Should oak.u.m or putty be used in the seams of "The Aquidneck"?

Should he pack the dinner-basket with beef or ham sandwiches?

Would Flint take lines for fishing, or a net for crabbing?

When all these were settled, Flint's thoughts drifted back to the portrait in the bed-room overhead. He began his questioning somewhat warily. "I suppose you've lived in this house for some time?"

"Wall, ever since I wuz born."

"And your father before you?"

"Yes, and my gran'father before him, and hisn fust."

"Ah, I see--an old homestead; and that portrait in my room is the wife of 'hisn'?"

"Not exactly--we never had no womenfolks in our family ez looked like that--stronger built is ourn, with more backbone, and none of that lackadaisical look raound the eyes."

"Pre-cisely," answered Flint. "And how does it happen that this lackadaisical-eyed portrait has hung so long without getting packed off to the garret?"

"Wall, you see," began Marsden, slowly and with evident relish, "thet's quite a story about thet theer."

"Yes?" said Flint, with a rising inflection which invited further confidence.

"Yes, indeed," answered Marsden, expanding still further and stroking his chin-whisker as he proceeded. "You see 't wuz this way--Captain Wagstaff--he wuz the portrait's uncle--wall, he wuz in command of a fleet that lay in the harbor up yonder, in the Revolutionary War. When he wuz ash.o.r.e, he spent most of his time to this haouse; and when his sister down to Philadelphy died, leavin' this daughter and no one to take care on her, he brought her on here to live with him. He'd been brought up a Quaker,--'Friend,' he called it,--though he did fight for his country, and right enough, sez I. Wall, this girl,--Ruth, her name wuz,--she came here and stopped awhile; and then there wuz a fight off the sh.o.r.e between the Captain's ship and a British cruiser. The cruiser wuz run down and sunk; but one of the officers they picked up waounded and brought ash.o.r.e, to this house, and Miss Ruth she set to work takin' care on him.

"Wall, what with cossettin' of him, and all sorts of philanderin', she got kinder soft on him, and one day, fust any one knowed, she'd jest run off with him."

"And what did the Captain say to that?" asked Flint, more interested than he was wont to be in Marsden's narratives.

"The Captain? Oh, they say he took on about it like thunder, and swore he'd never forgive her. But Ruth, she sent him her marriage lines, and wrote him what a good husband she'd got; and after the war wuz over, she kep' a-beggin' the Captain to come over and live with them. He wouldn't go; and I don't know ez I blame him any. Europe is so fur off, and such a wicked place--seems onsafer ez you get old. New England's the best place in the world to die in, and so he thought.

"Howsumever, she kep' a-sendin' him money and things; and one day ther came this here box--I've often heard my gran'mother tell how she looked on when 't wuz opened, and this picter turned out. Gran'ma wuz only a little thing, and she didn't know what to make of it all; for the Cap'n, he cried like a baby when he seen it. He had it taken up right away to his room (thet's whar you're a-sleepin') and hung over the mantel jest whar he could see it from his bed. Thar it stayed ez long ez he stayed on airth, and when he lay a-dyin',--He died, you know, in that very bed you're a-sleepin' in--only o' course the mattress is new--the old one wuz a feather-bed. My gran'mother wuz with him at the end, and she said he stretched out his arms to the pictur, same ez ef 't ed been his niece herself; and he sort o' cried out, 'G.o.d bless you, Ruth! I wish I'd 'a' understood you better!'

Wuzn't that a queer thing for him to say when he wuz a-dyin'?"

"Poor Ruth!" murmured Flint, with that placid, mild melancholy born of a sad story heard under comfortable circ.u.mstances. His fancy travelled back to the damsel in her Quaker dress, and he fell to wondering if the garb had been donned, with innocent hypocrisy, to please her old uncle, or if she always wore it in her faraway new home.

When he had got so far in his musings, his host recalled him to the present by continuing, "I dunno ez we've a very good claim to the pictur; but there ain't no heirs turned up, so ez the Cap'n wuz a little behind in his board bills, we sort o' kep' it."

Flint sat drumming with his fingers on the table, while his host still maundered on after the fashion of old age, which has so few topics that it cannot drop them with the light touch-and-go of youth.

Flint had already firmly determined that he would be the possessor of that portrait; but he was too shrewd to make any further advances now.

Instead, he turned again to the subject of "The Aquidneck," and, rising, made his way to the porch, where he almost walked over a speckled hen so nearly a match for the floor that his near-sighted eyes failed to perceive her, paying as little heed to her clucking and fluttering as he bestowed upon the smiles of a girl who stood in the doorway and moved, with conspicuous civility as he pa.s.sed. He stalked around to the corner of the porch where stood his long boots, for which he exchanged his low ties of russet leather, and, picking up fishing-tackle and crabbing nets, started off at a brisk pace for the sh.o.r.e of the pond, leaving Marsden to follow with the pail of dinner.

When all these were stowed away in the locker of "The Aquidneck,"

together with a straw-covered flask and a volume of Omar Khayyam, Flint bade a cheerful good-bye to Marsden, who stood rolling up his shirt-sleeves, and giving copious advice. The amateur skipper cast off from the little dock, lowered the centreboard, and stretched himself lazily in the stern, with one hand on the tiller. Peace was in his heart, and a pipe in his mouth--what could man ask more of the G.o.ds?

The white sails of "The Aquidneck" fluttered in the light breeze as if tremulous with the ecstasy of motion. The sea, beyond the low gra.s.s-covered sand-bar which enclosed the pond, lay bright and smooth to southward, its surface dotted with craft of various sizes. Here skimmed a white-winged schooner; there panted and puffed a tug absurdly inadequate to its tow of low-lying coal-barges. Far on the horizon, a swelling island raised its bulk, purple as Capri, against the golden haze.

Flint might have been a better sailor had he not been so good a swimmer; but, having no fear of the consequences of a sudden bath, he took all risks, sailed into the very apple of the eye of the wind, and habitually fastened his sheet,--a practice strongly reprehended by old Marsden.

"There's a new boat on the pond," said Flint to himself, as a cat-rigged craft, white-hulled with a band of olive, shot out from behind a point of rock. "Her lines are rather good. A good sailor aboard too, I should say, for she runs free and yet steady. I'd like to try a race with the chap some day; maybe it would be hardly fair if he's a new comer, for I know the pond like--d.a.m.n it! what's that?"

_That_ was a sunken rock which Flint, in his self-satisfied musings, had failed to keep a lookout for. It had struck "The Aquidneck" full (or _vice versa_, which amounts to the same thing); and here was a pretty pickle. Navigation is like flirtation: all goes smoothly till the shock comes, and then everything capsizes, with no chance for explanation.

"The Aquidneck" began to fill, and then to sink so rapidly that Flint, not caring to risk entanglement in the sheets, thought it prudent to jump overboard, and struck out l.u.s.tily for the sh.o.r.e.

Fortunately for Flint, the sh.o.r.e was near and the water shallow.

Unfortunately, the sh.o.r.e was at the end further from the inn, his clothes were soaking, and his tobacco and whiskey flask in the locker, already under water in the midst of mud and eel-gra.s.s.

Determined to make the best of a bad situation, Flint swam ash.o.r.e, calmly disposed his coat and knickerbockers over the bayberry bushes, and seated himself, in his dripping under-garments, to dry in the sun to consider his next move.

"Certainly things couldn't be much nastier," he grumbled. "Yes, they could too," he added, as he heard a female voice calling from beyond the screen of bayberry bushes.

"Boat ahoy! What's the matter?"

Flint's first impulse was to hide; but fearing the voice and its owner might come ash.o.r.e to investigate the extent of the calamity, he hastily donned his outer clothing and emerged, like a dripping seal, from his retreat. "All right!" he called out.

"All wrong! I should say," the voice replied; and in an instant he knew it for the voice which had called to him from the sulky on the previous afternoon.

"That girl is a hoodoo!" he muttered.

"Can I do anything for you?" inquired the voice, with that super-solemnity which results from the effort to conceal amus.e.m.e.nt,--a solemnity doubly insulting to its object, implying at once his absurdity and his vanity.

"Thank you!" answered Flint, stiffly; "if you will be kind enough to send some one over to give me a lift, I will be greatly obliged."

"Why not get in with us? Luff her in, Jim!" With this the girl and her companion, a boy of twelve years old, bare of leg and freckled of face, brought the boat around, and Flint climbed aboard with rather a bad grace.

To tell the truth, he was in a fit of the sulks. I admit that the sulks are not heroic; but Homer permitted them to Achilles, and why should I conceal the fact, unpleasing though it be, about my lesser hero.

Doubtless his ancestor, Jonathan Edwards, would have felt a like discomposure, had his pulpit given way under him in the presence of his congregation; and even that other fiery orator, Patrick The Great, might have lost his balance had his new peach-colored coat split up the back, when he was hurling death and destruction upon tyrants and pleading for liberty or death. To be ridiculous with equanimity is the crowning achievement of philosophy.

The boy addressed as "Jim" stared at Flint with open-mouthed enjoyment.

"You didn't fetch where you meant to, did you?"

"Hush, Jim!"

"Why, Fred, what am I saying wrong now? You're always hushing me up. I didn't mean to guy him, but he did look so jolly glum."

Seeing that intervention was vain in this quarter, his sister essayed a change of topic, and, womanlike, rushed on to the one she had most steadfastly promised herself to avoid.

"Were you fishing when the accident happened?" She stopped and colored nervously.

"No," observed Flint, dryly. (His remarks were the only dry things about him.) "My fishing-rod happened to be broken. It is of no consequence however," he hastened to add, seeing her blush deepen painfully. "The fish about here are not gamey enough to make fishing an exciting sport. Do you find it so?"

"I never fish."

"Ah, I am surprised."