and several "lasts before that"--summer suit made over, ready to
receive callers.

On the twentieth of the month the callers began to arrive. East
Wellmouth broke out, as a child breaks out with the measles, in
brilliant speckles, the disease in this instance being unmistakably
a pronounced case of summer boarders. The "speckles" were everywhere,
about the post office, in Ras Beebe's store, about the lighthouse,
on the beaches, and far and wide over the hills and hollows. They
picknicked in the pine groves, they giggled in the back seats on prayer
meeting nights, they sang noisily on the way back to the hotel after
evening mail sorting, they danced jazzily in the hotel parlor and on the
porches.

Martha did not mind them; she said they were rather nice, on the
whole, because they helped to remind her that all creation wasn't East
Wellmouth. Galusha didn't object to them, except when they were TOO
noisy at midnight or thereabouts and interfered with his slumbers.
Primmie condescended to them and aired her knowledge of local
celebrities and traditions. Captain Jethro ignored them utterly and
Lulie was popular among them. Only Zacheus, the philosopher, seemed to
find them unmitigated nuisances. Somehow or other the summer visitor got
under Mr. Bloomer's hard shell and upon his salt-seasoned nerves.

"Blast 'em!" grumbled Zach, "I don't know why 'tis, but they rile me
like fury. Prob'ly it's because I ain't never been much used to 'em the
way I would have been if I'd been keepin' light ashore all my days. Out
on the old Hog's Back we never had no visitors to speak of and we used
to hanker for 'em. Here, by Godfreys, they don't give us no time to
hanker for nothin'. And they ask such foolhead questions! One woman, she
says to me yesterday, she says--I was showin' her the foghorn, and says
she: 'Do you have to turn a crank to make it go?' Think of that! A hand
crank to make the fourth highest-power foghorn on the coast blow! I lost
my patience. 'No ma'am,' says I, 'a crank ain't necessary. I just put
my mouth to the touch-hole,' I says, 'and breathe natural and she
chirrups.' She believed it, too. I cal'late I'll catch thunder from
Cap'n Jeth if he finds out what I told her, but I can't help it; there's
limits, by Godfreys domino, limits!"

Galusha found, except for the slight annoyance of too many of these
sojourners, that summer at Gould's Bluffs and vicinity was even more
delightful than the fall and spring had been. H