“But, yer see, boys, he hed money, and that is about all folks wanter know when a man comes to settle down. And he bought that ’are place, and built that ’are house. He built it all sea-cap’n fashion, so’s to feel as much at home as he could. The parlor was like a ship’s cabin. The table and chairs was fastened down to the floor, and the closets was made with holes to set the casters and the decanters and bottles in, jest’s they be at sea; and there was stanchions to hold on by; and they say that blowy nights the cap’n used to fire up pretty well with his grog, till he hed about all he could carry, and then he’d set and hold on, and hear the wind blow, and kind o’ feel out to sea right there to hum. There wasn’t no Mis’ Cap’n Brown, and there didn’t seem likely to be none. And whether there ever hed been one, nobody know’d. He hed an old black Guinea nigger-woman, named Quassia, that did his work. She was shaped pretty much like one o’ these ’ere great crookneck-squashes. She wa’n’t no gret beauty, I can tell you; and she used to wear a gret red turban and a yaller short gown and red petticoat, and a gret string o’ gold beads round her neck, and gret big gold hoops in her ears, made right in the middle o’ Africa among the heathen there. For all she was black, she thought a heap o’ herself, and was consid’able sort o’ predominative over the cap’n. Lordy massy! boys, it’s alius so. Get a man and a woman together,--any sort o’ woman you’re a mind to, don’t care who ’tis,--and one way or another she gets the rule over him, and he jest has to train to her fife. Some does it one way, and some does it another; some does it by jawin’ and some does it by kissin’, and some does it by faculty and contrivance; but one way or another they allers does it. Old Cap’n Brown was a good stout, stocky kind o’ John Bull sort o’ fellow, and a good judge o’ sperits, and allers kep’ the best in them are cupboards o’ his’n; but, fust and last, things in his house went pretty much as old Quassia said.
“Folks got to kind o’ respectin’ Quassia. She come to meetin’ Sunday regular, and sot all fixed up in red and yaller and green, with glass beads and what not, lookin’ for all the world like one o’ them ugly Indian idols; but she was well-behaved as any Christian. She was a master hand at cookin’. Her bread and biscuits couldn’t be beat, and no couldn’t her pies, and there wa’n’t no such pound-cake as she made nowhere. Wal, this ’ere story I’m a goin’ to tell you was told me by Cinthy Pendleton. There ain’t a more respectable gal, old or young, than Cinthy nowheres. She lives over to Sherburne now, and I hear tell she’s sot up a manty-makin’ business; but then she used to do tailorin’ in Oldtown. She was a member o’ the church, and a good Christian as ever was. Wal, ye see, Quassia she got Cinthy to come up and spend a week to the Cap’n Brown house, a doin’ tailorin’ and a fixin’ over his close: ’twas along toward the fust o’ March. Cinthy she sot by the fire in the front parlor with her goose and her press-board and her work: for there wa’n’t no company callin’, and the snow was drifted four feet deep right across the front door; so there wa’n’t much danger o’ any body comin’ in. And the cap’n he was a perlite man to wimmen; and Cinthy she liked it jest as well not to have company, ’cause the cap’n he’d make himself entertainin’ tellin’ on her sea-stories, and all about his adventures among the Ammonites, and Perresites, and Jebusites, and all sorts o’ heathen people he’d been among.