The captain had even begun a letter to Mrs.Thomas, but laid it aside unfinished, having, since Bailey's unfortunate experience with the widow Beasley, a prejudice against experiments.
But this evening, before Mr.Tidditt called, he had been thinking that something would have to be done and done soon.

The generally shiftless condition of his domestic surroundings was getting to be unbearable.
Dust and dirt did not fit into his mental picture of the old home as it used to be and as he had tried to restore it.

There had been neither dust nor dirt in his mother's day.
He meditated and smoked for another hour.

Then, his mind being made up, he pulled down the desk lid of the old-fashioned secretary, resurrected from a pile of papers the note he had begun to Mrs.Thomas, dipped a sputtering pen into the ink bottle and proceeded to write.
His letter was a short one and rather noncommittal.

As Mrs.Thomas no doubt knew he had come back to live in his father's house at Bayport.