does not please me to hear you do so."

"You are a very obstinate girl!"

"That attribute of my character I fancy I inherit from daddy-professor's
side of the family," the girl returned bluntly.

"I shall be shamed to death! I must accept the Perritons' invitation. I
already have accepted it. They will think you a very queer girl, to say
the least."

"I am," her niece told her, the gray eyes smiling again, for Louise was
soon over her wrath. "Even daddy-prof says that."

"Because of his taking you all over the world with him as he did. I only
wonder he did not insist upon your going on this present horrid cruise.

"No. I have begun to like my comfort too well," and now Louise laughed
outright. "A mark of oncoming age, perhaps."

"You are a most unpleasant young woman, Louise."

Louise thought she might return the compliment with the exchange of but a
single word; but she was too respectful to do so.

"I am determined to remain here," she repeated, "so you may as well take
it cheerfully, auntie. If you intend staying with the Perritons any
length of time, of course I shall see you often, and meet them. I
haven't come down here to the Cape to play the hermit, I assure you. But
I am settled here with Cap'n Amazon, and I am comfortable. So, why
should I make any change?"

"But in this common house! With that awful looking old sailor! And the
way he talks! The rough adventures he has experienced--and the way he
relates them!"

"Why, I think he is charming. And his stories are jolly fun. He tells
the most thrilling and interesting things! I have before heard people
tell about queer corners of the world--and been in some of them myself.
Only the romance seems all squeezed out of such places nowadays. But
when Cap'n Amazon was young!" she sighed.

"You should hear him tell of having once been wrecked on an island in the
South Seas where there were only women left of the tribe inhabiting it,
the men all having been killed in battle by a neighboring tribe. The
poor sailors did not know whether those copper-colored Eves would decide
to kill and eat them, or merely marry them."

"Louise!" Aunt Euphemia rose and fairly glared at her niece. "You show
distinctly that association with these horrid people down here has
already contaminated your mind. You are positively vulgar!"

She sailed out of the room, descended the stairs, and "beat up" through
the living-room and store, as Betty Gallup said "