“No, don’t know’s I be, ‘special’; why?”

“Oh, nothing, except that if you were in a hurry I should advise your paying for them.  I told you, you remember, that we weren’t taking chances.”

For an instant Jeremiah stood there glowering.  Then he did another astonishing thing.  He took out the pocketbook once more and from it extracted a two-dollar bill.

“Take it out of that,” he said, “and send me a receipted bill afterwards.  I always cal’late to know what I’ve paid for.  And say, you—­what’s your name—­Mary-’Gusta, if you get tired of workin’ for Shad Gould and Zoeth Hamilton, come round and see me.  I’ve got—­I mean my wife’s got—­two or three mortgages that’s behind on the interest.  I ain’t been able to collect it for her yet, but—­but, by time, I believe you could!”

He went out and the next moment Mary was almost smothered in her uncle’s embrace.

“After this—­after this,” roared Shadrach, “I’ll believe anything’s possible if you’ve got a hand in it, Mary-’Gusta.  If you’d been Jonah you’d have put the whale in your pocket and swum ashore.”

CHAPTER XXVII

Early in April, when Mary announced that she was ready to put into operation her biggest and most ambitious plan, suggested the year before by Barbara Howe—­the tea-room and gift-shop plan—­the Captain did not offer strenuous opposition.

“I can’t see much sense in it,” he admitted.  “I don’t know’s I know what it’s all about.  Nigh as I can make out you’re figgerin’ to open up some kind of a high-toned eatin’ house.  Is that it?”

“Why, no, Uncle Shad, not exactly,” explained Mary.

“Then what is it—­a drinkin’ house?  I presume likely that’s it, bein’ as you call it a ‘tea-room.’  Kind of a temperance saloon, eh?  Can’t a feller get coffee in it, if he wants to?  I don’t wake up nights much hankerin’ for tea myself.”

“Listen, Uncle Shad:  A tea-room—­at least a tearoom of the sort I intend to have—­is a place where the summer people, the women and girls especially, will come and sit at little tables and drink tea and eat cakes and ice cream and look off at the ocean, if the weather is pleasant—­”

“Yes, and at the fog, if ’tain’t; and talk about their neighbor’s clothes and run down the characters of their best friends.  Yes, yes, I see; sort of a sewin’ circle without the sewin’.  All right, heave ahead and get your tea-room off the ways if you want to.  If anybody can make the thing keep afloat you can, Mary-’Gusta.”

So Mary, thus encouraged, went on to put her scheme into effect.  She had been planning the details for some time.  About halfway down the lane leading to the house from the store was another small story-and-a-half dwelling of the old-fashioned Cape Cod type.  It stood upon a little hill and commanded a wide view of ocean and beach and village.  There were some weather-beaten trees and a tangle of shrubs about it.  It had been untenanted for a good while and was in rather bad repair.