A Bad Penny [Illustration: “‘IS THIS YOUR BOY?’” _See page 16_] A BAD PENNY BY JOHN T. WHEELWRIGHT AUTHOR OF “A CHILD OF THE CENTURY,” “ROLLO’S JOURNEY TO CAMBRIDGE,” ETC. Illustrated by F. G. ATTWOOD [Illustration] BOSTON L. C. PAGE & COMPANY 1901 Copyright, 1896, By Lamson, Wolffe, and Company. _All rights reserved_ LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE “‘IS THIS YOUR BOY?’” _Frontispiece_ “MISS ELIZABETH SAT IN HIGH STATE AT HER TEA-TABLE” 12 “A PUFFY AND CONSEQUENTIAL-LOOKING MAN WAS DEACON FAIRBANKS” 46 ALICE 56 “THE BOAT WAS FLYING DOWN THE HARBOR” 64 “CHEEVER LOOKED THE MAN STRAIGHT IN THE EYE” 82 “SOME BOYS WHO NEVER WERE BOYS” 102 “JAMES TURNED AS HE HEARD THE NOISE” 119 “‘WE CANNOT BE TOO CAREFUL AT OUR AGE, MISS WOODBURY’” 137 “ANOTHER CUTLASS PIERCED THE AMERICAN’S BREAST” 154 A Bad Penny I With our modern habit of huddling together in cities, fair urban gardens, together with many other pleasant things of an age which loved elbow room, are now rare: yet in some of our New England seaboard towns, which commerce has deserted and the hands of modern improvers left unmarred, such gardens still exist, to rest the spirits of men, tired of living at lightning express rate. In one of these unprosperous Massachusetts towns, Oldbury, on the broad High Street, there stands a great square brick house, with a broad comfortable lawn stretching down to a high fence. A pathway leads from the street, between two rows of giant elm-trees, to the front door of the house; an entrance dignified by a portico of wooden Corinthian columns painted white. The house itself is severely simple, as befits a mansion, built by a Yankee ship-owner, but there is about it a comfortable air of solidity, which makes it more attractive than the gimcrack villas, which our successful men build nowadays. It was evidently built to last, and to be lived in by the builder and the children who should come after him.