om. "And here's what I call my spare
stateroom. I keep it ready for comp'ny. Not that I ever have any, you
understand."

Judah's bedroom was small and snug. The "spare stateroom" was a trifle
larger. In both were the old-fashioned mahogany furniture of our
great-grandfathers. Mr. Cahoon apologized for it.

"Kind of old-timey stuff down below here," he explained. "Just common
folks used these rooms, I judge likely. But you'd ought to see them up
on the quarter deck. There's your high-toned fixin's! Marble tops to the
bureaus and tables and washstands, and fruit--peaches and pears and all
sorts--carved out on the headboards of the beds, and wreaths on the
walls all made out of shells, and--and kind of brass doodads at the tops
of the window curtains. Style, don't talk!... Sort of a pretty look-off
through that deadlight, ain't there, Cap'n Sears? Seems so to me."

Kendrick had raised the window shade of the spare stateroom and was
looking out. The view extended across the rolling hills and little pine
groves and cranberry bogs, to the lower road with its white houses and
shade trees. And beyond the lower road were more hills and pines, a
pretty little lake--Crowell's Pond, it was called--sand dunes and then
the blue water of the Bay. The captain looked at the view for a few
moments, then, turning, looked once more at the room and its furniture.

"So you've never had a passenger in your spare stateroom, Judah?" he
asked.

"Nary one, not yet."

"Expectin' any?"

"Nary one. Don't know nobody to expect."

"But you think it would be all right if you did have some one? Your
er--owner--young Minot, I mean, wouldn't object?"

"Object! No, no. He told me to. 'I should think you'd die livin' here
alone,' he says. 'Why don't you take a boarder? I would if I was you.'"

Sears Kendrick stopped looking at the room and its furniture and turned
his gaze upon his former cook.

"Take a boarder?" he repeated. "Did Ogden Minot tell you to take a
boarder? And do you think he meant it?"

"Sartin sure he meant it. He don't care what I do--in reason, of
course."

"Humph!... Well, then, Judah, why don't you take one?"

"Eh? Take one what? A boarder? Who'd I take, for thunder's sakes?"

Captain Kendrick smiled.

"Me," he said.

CHAPTER III

For the half hour which followed the captain's utterance of that simple
little word, "Me," exclamation, protestation and argument heated and
unwontedly disturbed the atmosphere o