e said his father or
grandfather had hidden a long while ago. He kept saying it would all be
in 'doubloons, doubloons,' because it was got in the Spanish Main and
brought here in a ship. And he said there was treasure, heaps of it, in
the bottom of the Cat's Mouth, where ships had sunk, gold pieces all in
amongst the ribs of dead men. Mr. Pendarves,"--she looked at me with a
shy, awed sympathy,--"I saw your grandfather was--was----"

"He is crazy, or nearly so," said I. "Plain talk is best."

"I'm afraid so. I thought shame to beguile a poor old man that way, but,
sir, I could not stop it. He came every day, and they looked in the
crystal--just as they were doing this afternoon, you know. He's worse
now; I think he forgets betweenwhiles what was said the last time they
looked. Then, one day, _he_ told me we were to come here to live. It was
wrong--I knew it; but when I saw it, and thought what I could do--and I
did so want to have a home and--and be respectable--and I thought, too,
if I worked hard and made it nice, it would be a--a kind of payment,
wouldn't it? I couldn't help longing to----"

"Don't cry that way," I said. "I can't bear to see you cry."

"I can't help it," she sobbed. "It's so hard to leave it all."

"Well, then, why leave it?" said I. "_He_ has to, surely; but that need
make no difference to you. We must have a housekeeper, you know."

She gave me a woeful glance; and I understood that, according to her
poor little code, it would be more "respectable" to resume her
journeyings with the fat crystal-gazer than to stay in the house with
Nick Pendarves as his grandfather's housekeeper. Here was a ticklish
point to argue with her; and, for all her tears, there was a firmness in
the set of her chin (it was dented with a dimple) that warned me such
argument would be a waste of time. She had made up her mind, and would
stand to it at all costs. It was martyrdom in an eminently feminine
style; women deliver themselves up to it day by day, and contrive to be
perfectly unreasonable, yet somehow in the right. She wiped her eyes
presently, shut her mouth on a sob, and went resolutely about her work.
We had, after all, a tolerably cheerful evening in the kitchen. It
seemed wisest for me not to show myself again before Captain Pendarves,
but I am afraid I did not repine greatly at the banishment. As the door
swung to and fro behind Mary carrying their dishes, I caught glimpses of
the gloomy parlor, my grandfath