"Don't look at me, Emily. I feel like a barrel squeezed into an umbrella cover. This dress is long enough, land knows, but that's about all you can say of it. However, I suppose we hadn't ought to--to look a gift dress in the waistband."

Supper was ready in the dining-room and thither they were piloted by Kenelm, whose hair, what there was of it, was elaborately "slicked down," and whose celluloid collar had evidently received a scrubbing. In the dining-room they found Captain Bangs awaiting them. Miss Parker made her appearance bearing a steaming teapot. Hannah, now that they had an opportunity to inspect her, was seen to be as tall and sharp-featured as her brother was short and round. She was at least fifteen years older than he, but she moved much more briskly. Also she treated Kenelm as she might have treated a child, an only child who needed constant suppression.

"Please to be seated, everybody," she said. "Cap'n Obed, you take your reg'lar place. Mrs. Barnes, if you'll be so kind as to set here, and Miss Howes next to you. Kenelm, you set side of me. Set down, don't stand there fidgetin'. WHAT did you put on that necktie for? I told you to put on the red one."

Kenelm fingered his tie. "I--I cal'late I must have forgot, Hannah," he stammered. "I never noticed. This one's all right, ain't it?"

"All right! It'll have to be. You can't change it now. But, for goodness sakes, look out it stays on. The elastic's all worn loose and it's li'ble to drop into your tea or anywheres else. Now," with a sudden change from a family to a "company" manner, "may I a.s.sist you to a piece of the cold ham, Miss Howes? I trust you are feelin' quite restored to yourself again?"

Emily's answer being in the affirmative, their hostess continued:

"I'm so sorry to be obliged to set nothin' but cold ham and toast and tea before you," she said. "If I had known you was comin' I should have prepared somethin' more fittin'. After such an experience as you must have been through this night to set down to ham and toast! I--I declare I feel real debilitated and ashamed to offer 'em to you."

Thankful answered.

"Don't say a word, Miss Parker," she said, heartily. "We're the ones that ought to be ashamed. Landin' on you this way in the middle of the night. You're awfully good to take us in at all. My cousin and I were on our way to the hotel, but Cap'n Bangs wouldn't hear of it. He's responsible for our comin' here."

Miss Parker nodded.

"Cap'n Obed is the most hospital soul livin'," she said, grandly. "He done just right. If he'd done anything else Kenelm and I would have felt hurt. I--Look out!" with a sudden s.n.a.t.c.h at her brother's shirt front.

"There goes that tie. Another second and 'twould have been right in your plate."

Kenelm snapped the loop of the "made" tie over his collar b.u.t.ton. "Don't grab at me that way, Hannah," he protested mildly. "I'm kind of nervous tonight, after what I've been through. 'Twouldn't have done no great harm if I had dropped it. I could pick it up again, couldn't I?"

"You could, but I doubt if you would. You might have ate it, you're so absent-minded. Nervous! YOU nervous! What do you think of me? Mrs.

Barnes," turning to Thankful and once more resuming the "company"

manner, "you'll excuse our bein' a little upset. You see, when my brother came home and said he'd seen lights movin' around in the old Barnes' house, he frightened us all pretty near to death. All Cap'n Obed could think of was tramps, or thieves or somethin'. Nothin' would do but he must drag Kenelm right back to see who or what was in there. And I was left alone to imagine all sorts of dreadful things. Tramps I might stand. They belong to this world, anyhow. But in THAT house, at eleven o'clock at night, I--Mrs. Barnes, do you believe in aberrations?"

Thankful was nonplused. "In--in which?" she asked.

"In aberrations, spirits of dead folks comin' alive again?"

For just a moment Mrs. Barnes hesitated. Then she glanced at Emily, who was trying hard not to smile, and answered, with decision: "No, I don't."

"Well, I don't either, so far as that goes. I never see one myself, and I've never seen anybody that has. But when Kenelm came tearin' in to say he'd seen a light in a house shut up as long as that one has been, and a house that folks--"

Captain Bangs interrupted. He had been regarding Thankful closely and now he changed the subject.

"How did it happen you saw that light, Kenelm?" he asked. "What was you doin' over in that direction a night like this?"

Kenelm hesitated. He seemed to find it difficult to answer.

"Why--why--" he stammered, "I'd been up to the office after the mail.

And--and--it was so late comin' that I give it up. I says to Lemuel Ryder, 'Lem,' I says--"

His sister broke in.

"Lem Ryder!" she repeated. "Was he at the post-office?"

"Well--well--" Kenelm's confusion was more marked than ever.

"Well--well--" he stammered, "I see him, and I says--"

"You see him! Where did you see him? Kenelm Parker, I don't believe you was at the postoffice at all. You was at the clubroom, that's where you was. At that clubroom, smokin' and playin' cards with that deprivated crowd of loafers and gamblers. Tell me the truth, now, wasn't you?"

Mr. Parker's tie fell off then, but neither he nor his sister noticed it.

"Gamblers!" he snorted. "There ain't no gamblers there. Playin' a hand or two of Californy Jack just for fun ain't gamblin'. I wouldn't gamble, not for a million dollars."

Captain Obed laughed. "Neither would I," he observed. "Nor for two cents, with that clubroom gang; 'twould be too much nerve strain collectin' my winnin's. I see now why you come by the Barnes' house, Kenelm. It's the nighest way home from that clubhouse. Well, I'm glad you did. Mrs. Barnes and Miss Howes would have had a long session in the dark if you hadn't. Yes, and a night at Darius Holt's hotel, which would have been a heap worse. So you've been livin' at South Middleboro, Mrs.

Barnes, have you? Does Miss Howes live there, too?"

Thankful, very grateful for the change of topic, told of her life since her husband's death, of her long stay with Mrs. Pearson, of Emily's teaching school, and their trip aboard the depot-wagon.

"Well," exclaimed Miss Parker, when she had finished, "you have been through enough, I should say! A reg'lar story-book adventure, ain't it?

Lost in a storm and shut up in an empty house, the one you come purpose to see. It's a mercy you wa'n't either of you hurt, climbin' in that window the way you did. You might have broke your arms or your necks or somethin'. Mr. Alpheus Ba.s.sett, down to the Point--a great, strong, fleshy man, weighs close to two hundred and fifty and never sick a day in his life--he was up in the second story of his buildin' walkin'

around spry as anybody--all alone, which he shouldn't have been at his age--and he stepped on a fish and away he went. And the next thing we hear he's in bed with his collar-bone. Did you ever hear anything like that in your life, Miss Howes?"

It was plain that Emily never had. "I--I'm afraid I don't understand,"

she faltered. "You say he was in the second story of a building and he stepped on--on a FISH?"

"Yes, just a mackerel 'twas, and not a very big one, they tell me. At first they was afraid 'twas the spine he'd broke, but it turned out to be only the collar-bone, though that's bad enough."

Captain Obed burst into a laugh. "'Twa'n't the mackerel's collar-bone, Miss Howes," he explained, "though I presume likely that was broke, too, if Alpheus stepped on it. He was up in the loft of his fish shanty icin'

and barrelin' fish to send to Boston, and he fell downstairs. Wonder it didn't kill him."

Miss Parker nodded. "That's what I say," she declared. "And Sarah--that's his wife--tells me the doctors are real worried because the fraction ain't ignited yet."

Thankful coughed and then observed that she should think they would be.

"If you don't mind," she added, "I think it's high time all hands went to bed. It must be way along into the small hours and if we set here any longer it'll be time for breakfast. You folks must be tired, settin' up this way and I'm sure Emily and I am. If we turn in now we may have a chance to look over that precious property of mine afore we go back to South Middleboro. I don't know, though, as we haven't seen enough of it already. It don't look very promisin' to me."

The captain rose from the table and, walking to the window, pushed aside the shade.

"It'll look better tomorrow--today, I should say," he observed. "The storm's about over, and the wind's hauled to the west'ard. We'll have a spell of fair weather now, I guess. That property of yours, Mrs. Barnes, 'll look a lot more promisin' in the sunshine. There's no better view along sh.o.r.e than from the front windows of that house. 'Tain't half bad, that old house ain't. All it needs is fixin' up."

Good nights--good mornings, for it was after two o'clock--were said and the guests withdrew to their bedroom. Once inside, with the door shut, Thankful and Emily looked at each other and both burst out laughing.

"Oh, dear me!" gasped the former, wiping her eyes. "Maybe it's mean to laugh at folks that's been as kind to us as these Parkers have been, but I never had such a job keepin' a straight face in my life. When she said she was 'debilitated' at havin' to give us ham and toast that was funny enough, but what come afterwards was funnier. The 'fraction' ain't 'ignited' yet and the doctors are worried. I should think they'd be more worried if it had."

Emily shook her head. "I am glad I didn't have to answer that remark, Auntie," she said. "I never could have done it without disgracing myself. She is a genuine Mrs. Malaprop, isn't she?"

This was a trifle too deep for Mrs. Barnes, who replied that she didn't know, she having never met the Mrs. What's-her-name to whom her cousin referred. "She's a genuine curiosity, this Parker woman, if that's what you mean, Emily," she said. "And so's her brother, though a different kind of one. We must get Cap'n Bangs to tell us more about 'em in the mornin'. He thinks that--that heirloom house of mine will look better in the daylight. Well, I hope he's right; it looked hopeless enough tonight, what I could see of it."

"I like that Captain Bangs," observed Emily.

"So do I. It seems as if we'd known him for ever so long. And how his salt-water talk does take me back. Seems as if I was hearin' my father and Uncle Abner--yes, and Eben, too--speakin'. And it is so sort of good and natural to be callin' somebody 'Cap'n.' I was brought up amongst cap'ns and I guess I've missed 'em more'n I realized. Now you must go to sleep; you'll need all the sleep you can get, and that won't be much.

Good night."

"Good night," said Emily, sleepily. A few minutes later she said: "Auntie, what did become of that lantern our driver was so anxious about? The last I saw of it it was on the floor by the sofa where I was lying. But I didn't seem to remember it after the captain and Mr. Parker came."