minute as he came up the street again at noon. Her
sewing was not making, but mending, in these days; and the more she
had to mend, the more she sat by one of her front windows, where the
light was good.

II.

One evening toward the end of summer there came a loud rap at the
knocker of Mrs. Lunn's front door. It was the summons of Captain Asa
Shaw, who sought a quiet haven from the discomforts of the society of
his sisters-in-law and his notoriously ill-bred children. Captain Shaw
was prosperous, if not happy; he had been figuring up accounts that
rainy afternoon, and found himself in good case. He looked burly and
commonplace and insistent as he stood on the front doorstep, and
thought Mrs. Lunn was long in coming. At the same moment when she had
just made her appearance with a set smile, and a little extra color in
her cheeks, from having hastily taken off her apron and tossed it into
the sitting-room closet, and smoothed her satin-like black hair on the
way, there was another loud rap on the smaller side-door knocker.

"There must be somebody wanting to speak with me on an errand," she
prettily apologized, as she offered Captain Shaw the best
rocking-chair. The side door opened into a tiny entry-way at the other
end of the room, and she unfastened the bolt impatiently. "Oh, walk
right in, Cap'n Crowe!" she was presently heard to exclaim; but there
was a note of embarrassment in her tone, and a look of provocation on
her face, as the big shipmaster lumbered after her into the
sitting-room. Captain Shaw had taken the large chair, and the newcomer
was but poorly accommodated on a smaller one with a cane seat. The
walls of the old Lunn house were low, and his head seemed in danger of
knocking itself; he was clumsier and bigger than ever in this moment
of dismay. His sisters had worn his patience past endurance, and he
had it in mind to come to a distinct understanding with Mrs. Lunn that
very night.

Captain Shaw was in his every-day clothes, which lost him a point in
Mrs. Lunn's observant eyes; but Captain Crowe had paid her the honor
of putting on his best coat for this evening visit. She thought at
first that he had even changed his shirt, but upon reflection
remembered that this could not be taken as a special recognition of
her charms, it being Wednesday night. On the wharves, or in a
down-town office, the two men were by way of being good friends, but
at this moment great Captain Crowe openly despised his so