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Rh torrent. Happiness mounted within him like sap in a giant maple.

Often at breakfast he put down his cup untouched, to explain in a tone of wondering delight:—

"Ye know, to be real downright honest, I suspicioned 't was all over, and—and here 't is jes' beginnin', eh, Joyce?"

Or, as she prepared their supper in the little savory kitchen, he came in, humming, from the workshop, his eyes alight, his fingers tarred, a curly shaving of clean pine caught in his beard.

"Well, here goes to wash up!" he announced, as though that were an ecstasy. And later, sitting by the stove, he might break out with: "Yes, sir! I'm good for ten more years' hard work easily—easily!"

Meantime the crumbling wharf and the deck of the Amirald became a littered meeting-place, where the captain, Zwinglius, and Bunty directed all their able-bodied friends in a labor of love. At first a joke, the repairs engrossed the village. Even Mrs. Gildersleeve's summer boarder, a mouse-like little