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She was as used to loneliness as a hotel melancholiac; the people they had known had drifted away to far suburbs. In each other the Applebys found all life. In July, Father began his annual agitation for a vacation. Mr. Pilkings, of Pilkings & Son's Standard Shoe Parlor, didn't believe in vacations. He believed in staying home and saving money.
Father realized with a thumping heart that he had indeed chosen well in selecting Grimsby Head. Ten, twelve, even fifteen orders a day came from the motorists. The chronic summerites, they who came to Grimsby Center each year, walked over to see the new tea-room and to purchase Mother's home-made doughnuts. On June 27th the Applebys made a profit of $4.67, net.
He saw her send the chauffeur away, and cache her lorgnette, and roll up her sleeves, and simply wade into an orgy of cribbage, with pleasing light refreshments of cider and cakes waiting by the fireplace. Then he saw Mrs. Carter sending all her acquaintances to "The T Room," and the establishment so prosperous that Miss Mitchin would come around and beg the Applebys to enter into partnership.
And he struck up "Susanna" on his mouth-organ. The Applebys didn't start for Japan on Christmas Eve. Also, they didn't go defiantly with pack on back through the streets of New York, like immigrants to youth.
The Applebys didn't have muffins, but they did have sandwiches, and everybody was happy. Mother shooed the maid out into the kitchen, and herself, with awkward eagerness to get orders exactly right, leaned over the tea-table.
No, you just sit and have a good rest." And then, when they had composed to a spurious sort of rest the hands that were aching for activity, the Applebys would be dragged out, taken to teas, shown off, with their well-set-up backs and handsome heads, as Lulu's aristocratic parents. "My father has been a prominent business man in New York for many years, you know," she would confide to neighbors.
"This is the Roseberry family," Polly told her, indicating the dolls on the right, "and these," she pointed to those on her left, "these are the Applebys." "You must have some, too, Mary," said Molly. "What shall you call yours?" Mary had picked up one of the little figures. "Why, they are made of hips, aren't they?" "What are hips?" asked Molly.
Mid-June came; the stream of cars was almost a solid parade; the Portygee maid brought the news that there were summer boarders at the Nickerson farm-house; and the Applebys, when they were in Grimsby Center buying butter and bread, saw the rocking-chair brigade mobilizing on the long white porches of the Old Harbor Inn. And trade began! There was no rival tea-room within ten miles.
It was soon over, the dishes soon washed, and by seven o'clock the Applebys and Tubbses gathered in the sacred parlor, where ordinary summerites were not welcome, where the family crayon-enlargements hung above the green plush settee from Boston, which was flanked by the teak table which Uncle Joe's Uncle Ira had brought from China, and the whale's vertebræ without which no high-caste Cape Cod household is virtuous.
Leaving Bold Ben and his comrades to their fate, she ran to the further side of the rock, but here she hesitated. The sea was steadily making in, sending little cascades over the weed-covered ledges each time it retreated. "Can't you get across?" asked Molly, as she came up with her Applebys, and saw Polly standing still.
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