the matter?" she said, nodding easily to Eph. "What do you two always find to laugh about?"
"Ephraim was feeding me with spoon-meat," said Aunt Lyddy, pointing to the basket, which looked like a basket of anthracite coal.
"It looks like spoon-meat," said Susan, and then she laughed too. "I'll roast some of them for supper," she added, "a new way that I know."
Eph was not invited to stay to supper, but he stayed, none the less: that was always understood.
"Well! Well! Well!" said Joshua, coming to the door-step, and washing his hands and arms just outside, in a tin basin. "I thought I see you set down a parcel of oysters—but there was seaweed over 'em, and I don' know's I could hev said they was oysters; but then, if the square question hed been put to me, 'Mr. Carr, be them oysters or not?' I s'pose I should hev said they was; still, if they'd asked me how I knew—"
"Come, come, father!" said Aunt Lyddy, "do give poor Ephraim a little peace. Why don't you just say you thought they were oysters, and done with it?"
"Say I thought they was?" he replied, innocently. "I knew well enough they was—that is—knew? No, I didn't know, but—"
Aunt Lyddy, with an air of mock resignation, gave up, while Joshua endeavored to fix, to a hair, the exact extent of his knowledge.
Eph smiled; but he remembered what would have made him pardon, a thousand times over, the old man's garrulousness. He remembered who alone had never failed, once a year, to visit a certain prisoner, at the cost of a long and tiresome journey, and who had written to that homesick prisoner kind and cheering letters, and had sent him baskets of simple dainties for holidays.
Susan bustled about, and made a fire of crackling sticks, and began to roast the oysters in a way that made a most savory smell. She set the table, and then sat down at the melodeon, while she was waiting, and sang a hymn—for she was of a musical turn, and was one of the choir. Then she jumped up, and took out the steaming oysters, and they all sat down.
"Well, well, well!" said her father; "these be good! I didn't s'pose you had any very good oysters in your bed, Ephraim. But there, now—I don' s'pose I ought to have said that; that wasn't very polite; but what I meant was—I didn't s'pose you had any that was real good—though I don' know but that I've said about the same thing, now. Well, anyway, these be splendid; they're full as good as those cohogs we had t'other night."
"Quahaugs!" said Susan. "The idea of comparing these oysters with quahaugs!"
"Well, well! that's so!" said the father. "I didn't say right, did I, when I said that? Of course, they ain't no comparison—that is—no comparison—why, of course, they is a comparison between everything, but then, cohogs don' really compare with oysters! That's true!"
And then he paused to eat a few.
He was silent so long at this occupation that they all laughed.
"Well, well!" said he, laying down his fork, and smiling innocently; "what be you all laughin' at? Not but what I allers like to hev folks laugh—but then—I didn't see nothin' to laugh at. Still perhaps, they was suthin' to laugh at that I didn't see; sometimes one man'll be lookin' down into his plate, all taken up with his vittles, and others that's lookin' around the room, may see the kittens frolickin', or some such thing. 'Tain't the fust time I've known all hands to laugh all to onct, when I didn't see nothin'."
Susan helped him again, and secured another brief respite.
"Ephraim," said he, after awhile, "you ain't skilled to cook oysters like this, I don' believe. You ought to get married! I was sayin' to Susan t'other day—well, now, mother, have I said an'thing out o' the way?—well, I don' s'pose 'twas just my place to hev said an'thing about gittin' married, to Ephraim, seein's—"
"Come, come, father," said Aunt Lyddy, "that'll do, now. You must let Ephraim alone, and not joke him about such things."
Meanwhile Susan had hastily gone into the pantry to look for a pie, which she seemed unable at once to find.
"Pie got adrift?" called out Joshua. "Seems to me you don' hook on to it very quick. Now that looks good," he added, when she came out. "That looks like cookin'! All I meant was, 't Ephraim ought not to be doin' his own cookin'—that is—if you can call it cookin'—but then, of course, 'tis cookin'—there's all kinds o' cookin'. I went cook myself, when I was a boy."
After supper, Aunt Lyddy sat down to knit, and Joshua drew his chair up to an open window, to smoke his pipe. In this vice Aunt Lyddy encouraged him. The odor of Virginia tobacco was a sweet savor in her nostrils. No breezes from Araby ever awoke more grateful feelings than did the fragrance of Uncle Joshua's pipe. To Aunt Lyddy it meant quiet and peace.
Susan and Eph sat down on the broad flag door-stone, and talked quietly of the simple news of the neighborhood, and of the days when they used to go to school, and come home, always together.
"I didn't much think, then," said Eph, "that I should ever bring up where I have, and get ashore before I was fairly out to sea!"
"Jehiel's schooner got ashore on the bar, years ago," said Susan, "and yet they towed her off, and I saw her this morning, from my chamber window, before sunrise, all sail set, going by to the eastward."
"I know what you mean," said Eph. "But here—I got mad once, and I almost had a right to, and I can't get started again; I never shall. I can get a livin', of course; but I shall always be pointed out as a jail-bird, and could no more get any footin' in the world than Portuguese Jim."
Portuguese Jim was the sole professional criminal of the town, a weak, good-natured, knock-kneed vagabond, who stole hens, and spent every winter in the House of Correction as an "idle and disorderly person."
Susan laughed outright at the picture. Eph smiled, too, but a little bitterly.
"I suppose it was more ugliness than anything else," he said, "that made me come back here to live, where everybody knows I've been in jail and is down on me."
"They are not down on you," said Susan. "Nobody is down on you. It's all your own imagination. And if you had gone anywhere that you was a stranger, you know that the first thing that you would have done would have been to call a meetin' and tell all the people that you had burned down a man's barn, and been in the State's-prison, and that you wanted them all to know it at the start; and you wouldn't have told them why you did it, and how young you was then, and how Eliphalet treated your mother, and how you was going to pay him for all he lost. Here, everybody knows that side of it. In fact," she added, with a little twinkle in her eye, "I have sometimes had an idea that the main thing they don't like is to see you savin' every cent to pay to Eliphalet."
"And yet it was on your say that I took up that plan," said Eph. "I never thought of it till you asked me when I was goin' to begin to pay him up."
"And you ought to," said Susan. "He has a right to the money—and then you don't want to be under obligations to that man all your life. Now, what you want to do is to cheer up and go around among folks. Why, now, you're the only fish-buyer there is that the men don't watch when he's weighin' their fish. You'll own up to that, for one thing, won't you?"
"Well, they are good fellows that bring fish to me," he said.
"They weren't good fellows when they traded at the great wharf," said Susan. "They had a quarrel down there once a week, reg'larly."
"Well, suppose they do trust me in that," said Eph. "I can never rub out that I've been in State's-prison."
"You
