and laughed again.

When they'd gone, Jonadab turned to Ebenezer and he says: "That taking
us out on this boat was another case of having fun with the countrymen.
Hey?"

"I guess so," says Dillaway. "I b'lieve he told one of the guests that
he was going to put Cape Cod on ice this morning."

I looked away up the river where a little black speck was just getting
to shore. And I thought of how chilly the wind was out there, and how
that ice-water must have felt, and what a long ways 'twas from home.
And then I smiled, slow and wide; there was a barge load of joy in every
half inch of that smile.

"It's a cold day when Phil loses a chance for a joke," says Ebenezer.

"'Tain't exactly what you'd call summery just now," I says. And we
hauled down sail, run the ice-boat up to the wharf, and went up to our
room to pack our extension cases for the next train.

"You see," says Jonadab, putting in his other shirt, "it's easy enough
to get the best of Cape folks on wash sales and lying, but when it comes
to boats that's a different pair of shoes."

"I guess Phil'll agree with you," I says.

THE COUNT AND THE MANAGER

The way we got into the hotel business in the first place come around
like this: Me and Cap'n Jonadab went down to Wellmouth Port one day
'long in March to look at some property he'd had left him. Jonadab's
Aunt Sophrony had moved kind of sudden from that village to Beulah
Land--they're a good ways apart, too--and Cap'n Jonadab had come in for
the old farm, he being the only near relative.

When you go to Wellmouth Port you get off the cars at Wellmouth Center
and then take Labe Bearse's barge and ride four miles; and then, if the
horse don't take a notion to lay down in the road and go to sleep, or a
wheel don't come off or some other surprise party ain't sprung on you,
you come to a place where there's a Baptist chapel that needs painting,
and a little two-for-a-cent store that needs trade, and two or three
houses that need building over, and any Lord's quantity of scrub pines
and beach grass and sand. Then you take Labe's word for it that you've
got to Wellmouth Port and get out of the barge and try to remember
you're a church member.

Well, Aunt Sophrony's house was a mile or more from the place where the
barge stopped, and Jonadab and me, we hoofed it up there. We bought some
cheese and crackers and canned things at the store, 'cause we expected
to stay overnight in the house, and knew the