only spending the Summer here. We live in
New York."

Mr. Putchett opened his eyes, whistled, and remarked:

"It's very funny."

"Why, I don't think so," said the child, very innocently. "Lots of
people that board here come from New York. Don't you want to see my
well? I dug the deepest well of anybody to-day. Just come and see--it's
only a few steps from here."

Mechanically, as one straggling with a problem above his comprehension,
the financier followed the child, and gazed into a hole, perhaps a foot
and a half deep, on the beach.

"That's my well," said she, "and that one next it is Frank's. Nellie's
is way up there. I guess hers _would_ have been the biggest, but a wave
came up and spoiled it."

Mr. Putchett looked from the well into the face of its little digger,
and was suddenly conscious of an insane desire to drink some of the
water. He took the child's pail, dipped some water, and was carrying it
to his lips, when the child spoiled what was probably the first
sentimental feeling of Mr. Putchett's life by hastily exclaiming:

"You mustn't drink that--it's salty!"

The sentimentalist sorrowfully put the bitter draught away, and the
child rattled on:

"If you're down here to-morrow, I'll show you where we find
scallop-shells; maybe you can find some with pink and yellow spots on
them. _I've_ got some. If you don't find any, I'll give you one."

"Thank you," said her companion.

Just then some one shouted "Alice!" and the child exclaiming, "Mamma's
calling me; good-by," hurried away, while the broker walked slowly
toward the hotel with an expression of countenance which would have
hidden him from his oldest acquaintance.

Mr. Putchett spent the evening on the piazza instead of in the barroom,
and he neither smoked nor drank. Before retiring he contracted with the
colored cook to shave him in the morning, and to black his boots; and he
visited the single store of the neighborhood and purchased a shirt, some
collars, and a cravat.

When in the morning he was duly shaved, dressed and brushed, he
critically surveyed himself in the glass, and seemed quite dissatisfied.
He moved from the glass, spread a newspaper on the table, and put into
it the contents of his capacious pockets. A second examination before
the glass seemed more satisfactory in result, thus indicating that to
the eye of Mr. Putchett his well-stuffed pockets had been unsightly in
effect.

The paper and its contents he gave the landl