e said. "I ain't seen you sence you wore your hair
up, but you're just as good-lookin' as ever. And ain't that Bailey? Yes,
'tis, and Asaph, too! How are you, boys? Shake!"

Mr. Bangs and his chum, the town clerk, had emerged from the doorway.
Their mouths and eyes were wide open and they seemed to be suffering
from a sort of paralysis.

"Well? What's the matter with you?" demanded the arrival. "Ain't too
stuck up to shake hands after all these years, are you?"

Bailey's mouth closed in order that it's possessor might swallow. Then
it slowly reopened.

"I swan to man!" he ejaculated. "WELL! I swan to man! I--I b'lieve
you're Cy Whittaker!"

"Course I am. Have to dye my carrot top if I want to play anybody else.
But look here, boys, you answer my question: who had the cheek to rig
up that blasted piazza on my house? It starts to come down to-morrow
mornin'!"

CHAPTER III

"FIXIN' OVER"

Miss Angeline Phinney made no less than nine calls that afternoon.
Before bedtime it was known, from the last house in Woodchuck Lane to
the fish shanties at West Bayport, that "young Cy" Whittaker had come
back; that he had come back "for good"; that he was staying temporarily
at the perfect boarding house; that he was "awful well off"--having made
lots of money down in South America; that he intended to "fix over"
the Whittaker place, and that it was to be fixed over, not in a modern
manner, with plush parlor sets--a la Sylvanus Cahoon--nor with onyx
tables and blue and gold chairs like those adorning the Atkins mansion.
It was to be, as near as possible, a reproduction of what it had been in
the time of the late "Cap'n Cy," young Cy's father.

"_I_ think he's out of his head," declared Miss Phinney, in confidence,
to each of the nine females whom she favored with her calls. "Not crazy,
you understand, but sort of touched in the upper story. I says so to
Matildy Tripp, said it right out, too: 'Matildy,' I says, 'he's got a
screw loose up aloft just as sure as you're a born woman!' 'What makes
you think so?' says she. 'Well,' says I, 'do you s'pose anybody that
wan't foolish would be for spendin' good money on an old house to
make it OLDER?' I says. Goin' to tear down the piazza the fust thing!
Perfectly good piazza that cost ninety-eight dollars and sixty cents to
build; I know, because I see the bill when the Howeses had it done. And
he's goin' to set out box hedges, somethin' that ain't been the style
in this town se