d if you'll let me climb out past I'll speak to the brakeman
about puttin' you off where you belong."

"You're very kind," says he. "Regret you can't stay longer."

Was that a josh, or what? Anyway, I figures I'm gettin' off easy, for
there was a lot more of that blamed book he might have pumped into me
if I hadn't ducked.

"Never again!" says I to myself. "Next time I gets curious I'll keep
my mouth shut."

I wa'n't takin' any chances of his holdin' me up on the station
platform when we got off, either. I was the first man to swing from
the steps, and I makes a bee line for the road leadin' out towards
Chester's place, not stoppin' for a hack. Pretty soon who should come
drivin' after me but Curlylocks. He still has his book open, though;
so he gets by without spottin' me, and I draws a long breath.

By the time I'd hoofed over the two miles between the stations and
where Chester lives I'd done a lot of breathin'. It was quite some of
a place to get to, one of these new-model houses, that wears the
plasterin' on the outside and has a roof made of fancy drain pipe.
It's balanced right on the edge of the rocks, with the whole of Long
Island sound for a back yard and more'n a dozen acres of private park
between it and the road.

"Gee!" says I to Chester, "I should think this would be as lonesome as
livin' in a lighthouse."

"Not with the mob that mother usually has around," says he.

If the attendance that night was a sample, I guess he was right; for
the bunch that answers the dinner gong would have done credit to a
summer hotel. Seems that Chester's old man had been a sour, unsociable
old party in his day, keepin' the fam'ly shut up in a thirty-foot-front
city house that was about as cheerful as a tomb, and havin' comp'ny to
dinner reg'lar once a year.

But when he finally quit breathin', and the lawyers had pried the
checkbook out of his grip, mother had sailed in to make up for lost
time. It wasn't bridge and pink teas. She'd always had a hankerin'
for minglin' with the high brows, and it was them she went gunnin'
for,--anything from a college president down to lady novelists.
Anybody that could paint a prize picture, or break into print in the
thirty-five-cent magazines, or get his name up as havin' put the scoop
net over a new germ, could win a week of first class board from her by
just sendin' in his card.

But it was tough on Chester, havin' that kind of a gang around all the
time, clutterin