happy as a little rose."

"So I tell Roxy," said Miss Ruey, who had been absent from the room to
hold private consultations with Miss Emily concerning the biscuits and
sponge-cake for tea, and who now sat down to the quilt and began to
unroll a capacious and very limp calico thread-case; and placing her
spectacles awry on her little pug nose, she began a series of ingenious
dodges with her thread, designed to hit the eye of her needle.

"The old folks," she continued, "are e'en a'most tickled to
pieces,--'cause they think it'll jist be the salvation of him to get
Mara."

"I ain't one of the sort that wants to be a-usin' up girls for the
salvation of fellers," said Miss Roxy, severely. "Ever since he nearly
like to have got her eat up by sharks, by giggiting her off in the boat
out to sea when she wa'n't more'n three years old, I always have
thought he was a misfortin' in that family, and I think so now."

Here broke in Mrs. Eaton, a thrifty energetic widow of a deceased
sea-captain, who had been left with a tidy little fortune which
commanded the respect of the neighborhood. Mrs. Eaton had entered
silently during the discussion, but of course had come, as every other
woman had that afternoon, with views to be expressed upon the subject.

"For my part," she said, as she stuck a decisive needle into the first
clam-shell pattern, "I ain't so sure that all the advantage in this
match is on Moses Pennel's part. Mara Lincoln is a good little thing,
but she ain't fitted to help a man along,--she'll always be wantin'
somebody to help her. Why, I 'member goin' a voyage with Cap'n Eaton,
when I saved the ship, if anybody did,--it was allowed on all hands.
Cap'n Eaton wasn't hearty at that time, he was jist gettin' up from a
fever,--it was when Marthy Ann was a baby, and I jist took her and went
to sea and took care of him. I used to work the longitude for him and
help him lay the ship's course when his head was bad,--and when we came
on the coast, we were kept out of harbor beatin' about nearly three
weeks, and all the ship's tacklin' was stiff with ice, and I tell you
the men never would have stood it through and got the ship in, if it
hadn't been for me. I kept their mittens and stockings all the while
a-dryin' at my stove in the cabin, and hot coffee all the while
a-boilin' for 'em, or I believe they'd a-frozen their hands and feet,
and never been able to work the ship in. That's the way _I_ did. Now
Sally Kittridge is a