u been keeping
yourself? And Mrs. Dellenbaugh! This is indeed a pleasure. I have just
passed the dear doctor, and he is looking as young as he did ten years
ago. And my Lady Lucy! Down so early! Well, Mistress Martha, up again I
see; I told you you'd be all right in a day or two."

This running fire of greetings was made with a pause before each inmate
of the room--a hearty hand-shake for the bluff captain, the pressing of
Mrs. Dellenbaugh's limp fingers, a low bow to Lucy, and a pat on
Martha's plump shoulder.

Jane came last, as she always did. She had risen to greet him and was
now unwinding the white silk handkerchief wrapped about his throat and
helping him off with his fur tippet and gloves.

"Thank you, Jane. No, let me take it; it's rather wet," he added as he
started to lay the heavy overcoat over a chair. "Wait a minute. I've
some violets for you if they are not crushed in my pocket. They came
last night," and he handed her a small parcel wrapped in tissue paper.
This done, he took his customary place on the rug with his back to the
blazing logs and began unbuttoning his trim frock-coat, bringing to
view a double-breasted, cream-white waistcoat--he still dressed as a
man of thirty, and always in the fashion--as well as a fluffy scarf
which Jane had made for him with her own fingers.

"And what have I interrupted?" he asked, looking over the room. "One of
your sea yarns, captain?"--here he reached over and patted the child's
head, who had crept back to the captain's arms--"or some of my lady's
news from Paris? You tell me, Jane," he added, with a smile, opening
his thin, white, almost transparent fingers and holding them behind his
back to the fire, a favorite attitude.

"Ask the captain, John." She had regained her seat and was reaching out
for her work-basket, the violets now pinned in her bosom--her eyes had
long since thanked him.

"No, do YOU tell me," he insisted, moving aside the table with her
sewing materials and placing it nearer her chair.

"Well, but it's the captain who should speak," Jane replied, laughing,
as she looked up into his face, her eyes filled with his presence. "He
has startled us all with the most wonderful proposition. The Government
is going to build a life-saving station at Barnegat beach, and they
have offered him the position of keeper, and he says he will take it if
I will let Archie go with him as one of his crew."

Doctor John's face instantly assumed a graver look. T