when
it came June, up the river he went trolling for bass, and he used
a different sort of bait from the rest,--bass won't bite much at
clams,--and he hauled in great forty-pounders. And sometimes in the
afternoons he took out Faith and me,--for, as Faith would go, whether or
no, I always made it a point to put by everything and go too; and I used
to try and get some of the other girls in, but Mr. Gabriel never would
take them, though he was hail-fellow-well-met with everybody, and was
everybody's favorite, and it was known all round how he found out Faith,
and that alone made him so popular, that I do believe, if he'd only
taken out naturalization-papers, we'd have sent him to General Court.
And then it grew time for the river-mackerel, and they used to bring in
at sunset two or three hundred in a shining heap, together with great
lobsters that looked as if they'd been carved out of heliotrope-stone,
and so old that they were barnacled. And it was so novel to Mr. Gabriel,
that he used to act as if he'd fallen in fairy-land.

After all, I don't know what we should have done without him that
summer: he always paid Dan or father a dollar a day and the hire of the
boat; and the times were so hard, and there was so little doing, that,
but for this, and packing the barrels of clam-bait, they'd have been
idle and fared sorely. But we'd rather have starved: though, as for
that, I've heard father say there never was a time when he couldn't
go out and catch some sort of fish and sell it for enough to get us
something to eat. And then this Mr. Gabriel, he had such a winning way
with him, he was as quick at wit as a bird on the wing, he had a story
or a song for every point, he seemed to take to our simple life as if
he'd been born to it, and he was as much interested in all our trifles
as we were ourselves. Then he was so sympathetic, he felt everybody's
troubles, he went to the city and brought down a wonderful doctor to see
mother, and he got her queer things that helped her more than you'd have
thought anything could, and he went himself and set honeysuckles out
all round Dan's house, so that before summer was over it was a bower of
great sweet blows, and he had an alms for every beggar, and a kind word
for every urchin, and he followed Dan about as a child would follow some
big shaggy dog. He introduced, too, a lot of new-fangled games; he was
what they called a gymnast, and in feats of rassling there wasn't a man
among them