"Yes, by myself. I'd rather go alone. I don't intend to mind
anything, and I'm goin' to tell her that she can stay there and spend
Christmas,--the place she lives in ain't no place to spend
Christmas,--and she can make the little gal have a good time, and go
'long just as we intended to go 'long--plum-duff and mince-pie all the
same. I can stay here, and you and me can have our Christmas dinner
together, if we choose to give it that name. And if she ain't ready to
go to-morrow, she can stay a day or two longer. It's all the same to
me, if it's the same to you, cap'n."

Captain Cephas having said that it was the same to him, Captain Eli put
on his cap and buttoned up his pea-jacket, declaring that the sooner he
got to his house the better, as she might be thinking that she would
have to move out of it now that things were different.

Before Captain Eli reached his house he saw something which pleased
him. He saw the sea-going stranger, with his back toward him, walking
rapidly in the direction of the village store.

Captain Eli quickly entered his house, and in the doorway of the room
where the tree was he met Mrs. Trimmer, beaming brighter than any
morning sun that ever rose.

"Merry Christmas!" she exclaimed, holding out both her hands. "I've
been wondering and wondering when you'd come to bid me `Merry
Christmas'--the merriest Christmas I've ever had."

Captain Eli took her hands and bid her "Merry Christmas" very gravely.

She looked a little surprised. "What's the matter, Captain Eli?" she
exclaimed. "You don't seem to say that as if you meant it."

"Oh, yes, I do," he answered. "This must be an all-fired--I mean a
thunderin' happy Christmas fer you, Mrs. Trimmer."

"Yes," said she, her face beaming again. "And to think that it should
happen on Christmas day--that this blessed morning, before anything
else happened, my Bob, my only brother, should--"

"Your what!" roared Captain Eli, as if he had been shouting orders in a
raging storm.

Mrs. Trimmer stepped back almost frightened. "My brother," said she.
"Didn't he tell you he was my brother--my brother Bob, who sailed away
a year before I was married, and who has been in Africa and China and I
don't know where? It's so long since I heard that he'd gone into
trading at Singapore that I'd given him up as married and settled in
foreign parts. And here he has come to me as if he'd tumbled from the
sky on this blessed Christmas morning."

Capt