"Paintin' the steps," said the captain serenely.
"Painting the steps!" came a scornful echo. "Hark!— They don't need it more'n the cat needs another tail!"
The captain maintained a long silence. He added a stick of maple to the parlor fire, then took a letter from his pocket, and stood reading. The single sheet appeared to require study; at last he shook his head and drew a weary breath. His next attempt at cheerfulness was plainly forced.
"Might be kind o' fun to have it, though," he remarked.
"What?" called the invalid; and after a pause, fretfully, "Have what?"
"Another tail," said the captain, in an absent voice, scanning his letter again.
A mutter of impatient words—"sense" …"second childhood" … "idiot"—came from the sickroom. The captain's great shoulders squared in a slow, patient heave, as he smoothed the page. It ran in crabbed scrawl, along guide-lines ruled in pencil:—
