About the post-office and the store--both under
the same roof--the greater number of the houses cluster, as if
they had come for their week's groceries, or were waiting for the
mail, while toward the west the dwellings become fewer and fewer,
until at last the village blends into a long stretch of sandy
coast and scrubby pine-woods. Eastward the village ends abruptly
at the foot of a windswept bluff, on which no one cares to build.
Among the last houses in the western end of the village stood
two neat, substantial dwellings, one belonging to Captain Eli
Bunker, and the other to Captain Cephas Dyer. These householders
were two very respectable retired mariners, the first a widower
about fifty, and the other a bachelor of perhaps the same age, a
few years more or less making but little difference in this
region of weather-beaten youth and seasoned age.
Each of these good captains lived alone, and each took
entire charge of his own domestic affairs, not because he was
poor, but because it pleased him to do so. When Captain Eli
retired from the sea he was the owner of a good vessel, which he
sold at a fair profit; and Captain Cephas had made money in many
a voyage before he built his house in Sponkannis and settled
there.
When Captain Eli's wife was living she was his household
manager. But Captain Cephas had never had a woman in his house,
except during the first few months of his occupancy, when certain
female neighbors came in occasionally to attend to little matters
of cleaning which, according to popular notions, properly belong
to the sphere of woman.
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