"I see you're nigh-sighted, ma'am. Some of us git that way as we grow older. I never have been bothered with short eyesight myself." "I wish to see my niece at once," Mrs. Conroth said, flushing a little at his suggestion of her advancing years. "Come right in," he said, lifting the flap in the counter. Mrs. Conroth glared around the store through her glass. "Cannot Louise come here?" She asked helplessly. "We live back o' the shop--and overhead," explained Cap'n Amazon. "Come right in, I'll have Betty Gallup call Louise." Bristling her indignation like a porcupine its quills, the majestic woman followed the spry figure of the captain. Her first glance over the old-fashioned, homelike room elicited a pronounced sniff. "Catarrh, ma'am?" suggested the perfectly composed Cap'n Amazon. "This strong salt air ought to do it a world of good. I've known a sea v'y'ge to cure the hardest cases. They tell me lots of 'em come down here to the Cape afflicted that way and go home cured." Mrs. Conroth stared with growing comprehension at Cap'n Amazon. It began to percolate into her brain that possibly this strange-looking seaman possessed qualities of apprehension for which she had not given him credit. "Sit down, ma'am," said Cap'n Amazon hospitably. "Abe ain't here, but I cal'late he'd want me to do the honors, and assure you that you are welcome. He always figgers on having a spare berth for anybody that boards us, as well as a seat at the table. "Betty," he added, turning to the amazed Mrs. Gallup, just then appearing at the living-room door, "tell Louise her A'nt 'Phemie is here, will you?" "Say Mrs. Conroth, woman," corrected the lady tartly. Betty scowled and went away, muttering: "Who's a 'woman,' I want to know? I ain't one no more'n _she_ is," and it can be set down in the log that the "able seaman" began by being no friend of Aunt Euphemia's. It was with a sinking at her heart that Louise heard of her aunt's arrival. She had written to her Aunt Euphemia before leaving New York that she had decided to try Cape Cod for the summer and would go to her mother's relative, Captain Abram Silt. Again, on reaching the store on the Shell Road, she had dutifully written a second letter announcing her arrival. She had known perfectly well that some time she would have to "pay the piper." Aunt Euphemia would never overlook such a thing. Louise was sure of that. But the idea that the Poughkeepsie lady would follow her to Cardhaven never for a moment entered Louise's thought. She had put off this reckoning until the fall--until the return of daddy-professor. But here Aunt Euphemia had descended upon her as unexpectedly as the Day of Wrath spoken of in Holy Writ. As she came down the stairs she heard her uncle's voice in the living-room. Something had started him upon a tale of adventure above and beyond the usual run of his narrative.