iarch,
after due reflection, gathering his beard in his band. "Mebbe it's more."
His upper lip was blue, shaven, prehensile.

"What did you ask him for, when you know?" said Janet, mirthfully, when
they had gone on, and Ditmar was imitating him. Ditmar's reply was to
wink at her. Presently they saw another figure on the road.

"Let's see what he'll say," Ditmar proposed. This man was young, the
colour of mahogany, with glistening black hair and glistening black eyes
that regarded the too palpable joyousness of their holiday humour in mute
surprise.

"I no know--stranger," he said.

"No speaka Portugueso?" inquired Ditmar, gravely.

"The country is getting filthy with foreigners," he observed, when he had
started the car. "I went down to Plymouth last summer to see the old
rock, and by George, it seemed as if there wasn't anybody could speak
American on the whole cape. All the Portuguese islands are dumped there
--cranberry pickers, you know."

"I didn't know that," said Janet.

"Sure thing!" he exclaimed. "And when I got there, what do you think?
there was hardly enough of the old stone left to stand on, and that had a
fence around it like an exhibit in an exposition. It had all been chipped
away by souvenir hunters."

She gazed at him incredulously.

"You don't believe me! I'll take you down there sometime. And another
thing, the rock's high and dry--up on the land. I said to Charlie Crane,
who was with me, that it must have been a peach of a jump for old Miles
Standish and Priscilla what's her name."

"How I'd love to see the ocean again!" Janet exclaimed.

"Why, I'll take you--as often as you like," he promised. "We'll go out on
it in summer, up to Maine, or down to the Cape."

Her enchantment was now so great that nothing seemed impossible.

"And we'll go down to Plymouth, too, some Sunday soon, if this weather
keeps up. If we start early enough we can get there for lunch, easy.
We'll see the rock. I guess some of your ancestors must have come over
with that Mayflower outfit--first cabin, eh? You look like it."

Janet laughed. "It's a joke on them, if they did. I wonder what they'd
think of Hampton, if they could see it now. I counted up once, just to
tease father--he's the seventh generation from Ebenezer Bumpus, who came
to Dolton. Well, I proved to him he might have one hundred and twenty-six
other ancestors besides Ebenezer and his wife."

"That must have jarred him some," was Ditmar's comment.