"
"You don't say so, Lovell!" exclaimed Madeline. "And what'll poor Robin
do now, Lovell? Oh, what'll poor Robin do now?"
"Yes," said he gravely; "that's what _they_ thought, ahem! _They_ thought
they should stay a week, _they_ thought so, certainly."
"Wall, I declar' for't, Lovell," said Grandma; "now's the time you'd
ought to have a wife. Jest to think how comf'table 'twould be fu ye, now,
instead of stayin' there all alone, if ye only had a nice little wife to
home, to cook for ye, and watch for ye, and keep ye company, and----"
"_I_ think so," exclaimed Lovell, giving a quick glance backward in the
direction of his gun. "Certainly, ahem! _I_ think so. _I_ do."
"Lookin' for game? Eh, Lovell?" inquired Grandpa.
"Pa," said Grandma, solemnly: "I wish you'd put another stick of wood in
the stove."
Grandpa was awake now, and a youthful and satanic gleam shone from under
his shaggy eyebrows; he glanced at me, too, as was his habit on such
occasions, as though I had a sort of sympathy for and fellowship with him
in his bold iniquities of speech.
But the guileless Lovell interpreted not the deeper meaning of Grandpa's
words.
"I think some of it, Cap'n," he answered unsmilingly, and then continued:
"It's been--ahem!--it's been a very mild winter on the--ahem!--I should
say on the Cape.
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