"Excuse me, Mister," observed Gabe, after an interval, "but you ain't said where you're goin'."

The passenger came out of his day dream with a start.

"Why, that's right!" he exclaimed. "So I haven't! Well, now, where would you go, if you was me? Is there a hotel or tavern or somethin'?"

"Yup. There's the Bayport Hotel. 'Tain't exactly a hotel, neither. We call it the perfect boardin' house 'round here. You see--"

He proceeded to tell the story of "the perfect boarding house." His listener seemed greatly interested, and although he laughed, did not interrupt until the tale was ended.

"So!" he said, chuckling. "Bailey Bangs, hey? Stub Bangs! Well, well! And he married Ketury Payson! How in time did he ever find spunk enough to propose? And Ketury runs the perfect boardin' house! Well, that ought to be job enough for one woman. She runs Bailey, too, on the side, I s'pose?"

"You bet you! He don't dast to say 'boo' to a chicken when she's 'round. I say, Mister! I don't know's I know your name, do I? I judge you've been here afore so--"

"Yes, I've been here before. Whose is that big place up there across our bows? The one with the cupola on the main truck?"

"That, sir," said Mr. Lumley, oratorically, "belongs to the Honorable Heman G. Atkins, and it's probably the finest in this county. Heman is our representative in Washin'ton, and-- Did you say anything?"

The passenger had said something, but he did not repeat it. He was leaning from the carriage and gazing steadily up the slope ahead. And his gaze, strange to say, was not directed at the imposing Atkins estate, but at its opposite neighbor, the old "Cy Whittaker place."

Slowly, laboriously, Dan'l Webster mounted the hill. At the crest he would have paused to take breath, but the driver would not let him.

"Git along, you!" he commanded, flapping the reins.

And then Mr. Lumley suffered the shock of a surprise. The hitherto cool and self-possessed occupant of the rear seat seemed very much excited. His big red hand clasped Mr. Lumley's over the reins, and Dan'l was brought to an abrupt standstill.

"Heave to!" he ordered, sharply, and the tone was that of one who has given many orders and expects them to be obeyed. "Belay! Whoa, there! Great land of love! look at that! LOOK at it! Who did that?"

The mate to the big red hand pointed to the front door of the Whittaker place. Gabe was alarmed.

"Done what? Done which?" he gasped. "What you talkin' about? There ain't nobody lives in there. That house has been empty for--"

"Where's the front fence?" demanded the excited passenger. "What's become of the hedge? And who put up that--that darned piazza?"

The piazza had been where it now was almost since Mr. Lumley could remember. He hastened to reply that he didn't know; he wasn't sure; he presumed likely 'twas "them New Hampshire Howeses," when they ran a summer boarding house.

The stranger drew a long breath. "Well, of all the--" he began. Then he choked, hesitated, and ordered his driver to heave ahead and run alongside the hotel as quick as the Almighty would let him. Gabe hastened to obey. He was now absolutely certain that his companion was an escaped lunatic, and the sooner another keeper was appointed the better. The remainder of the trip was made in silence.

Mrs. Bangs opened the door of the perfect boarding house and stood majestically waiting to receive the prospective guest. Over her shoulders peered the faces of the boarders.

"Good afternoon," began the landlady. "I presume likely you would like to--"

She was interrupted. The newcomer turned toward her and extended his hand.

"Hello, Ketury!" he said. "I ain't seen you sence you wore your hair up, but you're just as good-lookin' as ever. And ain't that Bailey? Yes, 'tis, and Asaph, too! How are you, boys? Shake!"

Mr. Bangs and his chum, the town clerk, had emerged from the doorway. Their mouths and eyes were wide open and they seemed to be suffering from a sort of paralysis.

"Well? What's the matter with you?" demanded the arrival. "Ain't too stuck up to shake hands after all these years, are you?"

Bailey's mouth closed in order that it's possessor might swallow. Then it slowly reopened.

"I swan to man!" he ejaculated. "WELL! I swan to man! I--I b'lieve you're Cy Whittaker!"

"Course I am. Have to dye my carrot top if I want to play anybody else. But look here, boys, you answer my question: who had the cheek to rig up that blasted piazza on my house? It starts to come down to-morrow mornin'!"

CHAPTER III

"FIXIN' OVER"

Miss Angeline Phinney made no less than nine calls that afternoon. Before bedtime it was known, from the last house in Woodchuck Lane to the fish shanties at West Bayport, that "young Cy" Whittaker had come back; that he had come back "for good"; that he was staying temporarily at the perfect boarding house; that he was "awful well off"--having made lots of money down in South America; that he intended to "fix over" the Whittaker place, and that it was to be fixed over, not in a modern manner, with plush parlor sets--a la Sylvanus Cahoon--nor with onyx tables and blue and gold chairs like those adorning the Atkins mansion. It was to be, as near as possible, a reproduction of what it had been in the time of the late "Cap'n Cy," young Cy's father.

"_I_ think he's out of his head," declared Miss Phinney, in confidence, to each of the nine females whom she favored with her calls. "Not crazy, you understand, but sort of touched in the upper story. I says so to Matildy Tripp, said it right out, too: 'Matildy,' I says, 'he's got a screw loose up aloft just as sure as you're a born woman!' 'What makes you think so?' says she. 'Well,' says I, 'do you s'pose anybody that wan't foolish would be for spendin' good money on an old house to make it OLDER?' I says. Goin' to tear down the piazza the fust thing! Perfectly good piazza that cost ninety-eight dollars and sixty cents to build; I know, because I see the bill when the Howeses had it done. And he's goin' to set out box hedges, somethin' that ain't been the style in this town sence Congressman Atkins pulled up his. 'What in the world, Cap'n Whittaker,' says I to him, 'do you want of box hedges? Homely and stiff and funeral lookin'! I might have 'em around my grave in the buryin' ground,' I says, 'but nowheres else.' 'All right, Angie,' says he, 'you shall have 'em there; I'll cut some slips purpose for you. It'll be a pleasure,' he says. Now ain't that crazy talk for a grown man?"

Miss Phinney was not the only one in our village to question Captain Cy Whittaker's sanity during the next few months. The majority of our people didn't understand him at all. He was generally liked, for although he had money, he did not put on airs, but he had his own way of doing things, and they were not Bayport ways.

True to his promise, he had a squad of carpenters busy, on the day following his arrival, tearing down the loathed piazza. These carpenters, and more, were kept busy throughout that entire spring and well into the summer. Then came painters and gardeners. The piazza disappeared; a new picket fence, exactly like the old one torn down by the Howeses, was erected; new shutters were hung; new windowpanes were set; the roof was newly shingled. Captain Cy, Senior, had, in his day, cherished a New England fondness for white and green paint; therefore the new fence was white and the house was white and the blinds a brilliant green. Rows of box hedge, the plants brought from Boston, were set out on each side of the front walk. The Howes front-door bell--a clamorous gong--was removed, and a glass knob attached to a spring bell of the old-fashioned "jingle" variety took its place. An old-fashioned flower garden-- Cap'n Cy's mother had loved posies--was laid out on the west lawn beyond the pear trees. All these changes the captain superintended; when they were complete he turned his attention to interior decoration.

And now Captain Cy proceeded to, literally, astonish the natives. Among the Howes "improvements" were gilt wall papers and modern furniture for the lower floor of the house. The furniture they had taken with them; the wall paper had perforce been left behind. And the captain had every scrap of that paper stripped from the walls, and the latter re-covered with quaint, ugly, old-fashioned patterns, stripes and roses and flowered sprays with impossible birds flitting among them. The Bassett decorators has pasted the gilt improvement over the old Whittaker paper, and it was the Whittaker paper that the captain did his best to match, sending samples here, there, and everywhere in the effort. Then, upon the walls he hung old-fashioned pictures, such as Bayport dwellers had long ago relegated to their attics, pictures like "From Shore to Shore," "Christian Viewing the City Beautiful," and "Signing the Declaration." To these he added, bringing them from the crowded garret of the homestead, oil paintings of ships commanded by his father and grandfather, and family portraits, executed--which is a peculiarly fitting word--by deceased local artists in oil and crayon.

He boarded up the fireplace in the sitting room and installed a base-burner stove, resurrected from the tinsmith's barn. He purchased a full "haircloth set" of parlor furniture from old Mrs. Penniman, who never had been known to sell any of her hoarded