"Wall, thirty-five then, as you're an old shipmate," conceded Abner.
Pegleg looked at him shrewdly, as he laid down three dimes and a nickel.
"I didn't know but mebbe you was buyin' it for Captain Burgess," he hazarded. "He's boardin' to your house, an' folks say he's courtin' M'lissy Macy."
"Folks is always sayin' things," responded Abner. "Mebbe Enoch might know a 'Guide to Courtship and Matrimony' from a last year's pill almanac, if somebody showed him."
Once around the corner of the beach from Pegleg's shanty, Abner danced a hornpipe, shocking a flock of gulls.
"Thirty-five cents from twenty-five dollars leaves twenty-four dollars and sixty-five cents," he calculated swiftly. "And I'll get a mess of clams beside. The papers will be mentionin' me as a financier pretty soon."
"Did Pegleg suspect anything?" was Captain Enoch's first question when Abner returned in triumph.
"Oh, he suspected," replied Abner jubilantly. "He wouldn't be Pegleg if he didn't. But I didn't help him any, and he looked dreadful disappointed. You can eat your chowder in peace, if you ain't so love sick you've lost your appetite."
"It ain't hurt my appetite a mite," retorted the Captain. "And I ain't goin' to let it. Let's see that book. I want to find out how much I've be'n cheated."
With trembling fingers Captain Enoch turned to the chapter of proposals. "'How to Propose to a Fat Lady,'" he read. "Humph! M'lissy ain't fat. 'How to Propose to a Lady of Dignity and Refinement. 'That sounds more like it. But the big words are thicker than a school of mummychogs."