He boarded up the fireplace in the sitting room and installed a base-burner stove, resurrected from the tinsmith's barn. He purchased a full “haircloth set” of parlor furniture from old Mrs. Penniman, who never had been known to sell any of her hoarded belongings before, even to the “antiquers,” and wouldn't have done so now, had it not been that the captain's offer was too princely to be real, and the old lady feared she might be dreaming and would wake up before she received the money. And from Trumet to Ostable he journeyed, buying a chair here and a table there, braided rag mats from this one, and corded bedsteads and “rising sun” quilts from that. At least half of Bayport believed with Gabe Lumley and Miss Phinney that, if Captain Cy had not escaped from a home for the insane, he was a likely candidate for such an institution. At the table of the perfect boarding house the captain was not inclined to be communicative regarding his reasons and his intentions. He was a prime favorite there, praising Keturah's cooking, joking with Angeline concerning what he was pleased to call her “giddy” manner of dressing and wearing “side curls,” and telling yarns of South American dress and behavior, which would probably have shocked Mrs. Tripp--she having recently left the Methodist church to join the “Come-Outers,” because the Sunday services of the former were, with the organ and a paid choir, altogether “too play-actin'”--if they had not been so interesting, and if Captain Cy had not always concluded them with the observation: “But there! you can't expect nothin' more from ignorant critters denied the privileges of congregational singin' and experience meetin's; hey, Matilda?” Mrs. Tripp would sigh and admit that she supposed not. “Only I do wish Mr. Daniels, OUR minister, might have a chance to preach over 'em, poor things!” “So do I,” with a covert wink at Mrs. Bangs, who was a stanch adherent of the regular faith. “South America 'd be just the place for him; ain't that so, Keturah?” He evaded all personal questions put to him by the boarders, explaining that he was renovating the old place just for fun--he always had had a gang of men working for him, and it seemed natural somehow. But to the friends of his boyhood, Asaph Tidditt and Bailey Bangs, he told the real truth. “I swan to man!” exclaimed Bailey, almost tearfully, as the trio wandered through the rooms of the Cy Whittaker place, dodging paper hangers and plasterers; “I swan to man, Whit, if it don't almost seem as though I was a boy again. Why! it's your dad's house come back alive, it is so! Look at this settin' room! Seem's if I could see him now a-settin' by that ere stove, and Mrs. Whittaker, your ma, over there a-sewin', and old Cap'n Cy--your granddad--snoozin' in that big armchair--Why! why, whit! it's the very image of the chair he always set in!” Captain Cy laughed aloud.