The lazy fellow did not go to work. He idled around the house, helped his father under protest, and occasionally went fishing or clamming and thus added to the family larder. His mother must have supplied him with money, the captain decided, for he was able to buy tobacco and such other small luxuries as he wanted. Sarah bought all his clothing, as she did Orrin's; and hard bargains she drove indeed for them with the peddlers and with Cap'n Abe. Once Tom went to Paulmouth and came home with the unmistakable smell of liquor on his breath. "You're a good-for-nothing, lazy fellow!" Cap'n Jonah once heard Pearl tell the youth, and with vigor. "And you won't ever do what you promised me you would--and 'twill soon be Christmas." The captain wondered what it was Tom Petty had promised her. At least, the girl evidently had no love for the lout, and Cap'n Jonah was glad of that. He watched her intercourse with Helmford, however, with high delight. When the "fish hatchery man" was near Pearl could not help preening her feathers for him. Her pretty face glowed with interest when he spoke. When he addressed her directly she was by no means tongue-tied; yet there was a sweet shyness in Pearl's manner at such times that was very attractive. The young man could not fail to be charmed with the girl's unaffected sweetness when he was in her presence. But he held himself back, and treated Pearl only with that courtesy and kindness that he gave to every woman. He presumed the girl was already chosen as the future mate for the son of the house. Helmford did not purpose to make Pearl's situation more difficult than it was by offering her any particular attention. Yet Tom Petty glowered at the two, and occasionally dropped a caustic remark for which his mother took him privately to task. Helmford had brought a great store of books with him and bookshelves on which to arrange them. It was Pearl's duty to dust these from time to time, for, after having once gone through the new boarder's possessions quite as thoroughly as she had Cap'n Jonah's, Sarah Petty gave the care of the new boarder's room over to her willing little drudge. Pearl had obtained a fair education in the simpler branches before she had been allotted by the selectmen to Orrin Petty, her mother's step-brother's cousin-by-marriage--a relationship which even the closest student of genealogy would have found difficulty in figuring out. She loved to read and all the time she could steal from her multitudinous tasks was spent in that way. Not that her selection of fiction had been very wise, perhaps, before Helmford came to board at the Petty homestead. The romances in the _Ladies' Home Provider_ were not strong intellectual food; but they were amusing, even enthralling, to the mind of Pearl Holden.