"I tell you!" he often confided to his inner self, "city life is blightin'! When I was there, it took the breath out o' me, an' now it's come t' Quinton, it's knocked a good many different from what they once was!" With this oft-repeated sentiment Mark reached his father's door one day and through it caught the smell of frying crullers. Old Pa Tapkins was realizing his harvest from the boarders by acting upon Janet's suggestion to Mark. From early sunrise until the going down of the sun, Pa, when not necessarily preparing food for three regular meals, was mixing, shaping, frying, and selling his now famous cakes. People, in passing, inhaled the fragrance of Pa's cooking and stopped to regale themselves and take samples to friends who were yet to be initiated. Pa and his crullers were becoming bywords, and they often helped out, where meals at the boarding place failed and conversation lacked humor. As Mark stepped into the kitchen, not only his father, but Captain Billy hailed him. "Hello! Cap'n Billy," cried Mark, "come off fur a change, have ye?" "Yes, yes," Billy replied through a mouthful of cruller, hot enough to make an ordinary man groan with pain. "Yes, yes; I've come off t' see the doin's." "Well, there is considerable goin's on," Mark nodded, and calmly helped himself to a cake that was still sizzling; "there don't seem t' be no signs of lettin' up on us!" "Now, Markie!" purred Pa from the stove, "that ain't puttin' the case jest as it is. Looked at from some p'ints, we are the clutchers." Pa was a mild little man with a round, innocent face, and flaxen hair rising in a curly halo about it. His china-blue eyes had all the trust and surprise of a newly awakened baby. Life had always been to Pa Tapkins a mild series of shocks, and he parried each statement and circumstance in order that he might haply recognize it if he ran across it again, or, more properly speaking, if it struck him a smarting blow again. Pa never ran at all. As nearly as any mortal can be stationary, Pa was; but in the nature of things, passing events touched him more or less sharply in their progress. "It ain't all their doin's, Markie, now is it?" "Like as not it ain't, Pa. Sold many crullers t'-day?" "I've sold all I've made, up t' this batch, Markie, an' I've been putterin' over the heat since the mornin' meal." "Well, I'll lay the things on fur the noon meal, Pa, you tend t' business." "But you ain't slept, Markie. Up all night an' no sleep nex' day! 'T won't do, Markie, now will it?" "I'll sleep, come night time." Mark seized his third almost boiling cruller and turned to Billy. "You ain't seen Janet, hev you?" Billy looked guilty. "No, an' I ain't a-goin' t' this trip. Mark, how is things at the Light?" "Squally as t' Susan Jane. Seein' others spry while she's chained by the stroke ain't addin' t' Susan Jane's Christian qualities." "Stormin' at Janet?"