ious colors--blue and
gold and purple!"

"And no grass nor nothin'," the invalid retorted. "Not even a place to go
fishin'. And you call it beau--Say, was you ever in Bangor?"

Gilbert roared with laughter; but Lucia took the old boy seriously.
"Bangor?" she repeated, wonderingly.

"Yes. Bangor, Maine. Now there's a place as is beau--Take the town hall,
for instance. And the Soldiers' Monument. And the cemetery. They got the
swellest cemetery in Bangor you ever--." Gilbert was almost doubling up
with laughter; but Uncle Henry went right on: "As for this gol darn place,
I wish it was in--An' it wouldn't have fur to go, neither!" he added,
emphatically, smiling at his own humor. "I wisht I was back in Maine!
There's where I was always so happy!"

By this time Lucia was smiling too. She went over and shook her finger
gently in the invalid's face. "You're cross just because you're hungry!"

"I ain't neither!" Smith replied, like a little boy.

"Yes, you are!" Lucia kept on.

"I ain't!"

"Uh, uh!" she teased him, as though she were playing with a baby.

Smith grew peevish. "Gol darn it, I tell you I ain't!" And he gave his
chair a rapid twirl.

"Boo!" came from Lucia softly. She laughed, and ran up the tiny stone
stairs that led to her room.

"Boo, yourself!" called out Uncle Henry, determined to have the last word,
as Lucia disappeared. Then he turned querulously on his nephew, as soon as
he was certain she was out of hearing. "Why did you ever invite 'em to stay
here in the first place?" he wanted to know. The sound of "Red's" harmonica
was heard outside.

"Because there was no decent hotel anywhere near. I couldn't do less than
offer them what little hospitality I had, could I, when Sturgis suggested
it?"

But his uncle didn't agree with him at all. "You could have done a whole
lot less," he decided. "You could have invited 'em to keep on going. Comin'
here at a time like this, and not only eatin' us out of house and home, but
drinkin' up the last bottle of liquor in the world!" This seemed to him the
culminating tragedy. When his nephew said nothing at all, he asked,
petulantly, "Well, what are you going to do? That's what I want to know."

"What can I do?"

"Do you mean to say you're going to set here and get throwed out into the
street and not even try to do something?"

Gilbert merely shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, of all the--" his Uncle Henry went on. "It's a darn good thing for
you that I'm a