“But ’twill cost so like the dickens to furnish it,” I says.

“Furnish it!” says he.  “Why, that’s just it!  It won’t cost nothing to furnish it—­nothing to speak of.  I went through the house day before yesterday—­crawled in the kitchen window—­oh! it’s all right, you can count the spoons—­and there’s eight of those bedrooms furnished just right, corded bedsteads, painted bureaus with glass knobs, ‘God Bless Our Home’ and Uncle Jeremiah’s coffin plate on the wall, rag mats on the floor, and all the rest.  All she needs is a little more of the same stuff, that I can buy ’round here for next to nothing—­I used to buy for an auction room—­and a little paint and fixings, and there she is.  All I want from you folks is a little money—­I’ll chuck in two hundred and fifty myself—­and you two can be proprietors and treasurers if you want to.  But active manager and publicity man—­that’s yours cheerily, Peter Theodosius Brown!” And he slapped his plaid vest.

Well, he talked all the forenoon and all the way to Orham on the train and most of that night.  And when he heaved anchor, Jonadab had agreed to put up a thousand and I was in for five hundred and Peter contributed two hundred and fifty and experience and nerve.  And the “Old Home House” was off the ways.

And by the first of May ’twas open and ready for business, too.  You never see such a driver as that feller Brown was.  He had a new wide piazza built all ’round the main buildings, painted everything up fine, hired the three best women cooks in Wellmouth—­and there’s some good cooks on Cape Cod, too—­and a half dozen chamber girls and waiters.  He had some trouble getting corded beds and old bureaus for the empty rooms, but he got ’em finally.  He bought the last bed of Beriah Burgess, up at East Harniss, and had quite a dicker getting it.

“He thought he ought to get five dollars for it,” says Brown, telling Jonadab and me about it.  “Said he hated to part with it because his grandmother died in it.  I told him I couldn’t see any good reason why I should pay more for a bed just because it had killed his grandmother, so we split up and called it three dollars.  ’Twas too much money, but we had to have it.”

And the advertisements!  They was sent everywheres.  Lots of ’em was what Peter called “reading notices,” and them he mostly got for nothing, for he could talk an editor foolish same as he could anybody else.  By the middle of April most of our money was gone, but every room in the house was let and we had applications coming by the pailful.

And the folks that come had money, too—­they had to have to pay Brown’s rates.  I always felt like a robber or a Standard Oil director every time I looked at the books.  The most of ’em was rich folks—­self-made men, just like Peter prophesied—­and they brought their wives and daughters and slept on cornhusks and eat chowder and said ’twas great and just like old times.  And they got the rest we advertised; we didn’t cheat ’em on rest. By ten o’clock pretty nigh all hands was abed, and ’twas so still all you could hear was the breakers or the wind, or p’raps a groan coming from a window where some boarder had turned over in his sleep and a corncob in the mattress had raked him crossways.