why the invisible gods had thus smitten them. Not for a week, a week
of draining expense without any income to speak of, did they find out.

One July evening they walked to Grimsby Center. Half-way down they came
to a new sign, shaped like a tea-pot, declaring in a striking block of
print:

MISS MITCHIN OF BROOKLINE ANNOUNCES THE QUAINTEST TEA-ROOM ON
THE CAPE. HISTORIC SOULE MANSION, GRIMSBY CENTER. CRUMPETS AND
SALLY LUNNS WITH FRESH STRAWBERRY JAM. OPEN JULY 1.

And the Applebys had never heard of crumpets or Sally Lunns.

While the light turned the moors to a wistful lavender, the little old
couple stood in a hollow of the road, looking mutely up at the sign that
mocked them from its elevation on a bare gravel bank beside the way.
Father's shoulders braced; he bit his lips; he reached out for Mother's
hand and patted it. He led her on, and it was he who spoke first:

"Oh, that kind of miffle-business won't hurt us any. Girly-girly stuff,
that's what it is. Regular autoists would rather have one of your
home-made doughnuts than all the crumples in the world, and you can just
bet your bottom dollar on that, Sary Jane."

He even chuckled, but it was a feeble chuckle, and he could find no
other solace to give as they trudged toward Grimsby Center, two
insignificant people, hand in hand, dim in the melancholy light which
made mysterious the stretching moors. Presently they and the black
highroad disappeared. Only the sandy casual trails and mirror-bright
tiny pools stood out in the twilight.

Yet there was light enough for them to see the silhouettes of two more
tea-pot signs before they entered Grimsby Center.

The village was gay, comparatively. There was to be a motion-picture
show in the town hall, and the sign advertising it was glaring with no
less than four incandescent lights. In the Old Harbor Inn the guests
were dancing to phonograph music, after their early supper. A man who
probably meant well was playing long, yellowish, twilit wails on a
cornet, somewhere on the outskirts. Girls in sailor jumpers, with vivid
V's of warmly tanned flesh, or in sweaters of green and rose and violet
and canary yellow, wandered down to the post-office. To the city-bred
Applebys there would have been cheer and excitement in this mild
activity, after their farm-house weeks; indeed Father suggested, "We
ought to stay and see the movies. Look! Royal X. Snivvles in 'The Lure
of the Crimson Cobra'--six reels--that