"It don't cost you nothin' to have us read it," said Cap'n Joab easily.
"The news is all here arter we git through."
"Uh-huh! I s'pose so. I'd ought to thank ye, I don't dispute, for keepin' the paper from feelin' lonesome.
"I dunno why Abe takes it, anyway, 'cept to foller the sailin's and arrivals at the port o' Boston—'nless he finds more time to read than ever I do. I ain't ever been so busy in my life as I be in this store—'nless it was when I shipped a menagerie for a feller at a Dutch Guinea port and his monkeys broke out o' their cages when we was two days at sea and they tried to run the ship.
"That was some v'y'ge, as the feller said," continued Cap'n Amazon, getting well under way as he lit his after-breakfast pipe. "Them monkeys kep' all the crew on the jump and the afterguard scurcely got a meal in peace, I was——"
"Belay there!" advised Cap'n Joab, with disgust. "Save that yarn for the dog watch. What was it ye said that craft was named Cap'n Abe sailed in?"
Cap'n Amazon stopped in his story-telling and was silent for an instant. Louise, who had stood at the inner doorway listening, turned to go, when she heard the substitute storekeeper finally say:
"Curlew, out o' Boston."
The name caught the girl's instant attention and she felt suddenly apprehensive.
"Here's news o' her," Cap'n Joab said in a hushed voice. "And it ain't good news, Cap'n Silt."
"What d'ye mean?" asked the latter.