s
vinegar and pepper-sass bottles, great, big, elegant mustache cup with
'Forget Me Not' printed out on it in gold letters--everything so fine it
couldn't be no finer--but by creepin', sometimes I can't help feelin'
lonesome! Seems foolish, don't it, but I be."

Captain Kendrick did not speak. He pulled at his beard with more
deliberation and the look in his eye was that of one watching the
brightening dawn of an idea.

"I told Ogden so last time he was down," continued Mr. Cahoon. "He asked
me if I was comf'table and if I wanted anything more and I told him I
didn't. 'Only thing that ails me,' I says, 'is that I get kind of
lonesome bein' by myself so much. Sometimes I wisht I had comp'ny.'
'Well, why don't you _have_ comp'ny?' says he. 'You've got room enough,
lord knows.' 'Yes,' I says, 'but who'll I have?' He laughed. 'That's
your lookout,' says he. 'You can't expect me to hire a companion for
you.'"

"Humph!" Kendrick regarded him thoughtfully. "So you would like company,
would you, Judah?"

"Sartin sure I would, if 'twas the right kind. I got a cat and that
helps a little mite. And Cap'n Shubal Hammond's wife told me yesterday
she'd give me a young pig if I wanted one. That's what I'm cartin' home
this little mite of seaweed for, to bed down the pig sty. But cats and
hogs, they're all right enough, but they ain't human."

"Do you keep hens?"

This apparently harmless question seemed to arouse Mr. Cahoon's ire. His
whiskers bristled and his nose flamed.

"Hens!" he repeated. "Don't talk to me about hens! No, sir, by the
prophets, I don't keep hens! But them everlastin' Fair Harborers keep
'em and if they'd keep 'em to home I wouldn't say a word. But they
don't. Half the time they're over my side of the fence raisin' blue hob
with my garden. Hens! Don't talk to me about 'em! I hate the sight of
the critters."

Kendrick smiled. "And after all," he observed, "hens aren't human,
either."

Judah snorted. "Some are," he declared, "and them's the worst kind."

There was, doubtless, a hidden meaning in this speech, but if so Sears
Kendrick did not seek to find it. Laying a hand upon the broad shoulder
of his former sea-cook he lifted himself to his feet.

"Judah," he asked, briskly, "is that seaweed in your cart there dry?"

"Eh? Dry? Yes, yes, dry as a cat's back. Been layin' on the beach above
tide mark ever since last winter. Why?"

"Do you suppose you could help me hoist myself aboard?"

"Aboard? Abo