rful. Approve of YOUR
selection! How about hers? You durned quahaug! How did you do it?"

I gave him a condensed and hurried resume of the whole story. He did
not interrupt once--a perfectly amazing feat for him--and when I had
finished he shook his head.

"It's no use," he said. "I'm too good for the business I am in. I am
wasting my talents. _I_ sent you over there. _I_ told you to go. _I_
prescribed travel and a wife and all the rest. _I_ did it. I'm going to
quit the publishing game. I'm going to set up as a specialist, a brain
specialist, for clams. And I'll use your face as a testimonial: 'Kent
Knowles, Quahaug. Before and After Taking.' Man, you look ten years
younger than you did when you went away."

"You must not take all the credit," I told him. "You forget Hephzy and
her dreams, the dream she told us about that day at Bayport. That dream
has come true; do you realize it?"

He nodded. "I admit it," he said. "She is a better specialist than I.
I shall have to take her into partnership. 'Campbell and Cahoon.
Prescribers and Predictors. Authors Made Human.' I'll speak to her about
it."

As he said good-by to us at the Grand Central Station he asked me
another question.

"Kent," he whispered, "what are you going to do now? What are you going
to do with her? Are you and she going back to Bayport to be Mr. and Mrs.
Quahaug? Is that your idea?"

I shook my head. "We're going back to Bayport," I said, "but how long
we shall stay there I don't know. One thing you may be sure of, Jim; I
shall be a quahaug no more."

He nodded. "I think you're right," he declared. "She'll see to that, or
I miss my guess. No, my boy, your quahaug days are over. There's nothing
of the shellfish about her; she's a live woman, as well as a mighty
pretty one, and she cares enough about you to keep you awake and in the
game. I congratulate you, Kent, and I'm almost as happy as you are. Also
I shall play the optimist at our next directors' meeting; I see signs
of a boom in the literature factory. Go to it, my son. You have my
blessing."

We took the one o'clock train for Boston, remained there over night, and
left on the early morning "accommodation"--so called, I think, because
it accommodates the train hands--for Cape Cod. As we neared Buzzard's
Bay my spirits, which had been at topnotch, began to sink. When the sand
dunes of Barnstable harbor hove in sight they sank lower and lower.
It was October, the summer people, most of the