"Oh, then it couldn't have been them, I was warned of!" returned Mrs. Davids, looking as though she regretted it. "It was right over my head, and I waked up just as the thing was rushing past. You haven't heard, have you," she continued, "whether or no there was any other damage done by the gale?"
"I don't know whether you would call it damage exactly," returned Captain Ben; "but Loizah Mullers got so scared she left me and went home. She said she couldn't stay and run the chance of another of our coast blows, and off she trapsed."
Mrs. Davids sighed like November. "So you have some hard luck as well as myself. I don't suppose you can get a housekeeper to keep her long," said she, dismally.
"Abel Grimes tells me it is enough sight easier getting wives than housekeepers, and I'm some of a mind to try that tack," replied Captain Ben, smiling grimly.
Mrs. Davids put up her hand to feel of her back hair, and smoothed down her apron; while Miss Persis Tame blushed like a withered rose, and turned her eyes modestly out of the window.
"I am so. But the difficulty is, who will it be? There are so many to select from it is fairly bothersome," continued Captain Ben, winking fast and looking as though he was made of dry corncobs and hay.
Miss Persis Tame turned about abruptly. "The land alive!" she ejaculated with such sudden emphasis that the dishes shook on their shelves and Captain Ben in his chair. "It makes me mad as a March hare to hear men go on as though all they'd got to do was to throw down their handkerchers to a woman, and, no matter who, she'd spring and run to pick it up. It is always 'Who will I marry?' and not 'Who will marry me?'"
"Why, there is twice the number of widders that there is of widderers here at the P'int. That was what was in my mind," said Captain Ben, in a tone of meek apology. "There is the Widow Keens, she that was Azubah Muchmore. I don't know but what she would do; Lyddy used to think every thing of her, and she is a first-rate of a housekeeper."
"Perhaps so," assented Mrs. Davids, dubiously. "But she is troubled a sight with the head complaint; I suppose you know she is. That is against her."
"Yes," assented Miss Tame. "The Muchmores all have weak heads. And, too, the Widow Keens, she's had a fall lately. She was up in a chair cleaning her top buttery shelf, and somehow one of the chair-leg's give way,—it was loose or something, I expect,—and down she went her whole heft. She keeps about, but she goes with two staves."