Quaint Courtships | Page 7

voice, "Alfred--Alfred Price!"
The Captain turned and looked at her. There was just one moment's pause; perhaps be tried to bridge the years, and to believe that it was Letty who spoke to him--Letty, whom he had last seen that wintry night, pale and weeping, in the slender green sheath of a fur-trimmed pelisse. If so, he gave it up; this plump, white-haired, bright-eyed old lady, in a wide-spreading, rustling black silk dress, was not Letty. It was Mrs. North.
The Captain came across the street, waving his newspaper, and saying, "So you've cast anchor in the old port, ma'am?"
"My daughter is not at home; do come in," she said, smiling and nodding. Captain Price hesitated; then he put his pipe in his pocket and followed her into the parlor. "Sit down," she cried, gayly. "Well, _Alfred!_"
"Well,--_Mrs. North!_" he said; and then they both laughed, and she began to ask questions: Who was dead? Who had so and so married? "There are not many of us left," she said. "The two Ferris girls and Theophilus Morrison and Johnny Gordon--he came to see me yesterday. And Matty Dilworth; she was younger than I,--oh, by ten years. She married the oldest Barkley boy, didn't she? I hear he didn't turn out well. You married his sister, didn't you? Was it the oldest girl or the second sister?"
"It was the second--Jane. Yes, poor Jane. I lost her in fifty-five."
"You have children?" she said, sympathetically.
"I've got a boy," he said; "but he's married."
"My girl has never married; she's a good daughter,"--Mrs. North broke off with a nervous laugh; "here she is, now!"
Mary North, who had suddenly appeared in the doorway, gave a questioning sniff, and the Captain's hand sought his guilty pocket; but Miss North only said: "How do you do, sir? Now, mother, don't talk too much and get tired." She stopped and tried to smile, but the painful color came into her face. "And--if you please, Captain Price, will you speak in a low tone? Large, noisy persons exhaust the oxygen in the air, and--"
_"Mary!"_ cried poor Mrs. North; but the Captain, clutching his old felt hat, began to hoist himself up from the sofa, scattering ashes about as he did so. Mary North compressed her lips.
"I tell my daughter-in-law they'll keep the moths away," the old gentleman said, sheepishly.
"I use camphor," said Miss North. "Flora must bring a dust-pan."
"Flora?" Alfred Price said. "Now, what's my association with that name?"
"She was our old cook," Mrs. North explained; "this Flora is her daughter. But you never saw old Flora?"
"Why, yes, I did," the old man said, slowly. "Yes. I remember Flora. Well, good-by,--Mrs. North."
"Good-by, Alfred. Come again," she said, cheerfully.
"Mother, here's your beef tea," said a brief voice.
Alfred Price fled. He met his son just as he was entering his own house, and burst into a confidence: "Cy, my boy, come aft and splice the main-brace. Cyrus, what a female! She knocked me higher than Gilroy's kite. And her mother was as sweet a girl as you ever saw!" He drew his son into a little, low-browed, dingy room at the end of the hall. Its grimy untidiness matched the old Captain's clothes, but it was his one spot of refuge in his own house; here he could scatter his tobacco ashes almost unrebuked, and play on his harmonicon without seeing Gussie wince and draw in her breath; for Mrs. Cyrus rarely entered the "cabin." "I worry so about its disorderliness that I won't go in," she used to say, in a resigned way. And the Captain accepted her decision with resignation of his own. "Crafts of your bottom can't navigate in these waters," he agreed, earnestly; and, indeed, the room was so cluttered with his belongings that voluminous hoop-skirts could not get steerageway. "He has so much rubbish," Gussie complained; but it was precious rubbish to the old man. His chest was behind the door; a blowfish, stuffed and varnished, hung from the ceiling; two colored prints of the "Barque Letty M., 800 tons," decorated the walls; his sextant, polished daily by his big, clumsy hands, hung over the mantelpiece, on which were many dusty treasures--the mahogany spoke of an old steering-wheel; a whale's tooth; two Chinese wrestlers, in ivory; a fan of spreading white coral; a conch-shell, its beautiful red lip serving to hold a loose bunch of cigars. In the chimney-breast was a little door, and the Captain, pulling his son into the room after that call on Mrs. North, fumbled in his pockets for the key. "Here," he said; ("as the Governor of North Carolina said to the Governor of South Carolina)--Cyrus, she gave her mother _beef tea!_"
But Cyrus was to receive still further enlightenment on the subject of his opposite neighbor:
"She called him in. I heard her, with my own