thing had no chance with Zena Pepperleigh. Why, she had told Pupkin
one night in the canoe that she would only marry a man who was poor
and had his way to make and would hew down difficulties for her sake.
And when Pupkin couldn't answer the argument she was quite cross and
silent all the way home.


What was Peter Pupkin doing, then, at eight hundred dollars in a bank
in Mariposa? If you ask that, it means that you know nothing of the
life of the Maritime Provinces and the sturdy temper of the people. I
suppose there are no people in the world who hate luxury and
extravagance and that sort of thing quite as much as the Maritime
Province people, and, of them, no one hated luxury more than Pupkin
senior.

Don't mistake the man. He wore a long sealskin coat in winter, yes;
but mark you, not as a matter of luxury, but merely as a question of
his lungs. He smoked, I admit it, a thirty-five cent cigar, not
because he preferred it, but merely through a delicacy of the thorax
that made it imperative. He drank champagne at lunch, I concede the
point, not in the least from the enjoyment of it, but simply on
account of a peculiar affection of the tongue and lips that
positively dictated it. His own longing--and his wife shared it--was
for the simple, simple life--an island somewhere, with birds and
trees. They had bought three or four islands--one in the St.
Lawrence, and two in the Gulf, and one off the coast of
Maine--looking for this sort of thing. Pupkin senior often said that
he wanted to have some place that would remind him of the little old
farm up the Aroostook where he was brought up. He often bought little
old farms, just to try them, but they always turned out to be so near