With this the retired chief engineer entered the cottage and passed into the kitchen. The floors had been scrubbed white with sand and holy-stone. The brass door-knobs and andirons were polished like gold. The woodwork glistened with speckless white paint. What furniture there was consisted of solid, old-fashioned pieces, such as Windsor chairs, a highboy, a claw-footed table or two, and a desk of bird’s-eye maple. No bric-a-brac cluttered them. Habit had schooled this nautical housekeeper to dispense with loose stuff which might go adrift in a heavy sea-way. Kicking himself out of his overalls, he tied a white apron about his waist and bent his attention to the kitchen stove. The green peas were boiling merrily, the potatoes were almost baked, and it was time to fry the bacon and eggs. He cooked his own dinner with as hearty good-will as he had hoed the garden. It was all part of the game which he enjoyed with such boyish zest. Stepping to the back door, he blew a blast on a tin horn to summon the Perkins boy. That lazy urchin sped out of the onion bed as if he had wings, and Johnny Kent was moved to comment: “Be careful, Bub, or your family’ll disown you. You came bowlin’ along to your vittles like you were actually alive! Right after dinner you wash the dishes and scour them tins, and if you leave a spot on ’em no bigger than a flea’s whisker, I’ll nail your hide to the barn door. Then we’ll hitch up the mare and jog along to East Pond with our fish-poles.” “Folks in town think it kind o’ queer you don’t hire a woman to keep house,” said the Perkins offspring as he took the wash-basin down from its hook. “You can tell ’em with my compliments that they’re a gabby lot of gossips and ought to have a stopper put on their jaw-tackle,” returned Johnny Kent with surprising heat and a perceptible blush. “I can look after myself without any advice from the village.” Young Perkins snickered and thought it wise to change the subject. When they sat down to table, the host was in the best of humor as he declaimed with tremendous gusto: “Did you ever taste such peas? Raised ’em myself. Cooked in cream from my own cow. Early Rose potatoes from my own garden. Eggs from my own hens. They lay ’em every day.” “Hens have to lay or bust this time o’ year,” prosaically replied the youth. “An’ peas is peas.” “Romance was plumb left out of your system,” sighed the mariner. “All the years I was wanderin’ over the high seas seem tame and monotonous alongside this.” Before the meal was ended there came an interruption. Johnny Kent dropped knife and fork and suspiciously sniffed the breeze which drew through the open windows. “Bub” Perkins likewise showed uneasy symptoms and cocked his freckled snub nose to sniff the air. It was a tableau evidently of some importance. Presently they both arose without a word and hastened out of doors to scan the peaceful landscape far and near. “I smelled wood smoke, sure as guns,” said Johnny Kent.