ons coming by the pailful.

And the folks that come had money, too--they had to have to pay Brown's
rates. I always felt like a robber or a Standard Oil director every time
I looked at the books. The most of 'em was rich folks--self-made men,
just like Peter prophesied--and they brought their wives and daughters
and slept on cornhusks and eat chowder and said 'twas great and just
like old times. And they got the rest we advertised; we didn't cheat
'em on REST. By ten o'clock pretty nigh all hands was abed, and 'twas so
still all you could hear was the breakers or the wind, or p'raps a groan
coming from a window where some boarder had turned over in his sleep and
a corncob in the mattress had raked him crossways.

There was one old chap that we'll call Dillaway--Ebenezer Dillaway.
That wan't his name; his real one's too well known to tell. He runs the
"Dillaway Combination Stores" that are all over the country. In them
stores you can buy anything and buy it cheap--cheapness is Ebenezer's
stronghold and job lots is his sheet anchor. He'll sell you a mowing
machine and the grass seed to grow the hay to cut with it. He'll sell
you a suit of clothes for two dollars and a quarter, and for ten cents
more he'll sell you glue enough to stick it together again after you've
worn it out in the rain. He'll sell you anything, and he's got cash
enough to sink a ship.

He come to the "Old Home House" with his daughter, and he took to the
place right away. Said 'twas for all the world like where he used to
live when he was a boy. He liked the grub and he liked the cornhusks
and he liked Brown. Brown had a way of stealing a thing and yet paying
enough for it to square the law--that hit Ebenezer where he lived.

His daughter liked Brown, too, and 'twas easy enough to see that
Brown liked her. She was a mighty pretty girl, the kind Peter called a
"queen," and the active manager took to her like a cat to a fish.
They was together more'n half the time, gitting up sailing parties, or
playing croquet, or setting up on the "Lover's Nest," which was a
kind of slab summer-house Brown had rigged up on the bluff where Aunt
Sophrony's pig-pens used to be in the old days.

Me and Jonadab see how things was going, and we'd look at one another
and wink and shake our heads when the pair'd go by together. But all
that was afore the count come aboard.

We got our first letter from the count about the third of June. The
writing was all over the plate