"Ain't it so?" agreed Tom, with a vivid remembrance of his experience at the cattle show. CHAPTER XXII THE STING OF HYPOCRISY Meanwhile Cap'n Jonah was at the Shell Road store wishing heartily that he did not have to go home. Playing a part was already beginning to pall upon the worthy captain. It was no small satisfaction he had in "foolin' them Pettys"; but the effect of his hypocrisy, he found, was to be more far-reaching than he supposed. He had not foreseen Sarah Petty's desire to show him off before the family. He had not forecast in any degree how the story of his wealth would spread, and grow, and become a Frankenstein to pursue him. It was bad enough at the store to have the loungers remark slyly upon his fortune and hint their curiosity as to how he had obtained it. None doubted the veracity of Tom Petty's tale. Even Milt Baker, the Shell Road humorist, was too much awed by the existence of so great a property in the neighborhood to invent any quips upon the subject. There is a feeling of reverence born in most Cape Codders for money. For one reason, it is so hard to get! Cap'n Jonah had Abraham Silt at his back while he was in the store, and if the storekeeper saw him getting cornered he promptly came to the rescue. But to face all these people from Harwich, and alone, was going to be something of a job, and Cap'n Jonah dreaded it. He felt as though Joe Helmford's defection, too, was a personal loss. That bright young man had often acted in a way to switch the conversation from personal matters when Cap'n Jonah was harassed by the Petty family. Had Helmford not left the Petty house Cap'n Jonah would have considered taking the young man into his confidence. Cap'n Abe had asked him how close to the bare bones of truth he could trim his ship; but Cap'n Jonah had found it an ungracious task to befool his friends as well as those for whom he felt no sympathy whatever. Of course, Pearl had to be kept in ignorance of the truth. The transparency of the girl's character precluded his taking her into his confidence. And the old captain saw, as time passed, that the fewer people who knew his secret the better his chance of carrying on the play. What the end would be, Cap'n Jonah dared not meditate upon. He had forced the Pettys to mend their treatment of Pearl. But he really had not foreseen all the change the story of his hypothetical fortune would make in his own affairs. Sarah Petty's new tack amazed Cap'n Jonah. He had expected more consideration at her hands as the result of the conspiracy; but all this that was going on in the Petty household he certainly had not imagined. "Whatever!" he said privately to the storekeeper. "I'm gettin' things so soft that I dunno what to do about it. They'll be smotherin' me to death with their soft-soapin' ways."