“But my geogoraphy,” Tess ventured, timidly, and mispronouncing the word as usual, “says that the West Indies are tropical. Porto Rico is near the Equator.”
“Now, ain’t that wonderful—jest wonderful?” declared the clam digger, smiting his knee with his palm. “Shows what it is to be book l’arned, shipmet.
“’Course, I knowed them was tropical places, but I didn’t know ’twas all writ down in books—joggerfries, do they call ’em?”
“Yes, sir,” said Tess, seriously. “And it is so hot down there they couldn’t possibly need warming pans.”
“Now, ye’d think that, wouldn’t ye, shipmet? And I’d think it. But the skipper of the Spankin’ Sal, he knowed dif’rent.
“A master brainy man was Captain Roebuck. That was his name—Roebuck,” declared the clam digger, solemnly. “Hev you ever seen a warming pan, shipmet—an old-fashioned warmin’ pan?”
“Oh, yes!” cried Tess and Dot together. “There’s one hangs over the mantelpiece in the sitting-room of the old Corner House,” added Tess. “That’s where we live when we’re at home in Milton.
“And it is a round brass pan, with a cover that has holes in it, and a long handle. Mrs. MacCall says folks used to put live coals in it and iron the beds before folks went to bed, in the cold weather. But we got furnace heat now, and don’t need the warming pan.”
“Surely, surely, shipmet,” agreed the clam digger. “Them’s the things. And Cap’n Roebuck of the Spankin’ Sal, plagued near crammed the upper holt with them.
“It looks right foolish, shipmet; but that skipper got a chancet ter buy up a whole lot o’ them brass warmin’ pans cheap. If he’d seen ’em cheap enough, he’d bought up a hull cargo of secon’ hand hymn books, and he’d took ’em out to the heathen in the South Seas and made a profit on ’em—he would that!” pursued Kuk, confidently.