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We rattled along the main road, up the hill by the Whittaker place I looked eagerly for a glimpse of Captain Cy himself, but I didn't see him and on until we reached our gate. Frances said very little during our progress through the village. I did not dare speak to her; I was afraid of asking her how she liked what she had seen of Bayport.
She was the girl with the dark eyes, whose look of contemptuous indifference had so withered my self-esteem. And her companion was the young chap who, from the tonneau of the automobile that morning, had inquired the way to Bayport. The young man turned lazily. "Are we?" he said. "I What! Why, Mabel, it's the humorist!" Then she recognized me.
But what he had said did not suit me. "Don't talk nonsense, Jim," I said. "Don't you suppose I have thought " "Thought! that's just it; you do nothing but think. Stop thinking. Stop being a quahaug a dead one, anyway. Drop the whole business, drop Bayport, drop America, if you like. Get up, clear out, go to China, go to Europe, go to Well, never mind, but go somewhere. Go somewhere and forget it.
As it is, I say nothin' and wink my port eye." The ten-day visit ended, Mr. Tidditt returned to Bayport. On the afternoon of his return he and Bailey called at the Whittaker place, and there they were joined by Miss Dawes, who had been summoned to the conclave by a note intrusted to Bos'n.
Unless, of course, I go home and stop the blackmail by printing my story in the Breeze. I've a precious good mind to do it. By the Almighty, I WILL do it! unless you come off that high horse of yours and talk like a man." And then the monument fell, fell prostrate, with a sickly, pitiful crash. If we of Bayport could have seen our congressman then!
So I started on the morning train. Then the stage broke down and I began to think I was stranded at Bayport. But this kind-hearted chap from Wellmouth I believe that's where he lived happened to pull up to watch us wrestling with the smashed wheel, and when he found I was in a hurry to get to Trumet, offered to give me a lift. His name was was Bird.
Johnson, it appeared, was ill, had been indisposed the day before and was now at home in bed. I hesitated. If this were Bayport I should have bade the gardener harness "Pet" or have harnessed him myself. But this was Mayberry, not Bayport. The gardener, deprived of his assistant's help Johnson worked about the garden when not driving was not in good humor.
While the exhibition was in progress Miss Dawes called. And before she left Gabe Lumley drove up in the depot wagon bearing a big express package addressed to "Miss Emily Thomas, Bayport." "Humph!" exclaimed Captain Cy. "Somethin' more for Bos'n, hey! Who in the world sent it, do you s'pose?" Asaph and Bailey made various inane suggestions as to the sender. Phoebe said nothing.
It was not as bad as might have been, but it was bad enough. Lawyer Peabody wired that Captain Cyrus Whittaker was at his home in Ostable, sick in bed, and threatened with pneumonia. Captain Cy, hurrying homeward in response to the attorney's former telegram, had reached Boston the day of the blizzard. He had taken the train for Bayport that afternoon.
So she paused and pantingly waited for whoever was coming. She could not see more than a few yards, but the footsteps sounded nearer and nearer, and, a moment later, a man's voice began singing "Annie Rooney," a melody then past its prime in the cities, but popularized in Bayport by some departed batch of summer boarders.
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