ing over the door, we can make room for it."

As Captain Bream ran on in this fashion, smoothing down all
difficulties, and making everything comfortable, the poor sisters grew
more and more desperate, and Kate felt a tendency to recklessness coming
on. Suddenly a happy thought occurred to her.

"But sir," she interposed with much firmness of tone and manner, "there
is one great difficulty in the way of our letting the room to you which
I fear cannot be overcome."

The captain looked at her inquiringly, and Jessie regarded her with
admiration and wonder, for she could not conceive what this
insurmountable difficulty could be.

"My sister and I," continued Kate, "have both an _unconquerable_ dislike
to tobacco--"

"Oh! _that's_ no objection," cried the captain with a light laugh--which
in him, however, was an ear-splitting guffaw--"for I don't smoke!"

"Don't smoke?" repeated both sisters in tones of incredulity, for in
their imagination a seaman who did not smoke seemed as great an
impossibility as a street boy who did not whistle.

"An' what's more," continued the captain, "I don't drink. I'm a
tee-total abstainer. I leave smokin' to steam-funnels, an' drinkin' to
the fish."

"But," persisted Kate, on whom another happy thought had descended, "my
sister and I keep very early hours, and a latch-key we could never--"

"Pooh! that's no difficulty," again interrupted this unconquerable man
of the sea; "I hate late hours myself, when I'm ashore, havin' more than
enough of 'em when afloat. I'll go to bed regularly at nine o'clock,
an' won't want a latch-key."

The idea of such a man going to bed at all was awesome enough, but the
notion of his doing so in that small room, and in that delicately
arranged little bed under that roof-tree, was so perplexing, that the
sisters anxiously rummaged their minds for a new objection, but could
find none until their visitor asked the rent of the room. Then Kate was
assailed by another happy thought, and promptly named double the amount
which she and Jessie had previously fixed as its value--which amount she
felt sure would prove prohibitory.

Her dismay, then, may be imagined when the captain exclaimed with a
sigh--perhaps it were better to say a breeze--of relief:--

"Well, then, that's all comfortably settled. I consider the rent quite
moderate. I'll send up my chest to-morrow mornin', an' will turn up
myself in the evenin'. I'll bid ye good-day now, ladies, an' b