not care to buy."

Martha's interest increased. "Stock?" she repeated. "What sort of stock
was it, Mr. Bangs?"

"I didn't catch the name. And yet, as I remember, I did catch
some portion of it. Ah--let me see--Could there be such a thing as
a--ah--'ornamenting' stock? A Wellmouth ornamenting or decorating stock,
you know?"

Miss Phipps leaned forward. "Was it Wellmouth Development Company
stock?" she asked.

"Eh? Oh, yes--yes, I'm quite certain that was it. Yes, I think it was,
really."

"And Raish wanted Cap'n Jeth to buy some of it?"

"That was what I gathered, Miss Phipps. As I say, I was more interested
at the time in my--ah--pet tomb."

Primmie shivered again. Miss Martha looked very serious. She was
preoccupied during the rest of the dinner and, immediately afterward,
went, as has been told, over to the Hallett house, leaving her guest the
alternative of loneliness or Primmie.

At first he chose the loneliness. As a matter of fact, his morning's
exercise had fatigued him somewhat and he went up to his room with the
intention of taking a nap. But, before lying down, he seated himself in
the rocker by the window and looked out over the prospect of hills and
hollows, the little village, the pine groves, the shimmering, tumbling
sea, and the blue sky with its swiftly moving white clouds, the latter
like bunches of cotton fluff. The landscape was bare enough, perhaps,
but somehow it appealed to him. It seemed characteristically plain and
substantial and essential, like--well, like the old Cape Cod captains of
bygone days who had spent the dry land portion of their lives there and
had loved to call it home. It was American, as they were, American in
the old-fashioned meaning of the word, bluff, honest, rugged, real.
Galusha Bangs had traveled much, he loved the out of the way,
the unusual. It surprised him therefore to find how strongly this
commonplace, 'longshore spot appealed to his imagination. He liked it
and wondered why.

Of course the liking might come from the contrast between the rest and
freedom he was now experiencing and the fevered chase led him at the
mountain hotel where Mrs. Worth Buckley and her lion-hunting sisters
had their habitat. Thought of the pestilential Buckley female set him
to contrasting her affectations with the kind-hearted and wholehearted
simplicity of his present hostess, Miss Martha Phipps. It was something
of a contrast. Mrs. Buckley was rich and sophisticated and--in he