Salthaven

Robert Vyner comes home to a junior partnership in Vyner and Son, his father’s ship-owning firm, and promptly turns the small seaport of Salthaven into a courtship problem. The object is Joan Hartley, daughter of the chief clerk his arrival has just displaced from a comfortable office. Robert invents errands that need no running and takes up gardening with no talent for it, the better to be near her. His rival, Mr. Saunders, is digging in the same beds on the advice of Captain Trimblett, an elderly shipmaster lodging out at Tranquil Vale who matchmakes with great confidence and mixed results. Trimblett has a second case on his hands too: Peter Truefitt, engaged at fifty-two and unable to break the news to the sister he lives with.