mmon pleasure, and the host walked back into the
house to compliment his housekeeper, though the sting of his friend's
untimely question expressed itself by a remark that they had made most
too much of an every-day matter by having the coffee in those best
cups.

Mrs. French laughed. "'T will give 'em something to talk about; 't was
excellent good coffee, this last you got, anyway," and Captain Asaph
walked away, restored to a pleased and cheerful frame of mind. When he
waked up after a solid after-dinner nap, Mrs. French, in her decent
afternoon gown, as calm as if there had been no company to dinner, was
just coming down the front stairs.

She seated herself by the window, and pretended to look into the
street. The captain shook his newspaper at an invading fly. It was
early September and flies were cruelly persistent. Somehow his nap had
not entirely refreshed him, and he watched his housekeeper with
something like disapproval.

"I want to talk with you about something, sir," said Mrs. French.

"She's going to raise her pay," the captain grumbled to himself.
"Well, speak out, can't ye ma'am?" he said.

"You know I've been sayin' all along that you ought to get your
niece"--

"She's my _great_-niece," blew the captain, "an' I don't know as I
want her." The awful certainty came upon him that those hints were
well-founded about Mrs. French's determination to marry him, and his
stormy nature rose in wild revolt. "Can't you keep your place, ma'am?"
and he gave a great _whoo!_ as if he were letting off superabundant
steam. She might prove to carry too many guns for him, and he grew
very red in the face. It was a much worse moment than when a vessel
comes driving at you amidships out of the fog.

"Why, yes, sir, I should be glad to keep my place," said Mrs. French,
taking the less grave meaning of his remark by instinct, if not by
preference; "only it seems your duty to let your great-niece come some
time or other, and I can go off. Perhaps it is an untimely season to
speak, about it, but, you see, I have had it in mind, and now I've got
through with the preserves, and there's a space between now and
house-cleaning, I guess you'd better let the young woman come. Folks
have got wind about your refusing her earlier, and think hard of me:
my position isn't altogether pleasant," and she changed color a
little, and looked him full in the face.

The captain's eyes fell. He did owe her something. He never had been
so co