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—[Touched.] It’s too bad you have to be so lonesome, Dick. Why don’t you give up the old boat? You’ve been on the sea long enough, heaven’s knows. Why don’t you make up your mind and settle down here with us?

—[Emphatically.] And go diggin’ up the dirt and plantin’ things? Not by a hell of a sight! You can have all the darned dirt in the earth for all o’ me. I ain’t sayin’ it ain’t all right—if you’re made that way—but I ain’t. No settlin’ down for me. No sirree! [Irritably.] But all this talk ain’t tellin’ me what I’m to do with that sta’b’d cabin I fixed up. It’s all painted white, an a bran new mattress on the bunk, ’n’ new sheets ’n’ blankets ’n’ things. And Chips built in a book-case so’s Robert could take his books along—with a slidin’ bar fixed across’t it, mind, so’s they couldn’t fall out no matter how she rolled. [With excited consternation.] What d’you suppose my officers is goin’ to think when there’s no one comes aboard to occupy that sta’b’d cabin? And the men what did the work on it—what’ll they think? [He shakes his finger indignantly.] They’re liable as not to suspicion it was a woman I’d planned to ship along, and that she gave me the go-by at the last moment! [He wipes his perspiring brow in anguish at this thought.] Gawd A’mighty! They’re only lookin’ to have the laugh on me for something like that. They’re liable to b’lieve anything, those fellers is!

—[With a wink.] Then there’s nothing to it but for you to get right out and hunt up а wife some-