mething, and Mother decided to go with him. At the last minute
Aunt Ailsa got a weekend invitation from somebody she hadn't seen
for ages and went away, too, which left us alone with Katy and Lena.
Katy has been with us next to forever and took care of Jerry and
Greg when they were Infant Babes, so that Mother never imagined, of
course, that anything could happen in two days. It wasn't Katy's
fault either.

The first day was foggy, and the garden dripped, so we went down to
call on Captain Moss, who lives near the ferry-landing. Besides
having boats for hire, he sells such things as fishing-tackle and
very strong-smelling rope, and sometimes salt herring on a stick.
The things he sells are all mixed up with parts of his own boats and
pieces of canvas and rope-ends, and curly shavings that skitter
across the floor when the wind blows in from the harbor. There is a
window at one end of his shop-place that goes all the way to the
floor, like a doorway, and it is always open. His shop is half on
the ferry-wharf so that the window hangs right over the water, very
high above it. It is quite a dizzyish place, but wonderful to look
out at. Far away you see boats coming in, and Wecanicut all flat and
gray, and then right below is nice sloshy green water with old boxes
and straws floating by, and sometimes horrid orange-peels that
picnic people throw in.

That afternoon Captain Moss was mending the stern of one of his
boats, and when we asked him what he was fitting on, he said:
"Rudder-gudgeons."

He grunted it out so funnily that it sounded just like some queer
old flounder trying to talk, and we thought he was joking. But he
wasn't at all. Sometimes he is very nice and tells us the longest
yarns about when he shipped on a whaler, but this time he was busy
and the rudder-gudgeons didn't behave right, I think, so he let us
do all the talking. We told him a good deal about the bottle, and
also something about the city under the sea. He said he shouldn't
wonder at it, for there was powerful curious things under the sea.
He also said he supposed now we'd be wanting to hire the _Jolly
Nancy_ "fer to find submarine cities, sence he wouldn't let us have
her to go a-stavin' in her bottom on them rocks off Wecanicut."

We decided that he really didn't want to be bothered, so we went
away presently. To soothe him, Jerry bought some of the dry herring
things and carried them home in a pasteboard box that said "1/2 doz.
galvanized li