Apparently the family had waited with supper for Abner to come home, for his wife immediately placed the meat on the frying pan, and the odor of steak quickly filled every cranny of the small cabin of three rooms.
The two little girls were slow to make up with Darry, but he knew how to interest them in certain ways, and it was not long before they hovered around him as if he were a curiosity indeed.
Abner tried to make himself as agreeable as possible, for various reasons.
He saw that his wife had not yet become reconciled to the fact of a stranger coming among them, and was watching Darry out of the corners of her eyes from time to time, while a frown would gather on her brow.
She was a sharp-featured woman; but life goes hard with those of her sex in this coast country, and they grow old at forty.
Darry was studying hard how to please her, for he felt that she was to be pitied after having lost her only boy so suddenly a year or so back; and he determined never to forget this if she should scold him needlessly or show temper.
He anticipated her wants in the line of wood for the fire, cheerfully assisted in washing up the supper dishes, and was withal so obliging that ere long the anxious Abner saw the lines begin to leave the forehead of his better half.
This tickled him more than any well-won fight in the breakers might have done, for he had a secret dread of Nancy's often ungovernable temper.
"The boy's gone and done it, blame me if he ain't!" he muttered to himself, when he saw his wife actually smile over at where Darry was sitting, with one of the twins on either side, entranced with some figures he was drawing to illustrate a little story he had been telling them about some sight seen in Naples.
When it came time to retire Darry was given a shake-down in the second room.