Fair Harbor | Page 2

new caster and fix it. If that bed ain't a
cripple I don't know what is."
Joel looked a trifle taken aback. His laugh this time was not quite as
uproarious.
"Guess you spoke the truth that time, Sarah, without knowin' it. Who is
it they say always speaks the truth? Children and fools, ain't it? Well,

you ain't a child scarcely, Sarah. Hope you ain't the other thing. Eh? Ho,
ho!"
Mrs. Macomber was halfway to the kitchen door, a pile of plates upon
her arm. She did not stop nor turn, but she did speak.
"Well," she observed, "I don't know. I was one once in my life, there's
precious little doubt about that."
She left the room. Young Kent and Captain Kendrick exchanged
glances. Mr. Macomber swallowed, opened his mouth, closed it and
swallowed again. Lemuel and Sarah-Mary, the two older children,
giggled. The clock on the mantel struck seven times. The sound came,
to the adults, as a timely relief from embarrassment.
Captain Kendrick looked at his watch.
"What's that?" he exclaimed. "Six bells already? So 'tis. I declare I
didn't think 'twas so late."
Joel rose to his feet, moving--for him--with marked rapidity.
"Seven o'clock!" he cried. "My, my! We've got to get under way,
George, if we want to make port at the store afore 'Liphalet does. Come
on, George, hurry up."
Kent lingered for a moment to speak to Sears Kendrick. Then he
emerged from the house and he and Joel walked rapidly off together.
They were employed, one as clerk and bookkeeper and the other as
driver of the delivery wagon, at Eliphalet Bassett's Grocery, Dry Goods,
Boots and Shoes and Notion Store at the corner of the main road and
the depot road. Joel's position there was fixed for eternity, at least he
considered it so, having driven that same delivery wagon at the same
wage for twenty-two years. "Me and that grocery cart," Mr. Macomber
was wont to observe, "have been doin' 'Liphalet's errands so long we've
come to be permanent fixtures. Yes, sir, permanent fixtures." When this
was repeated to Mr. Bassett the latter affirmed that it was true. "Every
time the dum fool goes out takin' orders," said Eliphalet, "he stays so

long that I begin to think he's turned into a permanent fixture. Takes an
order for a quarter pound of tea and a spool of cotton and then hangs
'round and talks steady for half an hour. Permanent fixture! Permanent
gas fixture, that's what he is."
George Kent did not consider himself a permanent fixture at Bassett's.
He had been employed there for three years, or ever since the death of
his father, Captain Sylvester Kent, who had died at sea aboard his ship,
the Ocean Ranger, on the voyage home from Java to Philadelphia.
George remained in Bayport to study law with Judge Knowles, who
was interested in the young man and, being a lawyer of prominence on
the Cape, was an influential friend worth having. The law occupied
young Kent's attention in the evenings; he kept Mr. Bassett's books and
sold Mr. Bassett's brown sugar, calico and notions during the days, not
because he loved the work, the place, or its proprietor, but because the
twelve dollars paid him each Saturday enabled him to live. And, in
order to live so cheaply that he might save a bit toward the purchase of
clothes, law books and sundries, he boarded at Joel Macomber's. Sarah
Macomber took him to board, not because she needed company--six
children and a husband supplied a sufficiency of that--but because three
dollars more a week was three dollars more.
Joel and George having tramped off to business and the very last crumb
of the Macomber breakfast having vanished, the Macomber children
proceeded to go through their usual morning routine. Lemuel, who did
chores for grumpy old Captain Elijah Samuels at the latter's big place
on the depot road, departed to rake hay and be sworn at. Sarah-Mary
went upstairs to make beds; when the bed-making was over she and
Edgar and Bemis would go to school. Aldora and Joey, the two
youngest, went outdoors to play. And Captain Sears Kendrick, late
master of the ship Hawkeye, and before that of the Fair Wind and the
Far Seas and goodness knows how many others, who ran away to ship
as cabin boy when he was thirteen, who fought the Malay pirates when
he was eighteen, and outwitted Semmes by outmaneuvering the
Alabama when he was twenty-eight, a man once so strong and bronzed
and confident, but now so weak and shaken--Captain Sears Kendrick
rose painfully and with effort from his chair, took his cane from the

corner and hobbled to the kitchen.
"Sarah," he said, "I'm goin' to help you with those dishes this mornin'."