"Why?"

"Why! don't it strike ye, woman, 't they 's nothin' ondefinite 'n pokin' around over the 'nhabited 'arth, lookin' for the Widder Lester's circle-basket? I was hopin' widders was more definite, but it seems they're jest like all the rest on ye: poo! poo! hohum--jest like all the rest on ye."

"We've got to find her, cap'n; she sets sech store by talkin' along o'

major."

"Major!" sniffed the captain; "she ain't worthy to ontie the major's shoe-lockets; they ain't none on 'em worthy, maids, widders--none on 'em!"

I knew to what he referred, what grat.i.tude was moving in his breast.

"Wal, thar now, Cap'n Pharo Kobbe! ain't Vesty Kirtland worthy?"

"Vesty!" said the captain, undismayed--"Vesty 's an amazin' gal, but she ain't nowheres along o' major!"

"Wal, I must say! I wonder whatever put you in such a takin' to major."

He did not say.

We travelled vaguely, gazing from house to house, and then the road over again, without discovering any sign of the basket.

"By clam! it 's almost enough to make an infidel of a man," said the captain, furiously relighting his pipe.

"Cap'n Pharo Kobbe, you're all'as layin' everything either to women or religion."

"Don't mention on 'em in the same breath," said the captain; "don't.

They hadn't never orter be cla.s.sed together!"

Fortunately at this juncture we saw Mrs. Lester afar off at a fork of the roads standing and waving her arms to us, and we hastened to join her, but imagine the captain's feelings when from the circle-basket she took out a large, plump blueberry pie, or "turnover," for each of us, with a face all beaming with unconscious joy and good-will.

"How do you feel now, eatin' Miss Lester's turnover, after what you've been and said?" said his wife.

"What'd I say?" said the captain boldly, immersed in the joys of his blueberry pie; for a primitive, a generic appet.i.te attaches to this region: one is always hungry; no sooner has one eaten than he is wholesomely hungry again.

"Do you want me to tell what you said, Cap'n Pharo Kobbe?"

"Poo! poo!" said the captain, wiping his mouth with a flourish.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Music fragment: 'Or as the morning flow'r, The blighting wind sweeps o'er, she--'"]

"You'd ought to join a concert," said his wife, at the stinging height of sarcasm, for the captain's singing was generally regarded as a sacred subject.

But there was one calm spirit aboard, my companion, Mrs. Lester. Ah me! if I might but drive with her again! Her weight was such, settling the springs that side, that I, slender and uplifted, and tossed by the roughness of the road, had continually to cling to the side bars, in order to give a proper air of coolness to our relationship.

But when it came to the pie I had to give up the contest, and ate it reclining, literally, upon her bosom.

"I'm glad I didn't wear my dead-l.u.s.tre silk," said she tenderly; "it might 'a' got spotted. I'm all'as a great hand to spot when I'm eatin'

blueberry pie."

Blessed soul! it was not she; it was my arm that was scattering the contents of the pie.

"You know I board 'Blind Rodgers,'" she went on, still deeper to bury my regret and confusion. I had heard of him; his sightless, gentle ambition it was to live without making "spots."

"Wal, we had blueberry pie for dinner yesterday--and I wonder if them rich parents in New York 't left him with me jest because he was blind, and hain't for years took no notice of him 'cept to send his board--I wonder if they could 'a' done what he done? I made it with a lot o'

sweet, rich juice, and I thought to myself, 'I know Blind Rodgers'll slop a little on the table-cloth to-day,' and I put on a clean table-cloth, jest hopin' he would. But where I set, with seein' eyes, there was two or three great spots on the cloth; and he et his pie, but on his place at table, when he got up, ye wouldn't 'a' known anybody'd been settin' there, it was so clean and white!"

Some tears coursed down her cheeks at the pure recollection--we, who have seeing eyes, make so many spots! I felt the tears coming to my own eyes, for we were as close in sympathy as in other respects.

Meanwhile the ancient horse was taking quite an unusual pace over the road.

"Another sail on ahead there somewhere," said Captain Pharo; "hoss is chasin' another hoss. It 's Mis' Garrison's imported coachman, takin'

home some meal, 'cross kentry. He'll turn in to'ds the Neck by'n'by.

Poo! poo! Mis' Garrison wanted Fluke to coach for her; he was so strong an' harnsome; an' she was tellin' him what she wanted him to do, curchy here, and curchy there. 'Mis' Garrison,' says Fluke, 'I'll drive ye 'round wherever ye wants me to, but I'll be d--d if I'll curchy to ye!' So she fetched along an imported one."

Whatever the obsequious conduct of this individual toward Mrs.

Garrison, his manners to us were insolent to a degree. Having once turned to look at us, he composed his hat on one side, grinned, whistled, and would neither turn again nor give us room to pa.s.s, nor drive out of a walk, on our account.

"Either fly yer sails, or cl'ar the ship's channel there," cried Captain Pharo at last, snorting with indignation.

The wicked imported coachman continued the same.

It was now that our horse, who had been meanwhile going through what quiet mental processes we knew not, solved the apparent difficulty of the situation by a judicious selection of expedients. He lifted the bag of meal bodily from the coachman's wagon with his teeth, and, depositing it silently upon the ground by the roadside, paused of his own accord and gravely waited for us to do the rest.

The coachman was pursuing his way, unconscious, insolent, whistling.

"She'll take it out o' yer wages; she 's dreadful close," chuckled Captain Pharo, as we tucked the bag of meal away on the carriage floor.

"See when ye'll scoff in my sails, and block up the ship's channel ag'in! Now then; touch and go is a good pilot," and we struck off on a divergent road at a rattling pace.

But these adventures had exhausted so much time, when we arrived at Crooked River it was high tide, and the bridge was already elevated for the pa.s.sage of a schooner approaching in the distance.

"See, now, what ye done, don't ye?" said Captain Pharo--I must say it--with mean reproach, to his wife; "we've got to wait here an hour an' a half."

"Wal, thar, Cap'n Pharo Kobbe, seems to me I wouldn't say nothin'

'g'inst Providence nor n.o.body else, for once, ef I'd jest got two dollars' worth o' meal, jest for pickin' it up off'n the road."

Touched by this view of the case, the captain sang with great cheerfulness that his days were as the gra.s.s or as the morning flower--when an inspiration struck him.

"I don' know," said he, "why we hadn't just as well turn here and go up Artichoke road, and git baited at Coffin's, 'stid er stoppin' to see 'em on the way home. I'm feelin' sharp as a meat-axe ag'in."

"I don' know whether the rest of ye are hungry or not," said plump little Mrs. Kobbe; "but I'm gittin as long-waisted as a knittin'-needle."

The language of vivid hyperbole being exhausted, Mrs. Lester and I expressed ourselves simply to the same effect. We turned, heedful no longer of the tides, and travelled delightfully along the Artichoke road until we reached a brown dwelling that I knew could be none other than theirs--Uncle Coffin's and Aunt Salomy's; they were in their sunny yard, and before I knew them, I loved them.

"Dodrabbit ye!" cried Uncle Coffin Demmin, springing out at us in hospitable ecstasy, Salomy beside him; "git out! git out quick! The sight on ye makes me sick, in there. Git out, I say!" he roared.

"No-o; guess not, Coffin," said Captain Pharo, with gloomy observance of formalities; "guess I ca-arnt; goin' up to the Point to git a nail put in my hoss's shu-u."

But Uncle Coffin was already leading the horse and carriage on to the barn floor.