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He was thinking hard. “Suppose I don’t make good?” he says. “I never worked in my life. And suppose she–“

“Oh, suppose your granny’s pet hen hatched turkeys,” I says, getting impatient, “I’ll risk your making good. I wa’n’t a first mate, shipping fo’mast hands ten years, for nothing. I can generally tell beet greens from cabbage without waiting to smell ’em cooking. And as for her, it seems to me that a girl who thinks enough of a feller to run away from him so’s he won’t spile his future, won’t like him no less for being willing to work and wait for her. You stay here and think it over. I’m going out for a spell.”

When I come back Jonesy was ready for me.

“Mr. Wingate,” says he, “it’s a deal. I’m going to go you, though I think you’re plunging on a hundred-to-one shot. Some day I’ll tell you more about myself, maybe. But now I’m going to take your advice and the position. I’ll do my best, and I must say you’re a brick. Thanks awfully.”

“Good enough!” I says. “Now you go and tell her, and I’ll write the letter to Dillaway.”

So the next forenoon Peter T. Brown was joyful all up one side because Mabel had said she’d stay, and mournful all down the other because his pet college giant had quit almost afore he started. I kept my mouth shut, that being the best play I know of, nine cases out of ten.

I went up to the depot with Jonesy to see him off.

“Good-by, old man,” he says, shaking hands. “You’ll write me once in a while, telling me how she is, and–and so on?”

“Bet you!” says I. “I’ll keep you posted up. And let’s hear how you tackle the Consolidated Cash business.”

July and the first two weeks in August moped along and everything at the Old Home House kept about the same. Mabel was in mighty good spirits, for her, and she got prettier every day. I had a couple of letters from Jones, saying that he guessed he could get bookkeeping through his skull in time without a surgical operation, and old Dillaway was down over one Sunday and was preaching large concerning the “find” my candidate was for the Providence branch. So I guessed I hadn’t made no mistake.

I had considerable fun with Cap’n Jonadab over his not landing a rich husband for the Seabury girl. Looked like the millionaire crop was going to be a failure that summer.

“Aw, belay!” says he, short as baker’s pie crust. “The season ain’t over yet. You better take a bath in the salt mack’rel kag; you’re too fresh to keep this hot weather.”

Talking “husband” to him was like rubbing pain-killer on a scalded pup, so I had something to keep me interested dull days. But one morning he comes to me, excited as a mouse at a cat show, and says he:

“Ah, ha! what did I tell you? I’ve got one!”

“I see you have,” says I. “Want me to send for the doctor?”

“Stop your foolishing,” he says. “I mean I’ve got a millionaire. He’s coming to-night, too. One of the biggest big-bugs there is in New York. Ah, ha! what did I tell you?”

He was fairly boiling over with gloat, but from between the bubbles I managed to find out that the new boarder was a big banker from New York, name of Van Wedderburn, with a barrel of cash and a hogshead of dyspepsy. He was a Wall Street “bear,” and a steady diet of lamb with mint sass had fetched him to where the doctors said ’twas lay off for two months or be laid out for keeps.

“And I’ve fixed it that he’s to stop at your house, Barzilla,” crows Jonadab. “And when he sees Mabel–well, you know what she’s done to the other men folks,” he says.