As the mounds of smoothly ironed bed and table linen, with windrows of towels and piles of garments, rose, Sarah's voice rose likewise in snarling criticism. There was no chair in the kitchen that was not occupied by the smoothed pieces. Tom Petty lumbered in to fill and light his pipe and grinned knowingly at Pearl. "Ain't you got through yet, Pearly? By hokey! but you're takin' your time about a little old mess o' clothes." Pearl would not reply to this attempted pleasantry. "What's the matter--mad?" asked the jovial Tenn, pointing a tentative finger to lift Pearl's drooping chin. "You ain't mad with me, are you, Pearly?" "You get away from me, Tom Petty!" gasped the girl, starting back, the heavy iron poised in her hand. "By hokey! I believe you'd swipe me one with that iron!" crowed the lout, in much apparent fear. In retreating he fell against a chair. The neatly piled pillow slips upon it toppled to the floor. His mother entered the kitchen just in season to spy this disaster. "There! You plagued, good-for-nothin', useless gal!" she shrieked. "Them pillow slips all over the floor 'count o' your foolin' with Tom. He can't come into the house but you haf to leave your work to have some game with him. I could box your ears!" Tom ran laughing out of the kitchen. He made no effort to defend Pearl from his mother's undeserved wrath. "Now, Miss!" Sarah Petty continued, scrambling the overturned linen up anyway, some slightly soiled from contact with Tom's muddy boots, but all ruffled and wrinkled. "Now, Miss! You can just have the pleasure of washin' an' ironin' them over again. You wash 'em to-night after supper an' hang 'em out; and if they ain't ironed and in the linen closet by to-morrow noon, you'll hear from me, you lazybones!" She went away, grumbling, with a pile of ironed clothes. Cap'n Jonah heard Pearl sigh, then sob, then sigh again. The girl's spirit was broken. The old mariner drew forth his never-failing comforter--the silver snuff-box. He rapped it with his knuckle, snapped open the cover, and took a huge pinch. "Achoo!" he rasped, then muttered: "That Bible feller got it right: Better a dinner of herbs and a little peace. Whatever! a person might's well live with a live tagger as with Sarah Petty." CHAPTER VI ROMANCE AND PEARL HOLDEN Cap'n Jonah Hand was gregarious by nature. He had spent many solitary hours at sea, but not from choice. The master of a good-sized craft can favor his mate and sub-officers with little of his company and his crew none at all. Off duty he had spent many many hours playing that favorite solitaire of the lonely mariner "Push"--a game which "comes out" about once in five hundred times. Now that he was ashore with human beings within hail, the retired seaman wasted no time in such a poor substitute for sociability.