booked all through the summer and it looked as if our second season
would be better'n our first.

Then the Dillaway girl--she was christened Lobelia, like her mother,
but she'd painted it out and cruised under the name of Belle since the
family got rich--she thought 'twould be nice to have what she called a
"spring house-party" for her particular friends 'fore the regular season
opened. So Peter--he being engaged at the time and consequent in that
condition where he'd have put on horns and "mooed" if she'd give the
order--he thought 'twould be nice, too, and for a week it was "all hands
on deck!" getting ready for the "house-party."

Two days afore the thing was to go off the ways Brown gets a letter from
Belle, and in it says she's invited a whole lot of folks from Chicago
and New York and Boston and the land knows where, and that they've never
been to the Cape and she wants to show 'em what a "quaint" place it
is. "Can't you get," says she, "two or three delightful, queer, old
'longshore characters to be at work 'round the hotel? It'll give such a
touch of local color," she says.

So out comes Peter with the letter.

"Barzilla," he says to me, "I want some characters. Know anybody that's
a character?"

"Well," says I, "there's Nate Slocum over to Orham. He'd steal anything
that wa'n't spiked down. He's about the toughest character I can think
of, offhand, this way."

"Oh, thunder!" says Brown. "I don't want a crook; that wouldn't be any