"So I sot there an' giv' 'em my views on moderation. I must say for 'em, they appeared dreadful interested; they sot kind o' leanin' forrards, with their meouths not more 'n harf--'n' sartin not more 'n a quarter ways--shet; an' when I'd got through, they giv' me another reousin' three cheers ag'in. "They told me all abeout Lot's wife, tew," said Captain Leezur, with grateful seriousness; "they've been great travellers, ye know; all abeout the appearance o' that location where she sot, an' heow it looked arfter she'd got up an' went, an' the aspec's o' Jaffy, an' all them interestin' partickalers, more'n what I ever heered from anybody afore." I looked at Captain Leezur to see if no suspicion of earthly treachery was on his sun-blessed visage. None. I lifted my hat with a nameless reverence too deep for words, and left him, still smiling upward. XIV "TAR-A-TA!" OF THE TRUMPET Fluke played, with the dense black hair tossing above his handsome eyes, but Gurdon with a calm brow, though he too loved the music and dancing. "Go and have a turn with Vesty yourself," said Fluke; "we'll keep up fiddling, change about, with the organ." For Notely, studying every heart-throb of the Basins, had had a little parlor organ brought in for the night and put up in place of his piano; at it sat Mrs. Judah Kobbe, cousin and guest of the Pharo Kobbes, playing with such lively spirit and abandon that the very lamps danced upon the organ-brackets in untripping time with the feet of the dancers on the floor. I had already detected in the tone of society toward Mr. and Mrs. Judah Kobbe that they were awesome cosmopolites from some source. I now learned that they were from a crowded mart called Machias. Captain Pharo also told me mysteriously, in the pauses of his pipe, "'t they was l'arneder 'n any fish 't swims;" so I gazed at them with wonder from a distance, but did not much dream that it would be for me to speak with them. All along the edges of the floor were strewn children and babies, comfortably wrapped and laid to sleep; the habit of the Basins, who had no servants at home wherewith to leave them. Notely Garrison had led the dance with Vesty; now she sat rocking her baby, near Gurdon, who turned to them with a smile and swept a softer strain now and then, as when he played them to sleep at home. "Introduce me to the 'mezzo-tint' study yonder, the mediaeval picture over there, rocking her infant, back of the fiddlers." Notely slightly turned from his fellow-reveller, flushing. "There are pretty girls enough here for you to dance with, Sid; she would not like it. They are such simple people they would not understand. She is married, you see." "You danced with her." "Oh, I am an old friend."