I stood, for the second time, over the kettle with my eye-glasses securely adjusted, very earnestly and thoughtfully occupied in wielding the skimmer, when the door of the Ark suddenly opened and a mischievously smiling young man appeared on the threshold. He was not a Wallencamper, I saw at a glance. There was about him an unmistakable air of the great world. He was fashionably dressed and rather good-looking, with a short upper lip and a decided tinge of red in his hair. He stood staring at me with such manifest appreciation of the situation in his laughing eyes, that I felt a barbarous impulse to throw the skimmer of hot corn at him. It was as though some flimsy product of an advanced civilization had come in to sneer at the sacred customs of antiquity.
"I beg your pardon," the intruder began, addressing the Keeler family with exceeding urbanity of voice and manner; "I fear that I have happened in rather inopportunely, but I dared not of course transgress our happy Arcadian laws by knocking at the door."
"Oh, Lordy, yis, yis, and the fewer words the better. You know our ways by this time, fisherman," exclaimed Grandpa Keeler. "Come in! come in! Nobody that calls me friend need knock at my door."
"Come in! come in, fisherman! Won't you set, fisherman?" hospitably chimed in Grandma Keeler.
"Ah, thank you! may I consider your kind invitation deferred, merely," said the fisherman, suavely, "and excuse me if I introduce a little matter of business with the Captain. We carelessly left our oars on the banks yesterday, Captain Keeler, they were washed off, I have ordered some more, but can't get them by to-morrow. I hear you have a pair laid by, I should like to purchase."
"What, is it the old oars ye want?" interrupted Grandpa, "why, Lord a massy! you know whar' they be, fisherman, alongside that old pile o' rubbish on hither side o' the barn, and don't talk about purchasin'—take 'em and keep 'em as long as ye want, they ain't no account to me now."
"I am very much obliged to you, Captain," the fisherman said, "I am very sorry to have interrupted this—a—"
"Why, no interruption, I'm sure," said Grandma Keeler, good-naturedly, "we've kep' right along eatin'."
"Want a lantern to look for 'em eh?" inquired Grandpa Keeler, for the fisherman lingered, hesitating, on the threshold.
"This is our teacher, fisherman," said Grandma, in her gentle, tranquillizing tones, "and this 'ere is one of Emily's fishermen, teacher, and may the Lord bless ye in yer acquaintance," she added with simple fervor.