"I dunno. Good comes out o' bad sometimes. Bitter from the sweet as well. And when a man's got a repertation to maintain——There was that feller Hanks, on the Lunette, out o' Nantucket. I've heard Cap'n Am'zon tell it——"
"Cap'n Abe!" gasped Louise.
"Hi-mighty! There I go again," said the storekeeper mournfully. "You can't teach an old dog new tricks—nor break him of them he's l'arned!"
Louise and her father remained at the store on the Shell Road until Cap'n Abe was up and about again. Then they could safely leave him to the ministrations of Betty Gallup.
"Somehow," confessed that able seaman, "he don't seem just like he used to. He speaks quicker and sharper—more like that old pirate, Am'zon Silt, though I shouldn't be sayin' nothin' harsh of the dead, I s'pose. I don't dispute that Cap'n Am'zon was muchly of a man, when ye come to think on't.
"But Cap'n Abe's more to my taste. Now the place seems right again with him in the house. Cap'n Abe's as easy as an old shoe. And, land sakes! I ain't locked out o' his bedroom when I want to clean!
"One thing puzzles me, Miss Lou. I thought Cap'n Abe would take on c'nsiderable about Jerry. But when I told him the canary was dead he up and said that mebbe 'twas better so, seem' the old bird couldn't see no more. Now, who would ha' told him Jerry was blind?"
There were a few other things about the returned Cap'n Abe that might have amazed his neighbors. He seemed to possess an almost uncanny knowledge of what had happened during the summer. Besides, he seemed to have achieved Cap'n Amazon's manner of "looking down" a too inquisitive inquirer into personal affairs and refusing to answer.
Because of this, perhaps, nobody was ever known to ask the storekeeper why he had filled his sea chest with bricks and useless dunnage when he shipped it to Boston. That mystery was never explained.
Before Louise and her father were ready to leave Cardhaven most of the summer residents along The Beaches, including Aunt Euphemia, had gone. And the moving picture company had also flown.