report stated that the said client was considering hiring the house, furnished, for a few months and, in the event of his liking it as well as he expected, would then, in all probability, buy.

Laban's remaining as caretaker was his own suggestion.

"Me and the old gal--Zuby Jane, I mean--have talked it over," he explained, "and it seems like the best thing to do. You've got to have somebody here, Cap'n Dott, you've got to pay somebody, and it might as well be me. I'm out of a job just now, anyway. As for me and my wife bein' separated--well, we're different from most married folks that way; it seems the natural thing for us to BE separated. We're used to it, as you might say. I don't know as we'd get along so well together if we wasn't separated. There's nothin' like separation to keep husband and wife happy along with one another. I've been with Zuby for most three weeks steady now; that's the longest stretch we've had in a good many years. We ain't quarreled once, neither."

He seemed to consider the fact remarkable. Captain Dott grinned.

"I suppose that shuttin' her up in the dish closet wasn't what you'd call a quarrel, hey?" he observed.

Mr. Ginn was momentarily embarra.s.sed.

"Oh, that!" he exclaimed. "Humph! I forgot that, for the minute. But that wasn't a quarrel, rightly speakin'. 'Twas just a little difference of opinion on account of my not understandin' her reason for bein' so sot on havin' her own way. Soon's I understood 'twas all right. And you see yourself how peaceable she's been ever since."

So, after consultation with Azuba, the arrangement was perfected. Laban was to receive ten dollars a week, from which sum he was to provide his own meals. He was to sleep in the house, but the meals were to be obtained elsewhere. Mrs. Dott would not consider his cooking in her kitchen.