afraid of poverty, and able to take care of good round dollars. They can
play the piano all the morning and cook dinner all the afternoon if
they're called on to do it; so your difficulties ain't my difficulties.
I'll take the hall at your figures; term, five years; and if the baron'll
come down and spend a month with us at any time, I don't care when, we'll
show him what a big lap Luxury can get up when she tries."

And so it happened the New York papers announced that Hankinson J.
Terwilliger, Mrs. Terwilliger, the Misses Terwilliger, and Master
Hankinson J. Terwilliger, Jun., of Soleton, Massachusetts, had plunged
into the dizzy whirl of English society, and that the sole of the
three-dollar shoe now trod the baronial halls of the Bangletops. Later it
was announced that the Misses Terwilliger, of Bangletop Hall, had been
presented to the queen; that the Terwilligers had entertained the Prince
of Wales at Bangletop; in fact, the Terwilligers became an important
factor in the letters of all foreign correspondents of American papers,
for the president of the Terwilliger Three-dollar Shoe Company, of
Soleton, Massachusetts (Limited), was now in full possession of the
historic mansion, and was living up to his surroundings.

For a time everything was plain sailing for the Americans at Bangletop.
The dire forebodings of the agent did not seem to be fulfilled, and Mr.
Terwilliger was beginning to feel aggrieved. He had hired a house with a
ghost, and he wanted the use of it; but when he reflected upon the
consequences below stairs, he held his peace. He was not so sure, after he
had stayed at Bangletop awhile, and had had his daughters presented to the
queen, that he could be so independent of cooks as he had at first
supposed. Several times he had hinted rather broadly that some of the old
New England homemade flap-jacks would be most pleasing to his palate; but
since the prince had spent an afternoon on the lawn of Bangletop, the