CAPTAIN BEN'S CHOICE.

BY FRANCIS LEE PRATT.

An old red house on a rocky shore, with a fisherman's bluc boat rocking on the bay, and two white sails glistening far away over the water. Above, the blue, shining sky; and below, the blue, shining sea.

"It seems clever to have a pleasant day," said Mrs. Davids, sighing.

Mrs. Davids said everything with a sigh, and now she wiped

her eyes also on her calico apron. She was a woman with a complexion like faded seaweed, who seemed always pitying herself.

"I tell them," said she, "I have had real hard luck. My husband is buried away off in California, and

my son died in

the army, and he is buried away down South. Neither one of them is buried together."

Then she sighed again. Twice, this time.

"And so," she continued, taking out a pinch of bayberry snuff, "I am left alone in the world. Alone, I say! why, I've got a daughter, but she is away out West. She is married to an engineerman. And I've got two grandchildren."

Mrs. Davids took the pinch of bayberry and shook her head, looking as though that was the "hardest luck" of all.

"Well, everybody has to have their pesters, and you'll have to have yours," rejoined Miss Persis Tame, taking a pinch of snuff -the real Maccaboy-twice as large, with twice as fierce an action. "I don't know what it is to bury children, nor to lose a husband; I s'pose I don't; but I know what it is to be jammed round the world and not have a ruff to stick my head under. wish I had all the money I ever spent traveling-and that's twelve dollars!" she continued, regretfully.

I

"Why in the world don't you marry, and have a home of your own?" sighed Mrs. Davids.

"Well, I don't expect to marry. I don't know as I do, at my time of life," responded the spinster. "I rather guess my day for chances is gone by."

"You ain't such a dreadful sight older than I am, though," replied Mrs. Davids, reflectively.

"Not so old by two full years," returned Miss Tame, taking another smart pinch of snuff, as though it touched the empty spot in her heart and did it good. "But you ain't looking out for opportunities yet, I suppose?" Mrs. Davids sighed evasively.

"We can't tell what is before

There is more than one man in want of a wife."

As though to point her words, Captain Ben Lundy came in sight on the beach, his head a long way forward and his shambling feet trying in vain to keep up.

"Thirteen months and a half since Lyddy was buried," continued Mrs. Davids, accepting this application to her words, "and there is Captain Ben taking up with just what housekeeper he can get, and no housekeeper at all. It would be an excellent home for you, Persis. Captain Ben always had the name of making at kind husband."

She sighed again, whether from regret for the bereaved man, or for the multitude of women bereft of such a husband.

By this time Captain Ben's head was at the door.

"Morning!" said he, while his feet were coming up. "Quite an accident down here below the lighthouse last night. Schooner ran ashore in the blow, and broke all up into kindling-wood in less. than no time. Captain Tisdale's been out looking for dead bodies ever since daylight."

"I knowed it!" sighed Mrs. Davids. "I heard a rushing sound some time about the break of day, that waked me out of a

sound sleep, and I knowed then there was a spirit leaving its body. I heard it the night Davids went, or I expect I did. It must have been very nearly at that time."

"Well, I guess it wasn't a spirit, last night," said Captain Ben, "for, as I was going on to say, after searching back and forth,! Captain Tisdale came upon the folks, a man and a boy, rolled up in their wet blankets, asleep behind the lifeboat house. He said he felt like he could shake them for staying out in the wet. Wrecks always make for the lighthouse, so he s'posed those ones were drowned to death, sure enough."

"O, then it couldn't have been them I was warned of!" returned Mrs. Davids, looking as though she regretted it. "It was right over my head, and I waked up just as the thing was rushing past. You haven't heard, have you," she continued, "whether or no there was any other damage done by the gale?"

"I don't know whether you would call it damage exactly," returned Captain Ben; "but Loizah Mullers got so scared she left me and went home. She said she couldn't stay and run the chance of another of our coast blows, and off she trapsed."

Mrs. Davids sighed like November. "So you have some hard luck, as well as myself. I don't suppose you can get a housekeeper, to keep her long," said she, dismally.

"Abel Grimes tells me it is enough sight easier getting wives than housekeepers, and I'm some of a mind to try that tack," replied Captain Ben, smiling grimly.

Mrs. Davids put up her hand to feel of her back hair, and smoothed down her apron; while Miss Persis Tame blushed like a withered rose, and turned her eyes modestly out of the window.

"I am so! But the difficulty is, who will it be? There are so many to select from, it is fairly bothersome," continued Captain Ben, winking fast, and looking as though he was made of dry corn-cobs and hay.

Miss Persis Tame turned about abruptly. "The land alive!" she ejaculated, with such sudden emphasis that the dishes shook on their shelves and Captain Ben in his chair. "It makes me as mad as a March hare to hear men go on as though all they'd got to do was to throw down their handkerchers to a

woman, and, no matter who, she'd spring and up. It is always, 'Who will I marry?' and marry me?'"

"Why, there is twice the number of widders that there is of widderers here at the P'int. That was what was in my mind," said Captain Ben, in a tone of meek apology. "There is the Widow Keens, she that was Azubah Muchmore. I don't know but what she would do; Lyddy used to think everything of her, and she is a first-rate of a housekeeper."

"Perhaps so," assented Mrs. Davids, dubiously. "But she is troubled a sight with the head complaint; I suppose you know she is. That is against her."

"Yes," assented Miss Tame. "The Muchmores all have weak heads. And, too, the Widow Keens, she's had a fall lately. She was up in a chair cleaning her top buttery shelf, and somehow one of the chair legs give way-it was loose or something, I expect and down she went her whole heft. She keeps about, but she goes with two staves."

"I want to know if that is so!" said Captain Ben, his honest soul warming with sudden sympathy. "The widder has seen a sight of trouble."

"Yes, she has lived through a good deal, that woman has. I couldn't live through so much, 'pears to me; but we don't know what we can live through," rejoined Miss Tame.

Captain Ben did not reply, but his ready feet began to move to and fro restlessly; for his heart, more ready yet, had already gone out toward the unfortunate widow.

"It is so bad for a woman to be alone," said he to himself, shambling along the shingly beach a moment after. "Nobody to mend her chairs, or split up her kindlings, or do a chore for her; and she lame into the bargain! It is too bad!"

"He has steered straight for the widow Keens's, as sure as A is apple-dumpling," remarked Miss Persis, peering after him from the window.

"Well, I must admit I wouldn't have thought of Captain Ben's being en-a-mored after such a sickly piece of business. But men never know what they want. Won't you just hand me that gum-camphyer bottle, now you are up? It is on that chest of drawers behind you."

"No more they don't," returned Miss Tame, with a plaintive

cadence, taking a sniff from the camphor-bottle on the way. "However, I don't begrutch him to her-I don't know as I do. It will make her a good hum, though, if she concludes to make arrangements."

Meantime, Captain Ben Lundy's head was wellnigh at Mrs. Keens's door, for it was situated only around the first sand-hill. She lived in a little bit of a house that looked as though it had been knocked together for a crockery-crate in the first place, with two windows and a rude door thrown in as after-thoughts. In the rear of this house was another tiny building, something like a grown-up hen-coop; and this was where Mrs. Keens carried on the business bequeathed to her by her deceased husband, along with five small children, and one not so small. But, worse than that, one who was "not altogether there," as the English say.

She was about this business now, dressed in a primitive sort of bloomer, with a washtub and clothes-wringer before her, and an army of bathing-suits of every kind and color flapping wildly in the fresh sea air at one side.

From a little farther on, mingling with the sound of the beating surf, came the merry voices of bathers-boarders at the great hotels on the hill.

"Here you be! Hard at it!" said Captain Ben, puffing around the corner like a portable west wind. "I've understood you've had a hurt. Is that so?"

"Oh, no! Nothing to mention," returned Mrs. Keens, turning about a face bright and cheerful as the full moon; and throwing, as by accident, a red bathing-suit over the two broomsticks that leaned against her tub.

Unlike Mrs. Davids, Mrs. Keens neither pitied herself nor would allow anybody else to do so.

"Sho!" remarked Captain Ben, feeling defrauded. He had counted on sacrificing himself to his sympathies, but he didn't give up yet. "You must see some pretty tough times,'pears to me, with such a parcel of little ones, and only yourself to look to," said he, proceeding awkwardly enough to hang the pile of wrung-out clothes upon an empty line.

"I don't complain," returned the widow, bravely. "My children are not teusome; and Jack, why, you would be surprised to see how many things Jack can do, for all he isn't quite right."