"Levity, Captain Truck! I hope you do not insinuate that a daughter of mine discovers levity?"
"Certainly, ma'am; she is called the best rope jumper in the village, I hear; and levity, or lightness of carriage, is the great requisite for skill in the art. Then there are 'vain repetitions' in doing the same thing over and over so often, and 'vain repetitions' are forbidden even in our prayers. I can call both father and mother to testify to that fact."
"Well, this is news to me! I must speak to the minister about it."
"Of the two, the skipping-rope is rather more sinful than dancing, for the music makes the latter easy; whereas, one has to force the spirit to enter into the other. Commodore, our hour has come, and we must make sail. May I ask the favour, Mrs. Abbott, of a bit of thread to fasten this hook afresh?"
The widow-bewitched turned to her basket, and raising a piece of calico, to look for the thread "high, low, jack and the game," stared her in the face. When she bent her eyes towards her guests, she perceived all three gazing at the cards, with as much apparent surprise and curiosity, as if two of them knew nothing of their history.
"Awful!" exclaimed Mrs. Abbott, shaking both hands,--"awful--awful--awful! The powers of darkness have been at work here!"
"They seem to have been pretty much occupied, too," observed the captain, "for a better thumbed pack I never yet found in the forecastle of a ship."
"Awful--awful--awful!--This is equal to the forty days in the wilderness, Mr. Dodge."
"It is a trying cross, ma'am."
"To my notion, now," said the captain, "those cards are not worse than the skipping-rope, though I allow that they might have been cleaner."