"Cap'n Bean," replied the rotund Stashia, "we won't do any of them things, not one."

"Wha-a-at!" gasped the Captain.

"Have you ever been married, Cap'n Bean?"

"N-n-no, my dear."

"Well, I have, and I guess I know how it ought to be done. You'll have the minister come here, and here you'll come to marry me. You won't come in no dory, either. Catch me puttin' my two hundred an' thirty pounds into a little boat like that. You'll drive over here with a horse, like a respectable person, and you'll drive back with me, by land and past Sarepta Tucker's house so's she can see."

Now for more than thirty years Bastabol Bean, as master of coasting schooners up and down the Atlantic seaboard, had given orders. He had taken none, except the formal directions of owners. He did not propose to begin taking them now, not even from such an altogether charming person as Stashia Buckett. This much he said. Then he added:

"Stashia, I give in about coming here to marry you; that seems no more than fair. But I'll come in a dory and you'll go back in a dory."

"Then you needn't come at all, Cap'n Bastabol Bean."

Argue and plead as he might, this was her ultimatum.

"But, Stashia, I 'ain't got a horse, never owned one an' never handled one, and you know it," urged the Captain.