Yet, for a very good reason, she wished to appear generous to her relative. Not only might it be true that Cap'n Jonah was wealthy, but that old note given by her father for two thousand dollars might still be in existence. She must show herself liberal to her uncle, for she might yet have to plead for mercy. It was true that she was Cap'n Jonah's natural heiress, but he possibly had not made his will in her favor (she determined to find that out immediately) and it would never do to display a nature too grasping in the interim. "I don't expect you to cramp yourself none, Sarah," Cap'n Jonah said. "That's a mighty nice room Pearly give me." "She done jest what I would have done myself if I'd been to home," murmured Sarah Petty. "I like it 'cause it's nothin' at all like the close quarters of a ship's cabin." "It's our very best room, Uncle Jonah," she added. "I'm glad you like it." Secretly she could have shaken Pearl Holden for ever putting the old man in that chamber. There was one over the kitchen, in the ell, that would have been good enough for him, and probably pleased him quite as well. What did an old sailor like him want of such nice quarters? "Well, I tell you how 'tis, Uncle Jonah," she said aloud and at length. "Orrin and me ain't none too rich, as you can see. We have to stretch ends sometimes to make 'em meet. In the summer when I let out that best chamber I get six dollars a week for it from city folks that come down here to the Cape. It's quite a help. That's six dollars a week with board, of course. I should have to charge extry for wash and mendin' and the like----" "Whatever!" exploded Cap'n Jonah, and he would have changed color had his countenance not been burned so deeply that a surge of blood into it made little difference in its hue. "But if you don't mind sleepin' in another room, Uncle Jonah, supposin' I had a chance to let that best one at a good price, I'd be only too glad to take you in for two dollars less a week--say twenty dollars a month," Sarah hastened to say. "The wash and mendin' we'd consider later. I wouldn't want it to seem at all like I was gouging a relative, Uncle Jonah. But ev'rything does cost so much nowadays that I tell you, free and frank, we have to figger even what it costs to keep a cat." "Have to depend on mousetraps, I do suppose," murmured the old mariner. "I can see it's close sailin' for you to get along, Sarah. Wal! if that's the best you can do, I'll agree. Twenty dollars a month it is." "And washin' extry," added Sarah, her little green eyes sparking. She was not after all altogether sure that she had not underrated what Cap'n Jonah would have paid. Still, she was getting a five-week month's board out of him at the price she had set; and he certainly must be good for fifty cents a week wash money.