’most anywheres along that beach and the tide was out fur enough for me to get a bucket-full of small ones in no time. I fetched ’em up to the house and set down on the back step to open 'em. 

The Major and Shelton were watching me all this time and they looked interested—that is, the Congressman did, and Clark was doin’ his best not to. Pretty soon Shelton walks over and asks a question. "What are you doin’ with those things, Cap’n Snow?" says he, referrin’ to the clams. 

"Oh," says I, cheerful, "I’m figgerin’ on makin’ a chowder, if nothin’ busts." 

"A chowder," he says, sort of eager. "A clam chowder? Can you?" 

"I can. That is, I have made a good many and I cal’late to make this one, unless I’m struck with paralysis." 

"A clam chowder!" he says again, sort of eager but reverent. "By George! that’s good—er—for you, I mean." 

"I hope ’twill be good for you, too," says I. "I’m sorry that Major Clark’s dyspepsy’s such that 'twon’t be good for him, but that’s his misfortune, not my fault." 

Shelton looked sort of queer and went away to jine his chum. The two of ’em did consider’ble talkin’ and the Major appeared to be deliverin’ a sermon, at least I heard a good many orthodox words in the course of it. I finished my clam openin’, went in and got my cookin’ started. The flour and the butter made me think that some hot spider-bread would go good with the chowder and I started to mix a batch. Then I got another idea. 

'Twas too late for huckleberries and such, but out back of the shed, beyond the pines, was a little swampy place. I took a tin pail, went out there and filled the pail with early wild cranberries in five minutes. As I was comin’ back I noticed an onion patch in the garden. A chowder without onions is like a camp-meetin’ Sunday without your best girl—pretty flat and impersonal. Most of those left in the patch had gone to seed, but I got a half dozen. 

After a short spell that kitchen begun to get fragrant and folksy, as you might say. The coffee was b’ilin’, the chowder was about ready, there was a pan of red-hot spider-bread on the back of the stove and a cranberry shortcake—’twould have been better with cream, but to skim condensed milk is more exercise than profit—in the oven. I’d opened all the windows and the door, so the smell drifted out and livened up the surroundin’ scenery. Clark and Shelton were settin’ on 

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