He nodded. “I think you're right,” he declared. “She'll see to that, or I miss my guess. No, my boy, your quahaug days are over. There's nothing of the shellfish about her; she's a live woman, as well as a mighty pretty one, and she cares enough about you to keep you awake and in the game. I congratulate you, Kent, and I'm almost as happy as you are. Also I shall play the optimist at our next directors' meeting; I see signs of a boom in the literature factory. Go to it, my son. You have my blessing.” We took the one o'clock train for Boston, remained there over night, and left on the early morning “accommodation”--so called, I think, because it accommodates the train hands--for Cape Cod. As we neared Buzzard's Bay my spirits, which had been at topnotch, began to sink. When the sand dunes of Barnstable harbor hove in sight they sank lower and lower. It was October, the summer people, most of them, had gone, the station platforms were almost deserted, the more pretentious cottages were closed. The Cape looked bare and brown and wind-swept. I thought of the English fields and hedges, of the verdant beauty of the Mayberry pastures. What SORT of a place would she think this, the home to which I was bringing her? She had been very much excited and very much interested. New York, with its sky-scrapers and trolleys, its electric signs and clean white buildings, the latter so different from the grimy, gray dwellings and shops of London, had been a wonderland to her. She had liked the Pullman and the dining-car and the Boston hotel. But this, this was different. How would she like sleepy, old Bayport and the people of Bayport. Well, I should soon know. Even the morning “accommodation” reaches Bayport some time or other. We were the only passengers to alight at the station, and Elmer Snow, the station agent, and Gabe Lumley, who drives the depot wagon, were the only ones to welcome us. Their welcome was hearty enough, I admit. Gabe would have asked a hundred questions if I had answered the first of the hundred, but he seemed strangely reluctant to answer those I asked him. Bayport was gettin' along first-rate, he told me. Tad Simpson's youngest child had diphtheria, but was sittin' up now and the fish weirs had caught consider'ble mackerel that summer. So much he was willing to say, but he said little more. I asked how the house and garden were looking and he cal'lated they were all right. Pumping Gabe Lumley was a new experience for me. Ordinarily he doesn't need pumping. I could not understand it. I saw Hephzy and he in consultation on the station platform and I wondered if she had been able to get more news than I.