to shore. And I thought of how chilly the wind was out there, and how that ice-water must have felt, and what a long ways 'twas from home. And then I smiled, slow and wide; there was a barge load of joy in every half inch of that smile.
“It's a cold day when Phil loses a chance for a joke,” says Ebenezer.
“'Tain't exactly what you'd call summery just now,” I says. And we hauled down sail, run the ice-boat up to the wharf, and went up to our room to pack our extension cases for the next train.
“You see,” says Jonadab, putting in his other shirt, “it's easy enough to get the best of Cape folks on wash sales and lying, but when it comes to boats that's a different pair of shoes.”
“I guess Phil'll agree with you,” I says.
THE COUNT AND THE MANAGER
The way we got into the hotel business in the first place come around like this: Me and Cap'n Jonadab went down to Wellmouth Port one day 'long in March to look at some property he'd had left him. Jonadab's Aunt Sophrony had moved kind of sudden from that village to Beulah Land—they're a good ways apart, too—and Cap'n Jonadab had come in for the old farm, he being the only near relative.
When you go to Wellmouth Port you get off the cars at Wellmouth Center and then take Labe Bearse's barge and ride four miles; and then, if the horse don't take a notion to lay down in the road and go to sleep, or a wheel don't come off or some other surprise party ain't sprung on you, you come to a place where there's a Baptist chapel that needs painting, and a little two-for-a-cent store that needs trade, and two or three houses that need building over, and any Lord's quantity of scrub pines and beach grass and sand. Then you take Labe's word for it that you've got to Wellmouth Port and get out of the barge and try to remember you're a church member.
Well, Aunt Sophrony's house was a mile or more from the place where the barge stopped, and Jonadab and me, we hoofed it up there. We bought some cheese and crackers and canned things at the store, 'cause we expected to stay overnight in the house, and knew there wasn't no other way of getting provender.
We got there after a spell and set down on the big piazza with our souls full of gratitude and our boots full of sand. Great, big, old-fashioned house with fourteen big bedrooms in it, big barn, sheds, and one thing or 'nother, and perched right on top of a hill with five or six acres of ground 'round it. And how the March wind did whoop in off the sea and howl and screech lonesomeness through the pine trees! You take it in the middle of the night, with the shutters rattling and the old joists a-creaking and Jonadab snoring like a chap sawing hollow logs, and if it wan't joy then my name ain't Barzilla Wingate. I don't wonder Aunt Sophrony died. I'd have died 'long afore she did if I knew I was checked plumb through to perdition. There'd be some company where I was going, anyhow.
The next morning after ballasting up with the truck we'd bought at the store—the feller 'most keeled over when he found we was going to pay cash for it—we went out on the piazza again, and looked at the breakers and the pine trees and the sand, and held our hats on with both hands.
“Jonadab,” says I, “what'll you take for your heirloom?”
“Well,” he says, “Barzilla, the way I feel now, I think I'd take a return ticket to Orham and be afraid of being took up for swindling at that.”
Neither of us says nothing more for a spell, and, first thing you know, we heard a carriage rattling somewhere up the road. I was shipwrecked once and spent two days in a boat looking for a sail. When I heard that rattling I felt just the way I done when I sighted the ship that picked us up.
“Judas!” says Jonadab, “there's somebody COMING!”
We jumped out of our chairs and put for the corner of the house. There WAS somebody coming—a feller in a buggy, and he hitched his horse to the front fence and come whistling up the walk.
He was a tall chap, with a smooth face, kind of sharp and knowing, and with a stiff hat set just a little on one side. His clothes was new and about a week ahead of up-to-date, his shoes shined till they lit up the lower half of his legs, and his pants was creased so's you could mow with 'em. Cool and slick! Say! in the middle of that deadliness and compared to Jonadab and me, he looked like a bird of Paradise in a coop of moulting pullets.
“Cap'n Wixon?” he says to me, sticking out a gloved flipper.
“Not guilty,” says I. “There's the skipper. My name's Wingate.”
“Glad to have the pleasure, Mr. Wingate,” he says. “Cap'n Wixon, yours truly.”
We shook hands, and he took each of us by the arm and piloted us back to the piazza, like a tug with a couple of coal barges. He pulled up a chair, crossed his legs on the rail, reached into the for'ard hatch of his coat and brought out a cigar case.
“Smoke up,” he says. We done it—I holding my hat to shut off the wind, while Jonadab used up two cards of matches getting the first light. When we got the cigars to going finally, the feller says:
“My name's Brown—Peter T. Brown. I read about your falling heir to this estate, Cap'n Wixon, in a New Bedford paper. I happened to be in New Bedford then, representing the John B. Wilkins Unparalleled All Star Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ten Nights in a Bar-room Company. It isn't my reg'lar line, the show bus'ness, but it produced the necessary 'ham and' every day and the excelsior sleep inviter every night, so—but never mind that. Soon as I read the paper I came right down to look at the property. Having rubbered, back I go to Orham to see you. Your handsome and talented daughter says you are over here. That'll be about all—here I am. Now, then, listen to this.”
He went under his hatches again, rousted out a sheet of paper, unfolded it and read something like this—I know it by heart:
“The great sea leaps and splashes before you as it leaped and splashed in the old boyhood days. The sea wind sings to you as it sang of old. The old dreams come back to you, the dreams you dreamed as you slumbered upon the cornhusk mattress in the clean, sweet little chamber of the old home. Forgotten are the cares of business, the scramble for money, the ruthless hunt for fame. Here are perfect rest and perfect peace.
“Now what place would you say I was describing?” says the feller.
“Heaven,” says Jonadab, looking up, reverent like.
You never see a body more disgusted than Brown.
“Get out!” he snaps. “Do I look like the advance agent of Glory? Listen to this one.”
He unfurls another sheet of paper, and goes off on a tack about like this:
“The old home! You who sit in your luxurious apartments, attended by your liveried servants, eating the costly dishes that bring you dyspepsia and kindred evils, what would you give to go back once more to the simple, cleanly living of the old house in the country? The old home, where the nights were cool and refreshing, the sleep deep and sound; where the huckleberry pies that mother fashioned were swimming in fragrant juice, where the shells of the clams for the chowder were snow white and the chowder itself a triumph; where there were no voices but those of the wind and sea; no—”
“Don't!” busts out Jonadab. “Don't! I can't stand
