← catalogue

Shavings: A Novel

by Joseph Crosby Lincoln · English · Gutenberg #2452 · 636,577 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Shavings: A Novel
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Shavings: A Novel

Author: Joseph Crosby Lincoln


        
Release date: August 28, 2004 [eBook #2452]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2452

Credits: Produced by Donald Lainson. HTML version by Ronald Holder, Rick Niles


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHAVINGS: A NOVEL ***




Produced by Donald Lainson. HTML version by Ronald Holder, Rick Niles




"SHAVINGS"

by Joseph C. Lincoln




CHAPTER I


Mr. Gabriel Bearse was happy.  The prominence given to this
statement is not meant to imply that Gabriel was, as a general
rule, unhappy.  Quite the contrary; Mr. Bearse's disposition was a
cheerful one and the cares of this world had not rounded his plump
shoulders.  But Captain Sam Hunniwell had once said, and Orham
public opinion agreed with him, that Gabe Bearse was never happy
unless he was talking.  Now here was Gabriel, not talking, but
walking briskly along the Orham main road, and yet so distinctly
happy that the happiness showed in his gait, his manner and in the
excited glitter of his watery eye.  Truly an astonishing condition
of things and tending, one would say, to prove that Captain Sam's
didactic remark, so long locally accepted and quoted as gospel
truth, had a flaw in its wisdom somewhere.

And yet the flaw was but a small one and the explanation simple.
Gabriel was not talking at that moment, it is true, but he was
expecting to talk very soon, to talk a great deal.  He had just
come into possession of an item of news which would furnish his
vocal machine gun with ammunition sufficient for wordy volley after
volley.  Gabriel was joyfully contemplating peppering all Orham
with that bit of gossip.  No wonder he was happy; no wonder he
hurried along the main road like a battery galloping eagerly into
action.

He was on his way to the post office, always the gossip-
sharpshooters' first line trench, when, turning the corner where
Nickerson's Lane enters the main road, he saw something which
caused him to pause, alter his battle-mad walk to a slower one,
then to a saunter, and finally to a halt altogether.  This
something was a toy windmill fastened to a white picket fence and
clattering cheerfully as its arms spun in the brisk, pleasant
summer breeze.

The little windmill was one of a dozen, all fastened to the top
rail of that fence and all whirling.  Behind the fence, on posts,
were other and larger windmills; behind these, others larger still.
Interspersed among the mills were little wooden sailors swinging
paddles; weather vanes in the shapes of wooden whales, swordfish,
ducks, crows, seagulls; circles of little wooden profile sailboats,
made to chase each other 'round and 'round a central post.  All of
these were painted in gay colors, or in black and white, and all
were in motion.  The mills spun, the boats sailed 'round and
'round, the sailors did vigorous Indian club exercises with their
paddles.  The grass in the little yard and the tall hollyhocks in
the beds at its sides swayed and bowed and nodded.  Beyond, seen
over the edge of the bluff and stretching to the horizon, the blue
and white waves leaped and danced and sparkled.  As a picture of
movement and color and joyful bustle the scene was inspiring;
children, viewing it for the first time, almost invariably danced
and waved their arms in sympathy.  Summer visitors, loitering idly
by, suddenly became fired with the desire to set about doing
something, something energetic.

Gabriel Bearse was not a summer visitor, but a "native," that is,
an all-the-year-round resident of Orham, and, as his fellow natives
would have cheerfully testified, it took much more than windmills
to arouse HIS energy.  He had not halted to look at the mills.  He
had stopped because the sight of them recalled to his mind the fact
that the maker of these mills was a friend of one of the men most
concerned in his brand new news item.  It was possible, barely
possible, that here was an opportunity to learn just a little more,
to obtain an additional clip of cartridges before opening fire on
the crowd at the post office.  Certainly it might be worth trying,
particularly as the afternoon mail would not be ready for another
hour, even if the train was on time.

At the rear of the little yard, and situated perhaps fifty feet
from the edge of the high sand bluff leading down precipitously to
the beach, was a shingled building, whitewashed, and with a door,
painted green, and four windows on the side toward the road.  A
clamshell walk led from the gate to the doors.  Over the door was a
sign, very neatly lettered, as follows: "J. EDGAR W. WINSLOW.
MILLS FOR SALE."  In the lot next to that, where the little shop
stood, was a small, old-fashioned story-and-a-half Cape Cod house,
painted a speckless white, with vivid green blinds.  The blinds
were shut now, for the house was unoccupied.  House and shop and
both yards were neat and clean as a New England kitchen.

Gabriel Bearse, after a moment's reflection, opened the gate in the
picket fence and walked along the clamshell walk to the shop door.
Opening the door, he entered, a bell attached to the top of the
door jingling as he did so.  The room which Mr. Bearse entered was
crowded from floor to ceiling, save for a narrow passage, with hit-
or-miss stacks of the wooden toys evidently finished and ready for
shipment.  Threading his way between the heaps of sailors, mills,
vanes and boats, Gabriel came to a door evidently leading to
another room.  There was a sign tacked to this door, which read,
"PRIVATE," but Mr. Bearse did not let that trouble him.  He pushed
the door open.

The second room was evidently the work-shop.  There were a circular
saw and a turning lathe, with the needful belts, and a small
electric motor to furnish power.  Also there were piles of lumber,
shelves of paint pots and brushes, many shavings and much sawdust.
And, standing beside a dilapidated chair from which he had
evidently risen at the sound of the door bell, with a dripping
paint brush in one hand and a wooden sailor in the other, there was
a man.  When he saw who his visitor was he sat down again.

He was a tall man and, as the chair he sat in was a low one and the
heels of his large shoes were hooked over its lower rounds, his
knees and shoulders were close together when he bent over his work.
He was a thin man and his trousers hung about his ankles like a
loose sail on a yard.  His hair was thick and plentiful, a brown
sprinkled with gray at the temples.  His face was smooth-shaven,
with wrinkles at the corners of the eyes and mouth.  He wore
spectacles perched at the very end of his nose, and looked down
over rather than through them as he dipped the brush in the can of
paint beside him on the floor.

"Hello, Shavin's," hailed Mr. Bearse, blithely.

The tall man applied the brush to the nude pine legs of the wooden
sailor.  One side of those legs were modestly covered forthwith by
a pair of sky-blue breeches.  The artist regarded the breeches
dreamily.  Then he said:

"Hello, Gab."

His voice was a drawl, very deliberate, very quiet, rather soft and
pleasant.  But Mr. Bearse was not pleased.

"Don't call me that," he snapped.

The brush was again dipped in the paint pot and the rear elevation
of the pine sailor became sky-blue like the other side of him.
Then the tall man asked:

"Call you what?"

"Gab.  That's a divil of a name to call anybody.  Last time I was
in here Cap'n Sam Hunniwell heard you call me that and I cal'lated
he'd die laughin'.  Seemed to cal'late there was somethin'
specially dum funny about it.  I don't call it funny.  Say,
speakin' of Cap'n Sam, have you heard the news about him?"

He asked the question eagerly, because it was a part of what he
came there to ask.  His eagerness was not contagious.  The man on
the chair put down the blue brush, took up a fresh one, dipped it
in another paint pot and proceeded to garb another section of his
sailor in a spotless white shirt.  Mr. Bearse grew impatient.

"Have you heard the news about Cap'n Sam?" he repeated.  "Say,
Shavin's, have you?"

The painting went serenely on, but the painter answered.

"Well, Gab," he drawled, "I--"

"Don't call me Gab, I tell you.  'Tain't my name."

"Sho!  Ain't it?"

"You know well enough 'tain't.  My name's Gabriel.  Call me that--
or Gabe.  I don't like to be called out of my name.  But say,
Shavin's--"

"Well, Gab, say it."

"Look here, Jed Winslow, do you hear me?"

"Yes, hear you fust rate, Gabe--now."

Mr. Bearse's understanding was not easily penetrated; a hint
usually glanced from it like a piece of soap from a slanting cellar
door, but this time the speaker's tone and the emphasis on the
"now" made a slight dent.  Gabriel's eyes opened.

"Huh?" he grunted in astonishment, as if the possibility had never
until that moment occured to him.  "Why, say, Jed, don't you like
to be called 'Shavin's'?"

No answer.  A blue collar was added to the white shirt of the
sailor.

"Don't you, Jed?" repeated Gabe.

Mr. Winslow's gaze was lifted from his work and his eyes turned
momentarily in the direction of his caller.

"Gabe," he drawled, "did you ever hear about the feller that was
born stone deef and the Doxology?"

"Eh?  What--  No, I never heard it."

The eyes turned back to the wooden sailor and Mr. Winslow chose
another brush.

"Neither did he," he observed, and began to whistle what sounded
like a dirge.

Mr. Bearse stared at him for at least a minute.  Then he shook his
head.

"Well, by Judas!" he exclaimed.  "I--I--I snum if I don't think you
BE crazy, same as some folks say you are!  What in the nation has--
has your name got to do with a deef man and the Doxology?"

"Eh? . . .  Oh, nothin'."

"Then what did you bust loose and tell me about 'em for?  They
wan't any of MY business, was they?"

"No-o.  That's why I spoke of 'em."

"What?  You spoke of 'em 'cause they wan't any of my business?"

"Ye-es . . . I thought maybe--"  He paused, turned the sailor over
in his hand, whistled a few more bars of the dirge and then
finished his sentence.  "I thought maybe you might like to ask
questions about 'em," he concluded.

Mr. Bearse stared suspiciously at his companion, swallowed several
times and, between swallows, started to speak, but each time gave
it up.  Mr. Winslow appeared quite oblivious of the stare.  His
brushes gave the wooden sailor black hair, eyes and brows, and an
engaging crimson smile.  When Gabriel did speak it was not
concerning names.

"Say, Jed," he cried, "HAVE you heard about Cap'n Sam Hunniwell?
'Bout his bein' put on the Exemption Board?"

His companion went on whistling, but he nodded.

"Um-hm," grunted Gabe, grudgingly.  "I presumed likely you would
hear; he told you himself, I cal'late.  Seth Baker said he see him
come in here night afore last and I suppose that's when he told
you.  Didn't say nothin' else, did he?" he added, eagerly.

Again Mr. Winslow nodded.

"Did he?  Did he?  What else did he say?"

The tall man seemed to consider.

"Well," he drawled, at length, "seems to me I remember him sayin'--
sayin'--"

"Yes?  Yes?  What did he say?"

"Well--er--seems to me he said good night just afore he went home."

The disappointed Gabriel lost patience.  "Oh, you DIVILISH fool
head!" he exclaimed, disgustedly.  "Look here, Jed Winslow, talk
sense for a minute, if you can, won't you?  I've just heard
somethin' that's goin' to make a big row in this town and it's got
to do with Cap'n Sam's bein' app'inted on that Gov'ment Exemption
Board for drafted folks.  If you'd heard Phineas Babbitt goin' on
the way I done, I guess likely you'd have been interested."

It was plain that, for the first time since his caller intruded
upon his privacy, the maker of mills and sailors WAS interested.
He did not put down his brush, but he turned his head to look and
listen.  Bearse, pleased with this symptom of attention, went on.

"I was just into Phineas' store," he said, "and he was there, so I
had a chance to talk with him.  He's been up to Boston and never
got back till this afternoon, so I cal'lated maybe he hadn't heard
about Cap'n Sam's app'intment.  And I knew, too, how he does hate
the Cap'n; ain't had nothin' but cuss words and such names for him
ever since Sam done him out of gettin' the postmaster's job.
Pretty mean trick, some folks call it, but--"

Mr. Winslow interrupted; his drawl was a trifle less evident.

"Congressman Taylor asked Sam for the truth regardin' Phineas and a
certain matter," he said.  "Sam told the truth, that's all."

"Well, maybe that's so, but does tellin' the truth about folks make
'em love you?  I don't know as it does."

Winslow appeared to meditate.

"No-o," he observed, thoughtfully, "I don't suppose you do."

"No, I . . . Eh?  What do you mean by that?  Look here, Jed
Winslow, if--"

Jed held up a big hand.  "There, there, Gabe," he suggested,
mildly.  "Let's hear about Sam and Phin Babbitt.  What was Phineas
goin' on about when you was in his store?"

Mr. Bearse forgot personal grievance in his eagerness to tell the
story.

"Why," he began, "you see, 'twas like this: 'Twas all on account of
Leander.  Leander's been drafted.  You know that, of course?"

Jed nodded.  Leander Babbitt was the son of Phineas Babbitt,
Orham's dealer in hardware and lumber and a leading political boss.
Between Babbitt, Senior, and Captain Sam Hunniwell, the latter
President of the Orham National Bank and also a vigorous
politician, the dislike had always been strong.  Since the affair
of the postmastership it had become, on Babbitt's part, an intense
hatred.  During the week just past young Babbitt's name had been
drawn as one of Orham's quota for the new National Army.  The
village was still talking of the draft when the news came that
Captain Hunniwell had been selected as a member of the Exemption
Board for the district, the Board which was to hold its sessions at
Ostable and listen to the pleas of those desiring to be excused
from service.  Not all of Orham knew this as yet.  Jed Winslow had
heard it, from Captain Sam himself.  Gabe Bearse had heard it
because he made it his business to hear everything, whether it
concerned him or not--preferably not.

The war had come to Orham with the unbelievable unreality with
which it had come to the great mass of the country.  Ever since the
news of the descent of von Kluck's hordes upon devoted Belgium, in
the fall of 1914, the death grapple in Europe had, of course, been
the principal topic of discussion at the post office and around the
whist tables at the Setuckit Club, where ancient and retired
mariners met and pounded their own and each other's knees while
they expressed sulphurous opinions concerning the attitude of the
President and Congress.  These opinions were, as a usual thing,
guided by the fact of their holders' allegiance to one or the other
of the great political parties.  Captain Sam Hunniwell, a lifelong
and ardent Republican, with a temper as peppery as the chile con
carne upon which, when commander of a steam freighter trading with
Mexico, he had feasted so often--Captain Sam would have hoisted the
Stars and Stripes to the masthead the day the Lusitania sank and
put to sea in a dory, if need be, and armed only with a shotgun, to
avenge that outrage.  To hear Captain Sam orate concerning the
neglect of duty of which he considered the United States government
guilty was an experience, interesting or shocking, according to the
drift of one's political or religious creed.

Phineas Babbitt, on the contrary, had at first upheld the policy of
strict neutrality.  "What business is it of ours if them furriners
take to slaughterin' themselves?" he wanted to know.  He hotly
declared the Lusitania victims plaguey fools who knew what they
were riskin' when they sailed and had got just what was comin' to
'em--that is, he was proclaiming it when Captain Sam heard him;
after that the captain issued a proclamation of his own and was
proceeding to follow words with deeds.  The affair ended by mutual
acquaintances leading Captain Sam from the Babbitt Hardware
Company's store, the captain rumbling like a volcano and, to follow
up the simile, still emitting verbal brimstone and molten lava,
while Mr. Babbitt, entrenched behind his counter, with a monkey
wrench in his hand, dared his adversary to lay hands on a law-
abiding citizen.

When the Kaiser and von Tirpitz issued their final ultimatum,
however, and the President called America to arms, Phineas, in
company with others of his breed, appeared to have experienced a
change of heart.  At all events he kept his anti-war opinions to
himself and, except that his hatred for the captain was more
virulent than ever since the affair of the postmastership, he found
little fault with the war preparations in the village, the
organizing of a Home Guard, the raising of funds for a new flag and
flagpole and the recruiting meeting in the town hall.

At that meeting a half dozen of Orham's best young fellows had
expressed their desire to fight for Uncle Sam.  The Orham band--
minus its first cornet, who was himself one of the volunteers--had
serenaded them at the railway station and the Congregational
minister and Lawyer Poundberry of the Board of Selectmen had made
speeches.  Captain Sam Hunniwell, being called upon to say a few
words, had said a few--perhaps, considering the feelings of the
minister and the feminine members of his flock present, it is well
they were not more numerous.

"Good luck to you, boys," said Captain Sam.  "I wish to the
Almighty I was young enough to go with you.  And say, if you see
that Kaiser anywheres afloat or ashore give him particular merry
hell for me, will you?"

And then, a little later, came the news that the conscription bill
had become a law and that the draft was to be a reality.  And with
that news the war itself became a little more real.  And, suddenly,
Phineas Babbitt, realizing that his son, Leander, was twenty-five
years old and, therefore, within the limits of the draft age,
became once more an ardent, if a little more careful, conscientious
objector.

He discovered that the war was a profiteering enterprise engineered
by capital and greed for the exploiting of labor and the common
people.  Whenever he thought it safe to do so he aired these
opinions and, as there were a few of what Captain Hunniwell called
"yellow-backed swabs" in Orham or its neighborhood, he occasionally
had sympathetic listeners.  Phineas, it is only fair to say, had
never heretofore shown any marked interest in labor except to get
as much of it for as little money as possible.  If his son,
Leander, shared his father's opinions, he did not express them.  In
fact he said very little, working steadily in the store all day and
appearing to have something on his mind.  Most people liked
Leander.

Then came the draft and Leander was drafted.  He said very little
about it, but his father said a great deal.  The boy should not go;
the affair was an outrage.  Leander wasn't strong, anyway; besides,
wasn't he his father's principal support?  He couldn't be spared,
that's all there was about it, and he shouldn't be.  There was
going to be an Exemption Board, wasn't there?  All right--just wait
until he, Phineas, went before that board.  He hadn't been in
politics all these years for nothin'.  Sam Hunniwell hadn't got all
the pull there was in the county.

And then Captain Sam was appointed a member of that very board.  He
had dropped in at the windmill shop the very evening when he
decided to accept and told Jed Winslow all about it.  There never
were two people more unlike than Sam Hunniwell and Jed Winslow, but
they had been fast friends since boyhood.  Jed knew that Phineas
Babbitt had been on a trip to Boston and, therefore, had not heard
of the captain's appointment.  Now, according to Gabriel Bearse, he
had returned and had heard of it, and according to Bearse's excited
statement he had "gone on" about it.

"Leander's been drafted," repeated Gabe.  "And that was bad enough
for Phineas, he bein' down on the war, anyhow.  But he's been
cal'latin', I cal'late, to use his political pull to get Leander
exempted off.  Nine boards out of ten, if they'd had a man from
Orham on 'em, would have gone by what that man said in a case like
Leander's.  And Phineas, he was movin' heavens and earth to get one
of his friends put on as the right Orham man.  And now--NOW, by
godfreys domino, they've put on the ONE man that Phin can't
influence, that hates Phin worse than a cat hates a swim.  Oh, you
ought to heard Phineas go on when I told him.  He'd just got off
the train, as you might say, so nobody'd had a chance to tell him.
I was the fust one, you see.  So--"

"Was Leander there?"

"No, he wan't.  There wan't nobody in the store but Susie Ellis,
that keeps the books there now, and Abner Burgess's boy, that runs
errands and waits on folks when everybody else is busy.  That was a
funny thing, too--that about Leander's not bein' there.  Susie said
she hadn't seen him since just after breakfast time, half past
seven o'clock or so, and when she telephoned the Babbitt house it
turned out he hadn't been there, neither.  Had his breakfast and
went out, he did, and that's all his step-ma knew about him.  But
Phineas, he. . . .  Eh?  Ain't that the bell?  Customer, I presume
likely.  Want me to go see who 'tis, Shavin's--Jed, I mean?"


CHAPTER II


But the person who had entered the outer shop saved Mr. Bearse the
trouble.  He, too, disregarded the "Private" sign on the door of
the inner room.  Before Gabriel could reach it that door was thrown
open and the newcomer entered.  He was a big man, gray-mustached,
with hair a grizzled red, and with blue eyes set in a florid face.
The hand which had opened the door looked big and powerful enough
to have knocked a hole in it, if such a procedure had been
necessary.  And its owner looked quite capable of doing it, if he
deemed it necessary, in fact he looked as if he would rather have
enjoyed it.  He swept into the room like a northwest breeze, and
two bundles of wooden strips, cut to the size of mill arms,
clattered to the floor as he did so.

"Hello, Jed!" he hailed, in a voice which measured up to the rest
of him.  Then, noticing Mr. Bearse for the first time, he added:
"Hello, Gabe, what are you doin' here?"

Gabriel hastened to explain.  His habitual desire to please and
humor each person he met--each person of consequence, that is; very
poor people or village eccentrics like Jed Winslow did not much
matter, of course--was in this case augmented by a particular
desire to please Captain Sam Hunniwell.  Captain Sam, being one of
Orham's most influential men, was not, in Mr. Bearse's estimation,
at all the sort of person whom it was advisable to displease.  He
might--and did--talk disparagingly of him behind his back, as he
did behind the back of every one else, but he smiled humbly and
spoke softly in his presence.  The consciousness of having just
been talking of him, however, of having visited that shop for the
express purpose of talking about him, made the explaining process a
trifle embarrassing.

"Oh, howd'ye do, howd'ye do, Cap'n Hunniwell?" stammered Gabriel.
"Nice day, ain't it, sir?  Yes, sir, 'tis a nice day.  I was just--
er--that is, I just run in to see Shavin's here; to make a little
call, you know.  We was just settin' here talkin', wan't we,
Shavin's--Jed, I mean?"

Mr. Winslow stood his completed sailor man in a rack to dry.

"Ya-as," he drawled, solemnly, "that was about it, I guess.  Have a
chair, Sam, won't you? . . .  That was about it, we was sittin' and
talkin' . . .  I was sittin' and Gab--Gabe, I mean--was talkin'."

Captain Sam chuckled.  As Winslow and Mr. Bearse were occupying the
only two chairs in the room he accepted the invitation in its broad
sense and, turning an empty box upon end, sat down on that.

"So Gabe was talkin', eh?" he repeated.  "Well, that's singular.
How'd that happen, Gabe?"

Mr. Bearse looked rather foolish.  "Oh, we was just--just talkin'
about--er--this and that," he said, hastily.  "Just this and that,
nothin' partic'lar.  Cal'late I'll have to be runnin' along now,
Jed."

Jed Winslow selected a new and unpainted sailor from the pile near
him.  He eyed it dreamily.

"Well, Gabe," he observed, "if you must, you must, I suppose.
Seems to me you're leavin' at the most interestin' time.  We've
been talkin' about this and that, same as you say, and now you're
leavin' just as 'this' has got here.  Maybe if you wait--wait--a--"

The sentence died away into nothingness.  He had taken up the brush
which he used for the blue paint.  There was a loose bristle in it.
He pulled this out and one or two more came with it.

"Hu-um!" he mused, absently.

Captain Sam was tired of waiting.

"Come, finish her out, Jed--finish her out," he urged.  "What's the
rest of it?"

"I cal'late I'll run along now," said Mr. Bearse, nervously moving
toward the door.

"Hold on a minute," commanded the captain.  "Jed hadn't finished
what he was sayin' to you.  He generally talks like one of those
continued-in-our-next yarns in the magazines.  Give us the
September installment, Jed--come."

Mr. Winslow smiled, a slow, whimsical smile that lit up his lean,
brown face and then passed away as slowly as it had come, lingering
for an instant at one corner of his mouth.

"Oh, I was just tellin' Gabe that the 'this' he was talkin' about
was here now," he said, "and that maybe if he waited a space the
'that' would come, too.  Seems to me if I was you, Gabe, I'd--"

But Mr. Bearse had gone.

Captain Hunniwell snorted.  "Humph!" he said; "I judge likely I'm
the 'this' you and that gas bag have been talkin' about.  Who's the
'that'?"

His companion was gazing absently at the door through which Gabriel
had made his hurried departure.  After gazing at it in silence for
a moment, he rose from the chair, unfolding section by section like
a pocket rule, and, crossing the room, opened the door and took
from its other side the lettered sign "Private" which had hung
there.  Then, with tacks and a hammer, he proceeded to affix the
placard to the inner side of the door, that facing the room where
he and Captain Sam were.  The captain regarded this operation with
huge astonishment.

"Gracious king!" he exclaimed.  "What in thunder are you doin' that
for?  This is the private room in here, ain't it?"

Mr. Winslow, returning to his chair, nodded.

"Ya-as," he admitted, "that's why I'm puttin' the 'Private' sign on
this side of the door."

"Yes, but--  Why, confound it, anybody who sees it there will think
it is the other room that's private, won't they?"

Jed nodded.  "I'm in hopes they will," he said.

"You're in hopes they will!  Why?"

"'Cause if Gabe Bearse thinks that room's private and that he don't
belong there he'll be sartin sure to go there; then maybe he'll
give me a rest."

He selected a new brush and went on with his painting.  Captain
Hunniwell laughed heartily.  Then, all at once, his laughter ceased
and his face assumed a troubled expression.

"Jed," he ordered, "leave off daubin' at that wooden doll baby for
a minute, will you?  I want to talk to you.  I want to ask you what
you think I'd better do.  I know what Gab Bearse--  Much obliged
for that name, Jed; 'Gab's' the best name on earth for that
critter--I know what Gab came in here to talk about.  'Twas about
me and my bein' put on the Exemption Board, of course.  That was
it, wan't it?  Um-hm, I knew 'twas.  I was the 'this' in his 'this
and that.'  And Phin Babbitt was the 'that'; I'll bet on it.  Am I
right?"

Winslow nodded.

"Sure thing!" continued the captain.  "Well, there 'tis.  What am I
goin' to do?  When they wanted me to take the job in the first
place I kind of hesitated.  You know I did.  'Twas bound to be one
of those thankless sort of jobs that get a feller into trouble,
bound to be.  And yet--and yet--well, SOMEBODY has to take those
kind of jobs.  And a man hadn't ought to talk all the time about
how he wishes he could do somethin' to help his country, and then
lay down and quit on the first chance that comes his way, just
'cause that chance ain't--ain't eatin' up all the pie in the state
so the Germans can't get it, or somethin' like that.  Ain't that
so?"

"Seems so to me, Sam."

"Yes.  Well, so I said I'd take my Exemption Board job.  But when I
said I'd accept it, it didn't run across my mind that Leander
Babbitt was liable to be drafted, first crack out of the box.  Now
he IS drafted, and, if I know Phin Babbitt, the old man will be
down on us Board fellers the first thing to get the boy exempted.
AND, I bein' on the Board and hailin' from his own town, Orham
here, it would naturally be to me that he'd come first.  Eh?
That's what he'd naturally do, ain't it?"

His friend nodded once more.  Captain Sam lost patience.

"Gracious king!" he exclaimed.  "Jed Winslow, for thunder sakes say
somethin'!  Don't set there bobbin' your head up and down like one
of those wound-up images in a Christmas-time store window.  I ask
you if that ain't what Phin Babbitt would do?  What would you do if
you was in his shoes?"

Jed rubbed his chin.

"Step out of 'em, I guess likely," he drawled.

"Humph!  Yes--well, any self-respectin' person would do that, even
if he had to go barefooted the rest of his life.  But, what I'm
gettin' at is this: Babbitt'll come to me orderin' me to get
Leander exempted.  And what'll I say?"

Winslow turned and looked at him.

"Seems to me, Sam," he answered, "that if that thing happened
there'd be only one thing to say.  You'd just have to tell him that
you'd listen to his reasons and if they seemed good enough to let
the boy off, for your part you'd vote to let him off.  If they
didn't seem good enough--why--"

"Well--what?"

"Why, then Leander'd have to go to war and his dad could go to--"

"Eh?  Go on.  I want to hear you say it.  Where could he go?"

Jed wiped the surplus paint from his brush on the edge of the can.

"To sellin' hardware," he concluded, gravely, but with a twinkle in
his eye.

Captain Sam sniffed, perhaps in disappointment.  "His hardware'd
melt where I'D tell him to go," he declared.  "What you say is all
right, Ed.  It's an easy doctrine to preach, but, like lots of
other preacher's doctrines, it's hard to live up to.  Phin loves me
like a step-brother and I love him the same way.  Well, now here he
comes to ask me to do a favor for him.  If I don't do it, he'll
say, and the whole town'll say, that I'm ventin' my spite on him,
keepin' on with my grudge, bein' nasty, cussed, everything that's
mean.  If I do do it, if I let Leander off, all hands'll say that I
did it because I was afraid of Phineas and the rest would say the
other thing.  It puts me in a devil of a position.  It's all right
to say, 'Do your duty,' 'Stand up in your shoes,' 'Do what you
think's right, never mind whose boy 'tis,' and all that, but I
wouldn't have that old skunk goin' around sayin' I took advantage
of my position to rob him of his son for anything on earth.  I
despise him too much to give him that much satisfaction.  And yet
there I am, and the case'll come up afore me.  What'll I do, Jed?
Shall I resign?  Help me out.  I'm about crazy.  Shall I heave up
the job?  Shall I quit?"

Jed put down the brush and the sailor man.  He rubbed his chin.

"No-o," he drawled, after a moment.

"Oh, I shan't, eh?  Why not?"

"'Cause you don't know how, Sam.  It always seemed to me that it
took a lot of practice to be a quitter.  You never practiced."

"Thanks.  All right, then, I'm to hang on, I suppose, and take my
medicine.  If that's all the advice you've got to give me, I might
as well have stayed at home.  But I tell you this, Jed Winslow: If
I'd realized--if I'd thought about the Leander Babbitt case comin'
up afore me on that Board I never would have accepted the
appointment.  When you and I were talkin' here the other night it's
queer that neither of us thought of it. . . .  Eh?  What are you
lookin at me like that for?  You don't mean to tell me that YOU DID
think of it?  Did you?"

Winslow nodded.

"Yes," he said.  "I thought of it."

"You DID!  Well, I swear!  Then why in thunder didn't you--"

He was interrupted.  The bell attached to the door of the outer
shop rang.  The maker of windmills rose jerkily to his feet.
Captain Sam made a gesture of impatience.

"Get rid of your customer and come back here soon as you can," he
ordered.  Having commanded a steamer before he left the sea and
become a banker, the captain usually ordered rather than requested.
"Hurry all you can.  I ain't half through talkin' with you.  For
the land sakes, MOVE!  Of all the deliberate, slow travelin'--"

He did not finish his sentence, nor did Winslow, who had started
toward the door, have time to reach it.  The door was opened and a
short, thickset man, with a leathery face and a bristling yellow-
white chin beard, burst into the room.  At the sight of its
occupants he uttered a grunt of satisfaction and his bushy brows
were drawn together above his little eyes, the latter a washed-out
gray and set very close together.

"Humph!" he snarled, vindictively.  "So you BE here.  Gabe Bearse
said you was, but I thought probably he was lyin', as usual.  Did
he lie about the other thing, that's what I've come here to find
out?  Sam Hunniwell, have you been put on that Draft Exemption
Board?"

"Yes," he said, curtly, "I have."

The man trembled all over.

"You have?" he cried, raising his voice almost to a scream.

"Yes, I have.  What's it matter to you, Phin Babbitt?  Seems to
have het you up some, that or somethin' else."

"Het me up!  By--"  Mr. Phineas Babbitt swore steadily for a full
minute.  When he stopped for breath Jed Winslow, who had stepped
over and was looking out of the window, uttered an observation.

"I'm afraid I made a mistake, changin' that sign," he said,
musingly.  "I cal'late I'll make another: 'Prayer meetin's must be
held outside.'"

"By--," began Mr. Babbitt again, but this time it was Captain Sam
who interrupted.  The captain occasionally swore at other people,
but he was not accustomed to be sworn at.  He, too, began to "heat
up." He rose to his feet.

"That'll do, Babbitt," he commanded.  "What's the matter with you?
Is it me you're cussin'?  Because if it is--"

The little Babbitt eyes snapped defiance.

"If it is, what?" he demanded.  But before the captain could reply
Winslow, turning away from the window, did so for him.

"If it is, I should say 'twas a pretty complete job," he drawled.
"I don't know when I've heard fewer things left out.  You have
reason to be proud, both of you.  And now, Phineas," he went on,
"what's it all about?  What's the matter?"

Mr. Babbitt waved his fists again, preparatory to another outburst.
Jed laid a big hand on his shoulder.

"Don't seem to me time for the benediction yet, Phineas," he said.
"Ought to preach your sermon or sing a hymn first, seems so.  What
did you come here for?"

Phineas Babbitt's hard gray eyes looked up into the big brown ones
gazing mildly down upon him.  His gaze shifted and his tone when he
next spoke was a trifle less savage.

"He knows well enough what I came here for," he growled, indicating
Hunniwell with a jerk of his thumb.  "He knows that just as well as
he knows why he had himself put on that Exemption Board."

"I didn't have myself put there," declared the captain.  "The job
was wished on me.  Lord knows I didn't want it.  I was just tellin'
Jed here that very thing."

"Wished on you nothin'!  You planned to get it and you worked to
get it and I know why you did it, too.  'Twas to get another crack
at me.  'Twas to play another dirty trick on me like the one you
played that cheated me out of the post office.  You knew they'd
drafted my boy and you wanted to make sure he didn't get clear.
You--"

"That'll do!"  Captain Hunniwell seized him by the shoulder.
"That's enough," cried the captain.  "Your boy had nothin' to do
with it.  I never thought of his name bein' drawn when I said I'd
accept the job."

"You lie!"

"WHAT?  Why, you little sawed-off, dried-up, sassy son of a sea
cook!  I'll--"

Winslow's lanky form was interposed between the pair; and his slow,
gentle drawl made itself heard.

"I'm sorry to interrupt the experience meetin'," he said, "but I'VE
got a call to testify and I feel the spirit aworkin'.  Set down
again, Sam, will you please.  Phineas, you set down over there.
Please set down, both of you.  Sam, as a favor to me--"

But the captain was not in a favor-extending mood.  He glowered at
his adversary and remained standing.

"Phin--" begged Winslow.  But Mr. Babbitt, although a trifle paler
than when he entered the shop, was not more yielding.

"I'm particular who I set down along of," he declared.  "I'd as
soon set down with a--a rattlesnake as I would with some humans."

Captain Sam was not pale, far from it.

"Skunks are always afraid of snakes, they tell me," he observed,
tartly.  "A rattlesnake's honest, anyhow, and he ain't afraid to
bite.  He ain't all bad smell and nothin' else."

Babbitt's bristling chin beard quivered with inarticulate hatred.
Winslow sighed resignedly.

"Well," he asked, "you don't mind the other--er--critter in the
menagerie sittin', do you?  Now--now--now, just a minute," he
pleaded, as his two companions showed symptoms of speaking
simultaneously.  "Just a minute; let me say a word.  Phineas, I
judge the only reason you have for objectin' to the captain's bein'
on the Exemption Board is on account of your son, ain't it?  It's
just on Leander's account?"

But before the furious Mr. Babbitt could answer there came another
interruption.  The bell attached to the door of the outer shop rang
once more.  Jed, who had accepted his own invitation to sit, rose
again with a groan.

"Now I wonder who THAT is?" he drawled, in mild surprise.

Captain Hunniwell's frayed patience, never noted for long
endurance, snapped again.  "Gracious king! go and find out," he
roared.  "Whoever 'tis 'll die of old age before you get there."

The slow smile drifted over Mr. Winslow's face.  "Probably if I
wait and give 'em a chance they'll come in here and have apoplexy
instead," he said.  "That seems to be the fashionable disease this
afternoon.  They won't stay out there and be lonesome; they'll come
in here where it's private and there's a crowd.  Eh?  Yes, here
they come."

But the newest visitor did not come, like the others, uninvited
into the "private" room.  Instead he knocked on its door.  When
Winslow opened it he saw a small boy with a yellow envelope in his
hand.

"Hello, Josiah," hailed Jed, genially.  "How's the president of the
Western Union these days?"

The boy grinned bashfully and opined the magnate just mentioned was
"all right."  Then he added:

"Is Mr. Babbitt here?  Mr. Bearse--Mr. Gabe Bearse--is over at the
office and he said he saw Mr. Babbitt come in here."

"Yes, he's here.  Want to see him, do you?"

"I've got a telegram for him."

Mr. Babbitt himself came forward and took the yellow envelope.
After absently turning it over several times, as so many people do
when they receive an unexpected letter or message, he tore it open.

Winslow and Captain Sam, watching him, saw his face, to which the
color had returned in the last few minutes, grow white again.  He
staggered a little.  Jed stepped toward him.

"What is it, Phin?" he asked.  "Somebody dead or--"

Babbitt waved him away.  "No," he gasped, chokingly.  "No, let me
be.  I'm--I'm all right."

Captain Sam, a little conscience-stricken, came forward.  "Are you
sick, Phin?" he asked.  "Is there anything I can do?"

Phineas glowered at him.  "Yes," he snarled between his clenched
teeth, "you can mind your own darned business."

Then, turning to the boy who had brought the message, he ordered:
"You get out of here."

The frightened youngster scuttled away and Babbitt, the telegram
rattling in his shaking hand, followed him.  The captain, hurrying
to the window, saw him go down the walk and along the road in the
direction of his store.  He walked like a man stricken.

Captain Sam turned back again.  "Now what in time was in that
telegram?" he demanded.  Jed, standing with his back toward him and
looking out of the window on the side of the shop toward the sea,
did not answer.

"Do you hear me?" asked the captain.  "That telegram struck him
like a shock of paralysis.  He went all to pieces.  What on earth
do you suppose was in it?  Eh?  Why don't you say somethin'?  YOU
don't know what was in it, do you?"

Winslow shook his head.  "No," he answered.  "I don't know's I do."

"You don't know as you do?  Well, do you GUESS you do?  Jed
Winslow, what have you got up your sleeve?"

The proprietor of the windmill shop slowly turned and faced him.
"I don't know's there's anything there, Sam," he answered, "but--
but I shouldn't be much surprised if that telegram was from
Leander."

"Leander?  Leander Babbitt?  What . . .  Eh?  What in thunder do
YOU want?"

The last question was directed toward the window on the street side
of the shop.  Mr. Gabriel Bearse was standing on the outside of
that window, energetically thumping on the glass.

"Open her up!  Open her up!" commanded Gabe.  "I've got somethin'
to tell you."

Captain Sam opened the window.  Gabriel's face was aglow with
excitement.  "Say!  Say!" he cried.  "Did he tell you?  Did he tell
you?"

"Did who tell what?" demanded the captain.

"Did Phin Babbitt tell you what was in that telegram he just got?
What did he say when he read it?  Did he swear?  I bet he did!  If
that telegram wan't some surprise to old Babbitt, then--"

"Do you know what 'twas--what the telegram was?"

"Do I?  You bet you I do!  And I'm the only one in this town except
Phin and Jim Bailey that does know.  I was in the telegraph office
when Jim took it over the wire.  I see Jim was pretty excited.
'Well,' says he, 'if this won't be some jolt to old Phin!' he says.
'What will?' says I.  'Why,' says he--"

"What was it?" demanded Captain Sam.  "You're dyin' to tell us, a
blind man could see that.  Get it off your chest and save your
life.  What was it?"

Mr. Bearse leaned forward and whispered.  There was no real reason
why he should whisper, but doing so added a mysterious,
confidential tang, so to speak, to the value of his news.

"'Twas from Leander--from Phin's own boy, Leander Babbitt, 'twas.
'Twas from him, up in Boston and it went somethin' like this: 'Have
enlisted in the infantry.  Made up my mind best thing to do.  Will
not be back.  Have written particulars.'  That was it, or pretty
nigh it.  Leander's enlisted.  Never waited for no Exemption Board
nor nothin', but went up and enlisted on his own hook without
tellin' a soul he was goin' to.  That's the way Bailey and me
figger it up.  Say, ain't that some news?  Godfreys, I must hustle
back to the post office and tell the gang afore anybody else gets
ahead of me.  So long!"

He hurried away on his joyful errand.  Captain Hunniwell closed the
window and turned to face his friend.

"Do you suppose that's true, Jed?" he asked.  "Do you suppose it
CAN be true?"

Jed nodded.  "Shouldn't be surprised," he said.

"Good gracious king!  Do you mean the boy went off up to Boston on
his own hook, as that what's-his-name--Gab--says, and volunteered
and got himself enlisted into the army?"

"Shouldn't wonder, Sam."

"Well, my gracious king!  Why--why--no wonder old Babbitt looked as
if the main topsail yard had fell on him.  Tut, tut, tut!  Well, I
declare!  Now what do you suppose put him up to doin' that?"

Winslow sat down in his low chair again and picked up the wooden
sailor and the paint brush.

"Well, Sam," he said, slowly, "Leander's a pretty good boy."

"Yes, I suppose he is, but he's Phin Babbitt's son."

"I know, but don't it seem to you as if some sorts of fathers was
like birthmarks and bow legs; they come early in life and a feller
ain't to blame for havin' 'em?  Sam, you ain't sorry the boy's
volunteered, are you?"

"Sorry!  I should say not!  For one thing his doin' it makes my job
on the Exemption Board a mighty sight easier.  There won't be any
row there with Phineas now."

"No-o, I thought 'twould help that.  But that wan't the whole
reason, Sam."

"Reason for what?  What do you mean?"

"I mean that wan't my whole reason for tellin' Leander he'd better
volunteer, better go up to Boston and enlist, same as he did.  That
was part, but 'twan't all."

Captain Sam's eyes and mouth opened.  He stared at the speaker in
amazement.

"You told him to volunteer?" he repeated.  "You told him to go to
Boston and--  YOU did?  What on earth?"

Jed's brush moved slowly down the wooden legs of his sailor man.

"Leander and I are pretty good friends," he explained.  "I like him
and he--er--hum--I'm afraid that paint's kind of thick.  Cal'late
I'll have to thin it a little."

Captain Sam condemned the paint to an eternal blister.

"Go on! go on!" he commanded.  "What about you and Leander?  Finish
her out.  Can't you see you've got my head whirlin' like one of
those windmills of yours?  Finish her OUT!"

Jed looked over his spectacles.

"Oh!" he said.  "Well, Leander's been comin' in here pretty
frequent and we've talked about his affairs a good deal.  He's
always wanted to enlist ever since the war broke out."

"He HAS?"

"Why, sartin.  Just the same as you would, or--or I hope I would,
if I was young and--and," with a wistful smile, "different, and
likely to be any good to Uncle Sam.  Yes, Leander's been anxious to
go to war, but his dad was so set against it all and kept hollerin'
so about the boy's bein' needed in the store, that Leander didn't
hardly know what to do.  But then when he was drawn on the draft
list he came in here and he and I had a long talk.  'Twas
yesterday, after you'd told me about bein' put on the Board, you
know.  I could see the trouble there'd be between you and Phineas
and--and--well, you see, Sam, I just kind of wanted that boy to
volunteer.  I--I don't know why, but--"  He looked up from his work
and stared dreamily out of the window.  "I guess maybe 'twas
because I've been wishin' so that I could go myself--or--do
SOMETHIN' that was some good.  So Leander and I talked and finally
he said, 'Well, by George, I WILL go.'  And--and--well, I guess
that's all; he went, you see."

The captain drew a long breath.

"He went," he repeated.  "And you knew he'd gone?"

"No, I didn't know, but I kind of guessed."

"You guessed, and yet all the time I've been here you haven't said
a word about it till this minute."

"Well, I didn't think 'twas much use sayin' until I knew."

"Well, my gracious king, Jed Winslow, you beat all my goin' to sea!
But you've helped Uncle Sam to a good soldier and you've helped me
out of a nasty row.  For my part I'm everlastin' obliged to you, I
am so."

Jed looked pleased but very much embarrassed.

"Sho, sho," he exclaimed, hastily, "'twan't anything.  Oh, say,"
hastily changing the subject, "I've got some money 'round here
somewheres I thought maybe you'd take to the bank and deposit for
me next time you went, if 'twan't too much trouble."

"Trouble?  Course 'tain't any trouble.  Where is it?"

Winslow put down his work and began to hunt.  From one drawer of
his work bench, amid nails, tools and huddles of papers, he
produced a small bundle of banknotes; from another drawer another
bundle.  These, however, did not seem to satisfy him entirely.  At
last, after a good deal of very deliberate search, he unearthed
more paper currency from the pocket of a dirty pair of overalls
hanging on a nail, and emptied a heap of silver and coppers from a
battered can on the shelf.  Captain Hunniwell, muttering to
himself, watched the collecting process.  When it was completed, he
asked:

"Is this all?"

"Eh?  Yes, I guess 'tis.  I can't seem to find any more just now.
Maybe another batch'll turn up later.  If it does I'll keep it till
next time."

The captain, suppressing his emotions, hastily counted the money.

"Have you any idea how much there is here?" he asked.

"No, I don't know's I have.  There's been quite consider'ble comin'
in last fortni't or so.  Summer folks been payin' bills and one
thing or 'nother.  Might be forty or fifty dollars, I presume
likely."

"Forty or fifty!  Nearer a hundred and fifty!  And you keep it
stuffed around in every junk hole from the roof to the cellar.
Wonder to me you don't light your pipe with it.  I shouldn't wonder
if you did.  How many times have I told you to deposit your money
every three days anyhow?  How many times?"

Mr. Winslow seemed to reflect.

"Don't know, Sam," he admitted.  "Good many, I will give in.  But--
but, you see, Sam, if--if I take it to the bank I'm liable to
forget I've got it.  Long's it's round here somewheres I--why, I
know where 'tis and--and it's handy.  See, don't you?"

The captain shook his head.

"Jed Winslow," he declared, "as I said to you just now you beat all
my goin' to sea.  I can't make you out.  When I see how you act
with money and business, and how you let folks take advantage of
you, then I think you're a plain dum fool.  And yet when you bob up
and do somethin' like gettin' Leander Babbitt to volunteer and
gettin' me out of that row with his father, then--well, then, I'm
ready to swear you're as wise as King Solomon ever was.  You're a
puzzle to me, Jed.  What are you, anyway--the dum fool or King
Solomon?"

Jed looked meditatively over his spectacles.  The slow smile
twitched the corners of his lips.

"Well, Sam," he drawled, "if you put it to vote at town meetin' I
cal'late the majority'd be all one way.  But, I don't know"--; he
paused, and then added, "I don't know, Sam, but it's just as well
as 'tis.  A King Solomon down here in Orham would be an awful
lonesome cuss."


CHAPTER III


Upon a late September day forty-nine years and some months before
that upon which Gabe Bearse came to Jed Winslow's windmill shop in
Orham with the news of Leander Babbitt's enlistment, Miss Floretta
Thompson came to that village to teach the "downstairs" school.
Miss Thompson was an orphan.  Her father had kept a small drug
store in a town in western Massachusetts.  Her mother had been a
clergyman's daughter.  Both had died when she was in her 'teens.
Now, at twenty, she came to Cape Cod, pale, slim, with a wealth of
light brown hair and a pair of large, dreamy brown eyes.  Her taste
in dress was peculiar, even eccentric, and Orham soon discovered
that she, herself, was also somewhat eccentric.

As a schoolteacher she was not an unqualified success.  The
"downstairs" curriculum was not extensive nor very exacting, but it
was supposed to impart to the boys and girls of from seven to
twelve a rudimentary knowledge of the three R's and of geography.
In the first two R's, "readin' and 'ritin'," Miss Thompson was
proficient.  She wrote a flowery Spencerian, which was beautifully
"shaded" and looked well on the blackboard, and reading was the
dissipation of her spare moments.  The third "R," 'rithmetic, she
loathed.

Youth, even at the ages of from seven to twelve, is only too
proficient in learning to evade hard work.  The fact that Teacher
took no delight in traveling the prosaic highways of addition,
multiplication and division, but could be easily lured to wander
the flowery lanes of romantic fiction, was soon grasped by the
downstairs pupils.  The hour set for recitation by the first class
in arithmetic was often and often monopolized by a hold-over of the
first class in reading, while Miss Floretta, artfully spurred by
questions asked by the older scholars, rhapsodized on the beauties
of James Fenimore Cooper's "Uncas," or Dickens' "Little Nell," or
Scott's "Ellen."  Some of us antiques, then tow-headed little
shavers in the front seats, can still remember Miss Floretta's
rendition of the lines:

"And Saxon--I am Roderick Dhu!"

The extremely genteel, not to say ladylike, elocution of the
Highland chief and the indescribable rising inflection and emphasis
on the "I."

These literary rambles had their inevitable effect, an effect
noted, after a time, and called to the attention of the school
committee by old Captain Lycurgus Batcheldor, whose two
grandchildren were among the ramblers.

"Say," demanded Captain Lycurgus, "how old does a young-one have to
be afore it's supposed to know how much four times eight is?  My
Sarah's Nathan is pretty nigh ten and HE don't know it.  Gave me
three answers he did; first that 'twas forty-eight, then that 'twas
eighty-four and then that he'd forgot what 'twas.  But I noticed he
could tell me a whole string about some feller called Lockintar or
Lochinvar or some such outlandish name, and not only his name but
where he came from, which was out west somewheres.  A poetry piece
'twas; Nate said the teacher'd been speakin' it to 'em.  I ain't
got no objection to speakin' pieces, but I do object to bein' told
that four times eight is eighty-four, 'specially when I'm buyin'
codfish at eight cents a pound.  I ain't on the school committee,
but if I was--"

So the committee investigated and when Miss Thompson's year was up
and the question arose as to her re-engagement, there was
considerable hesitancy.  But the situation was relieved in a most
unexpected fashion.  Thaddeus Winslow, first mate on the clipper
ship, "Owner's Favorite," at home from a voyage to the Dutch East
Indies, fell in love with Miss Floretta, proposed, was accepted and
married her.

It was an odd match: Floretta, pale, polite, impractical and
intensely romantic; Thad, florid, rough and to the point.  Yet the
married pair seemed to be happy together.  Winslow went to sea on
several voyages and, four years after the marriage, remained at
home for what, for him, was a long time.  During that time a child,
a boy, was born.

The story of the christening of that child is one of Orham's pet
yarns even to this day.  It seems that there was a marked
disagreement concerning the name to be given him.  Captain Thad had
had an Uncle Edgar, who had been very kind to him when a boy.  The
captain wished to name his own youngster after this uncle.  But
Floretta's heart was set upon "Wilfred," her favorite hero of
romance being Wilfred of Ivanhoe.  The story is that the parents
being no nearer an agreement on the great question, Floretta made a
proposal of compromise.  She proposed that her husband take up his
stand by the bedroom window and the first male person he saw
passing on the sidewalk below, the name of that person should be
given to their offspring; a sporting proposition certainly.  But
the story goes on to detract a bit from the sporting element by
explaining that Mrs. Winslow was expecting a call at that hour from
the Baptist minister, and the Baptist minister's Christian name was
"Clarence," which, if not quite as romantic as Wilfred, is by no
means common and prosaic.  Captain Thad, who had not been informed
of the expected ministerial call and was something of a sport
himself, assented to the arrangement.  It was solemnly agreed that
the name of the first male passer-by should be the name of the new
Winslow.  The captain took up his post of observation at the window
and waited.

He did not have to wait long.  Unfortunately for romance, the
Reverend Clarence was detained at the home of another parishioner a
trifle longer than he had planned and the first masculine to pass
the Winslow home was old Jedidah Wingate, the fish peddler.  Mrs.
Diadama Busteed, who was acting as nurse in the family and had been
sworn in as witness to the agreement between husband and wife,
declared to the day of her death that that death was hastened by
the shock to her nervous and moral system caused by Captain Thad's
language when old Jedidah hove in sight.  He vowed over and over
again that he would be everlastingly condemned if he would label a
young-one of his with such a crashety-blank-blanked outrage of a
name as "Jedidah."  "Jedidiah" was bad enough, but there WERE a few
Jedidiahs in Ostable County, whereas there was but one Jedidah.
Mrs. Winslow, who did not fancy Jedidah any more than her husband
did, wept; Captain Thad's profanity impregnated the air with
brimstone.  But they had solemnly sworn to the agreement and Mrs.
Busteed had witnessed it, and an oath is an oath.  Besides, Mrs.
Winslow was inclined to think the whole matter guided by Fate, and,
being superstitious as well as romantic, feared dire calamity if
Fate was interfered with.  It ended in a compromise and, a
fortnight later, the Reverend Clarence, keeping his countenance
with difficulty, christened a red-faced and protesting infant
"Jedidah Edgar Wilfred Winslow."

Jedidah Edgar Wilfred grew up.  At first he was called "Edgar" by
his father and "Wilfred" by his mother.  His teachers, day school
and Sunday school, called him one or the other as suited their
individual fancies.  But his schoolmates and playfellows, knowing
that he hated the name above all else on earth, gleefully hailed
him as "Jedidah."  By the time he was ten he was "Jed" Winslow
beyond hope of recovery.  Also it was settled locally that he was
"queer"--not "cracked" or "lacking," which would have implied that
his brain was affected--but just "queer," which meant that his ways
of thinking and acting were different from those of Orham in
general.

His father, Captain Thaddeus, died when Jed was fifteen, just
through the grammar school and ready to enter the high.  He did not
enter; instead, the need of money being pressing, he went to work
in one of the local stores, selling behind the counter.  If his
father had lived he would, probably, have gone away after finishing
high school and perhaps, if by that time the mechanical ability
which he possessed had shown itself, he might even have gone to
some technical school or college.  In that case Jed Winslow's
career might have been very, very different.  But instead he went
to selling groceries, boots, shoes, dry goods and notions for Mr.
Seth Wingate, old Jedidah's younger brother.

As a grocery clerk Jed was not a success, neither did he shine as a
clerk in the post office, nor as an assistant to the local
expressman.  In desperation he began to learn the carpenter's trade
and, because he liked to handle tools, did pretty well at it.  But
he continued to be "queer" and his absent-minded dreaminess was in
evidence even then.

"I snum I don't know what to make of him," declared Mr. Abijah
Mullett, who was the youth's "boss."  "Never know just what he's
goin' to do or just what he's goin' to say.  I says to him
yesterday: 'Jed,' says I, 'you do pretty well with tools and wood,
considerin' what little experience you've had.  Did Cap'n Thad
teach you some or did you pick it up yourself?'  He never answered
for a minute or so, seemed to be way off dreamin' in the next
county somewheres.  Then he looked at me with them big eyes of his
and he drawled out: 'Comes natural to me, Mr. Mullett, I guess,' he
says.  'There seems to be a sort of family feelin' between my head
and a chunk of wood.'  Now what kind of an answer was that, I want
to know!"

Jed worked at carpentering for a number of years, sometimes going
as far away as Ostable to obtain employment.  And then his mother
was seized with the illness from which, so she said, she never
recovered.  It is true that Doctor Parker, the Orham physician,
declared that she had recovered, or might recover if she cared to.
Which of the pair was right does not really matter.  At all events
Mrs. Winslow, whether she recovered or not, never walked abroad
again.  She was "up and about," as they say in Orham, and did some
housework, after a fashion, but she never again set foot across the
granite doorstep of the Winslow cottage.  Probably the poor woman's
mind was slightly affected; it is charitable to hope that it was.
It seems the only reasonable excuse for the oddity of her behavior
during the last twenty years of her life, for her growing
querulousness and selfishness and for the exacting slavery in which
she kept her only son.

During those twenty years whatever ambition Jedidah Edgar Wilfred
may once have had was thoroughly crushed.  His mother would not
hear of his leaving her to find better work or to obtain promotion.
She needed him, she wailed; he was her life, her all; she should
die if he left her.  Some hard-hearted townspeople, Captain
Hunniwell among them, disgustedly opined that, in view of such a
result, Jed should be forcibly kidnaped forthwith for the general
betterment of the community.  But Jed himself never rebelled.  He
cheerfully gave up his youth and early middle age to his mother and
waited upon her, ran her errands, sat beside her practically every
evening and read romance after romance aloud for her benefit.  And
his "queerness" developed, as under such circumstances it was bound
to do.

Money had to be earned and, as the invalid would not permit him to
leave her to earn it, it was necessary to find ways of earning it
at home.  Jed did odd jobs of carpentering and cabinet making, went
fishing sometimes, worked in gardens between times, did almost
anything, in fact, to bring in the needed dollars.  And when he was
thirty-eight years old he made and sold his first "Cape Cod Winslow
windmill," the forerunner of the thousands to follow.  That mill,
made in some of his rare idle moments and given to the child of a
wealthy summer visitor, made a hit.  The child liked it and other
children wanted mills just like it.  Then "grown-ups" among the
summer folk took up the craze.  "Winslow mills" became the fad.
Jed built his little shop, or the first installment of it.

Mrs. Floretta Winslow died when her son was forty.  A merciful
release, Captain Sam and the rest called it, but to Jed it was a
stunning shock.  He had no one to take care of now except himself
and he did not know what to do.  He moped about like a deserted
cat.  Finally he decided that he could not live in the old house
where he was born and had lived all his life.  He expressed his
feelings concerning that house to his nearest friend, practically
his sole confidant, Captain Sam.

"I can't somehow seem to stand it, Sam," he said, solemnly.  "I
can't stay in that house alone any longer, it's--it's too
sociable."

The captain, who had expected almost anything but that, stared at
him.

"Sociable!" he repeated.  "You're sailin' stern first, Jed.
Lonesome's what you mean, of course."

Jed shook his head.

"No-o," he drawled, "I mean sociable.  There's too many boys in
there, for one thing."

"Boys!"  Captain Sam was beginning to be really alarmed now.
"Boys!  Say--say, Jed Winslow, you come along home to dinner with
me.  I bet you've forgot to eat anything for the last day or so--
been inventin' some new kind of whirlagig or other--and your empty
stomach's gone to your head and made it dizzy.  Boys!  Gracious
king!  Come on home with me."

Jed smiled his slow smile.  "I don't mean real boys, Sam," he
explained.  "I mean me--I'm the boys.  Nights now when I'm walkin'
around in that house alone I meet myself comin' round every corner.
Me when I was five, comin' out of the buttery with a cooky in each
fist; and me when I was ten sittin' studyin' my lesson book in the
corner; and me when I was fifteen, just afore Father died, sittin'
all alone thinkin' what I'd do when I went to Boston Tech same as
he said he was cal'latin' to send me.  Then--"

He paused and lapsed into one of his fits of musing.  His friend
drew a breath of relief.

"Oh!" he exclaimed.  "Well, I don't mind your meetin' yourself.  I
thought first you'd gone off your head, blessed if I didn't.
You're a queer critter, Jed.  Get those funny notions from readin'
so many books, I guess likely.  Meetin' yourself!  What an idea
that is!  I suppose you mean that, bein' alone in that house where
you've lived since you was born, you naturally get to thinkin'
about what used to be."

Jed stared wistfully at the back of a chair.

"Um-hm," he murmured, "and what might have been--and--and ain't."

The captain nodded.  Of all the people in Orham he, he prided
himself, was the only one who thoroughly understood Jed Winslow.
And sometimes he did partially understand him; this was one of the
times.

"Now--now--now," he said, hastily, "don't you get to frettin'
yourself about your not amountin' to anything and all that.  You've
got a nice little trade of your own buildin' up here.  What more do
you want?  We can't all be--er--Know-it-alls like Shakespeare, or--
or rich as Standard Oil Companies, can we?  Look here, what do you
waste your time goin' back twenty-five years and meetin' yourself
for?  Why don't you look ahead ten or fifteen and try to meet
yourself then?  You may be a millionaire, a--er--windmill trust or
somethin' of that kind, by that time.  Eh?  Ha, ha!"

Jed rubbed his chin.

"When I meet myself lookin' like a millionaire," he observed,
gravely, "I'll have to do the way you do at your bank, Sam--call in
somebody to identify me."

Captain Sam laughed.  "Well, anyhow," he said, "don't talk any more
foolishness about not livin' in your own house.  If I was you--"

Mr. Winslow interrupted.  "Sam," he said, "the way to find out what
you would do if you was me is to make sure WHAT you'd do--and then
do t'other thing, or somethin' worse."

"Oh, Jed, be reasonable."

Jed looked over his spectacles.  "Sam," he drawled, "if I was
reasonable I wouldn't be me."

And he lived no longer in the old house.  Having made up his mind,
he built a small two-room addition to his workshop and lived in
that.  Later he added a sleeping room--a sort of loft--and a little
covered porch on the side toward the sea.  Here, in pleasant summer
twilights or on moonlight nights, he sat and smoked.  He had a good
many callers and but few real friends.  Most of the townspeople
liked him, but almost all considered him a joke, an oddity, a
specimen to be pointed out to those of the summer people who were
looking for "types."  A few, like Mr. Gabriel Bearse, who
distinctly did NOT understand him and who found his solemn
suggestions and pointed repartee irritating at times, were inclined
to refer to him in these moments of irritation as "town crank."
But they did not really mean it when they said it.  And some
others, like Leander Babbitt or Captain Hunniwell, came to ask his
advice on personal matters, although even they patronized him just
a little.  He had various nicknames, "Shavings" being the most
popular.

His peculiar business, the making of wooden mills, toys and weather
vanes, had grown steadily.  Now he shipped many boxes of these to
other seashore and mountain resorts.  He might have doubled his
output had he chosen to employ help or to enlarge his plant, but he
would not do so.  He had rented the old Winslow house furnished
once to a summer tenant, but he never did so again, although he had
many opportunities.  He lived alone in the addition to the little
workshop, cooking his own meals, making his own bed, and sewing on
his own buttons.

And on the day following that upon which Leander Babbitt enrolled
to fight for Uncle Sam, Jedidah Edgar Wilfred Winslow was forty-
five years old.

He was conscious of that fact when he arose.  It was a pleasant
morning, the sun was rising over the notched horizon of the
tumbling ocean, the breeze was blowing, the surf on the bar was
frothing and roaring cheerily--and it was his birthday.  The
morning, the sunrise, the surf and all the rest were pleasant to
contemplate--his age was not.  So he decided not to contemplate it.
Instead he went out and hoisted at the top of the short pole on the
edge of the bluff the flag he had set there on the day when the
United States declared war against the Hun.  He hoisted it every
fine morning and he took it in every night.

He stood for a moment, watching the red, white and blue flapping
bravely in the morning sunshine, then he went back into his little
kitchen at the rear of the workshop and set about cooking his
breakfast.  The kitchen was about as big as a good-sized packing
box and Jed, standing over the oilstove, could reach any shelf in
sight without moving.  He cooked his oatmeal porridge, boiled his
egg and then sat down at the table in the next room--his combined
living and dining-room and not very much bigger than the kitchen--
to eat.  When he had finished, he washed the dishes, walked up to
the post office for the mail and then, entering the workshop, took
up the paint brush and the top sailor-man of the pile beside him
and began work.  This, except on Sundays, was his usual morning
routine.  It varied little, except that he occasionally sawed or
whittled instead of painted, or, less occasionally still, boxed
some of his wares for shipment.

During the forenoon he had some visitors.  A group of summer people
from the hotel came in and, after pawing over and displacing about
half of the movable stock, bought ten or fifteen dollars' worth and
departed.  Mr. Winslow had the satisfaction of hearing them burst
into a shout of laughter as they emerged into the yard and the
shrill voice of one of the females in the party rose above the
hilarity with: "Isn't he the WEIRDEST thing!"  And an accompanying
male voice appraised him as "Some guy, believe me!  S-o-o-me guy!"
Jed winced a little, but he went on with his painting.  On one's
forty-fifth birthday one has acquired or should have acquired a
certain measure of philosophical resignation.

Other customers or lookers came and went.  Maud Hunniwell, Captain
Sam's daughter, dropped in on her way to the post office.  The
captain was a widower and Maud was his only child.  She was,
therefore, more than the apple of his eye, she was a whole orchard
of apples.  She was eighteen, pretty and vivacious, and her father
made a thorough job of spoiling her.  Not that the spoiling had
injured her to any great extent, it had not as yet, but that was
Captain Sam's good luck.  Maud was wearing a new dress--she had a
new one every week or so--and she came into the windmill shop to
show it.  Of course she would have denied that that was the reason
for her coming, but the statement stands, nevertheless.  She and
Jed were great chums and had been since she could walk.  She liked
him, took his part when she heard him criticized or made fun of,
and was always prettily confidential and friendly when they were
alone together.  Of course there was a touch of superiority and
patronage in her friendship.  She should not be blamed for this;
all Orham, consciously or unconsciously, patronized Jed Winslow.

She came into the inner shop and sat down upon the same upturned
box upon which her father had sat the afternoon before.  Her first
remark, after "good mornings" had been exchanged, was concerning
the "Private" sign on the inner side of the door.

"What in the world have you put that sign inside here for?" she
demanded.

Mr. Winslow explained, taking his own deliberate time in making the
explanation.  Miss Hunniwell wrinkled her dainty upturned nose and
burst into a trill of laughter.

"Oh, that's lovely," she declared, "and just like you, besides.
And do you think Gabe Bearse will go back into the other room when
he sees it?"

Jed looked dreamily over his spectacles at the sign.  "I don't
know," he drawled.  "If I thought he'd go wherever that sign was I
ain't sure but I'd tack it on the cover of the well out in the yard
yonder."

His fair visitor laughed again.  "Why, Jed," she exclaimed.  "You
wouldn't want to drown him, would you?"

Jed seemed to reflect.  "No-o," he answered, slowly, "don't know's
I would--not in my well, anyhow."

Miss Hunniwell declared that that was all nonsense.  "You wouldn't
drown a kitten," she said.  "I know that because when Mrs.
Nathaniel Rogers' old white cat brought all her kittens over here
the first of this summer you wouldn't even put them out in the yard
at night, to say nothing of drowning them.  All six and the mother
cat stayed here and fairly swarmed over you and ate you out of
house and home.  Father said he believed they fed at the first
table and you were taking what was left.  It was a mercy the old
cat decided to lead them back to the Rogers' again or I don't know
WHAT might have become of you by this time."

Jed seemed to be thinking; there was a reminiscent twinkle in his
eye.

"The old cat didn't lead 'em back," he said.  "Nathaniel took 'em
back.  Didn't I ever tell you about that?"

"No, you didn't.  You KNOW you didn't.  Mr. Rogers took them back?
I can't believe it.  He told everywhere about town that he was glad
to get rid of the whole family and, as you and the cats seemed to
be mutually happy together, he wasn't going to disturb you.  He
thought it was a great joke on you.  And he took them back himself?
Why?"

Mr. Winslow rubbed his chin.  "I don't know's I'd ought to say
anything about it," he said.  "I haven't afore.  I wouldn't
interfere with Nate's sales for anything."

"Sales?  Sales of what?  Oh, you mean thing!  Don't be so
provoking!  Tell me the whole story this minute."

Jed painted a moment or two.  Then he said: "We-ell, Maud, you see
those kittens got to be kind of a nuisance.  They was cunnin' and
cute and all that, but they was so everlastin' lively and hungry
that they didn't give me much of a chance.  I was only one, you
see, and they had a majority vote every time on who should have the
bed and the chairs and the table and one thing or 'nother.  If I
sat down I sat on a cat.  If I went to bed I laid down on cats, and
when I turned them out and turned in myself they came and laid down
on ME.  I slept under fur blankets most of June.  And as for
eatin'--  Well, every time I cooked meat or fish they sat down in a
circle and whooped for some.  When I took it off the fire and put
it in a plate on the table, I had to put another plate and a--a
plane or somethin' heavy on top of it or they'd have had it sartin
sure.  Then when I sat down to eat it they formed a circle again
like a reg'lar band and tuned up and hollered.  Lord a-mercy, HOW
they did holler!  And if one of the kittens stopped, run out of
wind or got a sore throat or anything, the old cat would bite it to
set it goin' again.  She wan't goin' to have any shirkin' in HER
orchestra.  I ate to music, as you might say, same as I've read
they do up to Boston restaurants.  And about everything I did eat
was stuffed with cats' hairs.  Seemed sometimes as if those kittens
was solid fur all the way through; they never could have shed all
that hair from the outside.  Somebody told me that kittens never
shed hair, 'twas only full grown cats did that.  I don't believe
it.  Nate Rogers' old maltee never shed all that alone; allowin'
her a half barrel, there was all of another barrel spread around
the premises.  No-o, those cats was a good deal of a nuisance.
Um-hm. . . .  Yes, they was. . . ."

He paused and, apparently having forgotten that he was in the
middle of a story, began to whistle lugubriously and to bend all
his other energies to painting.  Miss Hunniwell, who had laughed
until her eyes were misty, wiped them with her handkerchief and
commanded him to go on.

"Tell me the rest of it," she insisted.  "How did you get rid of
them?  How did Mr. Rogers come to take them back?"

"Eh? . . .  Oh, why, you see, I went over to Nate's three or four
times and told him his cat and kittens were here and I didn't feel
right to deprive him of 'em any longer.  He said never mind, I
could keep 'em long as I wanted to.  I said that was about as long
as I had kept 'em.  Then he said he didn't know's he cared about
ever havin' 'em again; said he and his wife had kind of lost their
taste for cats, seemed so.  I--well, I hinted that, long as the
tribe was at my house I wan't likely to have a chance to taste much
of anything, but it didn't seem to have much effect.  Then--"

"Yes, yes; go on! go on!"

"Oh. . . .  Then one day Nate he happened to be in here--come to
borrow somethin', some tool seems to me 'twas--and the cats was
climbin' round promiscuous same as usual.  And one of the summer
women came in while he was here, wanted a mill for her little niece
or somethin'.  And she saw one of the animals and she dropped
everything else and sang out: 'Oh, what a beautiful kitten!  What
unusual coloring!  May I see it?'  Course she was seein' it
already, but I judged she meant could she handle it, so I tried to
haul the critter loose from my leg--there was generally one or more
of 'em shinnin' over me somewhere.  It squalled when I took hold of
it and she says: 'Oh, it doesn't want to come, does it!  It must
have a very affectionate disposition to be so attached to you.'
Seemed to me 'twas attached by its claws more'n its disposition,
but I pried it loose and handed it to her.  Then she says again,
'What unusual colorin'!  Will you sell this one to me?  I'll give
you five dollars for it.'"

He stopped again.  Another reminder from Miss Hunniwell was
necessary to make him continue.

"And you sold one of those kittens for five dollars?" she cried.

"No-o."

"You didn't?  Why, you foolish man!  Why not?"

"I never had a chance.  Afore I could say a word Nate Rogers spoke
up and said the kittens belonged to him.  Then she saw another one
that she hadn't seen afore and she says: 'Oh, that one has more
unusual colorin's even than this.  I never saw such color in a
cat.'  Course she meant ON a cat but we understood what she meant.
'Are they a very rare breed?' she asked.  Nate said they was and--"

Miss Hunniwell interrupted.  "But they weren't, were they?" she
cried.  "I never knew they were anything more than plain tabby."

Jed shook his head.  "Nate said they was," he went on solemnly.
"He said they were awful rare.  Then she wanted to know would he
sell one for five dollars.  He said no, he couldn't think of it."

"Why, the greedy old thing!"

"And so he and she had it back and forth and finally they struck a
bargain at seven dollars for the one that looked most like a crazy
quilt."

"Seven dollars for a CAT?  What color was it, for goodness' sake?"

"Oh, all kinds, seemed so.  Black and white and maltee and blue and
red and green--"

"Green!  What ARE you talking about?  Who ever saw a green cat?"

"This woman saw one that was part green and she bought it.  Then
she said she'd take it right along in her car.  Said she had a
friend that was as loony about cats as she was and she was goin' to
fetch her right down the very next day.  And a couple of hours
after she'd gone Nate and his boy came back with a clothes basket
with a board over the top and loaded in the balance of the family
and went off with 'em.  I ain't seen a hair of 'em since--no, I
won't say that quite, but I ain't seen THEM."

"And didn't he give you any of the seven dollars?"

"No-o."

"But you had been feeding those kittens and their mother for weeks."

"Ye-es."

"But didn't you ASK for anything?"

"We-ll, I told Nate he might maybe leave one of the kittens, so's I
could have a--er--souvenir of the visit, but he wouldn't do it.
Said those kittens was rare and--er--precious, or words to that
effect.  He didn't intend to let another go as cheap as he had that
one."

"Oh. . . . I see.  I remember now; I heard some one saying
something, early in July, about the sign on the Rogers' front
fence.  'Rare Cats for Sale' they said it was.  I think.  Of
course, I never thought of THOSE kittens.  He must have sold them
all, for the sign isn't there now."

Jed whistled a few bars.  "I don't hardly think he's sold 'em," he
said.  "I presume likely he's just gone out of the business."

"I don't see why he shouldn't sell them.  Green cats ought to sell
quickly enough, I should think.  Were they green, honest and truly,
Jed?"

Mr. Winslow nodded.

"They were that mornin'," he drawled, solemnly.

"That morning?  What do you mean?"

"We-ll, you see, Maud, those kittens were into everything and over
everything most of the time.  Four of 'em had got in here early
afore I came downstairs that day and had been playin' hide and hoot
amongst my paint pots.  They was green in spots, sure enough, but I
had my doubts as to its bein' fast color."

Maud laughed joyfully over the secret of the green pussies.

"I wish I might have seen that woman's face after the colors began
to wear off her 'rare' kitten," she said.

Jed smiled slightly.  "Nathan saw it," he said.  "I understood he
had to take back the kitten and give up the seven dollars.  He
don't hardly speak to me nowadays.  Seems to think 'twas my fault.
I don't hardly think 'twas, do you?"

Miss Hunniwell's call lasted almost an hour.  Besides a general
chat concerning Leander Babbit's voluntary enlistment, the subject
which all Orham had discussed since the previous afternoon, she had
a fresh bit of news.  The government had leased a large section of
land along the bay at East Harniss, the next village to Orham and
seven or eight miles distant, and there was to be a military
aviation camp there.

"Oh, it's true!" she declared, emphatically.  "Father has known
that the Army people have been thinking of it for some time, but it
was really decided and the leases signed only last Saturday.  They
will begin building the barracks and the buildings--the--oh, what
do they call those big sheds they keep the aeroplanes in?"

"The hangars," said Winslow, promptly.

"Yes, that's it.  They will begin building those right away."  She
paused and looked at him curiously.  "How did you know they called
them hangars, Jed?" she asked.

"Eh? . . .  Oh, I've read about 'em in the newspapers, that's
all. . . .  H-u-u-m. . . .  So we'll have aeroplanes flyin' around
here pretty soon, I suppose.  Well, well!"

"Yes.  And there'll be lots and lots of the flying men--the what-
do-you-call-'ems--aviators, and officers in uniform--and all sorts.
What fun!  I'm just crazy about uniforms!"

Her eyes snapped.  Jed, in his quiet way, seemed excited, too.  He
was gazing absently out of the window as if he saw, in fancy, a
procession of aircraft flying over Orham flats.

"They'll be flyin' up out there," he said, musingly.  "And I'll see
'em--I will.  Sho!"

Miss Hunniwell regarded him mischievously.  "Jed," she asked,
"would you like to be an aviator?"

Jed's answer was solemnly given.  "I'm afraid I shouldn't be much
good at the job," he drawled.

His visitor burst into another laugh.  He looked at her over his
glasses.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing; I--I was just thinking of you in a uniform, that's
all."

Jed smiled his slow, fleeting smile.

"I guess likely I would be pretty funny," he admitted.  "Any
Germans I met would probably die laughin' and that might help along
some."

But after Miss Hunniwell had gone he sat for some minutes gazing
out of the window, the wistful, dreamy look on his lean, homely
face.  Then he sighed, and resumed his painting.

That afternoon, about half past five, he was still at his task
when, hearing the doorbell ring, he rose and went into the front
shop.  To his astonishment the shop was empty.  He looked about for
the expected customer or caller, whoever he or she might be, and
saw no one.  He stepped to the window and looked out, but there was
no one on the steps or in the yard.  He made up his mind that he
must have dreamed of the bell-ringing and was turning back to the
inner room, when a voice said:

"Please, are you the windmill man?"

Jed started, turned again, and stared about him.

"Please, sir, here I am," said the voice.

Jed, looking down, instead of up or on a level, saw his visitor
then.  That is, he saw a tumbled shock of curls and a pair of big
round eyes looking up at him over a stock of weather vanes.

"Hello!" he exclaimed, in surprise.

The curls and eyes came out from behind the stack of vanes.  They
were parts of a little girl, and the little girl made him a demure
little courtesy.

"How do you do?" she said.

Jed regarded her in silence for a moment.  Then, "Why, I'm fair to
middlin' smart just at present," he drawled.  "How do YOU find
yourself to-day?"

The young lady's answer was prompt and to the point.  "I'm nicely,
thank you," she replied, and added: "I was sick at my stomach
yesterday, though."

This bit of personal information being quite unexpected, Mr.
Winslow scarcely knew what comment to make in reply to it.

"Sho!" he exclaimed.  "Was you, though?"

"Yes.  Mamma says she is 'clined to think it was the two whole
bananas and the choc'late creams, but I think it was the fried
potatoes.  I was sick twice--no, three times.  Please, I asked you
something.  Are you the windmill man?"

Jed, by this time very much amused, looked her over once more.  She
was a pretty little thing, although just at this time it is
doubtful if any of her family or those closely associated with her
would have admitted it.  Her face was not too clean, her frock was
soiled and mussed, her curls had been blown into a tangle and there
were smooches, Jed guessed them to be blackberry stains, on her
hands, around her mouth and even across her small nose.  She had a
doll, its raiment in about the same condition as her own, tucked
under one arm.  Hat she had none.

Mr. Winslow inspected her in his accustomed deliberate fashion.

"Guess you've been havin' a pretty good time, haven't you?" he
inquired.

The small visitor's answer was given with dignity.

"Yes," she said.  "Will you please tell me if you are the windmill
man?"

Jed accepted the snub with outward humility and inward appreciation.

"Why, yes," he admitted; "I presume likely I'm the windmill man.
Is there anything I can do for you this evenin'?"

Apparently there was, for the child, untucking the doll from
beneath her right arm and tucking it under the left, pointed her
right hand at a wooden weather-vane in the shape of a sperm whale
and asked:

"Please, does that fish go 'round?"

"Go 'round?  Go 'round where?"

"I mean does it go 'round and 'round on a stick?"

"Cal'late it does when it has a chance."

"And does it make the wind blow no'theast by no'th and--and like
that?"

"Eh?  Make the wind blow--how?"

"I mean does it make the wind blow different ways, no'theast by
no'th and cantin' 'round to the sou-east and--and those ways?
Captain Hedge has got a fish up on his barn that used to do that,
but now it won't 'cause he cal'lates it's rusted fast.  He said he
guessed he would have to be getting a new one.  When I saw the
fishes out in your yard I thought about it and I thought I would
come in and see if you had the right kind.  Is this one a--a
gunfish?"

"A WHICH fish?"

"A gunfish.  No, that isn't it.  A--a swordfish, that's it.
Captain Hedge's is a swordfish."

"We-ll, that particular one got a wrong start and ended up by bein'
a whale, but I shouldn't wonder if we could find a swordfish if we
looked.  Yes, here's one.  Think that would do?"

The child looked it over very carefully.

"Yes," she said, "I think it would.  If you're sure it would make
the wind go right."

"We-ll, I guess likely I could guarantee that fish would go 'most
any way the wind did, unless it should take a notion to blow
straight up and down, which don't happen often.  So you know Cap'n
Hedge, do you?  Relation of his, are you?  Visitin' there?"

"No.  Mamma and I are boarding at Mrs. Smalley's, but I go over to
call on Captain Hedge 'most every day."

"Sho!  Want to know!  Well, that's nice and sociable.  So you're
boardin' at Luretta Smalley's.  My! you're consider'ble ways from
home, ain't you?  Is your mamma with you?"

For the first time the youthful caller's poise seemed a trifle
shaken.

"No-o . . . no," she stammered, and added, hastily: "How much is
this fish, please?"

"I generally sell that sort of fish for about two dollars."  He
looked out of the window, hummed a tune, and then added: "Let's
see, what did you say your name was?"

"I didn't, but it's Barbara Armstrong.  HOW much did you say the
fish was?"

"Eh? . . .  Oh, two dollars."

Miss Armstrong looked very much disappointed.

"Oh, dear," she sighed.  "I didn't know it would be as much as
that.  I--I'm 'fraid I can't get it."

"So?  That's too bad.  What was you cal'latin' to do with it, if
you did get it?"

"I was going to give it to Captain Hedge.  He misses his, now that
it's rusted so fast that it won't go.  But I can't get it.  I
haven't got but fourteen cents, ten that Mamma gave me this morning
for being a good girl and taking my medicine nice yesterday, and
four that Mrs. Smalley gave me for getting the eggs last week.  And
two dollars is EVER so much more than fourteen cents, isn't it?"

"Hum. . . .  'Tis a little more, that's right.  It's considered
more by the--um--er--best authorities.  Hum . . . er . . . h-u-u-m.
Sometimes, though, I do take off a little somethin' for spot cash.
You'd pay spot cash, I presume likely, wouldn't you?"

"I--I don't know what spot cash is.  I'd pay fourteen cents."

Jed rubbed his chin.  "We-e-ll," he drawled, gravely, "I'm afraid I
couldn't hardly knock off all that that comes to.  But," taking
another and much smaller vane from a shelf, "there's an article,
not quite so big, that I usually get fifty cents for.  What do you
think of that?"

The child took the miniature swordfish and inspected it carefully.

"It's a baby one, isn't it," she observed.  "Will it tell wind just
as good as the big one?"

"Tell wind?  Hum! . . .  Don't know's I ever heard it put just that
way afore.  But a clock tells time, so I suppose there's no reason
why a vane shouldn't tell wind.  Yes, I guess 'twill tell wind all
right."

"Then I think it might do."  She seemed a little doubtful.  "Only,"
she added, "fifty cents is lots more than fourteen, isn't it?"

Mr. Winslow admitted that it was.  "But I tell you," he said, after
another period of reflection, "seein' as it's you I'll make a
proposal to you.  Cap'n Eri Hedge is a pretty good friend of mine,
same as he is of yours.  Suppose you and I go in partners.  You put
in your fourteen cents and I'll put in the rest of the swordfish.
Then you can take it to Cap'n Eri and tell him that we're givin' it
to him together.  You just consider that plan for a minute now,
will you?"

Miss Armstrong looked doubtful.

"I--I don't know as I know what you mean," she said.  "What did you
want me to do?"

"Why, consider the plan.  You know what 'consider' means, don't
you?"

"I know a Mother Goose with it in.  That one about the piper and
the cow:


     'He took up his pipes and he played her a tune,
          Consider, old cow, consider.'


But I don't know as I SURELY know what he wanted the cow to do?
Does 'consider' mean see if you like it?"

"That's the idea.  Think it over and see if you'd like to go halves
with me givin' the fish to Cap'n Hedge."

The curls moved vigorously up and down.

"I think I should," she decided.

"Good!  Now you wait and I'll do it up."

He wrapped the toy vane in a piece of paper and handed it to his
small patron.  She gravely produced a miniature velvet purse with
the remnants of some bead fringe hanging to its lower edge and laid
a dime and four pennies on the top of a packing case between them.
It was growing dark in the shop and Jed lighted one of the bracket
lamps.  Returning, he found the coins laid in a row and Miss
Armstrong regarding them somewhat soberly.

"There isn't any MORE than fourteen, is there?" she asked.  "I
mean--I mean fourteen cents takes all of it, doesn't it?"

Jed looked at her face.  His eye twinkled.

"Well, suppose it didn't?" he asked.  "What then?"

She hesitated.  "Why," she stammered, "if--if there was ONE left
over I--maybe I could buy something tomorrow at the candy store.
Not to-day, 'cause I told Mamma I wouldn't to-day 'cause I was sick
at my stomach yesterday--but to-morrow I could."

Mr. Winslow carefully counted the coins and then, spreading them
out on his big palm, showed them to her.

"There!" he said.  "Now you've given me the fourteen cents.  I've
got 'em, haven't I?"

Miss Barbara solemnly nodded.

"Yes," continued Jed.  "Now I'll put 'em back in your wallet again.
There they are, shut up in the wallet.  Now you put the wallet in
your pocket.  Now take your fish bundle under your arm.  There! now
everything's settled.  You've got the fish, haven't you?  Sartin'.
Yes, and I've been paid for it, haven't I?"

The child stared at him.

"But--but--" she began.

"Now--now don't let's argue about it," pleaded Jed, plaintively.
"Argum always gives me the--er--epizootic or somethin'.  You saw me
have the money right in my hand.  It's all settled; think it over
and see if it ain't.  You've got the fish and I've HAD the fourteen
cents.  Now run right along home and don't get lost.  Good-night."

He led her gently to the door and closed it behind her.  Then,
smiling and shaking his head, he returned to the inner shop, where
he lit the lamps and sat down for another bit of painting before
supper.  But that bit was destined not to be done that night.  He
had scarcely picked up his brush before the doorbell rang once
more.  Returning to the outer room, he found his recent visitor,
the swordfish under one arm and the doll under the other, standing
in the aisle between the stacked mills and vanes and looking, so it
seemed to him, considerably perturbed.

"Well, well!" he exclaimed.  "Back again so soon?  What's the
matter; forget somethin', did you?"

Miss Armstrong shook her head.

"No-o," she said.  "But--but--"

"Yes?  But what?"

"Don't you think--don't you think it is pretty dark for little
girls to be out?"

Jed looked at her, stepped to the door, opened it and looked out,
and then turned back again.

"Why," he admitted, "it is gettin' a little shadowy in the corners,
maybe.  It will be darker in an hour or so.  But you think it's too
dark for little girls already, eh?"

She nodded.  "I don't think Mamma would like me to be out when it's
so awful dark," she said.

"Hum! . . .  Hum. . . .  Does your mamma know where you are?"

The young lady's toe marked a circle on the shop floor.

"No-o," she confessed, "I--I guess she doesn't, not just exactly."

"I shouldn't be surprised.  And so you've come back because you was
afraid, eh?"

She swallowed hard and edged a little nearer to him.

"No-o," she declared, stoutly, "I--I wasn't afraid, not very; but--
but I thought the--the swordfish was pretty heavy to carry all
alone and--and so--"

Jed laughed aloud, something that he rarely did.

"Good for you, sis!" he exclaimed.  "Now you just wait until I get
my hat and we'll carry that heavy fish home together."

Miss Armstrong looked decidedly happier.

"Thank you very much," she said.  "And--and, if you please, my name
is Barbara."


CHAPTER IV


The Smalley residence, where Mrs. Luretta Smalley, relict of the
late Zenas T., accommodated a few "paying guests," was nearly a
mile from the windmill shop and on the Orham "lower road."  Mr.
Winslow and his new acquaintance took the short cuts, through by-
paths and across fields, and the young lady appeared to have
thoroughly recovered from her misgivings concerning the dark--in
reality it was scarcely dusk--and her doubts concerning her ability
to carry the "heavy" swordfish without help.  At all events she
insisted upon carrying it alone, telling her companion that she
thought perhaps he had better not touch it as it was so very, very
brittle and might get broken, and consoling him by offering to
permit him to carry Petunia, which fragrant appellation, it
appeared, was the name of the doll.

"I named her Petunia after a flower," she explained.  "I think she
looks like a flower, don't you?"

If she did it was a wilted one.  However, Miss Armstrong did not
wait for comment on the part of her escort, but chatted straight
on.  Jed learned that her mother's name was Mrs. Ruth Phillips
Armstrong.  "It used to be Mrs. Seymour Armstrong, but it isn't
now, because Papa's name was Doctor Seymour Armstrong and he died,
you know."  And they lived in a central Connecticut city, but
perhaps they weren't going to live there any more because Mamma had
sold the house and didn't know exactly WHAT to do.  And they had
been in Orham ever since before the Fourth of July, and they liked
it EVER so much, it was so quaint and--and "franteek"--

Jed interrupted here.  "So quaint and what?" he demanded.

"Franteek."  Miss Barbara herself seemed a little doubtful of the
word.  At any rate Mamma said it was something like that, and it
meant they liked it anyway.  So Mr. Winslow was left to ponder
whether "antique" or "unique" was intended and to follow his train
of thought wherever it chanced to lead him, while the child
prattled on.  They came in sight of the Smalley front gate and Jed
came out of his walking trance to hear her say:

"Anyway, we like it all but the sal'ratus biscuits and the coffee
and THEY are dreadful.  Mamma thinks it's made of chickenry--the
coffee, I mean."

At the gate Jed's "queerness," or shyness, came upon him.  The idea
of meeting Mrs. Armstrong or even the members of the Smalley family
he shrank from.  Barbara invited him to come in, but he refused
even to accompany her to the door.

"I'll just run along now," he said, hurriedly.  "Good night."

The child put out her hand.  "Good night," she said.  "Thank you
very much for helping me carry the fish home.  I'm coming to see
you again some day."

She scampered up the walk.  Jed, waiting in the shadow of the lilac
bushes by the fence, saw her rattle the latch of the door, saw the
door open and the child caught up in the arms of a woman, who
cried: "Oh, Babbie, dear, where HAVE you been?  Mamma was SO
frightened!"

He smiled over the memory of the little girl's visit more than once
that evening.  He was very fond of children and their society did
not embarrass or annoy him as did the company of most grown-ups--
strangers, that is.  He remembered portions of Miss Barbara's
conversation and determined to repeat them to Captain Sam
Hunniwell, the next time the latter called.

And that next time was the following forenoon.  Captain Sam, on the
way to his office at the bank, stopped his car at the edge of the
sidewalk and came into the shop.  Jed, having finished painting
wooden sailors for the present, was boxing an assorted collection
of mills and vanes to be sent South, for a certain demand for
"Winslow mills" was developing at the winter as well as the summer
resorts.  It was far from winter yet, but this purchaser was
forehanded.

"Hello, Jed," hailed the captain, "busy as usual.  You've got the
busy bee a mile astern so far as real hustlin' is concerned."

Jed took a nail from the half dozen held between his lips and
applied its point to the box top.  His sentences for the next few
minutes were mumbled between nails and punctuated with blows of the
hammer.

"The busy bee," he mumbled, "can sting other folks.  He don't get
stung much himself.  Collectin' honey's easier, I cal'late, than
collectin' money."

Captain Sam grunted.  "Are you stung again?" he demanded.  "Who did
it this time?"

Jed pointed with the hammer to an envelope lying on a pile of
wooden crows.  The captain took up the envelope and inspected its
contents.


"'We regret to inform you,' he read aloud, 'that the Funny Novelty
Company of this town went into bankruptcy a month ago.

"'JOHN HOLWAY.'"


"Humph!" he sniffed.  "That's short and sweet.  Owed you somethin',
I presume likely?"

Jed nodded.  "Seventeen dollars and three cents," he admitted,
between the remaining nails.

"Sho!  Well, if you could get the seventeen dollars you'd throw off
the three cents, wouldn't you?"

"No-o."

"You wouldn't?  Why not?"

Jed pried a crookedly driven nail out again and substituted a fresh
one.

"Can't afford to," he drawled.  "That's the part I'll probably
get."

"Guess you're right.  Who's this John Holway?"

"Eh. . . .  Why, when he ordered the mills of me last summer he was
president of the Funny Novelty Company up there to Manchester."

"Good Lord!  Well, I admire his nerve.  How did you come to sell
these--er--Funny folks, in the first place?"

Mr. Winslow looked surprised.

"Why, they wrote and sent an order," he replied.

"Did, eh?  And you didn't think of lookin' 'em up to see whether
they was good for anything or good for nothin'?  Just sailed in and
hurried off the stuff, I presume likely?"

Jed nodded.  "Why--why, yes, of course," he said.  "You see, they
said they wanted it right away."

His friend groaned.  "Gracious king!" he exclaimed.  "How many
times have I told you to let me look up credits for you when you
get an order from a stranger?  Well, there's no use talkin' to you.
Give me this letter.  I'll see what I can squeeze out of your Funny
friend. . . .  But, say," he added, "I can't stop but a minute, and
I ran in to ask you if you'd changed your mind about rentin' the
old house here.  If you have, I believe I've got a good tenant for
you."

Jed looked troubled.  He laid down the hammer and took the last
nail from his mouth.

"Now--now, Sam," he began, "you know--"

"Oh, I know you've set your thick head dead against rentin' it at
all, but that's silly, as I've told you a thousand times.  The
house is empty and it doesn't do any house good to stay empty.
Course if 'twas anybody but you, Jed Winslow, you'd live in it
yourself instead of campin' out in this shack here."

Jed sat down on the box he had just nailed and, taking one long leg
between his big hands, pulled its knee up until he could have
rested his chin upon it without much inconvenience.

"I know, Sam," he drawled gravely, "but that's the trouble--I ain't
been anybody but me for forty-five years."

The captain smiled, in spite of his impatience.  "And you won't be
anybody else for the next forty-five," he said, "I know that.  But
all the same, bein' a practical, more or less sane man myself, it
makes me nervous to see a nice, attractive, comfortable little
house standin' idle while the feller that owns it eats and sleeps
in a two-by-four sawmill, so to speak.  And, not only that, but
won't let anybody else live in the house, either.  I call that a
dog in the manger business, and crazy besides."

The big foot at the end of the long leg swung slowly back and
forth.  Mr. Winslow looked absently at the roof.

"DON'T look like that!" snapped Captain Sam.  "Come out of it!
Wake up!  It always gives me the fidgets to see you settin' gapin'
at nothin'.  What are you daydreamin' about now, eh?"

Jed turned and gazed over his spectacles.

"I was thinkin'," he observed, "that most likely that dog himself
was crazy.  If he wasn't he wouldn't have got into the manger.  I
never saw a dog that wanted to climb into a manger, did you, Sam?"

"Oh, confound the manger and the dog, too!  Look here, Jed; if I
found you a good tenant would you rent 'em that house of yours?"

Jed looked more troubled than ever.

"Sam," he began, "you know I'd do 'most anything to oblige you,
but--"

"Oblige me!  This ain't to oblige me.  It's to oblige you."

"Oh, then I won't do it."

"Well, then, 'tis to oblige me.  It'll oblige me to have you show
some sense.  Come on, Jed.  These people I've got in mind are nice
people.  They want to find a little house and they've come to me at
the bank for advice about findin' it.  It's a chance for you, a
real chance."

Jed rocked back and forth.  He looked genuinely worried.

"Who are they?" he asked, after a moment

"Can't name any names yet."

Another period of reflection.  Then: "City folks or Orham folks?"
inquired Mr. Winslow.

"City folks."

Some of the worried look disappeared.  Jed was plainly relieved and
more hopeful.

"Oh, then they won't want it," he declared.  "City folks want to
hire houses in the spring, not along as late in the summer as
this."

"These people do.  They're thinkin' of livin' here in Orham all the
year round.  It's a first-rate chance for you, Jed.  Course, I know
you don't really need the money, perhaps, but--well, to be real
honest, I want these folks to stay in Orham--they're the kind of
folks the town needs--and I want 'em contented.  I think they would
be contented in your house.  You let those Davidsons from Chicago
have the place that summer, but you've never let anybody so much as
consider it since.  What's the real reason?  You've told me as much
as a dozen, but I'll bet anything you've never told me the real
one.  'Twas somethin' the Davidsons did you didn't like--but what?"

Jed's rocking back and forth on the box became almost energetic and
his troubled expression more than ever apparent.

"Now--now, Sam," he begged, "I've told you all about that ever and
ever so many times.  There wasn't anything, really."

"There was, too.  What was it?"

Jed suffered in silence for two or three minutes.

"What was the real reason?  Out with it," persisted Captain
Hunniwell.

"Well--well, 'twas--'twas--" desperately, "'twas the squeakin' and--
and squealin'."

"Squeakin' and squealin'?  Gracious king!  What are you talkin'
about?"

"Why--the--the mills, you know.  The mills and vanes outside on--on
the posts and the fence.  They squeaked and--and sometimes they
squealed awful.  And he didn't like it."

"Who didn't?"

"Colonel Davidson.  He said they'd got to stop makin' that noise
and I said I'd oil 'em every day.  And--and I forgot it."

"Yes--well, I ain't surprised to death, exactly.  What then?"

"Well--well, you see, they were squealin' worse than usual one
mornin' and Colonel Davidson he came in here and--and I remembered
I hadn't oiled 'em for three days.  And I--I said how horrible the
squealin' was and that I'd oil 'em right away and--and--"

"Well, go on! go on!"

"And when I went out to do it there wasn't any wind and the mills
wasn't goin' at all.  You see, 'twas his oldest daughter takin' her
singin' lessons in the house with the window open."

Captain Sam put back his head and shouted.  Jed looked sadly at the
floor.  When the captain could speak he asked:

"And you mean to tell me that was the reason you wouldn't let the
house again?"

"Er--why, yes."

"I know better.  You didn't have any row with the Davidsons.  You
couldn't row with anybody, anyhow; and besides the Colonel himself
told me they would have taken the house the very next summer but
you wouldn't rent it to 'em.  And you mean to say that yarn you've
just spun was the reason?"

"Why--yes."

"Rubbish!  You've told me a dozen reasons afore, but I'm bound to
say this is the most foolish yet.  All right, keep the real reason
to yourself, then.  But I tell you what I'm goin' to do to get even
with you: I'm goin' to send these folks down to look at your house
and I shan't tell you who they are or when they're comin'."

The knee slipped down from Mr. Winslow's grasp and his foot struck
the floor with a crash.  He made a frantic clutch at his friend's
arm.

"Oh, now, Sam," he cried, in horror, "don't do that!  Don't talk
so!  You don't mean it!  Come here! . . .  Sam!"

But the captain was at the door.  "You bet I mean it!" he declared.
"Keep your weather eye peeled, Jed.  They'll be comin' 'most any
time now.  And if you have ANY sense you'll let 'em the house.  So
long!"

He drove away in his little car.  Jed Winslow, left standing in the
shop doorway, staring after him, groaned in anxious foreboding.

He groaned a good many times during the next few hours.  Each time
the bell rang announcing the arrival of a visitor he rose to answer
it perfectly sure that here were the would-be tenants whom his
friend, in the mistaken kindness of his heart, was sending to him.
Not that he had the slightest idea of renting his old home, but he
dreaded the ordeal of refusing.  In fact he was not sure that he
could refuse, not sure that he could invent a believable excuse for
doing so.  Another person would not have sought excuses, would have
declared simply that the property was not for rent, but Jed Winslow
was not that other person; he was himself, and ordinary methods of
procedure were not his.

Two or three groups of customers came in, purchased and departed.
Captain Jerry Burgess dropped in to bring the Winslow mail, which
in this case consisted of an order, a bill and a circular setting
forth the transcendent healing qualities of African Balm, the Foe
of Rheumatism.  Mr. Bearse happened in to discuss the great news of
the proposed aviation camp and to tell with gusto and detail how
Phineas Babbitt had met Captain Hunniwell "right square in front of
the bank" and had not spoken to him.  "No, sir, never said a word
to him no more'n if he wan't there.  What do you think of that?
And they say Leander wrote his dad that he thought he was goin' to
like soldierin' fust-rate, and Mrs. Sarah Mary Babbitt she told
Melissa Busteed that her husband's language when he read that was
somethin' sinful.  She said she never was more thankful that they
had lightnin' rods on the roof, 'cause such talk as that was enough
to fetch down fire from heaven."


CHAPTER V


It was nearly noon when Jed, entering the front shop in answer to
the bell, found there the couple the sight of which caused his
heart to sink.  Here they were, the house hunters--there was no
doubt of it in his mind.  The man was short and broad and
protuberant and pompous.  The woman possessed all the last three
qualities, besides being tall.  He shone with prosperity and
sunburn, she reeked of riches and talcum.  They were just the sort
of people who would insist upon hiring a house that was not in the
market; its not being in the market would, in their eyes, make it
all the more desirable.

Jed had seen them before, knew they were staying at the hotel and
that their names were Powless.  He remembered now, with a thrill of
alarm, that Mr. Bearse had recently spoken of them as liking Orham
very much and considering getting a place of their own.  And of
course Captain Sam, hearing this, had told them of the Winslow
place, had sent them to him.  "Oh, Lord!  Oh, Lord!" thought Jed,
although what he said was: "Good mornin'."

He might as well have said nothing.  Mrs. Powless, looming large
between the piles of mills and vanes, like a battleship in a narrow
channel, was loftily inspecting the stock through her lorgnette.
Her husband, his walking stick under his arm and his hands in his
pockets, was not even making the pretense of being interested; he
was staring through the seaward window toward the yard and the old
house.

"These are really quite extraordinary," the lady announced, after a
moment.  "George, you really should see these extraordinary
things."

George was, evidently, not interested.  He continued to look out of
the window.

"What are they?" he asked, without turning.

"Oh, I don't know.  All sorts of queer dolls and boats--and
creatures, made of wood.  Like those outside, you know--er--
teetotums, windmills.  Do come and look at them."

Mr. Powless did not comply.  He said "Umph" and that was all.

"George," repeated Mrs. Powless, "do you hear me?  Come and look at
them."

And George came.  One might have inferred that, when his wife spoke
like that, he usually came.  He treated a wooden porpoise to a
thoroughly wooden stare and repeated his remark of "Umph!"

"Aren't they extraordinary!" exclaimed his wife.  "Does this man
make them himself, I wonder?"

She seemed to be addressing her husband, so Jed did not answer.

"Do you?" demanded Mr. Powless.

"Yes," replied Jed.

Mrs. Powless said "Fancy!"  Mr. Powless strolled back to the
window.

"This view is all right, Mollie," he observed.  "Better even than
it is from the street.  Come and see."

Mrs. Powless went and saw.  Jed stood still and stared miserably.

"Rather attractive, on the whole, don't you think, dear?" inquired
the gentleman.  "Must be very decent in the yard there."

The lady did not reply, but she opened the door and went out,
around the corner of the shop and into the back yard.  Her husband
trotted after her.  The owner of the property, gazing pathetically
through the window, saw them wandering about the premises, looking
off at the view, up into the trees, and finally trying the door of
the old house and peeping in between the slats of the closed
blinds.  Then they came strolling back to the shop.  Jed, drawing a
long breath, prepared to face the ordeal.

Mrs. Powless entered the shop.  Mr. Powless remained by the door.
He spoke first.

"You own all this?" he asked, indicating the surrounding country
with a wave of his cane.  Jed nodded.

"That house, too?" waving the point of the cane toward the Winslow
cottage.

"Yes."

"How old is it?"

Jed stammered that he guessed likely it was about a hundred years
old or such matter.

"Umph!  Furniture old, too?"

"Yes, I cal'late most of it is."

"Nobody living in it?"

"No-o."

"Got the key to it?"

Here was the question direct.  If he answered in the affirmative
the next utterance of the Powless man would be a command to be
shown the interior of the house.  Jed was certain of it, he could
see it in the man's eye.  What was infinitely more important, he
could see it in the lady's eye.  He hesitated.

"Got the key to it?" repeated Mr. Powless.

Jed swallowed.

"No-o," he faltered, "I--I guess not."

"You GUESS not.  Don't you know whether you've got it or not?"

"No.  I mean yes.  I know I ain't."

"Where is it; lost?"

The key was usually lost, that is to say, Jed was accustomed to
hunt for fifteen minutes before finding it, so, his conscience
backing his inclination, he replied that he cal'lated it must be.

"Umph!" grunted Powless.  "How do you get into the house without a
key?"

Jed rubbed his chin, swallowed hard, and drawled that he didn't
very often.

"You do sometimes, don't you?"

The best answer that the harassed windmill maker could summon was
that he didn't know.  The red-faced gentleman stared at him in
indignant amazement.

"You don't KNOW?" he repeated.  "Which don't you know, whether you
go into the house at all, or how you get in without a key?"

"Yes,--er--er--that's it."

Mr. Powless breathed deeply.  "Well, I'll be damned!" he declared,
with conviction.

His wife did not contradict his assertion, but she made one of her
own.

"George," she commanded majestically, "can't you see the man has
been drinking.  Probably he doesn't own the place at all.  Don't
waste another moment on him.  We will come back later, when the
real owner is in.  Come!"

George came and they both went.  Mr. Winslow wiped his perspiring
forehead on a piece of wrapping paper and sat down upon a box to
recover.  Recovery, however, was by no means rapid or complete.
They had gone, but they were coming back again; and what should he
say to them then?  Very likely Captain Sam, who had sent them in
the first place, would return with them.  And Captain Sam knew that
the key was not really lost.  Jed's satisfaction in the fact that
he had escaped tenantless so far was nullified by the fear that his
freedom was but temporary.

He cooked his dinner, but ate little.  After washing the dishes he
crossed the road to the telephone and telegraph office and called
up the Orham Bank.  He meant to get Captain Hunniwell on the wire,
tell him that the house hunters had paid him a visit, that he did
not like them, and beg the captain to call them off the scent.  But
Captain Sam had motored to Ostable to attend a preliminary session
of the Exemption Board.  Jed sauntered gloomily back to the shop.
When he opened the door and entered he was greeted by a familiar
voice, which said:

"Here he is, Mamma.  Good afternoon, Mr. Winslow."

Jed started, turned, and found Miss Barbara Armstrong beaming up at
him.  The young lady's attire and general appearance were in marked
contrast to those of the previous evening.  Petunia also was in
calling costume; save for the trifling lack of one eye and a chip
from the end of her nose, she would have been an ornament to doll
society anywhere.

"This is my mamma," announced Barbara.  "She's come to see you."

"How do you do, Mr. Winslow?" said Mrs. Armstrong.

Jed looked up to find her standing beside him, her hand extended.
Beside a general impression that she was young and that her gown
and hat and shoes were white, he was at that moment too greatly
embarrassed to notice much concerning her appearance.  Probably he
did not notice even this until later.  However, he took her hand,
moved it up and down, dropped it again and said: "I--I'm pleased to
meet you, ma'am."

She smiled.  "And I am very glad to meet you," she said.  "It was
very kind of you to bring my little girl home last night and she
and I have come to thank you for doing it."

Jed was more embarrassed than ever.

"Sho, sho!" he protested; "'twasn't anything."

"Oh, yes, it was; it was a great deal.  I was getting very worried,
almost frightened.  She had been gone ever since luncheon--dinner,
I mean--and I had no idea where.  She's a pretty good little girl,
generally speaking," drawing the child close and smiling down upon
her, "but sometimes she is heedless and forgets.  Yesterday she
forgot, didn't you, dear?"

Barbara shook her head.

"I didn't forget," she said.  "I mean I only forgot a little.
Petunia forgot almost EVERYTHING.  I forgot and went as far as the
bridge, but she forgot all the way to the clam field."

Jed rubbed his chin.

"The which field?" he drawled.

"The clam field.  The place where Mrs. Smalley's fish man unplants
the clams she makes the chowder of.  He does it with a sort of hoe
thing and puts them in a pail.  He was doing it yesterday; I saw
him."

Jed's eyes twinkled at the word "unplants," but another thought
occurred to him.

"You wasn't out on those clam flats alone, was you?" he asked,
addressing Barbara.

She nodded.  "Petunia and I went all alone," she said.  "It was
kind of wet so we took off our shoes and stockings and paddled.
I--I don't know's I remembered to tell you that part, Mamma," she
added, hastily.  "I--I guess it must have slipped my mind."

But Mrs. Armstrong was watching Jed's face.

"Was there any danger?" she asked, quickly.

Jed hesitated before answering.  "Why," he drawled, "I--I don't
know as there was, but--well, the tide comes in kind of slow off ON
the flats, but it's liable to fill up the channels between them and
the beach some faster.  Course if you know the wadin' places it's
all right, but if you don't it's--well, it's sort of uncomfortable,
that's all."

The lady's cheeks paled a bit, but she did not exclaim, nor as Jed
would have said "make a fuss."  She said, simply, "Thank you, I
will remember," and that was the only reference she made to the
subject of the "clam field."

Miss Barbara, to whom the events of dead yesterdays were of no
particular concern compared to those of the vital and living to-
day, was rummaging among the stock.

"Mamma," she cried, excitedly, "here is a whale fish like the one I
was going to buy for Captain Hedge.  Come and see it."

Mrs. Armstrong came and was much interested.  She asked Jed
questions concerning the "whale fish" and others of his creations.
At first his replies were brief and monosyllabic, but gradually
they became more lengthy, until, without being aware of it, he was
carrying on his share of a real conversation.  Of course, he
hesitated and paused and drawled, but he always did that, even when
talking with Captain Sam Hunniwell.

He took down and exhibited his wares one by one.  Barbara asked
numberless questions concerning each and chattered like a red
squirrel.  Her mother showed such a genuine interest in his work
and was so pleasant and quiet and friendly, was, in short, such a
marked contrast to Mrs. George Powless, that he found himself
actually beginning to enjoy the visit.  Usually he was glad when
summer folks finished their looking and buying and went away; but
now, when Mrs. Armstrong glanced at the clock on the shelf, he was
secretly glad that that clock had not gone for over four months and
had providentially stopped going at a quarter after three.

He took them into the inner shop, his workroom, and showed them the
band saw and the lathe and the rest of his manufacturing outfit.
Barbara asked if he lived there all alone and he said he did.

"I live out there," he explained, pointing toward the shop
extension.  "Got a sittin'-room and a kitchen out there, and a
little upstairs, where I sleep."

Mrs. Armstrong seemed surprised.  "Why!" she exclaimed, "I thought
you lived in that dear little old house next door here.  I was told
that you owned it."

Jed nodded.  "Yes, ma'am," he said, "I do own it, but I don't live
in it.  I used to live there, but I ain't for quite a spell now."

"I don't see how you could bear to give it up.  It looks so quaint
and homey, and if the inside is as delightful as the outside it
must be quite wonderful.  And the view is the best in town, isn't
it?"

Jed was pleased.  "Why, yes, ma'am, 'tis pretty good," he admitted.
"Anyhow, most folks seem to cal'late 'tis.  Wouldn't you like to
come out and look at it?"

Barbara clapped her hands.  "Oh, yes, Mamma, do!" she cried.

Her mother hesitated.  "I don't know that we ought to trouble Mr.
Winslow," she said.  "He is busy, you know."

Jed protested.  "It won't be a mite of trouble," he declared.
"Besides, it ain't healthy to work too long at a stretch.  That
is," he drawled, "folks say 'tain't, so I never take the risk."

Mrs. Armstrong smiled and followed him out into the yard, where
Miss Barbara had already preceded them.  The view over the edge of
the bluff was glorious and the grass in the yard was green, the
flowers bright and pretty and the shadows of the tall lilac bushes
by the back door of the little white house cool and inviting.

Barbara danced along the bluff edge, looking down at the dories and
nets on the beach below.  Her mother sighed softly.

"It is lovely!" she said.  Then, turning to look at the little
house, she added, "And it was your old home, I suppose."

Jed nodded.  "Yes, ma'am," he replied.  "I was born in that house
and lived there all my life up to five years ago."

"And then you gave it up.  Why? . . .  Please forgive me.  I didn't
mean to be curious."

"Oh, that's all right, ma'am.  Nothin' secret about it.  My mother
died and I didn't seem to care about livin' there alone, that's
all."

"I see.  I understand."

She looked as if she did understand, and Jed, the seldom
understood, experienced an unusual pleasure.  The sensation
produced an unusual result.

"It's a kind of cute and old-fashioned house inside," he observed.
"Maybe you'd like to go in and look around; would you?"

She looked very much pleased.  "Oh, I should, indeed!" she
exclaimed.  "May I?"

Now, the moment after he issued the invitation he was sorry.  It
had been quite unpremeditated and had been given he could not have
told why.  His visitor had seemed so genuinely interested, and,
above all, had treated him like a rational human being instead of a
freak.  Under this unaccustomed treatment Jed Winslow had been
caught off his guard--hypnotized, so to speak.  And now, when it
was too late, he realized the possible danger.  Only a few hours
ago he had told Mr. and Mrs. George Powless that the key to that
house had been lost.

He paused and hesitated.  Mrs. Armstrong noticed his hesitation.

"Please don't think any more about it," she said.  "It is
delightful here in the yard.  Babbie and I will stay here a few
minutes, if we may, and you must go back to your work, Mr.
Winslow."

But Jed, having put his foot in it, was ashamed to withdraw.  He
hastened to disclaim any intention of withdrawal.

"No, no," he protested.  "I don't need to go to work, not yet
anyhow.  I should be real pleased to show you the house, ma'am.
You wait now and I'll fetch the key."

Some five minutes later he reappeared with triumph in his eye and
the "lost" key in his hand.

"Sorry to keep you waitin', ma'am," he explained.  "The key had--
er--stole its nest, as you might say.  Got it now, though."

His visitors looked at the key, which was attached by a cord to a
slab of wood about the size of half a shingle.  Upon one side of
the slab were lettered in black paint the words HERE IT IS.
Barbara's curiosity was aroused.

"What have you got those letters on there for, Mr. Winslow?" she
asked.  "What does it say?"

Jed solemnly read the inscription.  "I printed that on there," he
explained, "so I'd be able to find the key when I wanted it."

Mrs. Armstrong smiled.  "I should think it might help," she
observed, evidently much amused.

Mr. Winslow nodded.  "You would think so," he said, "wouldn't you?
Maybe 'twould, too, only 'twas such a plaguey nuisance, towin' that
half a cord of wood around, that I left it to home last time.
Untied the string, you know, and just took the key.  The wood and
the string was hangin' up in the right place, but the key wan't
among those present, as they say in the newspapers."

"Where was it?" demanded Barbara.

"Hush, dear," cautioned her mother.  "You mustn't ask so many
questions."

"That's all right, ma'am; I don't mind a mite.  Where was it?
We-ll, 'twas in my pants pocket here, just where I put it last
time I used it.  Naturally enough I shouldn't have thought of
lookin' there and I don't know's I'd have found it yet, but I
happened to shove my hands in my pockets to help me think, and
there 'twas."

This explanation should have been satisfying, doubtless, but
Barbara did not seem to find it wholly so.

"Please may I ask one more question, Mamma?" she pleaded.  "Just
only one?"

She asked it before her mother could reply.

"How does putting your hands in your pockets help you think, Mr.
Winslow?" she asked.  "I don't see how it would help a bit?"

Jed's eye twinkled, but his reply was solemnly given.

"Why, you see," he drawled, "I'm built a good deal like the old
steam launch Tobias Wixon used to own.  Every time Tobias blew the
whistle it used up all the steam and the engine stopped.  I've got
a head about like that engine; when I want to use it I have to give
all the rest of me a layoff. . . .  Here we are, ma'am.  Walk right
in, won't you."

He showed them through room after room of the little house, opening
the closed shutters so that the afternoon sunlight might stream in
and brighten their progress.  The rooms were small, but they were
attractive and cosy.  The furniture was almost all old mahogany and
in remarkably good condition.  The rugs were home-made; even the
coverlets of the beds were of the old-fashioned blue and white,
woven on the hand looms of our great-grandmothers.  Mrs. Armstrong
was enthusiastic.

"It is like a miniature museum of antiques," she declared.  "And
such wonderful antiques, too.  You must have been besieged by
people who wanted to buy them."

Jed nodded.  "Ye-es," he admitted, "I cal'late there's been no
less'n a million antiquers here in the last four or five year.  I
don't mean here in the house--I never let 'em in the house--but
'round the premises.  Got so they kind of swarmed first of every
summer, like June bugs.  I got rid of 'em, though, for a spell."

"Did you; how?"

He rubbed his chin.  "Put up a sign by the front door that said:
'Beware of Leprosy.'  That kept 'em away while it lasted."

Mrs. Armstrong laughed merrily.  "I should think so," she said.
"But why leprosy, pray?"

"Oh, I was goin' to make it smallpox, but I asked Doctor Parker if
there was anything worse than smallpox and he said he cal'lated
leprosy was about as bad as any disease goin'.  It worked fine
while it lasted, but the Board of Health made me take it down; said
there wan't any leprosy on the premises.  I told 'em no, but 'twas
a good idea to beware of it anyhow, and I'd put up the sign just on
general principles.  No use; they hadn't much use for principles,
general or otherwise, seemed so."

The lady commented on the neatness and order in the little rooms.
They were in marked contrast to the workshop.  "I suppose you have
a woman come here to clean and sweep," she said.

Jed shook his head.

"No-o," he answered.  "I generally cal'late to come in every little
while and clean up.  Mother was always a great one for keepin'
things slicked up," he added, apologetically, "and I--I kind of
like to think 'twould please her.  Foolish, I presume likely, but--
well, foolish things seem to come natural to me.  Got a kind of a
gift for 'em, as you might say.  I . . ."

He lapsed into silence, his sentence only begun.  Mrs. Armstrong,
looking up, found him gazing at her with the absent, far-off look
that his closest associates knew so well.  She had not met it
before and found it rather embarrassing, especially as it kept on
and on.

"Well?" she asked, after a time.  He started and awoke to
realities.

"I was just thinkin'," he explained, "that you was the only woman
that has been in this house since the summer I let it to the
Davidson folks.  And Mrs. Davidson wan't a mite like you."

That was true enough.  Mrs. Davidson had been a plump elderly
matron with gray hair, a rather rasping voice and a somewhat
aggressive manner.  Mrs. Armstrong was young and slim, her hair and
eyes were dark, her manner refined and her voice low and gentle.
And, if Jed had been in the habit of noticing such things, he might
have noticed that she was pleasant to look at.  Perhaps he was
conscious of this fact, but, if so, it was only in a vague, general
way.

His gaze wandered to Barbara, who, with Petunia, was curled up in a
big old-fashioned rocker.

"And a child, too," he mused.  "I don't know when there's been a
child in here.  Not since I was one, I guess likely, and that's too
long ago for anybody to remember single-handed."

But Mrs. Armstrong was interested in his previous remark.

"You have let others occupy this house then?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am, one summer I did.  Let it furnished to some folks name
of Davidson, from Chicago."

"And you haven't rented it since?"

"No, ma'am, not but that once."

She was silent for a moment.  Then she said: "I am surprised that
it hasn't been occupied always.  Do you ask such a VERY high rent,
Mr. Winslow?"

Jed looked doubtful.  "Why, no, ma'am," he answered.  "I didn't
cal'late 'twas so very high, considerin' that 'twas just for
'summer and furnished and all.  The Davidsons paid forty dollars a
month, but--"

"FORTY dollars!  A month?  And furnished like that?  You mean a
week, don't you?"

Mr. Winslow looked at her.  The slow smile wandered across his
face.  He evidently suspected a joke.

"Why, no, ma'am," he drawled.  "You see, they was rentin' the
place, not buyin' it."

"But forty dollars a month is VERY cheap."

"Is it?  Sho!  Now you speak of it I remember that Captain Sam
seemed to cal'late 'twas.  He said I ought to have asked a hundred,
or some such foolishness.  I told him he must have the notion that
I was left out of the sweet ile when they pickled the other thirty-
nine thieves.  Perhaps you've read the story, ma'am," he suggested.

His visitor laughed.  "I have read it," she said.  Then she added,
plainly more to herself than to him: "But even forty is far too
much, of course."

Jed was surprised and a little hurt.

"Yes--er--yes, ma'am," he faltered.  "Well, I--I was kind of 'fraid
'twas, but Colonel Davidson seemed to think 'twas about fair, so--"

"Oh, you misunderstand me.  I didn't mean that forty dollars was
too high a rent.  It isn't, it is a very low one.  I meant that it
was more than I ought to think of paying.  You see, Mr. Winslow, I
have been thinking that we might live here in Orham, Barbara and I.
I like the town; and the people, most of those I have met, have
been very pleasant and kind.  And it is necessary--that is, it
seems to me preferable--that we live, for some years at least, away
from the city.  This little house of yours is perfect.  I fell in
love with the outside of it at first sight.  Now I find the inside
even more delightful.  I"--she hesitated, and then added--"I don't
suppose you would care to let it unfurnished at--at a lower rate?"

Jed was very much embarrassed.  The idea that his caller would make
such a proposition as this had not occurred to him for a moment.
If it had the lost key would almost certainly have remained lost.
He liked Mrs. Armstrong even on such short acquaintance, and he had
taken a real fancy to Barbara; but his prejudice against tenants
remained.  He rubbed his chin.

"Why--why, now, ma'am," he stammered, "you--you wouldn't like
livin' in Orham all the year 'round, would you?"

"I hope I should.  I know I should like it better than living--
elsewhere," with, so it seemed to him, a little shudder.  "And I
cannot afford to live otherwise than very simply anywhere.  I have
been boarding in Orham for almost three months now and I feel that
I have given it a trial."

"Yes--yes, ma'am, but summer's considerable more lively than winter
here on the Cape."

"I have no desire for society.  I expect to be quiet and I wish to
be.  Mr. Winslow, would you consider letting me occupy this house--
unfurnished, of course?  I should dearly love to take it just as it
is--this furniture is far more fitting for it than mine--but I
cannot afford forty dollars a month.  Provided you were willing to
let me hire the house of you at all, not for the summer alone but
for all the year, what rent do you think you should charge?"

Jed's embarrassment increased.  "Well, now, ma'am," he faltered,
"I--I hope you won't mind my sayin' it, but--but I don't know's I
want to let this house at all.  I--I've had consider'ble many
chances to rent it, but--but--"

He could not seem to find a satisfactory ending to the sentence and
so left it unfinished.  Mrs. Armstrong was evidently much
disappointed, but she did not give up completely.

"I see," she said.  "Well, in a way I think I understand.  You
prefer the privacy.  I think I could promise you that Barbara and I
would disturb you very little.  As to the rent, that would be paid
promptly."

"Sartin, ma'am, sartin; I know 'twould, but--"

"Won't you think it over?  We might even live here for a month,
with your furniture undisturbed and at the regular rental.  You
could call it a trial month, if you liked.  You could see how you
liked us, you know.  At the end of that time," with a smile, "you
might tell us we wouldn't do at all, or, perhaps, then you might
consider making a more permanent arrangement.  Barbara would like
it here, wouldn't you, dear?"

Barbara, who had been listening, nodded excitedly from the big
rocker.  "Ever and ever so much," she declared; "and Petunia would
just adore it."

Poor Jed was greatly perturbed.  "Don't talk so, Mrs. Armstrong,"
he blurted.  "Please don't.  I--I don't want you to.  You--you make
me feel bad."

"Do I?  I'm so sorry.  I didn't mean to say anything to hurt your
feelings.  I beg your pardon."

"No, you don't.  I--I mean you hadn't ought to.  You don't hurt my
feelin's; I mean you make me feel bad--wicked--cussed mean--all
that and some more.  I know I ought to let you have this house.
Any common, decent man with common decent feelin's and sense would
let you have it.  But, you see, I ain't that kind.  I--I'm selfish
and--and wicked and--"  He waved a big hand in desperation.

She laughed.  "Nonsense!" she exclaimed.  "Besides, it isn't so
desperate as all that.  You certainly are not obliged to rent the
house unless you want to."

"But I do want to; that is, I don't, but I know I'd ought to want
to.  And if I was goin' to let anybody have it I'd rather 'twould
be you--honest, I would.  And it's the right thing for me to do, I
know that.  That's what bothers me; the trouble's with ME.  I don't
want to do the right thing."  He broke off, seemed to reflect and
then asked suddenly:

"Ma'am, do you want to go to heaven when you die?"

The lady was naturally somewhat surprised at the question.  "Why,
yes," she replied, "I--  Why, of course I do."

"There, that's it!  Any decent, sensible person would.  But I don't."

Barbara, startled into forgetting that children should be seen and
not heard, uttered a shocked "Oh!"

Jed waved his hand.  "You see," he said, "even that child's morals
are upset by me.  I know I ought to want to go to heaven.  But when
I see the crowd that KNOW they're goin' there, are sartin of it,
the ones from this town, a good many of 'em anyhow; when I hear how
they talk in prayer-meetin' and then see how they act outside of
it, I--  Well," with a deep sigh, "I want to go where they ain't,
that's all."  He paused, and then drawled solemnly, but with a
suspicion of the twinkle in his eye: "The general opinion seems to
be that that's where I'll go, so's I don't know's I need to worry."

Mrs. Armstrong made no comment on this confession.  He did not seem
to expect any.

"Ma'am," he continued, "you see what I mean.  The trouble's with
me, I ain't made right.  I ought to let that house; Sam Hunniwell
told me so this mornin'.  But I--I don't want to.  Nothin' personal
to you, you understand; but . . . Eh?  Who's that?"

A step sounded on the walk outside and voices were heard.  Jed
turned to the door.

"Customers, I cal'late," he said.  "Make yourselves right to home,
ma'am, you and the little girl.  I'll be right back."

He went out through the dining-room into the little hall.  Barbara,
in the big rocker, looked up over Petunia's head at her mother.

"Isn't he a funny man, Mamma?" she said.

Mrs. Armstrong nodded.  "Yes, he certainly is," she admitted.

"Yes," the child nodded reflectively.  "But I don't believe he's
wicked at all.  I believe he's real nice, don't you?"

"I'm sure he is, dear."

"Yes.  Petunia and I like him.  I think he's what you said our
Bridget was, a rough damson."

"Not damson; diamond, dear."

"Oh, yes.  It was damson preserve Mrs. Smalley had for supper last
night.  I forgot.  Petunia told me to say damson; she makes so many
mistakes."

They heard the "rough diamond" returning.  He seemed to be in a
hurry.  When he re-entered the little sitting-room he looked very
much frightened.

"What is the matter?" demanded Mrs. Armstrong.

Jed gulped.

"They've come back," he whispered.  "Godfreys, I forgot 'em, and
they've come back.  WHAT'LL I do now?"

"But who--who has come back?"

Mr. Winslow waved both hands.

"The Old Scratch and his wife," he declared.  "I hope they didn't
see me, but--Land of love, they're comin' in!"

A majestic tread sounded in the hall, in the dining-room. Mrs.
George Powless appeared, severe, overwhelming, with Mr. George
Powless in her wake.  The former saw Mr. Winslow and fixed him with
her glittering eye, as the Ancient Mariner fixed the wedding guest.

"Ah!" she observed, with majestic irony, "the lost key is found, it
would seem."

Jed looked guilty.

"Yes, ma'am," he faltered.  "Er--yes, ma'am."

"So?  And now, I presume, as it is apparent that you do show the
interior of this house to other interested persons," with a glance
like a sharpened icicle in the direction of the Armstrongs,
"perhaps you will show it to my husband and me."

Jed swallowed hard.

"Well, ma'am," he faltered, "I--I'd like to, but--but the fact is,
I--"

"Well, what?"

"It ain't my house."

"Isn't your house?  George," turning to Mr. Powless, "didn't I hear
this man distinctly tell you that this house WAS his?"

George nodded.  "Certainly, my dear," he declared.  Then turning to
Mr. Winslow, he demanded: "What do you mean by saying it is yours
one moment and not yours the next; eh?"

Jed looked around.  For one instant his gaze rested upon the face
of Mrs. Armstrong.  Then he drew himself up.

"Because," he declared, "I've rented it furnished to this lady
here.  And, that bein' the case, it ain't mine just now and I ain't
got any right to be in it.  And," his voice rising in desperation,
"neither has anybody else."

Mrs. George Powless went a few moments later; before she went she
expressed her opinion of Mr. Winslow's behavior.  Mr. George
Powless followed her, expressing his opinion as he went.  The
object of their adjuration sat down upon a rush-bottomed chair and
rubbed his chin.

"Lord!" he exclaimed, with fervor.  Mrs. Armstrong looked at him in
amazement.

"Why, Mr. Winslow!" she exclaimed, and burst out laughing.

Jed groaned.  "I know how Jonah felt after the whale unloaded him,"
he drawled.  "That woman all but had me swallered.  If you hadn't
been here she would."

"Jed!" shouted a voice outside.  "Jed, where are you?"

Mr. Winslow raised his head.  "Eh?" he queried.  "That's Sam
hollerin', ain't it?"

It was Captain Hunniwell and a moment later he entered the little
sitting-room.  When he saw who his friend's companions were he
seemed greatly surprised.

"Why, Mrs. Armstrong!" he exclaimed.  "Are you here?  Now that's a
funny thing.  The last time I saw Jed I warned him I was goin' to
send you here to look at this house.  And you came without bein'
sent, after all; eh?"

Jed stared at him.  Before the lady could reply he spoke.  "What?"
he cried.  "Was she--Sam Hunniwell, was it HER you was goin' to
send to see about hirin' this house?"

"Sure it was.  Why not?"

Jed pointed toward the door.  "Then--then who," he demanded, "sent
those Powlesses here?"

"No one that I know of.  And anyhow they don't want to rent any
houses.  They've bought land over at Harnissport and they're goin'
to build a house of their own there."

"They are?  They are?  Then--then WHAT did that woman say I'd got
to show her the inside of this house for?"

"I don't know.  Did she?  Oh, I tell you what she was after,
probably.  Some one had told her about your old furniture and
things, Jed.  She's the greatest antique hunter on earth, so they
tell me.  That's what she was after--antiques."

Jed, having paused until this had sunk in, groaned.

"Lord!" he said, again.  "And I went and--"

Another groan finished the sentence.

Mrs. Armstrong came forward.

"Please don't worry about it, Mr. Winslow," she said.  "I know you
didn't mean it.  Of course, knowing your feelings, I shouldn't
think of taking the house."

But Jed slowly shook his head.

"I want you to," he declared.  "Yes, I mean it.  I want you to come
and live in this house for a month, anyhow.  If you don't, that
Powless woman will come back and buy every stick and rag on the
place.  I don't want to sell 'em, but I couldn't say no to her any
more than I could to the Old Harry.  I called her the Old Scratch's
wife, didn't I," he added.  "Well, I won't take it back."

Captain Sam laughed uproariously.

"You ain't very complimentary to Mr. Powless," he observed.

Jed rubbed his chin.

"I would be if I was referrin' to him," he drawled, "but I judge
he's her second husband."


CHAPTER VI


Of course Mrs. Armstrong still insisted that, knowing, as she did,
Mr. Winslow's prejudice against occupying the position of landlord,
she could not think of accepting his offer.  "Of course I shall
not," she declared.  "I am flattered to know that you consider
Barbara and me preferable to Mr. and Mrs. Powless; but even there
you may be mistaken, and, beside, why should you feel you must
endure the lesser evil.  If I were in your place I shouldn't endure
any evil at all.  I should keep the house closed and empty, just as
you have been doing."

Captain Sam shook his head impatiently.  "If you was in his place,"
he observed, "you would have let it every year.  Don't interfere
with him, Mrs. Armstrong, for the land sakes.  He's showed the
first streak of common sense about that house that he's showed
since the Davidsons went out.  Don't ask him to take it back."

And Jed stubbornly refused to take it back.  "I've let it to you
for a month, ma'am," he insisted.  "It's yours, furniture and all,
for a month.  You won't sell that Mrs. Powless any of it, will
you?" he added, anxiously.  "Any of the furniture, I mean."

Mrs. Armstrong scarcely knew whether to be amused or indignant.

"Of course I shouldn't sell it," she declared.  "It wouldn't be
mine to sell."

Jed looked frightened.  "Yes, 'twould; yes, 'twould," he persisted.
"That's why I'm lettin' it to you.  Then I can't sell it to her; I
CAN'T, don't you see?"

Captain Sam grinned.  "Fur's that goes," he suggested, "I don't
see's you've got to worry, Jed.  You don't need to sell it, to her
or anybody else, unless you want to."

But Jed looked dubious.  "I suppose Jonah cal'lated he didn't need
to be swallowed," he mused.  "You take it, ma'am, for a month, as a
favor to me."

"But how can I--like this?  We haven't even settled the question of
rent.  And you know nothing whatever about me."

He seemed to reflect.  Then he asked:

"Your daughter don't sing like a windmill, does she?"

Barbara's eyes and mouth opened.  "Why, Mamma!" she exclaimed,
indignantly.

"Hush, Babbie.  Sing like a--what?  I don't understand, Mr.
Winslow."

The captain burst out laughing.  "No wonder you don't, ma'am," he
said.  "It takes the seven wise men of Greece to understand him
most of the time.  You leave it to me, Mrs. Armstrong.  He and I
will talk it over together and then you and he can talk to-morrow.
But I guess likely you'll have the house, if you want it; Jed
doesn't go back on his word.  I always say that for you, don't I,
old sawdust?" turning to the gentleman thus nicknamed.

Jed, humming a mournful hymn, was apparently miles away in
dreamland.  Yet he returned to earth long enough to indulge in a
mild bit of repartee.  "You say 'most everything for me, Sam," he
drawled, "except when I talk in my sleep."

Mrs. Armstrong and Barbara left a moment later, the lady saying
that she and Mr. Winslow would have another interview next day.
Barbara gravely shook hands with both men.

"I and Petunia hope awfully that we are going to live here, Mr.
Winslow," she said, "'specially Petunia."

Jed regarded her gravely.  "Oh, she wants to more'n you do, then,
does she?" he asked.

The child looked doubtful.  "No-o," she admitted, after a moment's
reflection, "but she can't talk, you know, and so she has to hope
twice as hard else I wouldn't know it.  Good-by.  Oh, I forgot;
Captain Hedge liked his swordfish EVER so much.  He said it was a--
a--oh, yes, humdinger."

She trotted off after her mother.  Captain Hunniwell, after a
chuckle of appreciation over the "humdinger," began to tell his
friend what little he had learned concerning the Armstrongs.  This
was, of course, merely what Mrs. Armstrong herself had told him and
amounted to this: She was a widow whose husband had been a
physician in Middleford, Connecticut.  His name was Seymour
Armstrong and he had now been dead four years.  Mrs. Armstrong and
Barbara, the latter an only child, had continued to occupy the
house at Middleford, but recently the lady had come to feel that
she could not afford to live there longer, but must find some less
expensive quarters.

"She didn't say so," volunteered Captain Sam, "but I judge she lost
a good deal of her money, bad investments or somethin' like that.
If there's any bad investment anywheres in the neighborhood you can
'most generally trust a widow to hunt it up and put her insurance
money into it.  Anyhow, 'twas somethin' like that, for after livin'
there a spell, just as she did when her husband was alive, she all
at once decides to up anchor and find some cheaper moorin's.  First
off, though, she decided to spend the summer in a cool place and
some friend, somebody with good, sound judgment, suggests Orham.
So she lets her own place in Middleford, comes to Orham, falls in
love with the place--same as any sensible person would naturally,
of course--and, havin' spent 'most three months here, decides she
wants to spend nine more anyhow.  She comes to the bank to cash a
check, she and I get talkin', she tells me what she's lookin' for,
I tell her I cal'late I've got a place in my eye that I think might
be just the thing, and--"

He paused to bite the end from a cigar.  His friend finished the
sentence for him.

"And then," he said, "you, knowin' that I didn't want to let this
house any time to anybody, naturally sent her down to look at it."

"No such thing.  Course I knew that you'd OUGHT to let the house
and, likin' the looks and ways of these Armstrong folks first rate,
I give in that I had made up my mind TO send her down to look at
it.  But, afore I could do it, the Almighty sent her on His own
hook.  Which proves," he added, with a grin, "that my judgment has
pretty good backin' sometimes."

Jed rubbed his chin.  "Careful, Sam," he drawled, "careful.  The
Kaiser'll be gettin' jealous of you if you don't look out.  But
what," he inquired, "made her and the little girl move out of
Middleford, or wherever 'twas they lived?  They could have found
cheaper quarters there, couldn't they?  Course I ain't never been
there, but seems as if they could."

"Sartin they could, but the fact of their movin' is what makes me
pretty sure the widow's investments had turned sour.  It's a
plaguey sight easier to begin to cut down and live economical in a
place where nobody knows you than 'tis in one where everybody has
known you for years.  See that, don't you?"

Jed whistled sadly, breaking off in the middle of a bar to reply
that he didn't know as he did.

"I've never cut up, so cuttin' down don't worry me much," he
observed.  "But I presume likely you're right, Sam; you generally
are."  He whistled a moment longer, his gaze apparently fixed upon
a point in the middle of the white plastered ceiling.  Then he
said, dreamily: "Well, anyhow, 'twon't be but a month.  They'll go
somewheres else in a month."

Captain Sam sniffed.  "Bet you a dollar they won't," he retorted.
"Not unless you turn 'em out.  And I see you turnin' anybody out."

But Mr. Winslow looked hopeful.  "They'll go when the month's up,"
he reiterated.  "Nobody could stand me more than a month.  Mother
used to say so, and she'd known me longer than anybody."

And so, in this curious fashion, did tenants come to the old
Winslow house.  They moved in on the following Monday.  Jed saw the
wagon with the trunks backing up to the door and he sighed.  Then
he went over to help carry the trunks into the house.

For the first week he found the situation rather uncomfortable; not
as uncomfortable as he had feared, but a trifle embarrassing,
nevertheless.  His new neighbors were not too neighborly; they did
not do what he would have termed "pester" him by running in and out
of the shop at all hours, nor did they continually ask favors.  On
the other hand they did not, like his former tenants, the
Davidsons, treat him as if he were some sort of odd wooden image,
like one of his own weather vanes, a creature without feelings, to
be displayed and "shown off" when it pleased them and ignored when
it did not.  Mrs. Armstrong was always quietly cheerful and
friendly when they met in the yard or about the premises, but she
neither intruded nor patronized.  Jed's first impression of her, a
favorable one, was strengthened daily.

"I like her first-rate," he told Captain Sam.  "She ain't too
folksy and she ain't too standoffish.  Why, honest truth, Sam," he
added, ingenuously, "she treats me just the same as if I was like
the common run of folks."

The captain snorted.  "Gracious king!  Do stop runnin' yourself
down," he commanded.  "Suppose you are a little mite--er--different
from the--well, from the heft of mackerel in the keg, what of it?
That's your own private business, ain't it?"

Jed's lip twitched.  "I suppose 'tis," he drawled.  "If it wan't
there wouldn't be so many folks interested in it."

At first he missed the freedom to which he had accustomed himself
during his years of solitude, the liberty of preparing for bed with
the doors and windows toward the sea wide open and the shades not
drawn; of strolling out to the well at unearthly hours of the early
morning singing at the top of his lungs; of washing face and hands
in a tin basin on a bench by that well curb instead of within
doors.  There were some necessary concessions to convention to
which his attention was called by Captain Hunniwell, who took it
upon himself to act as a sort of social mentor.

"Do you always wash outdoors there?" asked the captain, after
watching one set of ablutions.

"Why--er--yes, I 'most generally do in good weather.  It's sort of--
er--well, sort of cool and roomy, as you might say."

"Roomy, eh?  Gracious king!  Well, I should say you needed room.
You splash into that basin like a kedge anchor goin' overboard and
when you come out of it you puff like a grampus comin' up to blow.
How do you cal'late Mrs. Armstrong enjoys seein' you do that?"

Jed looked startled and much disturbed.  "Eh?" he exclaimed.  "Why,
I never thought about her, Sam.  I declare I never did.  I--I'll
fetch the wash basin inside this very minute."

And he did.  The inconvenience attached to the breaking off of a
summer-time habit of years troubled him not half as much as the
fear that he might have offended a fellow creature's sensibilities.
Jed Winslow was far too sensitive himself and his own feelings had
been hurt too many times to make hurting those of another a small
offense in his eyes.

But these were minor inconveniences attached to his new position as
landlord.  There were recompenses.  At work in his shop he could
see through the window the white-clad, graceful figure of Mrs.
Armstrong moving about the yard, sitting with Barbara on the bench
by the edge of the bluff, or writing a letter at a table she had
taken out under the shadow of the silver-leaf tree.  Gradually Jed
came to enjoy seeing her there, to see the windows of the old house
open, to hear voices once more on that side of the shop, and to
catch glimpses of Babbie dancing in and out over the shining mica
slab at the door.

He liked the child when he first met her, but he had been a little
fearful that, as a neighbor, she might trouble him by running in
and out of the shop, interfering with his privacy and his work or
making a small nuisance of herself when he was waiting on
customers.  But she did none of these things, in fact she did not
come into the shop at all and, after the first week had passed, he
began to wonder why.  Late that afternoon, seeing her sitting on
the bench by the bluff edge, her doll in her arms, he came out of
the door of his little kitchen at the back of the shop and called
her.

"Good evenin'," he hailed.  "Takin' in the view, was you?"

She bobbed her head.  "Yes, sir," she called in reply; "Petunia and
I were looking at it."

"Sho!  Well, what do you and-er--What's-her-name think of it?"

Barbara pondered.  "We think it's very nice," she announced, after
a moment.  "Don't you like it, Mr. Winslow?"

"Eh?  Oh, yes, I like it, I guess.  I ain't really had time to look
at it to-day; been too busy."

The child nodded, sympathetically.  "That's too bad," she said.
Jed had, for him, a curious impulse, and acted upon it.

"Maybe I might come and look at it now, if I was asked," he
suggested.  "Plenty of room on that bench, is there?"

"Oh, yes, sir, there's lots.  I don't take much room and Petunia
almost always sits on my lap.  Please come."

So Jed came and, sitting down upon the bench, looked off at the
inlet and the beach and the ocean beyond.  It was the scene most
familiar to him, one he had seen, under varying weather conditions,
through many summers and winters.  This very thought was in his
mind as he looked at it now.

After a time he became aware that his companion was speaking.

"Eh?" he ejaculated, coming out of his reverie.  "Did you say
somethin'?"

"Yes, sir, three times.  I guess you were thinking, weren't you?"

"Um-m--yes, I shouldn't be surprised.  It's one of my bad habits,
thinkin' is."

She looked hard to see if he was smiling, but he was not, and she
accepted the statement as a serious one.

"Is thinking a bad habit?" she asked.  "I didn't know it was."

"Cal'late it must be.  If it wasn't, more folks would do it.  Tell
me, now," he added, changing the subject to avoid further cross-
questioning, "do you and your ma like it here?"

The answer was enthusiastic.  "Oh, yes!" she exclaimed, "we like it
ever and ever so much.  Mamma says it's--"  Barbara hesitated, and
then, after what was evidently a severe mental struggle, finished
with, "she said once it was like paradise after category."

"After--which?"

The young lady frowned.  "It doesn't seem to me," she observed,
slowly, "as if 'category' was what she said.  Does 'category' sound
right to you, Mr. Winslow?"

Jed looked doubtful.  "I shouldn't want to say that it did, right
offhand like this," he drawled.

"No-o.  I don't believe it was 'category.'  But I'm almost sure it
was something about a cat, something a cat eats--or does--or
something.  Mew--mouse--milk--" she was wrinkling her forehead and
repeating the words to herself when Mr. Winslow had an inspiration.

"'Twan't purgatory, was it?" he suggested.

Miss Barbara's head bobbed enthusiastically.  "Purr-gatory, that
was it," she declared.  "And it was something a cat does--purr,
you know; I knew it was.  Mamma said living here was paradise
after purr-gatory."

Jed rubbed his chin.

"I cal'late your ma didn't care much for the board at Luretta
Smalley's," he observed.  He couldn't help thinking the remark an
odd one to make to a child.

"Oh, I don't think she meant Mrs. Smalley's," explained Barbara.
"She liked Mrs. Smalley's pretty well, well as any one can like
boarding, you know," this last plainly another quotation.  "I think
she meant she liked living here so much better than she did living
in Middleford, where we used to be."

"Hum," was the only comment Jed made.  He was surprised,
nevertheless.  Judged by what Captain Sam had told him, the
Armstrong home at Middleford should have been a pleasant one.
Barbara rattled on.

"I guess that was it," she observed.  "She was sort of talking to
herself when she said it.  She was writing a letter--to Uncle
Charlie, I think it was--and I and Petunia asked her if she liked
it here and she sort of looked at me without looking, same as you
do sometimes, Mr. Winslow, when you're thinking of something else,
and then she said that about the catty--no, the purr-gatory.  And
when I asked her what purr-gatory meant she said, 'Never mind,'
and. . . .  Oh, I forgot!" in consternation; "she told me I mustn't
tell anybody she said it, either.  Oh, dear me!"

Jed hastened to reassure her.  "Never mind," he declared, "I'll
forget you ever did say it.  I'll start in forgettin' now.  In five
minutes or so I'll have forgot two words of it already.  By to-
morrow mornin' I wouldn't remember it for money."

"Truly?"

"Truly bluely, lay me down and cut me in twoly.  But what's this
you're sayin' about your ma lookin' at things without seein' 'em,
same as I do?  She don't do that, does she?"

The young lady nodded.  "Yes," she said; "course not as bad--I mean
not as often as you do, but sometimes, 'specially since--"  She
hastily clapped her hand over her mouth.  "Oh!" she exclaimed.

"What's the matter?  Toothache?"

"No.  Only I almost told another somethin' I mustn't."

"Sho!  Well, I'm glad you put on the cover just in time."

"So am I.  What else was I talking about?  Oh, yes, Mamma's
thinking so hard, same as you do, Mr. Winslow.  You know," she
added, earnestly, "she acts quite a lot like you sometimes."

Jed looked at her in horror.  "Good Lord!" he exclaimed.  Then, in
his solemnest drawl, he added, "You tell her to take somethin' for
it afore it's too late."

As he rose from the bench he observed: "Haven't seen you over to
the shop since you moved in.  I've been turnin' out another school
of swordfish and whales, too.  Why don't you run in and look 'em
over?"

She clapped her hands.  "Oh, may I?" she cried.  "I've wanted to
ever and ever so much, but Mamma said not to because it might annoy
you.  Wouldn't it annoy you, TRULY?"

"Not a bit."

"Oh, goody!  And might Petunia come, too?"

"Um-hm.  Only," gravely, "she'll have to promise not to talk too
much.  Think she'll promise that?  All right; then fetch her along."

So, the very next morning, when Jed was busy at the bandsaw, he was
not greatly surprised when the door opened and Miss Barbara
appeared, with Petunia in her arms.  He was surprised, however, and
not a little embarrassed when Mrs. Armstrong followed.

"Good morning," said the lady, pleasantly.  "I came over to make
sure that there hadn't been a mistake.  You really did ask Babby to
come in and see you at work?"

"Yes, ma'am, I--I did.  I did, sartin."

"And you don't mind having her here?  She won't annoy you?"

"Not a mite.  Real glad to have her."

"Very well, then she may stay--an hour, but no longer.  Mind,
Babby, dear, I am relying on you not to annoy Mr. Winslow."

So the juvenile visitor stayed her hour and then obediently went
away, in spite of Jed's urgent invitation to stay longer.  She had
asked a good many questions and talked almost continuously, but Mr.
Winslow, instead of being bored by her prattle, was surprised to
find how empty and uninteresting the shop seemed after she had
quitted it.

She came again the next day and the next.  By the end of the week
Jed had become sufficiently emboldened to ask her mother to permit
her to come in the afternoon also.  This request was the result of
a conspiracy between Barbara and himself.

"You ask your ma," urged Jed.  "Tell her I say I need you here
afternoons."

Barbara looked troubled.  "But that would be a wrong story,
wouldn't it?" she asked.  "You don't really need me, you know."

"Eh?  Yes, I do; yes, I do."

"What for?  What shall I tell her you need me for?"

Jed scratched his chin with the tail of a wooden whale.

"You tell her," he drawled, after considering for a minute or two,
"that I need you to help carry lumber."

Even a child could not swallow this ridiculous excuse.  Barbara
burst out laughing.

"Why, Mr. Winslow!" she cried.  "You don't, either.  You know I
couldn't carry lumber; I'm too little.  I couldn't carry any but
the littlest, tiny bit."

Jed nodded, gravely.  "Yes, sartin," he agreed; "that's what I need
you to carry.  You run along and tell her so, that's a good girl."

But she shook her head vigorously.  "No," she declared.  "She would
say it was silly, and it would be.  Besides, you don't really need
me at all.  You just want Petunia and me for company, same as we
want you.  Isn't that it, truly?"

"Um-m.  Well, I shouldn't wonder.  You can tell her that, if you
want to; I'd just as soon."

The young lady still hesitated.  "No-o," she said, "because she'd
think perhaps you didn't really want me, but was too polite to say
so.  If you asked her yourself, though, I think she'd let me come."

At first Jed's bashfulness was up in arms at the very idea, but at
length he considered to ask Mrs. Armstrong for the permission.  It
was granted, as soon as the lady was convinced that the desire for
more of her daughter's society was a genuine one, and thereafter
Barbara visited the windmill shop afternoons as well as mornings.
She sat, her doll in her arms, upon a box which she soon came to
consider her own particular and private seat, watching her long-
legged friend as he sawed or glued or jointed or painted.  He had
little waiting on customers to do now, for most of the summer
people had gone.  His small visitor and he had many long and, to
them, interesting conversations.

Other visitors to the shop, those who knew him well, were surprised
and amused to find him on such confidential and intimate terms with
a child.  Gabe Bearse, after one short call, reported about town
that crazy Shavin's Winslow had taken up with a young-one just
about as crazy as he was.

"There she set," declared Gabriel, "on a box, hugging a broken-
nosed doll baby up to her and starin' at me and Shavin's as if we
was some kind of curiosities, as you might say.  Well, one of us
was; eh?  Haw, haw!  She didn't say a word and Shavin's he never
said nothin' and I felt as if I was preaching in a deef and dumb
asylum.  Finally, I happened to look at her and I see her lips
movin'.  'Well,' says I, 'you CAN talk, can't you, sis, even if
it's only to yourself.  What was you talkin' to yourself about,
eh?'  She didn't seem to want to answer; just sort of reddened up,
you know; but I kept right after her.  Finally she owned up she was
countin'.  'What was you countin'?' says I.  Well, she didn't want
to tell that, neither.  Finally I dragged it out of her that she
was countin' how many words I'd said since I started to tell about
Melissy Busteed and what she said about Luther Small's wife's aunt,
the one that's so wheezed up with asthma and Doctor Parker don't
seem to be able to do nothin' to help.  'So you was countin' my
words, was you?' says I.  'Well, that's good business, I must say!
How many have I said?'  She looked solemn and shook her head.  'I
had to give it up,' says she.  'It makes my head ache to count fast
very long.  Doesn't it give you a headache to count fast, Mr.
Winslow?'  Jed, he mumbled some kind of foolishness about some
things givin' him earache.  I laughed at the two of 'em.  'Humph!'
says I, 'the only kind of aches I have is them in my bones,'
meanin' my rheumatiz, you understand.  Shavin's he looked moony up
at the roof for about a week and a half, same as he's liable to do,
and then he drawled out: 'You see he DOES have headache, Babbie,'
says he.  Now did you ever hear such fool talk outside of an
asylum?  He and that Armstrong kid are well matched.  No wonder she
sits in there and gapes at him half the day."

Captain Sam Hunniwell and his daughter were hugely tickled.

"Jed's got a girl at last," crowed the captain.  "I'd about given
up hope, Jed.  I was fearful that the bloom of your youth would
pass away from you and you wouldn't keep company with anybody.
You're so bashful that I know you'd never call on a young woman,
but I never figured that one might begin callin' on you.  Course
she's kind of extra young, but she'll grow out of that, give her
time."

Maud Hunniwell laughed merrily, enjoying Mr. Winslow's confusion.
"Oh, the little girl is only the bait, Father," she declared.  "It
is the pretty widow that Jed is fishing for.  She'll be calling
here soon, or he'll be calling there.  Isn't that true, Jed?  Own
up, now.  Oh, see him blush, Father!  Just see him!"

Jed, of course, denied that he was blushing.  His fair tormentor
had no mercy.

"You must be," she insisted.  "At any rate your face is very, very
red.  I'll leave it to Father.  Isn't his face red, Father?"

"Red as a flannel lung-protector," declared Captain Sam, who was
never known to contradict his only daughter, nor, so report
affirmed, deny a request of hers.

"Of course it is," triumphantly.  "And it can't be the heat,
because it isn't at all warm here."

Poor Jed, the long-suffering, was goaded into a mild retort.

"There's consider'ble hot air in here some spells," he drawled,
mournfully.  Miss Hunniwell went away reaffirming her belief that
Mr. Winslow's friendship for the daughter was merely a strategical
advance with the mother as the ultimate objective.

"You'll see, Father," she prophesied, mischievously.  "We shall
hear of his 'keeping company' with Mrs. Armstrong soon.  Oh, he
couldn't escape even if he wanted to.  These young widows are
perfectly irresistible."

When they were a safe distance from the windmill shop the captain
cautioned his daughter.

"Maud," he said, "you'd better not tease Jed too much about that
good-lookin' tenant of his.  He's so queer and so bashful that I'm
afraid if you do he'll take a notion to turn the Armstrongs out
when this month's up."

Miss Hunniwell glanced at him from the corner of her eye.

"Suppose he does?" she asked.  "What of it?  She isn't a GREAT
friend of yours, is she, Father?"

It was the captain's turn to look embarrassed.

"No, no, course she ain't," he declared, hastily.  "All I've been
thinkin' is that Jed ought to have a tenant in that house of his,
because he needs the money.  And from what I've been able to find
out about this Mrs. Armstrong she's a real nice genteel sort of
body, and--and--er--"

"And she's very sweet and very pretty and so, of course, naturally,
all the men, especially the middle-aged men--"

Captain Sam interrupted explosively.  "Don't be so foolish!" he
ordered.  "If you don't stop talkin' such nonsense I'll--I don't
know what I'll do to you.  What do you suppose her bein' sweet and
good-lookin' has got to do with me?  Gracious king!  I've got one
good-lookin'--er--that is to say, I've got one young female to take
care of now and that's enough, in all conscience."

His daughter pinched his arm.

"Oh, ho!" she observed.  "You were going to say she was good-
looking and then you changed your mind.  Don't you think this young
female--WHAT a word! you ought to be ashamed of it--DON'T you think
she is good-looking, Daddy, dear?"

She looked provokingly up into his face and he looked fondly down
into hers.

"Don't you?" she repeated.

"We-ll, I--I don't know as I'd want to go so far as to say that.  I
presume likely her face might not stop a meetin'-house clock on a
dark night, but--"

As they were in a secluded spot where a high hedge screened them
from observation Miss Maud playfully boxed her parent's ears, a
proceeding which he seemed to enjoy hugely.

But there was reason in the captain's caution, nevertheless.  Miss
Maud's "teasing" concerning the widow had set Jed to thinking.  The
"trial" month was almost up.  In a little while he would have to
give his decision as to whether the little Winslow house was to
continue to be occupied by Barbara and her mother, or whether it
was to be, as it had been for years, closed and shuttered tight.
He had permitted them to occupy it for that month, on the spur of
the moment, as the result of a promise made upon impulse, a
characteristic Jed Winslow impulse.  Now, however, he must decide
in cold blood whether or not it should be theirs for another eleven
months at least.

In his conversation with Captain Sam, the conversation which took
place immediately after the Armstrongs came, he had stoutly
maintained that the latter would not wish to stay longer than the
month, that his own proximity as landlord and neighbor would be
unbearable longer than that period.  But if the widow found it so
she had so far shown no evidence of her disgust.  Apparently that
means of breaking off the relationship could not be relied upon.
Of course he did not know whether or not she wished to remain, but,
if she did, did he wish her to do so?  There was nothing personal
in the matter; it was merely the question as to whether his
prejudice of years against renting that house to any one was to
rule or be overthrown.  If she asked him for his decision what
should he say?  At night, when he went to bed, his mind was made
up.  In the morning when he arose it was unmade.  As he told
Captain Hunniwell: "I'm like that old clock I used to have, Sam.
The pendulum of that thing used to work fine, but the hands
wouldn't move.  Same way with me.  I tick, tick, tick all day over
this pesky business, but I don't get anywheres.  It's always half-
past nothin'."

Captain Sam was hugely disgusted.  "It ain't more'n quarter past,
if it is that," he declared, emphatically.  "It's just nothin', if
you ask me.  And say, speakin' of askin', I'd like to ask you this:
How are you goin' to get 'em out, provided you're fool enough to
decide they've got to go?  Are you goin' to tell Mrs. Armstrong
right up and down and flat-footed that you can't stand any more of
her?  I'd like to hear you say it.  Let me know when the show's
goin' to come off.  I want a seat in the front row."

Poor Jed looked aghast at the very idea.  His friend laughed
derisively and walked off and left him.  And the days passed and
the "trial month" drew closer and closer to its end until one
morning he awoke to realize that that end had come; the month was
up that very day.

He had not mentioned the subject to the widow, nor had she to him.
His reasons for not speaking were obvious enough; one was that he
did not know what to say, and the other that he was afraid to say
it.  But, as the time approached when the decision must be made, he
had expected that she would speak.  And she had not.  He saw her
daily, sometimes several times a day.  She often came into the shop
to find Barbara, who made the workroom a playhouse on rainy or
cloudy days, and she talked with him on other topics, but she did
not mention this one.

It was raining on this particular day, the last day in the "trial
month," and Jed, working at his lathe, momentarily expected Barbara
to appear, with Petunia under one arm and a bundle of dolls'
clothes under the other, to announce casually that, as it was such
bad weather, they had run in to keep him, Mr. Winslow, from getting
lonesome.  There was precious little opportunity to be lonesome
where Babbie was.

But this morning the child did not come and Jed, wondering what the
reason for her absence might be, began to feel vaguely
uncomfortable.  Just what was the matter he did not know, but that
there was something wrong with him, Jed Winslow, was plain.  He
could not seem to keep his mind on his work; he found himself
wandering to the window and looking out into the yard, where the
lilac bushes whipped and thrashed in the gusts, the overflowing
spouts splashed and gurgled, and the sea beyond the edge of the
bluff was a troubled stretch of gray and white, seen through
diagonal streaks of wind-driven rain.  And always when he looked
out of that window he glanced toward the little house next door,
hoping to see a small figure, bundled under a big rain coat and
sheltered by a big umbrella, dodge out of the door and race across
the yard toward the shop.

But the door remained shut, the little figure did not appear and,
except for the fact that the blinds were not closed and that there
was smoke issuing from the chimney of the kitchen, the little house
might have been as empty as it had been the month before.

Or as it might be next month.  The thought came to Jed with a
meaning and emphasis which it had not brought before.  A stronger
gust than usual howled around the eaves of the shop, the sashes
rattled, the panes were beaten by the flung raindrops which pounded
down in watery sheets to the sills, and Jed suddenly diagnosed his
own case, he knew what was the matter with him--he was lonesome;
he, who had lived alone for five years and had hoped to live alone
for the rest of his life, was lonesome.

He would not admit it, even to himself; it was ridiculous.  He was
not lonesome, he was just a little "blue," that was all.  It was
the weather; he might have caught a slight cold, perhaps his
breakfast had not agreed with him.  He tried to remember what that
breakfast had been.  It had been eaten in a hurry, he had been
thinking of something else as usual, and, except that it consisted
of various odds and ends which he had happened to have on hand, he
could not itemize it with exactness.  There had been some cold
fried potatoes, and some warmed-over pop-overs which had "slumped"
in the cooking, and a doughnut or two and--oh, yes, a saucer of
canned peaches which had been sitting around for a week and which
he had eaten to get out of the way.  These, with a cup of warmed-
over coffee, made up the meal.  Jed couldn't see why a breakfast of
that kind should make him "blue."  And yet he was blue--yes, and
there was no use disguising the fact, he was lonesome.  If that
child would only come, as she generally did, her nonsense might
cheer him up a bit.  But she did not come.  And if he decided not
to permit her mother to occupy the house, she would not come much
more.  Eh?  Why, it was the last day of the month!  She might never
come again!

Jed shut off the motor and turned away from the lathe.  He sank
down into his little chair, drew his knee up under his chin, and
thought, long and seriously.  When the knee slid down to its normal
position once more his mind was made up.  Mrs. Armstrong might
remain in the little house--for a few months more, at any rate.
Even if she insisted upon a year's lease it wouldn't do any great
harm.  He would wait until she spoke to him about it and then he
would give his consent.  And--and it would please Captain Sam, at
any rate.

He rose and, going to the window, looked out once more across the
yard.  What he saw astonished him.  The back door of the house was
partially open and a man was just coming out.  The man, in dripping
oil-skins and a sou'wester, was Philander Hardy, the local
expressman.  Philander turned and spoke to some one in the house
behind him.  Jed opened the shop door a crack and listened.

"Yes, ma'am," he heard Hardy say.  "I'll be back for 'em about four
o'clock this afternoon.  Rain may let up a little mite by that
time, and anyhow, I'll have the covered wagon.  Your trunks won't
get wet, ma'am; I'll see to that."

A minute later Jed, an old sweater thrown over his head and
shoulders, darted out of the front door of his shop.  The express
wagon with Hardy on the driver's seat was just moving off.  Jed
called after it.

"Hi, Philander!" he called, raising his voice only a little, for
fear of being overheard at the Armstrong house.  "Hi, Philander,
come here a minute.  I want to see you."

Mr. Hardy looked over his shoulder and then backed his equipage
opposite the Winslow gate.

"Hello, Jedidah Shavin's," he observed, with a grin.  "Didn't know
you for a minute, with that shawl over your front crimps.  What you
got on your mind; anything except sawdust?"

Jed was too much perturbed even to resent the loathed name "Jedidah."

"Philander," he whispered, anxiously; "say, Philander, what does
she want?  Mrs. Armstrong, I mean?  What is it you're comin' back
for at four o'clock?"

Philander looked down at the earnest face under the ancient
sweater.  Then he winked, solemnly.

"Well, I tell you, Shavin's," he said.  "You see, I don't know how
'tis, but woman folks always seem to take a terrible shine to me.
Now this Mrs. Armstrong here--  Say, she's some peach, ain't she!--
she ain't seen me more'n half a dozen times, but here she is
beggin' me to fetch her my photograph.  'It's rainin' pretty hard,
to-day,' I says.  'Won't it do if I fetch it to-morrow?'  But no,
she--"

Jed held up a protesting hand.  "I don't doubt she wants your
photograph, Philander," he drawled.  "Your kind of face is rare.
But I heard you say somethin' about comin' for trunks.  Whose
trunks?"

"Whose?  Why, hers and the young-one's, I presume likely.  'Twas
them I fetched from Luretta Smalley's.  Now she wants me to take
'em back there."

A tremendous gust, driven in from the sea, tore the sweater from
the Winslow head and shoulders and wrapped it lovingly about one of
the posts in the yard.  Jed did not offer to recover it; he
scarcely seemed to know that it was gone.  Instead he stood staring
at the express driver, while the rain ran down his nose and dripped
from its tip to his chin.

"She--she's goin' back to Luretta Smalley's?" he repeated.  "She--"

He did not finish the sentence.  Instead he turned on his heel and
walked slowly back to the shop.  The sweater, wrapped about the
post where, in summer, a wooden sailor brandished his paddles,
flapped soggily in the wind.  Hardy gazed after him.

"What in time--?" he exclaimed.  Then, raising his voice, he
called: "Hi, Jed!  Jed!  You crazy critter!  What--Jed, hold on a
minute, didn't you know she was goin'?  Didn't she tell you?  Jed!"

But Jed had entered the shop and closed the door.  Philander drove
off, shaking his head and chuckling to himself.

A few minutes later Mrs. Armstrong, hearing a knock at the rear
door of the Winslow house, opened it to find her landlord standing
on the threshold.  He was bareheaded and he had no umbrella.

"Why, Mr. Winslow!" she exclaimed.  It was the first time that he
had come to that house of his own accord since she had occupied it.
Now he stood there, in the rain, looking at her without speaking.

"Why, Mr. Winslow," she said again.  "What is it?  Come in, won't
you?  You're soaking wet.  Come in!"

Jed looked down at the sleeves of his jacket.  "Eh?" he drawled,
slowly.  "Wet?  Why, I don't know's I ain't--a little.  It's--it's
rainin'."

"Raining!  It's pouring.  Come in."

She took him by the arm and led him through the woodshed and into
the kitchen.  She would have led him further, into the sitting-
room, but he hung back.

"No, ma'am, no," he said.  "I--I guess I'll stay here, if you don't
mind."

There was a patter of feet from the sitting-room and Barbara came
running, Petunia in her arms.  At the sight of their visitor's
lanky form the child's face brightened.

"Oh, Mr. Winslow!" she cried.  "Did you come to see where Petunia
and I were?  Did you?"

Jed looked down at her.  "Why--why, I don't know's I didn't," he
admitted.  "I--I kind of missed you, I guess."

"Yes, and we missed you.  You see, Mamma said we mustn't go to the
shop to-day because--  Oh, Mamma, perhaps he has come to tell you
we won't have to--"

Mrs. Armstrong interrupted.  "Hush, Babbie," she said, quickly.  "I
told Barbara not to go to visit you to-day, Mr. Winslow.  She has
been helping me with the packing."

Jed swallowed hard.  "Packin'?" he repeated.  "You've been packin'?
Then 'twas true, what Philander Hardy said about your goin' back to
Luretta's?"

The lady nodded.  "Yes," she replied.  "Our month here ends to-day.
Of course you knew that."

Jed sighed miserably.  "Yes, ma'am," he said, "I knew it, but I
only just realized it, as you might say.  I . . .  Hum! . . .
Well . . ."

He turned away and walked slowly toward the kitchen door.  Barbara
would have followed but her mother laid a detaining hand upon her
shoulder.  On the threshold of the door between the dining-room and
kitchen Jed paused.

"Ma'am," he said, hesitatingly, "you--you don't cal'late there's
anything I can do to--to help, is there?  Anything in the packin'
or movin' or anything like that?"

"No, thank you, Mr. Winslow.  The packing was very simple."

"Er--yes, ma'am. . . .  Yes, ma'am."

He stopped, seemed about to speak again, but evidently changed his
mind, for he opened the door and went out into the rain without
another word.  Barbara, very much surprised and hurt, looked up
into her mother's face.

"Why, Mamma," she cried, "has--has he GONE?  He didn't say good-by
to us or--or anything.  He didn't even say he was sorry we were
going."

Mrs. Armstrong shook her head.

"I imagine that is because he isn't sorry, my dear," she replied.
"You must remember that Mr. Winslow didn't really wish to let any
one live in this house.  We only came here by--well, by accident."

But Barbara was unconvinced.

"He ISN'T glad," she declared, stoutly.  "He doesn't act that way
when he is glad about things.  You see," she added, with the air of
a Mrs. Methusaleh, "Petunia and I know him better than you do,
Mamma; we've had more chances to get--to get acquainted."

Perhaps an hour later there was another knock at the kitchen door.
Mrs. Armstrong, when she opened it, found her landlord standing
there, one of his largest windmills--a toy at least three feet
high--in his arms.  He bore it into the kitchen and stood it in the
middle of the floor, holding the mammoth thing, its peaked roof
high above his head, and peering solemnly out between one of its
arms and its side.

"Why, Mr. Winslow!" exclaimed Mrs. Armstrong.

"Yes, ma'am," said Jed.  "I--I fetched it for Babbie.  I just kind
of thought maybe she'd like it."

Barbara clasped her hands.

"Oh!" she exclaimed.  "Oh, is it for me."

Jed answered.

"'Tis, if you want it," he said.

"Want it?  Why, Mamma, it's one of the very best mills!  It's a
five dollar one, Mamma!"

Mrs. Armstrong protested.  "Oh, I couldn't let you do that, Mr.
Winslow," she declared.  "It is much too expensive a present.  And
besides--"

She checked herself just in time.  It had been on the tip of her
tongue to say that she did not know what they could do with it.
Their rooms at Mrs. Smalley's were not large.  It was as if a
dweller in a Harlem flat had been presented with a hippopotamus.

The maker of the mill looked about him, plainly seeking a place to
deposit his burden.

"'Tisn't anything much," he said, hastily.  "I--I'm real glad for
you to have it."

He was about to put it on top of the cookstove, in which there was
a roaring fire, but Mrs. Armstrong, by a startled exclamation and a
frantic rush, prevented his doing so.  So he put it on the table
instead.  Barbara thanked him profusely.  She was overjoyed; there
were no comparisons with hippopotami in HER mind.  Jed seemed
pleased at her appreciation, but he did not smile.  Instead he
sighed.

"I--I just thought I wanted her to have it, ma'am," he said,
turning to Mrs. Armstrong.  "'Twould keep her from--from forgettin'
me altogether, maybe. . . .  Not that there's any real reason why
she should remember me, of course," he added.

Barbara was hurt and indignant.

"Of COURSE I shan't forget you, Mr. Winslow," she declared.
"Neither will Petunia.  And neither will Mamma, I know.  She feels
awful bad because you don't want us to live here any longer, and--"

"Hush, Babbie, hush!" commanded her mother.  Barbara hushed, but
she had said enough.  Jed turned a wondering face in their
direction.  He stared without speaking.

Mrs. Armstrong felt that some one must say something.

"You mustn't mind what the child says, Mr. Winslow," she explained,
hurriedly.  "Of course I realize perfectly that this house is yours
and you certainly have the right to do what you please with your
own.  And I have known all the time that we were here merely on
trial."

Jed lifted a big hand.

"Er--er--just a minute, ma'am, please," he begged.  "I--I guess my
wooden head is beginnin' to splinter or somethin'.  Please answer
me just this--if--if you'd just as soon: Why are you movin' back to
Luretta's?"

It was her turn to look wonderingly at him.  "Why, Mr. Winslow,"
she said, after a moment's hesitation, "isn't that rather an
unnecessary question?  When Babbie and I came here it was with the
understanding that we were to be on trial for a month.  We had gone
into no details at all, except that the rent for this one month
should be forty dollars.  You were, as I understood it, to consider
the question of our staying and, if you liked us and liked the idea
of renting the house at all, you were to come to me and discuss the
matter.  The month is up and you haven't said a word on the
subject.  And, knowing what your feelings HAD been, I of course
realized that you did not wish us to remain, and so, of course, we
are going.  I am sorry, very sorry.  Babbie and I love this little
house, and we wish you might have cared to have us stay in it, but--"

"Hold on! hold on!" Jed was, for him, almost energetic.  "Mrs.
Armstrong, ma'am, do you mean to tell me you're goin' back to
Luretta Smalley's because you think I don't want you to stay?  Is
that it, honest truth?"

"Why, of course, it is.  What else?"

"And--and 'tain't because you can't stand me any longer, same as
Mother used to say?"

"Can't stand you?  Your mother used to say?  What DO you mean, Mr.
Winslow?"

"I mean--I mean you ain't goin' because I used to wash my face out
in the yard, and--and holler and sing mornin's and look so
everlastin' homely--and--and be what everybody calls a town crank--
and--"

"Mr. Winslow!  PLEASE!"

"And--and you and Babbie would stay right here if--if you thought I
wanted you to?"

"Why, of course.  But you don't, do you?"

Before Jed could answer the outside door was thrown open without
knock or preliminary warning, and Captain Sam Hunniwell, dripping
water like a long-haired dog after a bath, strode into the kitchen.

"Mornin', ma'am," he said, nodding to Mrs. Armstrong.  Then,
turning to the maker of windmills: "You're the feller I'm lookin'
for," he declared.  "Is what Philander Hardy told me just now true?
Is it?"

Jed was dreamily staring out of the window.  He was smiling, a
seraphic smile.  Receiving no reply, Captain Sam angrily repeated
his question.  "Is it true?" he demanded.

"No-o, no, I guess 'tisn't.  I'd know better if I knew what he told
you."

"He told me that Mrs. Armstrong here was movin' back to Luretta
Smalley's to-day.  Jed Winslow, have you been big enough fool--"

Jed held up the big hand.

"Yes," he said.  "I always am."

"You always are--what?"

"A big enough fool.  Sam, what is a lease?"

"What is a lease?"

"Yes.  Never mind tellin' me; show me.  Make out a lease of this
house to Mrs. Armstrong here."

Mrs. Armstrong was, naturally, rather surprised.

"Why, Mr. Winslow," she cried; "what are you talking about?  We
haven't agreed upon rent or--"

"Yes, we have.  We've agreed about everything.  Er--Babbie, you get
your things on and come on over to the shop.  You and I mustn't be
sittin' 'round here any longer.  We've got to get to WORK."


CHAPTER VII


And so, in as sudden a fashion as he had granted the "month's
trial," did Jed grant the permanent tenure of his property.  The
question of rent, which might easily have been, with the ordinary
sort of landlord, a rock in the channel, turned out to be not even
a pebble.  Captain Hunniwell, who was handling the business
details, including the making out of the lease, was somewhat
troubled.

"But, Jed," he protested, "you've GOT to listen to me.  She won't
pay forty a month, although she agrees with me that for a furnished
house in a location like this it's dirt cheap.  Of course she's
takin' it for all the year, which does make consider'ble
difference, although from May to October, when the summer folks are
here, I could get a hundred and forty a month just as easy as . . .
Eh?  I believe you ain't heard a word I've been sayin'.  Gracious
king!  If you ain't enough to drive the mate of a cattle boat into
gettin' religion!  Do you hear me?  I say she won't pay--"

Jed, who was sitting before the battered old desk in the corner of
his workshop, did not look around, but he waved his right hand, the
fingers of which held the stump of a pencil, over his shoulder.

"Ssh-h, sh-h, Sam!" he observed, mildly.  "Don't bother me now;
please don't, there's a good feller.  I'm tryin' to work out
somethin' important."

"Well, this is important.  Or, if it ain't, there's plenty that is
important waitin' for me up at the bank.  I'm handlin' this house
business as a favor to you.  If you think I've got nothin' else to
do you're mistaken."

Jed nodded, contritely, and turned to face his friend.  "I know it,
Sam," he said, "I know it.  I haven't got the least mite of excuse
for troublin' you."

"You ain't troublin' me--not that way.  All I want of you is to say
yes or no.  I tell you Mrs. Armstrong thinks she can't afford to
pay forty a month."

"Yes."

"And perhaps she can't.  But you've got your own interests to think
about.  What shall I do?"

"Yes."

"YES!  What in time are you sayin' yes for?"

"Hum?  Eh?  Oh, excuse me, Sam; I didn't mean yes, I mean no."

"Gracious king!"

"Well--er--er--," desperately, "you told me to say yes or no, so I--"

"See here, Jed Winslow, HAVE you heard what I've been sayin'?"

"Why, no, Sam; honest I ain't.  I've run across an idea about
makin' a different kind of mill--one like a gull, you know, that'll
flap its wings up and down when the wind blows--and--er--I'm afraid
my head is solid full of that and nothin' else.  There generally
ain't more'n room for one idea in my head," he added, apologetically.
"Sometimes that one gets kind of cramped."

The captain snorted in disgust.  Jed looked repentant and distressed.

"I'm awful sorry, Sam," he declared.  "But if it's about that house
of mine--rent or anything, you just do whatever Mrs. Armstrong says."

"Whatever SHE says?  Haven't you got anything to say?"

"No, no-o, I don't know's I have.  You see, I've settled that she
and Babbie are to have the house for as long as they want it, so
it's only fair to let them settle the rest, seems to me.  Whatever
Mrs. Armstrong wants to pay'll be all right.  You just leave it to
her."

Captain Sam rose to his feet.

"I've a dum good mind to," he declared "'Twould serve you right if
she paid you ten cents a year."  Then, with a glance of disgust at
the mountain of old letters and papers piled upon the top of the
desk where his friend was at work, he added: "What do you clean
that desk of yours with--a shovel?"

The slow smile drifted across the Winslow face.  "I cal'late that's
what I should have to use, Sam," he drawled, "if I ever cleaned
it."

The captain and the widow agreed upon thirty-five dollars a month.
It developed that she owned their former house in Middleford and
that the latter had been rented for a very much higher rent.  "My
furniture," she added, "that which I did not sell when we gave up
housekeeping, is stored with a friend there.  I know it is
extravagant, my hiring a furnished house, but I'm sure Mr. Winslow
wouldn't let this one unfurnished and, besides, it would be a crime
to disturb furniture and rooms which fit each other as these do.
And, after all, at the end of a year I may wish to leave Orham.  Of
course I hope I shall not, but I may."

Captain Sam would have asked questions concerning her life in
Middleford, in fact he did ask a few, but the answers he received
were unsatisfactory.  Mrs. Armstrong evidently did not care to talk
on the subject.  The captain thought her attitude a little odd, but
decided that the tragedy of her husband's death must be the cause
of her reticence.  Her parting remarks on this occasion furnished
an explanation.

"If you please, Captain Hunniwell," she said, "I would rather you
did not tell any one about my having lived in Middleford and my
affairs there.  I have told very few people in Orham and I think on
the whole it is better not to.  What is the use of having one's
personal history discussed by strangers?"

She was evidently a trifle embarrassed and confused as she said
this, for she blushed just a little.  Captain Sam decided that the
blush was becoming.  Also, as he walked back to the bank, he
reflected that Jed Winslow's tenant was likely to have her personal
history and affairs discussed whether she wished it or not.  Young
women as attractive as she were bound to be discussed, especially
in a community the size of Orham.  And, besides, whoever else she
may have told, she certainly had told him that Middleford had
formerly been her home and he had told Maud and Jed.  Of course
they would say nothing if he asked them, but perhaps they had told
it already.  And why should Mrs. Armstrong care, anyway?

"Let folks talk," he said that evening, in conversation with his
daughter.  "Let 'em talk, that's my motto.  When they're lyin'
about me I know they ain't lyin' about anybody else, that's some
comfort.  But women folks, I cal'late, feel different."

Maud was interested and a little suspicious.

"You don't suppose, Pa," she said, "that this Mrs. Armstrong has a
past, do you?"

"A past?  What kind of a thing is a past, for thunder sakes?"

"Why, I mean a--a--well, has she done something she doesn't want
other people to know; is she trying to hide something, like--well,
as people do in stories?"

"Eh?  Oh, in the books!  I see.  Well, young woman, I cal'late the
first thing for your dad to do is to find out what sort of books
you read.  A past!  Ho, ho!  I guess likely Mrs. Armstrong is a
plaguey sight more worried about the future than she is about the
past.  She has lived the past already, but she's got to live the
future and pay the bills belongin' to it, and that's no triflin'
job in futures like these days."

Needless to say Jed Winslow did no speculating concerning his
tenant's "past."  Having settled the question of that tenancy
definitely and, as he figured it, forever, he put the matter
entirely out of his mind and centered all his energies upon the new
variety of mill, the gull which was to flap its wings when the wind
blew.  Barbara was, of course, much interested in the working out
of this invention, and her questions were many.  Occasionally Mrs.
Armstrong came into the shop.  She and Jed became better acquainted.

The acquaintanceship developed.  Jed formed a daily habit of
stopping at the Armstrong door to ask if there were any errands to
be done downtown.  "Goin' right along down on my own account,
ma'am," was his invariable excuse.  "Might just as well run your
errands at the same time."  Also, whenever he chopped a supply of
kindling wood for his own use he chopped as much more and filled
the oilcloth-covered box which stood by the stove in the Armstrong
kitchen.  He would not come in and sit down, however, in spite of
Barbara's and her mother's urgent invitation; he was always too
"busy" for that.

But the time came when he did come in, actually come in and sit
down to a meal.  Barbara, of course, was partially responsible for
this amazing invitation, but it was Heman Taylor's old brindle
tomcat which really brought it to pass.  The cat in question was a
disreputable old scalawag, with tattered ears and a scarred hide,
souvenirs of fights innumerable, with no beauty and less morals,
and named, with appropriate fitness, "Cherub."

It was a quarter to twelve on a Sunday morning and Jed was
preparing his dinner.  The piece de resistance of the dinner was,
in this instance, to be a mackerel.  Jed had bought the mackerel of
the fish peddler the previous afternoon and it had been reposing on
a plate in the little ancient ice-chest which stood by the back
door of the Winslow kitchen.  Barbara, just back from Sunday school
and arrayed in her best, saw that back door open and decided to
call.  Jed, as always, was glad to see her.

"You're getting dinner, aren't you, Mr. Winslow?" she observed.

Jed looked at her over his spectacles.  "Yes," he answered.
"Unless somethin' happens I'm gettin' dinner."

His visitor looked puzzled.

"Why, whatever happened you would be getting dinner just the same,
wouldn't you?" she said.  "You might not have it, but you'd be
getting it, you know."

Jed took the mackerel out of the ice-chest and put the plate
containing it on the top of the latter.  "We-ell," he drawled, "you
can't always tell.  I might take so long gettin' it that, first
thing I knew, 'twould be supper."

Humming a hymn he took another dish from the ice-chest and placed
it beside the mackerel plate.

"What's that?" inquired Barbara.

"That?  Oh, that's my toppin'-off layer.  That's a rice puddin',
poor man's puddin', some folks call it.  I cal'late your ma'd call
it a man's poor puddin', but it makes good enough ballast for a
craft like me."  He began singing again.


     "'I know not, yea, I know not
       What bliss awaits me there.
       Di, doo de di di doo de--'"


Breaking off to suggest: "Better stay and eat along with me to-day,
hadn't you, Babbie?"

Barbara tried hard not to seem superior.

"Thank you," she said, "but I guess I can't.  We're going to have
chicken and lemon jelly."  Then, remembering her manners, she
added: "We'd be awful glad if you'd have dinner with us, Mr.
Winslow."

Jed shook his head.

"Much obliged," he drawled, "but if I didn't eat that mackerel, who
would?"

The question was answered promptly.  While Mr. Winslow and his
small caller were chatting concerning the former's dinner, another
eager personality was taking a marked interest in a portion of that
dinner.  Cherub, the Taylor cat, abroad on a foraging expedition,
had scented from his perch upon a nearby fence a delicious and
appetizing odor.  Following his nose, literally, Cherub descended
from the fence and advanced, sniffing as he came.  The odor was
fish, fresh fish.  Cherub's green eyes blazed, his advance became
crafty, strategical, determined.  He crept to the Winslow back
step, he looked up through the open door, he saw the mackerel upon
its plate on the top of the ice-chest.

"If I didn't eat that mackerel," drawled Jed, "who woul

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/2452