by kearfully
in the box. What did you hit Jim for, Sammy? Let me ketch you a-hitten
your little brother agin an' I'll spank you. Now get in the house, all
of ye. You see, miss," turning to me, "we manage somehow. If it wa'n't
fur _her_, we'd give up. There's that boy Jim, he took to swearing this
spring. I declare it was jess awful to hear him go on. I spanked him,
and Scud he switched him, but it wa'n't to no use. That boy talked jess
scand'lous, till your cousin here, miss, she heerd him one mornin', an'
took a white powder an' put a little on his tongue. It made Jim powerful
sick. And, says she, 'If I hear you swearin' agin I'll pizen ye; an'
you'll die in a minute an' never see God,' and I declare to goodness he
was so skeared that I hain't heerd him swear since. There's Scud.
Where's Salt, pa? Come here an' speak to the ladies. She's brought ye
some ties."

"Salt's makin' the boat fast," began Scud, nodding with inimitable ease
to his visitors. "I'm afraid ther's goin' to be--"

Scud stopped short in open-mouthed pleasure when he saw a couple of
brilliant red and blue ties dangling from Betty's hand. He had come up
the rocky path, whistling like a boy, with every line and pucker in his
face on a broad smile. If Lavater had seen this fisherman's physiognomy
he would have pronounced it indicative of incomparable good nature.
Indeed, Scud's good nature went so far at times as to be incomparably
inadequate to the demands of existence. If he happened to go for weeks
without catching so much as a sculpin in his net, and the starvation of
his youngsters stared him in the face, he showed none of the common
symptoms of discouragement, such as swearing, drinking, beating his
wife, or cursing his luck. He only whistled the blither, ran up bills at
the butcher's and grocer's with irresistible faith, borrowed his "chaws"
of his luckier mates, and laughed as if poverty were an excellent joke
that Providence was cracking at him. Why shouldn't he appreciate it,
even if it were at his own expense.

Scud was born "easy." Who could blame him? He gave up his lobster-pots
because it took too much time to dry them and keep them in repair, and
it was too cold and dangerous hauling them in stormy weather off the
rocks. Scud found it too troublesome to underrun his trap more than
twice a-day--once at six o'clock in the morning, then at six o'clock at
night. Even when the mackerel or the herring struck, and every man who
had a trap hover