In two weeks she was settled at the cap'n's, and Jake Preble had come to board, doggedly, even sulkily, at first, and then suddenly armed with that quiet acceptance he had ready for all the changes in his life. But Mariana smoothed his path to a pleasant familiarity with the big house and its ways, and he began to look about the room, from his place at the table with his book or paper, wonderingly and even pathetically, as she thought, recalling the time before his sister died when his own house had been full of the warm intimacies of an ordered life. The captain reveled in the comfort of his state. He brought in wood until Mariana had to bid him cease. He built fires and drew water, and his ruddy face shone with contentment. She made his favorite dishes and seemed not to notice when Jake, too, in his shy way, awoke to praise them. She even read aloud to the cap'n on a Sunday night from the life of women who, the title declared, debatably, had "Made India what It is." On such nights of intellectual stress Jake betook himself to the kitchen and ostentatiously pored over the "Scout in Early New England." The cap'n, who was hospitality itself, trudged out there one night, in the midst of a panegyric on Mrs. Judson, and besought him to come in. "If you don't like that kind o' readin', Jake, we'll try suthin' else," he conceded generously. "I jest as soon play fox an' geese Sunday nights if anybody wants to. I ain't one to tie up the cat's tail Sunday mornin' so 's she won't play." "I'll be in byme-by," said Jake, frowningly intent upon his page. "You go on with your readin', cap'n. I'll be in." But, instead, he walked out and down the road to his own lonely house, and Mariana, though her brain followed him every step of the way, went on reading in the clearest voice, minding her stops as she had been taught when she was accounted the best reader in the class. But in those days of reading-classes her heart had not ached. It ached all the time now. She had shut the gate behind her, and the one she opened led into an unfamiliar country. Mariana had been born to live ingenuously, simply, like the child she was. Woman's wiles were not for her, and the fruit they brought her had a bitter tang. But whether her campaign was a righteous one or not, it was brilliantly successful. She could hardly think that any women, looking on, were laughing at her, even in a kindly way. She had taken her own stand and the world had patently respected it. Immediately on her moving to the cap'n's she had gone out in her best cashmere and made a series of calls, and far and wide she had gayly announced herself as keeping house because she wanted the money; in the spring, she told the neighborhood, she meant to take what she had earned and make a journey to Canada to see cousin Liddy, who had married into a nice family there, and over and over again had written for her to come.