f old ocean" and the "simple, cleanly living of the bygone
days we dream about," there was some new froth concerning hunting and
fishing. You'd think the wild geese roosted on the flagpole nights, and
the bluefish clogged up the bay so's you could walk on their back fins
without wetting your feet--that is, if you wore rubbers and trod light.

"There!" says Peter T., waving the advertisement and crowing gladsome;
"they'll take to that like your temp'rance aunt to brandy cough-drops.
We'll have to put up barbed wire to keep 'em off."

"Humph!" grunts Cap'n Jonadab. "Anybody but a born fool'll know there
ain't any shooting down here this time of year."

Peter looked at him sorrowful. "Pop," says he, "did you ever hear that
Solomon answered a summer hotel ad? This ain't a Chautauqua, this is
the Old Home House, and its motto is: 'There's a new victim born every
minute, and there's twenty-four hours in a day.' You set back and count
the clock ticks."

Well, that's 'bout all we had to do. We got boarders enough from that
ridiculous advertisement to fill every spare room we had, including
Jonadab's and mine. Me and the cap'n had to bunk in the barn loft; but
there was some satisfaction in that--it give us an excuse to get away
from the "sports" in the smoking room.

The Todds was part of the haul. He was a little, dried-up man, single,
and a minister. Nigh's I could find out, he'd given up preaching by the
request of the doctor and his last congregation. He had a notion that he
was a mighty hunter afore the Lord, like Nimrod in the Bible, and he'd
come to the Old Home to bag a few gross of geese and ducks.

His sister was an old maid, and slim, neither of which failings was from
choice, I cal'late. She wore eye-glasses and a veil to "preserve her
complexion," and her idee seemed to be that native Cape Codders lived in
trees and ate cocoanuts. She called 'em "barbarians, utter barbarians."
Whenever she piped "James" her brother had to drop everything and report
on deck. She was skipper of the Todd craft.

Them Todds was what Peter T. called "the limit, and a chip or two over."
The other would-be gunners and fishermen were satisfied to slam shot
after sandpeeps, or hook a stray sculpin or a hake. But t'wa'n't so
with brother James Todd and sister Clarissa. "Ducks" it was in the
advertising, and nothing BUT ducks they wanted. Clarissa, she commenced
to hint middling p'inted concerning fraud.

Finally we lost patience, and