It costs money to
ship a heavy sea chest by express. He could have took it on his ticket
as baggage, free gratis, for nothin'!"
"I really don't see," Louise now said rather severely, "that these
facts you state--if they are facts--are any of our business, Betty.
Uncle Abram might have taken the train at some other station. He was
not sure, perhaps, whether he would join the ship Cap'n Amazon
recommended, so why should he not send his chest by express?"
"Cap'n Am'zon! Humph!" sniffed Betty. "Nobody knows whether that's
his name or not. _He_ comes here without a smitch of clo'es, as near
as I can find out."
Louise was amused; yet she was somewhat vexed as well. The curiosity,
as well as the animosity, displayed by Betty and others of the
neighbors began to appall her. If Cape Cod folk were, as her
daddy-professor had declared, "the salt of the earth," some of the salt
seemed to have lost its savor.
"We were talking about Cap'n Abe," said Louise severely. "Just as he
had his own good reasons for going away when and how he did, he
probably had his reasons for taking nobody into his confidence.
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