Americans -- Europe -- Fiction; Cape Cod (Mass.) -- Fiction
Jim stood the shock remarkably well, considering. He gave me one glance,
a glance which expressed a portion of his feelings, and then he and
Frances shook hands.
“Mrs. Knowles,” he said, “I--you'll excuse my apparent lack of
intellect, but--but this husband of yours has--I've known him a good
while and I thought I had lost all capacity for surprise at anything
he might do, but--but I hadn't. I--I--Please don't mind me; I'm really
quite sane at times. I am very, very glad. May we shake hands again?”
He insisted upon our breakfasting with him at a near-by hotel. When he
and I were alone together he seized my arm.
“Confound you!” he exclaimed. “You old chump! What do you mean by
springing this thing on me without a word of warning? I never was as
nearly knocked out in my life. What do you mean by it?”
I laughed. “It is all part of your prescription,” I said. “You told me I
should marry, you know. Do you approve of my selection?”
“Approve of it! Why, man, she's--she's wonderful. Approve of YOUR
selection! How about hers? You durned quahaug! How did you do it?”
I gave him a condensed and hurried resume of the whole story. He did
not interrupt once--a perfectly amazing feat for him--and when I had
finished he shook his head.
“It's no use,” he said. “I'm too good for the business I am in. I am
wasting my talents. _I_ sent you over there. _I_ told you to go. _I_
prescribed travel and a wife and all the rest. _I_ did it. I'm going to
quit the publishing game. I'm going to set up as a specialist, a brain
specialist, for clams. And I'll use your face as a testimonial: 'Kent
Knowles, Quahaug. Before and After Taking.' Man, you look ten years
younger than you did when you went away.”
“You must not take all the credit,” I told him. “You forget Hephzy and
her dreams, the dream she told us about that day at Bayport. That dream
has come true; do you realize it?”
He nodded. “I admit it,” he said. “She is a better specialist than I.
I shall have to take her into partnership. 'Campbell and Cahoon.
Prescribers and Predictors. Authors Made Human.' I'll speak to her about
it.”
As he said good-by to us at the Grand Central Station he asked me
another question.
“Kent,” he whispered, “what are you going to do now? What are you going
to do with her? Are you and she going back to Bayport to be Mr. and Mrs.
Quahaug? Is that your idea?”
I shook my head. “We're going back to Bayport,” I said, “but how long
we shall stay there I don't know. One thing you may be sure of, Jim; I
shall be a quahaug no more.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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