On the way home he thought a great deal about the pretty young lady, whose name he discovered was Emily Richards. He decided that if she would only wait for him, he might like to marry her when he grew up. But he was thirteen and she was seventeen, and the very next year she married John Thayer, the sailor in the blue suit. And two years after that young Cy ran away to be a sailor himself. In spite of his age and his lifetime of battering about the world, Captain Cy had a sentimental streak in his makeup; his rejuvenation of the old home proved that. Betsy's letter interested him. He had made guarded inquiries concerning Mary Thayer, now Mary Thomas, of others besides Asaph, and the answers had been satisfactory so far as they went; those who remembered her had liked her very much. The captain had even begun a letter to Mrs. Thomas, but laid it aside unfinished, having, since Bailey's unfortunate experience with the widow Beasley, a prejudice against experiments. But this evening, before Mr. Tidditt called, he had been thinking that something would have to be done and done soon. The generally shiftless condition of his domestic surroundings was getting to be unbearable. Dust and dirt did not fit into his mental picture of the old home as it used to be and as he had tried to restore it. There had been neither dust nor dirt in his mother's day. He meditated and smoked for another hour. Then, his mind being made up, he pulled down the desk lid of the old-fashioned secretary, resurrected from a pile of papers the note he had begun to Mrs. Thomas, dipped a sputtering pen into the ink bottle and proceeded to write. His letter was a short one and rather noncommittal. As Mrs. Thomas no doubt knew he had come back to live in his father's house at Bayport. He might possibly need some one to keep house for him. He understood that she, Mary Thayer that was, was a good housekeeper and that she was open to an engagement if everything was mutually satisfactory. He had known her mother slightly when the latter lived in Orham. He thought an interview might be pleasant, for they could talk over old times if nothing more. Perhaps, on the whole, she might care to risk a trip to Bayport, therefore he inclosed money for her railroad fare. “You understand, of course,” so he wrote in conclusion, “that nothing may come of our meeting at all. So please don't say a word to anybody when you strike town. You've lived here yourself, and you know that three words hove overboard in Bayport will dredge up gab enough to sink a dictionary. So just keep mum till the business is settled one way or the other.” He put on his hat and went down to the post office, where he dropped his letter in the slot of the box fastened to the front door. Then he returned home and retired at exactly eleven o'clock. In spite of his remarks to Asaph, he had not “turned in” so early after all.