What a day it was! From beneath the lattice that arched the entrance to the cottage and supported a rambler rose bursting into bloom she could see the bay, blue as a sapphire and scintillating with ripples of gold. A weather-stained scow was making its way out of the channel, and above it circled a screaming cloud of tern that had been routed from their nesting place on the margin of white sand that bordered the path to the open sea. Mingling with their cries and the rhythmic pulsing of the surf, the clear voices of the men aboard the tug reached her ear. It was flood tide, and the water that surged over the bar stained its reach of pearl to jade green and feathered its edges with snowy foam.

It was no weather to be cooped up indoors doing housework.

Idly Celestina loitered, drinking in the beauty of the scene. The languor of summer breathed in the gentle, pine-scented air and rose from the warm earth of the garden. Voluptuously she stretched her arms and yawned; then straightening to her customary erectness she went into the house, being probably the only woman in Wilton who that morning had abandoned her domestic duties long enough to take into her soul the benediction of the world about her.

It was such detours from the path of duty that had helped to win for Celestina her pseudonym of "easy goin'." Perhaps this very vagrant quality in her nature was what had aided her in so thoroughly sympathizing with Willie in his sporadic outbursts of industry. For Willie was not a methodical worker any more than was Celestina. There were intervals, it is true, when he toiled steadily, feverishly, all day long and far into the night, forgetting either to eat or sleep; then would follow days together when he simply pottered about, or did even worse and remained idle in the sunny shelter of the grape arbor. Here on a rude bench constructed from a discarded four-poster he would often sit for hours, smoking his corncob pipe and softly humming to himself; but when genius went awry and his courage was at a low ebb, strings, wires, and pulleys having failed to work, he would neither smoke nor sing, but with eyes on the distance would sit immovable as if carved from stone.

To-day, however, was not one of his "settin' days." He had been up since dawn, had eaten no breakfast, and had even been too deeply preoccupied to fill and light the blackened pipe that dangled limply from his lips. Yet despite all his coaxings and cajolings, the iron pump opposite the shed door still refused to do anything but emit from its throat a few dry, profitless gurgles that seemed forced upward from the very caverns of the earth. Both Willie and Jan Eldredge looked tired and disheartened, and when Zenas Henry approached stood at bay, surrounded by a litter of wrenches, hammers, and scattered fragments of metal.

"What's the matter with your pump?" called Zenas Henry as he strolled toward them.

Willie turned on the intruder, a smile half humorous, half contemptuous, flitting across his face.

"If I could answer that question, Zenas Henry, I wouldn't be standin' here gapin' at the darn thing," was his laconic response. "It's just took a spell, that's all there is to it. It was right enough last night."

"There's no accountin' fur machinery," Zenas Henry remarked.

The observation struck a note of pessimism that rasped Willie's patience.

"There's got to be some accountin' fur this claptraption," retorted he, a suggestion of crispness in his tone. "I shan't stir foot from this spot 'til I find out what's set it to actin' up this way."

Zenas Henry laughed at the declaration of war echoing in the words.

"I've given up flyin' all to flinders over everything that gets out of gear," he drawled. "If I was to be goin' up higher'n a kite every time, fur instance, that the seaweed ketches round the propeller of my motor-boat, I'd be in mid-air most of the time."

Willie raised his head with the alertness of a hunter on the scent.

"Seaweed?" he repeated vaguely.

Zenas Henry nodded.

"Ain't there no scheme fur doin' away with a nuisance like that?"

"I ain't discovered any," came dryly from Zenas Henry. "We've all had a whack at the thing—Captain Jonas, Captain Phineas, Captain Benjamin, an' me—an' we're back where we were at the beginnin'. Nothin' we've tried has worked."

"U—m!" ruminated Willie, stroking his chin.

"I've about come to the conclusion we ain't much good as mechanics, anyhow," went on Zenas Henry with a short laugh. "In fact, Abbie's of the mind that we get things out of order faster'n we put 'em in."

Janoah Eldridge rubbed his grimy hands and chuckled, but Willie deigned no reply.

"This propeller now," he presently began as if there had been no digression from the topic, "I s'pose the kelp gets tangled around the blades."

"That's it," assented Zenas Henry.

"An' that holds up your engine."

"Uh-huh," Zenas Henry agreed with the same bored inflection.

"An' that leaves you rockin' like a baby in a cradle 'til you can get the wheel free."

"Uh-huh."

There was a moment of silence.

"It can't be much of a stunt tossin' round in a choppy sea like as if you was a chip on the waves," commented Jan Eldridge with a commiserating grin.

"'Tain't."

"What do you do when you find yourself in a fix like that?" he inquired with interest.

"Do?" reiterated Zenas Henry. "What a question! What would any fool do? There ain't no choice left you but to hang head downwards over the stern of the boat an' claw the eel-grass off the wheel with a gaff."

Janoah burst into a derisive shout.

"Oh, my eye!" he exclaimed. "So that's the way you do it, eh? Don't talk to me of motor-boats! A good old-fashioned skiff with a leg-o'-mutton sail in her is good enough fur me. How 'bout you, Willie?"

No reply was forthcoming.

"I say, Willie," repeated Jan in a louder tone, "that these new fangled motor-boats, with their noise an' their smell, ain't no match fur a good clean dory."

Willie came out of his trance just in time to catch the final clause of the sentence.

"Who ever saw a clean dory in Wilton?"

Jan faltered, abashed.

"Well, anyhow," he persisted, "in my opinion, clean or not, a straight wholesome smell of cod ain't to be mentioned in the same breath with a mix-up of stale fish an' gasoline."

Zenas Henry bridled.

"You don't buy a motor-boat to smell of," he said tartly. "You seem to forget it's to sail in."

"But if the eel-grass holds you hard an' fast in one spot most of the time I don't see's you do much sailin'," taunted Jan. "'Pears to me you're just adrift an' goin' nowheres a good part of the time."

"No, I ain't" snapped Zenas Henry with rising ire. "It's only sometimes the thing gets spleeny. Most always—"

"Then it warn't you I saw pitchin' in the channel fur a couple of hours yesterday afternoon," commented the tormentor.

"No. That is—let me think a minute," meditated Zenas Henry. "Yes, I guess it was me, after all," he admitted with reluctant honesty. "The tide brought in quite a batch of weeds, an' they washed up round the boat before I could get out of their way; quicker'n a wink we were neatly snarled up in 'em. Captain Jonas an' Captain Phineas tried to get clear, but somehow they ain't got much knack fur freein' the wheel. So we did linger in the channel a spell."

"Linger!" put in Willie. "I shouldn't call bobbin' up an' down in one spot fur two mortal hours lingerin'. I'd call it nearer bein' hypnotized."

Zenas Henry was now plainly out of temper. He was well aware that Wilton had scant sympathy with his motor-boat, the first innovation of the sort that had been perpetrated in the town.

"Hadn't you better turn your attention from motor-boats to pumps?" he asked testily.

"I reckon I had, Zenas Henry," Willie answered, unruffled by the thrust. "As you say, if you chose to wind yourself up in the eel-grass it's none of my affair."

Turning his back on