of a quahaug's
pilgrimage. Perhaps it is fitting that Asaph should end it. He dropped
in for a call the other afternoon and, as I had finished my day's
"stunt" at the desk, I assisted in entertaining him. Frances was in the
sitting-room also and Hephzy joined us soon afterward. Mr. Tidditt had
stopped at the post-office on his way down and he had the Boston morning
paper in his hand. Of course he was filled to the brim with war news. We
discuss little else in Bayport now; even the new baby at the parsonage
has to play second fiddle.

"My godfreys!" exclaimed Asaph, as soon as he sat down in the rocking
chair and put his cap on the floor beneath it. "My godfreys, but they're
havin' awful times over across, now ain't they. Killin' and fightin' and
battlin' and slaughterin'! It don't seem human to me somehow."

"It is human, I'm afraid," I said, with a sigh. "Altogether too human.
We're a poor lot, we, humans, after all. We pride ourselves on our
civilization, but after all, it takes very little to send us back to
savagery."

"That's so," said Asaph, with conviction. "That's true about everybody
but us folks in the United States. We are awful fortunate, we are. We
ain't savages. We was born in a free country, and we've been brought up
right, I declare! I beg your pardon, Mrs. Knowles; I forgot you wasn't
born in Bayport."

Frances smiled. "No apology is needed, Mr. Tidditt," she said. "I
confess to having been born a--savage."

"But you're all right now," said Asaph, hastily, trying to cover his
slip. "You're all right now. You're just as American as the rest of us.
Kent, suppose this war in Europe is goin' to hurt your trade any? It's
goin' to hurt a good many folks's. They tell me groceries and such like
is goin' way up. Lucky we've got fish and clams to depend on. Clams
and quahaugs'll keep us from starvin' for a spell. Oh," with a chuckle,
"speakin' of quahaugs reminds me. Did you know they used to call your
husband a quahaug, Mrs. Knowles? That's what they used to call him round
here--'The Quahaug.' They called him that 'count of his keepin' inside
his shell all the time and not mixin' with folks, not toadyin' up to the
summer crowd and all. I always respected him for it. _I_ don't toady to
nobody neither."

Hephzy had come in by this time and now she took a part in the
conversation.

"They don't call him 'The Quahaug' any more," she declared, indignantly.
"He's been out of his shell more and seen more than