eturned Joe jovially.

He had every Doane laughing at supper that night. "Bear up! Bear up!
True, you've got a father instead of a goat--but we've all got our
cross! We all have our cross to bear!"

"Say!" said he after supper, "every woman, every kid, puts on a hat, and
up we go to see if Ed. Smith might _happen_ to have a soda."

As they were starting out, he peered over at the Cadaras in mock
surprise. "Why, what's the matter with that _goat_? That goat don't seem
to be takin' the Cadaras out for a soda."

Next day he started to make a kiddie-car for Edgar. He promised Joe he'd
make him a sail-boat. But it was up-hill work. The Cape's End Summer
folk gave a "Streets of Bagdad" and the "disaster families" got the
proceeds. Then when the Summer folk began to go away it was quite
natural to give what they didn't want to take with them to a family
that had had a disaster. The Doanes had had no disaster; anyway, the
Doanes weren't the kind of people you'd think of giving things to. True,
Mr. Doane would sometimes come and put on your screen-doors for you, but
it was as if a neighbor had come in to lend a hand. A man who lives
beside the sea and works on the land is not a picturesque figure. Then,
in addition to being alive, Joe Doane wasn't Portuguese. So the Cadaras
got the underwear and the bats and preserves that weren't to be taken
back to town. No one father--certainly not a father without a steady
job--could hope to compete with all that wouldn't go into trunks.

Anyway, he couldn't possibly make a goat. No wit or no kindness which
emanated from him could do for his boys what that goat did for the
Cadaras. Joe Doane came to throw an awful hate on the government goat.
Portagees were only Portagees--yet _they_ had the government goat. Why,
there had been Doanes on that Cape for more than a hundred years. There
had been times when everybody round there _worked_ for the Doanes, but
now the closest his boys could come to the government was beddin' down
the Cadaras' government goat! Twenty-five years ago Cadaras had huddled
in a hut on the God-forsaken Azores! If they knew there was a United
States government, all they knew was that there _was_ one. And now it
was these Cadara kids were putting on airs to _him_ about the
government. He knew there was a joke behind all this, behind his getting
so wrought up about it, but he would sit and watch that goat eat leaves
in the vacant lot across from the Cadaras until the goa