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+Project Gutenberg's The Log of The “Jolly Polly”, by Richard Harding Davis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Log of The “Jolly Polly”
+
+Author: Richard Harding Davis
+
+Posting Date: October 10, 2008 [EBook #1808]
+Release Date: May, 1999
+Last Updated: March 4, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOG OF THE “JOLLY POLLY” ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Aaron Cannon
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LOG OF THE “JOLLY POLLY”
+
+By Richard Harding Davis
+
+
+
+Temptation came to me when I was in the worst possible position to
+resist it.
+
+It is a way temptation has. Whenever I swear off drinking invariably I
+am invited to an ushers' dinner. Whenever I am rich, only the highbrow
+publications that pay the least, want my work. But the moment I am
+poverty-stricken the MANICURE GIRL'S MAGAZINE and the ROT AND SPOT
+WEEKLY spring at me with offers of a dollar a word. Temptation always is
+on the job. When I am down and out temptation always is up and at me.
+
+When first the Farrells tempted me my vogue had departed. On my name and
+“past performances” I could still dispose of what I wrote, but only to
+magazines that were just starting. The others knew I no longer was
+a best-seller. All the real editors knew it. So did the theatrical
+managers.
+
+My books and plays had flourished in the dark age of the
+historical-romantic novel. My heroes wore gauntlets and long swords.
+They fought for the Cardinal or the King, and each loved a high-born
+demoiselle who was a ward of the King or the Cardinal, and with feminine
+perversity, always of whichever one her young man was fighting. With
+people who had never read Guizot's “History of France,” my books were
+popular, and for me made a great deal of money. This was fortunate, for
+my parents had left me nothing save expensive tastes. When the tastes
+became habits, the public left me. It turned to white-slave and crook
+plays, and to novels true to life; so true to life that one felt the
+author must at one time have been a masseur in a Turkish bath.
+
+So, my heroines in black velvet, and my heroes with long swords were
+“scrapped.” As one book reviewer put it, “To expect the public of to-day
+to read the novels of Fletcher Farrell is like asking people to give up
+the bunny hug and go back to the lancers.”
+
+And, to make it harder, I was only thirty years old.
+
+It was at this depressing period in my career that I received a letter
+from Fairharbor, Massachusetts, signed Fletcher Farrell. The letter was
+written on the business paper of the Farrell Cotton Mills, and asked if
+I were related to the Farrells of Duncannon, of the County Wexford,
+who emigrated to Massachusetts in 1860. The writer added that he had a
+grandfather named Fletcher and suggested we might be related. From the
+handwriting of Fletcher Farrell and from the way he ill-treated the
+King's English I did not feel the ties of kinship calling me very loud.
+I replied briefly that my people originally came from Youghal, in County
+Cork, that as early as 1730 they had settled in New York, and that all
+my relations on the Farrell side either were still at Youghal, or dead.
+Mine was not an encouraging letter; nor did I mean it to be; and I
+was greatly surprised two days later to receive a telegram reading,
+“Something to your advantage to communicate; wife and self calling
+on you Thursday at noon. Fletcher Farrell.” I was annoyed, but also
+interested. The words “something to your advantage” always possess a
+certain charm. So, when the elevator boy telephoned that Mr. and Mrs.
+Farrell were calling, I told him to bring them up.
+
+My first glance at the Farrells convinced me the interview was a waste
+of time. I was satisfied that from two such persons, nothing to my
+advantage could possibly emanate. On the contrary, from their lack of
+ease, it looked as though they had come to beg or borrow. They resembled
+only a butler and housekeeper applying for a new place under the
+disadvantage of knowing they had no reference from the last one. Of the
+two, I better liked the man. He was an elderly, pleasant-faced Irishman,
+smooth-shaven, red-cheeked, and with white hair. Although it was July,
+he wore a frock coat, and carried a new high hat that glistened. As
+though he thought at any moment it might explode, he held it from him,
+and eyed it fearfully. Mrs. Farrell was of a more sophisticated type.
+The lines in her face and hands showed that for years she might have
+known hard physical work. But her dress was in the latest fashion, and
+her fingers held more diamonds than, out of a showcase, I ever had seen.
+
+With embarrassment old man Farrell began his speech. Evidently it had
+been rehearsed and as he recited it, in swift asides, his wife prompted
+him; but to note the effect he was making, she kept her eyes upon me.
+Having first compared my name, fame, and novels with those of Charles
+Dickens, Walter Scott, and Archibald Clavering Gunter, and to the
+disadvantage of those gentlemen, Farrell said the similarity of our
+names often had been commented upon, and that when from my letter he
+had learned our families both were from the South of Ireland, he had
+a premonition we might be related. Duncannon, where he was born, he
+pointed out, was but forty miles from Youghal, and the fishing boats out
+of Waterford Harbor often sought shelter in Blackwater River. Had any of
+my forebears, he asked, followed the herring?
+
+Alarmed, lest at this I might take offense, Mrs. Farrell interrupted
+him.
+
+“The Fletchers and O'Farrells of Youghal,” she exclaimed, “were gentry.
+What would they be doing in a trawler?”
+
+I assured her that so far as I knew, 1750 being before my time, they
+might have been smugglers and pirates.
+
+“All I ever heard of the Farrells,” I told her, “begins after they
+settled in New York. And there is no one I can ask concerning them. My
+father and mother are dead; all my father's relatives are dead, and
+my mother's relatives are as good as dead. I mean,” I added, “we don't
+speak!”
+
+To my surprise, this information appeared to afford my visitors great
+satisfaction. They exchanged hasty glances.
+
+“Then,” exclaimed Mr. Farrell, eagerly; “if I understand you, you have
+no living relations at all--barring those that are dead!”
+
+“Exactly!” I agreed.
+
+He drew a deep sigh of relief. With apparent irrelevance but with a
+carelessness that was obviously assumed, he continued.
+
+“Since I come to America,” he announced, “I have made heaps of money.”
+ As though in evidence of his prosperity, he flashed the high hat. In
+the sunlight it coruscated like one of his wife's diamonds. “Heaps of
+money,” he repeated. “The mills are still in my name,” he went on, “but
+five years since I sold them--We live on the income. We own Harbor
+Castle, the finest house on the whole waterfront.”
+
+“When all the windows are lit up,” interjected Mrs. Farrell, “it's often
+took for a Fall River boat!”
+
+“When I was building it,” Farrell continued, smoothly, “they called
+it Farrell's Folly; but not NOW.” In friendly fashion he winked at
+me, “Standard Oil,” he explained, “offered half a million for it. They
+wanted my wharf for their tank steamers. But, I needed it for my yacht!”
+
+I must have sat up rather too suddenly, for, seeing the yacht had
+reached home, Mr. Farrell beamed. Complacently his wife smoothed an
+imaginary wrinkle in her skirt.
+
+“Eighteen men!” she protested, “with nothing to do but clean brass and
+eat three meals a day!”
+
+Farrell released his death grip on the silk hat to make a sweeping
+gesture.
+
+“They earn their wages,” he said generously.
+
+“Aren't they taking us this week to Cap May?”
+
+“They're taking the yacht to Cape May!” corrected Mrs. Farrell; “not ME!”
+
+“The sea does not agree with her,” explained Farrell; “WE'RE going by
+automobile.” Mrs. Farrell now took up the wondrous tale.
+
+“It's a High Flyer, 1915 model,” she explained; “green, with white enamel
+leather inside, and red wheels outside. You can see it from the window.”
+
+Somewhat dazed, I stepped to the window and found you could see it from
+almost anywhere. It was as large as a freight car; and was entirely
+surrounded by taxi-starters, bellboys, and nurse-maids. The chauffeur,
+and a deputy chauffeur, in a green livery with patent-leather leggings,
+were frowning upon the mob. They possessed the hauteur of ambulance
+surgeons. I returned to my chair, and then rose hastily to ask if I
+could not offer Mr. Farrell some refreshment.
+
+“Mebbe later,” he said. Evidently he felt that as yet he had not
+sufficiently impressed me.
+
+“Harbor Castle,” he recited, “has eighteen bedrooms, billiard-room,
+music-room, art gallery and swimming-pool.” He shook his head. “And no
+one to use 'em but us. We had a boy.” He stopped, and for an instant, as
+though asking pardon, laid his hand upon the knee of Mrs. Farrell.
+“But he was taken when he was four, and none came since. My wife has a
+niece,” he added, “but----”
+
+“But,” interrupted Mrs. Farrell, “she was too high and mighty for
+plain folks, and now there is no one. We always took an interest in
+you because your name was Farrell. We were always reading of you in
+the papers. We have all your books, and a picture of you in the
+billiard-room. When folks ask me if we are any relation--sometimes I
+tell 'em we ARE.”
+
+As though challenging me to object, she paused.
+
+“It's quite possible,” I said hastily. And, in order to get rid of them,
+I added: “I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll write to Ireland and----”
+
+Farrell shook his head firmly. “You don't need to write to Ireland,” he
+said, “for what we want.”
+
+“What DO you want?” I asked.
+
+“We want a SON,” said Farrell; “an adopted son. We want to adopt YOU!”
+
+“You want to WHAT?” I asked.
+
+To learn if Mrs. Farrell also was mad, I glanced toward her, but her
+expression was inscrutable. The face of the Irishman had grown purple.
+
+“And why not?” he demanded. “You are a famous young man, all right, and
+educated. But there's nothing about me I'm ashamed of! I'm worth five
+million dollars and I made every cent Of it myself--and I made it
+honest. You ask Dun or Bradstreet, ask----”
+
+I attempted to soothe him.
+
+“THAT'S not it, sir,” I explained. “It's a most generous offer, a most
+flattering, complimentary offer. But you don't know me. I don t know
+you. Choosing a son is a very----”
+
+“I've had you looked up,” announced Mrs. Farrell. “The Pinkertons give
+you a high rating. I hired 'em to trail you for six months.”
+
+I wanted to ask WHICH six months, but decided to let sleeping dogs lie.
+I shook my head. Politely but firmly I delivered my ultimatum.
+
+“It is quite impossible!” I said firmly.
+
+Mrs. Farrell continued the debate. She talked in a businesslike manner
+and pronounced the arrangement one by which both sides would benefit.
+There were thousands of other Farrells, she pointed out, any one of
+whom they might have adopted. But they had selected me because in so
+choosing, they thought they were taking the least risk. They had decided
+she was pleased to say, that I would not disgrace them, and that as a
+“literary author” I brought with me a certain social asset.
+
+A clever, young businessman they did not want. Their business affairs
+they were quit able to manage themselves. But they would like as an
+adopted son one who had already added glory to the name of Farrell,
+which glory he was willing to share.
+
+“We wouldn't tie you down,” she urged “but we would expect you to live
+at Harbor Castle a part of your time, and to call us Ma and Pa.
+You would have your own rooms, and your own servant, and there is a
+boat-house on the harbor front, where you could write your novels.”
+
+At this, knowing none wanted my novels, I may have winced, for,
+misreading my discontent, Farrell hastily interrupted.
+
+“You won't have to work at all,” he protested heartily. “My son can
+afford to live like a lord. You'll get all the spending money you want,
+and if you're fond of foreign parts, you can take the yacht wherever you
+please!”
+
+“The farther the better,” exclaimed Mrs. Farrell with heat. “And when
+you get it there, I hope you'll SINK it!”
+
+“Maybe your friends would come and visit You,” suggested Farrell,
+I thought, a trifle wistfully. “There's bathing, tennis, eight...
+bedrooms, billiard-room, art gallery----”
+
+“You told him that!” said Mrs. Farrell.
+
+I was greatly at a loss. Their offer was preposterous, but to them, it
+was apparently a perfectly possible arrangement. Nor were they acting
+on impulse. Mrs. Farrell had admitted that for six months she had had me
+“trailed.” How to say “No” and not give offense, I found difficult. They
+were deeply in earnest and I could see that Farrell, at least, was by
+instinct generous, human, and kind. It was, in fact, a most generous
+offer. But how was I to tell them tactfully I was not for sale, that I
+was not looking for “ready-to-wear” parents, and that if I were in the
+market, they were not the parents I would choose. I had a picture of
+life at Harbor Castle, dependent upon the charity of the Farrells. I
+imagined what my friends would say to me, and worse, what they would say
+behind my back. But I was not forced to a refusal.
+
+Mr. Farrell rose.
+
+“We don't want to hurry you,” he said. “We want you to think it over.
+Maybe if we get acquainted----”
+
+Mrs. Farrell smiled upon me ingratiatingly.
+
+“Why don't we get acquainted now?” she demanded. “We're motoring down
+to Cape May to stay three weeks. Why don't you come along--as our
+guest--and see how you like us?”
+
+I assured them, almost too hastily, that already was deeply engaged.
+
+As they departed, Farrell again admonished me to think it over.
+
+“And look me up at Dun's and Bradstreet's,” he advised. “Ask 'em about
+me at the Waldorf. Ask the head waiters and bellhops if I look twice at
+a five spot!”
+
+It seemed an odd way to select a father, but I promised.
+
+I escorted them even to the sidewalk, and not without envy watched them
+sweep toward the Waldorf in the High Flyer, 1915 model. I caught myself
+deciding, were it mine, I would paint it gray.
+
+I was lunching at the Ritz with Curtis Spencer, and I looked forward to
+the delight he would take in my story of the Farrells. He would probably
+want to write it. He was my junior, but my great friend; and as a
+novelist his popularity was where five years earlier mine had been. But
+he belonged to the new school. His novels smelled like a beauty parlor;
+and his heroines, while always beautiful, were, on occasions, virtuous,
+but only when they thought it would pay.
+
+Spencer himself was as modern as his novels, and I was confident his
+view of my adventure would be that of the great world which he described
+so accurately.
+
+But to my amazement when I had finished he savagely attacked me.
+
+“You idiot!” he roared. “Are you trying to tell me you refused five
+million dollars--just because you didn't like the people who wanted to
+force it on you? Where,” he demanded, “is Cape May? We'll follow them
+now! We'll close this deal before they can change their minds. I'll make
+you sign to-night. And, then,” he continued eagerly, “we'll take their
+yacht and escape to Newport, and you'll lend me five thousand dollars,
+and pay my debts, and give me back the ten you borrowed. And you might
+buy me a touring-car and some polo ponies and--and--oh, lots of things.
+I'll think of them as we go along. Meanwhile, I can't afford to give
+luncheons to millionaires, so you sign for this one; and then we'll
+start for Cape May.”
+
+“Are you mad?” I demanded; “do you think I'd sell my honor!”
+
+“For five million dollars?” cried Spencer. “Don't make me laugh! If they
+want a REAL novelist for a son they can adopt me!”
+
+I replied with dignity that I would not disgrace the memory of my
+parents.
+
+“You have disgraced them!” retorted Spencer, “with your Musketeer novels
+for infants. You need money. To get it you may be tempted to write more
+novels. Here's your chance! Stop robbing the public, and lead an honest
+life. Think of all the money you could give to the poor, think of all
+the money you and I could lose at Monte Carlo!”
+
+When he found I would not charter an auto-mobile and at once pursue the
+Farrells he changed his tactics. If I would not go to Cape May, then, he
+begged, I would go to Fairharbor. He asked that I would, at least, find
+out what I was refusing. Before making their offer, for six months, the
+Farrells had had me “looked up,” but, without knowing anything of them,
+after a talk of ten minutes I had turned them down. “Was that,” he
+asked, “intelligent? Was it fair to the Farrells?” He continued to tempt
+me.
+
+“They told you to think it over,” he persisted. “Very well, then, think
+it over at Fairharbor! For the next three weeks the Farrells will be at
+Cape May. The coast is clear. Go to Fairharbor as somebody else and be
+your own detective. Find out if what they tell you is true. Get inside
+information. Get inside Harbor Castle. Count the eighteen bedrooms and
+try the beds. Never mind the art gallery, but make sure there is a wine
+cellar. You can't start too soon, and I WILL GO WITH YOU!”
+
+I told him where he could go.
+
+We then tossed to see who should pay for the lunch and who should tip
+the head waiter. I lost and had to tip the head waiter. We separated,
+and as I walked down the Avenue, it seemed as though to the proprietor
+of every shop I passed I owed money. Owing them the money I did not so
+much mind; what most distressed me was that they were so polite about
+it. I had always wanted to reward their patience. A favorite dream of
+mine was to be able to walk down Fifth Avenue, my pockets stuffed with
+yellow bills, paying off my debts. Compared with my steadily decreasing
+income, how enormous my debts appeared; but when compared with the
+income of a man worth--say-five million dollars, how ridiculous! I had
+no more than reached my apartment, than a messenger-boy arrived with an
+envelope. It contained a ticket for a round trip on the New Bedford Line
+boat leaving that afternoon, a ticket for a stateroom, and a note from
+Curtis Spencer. The latter read: “The boat leaves at six to-night.
+You arrive at New Bedford seven to-morrow morning. New Bedford and
+Fairharbor are connected by a bridge. CROSS IT!”
+
+I tore the note in tiny fragments, and tossed them through the open
+window. I was exceedingly angry. As I stood at the window adding to the
+name of Curtis Spencer insulting aliases, the street below sent up hot,
+stifling odors: the smoke of taxicabs, the gases of an open subway, the
+stale reek of thousands of perspiring, unwashed bodies. From that one
+side street seemed to rise the heat and smells of all New York. For
+relief I turned to my work-table where lay the opening chapters of
+my new novel, “The White Plume of Savoy.” But now, in the light
+of Spencer's open scorn, I saw it was impudently false, childish,
+sentimental. My head ached, the humidity sapped my strength, at heart
+I felt sick, sore, discouraged. I was down and out. And seeing this,
+Temptation, like an obsequious floorwalker, came hurrying forward.
+
+“And what may I show you to-day?” asked Temptation. He showed me the
+upper deck of the New Bedford boat feeling her way between the green
+banks of the Sound. A cool wind swept past me bearing clean, salty
+odors; on the saloon deck a band played, and from the darkness the
+lighthouses winked at me, and in friendly greeting the stars smiled.
+Temptation won. In five minutes I was feverishly packing, and at
+five-thirty I was on board. I assured myself I had not listened to
+Temptation, that I had no interest in Fairharbor. I was taking the trip
+solely because it would give me a night's sleep on the Sound. I promised
+myself that on the morrow I would not even LOOK toward Harbor Castle;
+but on the evening following on the same boat, return to New York.
+Temptation did not stop to argue, but hastened after another victim.
+
+I turned in at nine o'clock and the coolness, and the salt air, blessed
+me with the first sleep I had known in weeks. And when I woke we were
+made fast to the company's wharf at New Bedford, and the sun was well
+up. I rose refreshed in body and spirit. No longer was I discouraged.
+Even “The White Plume of Savoy” seemed a perfectly good tale of
+romance and adventure. And the Farrells were a joke. Even if I were at
+Fairharbor, I was there only on a lark, and at the expense of Curtis
+Spencer, who had paid for the tickets. Distinctly the joke was on Curtis
+Spencer. I lowered the window screen, and looked across the harbor. It
+was a beautiful harbor. At ancient stone wharfs Jay ancient whalers
+with drooping davits and squared yards, at anchor white-breasted yachts
+flashed in the sun, a gray man-of-war's man flaunted the week's laundry,
+a four-masted schooner dried her canvas, and over the smiling surface of
+the harbor innumerable fishing boats darted. With delight I sniffed
+the odors of salt water, sun-dried herring, of oakum and tar. The shore
+opposite was a graceful promontory crowned with trees and decorous
+gray-shingled cottages set in tiny gardens that reached to the very edge
+of the harbor. The second officer was passing my window and I asked what
+the promontory was called.
+
+“Fairharbor,” he said. He answered with such proprietary pride and
+smiled upon Fairharbor with such approval that I ventured to guess it
+was his home.
+
+“That's right,” he said; “I used to live at the New York end of the
+run-in a flat. But never again! No place for the boy to play but in the
+street. I found I could rent one of those old cottages over there for
+the same money I paid for the flat. So I cut out New York. My boy lives
+in a bathing suit now, and he can handle a catboat same as me. We have
+a kitchen garden, and hens, and the fishermen here will give you all
+the fish you can carry away--fish right out of the water. I guess I've
+smashed the high cost of living problem all right. I wouldn't go back to
+living in New York now--not if they gave me the PILGRIM.”
+
+As though trying to prod my memory, I frowned. It was my conception of
+the part of a detective. “Hasn't Fletcher Farrell,” I asked, “a house in
+Fairharbor?”
+
+“Harbor Castle,” said the mate promptly. “It's on the other side of the
+point I'd as soon live in a jail!”
+
+“Why?” I exclaimed.
+
+But he was no longer listening. He pointed at the shore opposite.
+
+“See that flag running up the staff in that garden?” he cried. “That's
+my boy signalling. I got to get to the boat deck and wave back!”
+
+I felt as a detective. I had acquired important information. The mate,
+a man of judgment, preferred Fairharbor to New York. Also, to living in
+Harbor Castle, he preferred going to jail.
+
+The boat on which I had arrived was listed to start back at six the same
+evening on her return trip to New York. So, at the office of the line I
+checked my valise, and set forth to explore New Bedford.
+
+The whaling vessels moored to a nearby wharf, I inspected from hatches
+to keels, and by those on board was directed to a warehouse where were
+stored harpoons, whalebone, and wooden figure-heads. My pleasure in
+these led to my being passed on to a row of “antique” shops filled with
+relics of the days of whaling and also with genuine pie-crust tables,
+genuine flint-lock muskets, genuine Liverpool pitchers. I coveted
+especially old-time engravings of the whalers, and was told at
+Hatchardson's book-store on the main street others could be found in
+profusion.
+
+Hatchardson's proved to be a place of great delight. As you entered
+there were counters for magazines and post-cards, popular music, and
+best-selling novels, while in the rear of the shop tables and shelves
+were stocked with ancient volumes, and on the wall surrounding them hung
+engravings, prints and woodcuts of even the eighteenth century. Just as
+the drugstore on the corner seemed to be a waiting station for those
+of New Bedford who used the trolley-cars, so for those who moved in
+automobiles, or still clung to the family carriage, Hatchardson's
+appeared to be less a shop than a public meeting-place. I noticed that
+the clerks, most of whom were women, were with the customers on a most
+friendly footing, addressing them, and by them being addressed by name.
+Finding I was free to wander where I pleased, I walked to the rear of
+the shop and from one of the tables picked up a much-worn volume. It was
+entitled “The Log of the JOLLY POLLY”, and was illustrated with wood cuts
+showing square-rigged ships and whales Spouting. For five minutes, lost
+to my Surroundings, I turned the pages; and then became conscious that
+across the table some one was watching me. I raised my eyes and beheld a
+face of most surprising charm, intelligence and beauty. It was so lovely
+that it made me wince. The face was the fortune, and judging from the
+fact that in her hand she held a salesbook, the sole fortune, of a tall
+young girl who apparently had approached to wait on me. She was looking
+toward the street, so that, with the book-shelves for a back-ground, her
+face was in profile, and I determined swiftly that if she were to wait
+on me she would be kept waiting as long as my money lasted. I did not
+want “The Log of the JOLLY POLLY,” but I did want to hear the lovely
+lady speak, and especially I desired that the one to whom she spoke
+should be myself.
+
+“What is the price of this?” I asked. With magnificent self-control I
+kept my eyes on the book, but the lovely lady was so long silent that I
+raised them. To my surprise, I found on her face an expression of
+alarm and distress. With reluctance, and yet within her voice a certain
+hopefulness, she said, “Fifty dollars.”
+
+Fifty dollars was a death blow. I had planned to keep the young lady
+selling books throughout the entire morning, but at fifty dollars a
+book, I would soon be owing her money. I attempted to gain time.
+
+“It must be very rare!” I said. I was afraid to look at her lest my
+admiration should give offense, so I pretended to admire the book.
+
+“It is the only one in existence,” said the young lady. “At least, it is
+the only one for sale!”
+
+We were interrupted by the approach of a tall man who, from his playing
+the polite host and from his not wearing a hat, I guessed was Mr.
+Hatchardson himself. He looked from the book in my hand to the lovely
+lady and said smiling, “Have you lost it?”
+
+The girl did not smile. To her, apparently, it was no laughing matter.
+“I don't know--yet,” she said. Her voice was charming, and genuinely
+troubled.
+
+Mr. Hatchardson, for later I learned it was he, took the book and showed
+me the title-page.
+
+“This was privately printed in 1830,” he said, “by Captain Noah Briggs.
+He distributed a hundred presentation copies among his family and
+friends here in New Bedford. It is a most interesting volume.”
+
+I did not find it so. For even as he spoke the young girl, still with a
+troubled countenance, glided away. Inwardly I cursed Captain Briggs and
+associated with him in my curse the polite Mr. Hatchardson. But, at his
+next words my interest returned. Still smiling, he lowered his voice.
+
+“Miss Briggs, the young lady who just left us,” he said, “is the
+granddaughter of Captain Briggs, and she does not want the book to go
+out of the family; she wants it for herself.” I interrupted eagerly.
+
+“But it is for sale?” Mr. Hatchardson reluctantly assented.
+
+“Then I will take it,” I said.
+
+Fifty dollars is a great deal of money, but the face of the young lady
+had been very sad. Besides being sad, had it been aged, plain, and
+ill-tempered, that I still would have bought the book, is a question I
+have never determined.
+
+To Mr. Hatchardson, of my purpose to give the book to Miss Briggs, I
+said nothing. Instead I planned to send it to her anonymously by mail.
+She would receive it the next morning when I was arriving in New York,
+and, as she did not know my name, she could not possibly return it.
+At the post-office I addressed the “Log” to “Miss Briggs, care of
+Hatchardson's Bookstore,” and then I returned to the store. I felt I
+had earned that pleasure. This time, Miss Briggs was in charge of the
+post-card counter, and as now a post-card was the only thing I could
+afford to buy, at seeing her there I was doubly pleased. But she was
+not pleased to see me. Evidently Mr. Hatchardson had told her I had
+purchased the “Log” and at her loss her very lovely face still showed
+disappointment. Toward me her manner was distinctly aggrieved.
+
+But of the “Log” I said nothing, and began recklessly purchasing
+post-cards that pictured the show places of New Bedford. Almost the
+first one I picked up was labelled “Harbor Castle. Residence of Fletcher
+Farrell.” I need not say that I studied it intently. According to the
+post-card, Harbor Castle stood on a rocky point with water on both
+sides. It was an enormous, wide-spreading structure, as large as a
+fort. It exuded prosperity, opulence, extravagance, great wealth. I felt
+suddenly a filial impulse to visit the home of my would-be forefathers.
+
+“Is this place near here?” I asked.
+
+Miss Briggs told me that in order to reach it I should take the ferry to
+Fairharbor, and then cross that town to the Buzzards Bay side.
+
+“You can't miss it,” she said. “It's a big stone house, with red and
+white awnings. If you see anything like a jail in ruffles, that's it.”
+
+It was evident that with the home I had rejected Miss Briggs was
+unimpressed; but seeing me add the post-card to my collection, she
+offered me another.
+
+“This,” she explained, “is Harbor Castle from the bay. That is their
+yacht in the foreground.”
+
+The post-card showed a very beautiful yacht of not less than two
+thousand tons. Beneath it was printed “HARBOR LIGHTS; steam yacht owned
+by Fletcher Farrell.” I always had dreamed of owning a steam yacht, and
+seeing it stated in cold type that one was owned by “Fletcher Farrell,”
+ even though I was not that Fletcher Farrell, gave me a thrill of guilty
+pleasure. I gazed upon the post-card with envy.
+
+“HARBOR LIGHTS is a strange name for a yacht,” I ventured. Miss Briggs
+smiled.
+
+“Not for that yacht,” she said. “She never leaves it.”
+
+I wished to learn more of my would-be parents, and I wished to keep
+on talking with the lovely Miss Briggs, so, as an excuse for both, I
+pretended I was interested in the Farrells because I had something I
+wanted to sell them.
+
+“This Fletcher Farrell must be very rich,” I said. “I wonder,” I asked,
+“if I could sell him an automobile?” The moment I spoke I noticed that
+the manner of Miss Briggs toward Me perceptibly softened. Perhaps, from
+my buying offhand a fifty-dollar book she had thought me one of the
+rich, and had begun to suspect I was keeping her waiting on me only
+because I found her extremely easy to look at. Many times before, in a
+similar manner, other youths must have imposed upon her, and perhaps,
+also, in concealing my admiration, I had not entirely succeeded.
+
+But, when she believed that, like herself, I was working for my living,
+she became more human.
+
+“What car are you selling?” she asked. “I am TRYING to sell,” I
+corrected her, “the Blue Bird, six cylinder.”
+
+“I never heard of it,” said Miss Briggs.
+
+“Nor has any one else,” I answered, with truth. “That is one reason why
+I can't sell it. I arrived here this morning, and,” I added with pathos,
+“I haven't sold a car yet!”
+
+Miss Briggs raised her beautiful eyebrows skeptically. “Have you tried?”
+ she said.
+
+A brilliant idea came to me. In a side street I had passed a garage
+where Photaix cars were advertised for hire. I owned a Phoenix, and
+I thought I saw a way by which, for a happy hour, I might secure the
+society of Miss Briggs.
+
+“I am an agent and demonstrator for the Phoenix also,” I said glibly;
+“maybe I could show you one?”
+
+“Show me one?” exclaimed Miss Briggs. “One sees them everywhere! They
+are always under your feet!”
+
+“I mean,” I explained, “might I take you for a drive in one?”
+
+It was as though I had completely vanished. So far as the lovely Miss
+Briggs was concerned I had ceased to exist. She turned toward a nice old
+lady.
+
+“What can I show you, Mrs. Scudder?” she asked cheerily; “and how is
+that wonderful baby?”
+
+I felt as though I had been lifted by the collar, thrown out upon a
+hard sidewalk, and my hat tossed after me. Greatly shaken, and mentally
+brushing the dust from my hands and knees, I hastened to the ferry and
+crossed to Fairharbor. I was extremely angry. By an utter stranger I
+had been misjudged, snubbed and cast into outer darkness. For myself I
+readily found excuses. If a young woman was so attractive that at the
+first sight of her men could not resist buying her fifty-dollar books
+and hiring automobiles in which to take her driving, the fault was hers.
+I assured myself that girls as lovely as Miss Briggs were a menace to
+the public. They should not be at large. An ordinance should require
+them to go masked. For Miss Briggs also I was able to make excuses. Why
+should she not protect herself from the advances of strange young men?
+If a popular novelist, and especially an ex-popular one, chose to go
+about disguised as a drummer for the Blue Bird automobile and behaved
+as such, and was treated as such, what right had he to complain? So
+I persuaded myself I had been punished as I deserved. But to salve my
+injured pride I assured myself also that any one who read my novels
+ought to know my attitude toward any lovely lady could be only
+respectful, protecting, and chivalrous. But with this consoling thought
+the trouble was that nobody read my novels.
+
+In finding Harbor Castle I had no difficulty. It stood upon a rocky
+point that jutted into Buzzards Bay. Five acres of artificial lawn and
+flower-beds of the cemetery and railroad-station school of horticulture
+surrounded it, and from the highroad it was protected by a stone wall so
+low that to the passerby, of the beauties of Harbor Castle nothing was
+left to the imagination. Over this wall roses under conflicting banners
+of pink and red fought fiercely. One could almost hear the shrieks
+of the wounded. Upon the least thorny of these I seated myself and in
+tender melancholy gazed upon the home of my childhood. That is, upon the
+home that might-have-been.
+
+When surveying a completed country home, to make the owner thoroughly
+incensed the correct thing to say is, “This place has great
+possibilities!”
+
+Harbor Castle had more possibilities than any other castle I ever
+visited. But in five minutes I had altered it to suit myself. I had
+ploughed up the flower-beds, dug a sunken garden, planted a wind screen
+of fir, spruce, and Pine, and with a huge brick wall secured warmth and
+privacy. So pleased was I with my changes, that when I departed I was
+sad and downcast. The boat-house of which Mrs. Farrell had spoken
+was certainly an ideal work-shop, the tennis-courts made those at
+the Newport Casino look like a ploughed field, and the swimming-pool,
+guarded by white pillars and overhung with grape-vines, was a cool
+and refreshing picture. As, hot and perspiring, I trudged back through
+Fairharbor, the memory of these haunted me. That they also tempted me,
+it is impossible to deny. But not for long. For, after passing through
+the elm-shaded streets to that side of the village that faced the
+harbor, I came upon the cottages I had seen from the New Bedford shore.
+At close range they appeared even more attractive than when pointed
+out to me by the mate of the steamboat. They were very old, very
+weather-stained and covered with honeysuckle. Flat stones in a setting
+of grass led from the gates to the arched doorways, hollyhocks rose
+above hedges of box, and from the verandas one could look out upon the
+busy harbor and the houses of New Bedford rising in steps up the sloping
+hills to a sky-line of tree-tops and church spires. The mate had told
+me that for what he had rented a flat in New York he had secured one of
+these charming old world homes. And as I passed them I began to pick out
+the one in which when I retired from the world I would settle down. This
+time I made no alterations. How much the near presence of Miss Briggs
+had to do with my determination to settle down in Fairharbor, I cannot
+now remember. But, certainly as I crossed the bridge toward New Bedford,
+thoughts of her entirely filled my mind. I assured my self this was
+so only because she was beautiful. I was sure her outward loveliness
+advertised a nature equally lovely, but for my sudden and extreme
+interest I had other excuses. Her in dependence in earning her living,
+her choice in earning it among books and pictures, her pride of family
+as shown by her efforts to buy the family heirloom, all these justified
+my admiration. And her refusing to go joy-riding with an impertinent
+stranger, even though the impertinent stranger was myself, was an act I
+applauded. The more I thought of Miss Briggs the more was I disinclined
+to go away leaving with her an impression of myself so unpleasant as
+the one she then held. I determined to remove it. At least, until I had
+redeemed myself, I would remain in New Bedford. The determination gave
+me the greatest satisfaction. With a light heart I returned to the
+office of the steamboat line and retrieving my suit-case started with it
+toward the Parker House. It was now past five o'clock, the stores were
+closed, and all the people who had not gone to the baseball game with
+Fall River were in the streets. In consequence, as I was passing the
+post-office, Miss Briggs came down the steps, and we were face to face.
+
+In her lovely eyes was an expression of mingled doubt and indignation
+and in her hand freshly torn from the papers in which I had wrapped it,
+was “The Log of the JOLLY POLLY.” In action Miss Briggs was as direct
+as a submarine. At sight of me she attacked. “Did you send me this?” she
+asked.
+
+I lowered my bag to the sidewalk and prepared for battle. “I didn't
+think of your going to the post-office,” I said. “I planned you'd get
+it to-morrow after I'd left. When I sent it, I thought I would never see
+you again.”
+
+“Then you did send it!” exclaimed Miss Briggs. As though the book were
+a hot plate she dropped it into my hand. She looked straight at me, but
+her expression suggested she was removing a caterpillar from her pet
+rosebush.
+
+“You had no right,” she said. “You may not have meant to be impertinent,
+but you were!”
+
+Again, as though I had disappeared from the face of the earth, Miss
+Briggs gazed coldly about her, and with dignity started to cross the
+street. Her dignity was so great that she glanced neither to the left
+nor right. In consequence she did not see an automobile that swung
+recklessly around a trolley-car and dived at her. But other people saw
+it and shrieked. I also shrieked, and dropping the suit-case and the
+“Log,” jumped into the street, grabbed Miss Briggs by both arms, and
+flung her back to the sidewalk. That left me where she had been, and the
+car caught me up and slammed me head first against a telegraph pole.
+The pole was hard, and if any one counted me out I did not stay awake to
+hear him. When I came to I was conscious that I was lying on a sidewalk;
+but to open my eyes, I was much too tired. A voice was saying, “Do you
+know who he is, Miss?”
+
+The voice that replied was the voice of the lovely Miss Briggs. But now
+I hardly recognized it. It was full of distress, of tenderness and pity.
+
+“No, I don't know him,” it stammered. “He's a salesman--he was in the
+store this morning--he's selling motor-cars.” The first voice laughed.
+
+“Motor-cars!” he exclaimed. “That's why he ain't scared of 'em. He
+certainly saved you from that one! I seen him, Miss Briggs, and he most
+certainly saved your life!”
+
+In response to this astonishing statement I was delighted to hear a
+well-trained male chorus exclaim in assent.
+
+The voices differed; some spoke in the accents of Harvard, pure and
+undefiled, some in a “down East” dialect, others suggested Italian
+peanut venders and Portuguese sailors, but all agreed that the life of
+Miss Briggs had been saved by myself. I had intended coming to, but
+on hearing the chorus working so harmoniously I decided I had better
+continue unconscious.
+
+Then a new voice said importantly: “The marks on his suitcase are 'F.
+F., New York.”
+
+I appreciated instantly that to be identified as Fletcher Farrell meant
+humiliation and disaster. The other Fletcher Farrells would soon return
+to New Bedford. They would learn that in their absence I had been spying
+upon the home I had haughtily rejected. Besides, one of the chorus
+might remember that three years back Fletcher Farrell had been a popular
+novelist and might recognize me, and Miss Briggs would discover I was
+not an automobile agent and that I had lied to her. I saw that I must
+continue to lie to her. I thought of names beginning with “F,” and
+selected “Frederick Fitzgibbon.” To christen yourself while your eyes
+are shut and your head rests on a curb-stone is not easy, and later I
+was sorry I had not called myself Fairchild as being more aristocratic.
+But then it was too late. As Fitzgibbon I had come back to life, and as
+Fitzgibbon I must remain.
+
+When I opened my eyes I found the first voice belonged to a policeman
+who helped me to my feet and held in check the male chorus. The object
+of each was to lead me to a drink. But instead I turned dizzily to Miss
+Briggs. She was holding my hat and she handed it to me. Her lovely eyes
+were filled with relief and her charming voice with remorse.
+
+“I--I can't possibly thank you,” she stammered. “Are you badly hurt?”
+
+I felt I had never listened to words so original and well chosen. In
+comparison, the brilliant and graceful speeches I had placed on the lips
+of my heroines became flat and unconvincing.
+
+I assured her I was not at all hurt and endeavored, jauntily, to replace
+my hat. But where my head had hit the telegraph pole a large bump had
+risen which made my hat too small. So I hung it on the bump. It gave me
+a rakish air. One of the chorus returned my bag and another the “Log.”
+ Not wishing to remind Miss Briggs of my past impertinences; I guiltily
+concealed it.
+
+Then the policeman asked my name and I gave the one I had just invented,
+and inquired my way to the Parker House. Half the chorus volunteered to
+act as my escort, and as I departed, I stole a last look at Miss Briggs.
+She and the policeman were taking down the pedigree of the chauffeur
+of the car that had hit me. He was trying to persuade them he was
+not intoxicated, and with each speech was furnishing evidence to the
+contrary.
+
+After I had given a cold bath to the bump on my head and to the rest of
+my body which for the moment seemed the lesser of the two, I got into
+dry things and seated myself on the veranda of the hotel. With a cigar
+to soothe my jangling nerves, I considered the position of Miss Briggs
+and myself. I was happy in believing it had improved. On the morrow
+there was no law to prevent me from visiting Hatchardson's Bookstore,
+and in view of what had happened since last I left it, I had reason to
+hope Miss Briggs would receive me more, kindly. Of the correctness of
+this diagnosis I was at once assured. In front of the hotel a district
+messenger-boy fell off his bicycle and with unerring instinct picked
+me out as Mr. Fitzgibbon of New York. The note he carried was from Miss
+Briggs. It stated that in the presence of so many people it had been
+impossible for her to thank me as she wished for the service I had
+rendered her, and that Mrs. Cutler, with whom she boarded, and herself,
+would be glad if after supper I would call upon them. I gave the
+messenger-boy enough gold to enable him to buy a new bicycle and in my
+room executed a dance symbolizing joy. I then kicked my suit-case under
+the bed. I would not soon need it. Now that Miss Briggs had forgiven me,
+I was determined to live and die in New Bedford.
+
+The home of Mrs. Cutler, where Miss Briggs lodged and boarded, was in
+a side street of respectable and distinguished antiquity. The street
+itself was arched with the branches of giant elms, and each house was an
+island surrounded by grass, and over the porches climbed roses. It was
+too warm to remain indoors, so we sat on the steps of the porch, and
+through the leaves of the elms the electric light globe served us as a
+moon. For an automobile salesman I was very shy, very humble.
+
+Twice before I had given offense and I was determined if it lay with
+me, it would not happen again. I did not hope to interest Miss Briggs
+in myself, nor did I let it appear how tremendously I was interested
+in her. For the moment I was only a stranger in a strange land making
+a social call. I asked Miss Briggs about New Bedford and the whaling,
+about the books she sold, and the books she liked. It was she who
+talked. When I found we looked at things in the same way and that the
+same things gave us pleasure I did not comment on that astonishing fact,
+but as an asset more precious than gold, stored it away. When I returned
+to the hotel I found that concerning Miss Briggs I had made important
+discoveries. I had learned that her name was Polly, that the JOLLY POLLY
+had been christened after her grandmother, that she was an orphan, that
+there were relatives with whom she did not “hit it off,” that she was
+very well read, possessed of a most charming sense of humor, and that I
+found her the most attractive girl I had ever met.
+
+The next morning I awoke in an exalted frame of mind. I was in love with
+life, with New Bedford, and with Polly Briggs. I had been in love before
+but never with a young lady who worked in a shop, and I found that
+loving a lady so occupied gives one a tremendous advantage. For when you
+call she must always be at home, nor can she plead another engagement.
+So, before noon, knowing she could not deny herself, I was again at
+Hatchardson's, purchasing more postal-cards. But Miss Briggs was not
+deceived. Nor apparently was any one else. The BEDFORD MERCURY had told
+how, the previous evening, Frederick Fitzgibbon, an automobile salesman
+from New York, had been knocked out by an automobile while saving Miss
+Polly Briggs from a similar fate; and Mr. Hatchardson and all the old
+ladies who were in the bookstore making purchases congratulated me. It
+was evident that in Miss Briggs they took much more than a perfunctory
+interest. They were very fond of her. She was an institution; and I
+could see that as such to visitors she would be pointed out with pride,
+as was the new bronze statue of the Whaleman in Court House Square. Nor
+did they cease discussing her until they had made it quite clear to me
+that in being knocked out in her service I was a very lucky man. I did
+not need to be told that, especially as I noted that Miss Briggs was
+anxious lest I should not be properly modest. Indeed, her wish that in
+the eyes of the old ladies I should appear to advantage was so evident,
+and her interest in me so proprietary, that I was far from unhappy.
+
+The afternoon I spent in Fairharbor. From a real estate agent I obtained
+keys to those cottages on the water-front that were for rent, and I
+busied myself exploring them. The one I most liked I pretended I had
+rented, and I imagined myself at work among the flower-beds, or with
+my telescope scanning the shipping in the harbor, or at night seated
+in front of the open fire watching the green and blue flames of the
+driftwood. Later, irresolutely, I wandered across town to Harbor Castle,
+this time walking entirely around it and coming upon a sign that read,
+“Visitors Welcome. Do not pick the flowers.”
+
+Assuring myself that I was moved only by curiosity, I accepted the
+invitation, nor, though it would greatly have helped the appearance of
+the cemetery-like beds, did I pick the flowers. On a closer view Harbor
+Castle certainly possessed features calculated to make an impecunious
+author Stop, look, and listen. I pictured it peopled with my friends. I
+saw them at the long mahogany table of which through the French window
+I got a glimpse, or dancing in the music-room, or lounging on the wicker
+chairs on the sweeping verandas. I could see them in flannels at tennis,
+in bathing-suits diving from the spring-board of the swimming pool,
+departing on excursions in the motor-cars that at the moment in front
+of the garage were being sponged and polished, so that they flashed like
+mirrors. And I thought also of the two-thousand-ton yacht and to what
+far countries, to what wonderful adventures it might carry me.
+
+But all of these pictures lacked one feature. In none of them did
+Polly Briggs appear. For, as I very well knew, that was something the
+ambitions of Mrs. Farrell would not permit. That lady wanted me as a son
+only because she thought I was a social asset. By the same reasoning,
+as a daughter-in-law, she would not want a shop-girl, especially not one
+who as a shop-girl was known to all New Bedford. My mood as I turned my
+back upon the golden glories of Harbor Castle and walked to New Bedford
+was thoughtful.
+
+I had telegraphed my servant to bring me more clothes and my Phoenix
+car; and as I did not want him inquiring for Fletcher Farrell had
+directed him to come by boat to Fall River. Accordingly, the next
+morning, I took the trolley to that city, met him at the wharf, and sent
+him back to New York. I gave him a check with instructions to have it
+cashed in that city and to send the money, and my mail, to Frederick
+Fitzgibbon. This ALIAS I explained to him by saying I was gathering
+material for an article to prove one could live on fifty cents a day.
+He was greatly relieved to learn I did not need a valet to help me prove
+it.
+
+I returned driving the Phoenix to New Bedford, and as it was a Saturday,
+when the store closed at noon, I had the ineffable delight of taking
+Polly Briggs for a drive. As chaperons she invited two young friends of
+hers named Lowell. They had been but very lately married, and regarded
+me no more than a chauffeur they had hired by the hour. This left Polly
+who was beside me on the front seat, and myself, to our own devices.
+Our devices were innocent enough. They consisted in conveying the
+self-centred Lowells so far from home that they could not get back for
+supper and were so forced to dine with me. Polly, for as Polly I now
+thought of her, discovered the place. It was an inn, on the edge of a
+lake with an Indian name. We did not get home until late, but it had
+been such a successful party that before we separated we planned another
+journey for the morrow. That one led to the Cape by way of Bourne and
+Wood's Hole, and back again to the North Shore to Barnstable, where we
+lunched. It was a grand day and the first of others just as happy. After
+that every afternoon when the store closed I picked up the Lowells; and
+then Polly, and we sought adventures. Sometimes we journeyed no farther
+than the baseball park, but as a rule I drove them to some inn for
+dinner, where later, if there were music, we danced, if not, we returned
+slowly through the pine woods and so home by the longest possible route.
+The next Saturday I invited them to Boston. We started early, dined at
+the Touraine and went on to a musical comedy, where I had reserved seats
+in the front row. This nearly led to my undoing. Late in the first act
+a very merry party of young people who had come up from Newport and
+Narragansett to the Coates-Islip wedding filled the stage boxes and
+at sight of me began to wave and beckon. They were so insistent that
+between the acts I thought it safer to visit them. They wanted to know
+why I had not appeared at the wedding, and who was the beautiful girl.
+
+The next morning on our return trip to New Bedford Polly said, “I read
+in the papers this morning that those girls in that theatre party last
+night were the bridesmaids at the Coates-Islip wedding. They seemed to
+know you quite well.”
+
+I explained that in selling automobiles one became acquainted with many
+people.
+
+Polly shook her head and laughed. Then she turned and looked at me.
+
+“You never sold an automobile in your life,” she said.
+
+With difficulty I kept my eyes on the road; but I protested vigorously.
+
+“Don't think I have been spying,” said Polly; “I found you out quite by
+accident. Yesterday a young man I know asked me to persuade you to turn
+in your Phoenix and let him sell you one of the new model. I said
+you yourself were the agent for the Phoenix, and he said that, on the
+contrary, HE was, and that you had no right to sell the car in his
+TERRITORY.” I grinned guiltily and said:
+
+“Well, I HAVEN'T sold any, have I?”
+
+“That is not the point,” protested Polly. “What was your reason for
+telling me you were trying to earn a living selling automobiles?”
+
+“So that I could take you driving in one,” I answered.
+
+“Oh!” exclaimed Polly.
+
+There was a pause during which in much inward trepidation I avoided
+meeting her eyes. Then Polly added thoughtfully, “I think that was a
+very good reason.”
+
+In our many talks the name of the Fletcher Farrells had never been
+mentioned. I had been most careful to avoid it. As each day passed, and
+their return imminent, and in consequence my need to fly grew more near,
+and the name was still unspoken, I was proportionately grateful. But
+when the name did come up I had reason to be pleased, for Polly spoke
+it with approval, and it was not of the owner of Harbor Castle she was
+speaking, but of myself. It was one evening about two weeks after we
+had met, and I had side-stepped the Lowells and was motoring with Polly
+alone. We were talking of our favorite authors, dead and alive.
+
+“You may laugh,” said Polly, and she said it defiantly, “and I don't
+know whether you would call him among the dead or the living, but I am
+very fond of Fletcher Farrell!”
+
+My heart leaped. I was so rattled that I nearly ran the car into a stone
+wall. I thought I was discovered and that Polly was playing with me. But
+her next words showed that she was innocent. She did not know that the
+man to whom she was talking and of whom she was talking were the same.
+“Of course you will say,” she went on, “that he is too romantic, that he
+is not true to life. But I never lived in the seventeenth century, so
+I don't know whether he is true to life or not. And I like romance. The
+life I lead in the store gives me all the reality I want. I like to read
+about brave men and great and gracious ladies.”
+
+“I never met any girls like those Farrell write about, but it's nice to
+think they exist. I wish I were like them. And, his men, too--they make
+love better than any other man I ever read about.”
+
+“Better than I do?” I asked.
+
+Polly gazed at the sky, frowning severely. After a pause, and as though
+she had dropped my remark into the road and the wheels had crushed it,
+she said, coldly, “Talking about books----”
+
+“No,” I corrected, “we were talking about Fletcher Farrell.”
+
+“Then,” said Polly with some asperity, “don't change the subject. Do you
+know,” she went on hurriedly, “that you look like him--like the pictures
+of him--as he was.”
+
+“Heavens!” I exclaimed, “the man's not dead!”
+
+“You know what I mean,” protested Polly. “As he was before he stopped
+writing.”
+
+“Nor has he stopped writing,” I objected; “his books have stopped
+selling.” Polly turned upon me eagerly.
+
+“Do you know him?” she demanded. I answered with caution that I had met
+him.
+
+“Oh!” she exclaimed, “tell me about him!”
+
+I was extremely embarrassed. It was a bad place. About myself I could
+not say anything pleasant, and behind my back, as it were, I certainly
+was not going to say anything unpleasant. But Polly relieved me of the
+necessity of saying anything.
+
+“I don't know any man,” she exclaimed fervently, “I would so like to
+meet!”
+
+It seemed to me that after that the less I said the better. So I told
+her something was wrong with the engine and by the time I had pretended
+to fix it, I had led the conversation away from Fletcher Farrell as a
+novelist to myself as a chauffeur.
+
+The next morning at the hotel, temptation was again waiting for me. This
+time it came in the form of a letter from my prospective father-in-law.
+It had been sent from Cape May to my address in New York, and by my
+servant forwarded in an envelope addressed to “Frederick Fitzgibbon.”
+
+It was what in the world of commerce is called a “follow-up” letter. It
+recalled the terms of his offer to me, and improved upon them. It made
+it clear that even after meeting me Mr. Farrell and his wife were still
+anxious to stand for me as a son. They were good enough to say they had
+found me a “perfect gentleman.” They hoped that after considering their
+proposition I had come to look upon it with favor.
+
+As his son, Mr. Farrell explained, my annual allowance would be the
+interest on one million dollars, and upon his death his entire fortune
+and property he would bequeath to me. He was willing, even anxious, to
+put this in writing. In a week he would return to Fairharbor when he
+hoped to receive a favorable answer. In the meantime he enclosed a
+letter to his housekeeper.
+
+“Don't take anything for granted,” he urged, “but go to Fairharbor and
+present this letter. See the place for yourself. Spend the week there
+and act like you were the owner. My housekeeper has orders to take her
+orders from you. Don't refuse something you have never seen!”
+
+This part of the letter made me feel as mean and uncomfortable as a
+wet hen. The open, almost too open, methods of Mr. Farrell made my own
+methods appear contemptible. He was urging me to be his guest and I
+was playing the spy. But against myself my indignation did not last.
+A letter, bearing a special delivery stamp which arrived later in the
+afternoon from Mrs. Farrell turned my indignation against her, and with
+bitterness. She also had been spying. Her letter read:
+
+The Pinkerton I employed to report on you states that after losing you
+for a week he located you at New Bedford, that you are living under
+the name of Fitzgibbon, and that you have made yourself conspicuous by
+attentions to a young person employed in a shop. This is for me a
+great blow and disappointment, and I want you to clearly understand Mr.
+Farrell's offer is made to you as an unmarried man. I cannot believe
+your attentions are serious, but whether they are serious or not, they
+must cease. The detective reports the pair of you are now the talk of
+Fairharbor. You are making me ridiculous. I do not want a shop-girl for
+a daughter-in-law and you will either give up her acquaintance or give
+up Harbor Castle!
+
+I am no believer in ultimatums. In attaining one's end they seldom prove
+successful. I tore the note into tiny pieces, and defiantly, with Polly
+in the seat beside me, drove into the open country. At first we picked
+our way through New Bedford, from the sidewalks her friends waved to
+her, and my acquaintances smiled. The detective was right. We had indeed
+made ourselves the talk of the town, and I was determined the talk must
+cease.
+
+We had reached Ruggles Point when the car developed an illness. I got
+out to investigate. On both sides of the road were tall hemlocks and
+through them to the west we could see the waters of Sippican Harbor in
+the last yellow rays of the sun as it sank behind Rochester. Overhead
+was the great harvest moon.
+
+Polly had taken from the pocket of the car some maps and guide-books,
+and while I lifted the hood and was deep in the machinery she was
+turning them over.
+
+“What,” she asked, “is the number of this car? I forget.”
+
+As I have said, I was preoccupied and deep in the machinery; that
+is, with a pair of pliers I was wrestling with a recalcitrant wire.
+Unsuspiciously I answered: “Eight-two-eight.”
+
+A moment later I heard a sharp cry, and raised my head. With eyes wide
+in terror Polly was staring at an open book. Without appreciating my
+danger I recognized it as “Who's Who in Automobiles.” The voice of Polly
+rose in a cry of disbelief.
+
+“Eight-two-eight,” she read, “owned by Fletcher Farrell, Hudson
+Apartments, New York City.” She raised her eyes to mine.
+
+“Is that true?” she gasped. “Are you Fletcher Farrell?” I leaned into
+the car and got hold of her hand.
+
+“That is not important,” I stammered. “What is important is this: Will
+you be Mrs. Fletcher Farrell?”
+
+What she said may be guessed from the fact that before we returned to
+New Bedford we drove to Fairharbor and I showed her the cottage I liked
+best. It was the one with the oldest clapboard shingles, the oldest box
+hedge, the most fragrant honeysuckles, and a lawn that wet its feet in
+the surf. Polly liked it the best, too.
+
+By now the daylight had gone, and on the ships the riding lights were
+shining, but shining sulkily, for the harvest moon filled the world with
+golden radiance. As we stood on the porch of the empty cottage, in the
+shadow of the honeysuckles, Polly asked an impossible question. It was:
+
+“How MUCH do you love me?”
+
+“You will never know,” I told her, “but I can tell you this: I love you
+more than a two-thousand-ton yacht, the interest on one million dollars,
+and Harbor Castle!”
+
+It was a wasteful remark, for Polly instantly drew away.
+
+“What DO you mean?” she laughed.
+
+“Fletcher Farrell of Harbor Castle,” I explained, “offered me those
+things, minus you. But I wanted you.”
+
+“I see,” cried Polly, “he wanted to adopt you. He always talks of that.
+I am sorry for him. He wants a son so badly.” She sighed softly, “Poor
+uncle!”
+
+“Poor WHAT!” I yelled.
+
+“Didn't you know,” exclaimed Polly, “that Mrs. Farrell was a Briggs! She
+was my father's sister.”
+
+“Then YOU,” I said, “are the relation who was 'too high and mighty'!”
+ Polly shook her head.
+
+“No,” she said, “I didn't want to be dependent.”
+
+“And you gave up all that,” I exclaimed, “and worked at Hatchardson's,
+just because you didn't want to be dependent!”
+
+“I like my uncle-in-law very much,” explained Polly, “but not my aunt.
+So, it was no temptation. No more,” she cried, looking at me as though
+she were proud of me, “than it was to you.”
+
+In guilty haste I changed the subject. In other words, I kissed her. I
+knew some day I would have to confess. But until we were safely married
+that could wait. Before confessing I would make sure of her first. The
+next day we announced our engagement and Polly consented that it should
+be a short one. For, as I pointed out, already she had kept me waiting
+thirty years. The newspapers dug up the fact that I had once been a
+popular novelist, and the pictures they published of Polly proved her so
+beautiful that, in congratulation, I received hundreds of telegrams. The
+first one to arrive came from Cape May. It read:
+
+My dear boy, your uncle elect sends his heartiest congratulations to
+you and love to Polly. Don't make any plans until you hear from me--am
+leaving to-night. FLETCHER FARRELL.
+
+In terror Polly fled into my arms. Even when NOT in terror it was a
+practice I strongly encouraged.
+
+“We are lost!” she cried. “They will adopt us in spite of ourselves.
+They will lock us up for life in Harbor Castle! I don't WANT to be
+adopted. I want YOU! I want my little cottage!”
+
+I assured her she should have her little cottage; I had already bought
+it. And during the two weeks before the wedding, when I was not sitting
+around Boston while Polly bought clothes, we refurnished it. Polly
+furnished the library, chiefly with my own books, and “The Log of
+the JOLLY POLLY.” I furnished the kitchen. For a man cannot live on
+honeysuckles alone. My future uncle-in-law was gentle but firm.
+
+“You can't get away from the fact,” he said, “that you will be my nephew,
+whether you like it or not. So, be kind to an old man and let him give
+the bride away and let her be married from Harbor Castle.”
+
+In her white and green High Flier car and all of her diamonds, Mrs.
+Farrell called on Polly and begged the same boon. We were too happy to
+see any one else dissatisfied; so though we had planned the quietest of
+weddings, we gave consent. Somehow we survived it. But now we recall
+it only as that terrible time when we were never alone. For once in the
+hands of our rich relations the quiet wedding we had arranged became a
+royal alliance, a Field of the Cloth of Gold, the chief point of attack
+for the moving-picture men.
+
+The youths who came from New York to act as my ushers informed me that
+the Ushers' Dinner at Harbor Castle-from which, after the fish course,
+I had fled--was considered by them the most successful ushers' dinner in
+their career of crime. My uncle-in-Law also testifies to this. He ought
+to know. At four in the morning he was assisting the ushers in throwing
+the best man and the butler into the swimming-pool.
+
+For our honeymoon he loaned us the yacht. “Take her as far as you like,”
+ he said. “After this she belongs to you and Polly. And find a better
+name for her than Harbor Lights. It sounds too much like a stay-at-home.
+And I want you two to see the world.” I thanked him, and suggested he
+might rechristen her the JOLLY POLLY.
+
+“That was the name,” I pointed out, “of the famous whaler owned by
+Captain Briggs, your wife's father, and it would be a compliment to
+Polly, too.”
+
+My uncle-in-law-elect agreed heartily; but made one condition:
+
+“I'll christen her that,” he said, “if you will promise to write a new
+Log of the JOLLY POLLY.” I promised. This is it.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Log of The “Jolly Polly”, by
+Richard Harding Davis
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+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Log of the 'Jolly Polly', by Richard Harding Davis
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
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+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
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+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
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+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
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+
+Project Gutenberg's The Log of The "Jolly Polly", by Richard Harding Davis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Log of The "Jolly Polly"
+
+Author: Richard Harding Davis
+
+Release Date: October 10, 2008 [EBook #1808]
+Last Updated: March 4, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOG OF THE "JOLLY POLLY" ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Aaron Cannon, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THE LOG OF THE &ldquo;JOLLY POLLY&rdquo;
+     </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Richard Harding Davis
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Temptation came to me when I was in the worst possible position to resist
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a way temptation has. Whenever I swear off drinking invariably I am
+      invited to an ushers' dinner. Whenever I am rich, only the highbrow
+      publications that pay the least, want my work. But the moment I am
+      poverty-stricken the MANICURE GIRL'S MAGAZINE and the ROT AND SPOT WEEKLY
+      spring at me with offers of a dollar a word. Temptation always is on the
+      job. When I am down and out temptation always is up and at me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When first the Farrells tempted me my vogue had departed. On my name and
+      &ldquo;past performances&rdquo; I could still dispose of what I wrote, but only to
+      magazines that were just starting. The others knew I no longer was a
+      best-seller. All the real editors knew it. So did the theatrical managers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My books and plays had flourished in the dark age of the
+      historical-romantic novel. My heroes wore gauntlets and long swords. They
+      fought for the Cardinal or the King, and each loved a high-born demoiselle
+      who was a ward of the King or the Cardinal, and with feminine perversity,
+      always of whichever one her young man was fighting. With people who had
+      never read Guizot's &ldquo;History of France,&rdquo; my books were popular, and for me
+      made a great deal of money. This was fortunate, for my parents had left me
+      nothing save expensive tastes. When the tastes became habits, the public
+      left me. It turned to white-slave and crook plays, and to novels true to
+      life; so true to life that one felt the author must at one time have been
+      a masseur in a Turkish bath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, my heroines in black velvet, and my heroes with long swords were
+      &ldquo;scrapped.&rdquo; As one book reviewer put it, &ldquo;To expect the public of to-day
+      to read the novels of Fletcher Farrell is like asking people to give up
+      the bunny hug and go back to the lancers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, to make it harder, I was only thirty years old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at this depressing period in my career that I received a letter
+      from Fairharbor, Massachusetts, signed Fletcher Farrell. The letter was
+      written on the business paper of the Farrell Cotton Mills, and asked if I
+      were related to the Farrells of Duncannon, of the County Wexford, who
+      emigrated to Massachusetts in 1860. The writer added that he had a
+      grandfather named Fletcher and suggested we might be related. From the
+      handwriting of Fletcher Farrell and from the way he ill-treated the King's
+      English I did not feel the ties of kinship calling me very loud. I replied
+      briefly that my people originally came from Youghal, in County Cork, that
+      as early as 1730 they had settled in New York, and that all my relations
+      on the Farrell side either were still at Youghal, or dead. Mine was not an
+      encouraging letter; nor did I mean it to be; and I was greatly surprised
+      two days later to receive a telegram reading, &ldquo;Something to your advantage
+      to communicate; wife and self calling on you Thursday at noon. Fletcher
+      Farrell.&rdquo; I was annoyed, but also interested. The words &ldquo;something to your
+      advantage&rdquo; always possess a certain charm. So, when the elevator boy
+      telephoned that Mr. and Mrs. Farrell were calling, I told him to bring
+      them up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My first glance at the Farrells convinced me the interview was a waste of
+      time. I was satisfied that from two such persons, nothing to my advantage
+      could possibly emanate. On the contrary, from their lack of ease, it
+      looked as though they had come to beg or borrow. They resembled only a
+      butler and housekeeper applying for a new place under the disadvantage of
+      knowing they had no reference from the last one. Of the two, I better
+      liked the man. He was an elderly, pleasant-faced Irishman, smooth-shaven,
+      red-cheeked, and with white hair. Although it was July, he wore a frock
+      coat, and carried a new high hat that glistened. As though he thought at
+      any moment it might explode, he held it from him, and eyed it fearfully.
+      Mrs. Farrell was of a more sophisticated type. The lines in her face and
+      hands showed that for years she might have known hard physical work. But
+      her dress was in the latest fashion, and her fingers held more diamonds
+      than, out of a showcase, I ever had seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With embarrassment old man Farrell began his speech. Evidently it had been
+      rehearsed and as he recited it, in swift asides, his wife prompted him;
+      but to note the effect he was making, she kept her eyes upon me. Having
+      first compared my name, fame, and novels with those of Charles Dickens,
+      Walter Scott, and Archibald Clavering Gunter, and to the disadvantage of
+      those gentlemen, Farrell said the similarity of our names often had been
+      commented upon, and that when from my letter he had learned our families
+      both were from the South of Ireland, he had a premonition we might be
+      related. Duncannon, where he was born, he pointed out, was but forty miles
+      from Youghal, and the fishing boats out of Waterford Harbor often sought
+      shelter in Blackwater River. Had any of my forebears, he asked, followed
+      the herring?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alarmed, lest at this I might take offense, Mrs. Farrell interrupted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Fletchers and O'Farrells of Youghal,&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;were gentry.
+      What would they be doing in a trawler?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I assured her that so far as I knew, 1750 being before my time, they might
+      have been smugglers and pirates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All I ever heard of the Farrells,&rdquo; I told her, &ldquo;begins after they settled
+      in New York. And there is no one I can ask concerning them. My father and
+      mother are dead; all my father's relatives are dead, and my mother's
+      relatives are as good as dead. I mean,&rdquo; I added, &ldquo;we don't speak!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To my surprise, this information appeared to afford my visitors great
+      satisfaction. They exchanged hasty glances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; exclaimed Mr. Farrell, eagerly; &ldquo;if I understand you, you have no
+      living relations at all&mdash;barring those that are dead!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly!&rdquo; I agreed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew a deep sigh of relief. With apparent irrelevance but with a
+      carelessness that was obviously assumed, he continued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Since I come to America,&rdquo; he announced, &ldquo;I have made heaps of money.&rdquo; As
+      though in evidence of his prosperity, he flashed the high hat. In the
+      sunlight it coruscated like one of his wife's diamonds. &ldquo;Heaps of money,&rdquo;
+       he repeated. &ldquo;The mills are still in my name,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;but five years
+      since I sold them&mdash;We live on the income. We own Harbor Castle, the
+      finest house on the whole waterfront.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When all the windows are lit up,&rdquo; interjected Mrs. Farrell, &ldquo;it's often
+      took for a Fall River boat!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I was building it,&rdquo; Farrell continued, smoothly, &ldquo;they called it
+      Farrell's Folly; but not NOW.&rdquo; In friendly fashion he winked at me,
+      &ldquo;Standard Oil,&rdquo; he explained, &ldquo;offered half a million for it. They wanted
+      my wharf for their tank steamers. But, I needed it for my yacht!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I must have sat up rather too suddenly, for, seeing the yacht had reached
+      home, Mr. Farrell beamed. Complacently his wife smoothed an imaginary
+      wrinkle in her skirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eighteen men!&rdquo; she protested, &ldquo;with nothing to do but clean brass and eat
+      three meals a day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Farrell released his death grip on the silk hat to make a sweeping
+      gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They earn their wages,&rdquo; he said generously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aren't they taking us this week to Cap May?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're taking the yacht to Cape May!&rdquo; corrected Mrs. Farrell; &ldquo;not ME!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sea does not agree with her,&rdquo; explained Farrell; &ldquo;WE'RE going by
+      automobile.&rdquo; Mrs. Farrell now took up the wondrous tale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a High Flyer, 1915 model,&rdquo; she explained; &ldquo;green, with white enamel
+      leather inside, and red wheels outside. You can see it from the window.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Somewhat dazed, I stepped to the window and found you could see it from
+      almost anywhere. It was as large as a freight car; and was entirely
+      surrounded by taxi-starters, bellboys, and nurse-maids. The chauffeur, and
+      a deputy chauffeur, in a green livery with patent-leather leggings, were
+      frowning upon the mob. They possessed the hauteur of ambulance surgeons. I
+      returned to my chair, and then rose hastily to ask if I could not offer
+      Mr. Farrell some refreshment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mebbe later,&rdquo; he said. Evidently he felt that as yet he had not
+      sufficiently impressed me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Harbor Castle,&rdquo; he recited, &ldquo;has eighteen bedrooms, billiard-room,
+      music-room, art gallery and swimming-pool.&rdquo; He shook his head. &ldquo;And no one
+      to use 'em but us. We had a boy.&rdquo; He stopped, and for an instant, as
+      though asking pardon, laid his hand upon the knee of Mrs. Farrell. &ldquo;But he
+      was taken when he was four, and none came since. My wife has a niece,&rdquo; he
+      added, &ldquo;but&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; interrupted Mrs. Farrell, &ldquo;she was too high and mighty for plain
+      folks, and now there is no one. We always took an interest in you because
+      your name was Farrell. We were always reading of you in the papers. We
+      have all your books, and a picture of you in the billiard-room. When folks
+      ask me if we are any relation&mdash;sometimes I tell 'em we ARE.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As though challenging me to object, she paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's quite possible,&rdquo; I said hastily. And, in order to get rid of them, I
+      added: &ldquo;I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll write to Ireland and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Farrell shook his head firmly. &ldquo;You don't need to write to Ireland,&rdquo; he
+      said, &ldquo;for what we want.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What DO you want?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We want a SON,&rdquo; said Farrell; &ldquo;an adopted son. We want to adopt YOU!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You want to WHAT?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To learn if Mrs. Farrell also was mad, I glanced toward her, but her
+      expression was inscrutable. The face of the Irishman had grown purple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why not?&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;You are a famous young man, all right, and
+      educated. But there's nothing about me I'm ashamed of! I'm worth five
+      million dollars and I made every cent Of it myself&mdash;and I made it
+      honest. You ask Dun or Bradstreet, ask&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I attempted to soothe him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;THAT'S not it, sir,&rdquo; I explained. &ldquo;It's a most generous offer, a most
+      flattering, complimentary offer. But you don't know me. I don t know you.
+      Choosing a son is a very&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've had you looked up,&rdquo; announced Mrs. Farrell. &ldquo;The Pinkertons give you
+      a high rating. I hired 'em to trail you for six months.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I wanted to ask WHICH six months, but decided to let sleeping dogs lie. I
+      shook my head. Politely but firmly I delivered my ultimatum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is quite impossible!&rdquo; I said firmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Farrell continued the debate. She talked in a businesslike manner and
+      pronounced the arrangement one by which both sides would benefit. There
+      were thousands of other Farrells, she pointed out, any one of whom they
+      might have adopted. But they had selected me because in so choosing, they
+      thought they were taking the least risk. They had decided she was pleased
+      to say, that I would not disgrace them, and that as a &ldquo;literary author&rdquo; I
+      brought with me a certain social asset.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A clever, young businessman they did not want. Their business affairs they
+      were quit able to manage themselves. But they would like as an adopted son
+      one who had already added glory to the name of Farrell, which glory he was
+      willing to share.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We wouldn't tie you down,&rdquo; she urged &ldquo;but we would expect you to live at
+      Harbor Castle a part of your time, and to call us Ma and Pa. You would
+      have your own rooms, and your own servant, and there is a boat-house on
+      the harbor front, where you could write your novels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this, knowing none wanted my novels, I may have winced, for, misreading
+      my discontent, Farrell hastily interrupted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won't have to work at all,&rdquo; he protested heartily. &ldquo;My son can afford
+      to live like a lord. You'll get all the spending money you want, and if
+      you're fond of foreign parts, you can take the yacht wherever you please!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The farther the better,&rdquo; exclaimed Mrs. Farrell with heat. &ldquo;And when you
+      get it there, I hope you'll SINK it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maybe your friends would come and visit You,&rdquo; suggested Farrell, I
+      thought, a trifle wistfully. &ldquo;There's bathing, tennis, eight... bedrooms,
+      billiard-room, art gallery&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You told him that!&rdquo; said Mrs. Farrell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was greatly at a loss. Their offer was preposterous, but to them, it was
+      apparently a perfectly possible arrangement. Nor were they acting on
+      impulse. Mrs. Farrell had admitted that for six months she had had me
+      &ldquo;trailed.&rdquo; How to say &ldquo;No&rdquo; and not give offense, I found difficult. They
+      were deeply in earnest and I could see that Farrell, at least, was by
+      instinct generous, human, and kind. It was, in fact, a most generous
+      offer. But how was I to tell them tactfully I was not for sale, that I was
+      not looking for &ldquo;ready-to-wear&rdquo; parents, and that if I were in the market,
+      they were not the parents I would choose. I had a picture of life at
+      Harbor Castle, dependent upon the charity of the Farrells. I imagined what
+      my friends would say to me, and worse, what they would say behind my back.
+      But I was not forced to a refusal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Farrell rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We don't want to hurry you,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We want you to think it over.
+      Maybe if we get acquainted&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Farrell smiled upon me ingratiatingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't we get acquainted now?&rdquo; she demanded. &ldquo;We're motoring down to
+      Cape May to stay three weeks. Why don't you come along&mdash;as our guest&mdash;and
+      see how you like us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I assured them, almost too hastily, that already was deeply engaged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they departed, Farrell again admonished me to think it over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And look me up at Dun's and Bradstreet's,&rdquo; he advised. &ldquo;Ask 'em about me
+      at the Waldorf. Ask the head waiters and bellhops if I look twice at a
+      five spot!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed an odd way to select a father, but I promised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I escorted them even to the sidewalk, and not without envy watched them
+      sweep toward the Waldorf in the High Flyer, 1915 model. I caught myself
+      deciding, were it mine, I would paint it gray.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was lunching at the Ritz with Curtis Spencer, and I looked forward to
+      the delight he would take in my story of the Farrells. He would probably
+      want to write it. He was my junior, but my great friend; and as a novelist
+      his popularity was where five years earlier mine had been. But he belonged
+      to the new school. His novels smelled like a beauty parlor; and his
+      heroines, while always beautiful, were, on occasions, virtuous, but only
+      when they thought it would pay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spencer himself was as modern as his novels, and I was confident his view
+      of my adventure would be that of the great world which he described so
+      accurately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to my amazement when I had finished he savagely attacked me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You idiot!&rdquo; he roared. &ldquo;Are you trying to tell me you refused five
+      million dollars&mdash;just because you didn't like the people who wanted
+      to force it on you? Where,&rdquo; he demanded, &ldquo;is Cape May? We'll follow them
+      now! We'll close this deal before they can change their minds. I'll make
+      you sign to-night. And, then,&rdquo; he continued eagerly, &ldquo;we'll take their
+      yacht and escape to Newport, and you'll lend me five thousand dollars, and
+      pay my debts, and give me back the ten you borrowed. And you might buy me
+      a touring-car and some polo ponies and&mdash;and&mdash;oh, lots of things.
+      I'll think of them as we go along. Meanwhile, I can't afford to give
+      luncheons to millionaires, so you sign for this one; and then we'll start
+      for Cape May.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you mad?&rdquo; I demanded; &ldquo;do you think I'd sell my honor!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For five million dollars?&rdquo; cried Spencer. &ldquo;Don't make me laugh! If they
+      want a REAL novelist for a son they can adopt me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I replied with dignity that I would not disgrace the memory of my parents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have disgraced them!&rdquo; retorted Spencer, &ldquo;with your Musketeer novels
+      for infants. You need money. To get it you may be tempted to write more
+      novels. Here's your chance! Stop robbing the public, and lead an honest
+      life. Think of all the money you could give to the poor, think of all the
+      money you and I could lose at Monte Carlo!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When he found I would not charter an auto-mobile and at once pursue the
+      Farrells he changed his tactics. If I would not go to Cape May, then, he
+      begged, I would go to Fairharbor. He asked that I would, at least, find
+      out what I was refusing. Before making their offer, for six months, the
+      Farrells had had me &ldquo;looked up,&rdquo; but, without knowing anything of them,
+      after a talk of ten minutes I had turned them down. &ldquo;Was that,&rdquo; he asked,
+      &ldquo;intelligent? Was it fair to the Farrells?&rdquo; He continued to tempt me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They told you to think it over,&rdquo; he persisted. &ldquo;Very well, then, think it
+      over at Fairharbor! For the next three weeks the Farrells will be at Cape
+      May. The coast is clear. Go to Fairharbor as somebody else and be your own
+      detective. Find out if what they tell you is true. Get inside information.
+      Get inside Harbor Castle. Count the eighteen bedrooms and try the beds.
+      Never mind the art gallery, but make sure there is a wine cellar. You
+      can't start too soon, and I WILL GO WITH YOU!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I told him where he could go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We then tossed to see who should pay for the lunch and who should tip the
+      head waiter. I lost and had to tip the head waiter. We separated, and as I
+      walked down the Avenue, it seemed as though to the proprietor of every
+      shop I passed I owed money. Owing them the money I did not so much mind;
+      what most distressed me was that they were so polite about it. I had
+      always wanted to reward their patience. A favorite dream of mine was to be
+      able to walk down Fifth Avenue, my pockets stuffed with yellow bills,
+      paying off my debts. Compared with my steadily decreasing income, how
+      enormous my debts appeared; but when compared with the income of a man
+      worth&mdash;say-five million dollars, how ridiculous! I had no more than
+      reached my apartment, than a messenger-boy arrived with an envelope. It
+      contained a ticket for a round trip on the New Bedford Line boat leaving
+      that afternoon, a ticket for a stateroom, and a note from Curtis Spencer.
+      The latter read: &ldquo;The boat leaves at six to-night. You arrive at New
+      Bedford seven to-morrow morning. New Bedford and Fairharbor are connected
+      by a bridge. CROSS IT!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I tore the note in tiny fragments, and tossed them through the open
+      window. I was exceedingly angry. As I stood at the window adding to the
+      name of Curtis Spencer insulting aliases, the street below sent up hot,
+      stifling odors: the smoke of taxicabs, the gases of an open subway, the
+      stale reek of thousands of perspiring, unwashed bodies. From that one side
+      street seemed to rise the heat and smells of all New York. For relief I
+      turned to my work-table where lay the opening chapters of my new novel,
+      &ldquo;The White Plume of Savoy.&rdquo; But now, in the light of Spencer's open scorn,
+      I saw it was impudently false, childish, sentimental. My head ached, the
+      humidity sapped my strength, at heart I felt sick, sore, discouraged. I
+      was down and out. And seeing this, Temptation, like an obsequious
+      floorwalker, came hurrying forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what may I show you to-day?&rdquo; asked Temptation. He showed me the upper
+      deck of the New Bedford boat feeling her way between the green banks of
+      the Sound. A cool wind swept past me bearing clean, salty odors; on the
+      saloon deck a band played, and from the darkness the lighthouses winked at
+      me, and in friendly greeting the stars smiled. Temptation won. In five
+      minutes I was feverishly packing, and at five-thirty I was on board. I
+      assured myself I had not listened to Temptation, that I had no interest in
+      Fairharbor. I was taking the trip solely because it would give me a
+      night's sleep on the Sound. I promised myself that on the morrow I would
+      not even LOOK toward Harbor Castle; but on the evening following on the
+      same boat, return to New York. Temptation did not stop to argue, but
+      hastened after another victim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I turned in at nine o'clock and the coolness, and the salt air, blessed me
+      with the first sleep I had known in weeks. And when I woke we were made
+      fast to the company's wharf at New Bedford, and the sun was well up. I
+      rose refreshed in body and spirit. No longer was I discouraged. Even &ldquo;The
+      White Plume of Savoy&rdquo; seemed a perfectly good tale of romance and
+      adventure. And the Farrells were a joke. Even if I were at Fairharbor, I
+      was there only on a lark, and at the expense of Curtis Spencer, who had
+      paid for the tickets. Distinctly the joke was on Curtis Spencer. I lowered
+      the window screen, and looked across the harbor. It was a beautiful
+      harbor. At ancient stone wharfs Jay ancient whalers with drooping davits
+      and squared yards, at anchor white-breasted yachts flashed in the sun, a
+      gray man-of-war's man flaunted the week's laundry, a four-masted schooner
+      dried her canvas, and over the smiling surface of the harbor innumerable
+      fishing boats darted. With delight I sniffed the odors of salt water,
+      sun-dried herring, of oakum and tar. The shore opposite was a graceful
+      promontory crowned with trees and decorous gray-shingled cottages set in
+      tiny gardens that reached to the very edge of the harbor. The second
+      officer was passing my window and I asked what the promontory was called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fairharbor,&rdquo; he said. He answered with such proprietary pride and smiled
+      upon Fairharbor with such approval that I ventured to guess it was his
+      home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's right,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I used to live at the New York end of the run-in
+      a flat. But never again! No place for the boy to play but in the street. I
+      found I could rent one of those old cottages over there for the same money
+      I paid for the flat. So I cut out New York. My boy lives in a bathing suit
+      now, and he can handle a catboat same as me. We have a kitchen garden, and
+      hens, and the fishermen here will give you all the fish you can carry away&mdash;fish
+      right out of the water. I guess I've smashed the high cost of living
+      problem all right. I wouldn't go back to living in New York now&mdash;not
+      if they gave me the PILGRIM.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As though trying to prod my memory, I frowned. It was my conception of the
+      part of a detective. &ldquo;Hasn't Fletcher Farrell,&rdquo; I asked, &ldquo;a house in
+      Fairharbor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Harbor Castle,&rdquo; said the mate promptly. &ldquo;It's on the other side of the
+      point I'd as soon live in a jail!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; I exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was no longer listening. He pointed at the shore opposite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See that flag running up the staff in that garden?&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;That's my
+      boy signalling. I got to get to the boat deck and wave back!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt as a detective. I had acquired important information. The mate, a
+      man of judgment, preferred Fairharbor to New York. Also, to living in
+      Harbor Castle, he preferred going to jail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boat on which I had arrived was listed to start back at six the same
+      evening on her return trip to New York. So, at the office of the line I
+      checked my valise, and set forth to explore New Bedford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whaling vessels moored to a nearby wharf, I inspected from hatches to
+      keels, and by those on board was directed to a warehouse where were stored
+      harpoons, whalebone, and wooden figure-heads. My pleasure in these led to
+      my being passed on to a row of &ldquo;antique&rdquo; shops filled with relics of the
+      days of whaling and also with genuine pie-crust tables, genuine flint-lock
+      muskets, genuine Liverpool pitchers. I coveted especially old-time
+      engravings of the whalers, and was told at Hatchardson's book-store on the
+      main street others could be found in profusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hatchardson's proved to be a place of great delight. As you entered there
+      were counters for magazines and post-cards, popular music, and
+      best-selling novels, while in the rear of the shop tables and shelves were
+      stocked with ancient volumes, and on the wall surrounding them hung
+      engravings, prints and woodcuts of even the eighteenth century. Just as
+      the drugstore on the corner seemed to be a waiting station for those of
+      New Bedford who used the trolley-cars, so for those who moved in
+      automobiles, or still clung to the family carriage, Hatchardson's appeared
+      to be less a shop than a public meeting-place. I noticed that the clerks,
+      most of whom were women, were with the customers on a most friendly
+      footing, addressing them, and by them being addressed by name. Finding I
+      was free to wander where I pleased, I walked to the rear of the shop and
+      from one of the tables picked up a much-worn volume. It was entitled &ldquo;The
+      Log of the JOLLY POLLY&rdquo;, and was illustrated with wood cuts showing
+      square-rigged ships and whales Spouting. For five minutes, lost to my
+      Surroundings, I turned the pages; and then became conscious that across
+      the table some one was watching me. I raised my eyes and beheld a face of
+      most surprising charm, intelligence and beauty. It was so lovely that it
+      made me wince. The face was the fortune, and judging from the fact that in
+      her hand she held a salesbook, the sole fortune, of a tall young girl who
+      apparently had approached to wait on me. She was looking toward the
+      street, so that, with the book-shelves for a back-ground, her face was in
+      profile, and I determined swiftly that if she were to wait on me she would
+      be kept waiting as long as my money lasted. I did not want &ldquo;The Log of the
+      JOLLY POLLY,&rdquo; but I did want to hear the lovely lady speak, and especially
+      I desired that the one to whom she spoke should be myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the price of this?&rdquo; I asked. With magnificent self-control I kept
+      my eyes on the book, but the lovely lady was so long silent that I raised
+      them. To my surprise, I found on her face an expression of alarm and
+      distress. With reluctance, and yet within her voice a certain hopefulness,
+      she said, &ldquo;Fifty dollars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fifty dollars was a death blow. I had planned to keep the young lady
+      selling books throughout the entire morning, but at fifty dollars a book,
+      I would soon be owing her money. I attempted to gain time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must be very rare!&rdquo; I said. I was afraid to look at her lest my
+      admiration should give offense, so I pretended to admire the book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the only one in existence,&rdquo; said the young lady. &ldquo;At least, it is
+      the only one for sale!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We were interrupted by the approach of a tall man who, from his playing
+      the polite host and from his not wearing a hat, I guessed was Mr.
+      Hatchardson himself. He looked from the book in my hand to the lovely lady
+      and said smiling, &ldquo;Have you lost it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl did not smile. To her, apparently, it was no laughing matter. &ldquo;I
+      don't know&mdash;yet,&rdquo; she said. Her voice was charming, and genuinely
+      troubled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hatchardson, for later I learned it was he, took the book and showed
+      me the title-page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This was privately printed in 1830,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;by Captain Noah Briggs. He
+      distributed a hundred presentation copies among his family and friends
+      here in New Bedford. It is a most interesting volume.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I did not find it so. For even as he spoke the young girl, still with a
+      troubled countenance, glided away. Inwardly I cursed Captain Briggs and
+      associated with him in my curse the polite Mr. Hatchardson. But, at his
+      next words my interest returned. Still smiling, he lowered his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Briggs, the young lady who just left us,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is the
+      granddaughter of Captain Briggs, and she does not want the book to go out
+      of the family; she wants it for herself.&rdquo; I interrupted eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is for sale?&rdquo; Mr. Hatchardson reluctantly assented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I will take it,&rdquo; I said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fifty dollars is a great deal of money, but the face of the young lady had
+      been very sad. Besides being sad, had it been aged, plain, and
+      ill-tempered, that I still would have bought the book, is a question I
+      have never determined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mr. Hatchardson, of my purpose to give the book to Miss Briggs, I said
+      nothing. Instead I planned to send it to her anonymously by mail. She
+      would receive it the next morning when I was arriving in New York, and, as
+      she did not know my name, she could not possibly return it. At the
+      post-office I addressed the &ldquo;Log&rdquo; to &ldquo;Miss Briggs, care of Hatchardson's
+      Bookstore,&rdquo; and then I returned to the store. I felt I had earned that
+      pleasure. This time, Miss Briggs was in charge of the post-card counter,
+      and as now a post-card was the only thing I could afford to buy, at seeing
+      her there I was doubly pleased. But she was not pleased to see me.
+      Evidently Mr. Hatchardson had told her I had purchased the &ldquo;Log&rdquo; and at
+      her loss her very lovely face still showed disappointment. Toward me her
+      manner was distinctly aggrieved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But of the &ldquo;Log&rdquo; I said nothing, and began recklessly purchasing
+      post-cards that pictured the show places of New Bedford. Almost the first
+      one I picked up was labelled &ldquo;Harbor Castle. Residence of Fletcher
+      Farrell.&rdquo; I need not say that I studied it intently. According to the
+      post-card, Harbor Castle stood on a rocky point with water on both sides.
+      It was an enormous, wide-spreading structure, as large as a fort. It
+      exuded prosperity, opulence, extravagance, great wealth. I felt suddenly a
+      filial impulse to visit the home of my would-be forefathers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this place near here?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Briggs told me that in order to reach it I should take the ferry to
+      Fairharbor, and then cross that town to the Buzzards Bay side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't miss it,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It's a big stone house, with red and white
+      awnings. If you see anything like a jail in ruffles, that's it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was evident that with the home I had rejected Miss Briggs was
+      unimpressed; but seeing me add the post-card to my collection, she offered
+      me another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This,&rdquo; she explained, &ldquo;is Harbor Castle from the bay. That is their yacht
+      in the foreground.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The post-card showed a very beautiful yacht of not less than two thousand
+      tons. Beneath it was printed &ldquo;HARBOR LIGHTS; steam yacht owned by Fletcher
+      Farrell.&rdquo; I always had dreamed of owning a steam yacht, and seeing it
+      stated in cold type that one was owned by &ldquo;Fletcher Farrell,&rdquo; even though
+      I was not that Fletcher Farrell, gave me a thrill of guilty pleasure. I
+      gazed upon the post-card with envy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;HARBOR LIGHTS is a strange name for a yacht,&rdquo; I ventured. Miss Briggs
+      smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not for that yacht,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;She never leaves it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I wished to learn more of my would-be parents, and I wished to keep on
+      talking with the lovely Miss Briggs, so, as an excuse for both, I
+      pretended I was interested in the Farrells because I had something I
+      wanted to sell them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This Fletcher Farrell must be very rich,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; I asked,
+      &ldquo;if I could sell him an automobile?&rdquo; The moment I spoke I noticed that the
+      manner of Miss Briggs toward Me perceptibly softened. Perhaps, from my
+      buying offhand a fifty-dollar book she had thought me one of the rich, and
+      had begun to suspect I was keeping her waiting on me only because I found
+      her extremely easy to look at. Many times before, in a similar manner,
+      other youths must have imposed upon her, and perhaps, also, in concealing
+      my admiration, I had not entirely succeeded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, when she believed that, like herself, I was working for my living,
+      she became more human.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What car are you selling?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;I am TRYING to sell,&rdquo; I corrected
+      her, &ldquo;the Blue Bird, six cylinder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never heard of it,&rdquo; said Miss Briggs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor has any one else,&rdquo; I answered, with truth. &ldquo;That is one reason why I
+      can't sell it. I arrived here this morning, and,&rdquo; I added with pathos, &ldquo;I
+      haven't sold a car yet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Briggs raised her beautiful eyebrows skeptically. &ldquo;Have you tried?&rdquo;
+       she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A brilliant idea came to me. In a side street I had passed a garage where
+      Photaix cars were advertised for hire. I owned a Phoenix, and I thought I
+      saw a way by which, for a happy hour, I might secure the society of Miss
+      Briggs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am an agent and demonstrator for the Phoenix also,&rdquo; I said glibly;
+      &ldquo;maybe I could show you one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Show me one?&rdquo; exclaimed Miss Briggs. &ldquo;One sees them everywhere! They are
+      always under your feet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean,&rdquo; I explained, &ldquo;might I take you for a drive in one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was as though I had completely vanished. So far as the lovely Miss
+      Briggs was concerned I had ceased to exist. She turned toward a nice old
+      lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can I show you, Mrs. Scudder?&rdquo; she asked cheerily; &ldquo;and how is that
+      wonderful baby?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt as though I had been lifted by the collar, thrown out upon a hard
+      sidewalk, and my hat tossed after me. Greatly shaken, and mentally
+      brushing the dust from my hands and knees, I hastened to the ferry and
+      crossed to Fairharbor. I was extremely angry. By an utter stranger I had
+      been misjudged, snubbed and cast into outer darkness. For myself I readily
+      found excuses. If a young woman was so attractive that at the first sight
+      of her men could not resist buying her fifty-dollar books and hiring
+      automobiles in which to take her driving, the fault was hers. I assured
+      myself that girls as lovely as Miss Briggs were a menace to the public.
+      They should not be at large. An ordinance should require them to go
+      masked. For Miss Briggs also I was able to make excuses. Why should she
+      not protect herself from the advances of strange young men? If a popular
+      novelist, and especially an ex-popular one, chose to go about disguised as
+      a drummer for the Blue Bird automobile and behaved as such, and was
+      treated as such, what right had he to complain? So I persuaded myself I
+      had been punished as I deserved. But to salve my injured pride I assured
+      myself also that any one who read my novels ought to know my attitude
+      toward any lovely lady could be only respectful, protecting, and
+      chivalrous. But with this consoling thought the trouble was that nobody
+      read my novels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In finding Harbor Castle I had no difficulty. It stood upon a rocky point
+      that jutted into Buzzards Bay. Five acres of artificial lawn and
+      flower-beds of the cemetery and railroad-station school of horticulture
+      surrounded it, and from the highroad it was protected by a stone wall so
+      low that to the passerby, of the beauties of Harbor Castle nothing was
+      left to the imagination. Over this wall roses under conflicting banners of
+      pink and red fought fiercely. One could almost hear the shrieks of the
+      wounded. Upon the least thorny of these I seated myself and in tender
+      melancholy gazed upon the home of my childhood. That is, upon the home
+      that might-have-been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When surveying a completed country home, to make the owner thoroughly
+      incensed the correct thing to say is, &ldquo;This place has great
+      possibilities!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Harbor Castle had more possibilities than any other castle I ever visited.
+      But in five minutes I had altered it to suit myself. I had ploughed up the
+      flower-beds, dug a sunken garden, planted a wind screen of fir, spruce,
+      and Pine, and with a huge brick wall secured warmth and privacy. So
+      pleased was I with my changes, that when I departed I was sad and
+      downcast. The boat-house of which Mrs. Farrell had spoken was certainly an
+      ideal work-shop, the tennis-courts made those at the Newport Casino look
+      like a ploughed field, and the swimming-pool, guarded by white pillars and
+      overhung with grape-vines, was a cool and refreshing picture. As, hot and
+      perspiring, I trudged back through Fairharbor, the memory of these haunted
+      me. That they also tempted me, it is impossible to deny. But not for long.
+      For, after passing through the elm-shaded streets to that side of the
+      village that faced the harbor, I came upon the cottages I had seen from
+      the New Bedford shore. At close range they appeared even more attractive
+      than when pointed out to me by the mate of the steamboat. They were very
+      old, very weather-stained and covered with honeysuckle. Flat stones in a
+      setting of grass led from the gates to the arched doorways, hollyhocks
+      rose above hedges of box, and from the verandas one could look out upon
+      the busy harbor and the houses of New Bedford rising in steps up the
+      sloping hills to a sky-line of tree-tops and church spires. The mate had
+      told me that for what he had rented a flat in New York he had secured one
+      of these charming old world homes. And as I passed them I began to pick
+      out the one in which when I retired from the world I would settle down.
+      This time I made no alterations. How much the near presence of Miss Briggs
+      had to do with my determination to settle down in Fairharbor, I cannot now
+      remember. But, certainly as I crossed the bridge toward New Bedford,
+      thoughts of her entirely filled my mind. I assured my self this was so
+      only because she was beautiful. I was sure her outward loveliness
+      advertised a nature equally lovely, but for my sudden and extreme interest
+      I had other excuses. Her in dependence in earning her living, her choice
+      in earning it among books and pictures, her pride of family as shown by
+      her efforts to buy the family heirloom, all these justified my admiration.
+      And her refusing to go joy-riding with an impertinent stranger, even
+      though the impertinent stranger was myself, was an act I applauded. The
+      more I thought of Miss Briggs the more was I disinclined to go away
+      leaving with her an impression of myself so unpleasant as the one she then
+      held. I determined to remove it. At least, until I had redeemed myself, I
+      would remain in New Bedford. The determination gave me the greatest
+      satisfaction. With a light heart I returned to the office of the steamboat
+      line and retrieving my suit-case started with it toward the Parker House.
+      It was now past five o'clock, the stores were closed, and all the people
+      who had not gone to the baseball game with Fall River were in the streets.
+      In consequence, as I was passing the post-office, Miss Briggs came down
+      the steps, and we were face to face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In her lovely eyes was an expression of mingled doubt and indignation and
+      in her hand freshly torn from the papers in which I had wrapped it, was
+      &ldquo;The Log of the JOLLY POLLY.&rdquo; In action Miss Briggs was as direct as a
+      submarine. At sight of me she attacked. &ldquo;Did you send me this?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I lowered my bag to the sidewalk and prepared for battle. &ldquo;I didn't think
+      of your going to the post-office,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I planned you'd get it
+      to-morrow after I'd left. When I sent it, I thought I would never see you
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you did send it!&rdquo; exclaimed Miss Briggs. As though the book were a
+      hot plate she dropped it into my hand. She looked straight at me, but her
+      expression suggested she was removing a caterpillar from her pet rosebush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had no right,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You may not have meant to be impertinent,
+      but you were!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, as though I had disappeared from the face of the earth, Miss Briggs
+      gazed coldly about her, and with dignity started to cross the street. Her
+      dignity was so great that she glanced neither to the left nor right. In
+      consequence she did not see an automobile that swung recklessly around a
+      trolley-car and dived at her. But other people saw it and shrieked. I also
+      shrieked, and dropping the suit-case and the &ldquo;Log,&rdquo; jumped into the
+      street, grabbed Miss Briggs by both arms, and flung her back to the
+      sidewalk. That left me where she had been, and the car caught me up and
+      slammed me head first against a telegraph pole. The pole was hard, and if
+      any one counted me out I did not stay awake to hear him. When I came to I
+      was conscious that I was lying on a sidewalk; but to open my eyes, I was
+      much too tired. A voice was saying, &ldquo;Do you know who he is, Miss?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice that replied was the voice of the lovely Miss Briggs. But now I
+      hardly recognized it. It was full of distress, of tenderness and pity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don't know him,&rdquo; it stammered. &ldquo;He's a salesman&mdash;he was in the
+      store this morning&mdash;he's selling motor-cars.&rdquo; The first voice
+      laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Motor-cars!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;That's why he ain't scared of 'em. He
+      certainly saved you from that one! I seen him, Miss Briggs, and he most
+      certainly saved your life!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In response to this astonishing statement I was delighted to hear a
+      well-trained male chorus exclaim in assent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The voices differed; some spoke in the accents of Harvard, pure and
+      undefiled, some in a &ldquo;down East&rdquo; dialect, others suggested Italian peanut
+      venders and Portuguese sailors, but all agreed that the life of Miss
+      Briggs had been saved by myself. I had intended coming to, but on hearing
+      the chorus working so harmoniously I decided I had better continue
+      unconscious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a new voice said importantly: &ldquo;The marks on his suitcase are 'F. F.,
+      New York.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I appreciated instantly that to be identified as Fletcher Farrell meant
+      humiliation and disaster. The other Fletcher Farrells would soon return to
+      New Bedford. They would learn that in their absence I had been spying upon
+      the home I had haughtily rejected. Besides, one of the chorus might
+      remember that three years back Fletcher Farrell had been a popular
+      novelist and might recognize me, and Miss Briggs would discover I was not
+      an automobile agent and that I had lied to her. I saw that I must continue
+      to lie to her. I thought of names beginning with &ldquo;F,&rdquo; and selected
+      &ldquo;Frederick Fitzgibbon.&rdquo; To christen yourself while your eyes are shut and
+      your head rests on a curb-stone is not easy, and later I was sorry I had
+      not called myself Fairchild as being more aristocratic. But then it was
+      too late. As Fitzgibbon I had come back to life, and as Fitzgibbon I must
+      remain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I opened my eyes I found the first voice belonged to a policeman who
+      helped me to my feet and held in check the male chorus. The object of each
+      was to lead me to a drink. But instead I turned dizzily to Miss Briggs.
+      She was holding my hat and she handed it to me. Her lovely eyes were
+      filled with relief and her charming voice with remorse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&mdash;I can't possibly thank you,&rdquo; she stammered. &ldquo;Are you badly hurt?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt I had never listened to words so original and well chosen. In
+      comparison, the brilliant and graceful speeches I had placed on the lips
+      of my heroines became flat and unconvincing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I assured her I was not at all hurt and endeavored, jauntily, to replace
+      my hat. But where my head had hit the telegraph pole a large bump had
+      risen which made my hat too small. So I hung it on the bump. It gave me a
+      rakish air. One of the chorus returned my bag and another the &ldquo;Log.&rdquo; Not
+      wishing to remind Miss Briggs of my past impertinences; I guiltily
+      concealed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the policeman asked my name and I gave the one I had just invented,
+      and inquired my way to the Parker House. Half the chorus volunteered to
+      act as my escort, and as I departed, I stole a last look at Miss Briggs.
+      She and the policeman were taking down the pedigree of the chauffeur of
+      the car that had hit me. He was trying to persuade them he was not
+      intoxicated, and with each speech was furnishing evidence to the contrary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After I had given a cold bath to the bump on my head and to the rest of my
+      body which for the moment seemed the lesser of the two, I got into dry
+      things and seated myself on the veranda of the hotel. With a cigar to
+      soothe my jangling nerves, I considered the position of Miss Briggs and
+      myself. I was happy in believing it had improved. On the morrow there was
+      no law to prevent me from visiting Hatchardson's Bookstore, and in view of
+      what had happened since last I left it, I had reason to hope Miss Briggs
+      would receive me more, kindly. Of the correctness of this diagnosis I was
+      at once assured. In front of the hotel a district messenger-boy fell off
+      his bicycle and with unerring instinct picked me out as Mr. Fitzgibbon of
+      New York. The note he carried was from Miss Briggs. It stated that in the
+      presence of so many people it had been impossible for her to thank me as
+      she wished for the service I had rendered her, and that Mrs. Cutler, with
+      whom she boarded, and herself, would be glad if after supper I would call
+      upon them. I gave the messenger-boy enough gold to enable him to buy a new
+      bicycle and in my room executed a dance symbolizing joy. I then kicked my
+      suit-case under the bed. I would not soon need it. Now that Miss Briggs
+      had forgiven me, I was determined to live and die in New Bedford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The home of Mrs. Cutler, where Miss Briggs lodged and boarded, was in a
+      side street of respectable and distinguished antiquity. The street itself
+      was arched with the branches of giant elms, and each house was an island
+      surrounded by grass, and over the porches climbed roses. It was too warm
+      to remain indoors, so we sat on the steps of the porch, and through the
+      leaves of the elms the electric light globe served us as a moon. For an
+      automobile salesman I was very shy, very humble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twice before I had given offense and I was determined if it lay with me,
+      it would not happen again. I did not hope to interest Miss Briggs in
+      myself, nor did I let it appear how tremendously I was interested in her.
+      For the moment I was only a stranger in a strange land making a social
+      call. I asked Miss Briggs about New Bedford and the whaling, about the
+      books she sold, and the books she liked. It was she who talked. When I
+      found we looked at things in the same way and that the same things gave us
+      pleasure I did not comment on that astonishing fact, but as an asset more
+      precious than gold, stored it away. When I returned to the hotel I found
+      that concerning Miss Briggs I had made important discoveries. I had
+      learned that her name was Polly, that the JOLLY POLLY had been christened
+      after her grandmother, that she was an orphan, that there were relatives
+      with whom she did not &ldquo;hit it off,&rdquo; that she was very well read, possessed
+      of a most charming sense of humor, and that I found her the most
+      attractive girl I had ever met.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning I awoke in an exalted frame of mind. I was in love with
+      life, with New Bedford, and with Polly Briggs. I had been in love before
+      but never with a young lady who worked in a shop, and I found that loving
+      a lady so occupied gives one a tremendous advantage. For when you call she
+      must always be at home, nor can she plead another engagement. So, before
+      noon, knowing she could not deny herself, I was again at Hatchardson's,
+      purchasing more postal-cards. But Miss Briggs was not deceived. Nor
+      apparently was any one else. The BEDFORD MERCURY had told how, the
+      previous evening, Frederick Fitzgibbon, an automobile salesman from New
+      York, had been knocked out by an automobile while saving Miss Polly Briggs
+      from a similar fate; and Mr. Hatchardson and all the old ladies who were
+      in the bookstore making purchases congratulated me. It was evident that in
+      Miss Briggs they took much more than a perfunctory interest. They were
+      very fond of her. She was an institution; and I could see that as such to
+      visitors she would be pointed out with pride, as was the new bronze statue
+      of the Whaleman in Court House Square. Nor did they cease discussing her
+      until they had made it quite clear to me that in being knocked out in her
+      service I was a very lucky man. I did not need to be told that, especially
+      as I noted that Miss Briggs was anxious lest I should not be properly
+      modest. Indeed, her wish that in the eyes of the old ladies I should
+      appear to advantage was so evident, and her interest in me so proprietary,
+      that I was far from unhappy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The afternoon I spent in Fairharbor. From a real estate agent I obtained
+      keys to those cottages on the water-front that were for rent, and I busied
+      myself exploring them. The one I most liked I pretended I had rented, and
+      I imagined myself at work among the flower-beds, or with my telescope
+      scanning the shipping in the harbor, or at night seated in front of the
+      open fire watching the green and blue flames of the driftwood. Later,
+      irresolutely, I wandered across town to Harbor Castle, this time walking
+      entirely around it and coming upon a sign that read, &ldquo;Visitors Welcome. Do
+      not pick the flowers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Assuring myself that I was moved only by curiosity, I accepted the
+      invitation, nor, though it would greatly have helped the appearance of the
+      cemetery-like beds, did I pick the flowers. On a closer view Harbor Castle
+      certainly possessed features calculated to make an impecunious author
+      Stop, look, and listen. I pictured it peopled with my friends. I saw them
+      at the long mahogany table of which through the French window I got a
+      glimpse, or dancing in the music-room, or lounging on the wicker chairs on
+      the sweeping verandas. I could see them in flannels at tennis, in
+      bathing-suits diving from the spring-board of the swimming pool, departing
+      on excursions in the motor-cars that at the moment in front of the garage
+      were being sponged and polished, so that they flashed like mirrors. And I
+      thought also of the two-thousand-ton yacht and to what far countries, to
+      what wonderful adventures it might carry me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But all of these pictures lacked one feature. In none of them did Polly
+      Briggs appear. For, as I very well knew, that was something the ambitions
+      of Mrs. Farrell would not permit. That lady wanted me as a son only
+      because she thought I was a social asset. By the same reasoning, as a
+      daughter-in-law, she would not want a shop-girl, especially not one who as
+      a shop-girl was known to all New Bedford. My mood as I turned my back upon
+      the golden glories of Harbor Castle and walked to New Bedford was
+      thoughtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had telegraphed my servant to bring me more clothes and my Phoenix car;
+      and as I did not want him inquiring for Fletcher Farrell had directed him
+      to come by boat to Fall River. Accordingly, the next morning, I took the
+      trolley to that city, met him at the wharf, and sent him back to New York.
+      I gave him a check with instructions to have it cashed in that city and to
+      send the money, and my mail, to Frederick Fitzgibbon. This ALIAS I
+      explained to him by saying I was gathering material for an article to
+      prove one could live on fifty cents a day. He was greatly relieved to
+      learn I did not need a valet to help me prove it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I returned driving the Phoenix to New Bedford, and as it was a Saturday,
+      when the store closed at noon, I had the ineffable delight of taking Polly
+      Briggs for a drive. As chaperons she invited two young friends of hers
+      named Lowell. They had been but very lately married, and regarded me no
+      more than a chauffeur they had hired by the hour. This left Polly who was
+      beside me on the front seat, and myself, to our own devices. Our devices
+      were innocent enough. They consisted in conveying the self-centred Lowells
+      so far from home that they could not get back for supper and were so
+      forced to dine with me. Polly, for as Polly I now thought of her,
+      discovered the place. It was an inn, on the edge of a lake with an Indian
+      name. We did not get home until late, but it had been such a successful
+      party that before we separated we planned another journey for the morrow.
+      That one led to the Cape by way of Bourne and Wood's Hole, and back again
+      to the North Shore to Barnstable, where we lunched. It was a grand day and
+      the first of others just as happy. After that every afternoon when the
+      store closed I picked up the Lowells; and then Polly, and we sought
+      adventures. Sometimes we journeyed no farther than the baseball park, but
+      as a rule I drove them to some inn for dinner, where later, if there were
+      music, we danced, if not, we returned slowly through the pine woods and so
+      home by the longest possible route. The next Saturday I invited them to
+      Boston. We started early, dined at the Touraine and went on to a musical
+      comedy, where I had reserved seats in the front row. This nearly led to my
+      undoing. Late in the first act a very merry party of young people who had
+      come up from Newport and Narragansett to the Coates-Islip wedding filled
+      the stage boxes and at sight of me began to wave and beckon. They were so
+      insistent that between the acts I thought it safer to visit them. They
+      wanted to know why I had not appeared at the wedding, and who was the
+      beautiful girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning on our return trip to New Bedford Polly said, &ldquo;I read in
+      the papers this morning that those girls in that theatre party last night
+      were the bridesmaids at the Coates-Islip wedding. They seemed to know you
+      quite well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I explained that in selling automobiles one became acquainted with many
+      people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Polly shook her head and laughed. Then she turned and looked at me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You never sold an automobile in your life,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With difficulty I kept my eyes on the road; but I protested vigorously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't think I have been spying,&rdquo; said Polly; &ldquo;I found you out quite by
+      accident. Yesterday a young man I know asked me to persuade you to turn in
+      your Phoenix and let him sell you one of the new model. I said you
+      yourself were the agent for the Phoenix, and he said that, on the
+      contrary, HE was, and that you had no right to sell the car in his
+      TERRITORY.&rdquo; I grinned guiltily and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I HAVEN'T sold any, have I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is not the point,&rdquo; protested Polly. &ldquo;What was your reason for
+      telling me you were trying to earn a living selling automobiles?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So that I could take you driving in one,&rdquo; I answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; exclaimed Polly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause during which in much inward trepidation I avoided
+      meeting her eyes. Then Polly added thoughtfully, &ldquo;I think that was a very
+      good reason.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In our many talks the name of the Fletcher Farrells had never been
+      mentioned. I had been most careful to avoid it. As each day passed, and
+      their return imminent, and in consequence my need to fly grew more near,
+      and the name was still unspoken, I was proportionately grateful. But when
+      the name did come up I had reason to be pleased, for Polly spoke it with
+      approval, and it was not of the owner of Harbor Castle she was speaking,
+      but of myself. It was one evening about two weeks after we had met, and I
+      had side-stepped the Lowells and was motoring with Polly alone. We were
+      talking of our favorite authors, dead and alive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may laugh,&rdquo; said Polly, and she said it defiantly, &ldquo;and I don't know
+      whether you would call him among the dead or the living, but I am very
+      fond of Fletcher Farrell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My heart leaped. I was so rattled that I nearly ran the car into a stone
+      wall. I thought I was discovered and that Polly was playing with me. But
+      her next words showed that she was innocent. She did not know that the man
+      to whom she was talking and of whom she was talking were the same. &ldquo;Of
+      course you will say,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;that he is too romantic, that he is
+      not true to life. But I never lived in the seventeenth century, so I don't
+      know whether he is true to life or not. And I like romance. The life I
+      lead in the store gives me all the reality I want. I like to read about
+      brave men and great and gracious ladies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never met any girls like those Farrell write about, but it's nice to
+      think they exist. I wish I were like them. And, his men, too&mdash;they
+      make love better than any other man I ever read about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better than I do?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Polly gazed at the sky, frowning severely. After a pause, and as though
+      she had dropped my remark into the road and the wheels had crushed it, she
+      said, coldly, &ldquo;Talking about books&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; I corrected, &ldquo;we were talking about Fletcher Farrell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Polly with some asperity, &ldquo;don't change the subject. Do you
+      know,&rdquo; she went on hurriedly, &ldquo;that you look like him&mdash;like the
+      pictures of him&mdash;as he was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heavens!&rdquo; I exclaimed, &ldquo;the man's not dead!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know what I mean,&rdquo; protested Polly. &ldquo;As he was before he stopped
+      writing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor has he stopped writing,&rdquo; I objected; &ldquo;his books have stopped
+      selling.&rdquo; Polly turned upon me eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know him?&rdquo; she demanded. I answered with caution that I had met
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;tell me about him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was extremely embarrassed. It was a bad place. About myself I could not
+      say anything pleasant, and behind my back, as it were, I certainly was not
+      going to say anything unpleasant. But Polly relieved me of the necessity
+      of saying anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know any man,&rdquo; she exclaimed fervently, &ldquo;I would so like to
+      meet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed to me that after that the less I said the better. So I told her
+      something was wrong with the engine and by the time I had pretended to fix
+      it, I had led the conversation away from Fletcher Farrell as a novelist to
+      myself as a chauffeur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning at the hotel, temptation was again waiting for me. This
+      time it came in the form of a letter from my prospective father-in-law. It
+      had been sent from Cape May to my address in New York, and by my servant
+      forwarded in an envelope addressed to &ldquo;Frederick Fitzgibbon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was what in the world of commerce is called a &ldquo;follow-up&rdquo; letter. It
+      recalled the terms of his offer to me, and improved upon them. It made it
+      clear that even after meeting me Mr. Farrell and his wife were still
+      anxious to stand for me as a son. They were good enough to say they had
+      found me a &ldquo;perfect gentleman.&rdquo; They hoped that after considering their
+      proposition I had come to look upon it with favor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As his son, Mr. Farrell explained, my annual allowance would be the
+      interest on one million dollars, and upon his death his entire fortune and
+      property he would bequeath to me. He was willing, even anxious, to put
+      this in writing. In a week he would return to Fairharbor when he hoped to
+      receive a favorable answer. In the meantime he enclosed a letter to his
+      housekeeper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't take anything for granted,&rdquo; he urged, &ldquo;but go to Fairharbor and
+      present this letter. See the place for yourself. Spend the week there and
+      act like you were the owner. My housekeeper has orders to take her orders
+      from you. Don't refuse something you have never seen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This part of the letter made me feel as mean and uncomfortable as a wet
+      hen. The open, almost too open, methods of Mr. Farrell made my own methods
+      appear contemptible. He was urging me to be his guest and I was playing
+      the spy. But against myself my indignation did not last. A letter, bearing
+      a special delivery stamp which arrived later in the afternoon from Mrs.
+      Farrell turned my indignation against her, and with bitterness. She also
+      had been spying. Her letter read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Pinkerton I employed to report on you states that after losing you for
+      a week he located you at New Bedford, that you are living under the name
+      of Fitzgibbon, and that you have made yourself conspicuous by attentions
+      to a young person employed in a shop. This is for me a great blow and
+      disappointment, and I want you to clearly understand Mr. Farrell's offer
+      is made to you as an unmarried man. I cannot believe your attentions are
+      serious, but whether they are serious or not, they must cease. The
+      detective reports the pair of you are now the talk of Fairharbor. You are
+      making me ridiculous. I do not want a shop-girl for a daughter-in-law and
+      you will either give up her acquaintance or give up Harbor Castle!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am no believer in ultimatums. In attaining one's end they seldom prove
+      successful. I tore the note into tiny pieces, and defiantly, with Polly in
+      the seat beside me, drove into the open country. At first we picked our
+      way through New Bedford, from the sidewalks her friends waved to her, and
+      my acquaintances smiled. The detective was right. We had indeed made
+      ourselves the talk of the town, and I was determined the talk must cease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had reached Ruggles Point when the car developed an illness. I got out
+      to investigate. On both sides of the road were tall hemlocks and through
+      them to the west we could see the waters of Sippican Harbor in the last
+      yellow rays of the sun as it sank behind Rochester. Overhead was the great
+      harvest moon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Polly had taken from the pocket of the car some maps and guide-books, and
+      while I lifted the hood and was deep in the machinery she was turning them
+      over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What,&rdquo; she asked, &ldquo;is the number of this car? I forget.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As I have said, I was preoccupied and deep in the machinery; that is, with
+      a pair of pliers I was wrestling with a recalcitrant wire. Unsuspiciously
+      I answered: &ldquo;Eight-two-eight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A moment later I heard a sharp cry, and raised my head. With eyes wide in
+      terror Polly was staring at an open book. Without appreciating my danger I
+      recognized it as &ldquo;Who's Who in Automobiles.&rdquo; The voice of Polly rose in a
+      cry of disbelief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eight-two-eight,&rdquo; she read, &ldquo;owned by Fletcher Farrell, Hudson
+      Apartments, New York City.&rdquo; She raised her eyes to mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that true?&rdquo; she gasped. &ldquo;Are you Fletcher Farrell?&rdquo; I leaned into the
+      car and got hold of her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is not important,&rdquo; I stammered. &ldquo;What is important is this: Will you
+      be Mrs. Fletcher Farrell?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What she said may be guessed from the fact that before we returned to New
+      Bedford we drove to Fairharbor and I showed her the cottage I liked best.
+      It was the one with the oldest clapboard shingles, the oldest box hedge,
+      the most fragrant honeysuckles, and a lawn that wet its feet in the surf.
+      Polly liked it the best, too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By now the daylight had gone, and on the ships the riding lights were
+      shining, but shining sulkily, for the harvest moon filled the world with
+      golden radiance. As we stood on the porch of the empty cottage, in the
+      shadow of the honeysuckles, Polly asked an impossible question. It was:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How MUCH do you love me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will never know,&rdquo; I told her, &ldquo;but I can tell you this: I love you
+      more than a two-thousand-ton yacht, the interest on one million dollars,
+      and Harbor Castle!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a wasteful remark, for Polly instantly drew away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What DO you mean?&rdquo; she laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fletcher Farrell of Harbor Castle,&rdquo; I explained, &ldquo;offered me those
+      things, minus you. But I wanted you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; cried Polly, &ldquo;he wanted to adopt you. He always talks of that. I
+      am sorry for him. He wants a son so badly.&rdquo; She sighed softly, &ldquo;Poor
+      uncle!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor WHAT!&rdquo; I yelled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't you know,&rdquo; exclaimed Polly, &ldquo;that Mrs. Farrell was a Briggs! She
+      was my father's sister.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then YOU,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;are the relation who was 'too high and mighty'!&rdquo;
+       Polly shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I didn't want to be dependent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you gave up all that,&rdquo; I exclaimed, &ldquo;and worked at Hatchardson's,
+      just because you didn't want to be dependent!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like my uncle-in-law very much,&rdquo; explained Polly, &ldquo;but not my aunt. So,
+      it was no temptation. No more,&rdquo; she cried, looking at me as though she
+      were proud of me, &ldquo;than it was to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In guilty haste I changed the subject. In other words, I kissed her. I
+      knew some day I would have to confess. But until we were safely married
+      that could wait. Before confessing I would make sure of her first. The
+      next day we announced our engagement and Polly consented that it should be
+      a short one. For, as I pointed out, already she had kept me waiting thirty
+      years. The newspapers dug up the fact that I had once been a popular
+      novelist, and the pictures they published of Polly proved her so beautiful
+      that, in congratulation, I received hundreds of telegrams. The first one
+      to arrive came from Cape May. It read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My dear boy, your uncle elect sends his heartiest congratulations to you
+      and love to Polly. Don't make any plans until you hear from me&mdash;am
+      leaving to-night. FLETCHER FARRELL.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In terror Polly fled into my arms. Even when NOT in terror it was a
+      practice I strongly encouraged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are lost!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;They will adopt us in spite of ourselves. They
+      will lock us up for life in Harbor Castle! I don't WANT to be adopted. I
+      want YOU! I want my little cottage!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I assured her she should have her little cottage; I had already bought it.
+      And during the two weeks before the wedding, when I was not sitting around
+      Boston while Polly bought clothes, we refurnished it. Polly furnished the
+      library, chiefly with my own books, and &ldquo;The Log of the JOLLY POLLY.&rdquo; I
+      furnished the kitchen. For a man cannot live on honeysuckles alone. My
+      future uncle-in-law was gentle but firm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't get away from the fact,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that you will be my nephew,
+      whether you like it or not. So, be kind to an old man and let him give the
+      bride away and let her be married from Harbor Castle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In her white and green High Flier car and all of her diamonds, Mrs.
+      Farrell called on Polly and begged the same boon. We were too happy to see
+      any one else dissatisfied; so though we had planned the quietest of
+      weddings, we gave consent. Somehow we survived it. But now we recall it
+      only as that terrible time when we were never alone. For once in the hands
+      of our rich relations the quiet wedding we had arranged became a royal
+      alliance, a Field of the Cloth of Gold, the chief point of attack for the
+      moving-picture men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The youths who came from New York to act as my ushers informed me that the
+      Ushers' Dinner at Harbor Castle-from which, after the fish course, I had
+      fled&mdash;was considered by them the most successful ushers' dinner in
+      their career of crime. My uncle-in-Law also testifies to this. He ought to
+      know. At four in the morning he was assisting the ushers in throwing the
+      best man and the butler into the swimming-pool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For our honeymoon he loaned us the yacht. &ldquo;Take her as far as you like,&rdquo;
+       he said. &ldquo;After this she belongs to you and Polly. And find a better name
+      for her than Harbor Lights. It sounds too much like a stay-at-home. And I
+      want you two to see the world.&rdquo; I thanked him, and suggested he might
+      rechristen her the JOLLY POLLY.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was the name,&rdquo; I pointed out, &ldquo;of the famous whaler owned by Captain
+      Briggs, your wife's father, and it would be a compliment to Polly, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My uncle-in-law-elect agreed heartily; but made one condition:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll christen her that,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;if you will promise to write a new Log
+      of the JOLLY POLLY.&rdquo; I promised. This is it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
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+</html>
diff --git a/1808.txt b/1808.txt
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+Project Gutenberg's The Log of The "Jolly Polly", by Richard Harding Davis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Log of The "Jolly Polly"
+
+Author: Richard Harding Davis
+
+Posting Date: October 10, 2008 [EBook #1808]
+Release Date: May, 1999
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOG OF THE "JOLLY POLLY" ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Aaron Cannon
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LOG OF THE "JOLLY POLLY"
+
+By Richard Harding Davis
+
+
+
+Temptation came to me when I was in the worst possible position to
+resist it.
+
+It is a way temptation has. Whenever I swear off drinking invariably I
+am invited to an ushers' dinner. Whenever I am rich, only the highbrow
+publications that pay the least, want my work. But the moment I am
+poverty-stricken the MANICURE GIRL'S MAGAZINE and the ROT AND SPOT
+WEEKLY spring at me with offers of a dollar a word. Temptation always is
+on the job. When I am down and out temptation always is up and at me.
+
+When first the Farrells tempted me my vogue had departed. On my name and
+"past performances" I could still dispose of what I wrote, but only to
+magazines that were just starting. The others knew I no longer was
+a best-seller. All the real editors knew it. So did the theatrical
+managers.
+
+My books and plays had flourished in the dark age of the
+historical-romantic novel. My heroes wore gauntlets and long swords.
+They fought for the Cardinal or the King, and each loved a high-born
+demoiselle who was a ward of the King or the Cardinal, and with feminine
+perversity, always of whichever one her young man was fighting. With
+people who had never read Guizot's "History of France," my books were
+popular, and for me made a great deal of money. This was fortunate, for
+my parents had left me nothing save expensive tastes. When the tastes
+became habits, the public left me. It turned to white-slave and crook
+plays, and to novels true to life; so true to life that one felt the
+author must at one time have been a masseur in a Turkish bath.
+
+So, my heroines in black velvet, and my heroes with long swords were
+"scrapped." As one book reviewer put it, "To expect the public of to-day
+to read the novels of Fletcher Farrell is like asking people to give up
+the bunny hug and go back to the lancers."
+
+And, to make it harder, I was only thirty years old.
+
+It was at this depressing period in my career that I received a letter
+from Fairharbor, Massachusetts, signed Fletcher Farrell. The letter was
+written on the business paper of the Farrell Cotton Mills, and asked if
+I were related to the Farrells of Duncannon, of the County Wexford,
+who emigrated to Massachusetts in 1860. The writer added that he had a
+grandfather named Fletcher and suggested we might be related. From the
+handwriting of Fletcher Farrell and from the way he ill-treated the
+King's English I did not feel the ties of kinship calling me very loud.
+I replied briefly that my people originally came from Youghal, in County
+Cork, that as early as 1730 they had settled in New York, and that all
+my relations on the Farrell side either were still at Youghal, or dead.
+Mine was not an encouraging letter; nor did I mean it to be; and I
+was greatly surprised two days later to receive a telegram reading,
+"Something to your advantage to communicate; wife and self calling
+on you Thursday at noon. Fletcher Farrell." I was annoyed, but also
+interested. The words "something to your advantage" always possess a
+certain charm. So, when the elevator boy telephoned that Mr. and Mrs.
+Farrell were calling, I told him to bring them up.
+
+My first glance at the Farrells convinced me the interview was a waste
+of time. I was satisfied that from two such persons, nothing to my
+advantage could possibly emanate. On the contrary, from their lack of
+ease, it looked as though they had come to beg or borrow. They resembled
+only a butler and housekeeper applying for a new place under the
+disadvantage of knowing they had no reference from the last one. Of the
+two, I better liked the man. He was an elderly, pleasant-faced Irishman,
+smooth-shaven, red-cheeked, and with white hair. Although it was July,
+he wore a frock coat, and carried a new high hat that glistened. As
+though he thought at any moment it might explode, he held it from him,
+and eyed it fearfully. Mrs. Farrell was of a more sophisticated type.
+The lines in her face and hands showed that for years she might have
+known hard physical work. But her dress was in the latest fashion, and
+her fingers held more diamonds than, out of a showcase, I ever had seen.
+
+With embarrassment old man Farrell began his speech. Evidently it had
+been rehearsed and as he recited it, in swift asides, his wife prompted
+him; but to note the effect he was making, she kept her eyes upon me.
+Having first compared my name, fame, and novels with those of Charles
+Dickens, Walter Scott, and Archibald Clavering Gunter, and to the
+disadvantage of those gentlemen, Farrell said the similarity of our
+names often had been commented upon, and that when from my letter he
+had learned our families both were from the South of Ireland, he had
+a premonition we might be related. Duncannon, where he was born, he
+pointed out, was but forty miles from Youghal, and the fishing boats out
+of Waterford Harbor often sought shelter in Blackwater River. Had any of
+my forebears, he asked, followed the herring?
+
+Alarmed, lest at this I might take offense, Mrs. Farrell interrupted
+him.
+
+"The Fletchers and O'Farrells of Youghal," she exclaimed, "were gentry.
+What would they be doing in a trawler?"
+
+I assured her that so far as I knew, 1750 being before my time, they
+might have been smugglers and pirates.
+
+"All I ever heard of the Farrells," I told her, "begins after they
+settled in New York. And there is no one I can ask concerning them. My
+father and mother are dead; all my father's relatives are dead, and
+my mother's relatives are as good as dead. I mean," I added, "we don't
+speak!"
+
+To my surprise, this information appeared to afford my visitors great
+satisfaction. They exchanged hasty glances.
+
+"Then," exclaimed Mr. Farrell, eagerly; "if I understand you, you have
+no living relations at all--barring those that are dead!"
+
+"Exactly!" I agreed.
+
+He drew a deep sigh of relief. With apparent irrelevance but with a
+carelessness that was obviously assumed, he continued.
+
+"Since I come to America," he announced, "I have made heaps of money."
+As though in evidence of his prosperity, he flashed the high hat. In
+the sunlight it coruscated like one of his wife's diamonds. "Heaps of
+money," he repeated. "The mills are still in my name," he went on, "but
+five years since I sold them--We live on the income. We own Harbor
+Castle, the finest house on the whole waterfront."
+
+"When all the windows are lit up," interjected Mrs. Farrell, "it's often
+took for a Fall River boat!"
+
+"When I was building it," Farrell continued, smoothly, "they called
+it Farrell's Folly; but not NOW." In friendly fashion he winked at
+me, "Standard Oil," he explained, "offered half a million for it. They
+wanted my wharf for their tank steamers. But, I needed it for my yacht!"
+
+I must have sat up rather too suddenly, for, seeing the yacht had
+reached home, Mr. Farrell beamed. Complacently his wife smoothed an
+imaginary wrinkle in her skirt.
+
+"Eighteen men!" she protested, "with nothing to do but clean brass and
+eat three meals a day!"
+
+Farrell released his death grip on the silk hat to make a sweeping
+gesture.
+
+"They earn their wages," he said generously.
+
+"Aren't they taking us this week to Cap May?"
+
+"They're taking the yacht to Cape May!" corrected Mrs. Farrell; "not ME!"
+
+"The sea does not agree with her," explained Farrell; "WE'RE going by
+automobile." Mrs. Farrell now took up the wondrous tale.
+
+"It's a High Flyer, 1915 model," she explained; "green, with white enamel
+leather inside, and red wheels outside. You can see it from the window."
+
+Somewhat dazed, I stepped to the window and found you could see it from
+almost anywhere. It was as large as a freight car; and was entirely
+surrounded by taxi-starters, bellboys, and nurse-maids. The chauffeur,
+and a deputy chauffeur, in a green livery with patent-leather leggings,
+were frowning upon the mob. They possessed the hauteur of ambulance
+surgeons. I returned to my chair, and then rose hastily to ask if I
+could not offer Mr. Farrell some refreshment.
+
+"Mebbe later," he said. Evidently he felt that as yet he had not
+sufficiently impressed me.
+
+"Harbor Castle," he recited, "has eighteen bedrooms, billiard-room,
+music-room, art gallery and swimming-pool." He shook his head. "And no
+one to use 'em but us. We had a boy." He stopped, and for an instant, as
+though asking pardon, laid his hand upon the knee of Mrs. Farrell.
+"But he was taken when he was four, and none came since. My wife has a
+niece," he added, "but----"
+
+"But," interrupted Mrs. Farrell, "she was too high and mighty for
+plain folks, and now there is no one. We always took an interest in
+you because your name was Farrell. We were always reading of you in
+the papers. We have all your books, and a picture of you in the
+billiard-room. When folks ask me if we are any relation--sometimes I
+tell 'em we ARE."
+
+As though challenging me to object, she paused.
+
+"It's quite possible," I said hastily. And, in order to get rid of them,
+I added: "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll write to Ireland and----"
+
+Farrell shook his head firmly. "You don't need to write to Ireland," he
+said, "for what we want."
+
+"What DO you want?" I asked.
+
+"We want a SON," said Farrell; "an adopted son. We want to adopt YOU!"
+
+"You want to WHAT?" I asked.
+
+To learn if Mrs. Farrell also was mad, I glanced toward her, but her
+expression was inscrutable. The face of the Irishman had grown purple.
+
+"And why not?" he demanded. "You are a famous young man, all right, and
+educated. But there's nothing about me I'm ashamed of! I'm worth five
+million dollars and I made every cent Of it myself--and I made it
+honest. You ask Dun or Bradstreet, ask----"
+
+I attempted to soothe him.
+
+"THAT'S not it, sir," I explained. "It's a most generous offer, a most
+flattering, complimentary offer. But you don't know me. I don t know
+you. Choosing a son is a very----"
+
+"I've had you looked up," announced Mrs. Farrell. "The Pinkertons give
+you a high rating. I hired 'em to trail you for six months."
+
+I wanted to ask WHICH six months, but decided to let sleeping dogs lie.
+I shook my head. Politely but firmly I delivered my ultimatum.
+
+"It is quite impossible!" I said firmly.
+
+Mrs. Farrell continued the debate. She talked in a businesslike manner
+and pronounced the arrangement one by which both sides would benefit.
+There were thousands of other Farrells, she pointed out, any one of
+whom they might have adopted. But they had selected me because in so
+choosing, they thought they were taking the least risk. They had decided
+she was pleased to say, that I would not disgrace them, and that as a
+"literary author" I brought with me a certain social asset.
+
+A clever, young businessman they did not want. Their business affairs
+they were quit able to manage themselves. But they would like as an
+adopted son one who had already added glory to the name of Farrell,
+which glory he was willing to share.
+
+"We wouldn't tie you down," she urged "but we would expect you to live
+at Harbor Castle a part of your time, and to call us Ma and Pa.
+You would have your own rooms, and your own servant, and there is a
+boat-house on the harbor front, where you could write your novels."
+
+At this, knowing none wanted my novels, I may have winced, for,
+misreading my discontent, Farrell hastily interrupted.
+
+"You won't have to work at all," he protested heartily. "My son can
+afford to live like a lord. You'll get all the spending money you want,
+and if you're fond of foreign parts, you can take the yacht wherever you
+please!"
+
+"The farther the better," exclaimed Mrs. Farrell with heat. "And when
+you get it there, I hope you'll SINK it!"
+
+"Maybe your friends would come and visit You," suggested Farrell,
+I thought, a trifle wistfully. "There's bathing, tennis, eight...
+bedrooms, billiard-room, art gallery----"
+
+"You told him that!" said Mrs. Farrell.
+
+I was greatly at a loss. Their offer was preposterous, but to them, it
+was apparently a perfectly possible arrangement. Nor were they acting
+on impulse. Mrs. Farrell had admitted that for six months she had had me
+"trailed." How to say "No" and not give offense, I found difficult. They
+were deeply in earnest and I could see that Farrell, at least, was by
+instinct generous, human, and kind. It was, in fact, a most generous
+offer. But how was I to tell them tactfully I was not for sale, that I
+was not looking for "ready-to-wear" parents, and that if I were in the
+market, they were not the parents I would choose. I had a picture of
+life at Harbor Castle, dependent upon the charity of the Farrells. I
+imagined what my friends would say to me, and worse, what they would say
+behind my back. But I was not forced to a refusal.
+
+Mr. Farrell rose.
+
+"We don't want to hurry you," he said. "We want you to think it over.
+Maybe if we get acquainted----"
+
+Mrs. Farrell smiled upon me ingratiatingly.
+
+"Why don't we get acquainted now?" she demanded. "We're motoring down
+to Cape May to stay three weeks. Why don't you come along--as our
+guest--and see how you like us?"
+
+I assured them, almost too hastily, that already was deeply engaged.
+
+As they departed, Farrell again admonished me to think it over.
+
+"And look me up at Dun's and Bradstreet's," he advised. "Ask 'em about
+me at the Waldorf. Ask the head waiters and bellhops if I look twice at
+a five spot!"
+
+It seemed an odd way to select a father, but I promised.
+
+I escorted them even to the sidewalk, and not without envy watched them
+sweep toward the Waldorf in the High Flyer, 1915 model. I caught myself
+deciding, were it mine, I would paint it gray.
+
+I was lunching at the Ritz with Curtis Spencer, and I looked forward to
+the delight he would take in my story of the Farrells. He would probably
+want to write it. He was my junior, but my great friend; and as a
+novelist his popularity was where five years earlier mine had been. But
+he belonged to the new school. His novels smelled like a beauty parlor;
+and his heroines, while always beautiful, were, on occasions, virtuous,
+but only when they thought it would pay.
+
+Spencer himself was as modern as his novels, and I was confident his
+view of my adventure would be that of the great world which he described
+so accurately.
+
+But to my amazement when I had finished he savagely attacked me.
+
+"You idiot!" he roared. "Are you trying to tell me you refused five
+million dollars--just because you didn't like the people who wanted to
+force it on you? Where," he demanded, "is Cape May? We'll follow them
+now! We'll close this deal before they can change their minds. I'll make
+you sign to-night. And, then," he continued eagerly, "we'll take their
+yacht and escape to Newport, and you'll lend me five thousand dollars,
+and pay my debts, and give me back the ten you borrowed. And you might
+buy me a touring-car and some polo ponies and--and--oh, lots of things.
+I'll think of them as we go along. Meanwhile, I can't afford to give
+luncheons to millionaires, so you sign for this one; and then we'll
+start for Cape May."
+
+"Are you mad?" I demanded; "do you think I'd sell my honor!"
+
+"For five million dollars?" cried Spencer. "Don't make me laugh! If they
+want a REAL novelist for a son they can adopt me!"
+
+I replied with dignity that I would not disgrace the memory of my
+parents.
+
+"You have disgraced them!" retorted Spencer, "with your Musketeer novels
+for infants. You need money. To get it you may be tempted to write more
+novels. Here's your chance! Stop robbing the public, and lead an honest
+life. Think of all the money you could give to the poor, think of all
+the money you and I could lose at Monte Carlo!"
+
+When he found I would not charter an auto-mobile and at once pursue the
+Farrells he changed his tactics. If I would not go to Cape May, then, he
+begged, I would go to Fairharbor. He asked that I would, at least, find
+out what I was refusing. Before making their offer, for six months, the
+Farrells had had me "looked up," but, without knowing anything of them,
+after a talk of ten minutes I had turned them down. "Was that," he
+asked, "intelligent? Was it fair to the Farrells?" He continued to tempt
+me.
+
+"They told you to think it over," he persisted. "Very well, then, think
+it over at Fairharbor! For the next three weeks the Farrells will be at
+Cape May. The coast is clear. Go to Fairharbor as somebody else and be
+your own detective. Find out if what they tell you is true. Get inside
+information. Get inside Harbor Castle. Count the eighteen bedrooms and
+try the beds. Never mind the art gallery, but make sure there is a wine
+cellar. You can't start too soon, and I WILL GO WITH YOU!"
+
+I told him where he could go.
+
+We then tossed to see who should pay for the lunch and who should tip
+the head waiter. I lost and had to tip the head waiter. We separated,
+and as I walked down the Avenue, it seemed as though to the proprietor
+of every shop I passed I owed money. Owing them the money I did not so
+much mind; what most distressed me was that they were so polite about
+it. I had always wanted to reward their patience. A favorite dream of
+mine was to be able to walk down Fifth Avenue, my pockets stuffed with
+yellow bills, paying off my debts. Compared with my steadily decreasing
+income, how enormous my debts appeared; but when compared with the
+income of a man worth--say-five million dollars, how ridiculous! I had
+no more than reached my apartment, than a messenger-boy arrived with an
+envelope. It contained a ticket for a round trip on the New Bedford Line
+boat leaving that afternoon, a ticket for a stateroom, and a note from
+Curtis Spencer. The latter read: "The boat leaves at six to-night.
+You arrive at New Bedford seven to-morrow morning. New Bedford and
+Fairharbor are connected by a bridge. CROSS IT!"
+
+I tore the note in tiny fragments, and tossed them through the open
+window. I was exceedingly angry. As I stood at the window adding to the
+name of Curtis Spencer insulting aliases, the street below sent up hot,
+stifling odors: the smoke of taxicabs, the gases of an open subway, the
+stale reek of thousands of perspiring, unwashed bodies. From that one
+side street seemed to rise the heat and smells of all New York. For
+relief I turned to my work-table where lay the opening chapters of
+my new novel, "The White Plume of Savoy." But now, in the light
+of Spencer's open scorn, I saw it was impudently false, childish,
+sentimental. My head ached, the humidity sapped my strength, at heart
+I felt sick, sore, discouraged. I was down and out. And seeing this,
+Temptation, like an obsequious floorwalker, came hurrying forward.
+
+"And what may I show you to-day?" asked Temptation. He showed me the
+upper deck of the New Bedford boat feeling her way between the green
+banks of the Sound. A cool wind swept past me bearing clean, salty
+odors; on the saloon deck a band played, and from the darkness the
+lighthouses winked at me, and in friendly greeting the stars smiled.
+Temptation won. In five minutes I was feverishly packing, and at
+five-thirty I was on board. I assured myself I had not listened to
+Temptation, that I had no interest in Fairharbor. I was taking the trip
+solely because it would give me a night's sleep on the Sound. I promised
+myself that on the morrow I would not even LOOK toward Harbor Castle;
+but on the evening following on the same boat, return to New York.
+Temptation did not stop to argue, but hastened after another victim.
+
+I turned in at nine o'clock and the coolness, and the salt air, blessed
+me with the first sleep I had known in weeks. And when I woke we were
+made fast to the company's wharf at New Bedford, and the sun was well
+up. I rose refreshed in body and spirit. No longer was I discouraged.
+Even "The White Plume of Savoy" seemed a perfectly good tale of
+romance and adventure. And the Farrells were a joke. Even if I were at
+Fairharbor, I was there only on a lark, and at the expense of Curtis
+Spencer, who had paid for the tickets. Distinctly the joke was on Curtis
+Spencer. I lowered the window screen, and looked across the harbor. It
+was a beautiful harbor. At ancient stone wharfs Jay ancient whalers
+with drooping davits and squared yards, at anchor white-breasted yachts
+flashed in the sun, a gray man-of-war's man flaunted the week's laundry,
+a four-masted schooner dried her canvas, and over the smiling surface of
+the harbor innumerable fishing boats darted. With delight I sniffed
+the odors of salt water, sun-dried herring, of oakum and tar. The shore
+opposite was a graceful promontory crowned with trees and decorous
+gray-shingled cottages set in tiny gardens that reached to the very edge
+of the harbor. The second officer was passing my window and I asked what
+the promontory was called.
+
+"Fairharbor," he said. He answered with such proprietary pride and
+smiled upon Fairharbor with such approval that I ventured to guess it
+was his home.
+
+"That's right," he said; "I used to live at the New York end of the
+run-in a flat. But never again! No place for the boy to play but in the
+street. I found I could rent one of those old cottages over there for
+the same money I paid for the flat. So I cut out New York. My boy lives
+in a bathing suit now, and he can handle a catboat same as me. We have
+a kitchen garden, and hens, and the fishermen here will give you all
+the fish you can carry away--fish right out of the water. I guess I've
+smashed the high cost of living problem all right. I wouldn't go back to
+living in New York now--not if they gave me the PILGRIM."
+
+As though trying to prod my memory, I frowned. It was my conception of
+the part of a detective. "Hasn't Fletcher Farrell," I asked, "a house in
+Fairharbor?"
+
+"Harbor Castle," said the mate promptly. "It's on the other side of the
+point I'd as soon live in a jail!"
+
+"Why?" I exclaimed.
+
+But he was no longer listening. He pointed at the shore opposite.
+
+"See that flag running up the staff in that garden?" he cried. "That's
+my boy signalling. I got to get to the boat deck and wave back!"
+
+I felt as a detective. I had acquired important information. The mate,
+a man of judgment, preferred Fairharbor to New York. Also, to living in
+Harbor Castle, he preferred going to jail.
+
+The boat on which I had arrived was listed to start back at six the same
+evening on her return trip to New York. So, at the office of the line I
+checked my valise, and set forth to explore New Bedford.
+
+The whaling vessels moored to a nearby wharf, I inspected from hatches
+to keels, and by those on board was directed to a warehouse where were
+stored harpoons, whalebone, and wooden figure-heads. My pleasure in
+these led to my being passed on to a row of "antique" shops filled with
+relics of the days of whaling and also with genuine pie-crust tables,
+genuine flint-lock muskets, genuine Liverpool pitchers. I coveted
+especially old-time engravings of the whalers, and was told at
+Hatchardson's book-store on the main street others could be found in
+profusion.
+
+Hatchardson's proved to be a place of great delight. As you entered
+there were counters for magazines and post-cards, popular music, and
+best-selling novels, while in the rear of the shop tables and shelves
+were stocked with ancient volumes, and on the wall surrounding them hung
+engravings, prints and woodcuts of even the eighteenth century. Just as
+the drugstore on the corner seemed to be a waiting station for those
+of New Bedford who used the trolley-cars, so for those who moved in
+automobiles, or still clung to the family carriage, Hatchardson's
+appeared to be less a shop than a public meeting-place. I noticed that
+the clerks, most of whom were women, were with the customers on a most
+friendly footing, addressing them, and by them being addressed by name.
+Finding I was free to wander where I pleased, I walked to the rear of
+the shop and from one of the tables picked up a much-worn volume. It was
+entitled "The Log of the JOLLY POLLY", and was illustrated with wood cuts
+showing square-rigged ships and whales Spouting. For five minutes, lost
+to my Surroundings, I turned the pages; and then became conscious that
+across the table some one was watching me. I raised my eyes and beheld a
+face of most surprising charm, intelligence and beauty. It was so lovely
+that it made me wince. The face was the fortune, and judging from the
+fact that in her hand she held a salesbook, the sole fortune, of a tall
+young girl who apparently had approached to wait on me. She was looking
+toward the street, so that, with the book-shelves for a back-ground, her
+face was in profile, and I determined swiftly that if she were to wait
+on me she would be kept waiting as long as my money lasted. I did not
+want "The Log of the JOLLY POLLY," but I did want to hear the lovely
+lady speak, and especially I desired that the one to whom she spoke
+should be myself.
+
+"What is the price of this?" I asked. With magnificent self-control I
+kept my eyes on the book, but the lovely lady was so long silent that I
+raised them. To my surprise, I found on her face an expression of
+alarm and distress. With reluctance, and yet within her voice a certain
+hopefulness, she said, "Fifty dollars."
+
+Fifty dollars was a death blow. I had planned to keep the young lady
+selling books throughout the entire morning, but at fifty dollars a
+book, I would soon be owing her money. I attempted to gain time.
+
+"It must be very rare!" I said. I was afraid to look at her lest my
+admiration should give offense, so I pretended to admire the book.
+
+"It is the only one in existence," said the young lady. "At least, it is
+the only one for sale!"
+
+We were interrupted by the approach of a tall man who, from his playing
+the polite host and from his not wearing a hat, I guessed was Mr.
+Hatchardson himself. He looked from the book in my hand to the lovely
+lady and said smiling, "Have you lost it?"
+
+The girl did not smile. To her, apparently, it was no laughing matter.
+"I don't know--yet," she said. Her voice was charming, and genuinely
+troubled.
+
+Mr. Hatchardson, for later I learned it was he, took the book and showed
+me the title-page.
+
+"This was privately printed in 1830," he said, "by Captain Noah Briggs.
+He distributed a hundred presentation copies among his family and
+friends here in New Bedford. It is a most interesting volume."
+
+I did not find it so. For even as he spoke the young girl, still with a
+troubled countenance, glided away. Inwardly I cursed Captain Briggs and
+associated with him in my curse the polite Mr. Hatchardson. But, at his
+next words my interest returned. Still smiling, he lowered his voice.
+
+"Miss Briggs, the young lady who just left us," he said, "is the
+granddaughter of Captain Briggs, and she does not want the book to go
+out of the family; she wants it for herself." I interrupted eagerly.
+
+"But it is for sale?" Mr. Hatchardson reluctantly assented.
+
+"Then I will take it," I said.
+
+Fifty dollars is a great deal of money, but the face of the young lady
+had been very sad. Besides being sad, had it been aged, plain, and
+ill-tempered, that I still would have bought the book, is a question I
+have never determined.
+
+To Mr. Hatchardson, of my purpose to give the book to Miss Briggs, I
+said nothing. Instead I planned to send it to her anonymously by mail.
+She would receive it the next morning when I was arriving in New York,
+and, as she did not know my name, she could not possibly return it.
+At the post-office I addressed the "Log" to "Miss Briggs, care of
+Hatchardson's Bookstore," and then I returned to the store. I felt I
+had earned that pleasure. This time, Miss Briggs was in charge of the
+post-card counter, and as now a post-card was the only thing I could
+afford to buy, at seeing her there I was doubly pleased. But she was
+not pleased to see me. Evidently Mr. Hatchardson had told her I had
+purchased the "Log" and at her loss her very lovely face still showed
+disappointment. Toward me her manner was distinctly aggrieved.
+
+But of the "Log" I said nothing, and began recklessly purchasing
+post-cards that pictured the show places of New Bedford. Almost the
+first one I picked up was labelled "Harbor Castle. Residence of Fletcher
+Farrell." I need not say that I studied it intently. According to the
+post-card, Harbor Castle stood on a rocky point with water on both
+sides. It was an enormous, wide-spreading structure, as large as a
+fort. It exuded prosperity, opulence, extravagance, great wealth. I felt
+suddenly a filial impulse to visit the home of my would-be forefathers.
+
+"Is this place near here?" I asked.
+
+Miss Briggs told me that in order to reach it I should take the ferry to
+Fairharbor, and then cross that town to the Buzzards Bay side.
+
+"You can't miss it," she said. "It's a big stone house, with red and
+white awnings. If you see anything like a jail in ruffles, that's it."
+
+It was evident that with the home I had rejected Miss Briggs was
+unimpressed; but seeing me add the post-card to my collection, she
+offered me another.
+
+"This," she explained, "is Harbor Castle from the bay. That is their
+yacht in the foreground."
+
+The post-card showed a very beautiful yacht of not less than two
+thousand tons. Beneath it was printed "HARBOR LIGHTS; steam yacht owned
+by Fletcher Farrell." I always had dreamed of owning a steam yacht, and
+seeing it stated in cold type that one was owned by "Fletcher Farrell,"
+even though I was not that Fletcher Farrell, gave me a thrill of guilty
+pleasure. I gazed upon the post-card with envy.
+
+"HARBOR LIGHTS is a strange name for a yacht," I ventured. Miss Briggs
+smiled.
+
+"Not for that yacht," she said. "She never leaves it."
+
+I wished to learn more of my would-be parents, and I wished to keep
+on talking with the lovely Miss Briggs, so, as an excuse for both, I
+pretended I was interested in the Farrells because I had something I
+wanted to sell them.
+
+"This Fletcher Farrell must be very rich," I said. "I wonder," I asked,
+"if I could sell him an automobile?" The moment I spoke I noticed that
+the manner of Miss Briggs toward Me perceptibly softened. Perhaps, from
+my buying offhand a fifty-dollar book she had thought me one of the
+rich, and had begun to suspect I was keeping her waiting on me only
+because I found her extremely easy to look at. Many times before, in a
+similar manner, other youths must have imposed upon her, and perhaps,
+also, in concealing my admiration, I had not entirely succeeded.
+
+But, when she believed that, like herself, I was working for my living,
+she became more human.
+
+"What car are you selling?" she asked. "I am TRYING to sell," I
+corrected her, "the Blue Bird, six cylinder."
+
+"I never heard of it," said Miss Briggs.
+
+"Nor has any one else," I answered, with truth. "That is one reason why
+I can't sell it. I arrived here this morning, and," I added with pathos,
+"I haven't sold a car yet!"
+
+Miss Briggs raised her beautiful eyebrows skeptically. "Have you tried?"
+she said.
+
+A brilliant idea came to me. In a side street I had passed a garage
+where Photaix cars were advertised for hire. I owned a Phoenix, and
+I thought I saw a way by which, for a happy hour, I might secure the
+society of Miss Briggs.
+
+"I am an agent and demonstrator for the Phoenix also," I said glibly;
+"maybe I could show you one?"
+
+"Show me one?" exclaimed Miss Briggs. "One sees them everywhere! They
+are always under your feet!"
+
+"I mean," I explained, "might I take you for a drive in one?"
+
+It was as though I had completely vanished. So far as the lovely Miss
+Briggs was concerned I had ceased to exist. She turned toward a nice old
+lady.
+
+"What can I show you, Mrs. Scudder?" she asked cheerily; "and how is
+that wonderful baby?"
+
+I felt as though I had been lifted by the collar, thrown out upon a
+hard sidewalk, and my hat tossed after me. Greatly shaken, and mentally
+brushing the dust from my hands and knees, I hastened to the ferry and
+crossed to Fairharbor. I was extremely angry. By an utter stranger I
+had been misjudged, snubbed and cast into outer darkness. For myself I
+readily found excuses. If a young woman was so attractive that at the
+first sight of her men could not resist buying her fifty-dollar books
+and hiring automobiles in which to take her driving, the fault was hers.
+I assured myself that girls as lovely as Miss Briggs were a menace to
+the public. They should not be at large. An ordinance should require
+them to go masked. For Miss Briggs also I was able to make excuses. Why
+should she not protect herself from the advances of strange young men?
+If a popular novelist, and especially an ex-popular one, chose to go
+about disguised as a drummer for the Blue Bird automobile and behaved
+as such, and was treated as such, what right had he to complain? So
+I persuaded myself I had been punished as I deserved. But to salve my
+injured pride I assured myself also that any one who read my novels
+ought to know my attitude toward any lovely lady could be only
+respectful, protecting, and chivalrous. But with this consoling thought
+the trouble was that nobody read my novels.
+
+In finding Harbor Castle I had no difficulty. It stood upon a rocky
+point that jutted into Buzzards Bay. Five acres of artificial lawn and
+flower-beds of the cemetery and railroad-station school of horticulture
+surrounded it, and from the highroad it was protected by a stone wall so
+low that to the passerby, of the beauties of Harbor Castle nothing was
+left to the imagination. Over this wall roses under conflicting banners
+of pink and red fought fiercely. One could almost hear the shrieks
+of the wounded. Upon the least thorny of these I seated myself and in
+tender melancholy gazed upon the home of my childhood. That is, upon the
+home that might-have-been.
+
+When surveying a completed country home, to make the owner thoroughly
+incensed the correct thing to say is, "This place has great
+possibilities!"
+
+Harbor Castle had more possibilities than any other castle I ever
+visited. But in five minutes I had altered it to suit myself. I had
+ploughed up the flower-beds, dug a sunken garden, planted a wind screen
+of fir, spruce, and Pine, and with a huge brick wall secured warmth and
+privacy. So pleased was I with my changes, that when I departed I was
+sad and downcast. The boat-house of which Mrs. Farrell had spoken
+was certainly an ideal work-shop, the tennis-courts made those at
+the Newport Casino look like a ploughed field, and the swimming-pool,
+guarded by white pillars and overhung with grape-vines, was a cool
+and refreshing picture. As, hot and perspiring, I trudged back through
+Fairharbor, the memory of these haunted me. That they also tempted me,
+it is impossible to deny. But not for long. For, after passing through
+the elm-shaded streets to that side of the village that faced the
+harbor, I came upon the cottages I had seen from the New Bedford shore.
+At close range they appeared even more attractive than when pointed
+out to me by the mate of the steamboat. They were very old, very
+weather-stained and covered with honeysuckle. Flat stones in a setting
+of grass led from the gates to the arched doorways, hollyhocks rose
+above hedges of box, and from the verandas one could look out upon the
+busy harbor and the houses of New Bedford rising in steps up the sloping
+hills to a sky-line of tree-tops and church spires. The mate had told
+me that for what he had rented a flat in New York he had secured one of
+these charming old world homes. And as I passed them I began to pick out
+the one in which when I retired from the world I would settle down. This
+time I made no alterations. How much the near presence of Miss Briggs
+had to do with my determination to settle down in Fairharbor, I cannot
+now remember. But, certainly as I crossed the bridge toward New Bedford,
+thoughts of her entirely filled my mind. I assured my self this was
+so only because she was beautiful. I was sure her outward loveliness
+advertised a nature equally lovely, but for my sudden and extreme
+interest I had other excuses. Her in dependence in earning her living,
+her choice in earning it among books and pictures, her pride of family
+as shown by her efforts to buy the family heirloom, all these justified
+my admiration. And her refusing to go joy-riding with an impertinent
+stranger, even though the impertinent stranger was myself, was an act I
+applauded. The more I thought of Miss Briggs the more was I disinclined
+to go away leaving with her an impression of myself so unpleasant as
+the one she then held. I determined to remove it. At least, until I had
+redeemed myself, I would remain in New Bedford. The determination gave
+me the greatest satisfaction. With a light heart I returned to the
+office of the steamboat line and retrieving my suit-case started with it
+toward the Parker House. It was now past five o'clock, the stores were
+closed, and all the people who had not gone to the baseball game with
+Fall River were in the streets. In consequence, as I was passing the
+post-office, Miss Briggs came down the steps, and we were face to face.
+
+In her lovely eyes was an expression of mingled doubt and indignation
+and in her hand freshly torn from the papers in which I had wrapped it,
+was "The Log of the JOLLY POLLY." In action Miss Briggs was as direct
+as a submarine. At sight of me she attacked. "Did you send me this?" she
+asked.
+
+I lowered my bag to the sidewalk and prepared for battle. "I didn't
+think of your going to the post-office," I said. "I planned you'd get
+it to-morrow after I'd left. When I sent it, I thought I would never see
+you again."
+
+"Then you did send it!" exclaimed Miss Briggs. As though the book were
+a hot plate she dropped it into my hand. She looked straight at me, but
+her expression suggested she was removing a caterpillar from her pet
+rosebush.
+
+"You had no right," she said. "You may not have meant to be impertinent,
+but you were!"
+
+Again, as though I had disappeared from the face of the earth, Miss
+Briggs gazed coldly about her, and with dignity started to cross the
+street. Her dignity was so great that she glanced neither to the left
+nor right. In consequence she did not see an automobile that swung
+recklessly around a trolley-car and dived at her. But other people saw
+it and shrieked. I also shrieked, and dropping the suit-case and the
+"Log," jumped into the street, grabbed Miss Briggs by both arms, and
+flung her back to the sidewalk. That left me where she had been, and the
+car caught me up and slammed me head first against a telegraph pole.
+The pole was hard, and if any one counted me out I did not stay awake to
+hear him. When I came to I was conscious that I was lying on a sidewalk;
+but to open my eyes, I was much too tired. A voice was saying, "Do you
+know who he is, Miss?"
+
+The voice that replied was the voice of the lovely Miss Briggs. But now
+I hardly recognized it. It was full of distress, of tenderness and pity.
+
+"No, I don't know him," it stammered. "He's a salesman--he was in the
+store this morning--he's selling motor-cars." The first voice laughed.
+
+"Motor-cars!" he exclaimed. "That's why he ain't scared of 'em. He
+certainly saved you from that one! I seen him, Miss Briggs, and he most
+certainly saved your life!"
+
+In response to this astonishing statement I was delighted to hear a
+well-trained male chorus exclaim in assent.
+
+The voices differed; some spoke in the accents of Harvard, pure and
+undefiled, some in a "down East" dialect, others suggested Italian
+peanut venders and Portuguese sailors, but all agreed that the life of
+Miss Briggs had been saved by myself. I had intended coming to, but
+on hearing the chorus working so harmoniously I decided I had better
+continue unconscious.
+
+Then a new voice said importantly: "The marks on his suitcase are 'F.
+F., New York."
+
+I appreciated instantly that to be identified as Fletcher Farrell meant
+humiliation and disaster. The other Fletcher Farrells would soon return
+to New Bedford. They would learn that in their absence I had been spying
+upon the home I had haughtily rejected. Besides, one of the chorus
+might remember that three years back Fletcher Farrell had been a popular
+novelist and might recognize me, and Miss Briggs would discover I was
+not an automobile agent and that I had lied to her. I saw that I must
+continue to lie to her. I thought of names beginning with "F," and
+selected "Frederick Fitzgibbon." To christen yourself while your eyes
+are shut and your head rests on a curb-stone is not easy, and later I
+was sorry I had not called myself Fairchild as being more aristocratic.
+But then it was too late. As Fitzgibbon I had come back to life, and as
+Fitzgibbon I must remain.
+
+When I opened my eyes I found the first voice belonged to a policeman
+who helped me to my feet and held in check the male chorus. The object
+of each was to lead me to a drink. But instead I turned dizzily to Miss
+Briggs. She was holding my hat and she handed it to me. Her lovely eyes
+were filled with relief and her charming voice with remorse.
+
+"I--I can't possibly thank you," she stammered. "Are you badly hurt?"
+
+I felt I had never listened to words so original and well chosen. In
+comparison, the brilliant and graceful speeches I had placed on the lips
+of my heroines became flat and unconvincing.
+
+I assured her I was not at all hurt and endeavored, jauntily, to replace
+my hat. But where my head had hit the telegraph pole a large bump had
+risen which made my hat too small. So I hung it on the bump. It gave me
+a rakish air. One of the chorus returned my bag and another the "Log."
+Not wishing to remind Miss Briggs of my past impertinences; I guiltily
+concealed it.
+
+Then the policeman asked my name and I gave the one I had just invented,
+and inquired my way to the Parker House. Half the chorus volunteered to
+act as my escort, and as I departed, I stole a last look at Miss Briggs.
+She and the policeman were taking down the pedigree of the chauffeur
+of the car that had hit me. He was trying to persuade them he was
+not intoxicated, and with each speech was furnishing evidence to the
+contrary.
+
+After I had given a cold bath to the bump on my head and to the rest of
+my body which for the moment seemed the lesser of the two, I got into
+dry things and seated myself on the veranda of the hotel. With a cigar
+to soothe my jangling nerves, I considered the position of Miss Briggs
+and myself. I was happy in believing it had improved. On the morrow
+there was no law to prevent me from visiting Hatchardson's Bookstore,
+and in view of what had happened since last I left it, I had reason to
+hope Miss Briggs would receive me more, kindly. Of the correctness of
+this diagnosis I was at once assured. In front of the hotel a district
+messenger-boy fell off his bicycle and with unerring instinct picked
+me out as Mr. Fitzgibbon of New York. The note he carried was from Miss
+Briggs. It stated that in the presence of so many people it had been
+impossible for her to thank me as she wished for the service I had
+rendered her, and that Mrs. Cutler, with whom she boarded, and herself,
+would be glad if after supper I would call upon them. I gave the
+messenger-boy enough gold to enable him to buy a new bicycle and in my
+room executed a dance symbolizing joy. I then kicked my suit-case under
+the bed. I would not soon need it. Now that Miss Briggs had forgiven me,
+I was determined to live and die in New Bedford.
+
+The home of Mrs. Cutler, where Miss Briggs lodged and boarded, was in
+a side street of respectable and distinguished antiquity. The street
+itself was arched with the branches of giant elms, and each house was an
+island surrounded by grass, and over the porches climbed roses. It was
+too warm to remain indoors, so we sat on the steps of the porch, and
+through the leaves of the elms the electric light globe served us as a
+moon. For an automobile salesman I was very shy, very humble.
+
+Twice before I had given offense and I was determined if it lay with
+me, it would not happen again. I did not hope to interest Miss Briggs
+in myself, nor did I let it appear how tremendously I was interested
+in her. For the moment I was only a stranger in a strange land making
+a social call. I asked Miss Briggs about New Bedford and the whaling,
+about the books she sold, and the books she liked. It was she who
+talked. When I found we looked at things in the same way and that the
+same things gave us pleasure I did not comment on that astonishing fact,
+but as an asset more precious than gold, stored it away. When I returned
+to the hotel I found that concerning Miss Briggs I had made important
+discoveries. I had learned that her name was Polly, that the JOLLY POLLY
+had been christened after her grandmother, that she was an orphan, that
+there were relatives with whom she did not "hit it off," that she was
+very well read, possessed of a most charming sense of humor, and that I
+found her the most attractive girl I had ever met.
+
+The next morning I awoke in an exalted frame of mind. I was in love with
+life, with New Bedford, and with Polly Briggs. I had been in love before
+but never with a young lady who worked in a shop, and I found that
+loving a lady so occupied gives one a tremendous advantage. For when you
+call she must always be at home, nor can she plead another engagement.
+So, before noon, knowing she could not deny herself, I was again at
+Hatchardson's, purchasing more postal-cards. But Miss Briggs was not
+deceived. Nor apparently was any one else. The BEDFORD MERCURY had told
+how, the previous evening, Frederick Fitzgibbon, an automobile salesman
+from New York, had been knocked out by an automobile while saving Miss
+Polly Briggs from a similar fate; and Mr. Hatchardson and all the old
+ladies who were in the bookstore making purchases congratulated me. It
+was evident that in Miss Briggs they took much more than a perfunctory
+interest. They were very fond of her. She was an institution; and I
+could see that as such to visitors she would be pointed out with pride,
+as was the new bronze statue of the Whaleman in Court House Square. Nor
+did they cease discussing her until they had made it quite clear to me
+that in being knocked out in her service I was a very lucky man. I did
+not need to be told that, especially as I noted that Miss Briggs was
+anxious lest I should not be properly modest. Indeed, her wish that in
+the eyes of the old ladies I should appear to advantage was so evident,
+and her interest in me so proprietary, that I was far from unhappy.
+
+The afternoon I spent in Fairharbor. From a real estate agent I obtained
+keys to those cottages on the water-front that were for rent, and I
+busied myself exploring them. The one I most liked I pretended I had
+rented, and I imagined myself at work among the flower-beds, or with
+my telescope scanning the shipping in the harbor, or at night seated
+in front of the open fire watching the green and blue flames of the
+driftwood. Later, irresolutely, I wandered across town to Harbor Castle,
+this time walking entirely around it and coming upon a sign that read,
+"Visitors Welcome. Do not pick the flowers."
+
+Assuring myself that I was moved only by curiosity, I accepted the
+invitation, nor, though it would greatly have helped the appearance of
+the cemetery-like beds, did I pick the flowers. On a closer view Harbor
+Castle certainly possessed features calculated to make an impecunious
+author Stop, look, and listen. I pictured it peopled with my friends. I
+saw them at the long mahogany table of which through the French window
+I got a glimpse, or dancing in the music-room, or lounging on the wicker
+chairs on the sweeping verandas. I could see them in flannels at tennis,
+in bathing-suits diving from the spring-board of the swimming pool,
+departing on excursions in the motor-cars that at the moment in front
+of the garage were being sponged and polished, so that they flashed like
+mirrors. And I thought also of the two-thousand-ton yacht and to what
+far countries, to what wonderful adventures it might carry me.
+
+But all of these pictures lacked one feature. In none of them did
+Polly Briggs appear. For, as I very well knew, that was something the
+ambitions of Mrs. Farrell would not permit. That lady wanted me as a son
+only because she thought I was a social asset. By the same reasoning,
+as a daughter-in-law, she would not want a shop-girl, especially not one
+who as a shop-girl was known to all New Bedford. My mood as I turned my
+back upon the golden glories of Harbor Castle and walked to New Bedford
+was thoughtful.
+
+I had telegraphed my servant to bring me more clothes and my Phoenix
+car; and as I did not want him inquiring for Fletcher Farrell had
+directed him to come by boat to Fall River. Accordingly, the next
+morning, I took the trolley to that city, met him at the wharf, and sent
+him back to New York. I gave him a check with instructions to have it
+cashed in that city and to send the money, and my mail, to Frederick
+Fitzgibbon. This ALIAS I explained to him by saying I was gathering
+material for an article to prove one could live on fifty cents a day.
+He was greatly relieved to learn I did not need a valet to help me prove
+it.
+
+I returned driving the Phoenix to New Bedford, and as it was a Saturday,
+when the store closed at noon, I had the ineffable delight of taking
+Polly Briggs for a drive. As chaperons she invited two young friends of
+hers named Lowell. They had been but very lately married, and regarded
+me no more than a chauffeur they had hired by the hour. This left Polly
+who was beside me on the front seat, and myself, to our own devices.
+Our devices were innocent enough. They consisted in conveying the
+self-centred Lowells so far from home that they could not get back for
+supper and were so forced to dine with me. Polly, for as Polly I now
+thought of her, discovered the place. It was an inn, on the edge of a
+lake with an Indian name. We did not get home until late, but it had
+been such a successful party that before we separated we planned another
+journey for the morrow. That one led to the Cape by way of Bourne and
+Wood's Hole, and back again to the North Shore to Barnstable, where we
+lunched. It was a grand day and the first of others just as happy. After
+that every afternoon when the store closed I picked up the Lowells; and
+then Polly, and we sought adventures. Sometimes we journeyed no farther
+than the baseball park, but as a rule I drove them to some inn for
+dinner, where later, if there were music, we danced, if not, we returned
+slowly through the pine woods and so home by the longest possible route.
+The next Saturday I invited them to Boston. We started early, dined at
+the Touraine and went on to a musical comedy, where I had reserved seats
+in the front row. This nearly led to my undoing. Late in the first act
+a very merry party of young people who had come up from Newport and
+Narragansett to the Coates-Islip wedding filled the stage boxes and
+at sight of me began to wave and beckon. They were so insistent that
+between the acts I thought it safer to visit them. They wanted to know
+why I had not appeared at the wedding, and who was the beautiful girl.
+
+The next morning on our return trip to New Bedford Polly said, "I read
+in the papers this morning that those girls in that theatre party last
+night were the bridesmaids at the Coates-Islip wedding. They seemed to
+know you quite well."
+
+I explained that in selling automobiles one became acquainted with many
+people.
+
+Polly shook her head and laughed. Then she turned and looked at me.
+
+"You never sold an automobile in your life," she said.
+
+With difficulty I kept my eyes on the road; but I protested vigorously.
+
+"Don't think I have been spying," said Polly; "I found you out quite by
+accident. Yesterday a young man I know asked me to persuade you to turn
+in your Phoenix and let him sell you one of the new model. I said
+you yourself were the agent for the Phoenix, and he said that, on the
+contrary, HE was, and that you had no right to sell the car in his
+TERRITORY." I grinned guiltily and said:
+
+"Well, I HAVEN'T sold any, have I?"
+
+"That is not the point," protested Polly. "What was your reason for
+telling me you were trying to earn a living selling automobiles?"
+
+"So that I could take you driving in one," I answered.
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Polly.
+
+There was a pause during which in much inward trepidation I avoided
+meeting her eyes. Then Polly added thoughtfully, "I think that was a
+very good reason."
+
+In our many talks the name of the Fletcher Farrells had never been
+mentioned. I had been most careful to avoid it. As each day passed, and
+their return imminent, and in consequence my need to fly grew more near,
+and the name was still unspoken, I was proportionately grateful. But
+when the name did come up I had reason to be pleased, for Polly spoke
+it with approval, and it was not of the owner of Harbor Castle she was
+speaking, but of myself. It was one evening about two weeks after we
+had met, and I had side-stepped the Lowells and was motoring with Polly
+alone. We were talking of our favorite authors, dead and alive.
+
+"You may laugh," said Polly, and she said it defiantly, "and I don't
+know whether you would call him among the dead or the living, but I am
+very fond of Fletcher Farrell!"
+
+My heart leaped. I was so rattled that I nearly ran the car into a stone
+wall. I thought I was discovered and that Polly was playing with me. But
+her next words showed that she was innocent. She did not know that the
+man to whom she was talking and of whom she was talking were the same.
+"Of course you will say," she went on, "that he is too romantic, that he
+is not true to life. But I never lived in the seventeenth century, so
+I don't know whether he is true to life or not. And I like romance. The
+life I lead in the store gives me all the reality I want. I like to read
+about brave men and great and gracious ladies."
+
+"I never met any girls like those Farrell write about, but it's nice to
+think they exist. I wish I were like them. And, his men, too--they make
+love better than any other man I ever read about."
+
+"Better than I do?" I asked.
+
+Polly gazed at the sky, frowning severely. After a pause, and as though
+she had dropped my remark into the road and the wheels had crushed it,
+she said, coldly, "Talking about books----"
+
+"No," I corrected, "we were talking about Fletcher Farrell."
+
+"Then," said Polly with some asperity, "don't change the subject. Do you
+know," she went on hurriedly, "that you look like him--like the pictures
+of him--as he was."
+
+"Heavens!" I exclaimed, "the man's not dead!"
+
+"You know what I mean," protested Polly. "As he was before he stopped
+writing."
+
+"Nor has he stopped writing," I objected; "his books have stopped
+selling." Polly turned upon me eagerly.
+
+"Do you know him?" she demanded. I answered with caution that I had met
+him.
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed, "tell me about him!"
+
+I was extremely embarrassed. It was a bad place. About myself I could
+not say anything pleasant, and behind my back, as it were, I certainly
+was not going to say anything unpleasant. But Polly relieved me of the
+necessity of saying anything.
+
+"I don't know any man," she exclaimed fervently, "I would so like to
+meet!"
+
+It seemed to me that after that the less I said the better. So I told
+her something was wrong with the engine and by the time I had pretended
+to fix it, I had led the conversation away from Fletcher Farrell as a
+novelist to myself as a chauffeur.
+
+The next morning at the hotel, temptation was again waiting for me. This
+time it came in the form of a letter from my prospective father-in-law.
+It had been sent from Cape May to my address in New York, and by my
+servant forwarded in an envelope addressed to "Frederick Fitzgibbon."
+
+It was what in the world of commerce is called a "follow-up" letter. It
+recalled the terms of his offer to me, and improved upon them. It made
+it clear that even after meeting me Mr. Farrell and his wife were still
+anxious to stand for me as a son. They were good enough to say they had
+found me a "perfect gentleman." They hoped that after considering their
+proposition I had come to look upon it with favor.
+
+As his son, Mr. Farrell explained, my annual allowance would be the
+interest on one million dollars, and upon his death his entire fortune
+and property he would bequeath to me. He was willing, even anxious, to
+put this in writing. In a week he would return to Fairharbor when he
+hoped to receive a favorable answer. In the meantime he enclosed a
+letter to his housekeeper.
+
+"Don't take anything for granted," he urged, "but go to Fairharbor and
+present this letter. See the place for yourself. Spend the week there
+and act like you were the owner. My housekeeper has orders to take her
+orders from you. Don't refuse something you have never seen!"
+
+This part of the letter made me feel as mean and uncomfortable as a
+wet hen. The open, almost too open, methods of Mr. Farrell made my own
+methods appear contemptible. He was urging me to be his guest and I
+was playing the spy. But against myself my indignation did not last.
+A letter, bearing a special delivery stamp which arrived later in the
+afternoon from Mrs. Farrell turned my indignation against her, and with
+bitterness. She also had been spying. Her letter read:
+
+The Pinkerton I employed to report on you states that after losing you
+for a week he located you at New Bedford, that you are living under
+the name of Fitzgibbon, and that you have made yourself conspicuous by
+attentions to a young person employed in a shop. This is for me a
+great blow and disappointment, and I want you to clearly understand Mr.
+Farrell's offer is made to you as an unmarried man. I cannot believe
+your attentions are serious, but whether they are serious or not, they
+must cease. The detective reports the pair of you are now the talk of
+Fairharbor. You are making me ridiculous. I do not want a shop-girl for
+a daughter-in-law and you will either give up her acquaintance or give
+up Harbor Castle!
+
+I am no believer in ultimatums. In attaining one's end they seldom prove
+successful. I tore the note into tiny pieces, and defiantly, with Polly
+in the seat beside me, drove into the open country. At first we picked
+our way through New Bedford, from the sidewalks her friends waved to
+her, and my acquaintances smiled. The detective was right. We had indeed
+made ourselves the talk of the town, and I was determined the talk must
+cease.
+
+We had reached Ruggles Point when the car developed an illness. I got
+out to investigate. On both sides of the road were tall hemlocks and
+through them to the west we could see the waters of Sippican Harbor in
+the last yellow rays of the sun as it sank behind Rochester. Overhead
+was the great harvest moon.
+
+Polly had taken from the pocket of the car some maps and guide-books,
+and while I lifted the hood and was deep in the machinery she was
+turning them over.
+
+"What," she asked, "is the number of this car? I forget."
+
+As I have said, I was preoccupied and deep in the machinery; that
+is, with a pair of pliers I was wrestling with a recalcitrant wire.
+Unsuspiciously I answered: "Eight-two-eight."
+
+A moment later I heard a sharp cry, and raised my head. With eyes wide
+in terror Polly was staring at an open book. Without appreciating my
+danger I recognized it as "Who's Who in Automobiles." The voice of Polly
+rose in a cry of disbelief.
+
+"Eight-two-eight," she read, "owned by Fletcher Farrell, Hudson
+Apartments, New York City." She raised her eyes to mine.
+
+"Is that true?" she gasped. "Are you Fletcher Farrell?" I leaned into
+the car and got hold of her hand.
+
+"That is not important," I stammered. "What is important is this: Will
+you be Mrs. Fletcher Farrell?"
+
+What she said may be guessed from the fact that before we returned to
+New Bedford we drove to Fairharbor and I showed her the cottage I liked
+best. It was the one with the oldest clapboard shingles, the oldest box
+hedge, the most fragrant honeysuckles, and a lawn that wet its feet in
+the surf. Polly liked it the best, too.
+
+By now the daylight had gone, and on the ships the riding lights were
+shining, but shining sulkily, for the harvest moon filled the world with
+golden radiance. As we stood on the porch of the empty cottage, in the
+shadow of the honeysuckles, Polly asked an impossible question. It was:
+
+"How MUCH do you love me?"
+
+"You will never know," I told her, "but I can tell you this: I love you
+more than a two-thousand-ton yacht, the interest on one million dollars,
+and Harbor Castle!"
+
+It was a wasteful remark, for Polly instantly drew away.
+
+"What DO you mean?" she laughed.
+
+"Fletcher Farrell of Harbor Castle," I explained, "offered me those
+things, minus you. But I wanted you."
+
+"I see," cried Polly, "he wanted to adopt you. He always talks of that.
+I am sorry for him. He wants a son so badly." She sighed softly, "Poor
+uncle!"
+
+"Poor WHAT!" I yelled.
+
+"Didn't you know," exclaimed Polly, "that Mrs. Farrell was a Briggs! She
+was my father's sister."
+
+"Then YOU," I said, "are the relation who was 'too high and mighty'!"
+Polly shook her head.
+
+"No," she said, "I didn't want to be dependent."
+
+"And you gave up all that," I exclaimed, "and worked at Hatchardson's,
+just because you didn't want to be dependent!"
+
+"I like my uncle-in-law very much," explained Polly, "but not my aunt.
+So, it was no temptation. No more," she cried, looking at me as though
+she were proud of me, "than it was to you."
+
+In guilty haste I changed the subject. In other words, I kissed her. I
+knew some day I would have to confess. But until we were safely married
+that could wait. Before confessing I would make sure of her first. The
+next day we announced our engagement and Polly consented that it should
+be a short one. For, as I pointed out, already she had kept me waiting
+thirty years. The newspapers dug up the fact that I had once been a
+popular novelist, and the pictures they published of Polly proved her so
+beautiful that, in congratulation, I received hundreds of telegrams. The
+first one to arrive came from Cape May. It read:
+
+My dear boy, your uncle elect sends his heartiest congratulations to
+you and love to Polly. Don't make any plans until you hear from me--am
+leaving to-night. FLETCHER FARRELL.
+
+In terror Polly fled into my arms. Even when NOT in terror it was a
+practice I strongly encouraged.
+
+"We are lost!" she cried. "They will adopt us in spite of ourselves.
+They will lock us up for life in Harbor Castle! I don't WANT to be
+adopted. I want YOU! I want my little cottage!"
+
+I assured her she should have her little cottage; I had already bought
+it. And during the two weeks before the wedding, when I was not sitting
+around Boston while Polly bought clothes, we refurnished it. Polly
+furnished the library, chiefly with my own books, and "The Log of
+the JOLLY POLLY." I furnished the kitchen. For a man cannot live on
+honeysuckles alone. My future uncle-in-law was gentle but firm.
+
+"You can't get away from the fact," he said, "that you will be my nephew,
+whether you like it or not. So, be kind to an old man and let him give
+the bride away and let her be married from Harbor Castle."
+
+In her white and green High Flier car and all of her diamonds, Mrs.
+Farrell called on Polly and begged the same boon. We were too happy to
+see any one else dissatisfied; so though we had planned the quietest of
+weddings, we gave consent. Somehow we survived it. But now we recall
+it only as that terrible time when we were never alone. For once in the
+hands of our rich relations the quiet wedding we had arranged became a
+royal alliance, a Field of the Cloth of Gold, the chief point of attack
+for the moving-picture men.
+
+The youths who came from New York to act as my ushers informed me that
+the Ushers' Dinner at Harbor Castle-from which, after the fish course,
+I had fled--was considered by them the most successful ushers' dinner in
+their career of crime. My uncle-in-Law also testifies to this. He ought
+to know. At four in the morning he was assisting the ushers in throwing
+the best man and the butler into the swimming-pool.
+
+For our honeymoon he loaned us the yacht. "Take her as far as you like,"
+he said. "After this she belongs to you and Polly. And find a better
+name for her than Harbor Lights. It sounds too much like a stay-at-home.
+And I want you two to see the world." I thanked him, and suggested he
+might rechristen her the JOLLY POLLY.
+
+"That was the name," I pointed out, "of the famous whaler owned by
+Captain Briggs, your wife's father, and it would be a compliment to
+Polly, too."
+
+My uncle-in-law-elect agreed heartily; but made one condition:
+
+"I'll christen her that," he said, "if you will promise to write a new
+Log of the JOLLY POLLY." I promised. This is it.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Log of The "Jolly Polly", by 
+Richard Harding Davis
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of The Log of the Jolly Polly, by Davis
+#20 in our series by Richard Harding Davis
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+The Log of The "Jolly Polly"
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+by Richard Harding Davis
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+May, 1999  [Etext #1808]
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of The Log of the Jolly Polly, by Davis
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+Etext scanned by Aaron Cannon of Paradise, California
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+
+
+
+
+THE LOG OF THE "JOLLY POLLY"
+
+
+Temptation came to me when I was in the worst possible position to
+resist it.
+
+It is a way temptation has. Whenever I swear off drinking
+invariably I am invited to an ushers' dinner. Whenever I am rich,
+only the highbrow publications that pay the least, want my work.
+But the moment I am poverty-stricken the MANICURE GIRL'S MAGAZINE
+and the ROT AND SPOT WEEKLY spring at me with offers of a dollar a
+word. Temptation always is on the job. When I am down and out
+temptation always is up and at me.
+
+When first the Farrells tempted me my vogue had departed. On my
+name and "past performances" I could still dispose of what I wrote,
+but only to magazines that were just starting. The others knew I no
+longer was a best-seller. All the real editors knew it. So did the
+theatrical managers.
+
+My books and plays had flourished in the dark age of the
+historical-romantic novel. My heroes wore gauntlets and long
+swords. They fought for the Cardinal or the King, and each
+
+loved a high-born demoiselle who was a ward of the King or the
+Cardinal, and with feminine perversity, always of whichever one her
+young man was fighting. With people who had never read Guizot's
+"History of France," my books were popular, and for me made a great
+deal of money. This was fortunate, for my parents had left me
+nothing save expensive tastes. When the tastes became habits, the
+public left me. It turned to white-slave and crook plays, and to
+novels true to life; so true to life that one felt the author must
+at one time have been a masseur in a Turkish bath.
+
+So, my heroines in black velvet, and my heroes with long swords
+were "scrapped." As one book reviewer put it, "To expect the public
+of to-day to read the novels of Fletcher Farrell is like asking
+people to give up the bunny hug and go back to the lancers."
+
+And, to make it harder, I was only thirty years old.
+
+It was at this depressing period in my career that I received a
+letter from Fairharbor, Massachusetts, signed Fletcher Farrell. The
+letter was written on the business paper of the Farrell Cotton
+Mills, and asked if I were related to the Farrells of Duncannon, of
+the County Wexford, who emigrated to Massachusetts in 186o. The
+writer added that he had a grandfather named Fletcher and suggested
+we might be related. From the handwriting of Fletcher Farrell and
+from the way he ill-treated the King's English I did not feel the
+ties of kinship calling me very loud. I replied briefly that my
+people originally came from Youghal, in County Cork, that as early
+as 1730 they had settled in New York, and that all my relations on
+the Farrell side either were still at Youghal, or dead. Mine was
+not an encouraging letter; nor did I mean it to be; and I was
+greatly surprised two days later to receive a telegram reading,
+"Something to your advantage to communicate; wife and self calling
+on you Thursday at noon. Fletcher Farrell." I was annoyed, but also
+interested. The words "something to your advantage" always possess
+a certain charm. So, when the elevator boy telephoned that Mr. and
+Mrs. Farrell were calling, I told him to bring them up.
+
+My first glance at the Farrells convinced me the interview was a
+waste of time. I was satisfied that from two such persons, nothing
+to my advantage could possibly emanate. On the contrary, from their
+lack of ease, it looked as though they had come to beg or borrow.
+They resembled only a butler and housekeeper applying for a new
+place under the disadvantage of knowing they had no reference from
+the last one. Of the two, I better liked the man. He was an
+elderly, pleasant-faced Irishman, smooth-shaven, red-cheeked, and
+with white hair. Although it was July, he wore a frock coat, and
+carried a new high hat that glistened. As though he thought at any
+moment it might explode, he held it from him, and eyed it
+fearfully. Mrs. Farrell was of a more sophisticated type. The lines
+in her face and hands showed that for years she might have known
+hard physical work. But her dress was in the latest fashion, and
+her fingers held more diamonds than, out of a showcase, I ever had
+seen.
+
+With embarrassment old man Farrell began his speech. Evidently it
+had been rehearsed and as he recited it, in swift asides, his wife
+prompted him; but to note the effect he was making, she kept her
+eyes upon me. Having first compared my name, fame, and novels with
+those of Charles Dickens, Walter Scott, and Archibald Clavering
+Gunter, and to the disadvantage of those gentlemen, Farrell said
+the similarity of our names often had been commented upon, and that
+when from my letter he had learned our families both were from the
+South of Ireland, he had a premonition we might be related.
+Duncannon, where he was born, he pointed out, was but forty miles
+from Youghal, and the fishing boats out of Waterford Harbor often
+sought shelter in Blackwater River. Had any of my forebears, he
+asked, followed the herring?
+
+Alarmed, lest at this I might take offense, Mrs. Farrell
+interrupted him.
+
+"The Fletchers and O'Farrells of Youghal she exclaimed, "were
+gentry. What would they be doing in a trawler?"
+
+I assured her that so far as I knew, 1750 being before my time,
+they might have been smugglers and pirates.
+
+"All I ever heard of the Farrells," I told her, begins after they
+settled in New York. And there is no one I can ask concerning them.
+My father and mother are dead; all my father's relatives are dead,
+and my mother's relatives are as good as dead. I mean," I added,
+"we don't speak!"
+
+To my surprise, this information appeared to afford my visitors
+great satisfaction. They exchanged hasty glances.
+
+"Then," exclaimed Mr. Farrell, eagerly; "if I understand you, you
+have no living relations at all--barring those that are dead!"
+
+"Exactly!" I agreed.
+
+He drew a deep sigh of relief. With apparent irrelevance but with
+a carelessness that was obviously assumed, he continued.
+
+"Since I come to America," he announced, "I have made heaps of
+money. "As though in evidence of his prosperity, he flashed the
+high hat. In the sunlight it coruscated like one of his wife's
+diamonds. "Heaps of money," he repeated. "The mills are still in my
+name, he went on, "but five years since I sold them-- We live on
+the income. We own Harbor Castle, the finest house on the whole
+waterfront."
+
+"When all the windows are lit up," interjected Mrs. Farrell, "it's
+often took for a Fall River boat!"
+
+"When I was building it," Farrell continued, smoothly, "they called
+it Farrell's Folly; but not NOW." In friendly fashion he winked at
+me, "Standard Oil," he explained, "offered half a million for it.
+They wanted my wharf for their tank steamers. But, I needed it for
+my yacht!"
+
+I must have sat up rather too suddenly, for, seeing the yacht had
+reached home, Mr. Farrell beamed. Complacently his wife smoothed an
+imaginary wrinkle in her skirt.
+
+"Eighteen men!" she protested, "with nothing to do but clean brass
+and eat three meals a day!"
+
+Farrell released his death grip on the silk hat to make a sweeping
+gesture.
+
+"They earn their wages," he said generously.
+
+"Aren't they taking us this week to Cap May?"
+
+"They're taking the yacht to Cape May! corrected Mrs. Farrell; "not
+ME!"
+
+"The sea does not agree with her," explained Farrell; "WE'RE going
+by automobile." Mrs. Farrell now took up the wondrous tale
+
+It's a High Flyer, 1915 model," she explained; "green, with white
+enamel leather inside, and red wheels outside. You can see it from
+the window."
+
+Somewhat dazed, I stepped to the window and found you could see it
+from almost anywhere. It was as large as a freight car; and was
+entirely surrounded by taxi-starters, bellboys, and nurse-maids.
+The chauffeur, and a deputy chauffeur, in a green livery with
+patent-leather leggings, were frowning upon the mob. They possessed
+the hauteur of ambulance surgeons. I returned to my chair, and then
+rose hastily to ask if I could not offer Mr. Farrell some
+refreshment.
+
+"Mebbe later," he said. Evidently he felt that as yet he had not
+sufficiently impressed me.
+
+"Harbor Castle," he recited, "has eighteen bedrooms, billiard-room,
+music-room, art gallery and swimming-pool." He shook his head. "And
+no one to use 'em but us. We had a boy." He stopped, and for an
+instant, as though asking pardon, laid his hand upon the knee of
+Mrs. Farrell. "But he was taken when he was four, and none came
+since. My wife has a niece," he added, "but----"
+
+"But," interrupted Mrs. Farrell, "she was too high and mighty for
+plain folks, and now there is no one. We always took an interest in
+you because your name was Farrell. We were always reading of you in
+the papers. We have all your books, and a picture of you in the
+billiard-room. When folks ask me if we are any relation--sometimes
+I tell 'em we ARE."
+
+As though challenging me to object, she paused.
+
+"It's quite possible," I said hastily. And, in order to get rid of
+them, I added: "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll write to Ireland
+and----"
+
+Farrell shook his head firmly. "You don't need to write to
+Ireland," he said, "for what we want."
+
+"What DO you want?" I asked.
+
+"We want a SON," said Farrell; "an adopted son. We want to adopt
+YOU!"
+
+"You want to WHAT?" I asked.
+
+To learn if Mrs. Farrell also was mad, I glanced toward her, but
+her expression was inscrutable. The face of the Irishman had grown
+purple.
+
+"And why not?" he demanded. "You are a famous young man, all right,
+and educated. But there's nothing about me I'm ashamed of! I'm
+worth five million dollars and I made every cent Of it myself--and
+I made it honest. You ask Dun or Bradstreet, ask----"
+
+I attempted to soothe him.
+
+"THAT'S not it, sir, " I explained. "It's a most generous offer, a
+most flattering, complimentary offer. But you don't know me. I don
+t know you. Choosing a son is a very----"
+
+"I've had you looked up," announced Mrs. Farrell. "The Pinkertons
+give you a high rating. I hired 'em to trail you for six months."
+
+I wanted to ask WHICH six months, but decided to let sleeping dogs
+lie. I shook my head. Politely but firmly I delivered my ultimatum.
+
+"It is quite impossible!" I said firmly.
+
+Mrs. Farrell continued the debate. She talked in a businesslike
+manner and pronounced the arrangement one by which both sides would
+benefit. There were thousands of other Farrells, she pointed out,
+any one of whom they might have adopted. But they had selected me
+because in so choosing, they thought they were taking the least
+risk. They had decided she was pleased to say, that I would not
+disgrace them, and that as a "literary author " I brought with me
+a certain social asset.
+
+A clever, young businessman they did not want. Their business
+affairs they were quit able to manage themselves. But they would
+like as an adopted son one who had already added glory to the name
+of Farrell, which glory he was willing to share.
+
+"We wouldn't tie you down," she urged "but we would expect you to
+live at Harbor Castle a part of your time, and to call us Ma and
+Pa. You would have your own rooms, and your own servant, and there
+is a boat-house on the harbor front, where you could write your
+novels."
+
+At this, knowing none wanted my novels, I may have winced, for,
+misreading my discontent, Farrell hastily interrupted.
+
+"You won't have to work at all," he protested heartily. "My son can
+afford to live like a lord. You'll get all the spending money you
+want, and if you're fond of foreign parts, you can take the yacht
+wherever you please!"
+
+"The farther the better," exclaimed Mrs. Farrell with heat. "And
+when you get it there, I hope you'll SINK it!"
+
+"Maybe your friends would come and visit You," suggested Farrell,
+I thought, a trifle wistfully. "There's bathing, tennis, eight...
+bedrooms, billiard-room, art gallery----"
+
+"You told him that!" said Mrs. Farrell.
+
+I was greatly at a loss. Their offer was preposterous, but to them,
+it was apparently a perfectly possible arrangement. Nor were they
+acting on impulse. Mrs. Farrell had admitted that for six months
+she had had me "trailed." How to say "No" and not give offense, I
+found difficult. They were deeply in earnest and I could see that
+Farrell, at least, was by instinct generous, human, and kind. It
+was, in fact, a most generous offer. But how was I to tell them
+tactfully I was not for sale, that I was not looking for
+"ready-to-wear" parents, and that if I were in the market, they
+were not the parents I would choose. I had a picture of life at
+Harbor Castle, dependent upon the charity of the Farrells. I
+imagined what my friends would say to me, and worse, what they
+would say behind my back. But I was not forced to a refusal.
+
+Mr. Farrell rose.
+
+"We don't want to hurry you," he said. "We want you to think it
+over. Maybe if we get acquainted----"
+
+Mrs. Farrell smiled upon me ingratiatingly.
+
+"Why don't we get acquainted now?" she demanded. "We're motoring
+down to Cape May to stay three weeks. Why don't you come along--as
+our guest--and see how you like us?"
+
+I assured them, almost too hastily, that already was deeply
+engaged.
+
+As they departed, Farrell again admonished me to think it over.
+
+"And look me up at Dun's and Bradstreet's," he advised. "Ask 'em
+about me at the Waldorf. Ask the head waiters and bellhops if I
+look twice at a five spot!"
+
+It seemed an odd way to select a father, but I promised.
+
+I escorted them even to the sidewalk, and not without envy watched
+them sweep toward the Waldorf in the High Flyer, 1915 model. I
+caught myself deciding, were it mine, I would paint it gray.
+
+I was lunching at the Ritz with Curtis Spencer, and I looked
+forward to the delight he would take in my story of the Farrells.
+He would probably want to write it. He was my junior, but my great
+friend; and as a novelist his popularity was where five years
+earlier mine had been. But he belonged to the new school. His
+novels smelled like a beauty parlor; and his heroines, while always
+beautiful, were, on occasions, virtuous, but only when they thought
+it would pay.
+
+Spencer himself was as modern as his novels, and I was confident
+his view of my adventure would be that of the great world which he
+described so accurately.
+
+But to my amazement when I had finished he savagely attacked me.
+
+"You idiot!" he roared. "Are you trying to tell me you refused five
+million dollars-- just because you didn't like the people who
+wanted to force it on you? Where," he demanded, "is Cape May? We'll
+follow them now! We'll close this deal before they can change their
+minds. I'll make you sign to-night. And, then," he continued
+eagerly, "we'll take their yacht and escape to Newport, and you'll
+lend me five thousand dollars, and pay my debts, and give me back
+the ten you borrowed. And you might buy me a touring-car and some
+polo ponies and--and--oh, lots of things. I'll think of them as we
+go along. Meanwhile, I can't afford to give luncheons to
+millionaires, so you sign for this one; and then we'll start for
+Cape May."
+
+"Are you mad?" I demanded; "do you think I'd sell my honor!"
+
+"For five million dollars?" cried Spencer. "Don't make me laugh! If
+they want a REAL novelist for a son they can adopt me!"
+
+I replied with dignity that I would not disgrace the memory of my
+parents.
+
+"You have disgraced them!" retorted Spencer, "with your Musketeer
+novels for infants. You need money. To get it you may be tempted to
+write more novels. Here's your chance! Stop robbing the public, and
+lead an honest life. Think of all the money you could give to the
+poor, think of all the money you and I could lose at Monte Carlo!"
+
+When he found I would not charter an auto-mobile and at once pursue
+the Farrells he changed his tactics. If I would not go to Cape May,
+then, he begged, I would go to Fairharbor. He asked that I would,
+at least, find out what I was refusing. Before making their offer,
+for six months, the Farrells had had me "looked up, " but, without
+knowing anything of them, after a talk of ten minutes I had turned
+them down. "Was that," he asked, "intelligent? Was it fair to the
+Farrells?" He continued to tempt me.
+
+"They told you to think it over," he persisted. "Very well, then,
+think it over at Fairharbor! For the next three weeks the Farrells
+will be at Cape May. The coast is clear. Go to Fairharbor as
+somebody else and be your own detective. Find out if what they tell
+you is true. Get inside information. Get inside Harbor Castle.
+Count the eighteen bedrooms and try the beds. Never mind the art
+gallery, but make sure there is a wine cellar.
+
+You can't start too soon, and I WILL GO WITH YOU!"
+
+I told him where he could go.
+
+We then tossed to see who should pay for the lunch and who should
+tip the head waiter. I lost and had to tip the head waiter. We
+separated, and as I walked down the Avenue, it seemed as though to
+the proprietor of every shop I passed I owed money. Owing them the
+money I did not so much mind; what most distressed me was that they
+were so polite about it. I had always wanted to reward their
+patience. A favorite dream of mine was to be able to walk down
+Fifth Avenue, my pockets stuffed with yellow bills, paying off my
+debts. Compared with my steadily decreasing income, how enormous my
+debts appeared; but when compared with the income of a man worth--
+say-five million dollars, how ridiculous! I had no more than
+reached my apartment, than a messenger-boy arrived with an
+envelope. It contained a ticket for a round trip on the New Bedford
+Line boat leaving that afternoon, a ticket for a stateroom, and a
+note from Curtis Spencer. The latter read: "The boat leaves at six
+to-night. You arrive at New Bedford seven to-morrow morning. New
+Bedford and Fairharbor are connected by a bridge. CROSS IT!"
+
+I tore the note in tiny fragments, and tossed them through the open
+window. I was exceedingly angry. As I stood at the window adding to
+the name of Curtis Spencer insulting aliases, the street below sent
+up hot, stifling odors: the smoke of taxicabs, the gases of an open
+subway, the stale reek of thousands of perspiring, unwashed bodies.
+From that one side street seemed to rise the heat and smells of all
+New York. For relief I turned to my work-table where lay the
+opening chapters of my new novel, "The White Plume of Savoy." But
+now, in the light of Spencer's open scorn, I saw it was impudently
+false, childish, sentimental. My head ached, the humidity sapped my
+strength, at heart I felt sick, sore, discouraged. I was down and
+out. And seeing this, Temptation, like an obsequious floorwalker,
+came hurrying forward.
+
+"And what may I show you to-day?" asked Temptation. He showed me
+the upper deck of the New Bedford boat feeling her way between the
+green banks of the Sound. A cool wind swept past me bearing clean,
+salty odors; on the saloon deck a band played, and from the
+darkness the lighthouses winked at me, and in friendly greeting the
+stars smiled. Temptation won. In five minutes I was feverishly
+packing, and at five-thirty I was on board. I assured myself I had
+not listened to Temptation, that I had no interest in Fairharbor.
+was taking the trip solely because it would give me a night's sleep
+on the Sound. I promised myself that on the morrow I would not even
+LOOK toward Harbor Castle; but on the evening following on the same
+boat, return to New York. Temptation did not stop to argue, but
+hastened after another victim.
+
+I turned in at nine o'clock and the coolness, and the salt air,
+blessed me with the first sleep I had known in weeks. And when I
+woke we were made fast to the company's wharf at New Bedford, and
+the sun was well up. I rose refreshed in body and spirit. No longer
+was I discouraged. Even "The White Plume of Savoy" seemed a
+perfectly good tale of romance and adventure. And the Farrells were
+a joke. Even if I were at Fairlharbor, I was there only on a lark,
+and at the expense of Curtis Spencer, who had paid for the tickets.
+Distinctly the joke was on Curtis Spencer. I lowered the window
+screen, and looked across the harbor. It was a beautiful harbor. At
+ancient stone wharfs Jay ancient whalers with drooping davits and
+squared yards, at anchor white-breasted yachts flashed in the sun,
+a gray man-of-war's man flaunted the week's laundry, a four-masted
+schooner dried her canvas, and over the smiling surface of the
+harbor innumerable fishing boats darted. With delight I sniffed the
+odors of salt water, sun-dried herring, of oakum and tar. The shore
+opposite was a graceful promontory crowned with trees and decorous
+gray-shingled cottages set in tiny gardens that reached to the very
+edge of the harbor. The second officer was passing my window and I
+asked what the promontory was called.
+
+"Fairharbor," he said. He answered with such proprietary pride and
+smiled upon Fairharbor with such approval that I ventured to guess
+it was his home.
+
+"That's right," he said; "I used to live at the New York end of the
+run-in a flat. But never again! No place for the boy to play but in
+the street. I found I could rent one of those old cottages over
+there for the same money I paid for the flat. So I cut out New
+York. My boy lives in a bathing suit now, and he can handle a
+catboat same as me. We have a kitchen garden, and hens, and the
+fishermen here will give you all the fish you can carry away--fish
+right out of the water. I guess I've smashed the high cost of
+living problem all right. I wouldn't go back to living in New York
+now--not if they gave me the PILGRIM.
+
+As though trying to prod my memory, I frowned. It was my conception
+of the part of a detective. "Hasn't Fletcher Farrell," I asked, "a
+house in Fairharbor?"
+
+"Harbor Castle," said the mate promptly. "It's on the other side of
+the point I'd as soon live in a jail!"
+
+"Why?" I exclaimed.
+
+But he was no longer listening. He pointed at the shore opposite.
+
+"See that flag running up the staff in that garden?" he cried.
+"'That's my boy signalling. I got to get to the boat deck and wave
+back!"
+
+I felt as a detective. I had acquired important information. The
+mate, a man of judgment, preferred Fairharbor to New York. Also, to
+living in Harbor Castle, he preferred going to jail.
+
+The boat on which I had arrived was listed to start back at six the
+same evening on her return trip to New York. So, at the office of
+the line I checked my valise, and set forth to explore New Bedford.
+
+The whaling vessels moored to a nearby wharf, I inspected from
+hatches to keels, and by those on board was directed to a warehouse
+where were stored harpoons, whalebone, and wooden figure-heads. My
+pleasure in these led to my being passed on to a row of "antique"
+shops filled with relics of the days of whaling and also with
+genuine pie-crust tables, genuine flint-lock muskets, genuine
+Liverpool pitchers. I coveted especially old-time engravings of the
+whalers, and was told at Hatchardson's book-store on the main
+street others could be found in profusion.
+
+Hatchardson's proved to be a place of great delight. As you entered
+there were counters for magazines and post-cards, popular music,
+and best-selling novels, while in the rear of the shop tables and
+shelves were stocked with ancient volumes, and on the wall
+surrounding them hung engravings, prints and woodcuts of even the
+eighteenth century. Just as the drugstore on the corner seemed to
+be a waiting station for those of New Bedford who used the
+trolley-cars, so for those who moved in automobiles, or still clung
+to the family carriage, Hatchardson's appeared to be less a shop
+than a public meeting-place. I noticed that the clerks, most of
+whom were women, were with the customers on a most friendly
+footing, addressing them, and by them being addressed by name.
+Finding I was free to wander where I pleased, I walked to the rear
+of the shop and from one of the tables picked up a much-worn
+volume. It was entitled "The Log of the JOLLY POLLY, and was
+illustrated with wood cuts showing square- rigged ships and whales
+Spouting. For five minutes, lost to my Surroundings, I turned the
+pages; and then became conscious that across the table some one was
+watching me. I raised my eyes and beheld a face of most surprising
+charm, intelligence and beauty. It was so lovely that it made me
+wince. The face was the fortune, and judging from the fact that in
+her hand she held a salesbook, the sole fortune, of a tall young
+girl who apparently had approached to wait on me. She was looking
+toward the street, so that, with the book- shelves for a
+back-ground, her face was in profile, and I determined swiftly that
+if she were to wait on me she would be kept waiting as long as my
+money lasted. I did not want "The Log of the JOLLY POLLY," but I
+did want to hear the lovely lady speak, and especially I desired
+that the one to whom she spoke should be myself.
+
+"What is the price of this?" I asked. With magnificent self-
+control I kept my eyes on the book, but the lovely lady was so long
+silent that I raised them. To my surprise, I found on her face an
+expression of alarm and distress. With reluctance, and yet within
+her voice a certain hopefulness, she said, "Fifty dollars."
+
+Fifty dollars was a death blow. I had planned to keep the young
+lady selling books throughout the entire morning, but at fifty
+dollars a book, I would soon be owing her money. I attempted to
+gain time.
+
+"It must be very rare!" I said. I was afraid to look at her lest my
+admiration should give offense, so I pretended to admire the book.
+
+"It is the only one in existence," said the young lady. "At least,
+it is the only one for sale! "
+
+We were interrupted by the approach of a tall man who, from his
+playing the polite host and from his not wearing a hat, I guessed
+was Mr. Hatchardson himself. He looked from the book in my hand to
+the lovely lady and said smiling, "Have you lost it?"
+
+The girl did not smile. To her, apparently, it was no laughing
+matter. "I don't know--yet," she said. Her voice was charming, and
+genuinely troubled.
+
+Mr. Hatchardson, for later I learned it was he, took the book and
+showed me the title-page.
+
+"This was privately printed in 1830," he said, "by Captain Noah
+Briggs. He distributed a hundred presentation copies among his
+family and friends here in New Bedford. It is a most interesting
+volume."
+
+I did not find it so. For even as he spoke the young girl, still
+with a troubled countenance, glided away. Inwardly I cursed Captain
+Briggs and associated with him in my curse the polite Mr.
+Hatchardson. But, at his next words my interest returned. Still
+smiling, he lowered his voice.
+
+"Miss Briggs, the young lady who just left us," he said, is the
+granddaughter of Captain Briggs, and she does not want the book to
+go out of the family; she wants it for herself." I interrupted
+eagerly.
+
+"But it is for sale?" Mr. Hatchardson reluctantly assented.
+
+"Then I will take it," I said.
+
+Fifty dollars is a great deal of money, but the face of the young
+lady had been very sad. Besides being sad, had it been aged, plain,
+and ill-tempered, that I still would have bought the book, is a
+question I have never determined.
+
+To Mr. Hatchardson, of my purpose to give the book to Miss Briggs,
+I said nothing. Instead I planned to send it to her anonymously by
+mail. She would receive it the next morning when I was arriving in
+New York, and, as she did not know my name, she could not possibly
+return it. At the post-office I addressed the "Log" to "Miss
+Briggs, care of Hatchardson's Bookstore," and then I returned to
+the store. I felt I had earned that pleasure. This time, Miss
+Briggs was in charge of the post-card counter, and as now a
+post-card was the only thing I could afford to buy, at seeing her
+there I was doubly pleased. But she was not pleased to see me.
+Evidently Mr. Hatchardson had told her I had purchased the "Log"
+and at her loss her very lovely face still showed disappointment.
+Toward me her manner was distinctly aggrieved.
+
+But of the "Log" I said nothing, and began recklessly purchasing
+post-cards that pictured the show places of New Bedford. Almost the
+first one I picked up was labelled "Harbor Castle. Residence of
+Fletcher Farrell." I need not say that I studied it intently.
+According to the post-card, Harbor Castle stood on a rocky point
+with water on both sides. It was an enormous, wide-spreading
+structure, as large as a fort. It exuded prosperity, opulence,
+extravagance, great wealth. I felt suddenly a filial impulse to
+visit the home of my would-be forefathers.
+
+"Is this place near here?" I asked.
+
+Miss Briggs told me that in order to reach it I should take the
+ferry to Fairbarbor, and then cross that town to the Buzzards Bay
+side.
+
+"You can't miss it," she said. "It's a big stone house, with red
+and white awnings. If you see anything like a jail in ruffles,
+that's it."
+
+It was evident that with the home I had rejected Miss Briggs was
+unimpressed; but seeing me add the post-card to my collection, she
+offered me another.
+
+"This," she explained, "is Harbor Castle from the bay. That is
+their yacht in the foreground."
+
+The post-card showed a very beautiful yacht of not less than two
+thousand tons. Beneath it was printed "HARBOR LIGHTS; steam yacht
+owned by Fletcher Farrell." I always had dreamed of owning a steam
+yacht, and seeing it stated in cold type that one was owned by
+"Fletcher Farrell," even though I was not that Fletcher Farrell,
+gave me a thrill of guilty pleasure. I gazed upon the post-card
+with envy.
+
+"HARBOR LIGHTS is a strange name for a yacht," I ventured. Miss
+Briggs smiled.
+
+"Not for that yacht," she said. "She never leaves it."
+
+I wished to learn more of my would-be parents, and I wished to keep
+on talking with the lovely Miss Briggs, so, as an excuse for both,
+I pretended I was interested in the Farrells because I had
+something I wanted to sell them.
+
+"This Fletcher Farrell must be very rich," I said. " I wonder," I
+asked, "if I could sell him an automobile?" The moment I spoke I
+noticed that the manner of Miss Briggs toward Me perceptibly
+softened. Perhaps, from my buying offhand a fifty-dollar book she
+had thought me one of the rich, and had begun to suspect I was
+keeping her waiting on me only because I found her extremely easy
+to look at. Many times before, in a similar manner, other youths
+must have imposed upon her, and perhaps, also, in concealing my
+admiration, I had not entirely succeeded.
+
+But, when she believed that, like herself, I was working for my
+living, she became more human.
+
+"What car are you selling?" she asked. "I am TRYING to sell," I
+corrected her, "the Blue Bird, six cylinder."
+
+"I never heard of it," said Miss Briggs.
+
+"Nor has any one else," I answered, with truth. "That is one reason
+why I can't sell it. I arrived here this morning, and," I added
+with pathos, "I haven't sold a car yet!"
+
+Miss Briggs raised her beautiful eyebrows skeptically. "Have you
+tried?" she said.
+
+A brilliant idea came to me. In a side street I had passed a garage
+where Photaix cars were advertised for hire. I owned a Phoenix, and
+I thought I saw a way by which, for a happy hour, I might secure
+the society of Miss Briggs.
+
+"I am an agent and demonstrator for the Phoenix also," I said
+glibly; "maybe I could show you one?"
+
+"Show me one?" exclaimed Miss Briggs. "One sees them everywhere!
+They are always under your feet!"
+
+"I mean," I explained, "might I take you for a drive in one?"
+
+It was as though I had completely vanished. So far as the lovely
+Miss Briggs was concerned I had ceased to exist. She turned toward
+a nice old lady.
+
+"What can I show you, Mrs. Scudder?" she asked cheerily; "and how
+is that wonderful baby? "
+
+I felt as though I had been lifted by the collar, thrown out upon
+a hard sidewalk, and my hat tossed after me. Greatly shaken, and
+mentally brushing the dust from my hands and knees, I hastened to
+the ferry and crossed to Fairharbor. I was extremely angry. By an
+utter stranger I had been misjudged, snubbed and cast into outer
+darkness. For myself I readily found excuses. If a young woman was
+so attractive that at the first sight of her men could not resist
+buying her fifty-dollar books and hiring automobiles in which to
+take her driving, the fault was hers. I assured myself that girls
+as lovely as Miss Briggs were a menace to the public. They should
+not be at large. An ordinance should require them to go masked. For
+Miss Briggs also I was able to make excuses. Why should she not
+protect herself from the advances of strange young men? If a
+popular novelist, and especially an ex-popular one, chose to go
+about disguised as a drummer for the Blue Bird automobile and
+behaved as such, and was treated as such, what right had he to
+complain? So I persuaded myself I had been punished as I deserved.
+But to salve my injured pride I assured myself also that any one
+who read my novels ought to know my attitude toward any lovely lady
+could be only respectful, protecting, and chivalrous. But with this
+consoling thought the trouble was that nobody read my novels.
+
+In finding Harbor Castle I had no difficulty. It stood upon a rocky
+point that jutted into Buzzards Bay. Five acres of artificial lawn
+and flower-beds of the cemetery and railroad- station school of
+horticulture surrounded it, and from the highroad it was protected
+by a stone wall so low that to the passerby, of the beauties of
+Harbor Castle nothing was left to the imagination. Over this wall
+roses under conflicting banners of pink and red fought fiercely.
+One could almost hear the shrieks of the wounded. Upon the least
+thorny of these I seated myself and in tender melancholy gazed upon
+the home of my childhood. That is, upon the home that might-have-
+been.
+
+When surveying a completed country home, to make the owner
+thoroughly incensed the correct thing to say is, "This place has
+great possibilities!"
+
+Harbor Castle had more possibilities than any other castle I ever
+visited. But in five minutes I had altered it to suit myself. I had
+ploughed up the flower-beds, dug a sunken garden, planted a wind
+screen of fir, spruce, and Pine, and with a huge brick wall secured
+warmth and privacy. So pleased was I with my changes, that when I
+departed I was sad and downcast. The boat-house of which Mrs.
+Farrell had spoken was certainly an ideal work-shop, the
+tennis-courts made those at the Newport Casino look like a ploughed
+field, and the swimming-pool, guarded by white pillars and overhung
+with grape-vines, was a cool and refreshing picture. As, hot and
+perspiring, I trudged back through Fairharbor, the memory of these
+haunted me. That they also tempted me, it is impossible to deny.
+But not for long. For, after passing through the elm-shaded streets
+to that side of the village that faced the harbor, I came upon the
+cottages I had seen from the New Bedford shore. At close range they
+appeared even more attractive than when pointed out to me by the
+mate of the steamboat. They were very old, very weather-stained and
+covered with honeysuckle. Flat stones in a setting of grass led
+from the gates to the arched doorways, hollyhocks rose above hedges
+of box, and from the verandas one could look out upon the busy
+harbor and the houses of New Bedford rising in steps up the sloping
+hills to a sky-line of tree-tops and church spires. The mate had
+told me that for what he had rented a flat in New York he had
+secured one of these charming old world homes. And as I passed them
+I began to pick out the one in which when I retired from the world
+I would settle down. This time I made no alterations. How much the
+near presence of Miss Briggs had to do with my determination to
+settle down in Fairharbor, I cannot now remember. But, certainly as
+I crossed the bridge toward New Bedford, thoughts of her entirely
+filled my mind. I assured my self this was so only because she was
+beautiful. I was sure her outward loveliness advertised a nature
+equally lovely, but for my sudden and extreme interest I had other
+excuses. Her in dependence in earning her living, her choice in
+earning it among books and pictures, her pride of family as shown
+by her efforts to buy the family heirloom, all these justified my
+admiration. And her refusing to go joy-riding with an impertinent
+stranger, even though the impertinent stranger was myself, was an
+act I applauded. The more I thought of Miss Briggs the more was I
+disinclined to go away leaving with her an impression of myself so
+unpleasant as the one she then held. I determined to remove it. At
+least, until I had redeemed myself, I would remain in New Bedford.
+The determination gave me the greatest satisfaction. With a light
+heart I returned to the office of the steamboat line and retrieving
+my suit-case started with it toward the Parker House. It was now
+past five o'clock, the stores were closed, and all the people who
+had not gone to the baseball game with Fall River were in the
+streets. In consequence, as I was passing the post-office, Miss
+Briggs came down the steps, and we were face to face.
+
+In her lovely eyes was an expression of mingled doubt and
+indignation and in her hand freshly torn from the papers in which
+I had wrapped it, was "The Log of the JOLLY POLLY." In action Miss
+Briggs was as direct as a submarine. At sight of me she attacked.
+"Did you send me this?" she asked.
+
+I lowered my bag to the sidewalk and prepared for battle. "I didn't
+think of your going to the post-office," I said. "I planned you'd
+get it to-morrow after I'd left. When I sent it, I thought I would
+never see you again."
+
+"Then you did send it!" exclaimed Miss Briggs. As though the book
+were a hot plate she dropped it into my hand. She looked straight
+at me, but her expression suggested she was removing a caterpillar
+from her pet rosebush.
+
+"You had no right," she said. "You may not have meant to be
+impertinent, but you were!"
+
+Again, as though I had disappeared from the face of the earth, Miss
+Briggs gazed coldly about her, and with dignity started to cross
+the street. Her dignity was so great that she glanced neither to
+the left nor right. In consequence she did not see an automobile
+that swung recklessly around a trolley-car and dived at her. But
+other people saw it and shrieked. I also shrieked, and dropping the
+suit-case and the "Log," jumped into the street, grabbed Miss
+Briggs by both arms, and flung her back to the sidewalk. That left
+me where she had been, and the car caught me up and slammed me head
+first against a telegraph pole. The pole was hard, and if any one
+counted me out I did not stay awake to hear him. When I came to I
+was conscious that I was lying on a sidewalk; but to open my eyes,
+I was much too tired. A voice was saying, "Do you know who he is,
+Miss?"
+
+The voice that replied was the voice of the lovely Miss Briggs. But
+now I hardly recognized it. It was full of distress, of tenderness
+and pity.
+
+"No, I don't know him," it stammered. "He's a salesman--he was in
+the store this morning--he's selling motor-cars." The first voice
+laughed.
+
+"Motor-cars!" he exclaimed. "That's why he ain't scared of 'em. He
+certainly saved you from that one! I seen him, Miss Briggs, and he
+most certainly saved your life!"
+
+In response to this astonishing statement I was delighted to hear
+a well-trained male chorus exclaim in assent.
+
+The voices differed; some spoke in the accents of Harvard, pure and
+undefiled, some in a "down East" dialect, others suggested Italian
+peanut venders and Portuguese sailors, but all agreed that the life
+of Miss Briggs had been saved by myself. I had intended coming to,
+but on hearing the chorus working so harmoniously I decided I had
+better continue unconscious.
+
+Then a new voice said importantly: "The marks on his suitcase are
+'F. F., New York."
+
+I appreciated instantly that to be identified as Fletcher Farrell
+meant humiliation and disaster. The other Fletcher Farrells would
+soon return to New Bedford. They would learn that in their absence
+I had been spying upon the home I had haughtily rejected. Besides,
+one of the chorus might remember that three years back Fletcher
+Farrell had been a popular novelist and might recognize me, and
+Miss Briggs would discover I was not an automobile agent and that
+I had lied to her. I saw that I must continue to lie to her. I
+thought of names beginning with " F," and selected " Frederick
+Fitzgibbon." To christen yourself while your eyes are shut and your
+head rests on a curb-stone is not easy, and later I was sorry I had
+not called myself Fairchild as being more aristocratic. But then it
+was too late. As Fitzgibbon I had come back to life, and as
+Fitzgibbon I must remain.
+
+When I opened my eyes I found the first voice belonged to a
+policeman who helped me to my feet and held in check the male
+chorus. The object of each was to lead me to a drink. But instead
+I turned dizzily to Miss Briggs. She was holding my hat and she
+handed it to me. Her lovely eyes were filled with relief and her
+charming voice with remorse.
+
+"I--I can't possibly thank you," she stammered. "Are you badly
+hurt?"
+
+I felt I had never listened to words so original and well chosen.
+In comparison, the brilliant and graceful speeches I had placed on
+the lips of my heroines became flat and unconvincing,
+
+I assured her I was not at all hurt and endeavored, jauntily, to
+replace my hat. But where my head had hit the telegraph pole a
+large bump had risen which made my hat too small. So I hung it on
+the bump. It gave me a rakish air. One of the chorus returned my
+bag and another the "Log." Not wishing to remind Miss Briggs of my
+past impertinences; I guiltily concealed it.
+
+Then the policeman asked my name and I gave the one I had just
+invented, and inquired my way to the Parker House. Half the chorus
+volunteered to act as my escort, and as I departed, I stole a last
+look at Miss Briggs. She and the policeman were taking down the
+pedigree of the chauffeur of the car that had hit me. He was trying
+to persuade them he was not intoxicated, and with each speech was
+furnishing evidence to the contrary.
+
+After I had given a cold bath to the bump on my head and to the
+rest of my body which for the moment seemed the lesser of the two,
+I got into dry things and seated myself on the veranda of the
+hotel. With a cigar to soothe my jangling nerves, I considered the
+position of Miss Briggs and myself. I was happy in believing it had
+improved. On the morrow there was no law to prevent me from
+visiting Hatchardson's Bookstore, and in view of what had happened
+since last I left it, I had reason to hope Miss Briggs would
+receive me more, kindly. Of the correctness of this diagnosis I was
+at once assured. In front of the hotel a district messenger-boy
+fell off his bicycle and with unerring instinct picked me out as
+Mr. Fitzgibbon of New York. The note he carried was from Miss
+Briggs. It stated that in the presence of so many people it had
+been impossible for her to thank me as she wished for the service
+I had rendered her, and that Mrs. Cutler, with whom she boarded,
+and herself, would be glad if after supper I would call upon them.
+I gave the messenger-boy enough gold to enable him to buy a new
+bicycle and in my room executed a dance symbolizing joy. I then
+kicked my suit-case under the bed. I would not soon need it. Now
+that Miss Briggs had forgiven me, I was determined to live and die
+in New Bedford.
+
+The home of Mrs. Cutler, where Miss Briggs lodged and boarded, was
+in a side street of respectable and distinguished antiquity. The
+street itself was arched with the branches of giant elms, and each
+house was an island surrounded by grass, and over the porches
+climbed roses. It was too warm to remain indoors, so we sat on the
+steps of the porch, and through the leaves of the elms the electric
+light globe served us as a moon. For an automobile salesman I was
+very shy, very humble.
+
+Twice before I had given offense and I was determined if it lay
+with me, it would not happen again. I did not hope to interest Miss
+Briggs in myself, nor did I let it appear how tremendously I was
+interested in her. For the moment I was only a stranger in a
+strange land making a social call. I asked Miss Briggs about New
+Bedford and the whaling, about the books she sold, and the books
+she liked. It was she who talked. When I found we looked at things
+in the same way and that the same things gave us pleasure I did not
+comment on that astonishing fact, but as an asset more precious
+than gold, stored it away. When I returned to the hotel I found
+that concerning Miss Briggs I had made important discoveries. I had
+learned that her name was Polly, that the JOLLY POLLY had been
+christened after her grandmother, that she was an orphan, that
+there were relatives with whom she did not "hit it off," that she
+was very well read, possessed of a most charming sense of humor,
+and that I found her the most attractive girl I had ever met.
+
+The next morning I awoke in an exalted frame of mind. I was in love
+with life, with New Bedford, and with Polly Briggs. I had been in
+love before but never with a young lady who worked in a shop, and
+I found that loving a lady so occupied gives one a tremendous
+advantage. For when you call she must always be at home, nor can
+she plead another engagement. So, before noon, knowing she could
+not deny herself, I was again at Hatchardson's, purchasing more
+postal-cards. But Miss Briggs was not deceived. Nor apparently was
+any one else. The BEDFORD MERCURY had told how, the previous
+evening, Frederick Fitzgibbon, an automobile salesman from New
+York, had been knocked out by an automobile while saving Miss Polly
+Briggs from a similar fate; and Mr. Hatchardson and all the old
+ladies who were in the bookstore making purchases congratulated me.
+It was evident that in Miss Briggs they took much more than a
+perfunctory interest. They were very fond of her. She was an
+institution; and I could see that as such to visitors she would be
+pointed out with pride, as was the new bronze statue of the
+Whaleman in Court House Square. Nor did they cease discussing her
+until they had made it quite clear to me that in being knocked out
+in her service I was a very lucky man. I did not need to be told
+that, especially as I noted that Miss Briggs was anxious lest I
+should not be properly modest. Indeed, her wish that in the eyes of
+the old ladies I should appear to advantage was so evident, and her
+interest in me so proprietary, that I was far from unhappy.
+
+The afternoon I spent in Fairharbor. From a real estate agent I
+obtained keys to those cottages on the water-front that were for
+rent, and I busied myself exploring them. The one I most liked I
+pretended I had rented, and I imagined myself at work among the
+flower-beds, or with my telescope scanning the shipping in the
+harbor, or at night seated in front of the open fire watching the
+green and blue flames of the driftwood. Later, irresolutely, I
+wandered across town to Harbor Castle, this time walking entirely
+around it and coming upon a sign that read, "Visitors Welcome. Do
+not pick the flowers."
+
+Assuring myself that I was moved only by curiosity, I accepted the
+invitation, nor, though it would greatly have helped the appearance
+of the cemetery-like beds, did I pick the flowers. On a closer view
+Harbor Castle certainly possessed features calculated to make an
+impecunious author Stop, look, and listen. I pictured it peopled
+with my friends. I saw them at the long mahogany table of which
+through the French window I got a glimpse, or dancing in the
+music-room, or lounging on the wicker chairs on the sweeping
+verandas. I could see them in flannels at tennis, in bathing- suits
+diving from the spring-board of the swimming pool, departing on
+excursions in the motor-cars that at the moment in front of the
+garage were being sponged and polished, so that they flashed like
+mirrors. And I thought also of the two-thousand-ton yacht and to
+what far countries, to what wonderful adventures it might carry me.
+
+But all of these pictures lacked one feature. In none of them did
+Polly Briggs appear. For, as I very well knew, that was something
+the ambitions of Mrs. Farrell would not permit. That lady wanted me
+as a son only because she thought I was a social asset. By the same
+reasoning, as a daughter-in-law, she would not want a shop-girl,
+especially not one who as a shop-girl was known to all New Bedford.
+My mood as I turned my back upon the golden glories of Harbor
+Castle and walked to New Bedford was thoughtful.
+
+I had telegraphed my servant to bring me more clothes and my
+Phoenix car; and as I did not want him inquiring for Fletcher
+Farrell had directed him to come by boat to Fall River.
+Accordingly, the next morning, I took the trolley to that city, met
+him at the wharf, and sent him back to New York. I gave him a check
+with instructions to have it cashed in that city and to send the
+money, and my mail, to Frederick Fitzgibbon. This ALIAS I explained
+to him by saying I was gathering material for an article to prove
+one could live on fifty cents a day. He was greatly relieved to
+learn I did not need a valet to help me prove it.
+
+I returned driving the Phoenix to New Bedford, and as it was a
+Saturday, when the store closed at noon, I had the ineffable
+delight of taking Polly Briggs for a drive. As chaperons she
+invited two young friends of hers named Lowell. They had been but
+very lately married, and regarded me no more than a chauffeur they
+had hired by the hour. This left Polly who was beside me on the
+front seat, and myself, to our own devices. Our devices were
+innocent enough. They consisted in conveying the self-centred
+Lowells so far from home that they could not get back for supper
+and were so forced to dine with me. Polly, for as Polly I now
+thought of her, discovered the place. It was an inn, on the edge of
+a lake with an Indian name. We did not get home until late, but it
+had been such a successful party that before we separated we
+planned another journey for the morrow. That one led to the Cape by
+way of Bourne and Wood's Hole, and back again to the North Shore to
+Barnstable, where we lunched. It was a grand day and the first of
+others just as happy. After that every afternoon when the store
+closed I picked up the Lowells; and then Polly, and we sought
+adventures. Sometimes we journeyed no farther than the baseball
+park, but as a rule I drove them to some inn for dinner, where
+later, if there were music, we danced, if not, we returned slowly
+through the pine woods and so home by the longest possible route.
+The next Saturday I invited them to Boston. We started early, dined
+at the Touraine and went on to a musical comedy, where I had
+reserved seats in the front row. This nearly led to my undoing.
+Late in the first act a very merry party of young people who had
+come up from Newport and Narragansett to the Coates-Islip wedding
+filled the stage boxes and at sight of me began to wave and beckon.
+They were so insistent that between the acts I thought it safer to
+visit them. They wanted to know why I had not appeared at the
+wedding, and who was the beautiful girl.
+
+The next morning on our return trip to New Bedford Polly said, "I
+read in the papers this morning that those girls in that theatre
+party last night were the bridesmaids at the Coates-Islip wedding.
+They seemed to know you quite well.
+
+I explained that in selling automobiles one became acquainted with
+many people.
+
+Polly shook her head and laughed. Then she turned and looked at me.
+
+"You never sold an automobile in your life," she said.
+
+With difficulty I kept my eyes on the road; but I protested
+vigorously.
+
+"Don't think I have been spying," said Polly; "I found you out
+quite by accident. Yesterday a young man I know asked me to
+persuade you to turn in your Phoenix and let him sell you one of
+the new model. I said you yourself were the agent for the Phoenix,
+and he said that, on the contrary, HE was, and that you had no
+right to sell the car in his TERRITORY." I grinned guiltily and
+said:
+
+Well, I HAVEN'T sold any, have I?"
+
+That is not the point," protested Polly. "What was your reason for
+telling me you were trying to earn a living selling automobiles?"
+
+"So that I could take you driving in one," I answered.
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Polly.
+
+There was a pause during which in much inward trepidation I avoided
+meeting her eyes. Then Polly added thoughtfully, "I think that was
+a very good reason."
+
+In our many talks the name of the Fletcher Farrells had never been
+mentioned. I had been most careful to avoid it. As each day passed,
+and their return imminent, and in consequence my need to fly grew
+more near, and the name was still unspoken, I was proportionately
+grateful. But when the name did come up I had reason to be pleased,
+for Polly spoke it with approval, and it was not of the owner of
+Harbor Castle she was speaking, but of myself. It was one evening
+about two weeks after we had met, and I had side-stepped the
+Lowells and was motoring with Polly alone. We were talking of our
+favorite authors, dead and alive.
+
+"You may laugh," said Polly, and she said it defiantly, "and I
+don't know whether you would call him among the dead or the living,
+but I am very fond of Fletcher Farrell!"
+
+My heart leaped. I was so rattled that I nearly ran the car into a
+stone wall. I thought I was discovered and that Polly was playing
+with me. But her next words showed that she was innocent. She did
+not know that the man to whom she was talking and of whom she was
+talking were the same. "Of course you will say," she went on, "that
+he is too romantic, that he is not true to life. But I never lived
+in the seventeenth century, so I don't know whether he is true to
+life or not. And I like romance. The life I lead in the store gives
+me all the reality I want. I like to read about brave men and great
+and gracious ladies."
+
+I never met any girls like those Farrell write about, but it's nice
+to think they exist. I wish I were like them. And, his men,
+too--they make love better than any other man I ever read about."
+
+"Better than I do?" I asked.
+
+Polly gazed at the sky, frowning severely. After a pause, and as
+though she had dropped my remark into the road and the wheels had
+crushed it, she said, coldly, "Talking about books----"
+
+"No," I corrected, "we were talking about Fletcher Farrell."
+
+"Then," said Polly with some asperity, "don't change the subject.
+Do you know," she went on hurriedly, "that you look like him --like
+the pictures of him--as he was."
+
+"Heavens!" I exclaimed, "the man's not dead!"
+
+"You know what I mean," protested Polly. "As he was before he
+stopped writing."
+
+"Nor has he stopped writing," I objected; "his books have stopped
+selling." Polly turned upon me eagerly.
+
+"Do you know him?" she demanded. I answered with caution that I had
+met him.
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed, "tell me about him!"
+
+I was extremely embarrassed. It was a bad place. About myself I
+could not say anything pleasant, and behind my back, as it were, I
+certainly was not going to say anything unpleasant. But Polly
+relieved me of the necessity of saying anything.
+
+"I don't know any man," she exclaimed fervently, "I would so like
+to meet!"
+
+It seemed to me that after that the less I said the better. So I
+told her something was wrong with the engine and by the time I had
+pretended to fix it, I had led the conversation away from Fletcher
+Farrell as a novelist to myself as a chauffeur.
+
+The next morning at the hotel, temptation was again waiting for me.
+This time it came in the form of a letter from my prospective
+father-in-law. It had been sent from Cape May to my address in New
+York, and by my servant forwarded in an envelope addressed to
+Frederick Fitzgibbon."
+
+It was what in the world of commerce is called a "follow-up"
+letter. It recalled the terms of his offer to me, and improved upon
+them. It made it clear that even after meeting me Mr. Farrell and
+his wife were still anxious to stand for me as a son. They were
+good enough to say they had found me a "perfect gentleman." They
+hoped that after considering their proposition I had come to look
+upon it with favor.
+
+As his son, Mr. Farrell explained, my annual allowance would be the
+interest on one million dollars, and upon his death his entire
+fortune and property he would bequeath to me. He was willing, even
+anxious, to put this in writing. In a week he would return to
+Fairharbor when he hoped to receive a favorable answer. In the
+meantime he enclosed a letter to his housekeeper.
+
+"Don't take anything for granted," he urged, "but go to Fairharbor
+and present this letter. See the place for yourself. Spend the week
+there and act like you were the owner. My housekeeper has orders to
+take her orders from you. Don't refuse something you have never
+seen!"
+
+This part of the letter made me feel as mean and uncomfortable as
+a wet hen. The open, almost too open, methods of Mr. Farrell made
+my own methods appear contemptible. He was urging me to be his
+guest and I was playing the spy. But against myself my indignation
+did not last. A letter, bearing a special delivery stamp which
+arrived later in the afternoon from Mrs. Farrell turned my
+indignation against her, and with bitterness. She also had been
+spying. Her letter read:
+
+The Pinkerton I employed to report on you states that after losing
+you for a week he located you at New Bedford, that you are living
+under the name of Fitzgibbon, and that you have made yourself
+conspicuous by attentions to a young person employed in a shop.
+This is for me a great blow and disappointment, and I want you to
+clearly understand Mr. Farrell's offer is made to you as an
+unmarried man. I cannot believe your attentions are serious, but
+whether they are serious or not, they must cease. The detective
+reports the pair of you are now the talk of Fairharbor. You are
+making me ridiculous. I do not want a shop-girl for a
+daughter-in-law and you will either give up her acquaintance or
+give up Harbor Castle!
+
+I am no believer in ultimatums. In attaining one's end they seldom
+prove successful. I tore the note into tiny pieces, and defiantly,
+with Polly in the seat beside me, drove into the open country. At
+first we picked our way through New Bedford, from the sidewalks her
+friends waved to her, and my acquaintances smiled. The detective
+was right. We had indeed made ourselves the talk of the town, and
+I was determined the talk must cease.
+
+We had reached Ruggles Point when the car developed an illness. I
+got out to investigate. On both sides of the road were tall
+hemlocks and through them to the west we could see the waters of
+Sippican Harbor in the last yellow rays of the sun as it sank
+behind Rochester. Overhead was the great harvest moon.
+
+Polly had taken from the pocket of the car some maps and
+guide-books, and while I lifted the hood and was deep in the
+machinery she was turning them over.
+
+"What," she asked, "is the number of this car? I forget."
+
+As I have said, I was preoccupied and deep in the machinery; that
+is, with a pair of pliers I was wrestling with a recalcitrant wire.
+Unsuspiciously I answered: "Eight-two- eight"
+
+A moment later I heard a sharp cry, and raised my head. With eyes
+wide in terror Polly was staring at an open book. Without
+appreciating my danger I recognized it as "Who's Who in
+Automobiles." The voice of Polly rose in a cry of disbelief.
+
+"Eight-two-eight," she read, "owned by Fletcher Farrell, Hudson
+Apartments, New York City." She raised her eyes to mine.
+
+"Is that true?" she gasped. "Are you Fletcher Farrell?" I leaned
+into the car and got hold of her hand.
+
+"That is not important," I stammered. "What is important is this:
+Will you be Mrs. Fletcher Farrell?"
+
+What she said may be guessed from the fact that before we returned
+to New Bedford we drove to Fairharbor and I showed her the cottage
+I liked best. It was the one with the oldest clapboard shingles,
+the oldest box hedge, the most fragrant honeysuckles, and a lawn
+that wet its feet in the surf. Polly liked it the best, too.
+
+By now the daylight had gone, and on the ships the riding lights
+were shining, but shining sulkily, for the harvest moon filled the
+world with golden radiance. As we stood on the porch of the empty
+cottage, in the shadow of the honeysuckles, Polly asked an
+impossible question. It was:
+
+"How MUCH do you love me?"
+
+"You will never know," I told her, "but I can tell you this: I love
+you more than a two-thousand-ton yacht, the interest on one million
+dollars, and Harbor Castle!"
+
+It was a wasteful remark, for Polly instantly drew away.
+
+"What DO you mean?" she laughed.
+
+"Fletcher Farrell of Harbor Castle," I explained, "offered me those
+things, minus you. But I wanted you."
+
+"I see," cried Polly, "he wanted to adopt you. He always talks of
+that. I am sorry for him. He wants a son so badly." She sighed
+softly, "Poor uncle!"
+
+"Poor WHAT!" I yelled.
+
+"Didn't you know," exclaimed Polly, "that Mrs. Farrell was a
+Briggs! She was my father's sister."
+
+"Then YOU," I said, "are the relation who was 'too high and
+mighty'!" Polly shook her head.
+
+"No," she said, "I didn't want to be dependent."
+
+"And you gave up all that," I exclaimed, "and worked at
+Hatchardson's, just because you didn't want to be dependent!"
+
+"I like my uncle-in-law very much," explained Polly, "but not my
+aunt. So, it was no temptation. No more," she cried, looking at me
+as though she were proud of me, "than it was to you."
+
+In guilty haste I changed the subject. In other words, I kissed
+her. I knew some day I would have to confess. But until we were
+safely married that could wait. Before confessing I would make sure
+of her first. The next day we announced our engagement and Polly
+consented that it should be a short one. For, as I pointed out,
+already she had kept me waiting thirty years. The newspapers dug up
+the fact that I had once been a popular novelist, and the pictures
+they published of Polly proved her so beautiful that, in
+congratulation, I received hundreds of telegrams. The first one to
+arrive came from Cape May. It read:
+
+My dear boy, your uncle elect sends his heartiest congratulations
+to you and love to Polly. Don't make any plans until you hear from
+me--am leaving to-night. FLETCHER FARRELL.
+
+In terror Polly fled into my arms. Even when NOT in terror it was
+a practice I strongly encouraged.
+
+"We are lost!" she cried. "They will adopt us in spite of
+ourselves. They will lock us up for life in Harbor Castle! I don't
+WANT to be adopted. I want YOU! I want my little cottage!"
+
+I assured her she should have her little cottage; I had already
+bought it. And during the two weeks before the wedding, when I was
+not sitting around Boston while Polly bought clothes, we
+refurnished it. Polly furnished the library, chiefly with my own
+books, and "The Log of the JOLLY POLLY." I furnished the kitchen.
+For a man cannot live on honeysuckles alone. My future uncle-in-law
+was gentle but firm.
+
+"You can't get away from the fact," he said, that you will be my
+nephew, whether you like it or not. So, be kind to an old man and
+let him give the bride away and let her be married from Harbor
+Castle."
+
+In her white and green High Flier car and all of her diamonds, Mrs.
+Farrell called on Polly and begged the same boon. We were too happy
+to see any one else dissatisfied; so though we had planned the
+quietest of weddings, we gave consent. Somehow we survived it. But
+now we recall it only as that terrible time when we were never
+alone. For once in the hands of our rich relations the quiet
+wedding we had arranged became a royal alliance, a Field of the
+Cloth of Gold, the chief point of attack for the moving-picture
+men.
+
+The youths who came from New York to act as my ushers informed me
+that the Ushers' Dinner at Harbor Castle-from which, after the fish
+course, I had fled--was considered by them the most successful
+ushers' dinner in their career of crime. My uncle-in-Law also
+testifies to this. He ought to know. At four in the morning he was
+assisting the ushers in throwing the best man and the butler into
+the swimming-pool.
+
+For our honeymoon he loaned us the yacht. "Take her as far as you
+like," he said. "After this she belongs to you and Polly. And find
+a better name for her than Harbor Lights. It sounds too much like
+a stay-at-home. And I want you two to see the world." I thanked
+him, and suggested he might rechristen her the JOLLY POLLY.
+
+"That was the name," I pointed out, "of the famous whaler owned by
+Captain Briggs, your wife's father, and it would be a compliment to
+Polly, too."
+
+My uncle-in-law-elect agreed heartily; but made one condition:
+
+"I'll christen her that," he said, "if you will promise to write a
+new Log of the JOLLY POLLY." I promised. This is it.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of The Log of the Jolly Polly, by Davis
+
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