Think of
opening those upper windows on a summer morning and looking out and away
for miles and miles. It would be splendid!"

"Um--yes. But spring and summer don't last all the time. There's
December and January and February to think of. Even March ain't all joy;
we've got last night to prove it by. However, it doesn't look quite so
desperate as I thought it might; I'll give in to that. Last night I
was about ready to sell it for the price of a return ticket to South
Middleboro. Now I guess likely I ought to get a few tradin' stamps along
with the ticket. Humph! This sartin isn't ALL Poverty Lane, is it? THAT
place wa'n't built with tradin' stamps. Who lives there?"

She was pointing to the estate adjoining the Barnes house and fronting
the sea further on. "Estate" is a much abused term and is sometimes
applied to rather insignificant holdings, but this one deserved the
name. Great stretches of lawns and shrubbery, ornamental windmill,
greenhouses, stables, drives and a towered and turreted mansion
dominating all.

"I seem to have aristocratic neighbors, anyhow," observed Mrs. Barnes.
"Whose tintype belongs in THAT gilt frame?"

Captain Obed chuckled at the question.

"Why, nobody's just now," he said. "There was one up to last fall,
though I shouldn't have called him a tintype. More of a panorama, if
you asked me--or him, either. That place belonged to our leadin' summer
resident, Mr. Hamilton Colfax, of New York. There's a good view from
there, too, but not as fine as this one of yours, Mrs. Barnes. When your
uncle, Cap'n Abner, bought this old house it used to set over on a part
of that land there. The cap'n didn't like the outlook so well as the one
from here, so he bought this strip and moved the house down. Quite a job
movin' a house as old as this one.

"Mr. Colfax died last October," he added, "and the place is for sale.
Good deal of a shock, his death was, to East Wellmouth. Kind of like
takin' away the doughnut and leavin' nothin' but the hole. The Wellmouth
Weekly Advocate pretty nigh gave up the ghost when Mr. Colfax did. It
always cal'lated on fillin' at least three columns with the doin's of
the Colfaxes and their 'house parties' and such. All summer it told
what they did do and all winter it guessed what they was goin' to do. It
ain't been much more than a patent medicine advertisin' circular since
the blow struck. Well, have you looked enough? Shall we heave ahead and
go aboard your craft, Mrs.