Miss Letty put out a firm, plump hand and presented him with the poker.
"That stick's 'most fell apart," she said pacifically. "Mebbe you better give it a kind of a knock."
The cap'n did it absently and was soothed by the process. Then Miss Letty laid the shortened pieces together in a workmanlike way, and they blazed afresh.
"What you goin' to do with your things?" asked the cap'n, pointing a broad and expressive thumb about the place.
"Sell 'em off. That's what Ellery wrote. He says I could have an auction mebbe a week 'fore Thanksgivin',—that's about now,—an' then when he an' Mary come we could all go over to cousin Liza's to stay, an' start for Chicago from there. Seems if 'twas all complete."
"You ain't goin' to sell off your things without ay or no?" he inquired. "Don't ye prize 'em—the table you've eat off of an' chairs you've set in sence you were little?"
Miss Letty winced, and then recovered herself.
"Yes," she said, "I do prize 'em. But it seems if they'd got to go."
"Why don't ye take 'em with ye?"