[Pg 25] [Pg 25] Marion's eyes sparkled with joyful assurance and she stood up with an eager movement; I motioned her to wait. "Do you happen to know," I asked the postmistress, "what is the rent of the place?" "Well, he asks different rents from different people," she answered slowly, her features showing grim amusement, "and no one has ever managed to strike a bargain with him yet. Last spring a man came along from the city thinking as the place was standing idle anyway he ought to be able to rent it cheap for the summer, so he hunted Peter up to show him round. He was one of them big blustering sort of men that acts as if country people wasn't no better than door mats, but Peter followed him about as meek as Moses, carrying his overcoat and umbrella for him. They come in here about train time, then the man pulls out a dime and says, 'Here, my man,' says he, 'is something for your trouble. It's a ramshackle old house and ain't worth two hundred a year, but I'll give you fifty for six months.' Peter was looking at the dime in[Pg 26] a puzzled sort of way, then he smiled a curious sort of smile and bit the edge before he put it in his pocket. 'You're most too kind, sir,' he says, 'for it has been a great entertainment to me to show you about, and I don't often have the company of a real gentleman. I'm sorry the place is beyond your means, but the fact is that I couldn't afford to let you have it less than two hundred a month. I'm sorry,' says he, 'that you had so much trouble for nothing, but I'll just slip this half-dollar into your pocket and you'll have it to spend when you get back to the city.' With that he lays down the overcoat and umbrella and walks out. And for all the fine clothes and jewelry of that man, he used such profane language that I had to ask him to stop or else step outside. That's just like old Peter—he's so touchy there's no getting on with him, though he can be as sweet as pie if he happens to take a fancy to a person. There was once a man——" [Pg 26] At this point Marion adroitly interposed with another question, and in two minutes we were on the road to Waydean. Paul and I straggled along behind, scarcely able to[Pg 27] keep up with Marion's eager pace, as she breathlessly commented upon the delights of living in such a house as the postmistress had described. I became so enthusiastic, in sympathy with her, that by the time we caught a glimpse of the chimneys through a belt of trees I was almost persuaded that open fireplaces and diamond panes
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