bra an'
the fourth dimension."

Captain Benjamin grinned at the sally.

"It won't be goin' overboard no more now, Zenas Henry," responded he
serenely, "'cause since the _Sea Gull's_ got that eel-grass-proof
contrivance hitched to her, there won't be no call for me to be lyin'
head down'ards astern. I'll be settin' up like a Christian in
future--all of us will. My soul, but Bob Morton an' Willie Spence did
a good job on that boat! It's somethin' to have a young chap with
brains like that marryin' into the family! I'll bet there's 'most
nothin' on earth he couldn't tackle."

"You're right!" Captain Phineas chimed in. "If Delight's got to get
married--an' we'd be a lot of selfish brutes not to want her to--she
certainly has picked a promisin' husband. You can lose money--fling it
away or have it stolen from you--but you can't lose brains."

"That's so, Phineas! That's so!" Zenas Henry said. "Besides, 'tain't
as if he was takin' her to Indiana. New York ain't fur. Why, I'll
stake a catch of mackerel we could fetch up at that Long Island place
in the _Sea Gull_."

"Of course we could, Zenas Henry," agreed Captain Jonas, flashing a
glance of affection into his friend's face. "There's no question about
it. Take a good clear day an' the sea runnin' right, we could make it
without a mite of trouble. Long Island wouldn't be anything of a
cruise. No place that we can sail to in our own boat is fur away."

A listener of discrimination might have detected in the dialogue a note
of assumed optimism and suspected that the four old men seated like
images on the piazza rail were trying to buoy up one another's courage,
and in the assumption he would not, perhaps, have been far wrong.

"What do you s'pose this Galbraith has up his sleeve, Zenas Henry, that
he should be comin' over here?" Captain Benjamin Todd speculated,
during a lapse in the conversation. "He has some scheme in mind, you
can be sure of that."

"Why do you always go rootin' up evil like as if you was diggin' fur
clams, Benjamin?" inquired Captain Phineas impatiently, "All Mr.
Galbraith said was he wanted to see Zenas Henry. There surely is no
harm in that. Delight bein' his niece, it's only to be expected he'd
want to get sight of the folks she is livin' with. Most natural thing
in the world, it seems to me. 'Twould be queerer if he didn't show no
interest in the people who have brought her up."

"That's so, Phineas," Captain Jonas echoed.