ate hurry in the eyes of the
youngster coming with the paint pot and painting the bottom of the keel
as the blocks fell one by one. Well he might hurry; for sometimes the
ship trips the last dozen blocks or so, and thus stepped on with all
that tonnage they snap and crackle, and splinters fly in every
direction.

Nothing now held the ship but a single iron dog which bound the two
tallowed surfaces together. One stroke of the maul knocked this away.
Still the ship hung fire.

"Run back and forth thwartships, you there; all you good people!" cried
Hat hoarsely. "See if we can't start her that way."

So the ship's launching company ran back and forth, and fore and aft,
until their tongues were hanging out. Elmer nudged his wife and asked
her if she remembered that night when they had danced up and down
themselves at a moonlight launching. Pearl replied with a trace of acid
that she had good cause to remember it. It was then that Elmer had
screwed his courage to the speaking point.

In vain, all in vain Hat Tyler roared her orders. The _Minnie Williams_
budged not, nor felt a thrill of life along her keel. The crowd beside
the ways scarcely drew breath; the suspense was racking.

At length the ship's company stopped for lack of breath; and in a moment
of hush a voice cried: "You better get out of that traveling suit, Hat
Tyler. You won't travel to-day."

It was Pearl Higgins. She followed up her witty saying by a peal of
jeering laughter, which punctured the tense mood of that great throng of
friends and neighbors; and such a roar of laughter went up at Hat's
expense that the _Minnie Williams_--and Hat no less--quivered from stem
to stern.

The sea captain burst frankly into tears.

"No, sir," Elmer said to a member of the Tall Stove Club who had missed
the launching, "I never see Hat go all to pieces the way she did then.
She was all broken up over it. Well, she might have mistrusted that
Pearl had a bone to pick with her. Pearl had been between a sweat and a
shiver to get in a word, and she see her chance and let her have it
slap. 'T was just what the doctor ordered. It come in so kind of comical
too. There was Hat, all twittered up in that great poison-green hat of
hers with the little heap of crab apples over one eye--and she stood
there and couldn't say ay, yes or no. And then it was boo-hoo, you know,
same as women will when a thing ain't jest according to their liking.
Hat's a smart woman, all right enough,