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"Not in this house," declared the lady, with finality. "I do not feel safe here. And it's not safe for you to be here, Louise, with this this man. You don't know who he is; nobody knows who he is. I have just heard all about it from one of the er natives. Mr. Abram Silt never had a brother that anybody in Cardhaven ever saw. There is no Captain Amazon Silt and never was!" "Oh!" gasped Louise.
Across the road from the store, however, and as far as she could see toward Cardhaven, were better homes, some standing in the midst of tilled fields and orchards. Sandy lanes led to these homesteads from the highway. She could see the blunt spire of the Mariner's Chapel. Yet Cap'n Abe's house and store stood quite alone, for none of the other dwellings were close to the road.
Cap'n Am'zon says that many's the time he's thanked his stars he knowed how to knit." "I shall be glad to meet him," said Louise. "If he comes," Cap'n Abe rejoined, "an' I go away as I planned to, 'twon't make a mite o' difference to you, Niece Louise. You feel right at home here and so'll Cap'n Am'zon, though he ain't never been to Cardhaven yet.
"But can't this woman who comes to do the work cook for you?" "She can't cook for me," snorted Cap'n Abe. "I respect my stomach too much to eat after Bet Gallup. She's as good a man afore the mast as airy feller in Cardhaven. An' that's where she'd oughter be. But never let her in the galley." "Oh, well," Louise said cheerfully. "I'm a dab at camp cooking myself, as I told you.
Some gen'leman friend of Miss Noyes' lent it to 'em. They're out now hunting what they call a garridge for it. That's a fancy name for a barn, I guess. And dressed!" gasped Gusty finally. "They're dressed to kill!" "We shall have lively times around Cardhaven now, sha'n't we?" Louise commented demurely. "We almost always do in summer," Gusty agreed with a sigh.
The departure of her crew to-night will make it all the easier for Mr. Abram Silt's secret to be kept," the professor reminded her. "Yes. We will keep his secret," sighed Louise. "Poor Uncle Abram! After all, he can gain a reputation for courage only vicariously. It will be Cap'n Amazon Silt who will go down in the annals of Cardhaven as the brave man who risked his life for another, daddy-prof."
Washy suggested that the storekeeper was afraid of the sea; that in all his years at Cardhaven he had never been known to venture out of the quiet waters of the bay. To the girl's mind, too, came the remembrance of that talk she had had with Cap'n Abe on the evening of her arrival at the store. Was there something he had said then that explained this mystery?
I had a feelin' that I'd swoon away an' fall right down in my tracks if I undertook to face such a sea as that was t'other day. "And see! Nothing of the kind happened! I knew I'd got to make good Cap'n Am'zon's character, or not hold up my head in Cardhaven again. I don't dispute I've been a hi-mighty liar, Niece Louise. But but it's sort o' made a man o' me for once, don't ye think? "I dunno.
"There's there's only your poor mother's half-brother down on the Cape." "What half-brother?" demanded Louise with a quick smile that matched the professor's quizzical one. "Why Well, your mother, Lou, had an older half-brother, a Mr. Silt. He keeps a store at Cardhaven. You know, I met your mother down that way when I was hunting seaweed for the Smithsonian Institution.
And I made up he went to sea when he was twelve like I told ye, my dear. Ye-as. I did hate to lie to ye, an' you just new-come here. But I'd laid my plans for a long while back just to walk out, as it were, an' let these fellers 'round here have a taste o' Cap'n Am'zon Silt that they'd begun to doubt was ever comin' to Cardhaven.
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