must be, so wide and commodious were they.
Below it, you could see the basement shaping itself, with a low ceiling
like a vault and big beams running across, dressed, smoothed, and ready
for staining. Already in the street there were seven crates of red and
white awning.

And even then nobody knew what it was, and it was not till the
seventeenth day that Mr. Smith, in the privacy of the back bar, broke
the silence and explained.

"I tell you, boys," he says, "it's a caff--like what they have in the
city--a ladies' and gent's caff, and that underneath (what's yours, Mr.
Mullins?) is a Rats' Cooler. And when I get her started, I'll hire a
French Chief to do the cooking, and for the winter I will put in a 'girl
room,' like what they have in the city hotels. And I'd like to see who's
going to close her up then."

Within two more weeks the plan was in operation. Not only was the caff
built but the very hotel was transformed. Awnings had broken out in a
red and white cloud upon its face, its every window carried a box of
hanging plants, and above in glory floated the Union Jack. The very
stationery was changed. The place was now Smith's Summer Pavilion. It
was advertised in the city as Smith's Tourists' Emporium, and Smith's
Northern Health Resort. Mr. Smith got the editor of the Times-Herald to
write up a circular all about ozone and the Mariposa pine woods, with
illustrations of the maskinonge (piscis mariposis) of Lake Wissanotti.

The Saturday after that circular hit the city in July, there were men
with fishing rods and landing nets pouring in on every train, almost
too fast to register. And if, in the face of that, a few little drops of
whiskey were sold over the bar, who thought of it?

But the caff! that, of course, was the crowning glory of the thing, that
and the Rats' Cooler below.

Light and cool, with swinging windows open to the air, tables with
marble tops, palms, waiters in white coats--it was the standing marvel
of Mariposa. Not a soul in the town except Mr. Smith, who knew it by
instinct, ever guessed that waiters and palms and marble tables can be
rented over the long distance telephone.

Mr. Smith was as good as his word. He got a French Chief with an
aristocratic saturnine countenance, and a moustache and imperial that
recalled the late Napoleon III. No one knew where Mr. Smith got him.
Some people in the town said he was a French marquis. Others said he was
a count and explained the difference.