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Cape Cod Stories by Joseph Crosby Lincoln
page 200 of 208 (96%)

"Stop your foolishing," he says. "I mean I've got a millionaire. He's
coming to-night, too. One of the biggest big-bugs there is in New York.
Ah, ha! what did I tell you?"

He was fairly boiling over with gloat, but from between the bubbles I
managed to find out that the new boarder was a big banker from New
York, name of Van Wedderburn, with a barrel of cash and a hogshead of
dyspepsy. He was a Wall Street "bear," and a steady diet of lamb with
mint sass had fetched him to where the doctors said 'twas lay off for
two months or be laid out for keeps.

"And I've fixed it that he's to stop at your house, Barzilla," crows
Jonadab. "And when he sees Mabel--well, you know what she's done to the
other men folks," he says.

"Humph!" says I, "maybe he's got dyspepsy of the heart along with the
other kind. She might disagree with him. What makes you so cock sartin?"

"'Cause he's a widower," he says. "Them's the softest kind."

"Well, you ought to know," I told him. "You're one yourself. But,
from what I've heard, soft things are scarce in Wall Street. Bet you
seventy-five cents to a quarter it don't work."

He wouldn't take me, having scruples against betting--except when he
had the answer in his pocket. But he went away cackling joyful, and that
night Van Wedderburn arrived.

Van was a substantial-looking old relic, built on the lines of the
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