enormous fortune
slipping through our lingers just because this old man could not
remember a little matter about where a schooner had been anchored.

After he had eaten all the supper that he could hold--which was a good
deal--and had gone home, we told Susan the whole dismal story of how our
expedition had proved to be a total failure. It was best, we thought,
not to mince matters with her; and we stated minutely how time after
time the anchorage of the schooner had been precisely located, and then
in a little while had been unlocated again. She saw, as we did, that as
a clew Old Jacob was not much of a success, and also that he was about
the only thing in the least like a clew that we possessed. Realizing
this latter fact, and knowing that his great age made his death probable
at any moment, Susan strongly advised me, in her clear-sighted way, to
have him photographed.

IV.

Gregory Wilkinson seemed to find himself quite comfortable in our little
home, and settled down there into a sort of permanency. We were glad to
have him stay with us, for he was a first-rate fellow, and always good
company in his pleasant, quiet way, and he told us two or three times
that he was enjoying himself. He told me a great many more than two or
three times that he considered Susan to be a wonderfully fine woman;
indeed, he told me this at least once every day, and sometimes oftener.
He was greatly struck--just as everybody is who lives for any length
of time in the same house with Susan--by her capable ways, and by her
unfailing equanimity and sweetness of temper. Even when the colored girl
fell down the well, carrying the rope and the bucket along with her,
Susan was not a bit flustered. She told me just where I would find the
clothes-line and a big meat-hook; and when, with this hastily-improvised
apparatus, we had fished the colored girl up and got her safely on
dry land again, she knew exactly what to do to make her all right and
comfortable. As Gregory Wilkinson observed to me, after it was all over,
from the way that Susan behaved, any one might have thought that hooking
colored girls up out of wells was her regular business.

As to making Susan angry, that simply was impossible. When things went
desperately wrong with her in any way she would just come right to me
and cry a little on my shoulder. Then, when I had comforted her, she
would chipper up and be all right again in no time. Gregory Wilkinson
happened to come in