ors, and, much to his mother's annoyance, had
established himself as a full-fledged M. D.

If he had been poor, perhaps patients might not have come to him so
readily; but as it was, he found himself launched at once into a
lucrative practice.

This particular summer upon which our story opens, his grand lady-mother
was unusually incensed against handsome Jay. He had refused to spend his
vacation at the Castle, because, as he explained, there was a bevy of
fashionable girls invited there for him to fall in love with, and whom
he was expected to entertain.

"The long and the short of it is, mother, I shall not do it," he
decisively declared. "I shall simply run over to Lee and take up my
quarters in some unpretentious boarding-house, where I can come down to
my meals and lounge about in a _neglige_ shirt, and read my papers and
smoke my cigars swinging in a hammock, without being disturbed by
girls."

In high dudgeon his lady-mother and sister had sailed off to Europe, and
they lived all their after-lives to rue it, and to bemoan the fact that
they had not stayed at home to watch over the young man, and to guard
the golden prize from the band of women who were on the lookout for just
such an opportunity.

Jay Gardiner found just such an ideal boarding-house as he was looking
for. Every woman who came to the village with a marriageable daughter
tried to secure board at that boarding-house, but signally failed.

They never dreamed that the handsome, debonair young millionaire paid
the good landlady an exorbitant price to keep women out.

Good Widow Smith did her duty faithfully.

When Mrs. Pendleton, of New York, heard of the great attraction at Lee,
Massachusetts, she decided that that was the place where she and her two
daughters, Lou and Sally, should spend the summer.

"If either of you girls come home engaged to this millionaire," Mrs.
Pendleton had declared, "I shall consider it the greatest achievement of
my life. True, we live in a fine mansion on Fifth Avenue, and we are
supposed to be very wealthy; but not one of our dear five hundred
friends has discovered that the house we live in is merely rented, nor
that your father's business is mortgaged to the full extent. We will
have a hard time to pull through, and keep up appearances, until you two
are married off."

Mrs. Pendleton established herself at the Summerset House, with her two
daughters. Every Saturday afternoon the pompous old broker went out t