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When we entered the house we found all the women except Sally surrounding Billoo. He was very red in the face and dressed only in the canoe sail; but he wasn’t in the least embarrassed. He had a self-satisfied smile; and he was talking as fast and as loud as he could.

We told him to go to bed and be ashamed of himself, and sleep it off. And he said that nobody understood him, and denied having drunk the whole case of champagne, and he said that he was in perfect control of all his faculties, and that if the ladies wished him to, he could dance a hornpipe for them that he had learned when he was a sailor….

The doctor and I went upstairs; and while he was with Sally I changed into proper clothes; and then I waited outside the door for him to come out and tell me the worst. After a long time he came. He looked very solemn, and closed the door behind him.

“What is it?” I said, and I think my voice shook like a leaf.

“Sam,” he said gravely, “Sally is by way of cutting her first wisdom tooth.”

“Good Lord!” I said, “is that all?”

“It’s enough,” said the doctor, “because it isn’t a tooth.”

“Oh!” I said, “oh! What ought I to do?”

“Why,” said he, “I’d go in, and tell her how glad you are, and maybe laugh at her a little bit, and make much of her.”

But I couldn’t laugh at Sally, because she was crying.

I took her in my arms and made much of her, and asked her why she was crying, and she said she was crying because she was glad.

When the doctor had returned to Stepping-Stone, he got the Hobo’s captain on the telephone and told him from me to bring the Hobo back to Idle Island at once. She came about six, just as the tide was getting high, and she brought rescue to the men on the float, and, better than rescue, she brought the evening papers.

There had been a big day on Wall Street; one of the biggest in its history. And the men whom we had kept from going to business had made, among them, hundreds of thousands of dollars, just by sitting still. But they were ungrateful, especially Billoo. He complained bitterly, and said that he would have made three times as much money if he had been on the spot.

* * * * *

When the men paid the bets that they had lost to me, I turned the money over to my father’s secretary and told him to deposit it as a special account.

“What shall I call the account?” he asked.

“Call it,” I said, “the account of W. Tooth.”