"He was a music teacher that come to town here one winter, that's about all I can swear to," said Judah. "Down here for his health, so he said, and taught singin' school while he was gittin' healthy. His last name was Phillips, which is all right, but he had the craziest fust name ever _I_ heard. Egbert 'twas. Hoppin', creepin' Henry! Did you ever _hear_ such a name? _Egbert!_ Jumpin' prophets! Boys round town, they tell me, used to call him 'Eg' behind his back. Some of 'em, them that didn't like him, called him 'Soft biled.' Haw, haw! See what they meant, don't you, Cap'n Sears? Egbert, you know, that's 'Eg' for short, and then 'Soft biled' meanin' a soft biled egg.... Hey? Yes, I cal'lated you'd see it, you're pretty sharp at a joke, Cap'n, but there _has_ been them I've told that to that never.... Hey? Aye, aye, sir, I was just goin' to tell the rest of it." According to Judah's report, which was a second or third hand report of course, Egbert Phillips had not been too popular among the males in Bayport. But with the females--ah, there it was different. "He was one of them kind, they tell me," said Judah. "One of them smooth, slick, buttery kind of fellers that draws womenfolks same as molasses draws flies. Hailed from Philadelphy he did. I used to know a good many Philadelphy folks myself once. Why, one time----" The captain broke in to head off the Philadelphia reminiscence. Brought back to Bayport and Egbert and Lobelia, Judah went on to tell what more he knew of the Fair Harbor beginnings. Sears gathered that after the marriage Egbert who, it seemed, was not in love with the Cape as a place of residence, would have liked his wife to sell the old house and move away. But there was a clause in the will of Captain Sylvanus which prevented this. Under that will the property could not be sold while his daughter lived. It was then that Lobelia was seized with her great idea. She, a mariner's daughter, had--until the Providential appearance of the peerless Egbert--faced a lonely old age. But she had at least a comfortable home. There were so many women--sea-captains' widows and sisters--who faced their lonely future without a home. Why not turn the Seymour property into a home for them--a limited number of them? "So she done it," said Judah. "And that's how the Fair Harbor got off the ways." "But you called it a home," objected Captain Sears. "The other day that Snowden woman, the thin one, gave the other, the stout one--what's her name?--Northern lights--Aurora, that's it--she gave Aurora fits for speakin' of the place as a home. She declared it wasn't a home."