etticoat bought for her in London and sent like
the proverbial pig in a poke, had taken to watching the Yankee peddling
sloop, which, having lain for an hour at Patterson's on the Virginia
shore, was now heading for the Browne place. It was pretty to see the
sloop heel over under a beam wind and shoot steadily forward, while the
waves dashed fair against her weather side and splashed the water from
time to time to the top of her free board. It was a pleasant sight to
mark her approach by the gradual increase in her size and the growing
distinctness with which the details of her rigging could be made out.
At length, when her bow appeared to Judith Browne to be driving so
straight on the bank that nothing could prevent the vessel's going
ashore Captain Perkins called to his only man, standing at the helm,
"Hard down!" and the sloop swung her nose into the waves, and
gracefully rounded head into the wind just in time to lie close under
the bank, rocking fore and aft like a duck. As soon as she had swung
into the wind enough for her sail to flap, the captain called to the
boy who was the third member of the crew to let go the halyards; and as
the sail ran rattling down, the captain heaved the anchor at the bow
with his own hands. Then a plank was run out, a line made fast forward,
and Perkins climbed the bank and greeted Mrs. Browne. His manner
combined strangely the heartiness of the seaman with the sinuous
deference of the peddler. His speech was that which one hears only in
the most up-country New England regions and among London small
shopkeepers. The uttering of his vowel sounds taper end first greatly
amused his customers in the Chesapeake regions, while their abrupt
clipping of both vowels and liquids was equally curious to Perkins, who
regarded all people outside of New England as natives to be treated
with condescending kindness alike for Christian and for business
reasons, and as people who were even liable to surprise him by the
possession of some rudimentary virtues in spite of their unlucky
outlandishness.

"Glad to see yeh again, Mis' Braown," he said when he reached the top
of the bank. "Where's Mr. Braown?"

"He's gone down to the Nancy Jane. Won't you come in, Captain Perkins?
Come in and sit down a while."

"Wal, yes. And how's your little gal?" Seeing a dubious look on Mrs.
Browne's face, he said: "Or is it a boy, now? I call at so many houses
I git confused. Fine child, I remember."

"The lad's gone