Capn Abe, Storekeeper | Page 2

in this emergency. While the girl was
growing up there had been times when it was considered best--usually
because of her studies--for Lou to live with Aunt Euphemia. Indeed,
that good lady believed it almost a sin that a young girl should attend
the professor on any of his trips into "the wilds," as she expressed it.
Aunt Euphemia ignored the fact that nowadays the railroad and
telegraph are in Thibet and that turbines ply the headwaters of the
Amazon.
Mrs. Conroth dwelt in Poughkeepsie--that half-way stop between New
York and Albany; and she was as exclusive and opinionated a lady as

might be found in that city of aristocracy and learning.
The college in the shadow of which Aunt Euphemia's dwelling basked,
was that which had led the professor's daughter under the lady's sway.
Although the girls with whom Lou associated within the college walls
were up-to-the-minute--if not a little ahead of it--she found her aunt,
like many of those barnacles clinging to the outer reefs of learning in
college towns, was really a fossil. If one desires to meet the
ultraconservative in thought and social life let me commend him to this
stratum of humanity within stone's throw of a college. These barnacles
like Aunt Euphemia are wedded to a manner of thought, gained from
their own school experiences, that went out of fashion inside the
colleges thirty years ago.
Originally, in Lou Grayling's case, when she first lived with Aunt
Euphemia and was a day pupil at an exclusive preparatory school, it
had been drilled into her by the lady that "children should be seen but
not heard!" Later, although she acknowledged the fact that young girls
were now taught many things that in Aunt Euphemia's maidenhood
were scarcely whispered within hearing of "the young person," the lady
was quite shocked to hear such subjects discussed in the drawing-room,
with her niece as one of the discussers.
The structure of man and the lower animals, down to the number of
their ribs, seemed no proper topic for light talk at an evening party. It
made Aunt Euphemia gasp. Anatomy was Lou's hobby. She was an
excellent and practical taxidermist, thanks to her father. And she had
learned to name the bones of the human frame along with her
multiplication table.
However, there was little about Louise Grayling to commend her
among, for instance, the erudite of Boston. She was sweet and
wholesome, as has been indicated. She had all the common sense that a
pretty girl should have--and no more.
For she was pretty and, as well, owned that charm of intelligence
without which a woman is a mere doll. Her father often reflected that
the man who married Lou would be playing in great luck. He would get

a mate.
So far as Professor Grayling knew, however (and he was as keenly
observant of his daughter and her development as he was of scientific
matters), there was as yet no such man in sight. Lou had escaped the
usual boy-and-girl entanglements which fret the lives of many young
folk, because of her association with her father in his journeys about the
world. Being a perfectly normal, well-balanced girl, black boys, brown
boys, yellow boys, or all the hues and shades of boys to be met with in
those odd corners of the earth where the white man is at a premium, did
not interest Lou Grayling in the least.
Without being ultraconservative like Aunt Euphemia, she was the sort
of girl whom one might reckon on doing the sensible--perhaps the
obvious--thing in almost any emergency. Therefore, after that single
almost awed exclamation from the professor--his sole homage to Mrs.
Grundy--he added:
"My dear, do as you like. You are old enough and wise enough to
choose for yourself--your aunt's opinion to the contrary
notwithstanding. Only, if you don't mind----"
"What is it, daddy-prof?" she asked him with a smile, yet still
reflective.
"Why, if you don't mind," repeated the professor, "I'd rather you didn't
inform me where you decide to spend your summer until I am off. I--I
don't mind knowing after I am at sea--and your aunt cannot get at me."
She laughed at him gaily. "You take it for granted that I am going to
Cape Cod," she cried accusingly.
"No--o. But I know how sorely I should be tempted myself, realizing
your aunt's trying disposition."
"Perhaps this--this half-uncle may be quite as trying."
"Impossible!" was the father's rather emphatic reply.

"What?" she cried. "Traitor to the family fame?"
"You do not know Cape Cod folk. I do," he told her rather seriously.
"Some of them are quaint and peculiar. I suppose there are just as many
down there with traits of extreme Yankee frugality as elsewhere in New
England. But your mother's people, as I knew