Here for a season we leave both our child friends, and when ten years have passed over their heads,--when Moses shall be twenty, and Mara seventeen,--we will return again to tell their story, for then there will be one to tell. Let us suppose in the interval, how Moses and Mara read Virgil with the minister, and how Mara works a shepherdess with Miss Emily, which astonishes the neighborhood,--but how by herself she learns, after divers trials, to paint partridge, and checkerberry, and trailing arbutus,--how Moses makes better and better ships, and Sally grows up a handsome girl, and goes up to Brunswick to the high school,--how Captain Kittridge tells stories, and Miss Roxy and Miss Ruey nurse and cut and make and mend for the still rising generation,--how there are quiltings and tea-drinkings and prayer meetings and Sunday sermons,--how Zephaniah and Mary Pennel grow old gradually and graciously, as the sun rises and sets, and the eternal silver tide rises and falls around our little gem, Orr's Island. CHAPTER XVIII SALLY "Now, where's Sally Kittridge! There's the clock striking five, and nobody to set the table. Sally, I say! Sally!" "Why, Mis' Kittridge," said the Captain, "Sally's gone out more'n an hour ago, and I expect she's gone down to Pennel's to see Mara; 'cause, you know, she come home from Portland to-day." "Well, if she's come home, I s'pose I may as well give up havin' any good of Sally, for that girl fairly bows down to Mara Lincoln and worships her." "Well, good reason," said the Captain. "There ain't a puttier creature breathin'. I'm a'most a mind to worship her myself." "Captain Kittridge, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, at your age, talking as you do." "Why, laws, mother, I don't feel my age," said the frisky Captain, giving a sort of skip. "It don't seem more'n yesterday since you and I was a-courtin', Polly. What a life you did lead me in them days! I think you kep' me on the anxious seat a pretty middlin' spell." "I do wish you wouldn't talk so. You ought to be ashamed to be triflin' round as you do. Come, now, can't you jest tramp over to Pennel's and tell Sally I want her?" "Not I, mother. There ain't but two gals in two miles square here, and I ain't a-goin' to be the feller to shoo 'em apart. What's the use of bein' gals, and young, and putty, if they can't get together and talk about their new gownds and the fellers? That ar's what gals is for."