risively. "Skill! I wish I had a dollar for every
one I got when I was learning to drive. There was a farmer over here
in Chester--" and he proceeded to relate how he had had to pay for two
turkeys. "He got my number, the old hayseed, he was laying for me, and
the next time I went back that way he held me up for five dollars. I
can remember the time when a man in a motor was an easy mark for every
reuben in the county. They got rich on us."

She responded to his mood, which was wholly irresponsible, exuberant,
and they laughed together like children, every little incident assuming
an aspect irresistibly humorous. Once he stopped to ask an old man
standing in his dooryard how far it was to Kingsbury.

"Wal, mebbe it's two mile, they mostly call it two," said the patriarch,
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