He had been on the point of heaving up his job ever since the days when he sailed as cook aboard Captain Shadrach's schooner. When the Captain retired from the sea for the last time, and became partner and fellow shopkeeper with Zoeth, Isaiah had retired with him and was engaged to keep house for the two men. The Captain had balked at the idea of a female housekeeper.
“Women aboard ship are a dum nuisance,” he declared. “I've carried 'em cabin passage and I know. Isaiah Chase is a good cook, and, besides, if the biscuits are more fit for cod sinkers than they are for grub, I can tell him so in the right kind of language. We don't want no woman steward, Zoeth; you hear ME!”
Zoeth, although the Captain's seafaring language was a trial to his gentle, churchly soul, agreed with his partner on the main point. His experience with the other sex had not been such as to warrant further experiment. So Isaiah was hired and had been cook and steward at the South Harniss home for many years. But he made it a practice to assert his independence at frequent intervals, although, as a matter of fact, he would no more have dreamed of really leaving than his friends and employers would of discharging him. Mr. Chase was as permanent a fixture in that house as the ship's chronometer in the dining-room; and that was screwed to the wall.
And, in spite of his grumbling, he and Mary-'Gusta were rapidly becoming fast friends. Shadrach and Zoeth also were beginning to enjoy her company, her unexpected questions, her interest in the house and the store, and shrewd, old-fashioned comments on persons and things. She was a “queer young-one”; they, like the people of Ostable, agreed on that point, but Mr. Hamilton was inclined to think her ways “sort of takin'” and the Captain admitted that maybe they were. What he would not admit was that the girl's visit, although already prolonged for a fortnight, was anything but a visit.
“I presume likely,” hinted Zoeth, “you and me'll have to give the Judge some sort of an answer pretty soon, won't we? He'll be wantin' to know afore long.”
“Know? Know what?”
“Why—why whether we're goin' to say yes or no to what Marcellus asked us in that letter.”
“He does know. Fur's I'm consarned, he knows. I spoke my mind plain enough to pound through anybody's skull, I should think.”
“Yes—yes, I know you did. But, Shadrach, if she don't stay here for good where will she stay? She ain't got anybody else to go to.”
“She is stayin', ain't she? She—she's makin' us a visit, same as I said she could. What more do you want? Jumpin' fire! This fix is your doin' anyway. 'Tain't mine. If you had paid attention to what I said, the child wouldn't have been here at all.”