tmas scheme. As to the little
girl, she was delighted. She already looked upon Captain Eli as her
best friend in the world.

It was not so easy to go to Mrs. Trimmer's house and put the business
before her. "It ought to be plain sailin' enough," Captain Eli said to
himself, over and over again, "but, fer all that, it don't seem to be
plain sailin'."

But he was not a man to be deterred by difficult navigation, and he
walked straight to Eliza Trimmer's house.

Mrs. Trimmer was a comely woman about thirty-five, who had come to the
village a year before, and had maintained herself, or at least had
tried to, by dressmaking and plain sewing. She had lived at Stetford,
a seaport about twenty miles away, and from there, three years before,
her husband, Captain Trimmer, had sailed away in a good-sized schooner,
and had never returned. She had come to Sponkannis because she thought
that there she could live cheaper and get more work than in her former
home. She had found the first quite possible, but her success in
regard to the work had not been very great.

When Captain Eli entered Mrs. Trimmer's little room, he found her busy
mending a sail. Here fortune favored him. "You turn your hand to
'most anything, Mrs. Trimmer," said he, after he had greeted her.

"Oh, yes," she answered, with a smile, "I am obliged to do that.
Mending sails is pretty heavy work, but it's better than nothing."

"I had a notion," said he, "that you was ready to turn your hand to any
good kind of business, so I thought I would step in and ask you if
you'd turn your hand to a little bit of business I've got on the
stocks."

She stopped sewing on the sail, and listened while Captain Eli laid his
plan before her. "It's very kind in you and Captain Cephas to think of
all that," said she. "I have often noticed that poor little girl, and
pitied her. Certainly I'll come, and you needn't say anything about
paying me for it. I wouldn't think of asking to be paid for doing a
thing like that. And besides,"--she smiled again as she spoke,--"if
you are going to give me a Christmas dinner, as you say, that will make
things more than square."

Captain Eli did not exactly agree with her, but he was in very good
humor, and she was in good humor, and the matter was soon settled, and
Mrs. Trimmer promised to come to the captain's house in the morning and
help about the Christmas tree, and in the afternoon to go to get the
little girl from Mrs. Cruml