And before the season was over the engagement was announced. Old
Dillaway took it pretty well, considering. He liked Peter, and his
having no money to speak of didn't count, because Ebenezer had enough
for all hands. The old man said he'd been hoping for a son-in-law
sharp enough to run the "Consolidated Stores" after he was gone, and it
looked, he said, as if he'd found him.





THE SOUTH SHORE WEATHER BUREAU


"But," says Cap'n Jonadab and me together, jest as if we was "reading in
concert" same as the youngsters do in school, "but," we says, "will it
work? Will anybody pay for it?"

"Work?" says Peter T., with his fingers in the arm-holes of the
double-breasted danger-signal that he called a vest, and with his cigar
tilted up till you'd think 'twould set his hat-brim afire. "Work?" says
he. "Well, maybe 'twouldn't work if the ordinary brand of canned
lobster was running it, but with ME to jerk the lever and sound the loud
timbrel--why, say! it's like stealing money from a blind cripple that's
hard of hearing."

"Yes, I know," says Cap'n Jonadab. "But this ain't like starting the Old
Home House. That was opening up a brand-new kind of hotel that nobody
ever heard of before. This is peddling weather prophecies when there's