oked so very
forlorn I couldn't resist speaking. Do tell us why you are so sad; we're
dying to know."

Albert, taken by surprise, stammered that he didn't know that he was
sad. Miss Kelsey laughed merrily and declared that everyone who saw him
knew it at once. "Oh, excuse me, Madeline," she added. "I forgot that
you and Mr. Speranza had not met. Of course as you're going to live
in South Harniss you must know him without waiting another minute.
Everybody knows everybody down here. He is Albert Speranza--and we
sometimes call him Albert because here everybody calls everyone else
by their first names. There, now you know each other and it's all very
proper and formal."

The young lady who was her companion smiled. The smile was distinctly
worth looking at, as was the young lady herself, for that matter.

"I doubt if Mr. Speranza knows me very well, Jane," she observed.

"Doesn't know you! Why, you silly thing, haven't I just introduced you?"

"Well, I don't know much about South Harniss introductions, but isn't it
customary to mention names? You haven't told him mine."

Miss Kelsey laughed in high delight. "Oh, how perfectly ridiculous!"
she exclaimed. "Albert--Mr. Speranza, I mean--this is my friend Miss
Madeline Fosdick. She is from New York and she has decided to spend her
summers in South Harniss--which _I_ consider very good judgment. Her
father is going to build a cottage for her to spend them in down on the
Bay Road on the hill at the corner above the Inlet. But of course you've
heard of THAT!"

Of course he had. The purchase of the Inlet Hill land by Fletcher
Fosdick, the New York banker, and the price paid Solomon Dadgett for
that land, had been the principal topics of conversation around South
Harniss supper tables for the past ten days. Captain Lote Snow had
summed up local opinion of the transaction when he said: "We-ll, Sol
Dadgett's been talkin' in prayer-meetin' ever since I can remember about
the comin' of Paradise on earth. Judgin' by the price he got for the
Inlet Hill sand heap he must have cal'lated Paradise had got here and he
was sellin' the golden streets by the runnin' foot." Or, as Laban Keeler
put it: "They say King Soloman was a wise man, but I guess likely 'twas
a good thing for him that Sol Dadgett wasn't alive in his time. King Sol
would have needed all his wisdom to keep Dadgett from talkin' him into
buying the Jerusalem salt-ma'sh to build the temple on. . . . Um. . . .
Yes--yes--ye