Cape Cod Stories by Joseph Crosby Lincoln
page 26 of 208 (12%)
page 26 of 208 (12%)
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He was mopping his eyes with his red bandanner. I was consider'ble shook
up myself. The dear land knows we was more used to huckleberry pies and clam chowder than we was to liveried servants and costly dishes, but there was something in the way that feller read off that slush that just worked the pump handle. A hog would have cried; I know _I_ couldn't help it. As for Peter T. Brown, he fairly crowed. "It gets you!" he says. "I knew it would. And it'll get a heap of others, too. Well, we can't send 'em back to the old home, but we can trot the old home to them, or a mighty good imitation of it. Here it is; right here!" And he waves his hand up toward Aunt Sophrony's cast-off palace. Cap'n Jonadab set up straight and sputtered like a firecracker. A man hates to be fooled. "Old home!" he snorts. "Old county jail, you mean!" And then that Brown feller took his feet down off the rail, hitched his chair right in front of Jonadab and me and commenced to talk. And HOW he did talk! Say, he could talk a Hyannis fisherman into a missionary. I wish I could remember all he said; 'twould make a book as big as a dictionary, but 'twould be worth the trouble of writing it down. 'Fore he got through he talked a thousand dollars out of Cap'n Jonadab, and it takes a pretty hefty lecture to squeeze a quarter out of HIM. To make a long yarn short, this was his plan: He proposed to turn Aunt Sophrony's wind plantation into a hotel for summer boarders. And it wan't going to be any worn-out, regulation kind |
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