the habit of orderin’ wholesale from Boston, but he soon stopped that. One after another Jim Henry landed ’em. When I asked him how, he just winked.

"Skipper," says he—he most generally called me "Skipper" same as I called Beanblossom "Pullet"—"Skipper," he says, "you can always hook a cod if there’s any around and you keepin’ changin’ bait; ain’t that so? Um-hm; well, I change bait, that’s all. Every man, woman and suffragette has got a weak p’int somewheres. I just cast around till I find that particular weak p’int; then they swaller hook, line and sinker."

"Humph!" I says, "Miss Letitia ain’t swallowed nothin’ yet, that I’ve noticed. Her weak p’ints all strong ones? or what is the matter?"

He made a face. "Sister Pendlebury," says he, "is the frostiest proposition I ever tackled outside of an ice chest. But I’ll get her yet. You wait and see. Why, man, we’ve _got_ to get her."

Well, I could find more truth in them statements than I could satisfaction. We’d got to get her—yes. But she wouldn’t be got. She was the richest old maid on the North Shore; lived in a stone and plaster house bigger’n the Ostable County jail, which she’d labeled "Pendlebury Villa"; had six servants, three cats and a poll parrot; and was so tipped back with dignity and importance that a plumb-line dropped from her after-hair comb would have missed her heels by three inches. Her winter port was Brookline; summers she condescended to shed glory over Ostable.

To get the trade of Pendlebury Villa had been Jim Henry’s dream from the start. And up to date he was still dreamin’. The other big-bugs he had caged, but Letitia was still flyin’ free and importin’ her honey from Boston, so to speak. Jacobs had tried everything he could think of, bribin’ the servants, sendin’ samples of fancy breakfast food and pickles free gratis, writin’ letters, callin’ with his Sunday clothes on, everything—but ’twas "Keep Off the Grass" at Pendlebury Villa so far as we was concerned. ’Twas the biggest chunk of trade under one head on the Cape and it hurt Jim Henry’s pride not to get it. However, he kept on tryin’.

One mornin’ he comes back to the store after a cruise to the Villa and it seemed to me that he looked happier than was usual after one of these trips.

"Skipper," says he, "I think—I wouldn’t bet any more’n my small change, but I _think_ I’ve laid a corner stone."

"With Miss Pendlebury?" says I, excited.

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