"Yes," said Mariana, "but I ain't goin' unless he can get one or two more. I'm tired to death of settin' down to the table alone. One more wouldn't be no better. Three's the kind of a crowd I like. Two's no company. Don't you say so, cap'n?"
"I prefer to choose my company, that's all I say," the cap'n answered gallantly.
Jake looked from one to the other and then back again. What he saw scarcely pleased him, but it had to be accepted.
"All right," said he. "If you want a boarder, no reason why you shouldn't have one. I'll shut up my place to-morrer."
The red surged up into Mariana's cheeks. She had not known it was easy to cause such gates to open.
"When's Mandy goin'?" she asked indifferently.
"Week from Wednesday," said the cap'n. He was suffused with joy, and Mariana, in one of those queer ways she had of thinking of inapposite things, remembered him as she saw him once when, at the age of fourteen, he sat before a plate of griddle-cakes and saw the syrup-pitcher coming.
"Thursday, then," she said. "I'll be along bright and early."
She rose and set her chair against the wall. That seemed as if they were to go.
"You'd better by half stay where you be in your own home," she called after Jake, shutting the door behind him. "You won't like settin' at other folks' tables. You've set too long at your own."