“Emily, I came back to sign the strongest temperance pledge that you can possibly draw up; Fred Macdonald wanted to write out one, but I told him that nobody but you should do it; you’ve earned the right to, poor girl.” No such duty and surprise having ever before come hand in hand to Mrs. Crayme, she acted as every true woman will imagine that she herself would have done under similar circumstances, and this action made it not so easy as it might otherwise have been to see just where the pen and ink were, or to prevent the precious document, when completed, from being disfigured by peculiar blots which were neither finger-marks nor ink-spots, yet which in shape and size suggested both of these indications of unneatness. Mrs. Crayme was not an adept at literary composition, and, being conscious of her own deficiencies, she begged that a verbal pledge might be substituted; but her husband was firm. “A contract don’t steer worth a cent unless it’s in writing, Emily,” said he, looking over his wife’s shoulder as she wrote. “Gracious, girl, you’re making it too thin; _any_ greenhorn could sail right through that and all around it. Here, let _me_ have it.” And Crayme wrote, dictating aloud to himself as he did so, “And the--party--of the first part--hereby agrees to--do everything--else that the--spirit of this--agreement--seems to the party--of the second--part to--indicate or--imply.” This he read over to his wife, saying, “That’s the way we fix contracts that aren’t ship-shape, Emily; a steamboat couldn’t be run in any other way.” Then Crayme wrote at the foot of the paper, “Sam. Crayme, Capt. Str. _Excellence_,” surveyed the document with evident pride, and handed it to his wife, saying, “Now, you see, you’ve got me so I can’t ever get out of it by trying to make out that ’twas some other Sam Crayme that you reformed.” “O husband!” said Mrs. Crayme, throwing her arms about the captain’s neck, “_don’t_ talk in that dreadful business way! I’m too happy to bear it. I want to go with you on this trip.” The captain shrank away from his wife’s arms, and a cold perspiration started all over him as he exclaimed, “Oh, don’t, little girl! Wait till next trip. There’s an unpleasant set of passengers aboard; the barometer points to rainy weather, so you’d have to stay in the cabin all the time; our cook is sick, and his cubs serve up the most infernal messes; we’re light of freight, and have got to stop at every warehouse on the river, and the old boat’ll be either shrieking, or bumping, or blowing off steam the whole continual time.” Mrs. Crayme’s happiness had been frightening some of her years away, and her smile carried Sam himself back to his pre-marital period as she said, “Never mind the rest; I see you don’t want me to go,” and then she became Mrs. Crayme again as she said, pressing her face closely to her husband’s breast, “but I hope you won’t get _any_ freight, _anywhere_, so you can get home all the sooner.”