"Kind of a flat, bare country, ain't it?" observed the drummer, with a jerk of his head toward the window. "Looks bleak enough to me. Know anything about this neck of the woods, do you?"

Albert turned to look at him.

"Meaning the Cape?" he asked.

"Sure."

"Indeed I do. I know all about it."

"That so! Say, you sound as if you liked it."

Albert turned back to the window again.

"Like it!" he repeated. "I love it." Then he sighed, a sigh of satisfaction, and added: "You see, I BELONG here."

His grandparents and Rachel were surprised when he walked into the house that noon and announced that he hoped dinner was ready, because he was hungry. But their surprise was more than balanced by their joy. Captain Zelotes demanded to know how long he was going to stay.

"As long as you'll have me, Grandfather," was the answer.

"Eh? Well, that would be a consider'ble spell, if you left it to us, but I cal'late that girl in New York will have somethin' to say as to time limit, won't she?"

Albert smiled. "I'll tell you about that by and by," he said.

He did not tell them until that evening after supper. It was Friday evening and Olive was going to prayer-meeting, but she delayed "putting on her things" to hear the tale. The news that the engagement was off and that her grandson was not, after all, to wed the daughter of the Honorable Fletcher Fosd.i.c.k, shocked and grieved her not a little.

"Oh, dear!" she sighed. "I suppose you know what's best, Albert, and maybe, as you say, you wouldn't have been happy, but I DID feel sort of proud to think my boy was goin' to marry a millionaire's daughter."

Captain Zelotes made no comment--then. He asked to be told more particulars. Albert described the life at the Fosd.i.c.k home, the receptions, his enforced exhibitions and readings. At length the recital reached the point of the interview in Fosd.i.c.k's office.

"So he offered you to take you into the firm--eh, son?" he observed.

"Yes, sir."

"Humph! Fosd.i.c.k, Williamson and Hendricks are one of the biggest brokerage houses goin', so a good many New Yorkers have told me."

"No doubt. But, Grandfather, you've had some experience with me as a business man; how do you think I would fit into a firm of stockbrokers?"

Captain Lote's eye twinkled, but he did not answer the question. Instead he asked:

"Just what did you give Fosd.i.c.k as your reason for not sayin' yes?"

Albert laughed. "Well, Grandfather," he said, "I'll tell you. I said that I appreciated his kindness and all that, but that I would not draw a big salary for doing nothing except to be a little, d.a.m.ned tame house-poet led around in leash and shown off at his wife's club meetings."

Mrs. Snow uttered a faint scream. "Oh, Albert!" she exclaimed. She might have said more, but a shout from her husband prevented her doing so.

Captain Zelotes had risen and his mighty hand descended with a stinging slap upon his grandson's shoulder.

"Bully for you, boy!" he cried. Then, turning to Olive, he added, "Mother, I've always kind of cal'lated that you had one man around this house. Now, by the Lord A'Mighty, I know you've got TWO!"

Olive rose. "Well," she declared emphatically, "that may be; but if both those men are goin' to start in swearin' right here in the sittin' room, I think it's high time SOMEBODY in that family went to church."

So to prayer meeting she went, with Mrs. Ellis as escort, and her husband and grandson, seated in armchairs before the sitting room stove, both smoking, talked and talked, of the past and of the future--not as man to boy, nor as grandparent to grandson, but for the first time as equals, without reservations, as man to man.

CHAPTER XVIII

The next morning Albert met old Mr. Kendall. After breakfast Captain Zelotes had gone, as usual, directly to the office. His grandson, however, had not accompanied him.

"What are you cal'latin' to do this mornin', Al?" inquired the captain.

"Oh, I don't know exactly, Grandfather. I'm going to look about the place a bit, write a letter to my publishers, and take a walk, I think.

You will probably see me at the office pretty soon. I'll look in there by and by."

"Ain't goin' to write one or two of those five hundred dollar stories before dinner time, are you?"

"I guess not, sir. I'm afraid they won't be written as quickly as all that."

Captain Lote shook his head. "G.o.dfreys!" he exclaimed; "it ain't the writin' of 'em I'd worry about so much as the gettin' paid for 'em.

You're sure that editor man ain't crazy, you say?"

"I hope he isn't. He seemed sane enough when I saw him."

"Well, I don't know. It's live and learn, I suppose, but if anybody but you had told me that magazine folks paid as much as five hundred dollars a piece for yarns made up out of a feller's head without a word of truth in 'em, I'd--well, I should have told the feller that told me to go to a doctor right off and have HIS head examined. But--well, as 'tis I cal'late I'd better have my own looked at. So long, Al. Come in to the office if you get a chance."

He hurried out. Albert walked to the window and watched the st.u.r.dy figure swinging out of the yard. He wondered if, should he live to his grandfather's age, his step would be as firm and his shoulders as square.

Olive laid a hand on his arm.

"You don't mind his talkin' that way about your writin' those stories, do you, Albert?" she asked, a trace of anxiety in her tone. "He don't mean it, you know. He don't understand it--says he don't himself--but he's awful proud of you, just the same. Why, last night, after you and he had finished talkin' and he came up to bed--and the land knows what time of night or mornin' THAT was--he woke me out of a sound sleep to tell me about that New York magazine man givin' you a written order to write six stories for his magazine at five hundred dollars a piece.

Zelotes couldn't seem to get over it. 'Think of it, Mother,' he kept sayin'. 'Think of it! Pretty nigh twice what I pay as good a man as Labe Keeler for keepin' books a whole year. And Al says he ought to do a story every forni't. I used to jaw his head off, tellin' him he was on the road to starvation and all that. Tut, tut, tut! Mother, I've waited a long time to say it, but it looks as if you married a fool.' ...

That's the way he talked, but he's a long ways from bein' a fool, your grandfather is, Albert."

Albert nodded. "No one knows that better than I," he said, with emphasis.

"There's one thing," she went on, "that kind of troubled me. He said you was goin' to insist on payin' board here at home. Now you know this house is yours. And we love to--"

He put his arm about her. "I know it, Grandmother," he broke in, quickly. "But that is all settled. I am going to try to make my own living in my own way. I am going to write and see what I am really worth. I have my royalty money, you know, most of it, and I have this order for the series of stories. I can afford to pay for my keep and I shall. You see, as I told Grandfather last night, I don't propose to live on his charity any more than on Mr. Fosd.i.c.k's."

She sighed.

"So Zelotes said," she admitted. "He told me no less than three times that you said it. It seemed to tickle him most to death, for some reason, and that's queer, too, for he's anything but stingy. But there, I suppose you can pay board if you want to, though who you'll pay it to is another thing. _I_ shan't take a cent from the only grandson I've got in the world."

It was while on his stroll down to the village that Albert met Mr.

Kendall. The reverend gentleman was plodding along carrying a market basket from the end of which, beneath a fragment of newspaper, the tail and rear third of a huge codfish drooped. The basket and its contents must have weighed at least twelve pounds and the old minister was, as Captain Zelotes would have said, making heavy weather of it. Albert went to his a.s.sistance.

"How do you do, Mr. Kendall," he said; "I'm afraid that basket is rather heavy, isn't it. Mayn't I help you with it?" Then, seeing that the old gentleman did not recognize him, he added, "I am Albert Speranza."