"And now what?" continued Pearl. "I heard only to-day that she's been to the first selectman about having our place here condemned on the ground that it's unsafe. And the next thing I know I'll be turned out of house and home and won't know which way to turn nor where to lay my head. After I've slaved like a dog all my life and worse--and what thanks do I get for it? Why, my husband--walks away--and leaves me--in the lurch. That's how much he--thinks of me. Ain't you _never_ coming to bed?" Elmer, who had stood listening, now in fact had his lips ready puffed to blow out the light. But he did not blow. Instead he said, "My soul and body, what was that?" A fearful sound smote upon their ears. Something had shouldered the house. The stovepipe in the kitchen fell down, there followed the sound as of some scaly creature dragging its body across the linoleum. Then there came a fall of plaster, and the kitchen stove itself appeared stealthily through the bedroom wall. "My conscience!" said Elmer Higgins at the height of his mystification. But we anticipate. It will be well at this point to look in on the affairs of Hat Tyler for a moment. When it became apparent that the _Minnie Williams_ would not leave the ways until softer weather had loosened up the launching grease the crowd drifted away from her. The cook banked his fires and the crew went ashore for a carouse. Then it was that Hat had it out with Tyler. Jed said himself afterward that it was a regular old-fashioned session, but further than that he would not commit himself, beyond saying that of course Hat was sensitive--awful sensitive--and just as thin-skinned as she could be, and it was only natural she should get up on her high horse when once she had him alone. It was not till near midnight that, red of eye and with her hair stringing down any old how, she put her head out of the companionway and looked vengefully at the Higgins place across the way. "If looks could kill," Tyler said, thrusting his jaw out with hers, "there wouldn't be a grease spot left of that shack, would there, Hat?" Hat made no answer. She had felt an indefinable sensation at the soles of her feet. "We're away, Tyler, we're away!" she gasped. It was even so. Swift as a swallow on the wing and noiseless as a thief in the night the _Minnie Williams_ left the smoking ways, with that deep and graceful bow always so thrilling to beholders when there are beholders; the first and most beautiful motion of the ship. "You christian her, Hat!" cried Tyler. "I'll drop the hook." Hat broke the bottle over her stern works at the very moment that a roar of chain going out at the hawse pipe forward set the sleeping gulls flapping seaward. The _Minnie Williams_ floated there lightly as a feather drifted from the wings of sleep, soundless save for the chain rattling out of her lockers. She had chosen that whimsical hour of the night to take her first bath, and who should say the lady nay?