"Leaves a brown taste in your mouth, does it?" chuckled the captain. "And drained your pocket as dry as the Desert of Sahara, I bet!" "Hoh! Who was tellin' you?" demanded Tom, bitten with sudden suspicion. "I don't have to be told ev'rything--not at my age," chuckled Cap'n Jonah. "I was young once myself." He drew a bill-holder from an inner pocket. Tom, who had begun to scowl, washed that expression hurriedly off his face. "I guess you know how 'tis, Uncle Jonah," confessed the young fellow, suppressing a certain eagerness he felt and trying to keep his eyes off the bill-holder which, if not plethoric, looked to be well filled. "You know, where ev'rybody else is spendin', you spend more'n you ought to yourself." "Just so! Just so!" agreed the captain. He selected a yellow-backed bill, crisp and crackling, and thrust it suddenly into Tom's itching palm. "Here's a twenty for you. I never do know what sort o' presents to buy folks. Get somethin' for yourself or put it away in the bank as you like. And don't say nothin' to your Pop or Marm about it," concluded the shrewd old fellow, with a keen side glance at Tom. The latter was all but overcome. Relief and gratification momentarily enlarged his heart to almost the size of a pea. "By hokey! Uncle Jonah, you're all right!" he murmured, pocketing the twenty dollar bank note and his freckled face glowing all over. "I'll never forgit you for this." He lumbered away toward the barn while the captain continued to "pace the quarterdeck" along the shaded lane. A little later he saw Tom talking with Pearl at the barnyard bars. "I guess I put a spoke in your wheel, young man," thought the captain, but with a dark look at the loutish Tom. Pearl came back to the lane to bid Cap'n Jonah good-morning, her sweet face aglow. Starry-eyed and dimpling, she showed plainly, the old man thought, her relief on finding that Tom had in some way got out of his financial difficulty. When the young fellow paid his mother at the breakfast table, and before them all, the eighteen-seventy-five he owed her, he produced the exact change in small bills and silver. It did not cross Cap'n Jonah's mind to wonder where Tom had got the twenty dollar note changed, so early in the morning. CHAPTER V "BETTER A DINNER OF HERBS" The day in the Petty household began with bickerings. Sarah Petty possessed all the nagging power of dropping water. Orrin fulfilled his own surname in small meannesses. Tom was disobedient and disrespectful to both parents. All three picked on Pearl. Although they endeavored to show Cap'n Jonah the smooth side of their natures--and even Tom remained polite to him--the visitor could not fail to overhear many things that were not intended for his ears. Nor was he to be deceived regarding the character of his relatives.