Frances, you have heard me speak of Mr. Campbell very often. Here he is.

Jim, I have the pleasure of presenting you to Mrs. Knowles, my wife."

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."

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.

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. And Hephzy, too, was silent, although she kept her head out of the window most of the time.

But when the depot wagon entered the big gate and stopped before the side door I felt that I must say something. I must not appear fearful or uneasy.

"Here we are!" I cried, springing out and helping her and Hephzy to alight. "Here we are at last. This is home, dear."

And then the door opened and I saw that the dining-room was filled with people, people whom I had known all my life. Mr. Partridge, the minister, was there, and his wife, and Captain Whittaker and his wife, and the Dimicks and the Salterses and more. Before I could recover from my surprise Mr. Partridge stepped forward.

"Mr. Knowles," he said, "on this happy occasion it is our privilege to--"

But Captain Cy interrupted him.

"Good Lord!" he exclaimed, "don't make a speech to him now, Mr.

Partridge. Welcome home, Kent! We're all mighty glad to see you back again safe and sound. And Hephzy, too. By the big dipper, Hephzy, the sight of you is good for sore eyes! And I suppose this is your wife, Kent. Well, we--Hey! I might have known Phoebe would get ahead of me."

For Mrs. Whittaker and Frances were shaking hands. Others were crowding forward to do so. And the table was set and there were flowers everywhere and, in the background, was Susanna Wixon, grinning from ear to ear, with the cat--our cat--who seemed the least happy of the party, in her arms.

Hephzy had written Mrs. Whittaker from London, telling her of my marriage; she had telegraphed from New York the day before, announcing the hour of our return. And this was the result.

When it was all over and they had gone--they would not remain for dinner, although we begged them to do so--when they had gone and Hephzy had fled to the yard to inspect the hens, I turned to my wife.

"Frances," I said, "this is home. Here is where Hephzy and I have lived for so long. I--I hope you may be happy here. It is a rather crude place, but--"

She came to me and put her arms about my neck.

"Don't, my dear, don't!" she said. "It is beautiful. It is home.

And--and you know I have never had a home, a real home before."

"Then you like it?" I cried. "You really like it? It is so different from England. The people--"

"They are dear, kind people. And they like you and respect you, Kent.

How could you say they didn't! I know I shall love them all."

I made a dash for the kitchen. "Hephzy!" I shouted. "Hephzy! She does like it. She likes Bayport and the people and everything."

Hephzy was just entering at the back door. She did not seem in the least surprised.

"Of course she likes it," she said, with decision. "How could anybody help likin' Bayport?"

CHAPTER XIX

Which Treats of Quahaugs in General

Asaph Tidditt helped me to begin this long chronicle of a quahaug's pilgrimage. Perhaps it is fitting that Asaph should end it. He dropped in for a call the other afternoon and, as I had finished my day's "stunt" at the desk, I assisted in entertaining him. Frances was in the sitting-room also and Hephzy joined us soon afterward. Mr. Tidditt had stopped at the post-office on his way down and he had the Boston morning paper in his hand. Of course he was filled to the brim with war news. We discuss little else in Bayport now; even the new baby at the parsonage has to play second fiddle.

"My godfreys!" exclaimed Asaph, as soon as he sat down in the rocking chair and put his cap on the floor beneath it. "My godfreys, but they're havin' awful times over across, now ain't they. Killin' and fightin' and battlin' and slaughterin'! It don't seem human to me somehow."

"It is human, I'm afraid," I said, with a sigh. "Altogether too human.

We're a poor lot, we, humans, after all. We pride ourselves on our civilization, but after all, it takes very little to send us back to savagery."

"That's so," said Asaph, with conviction. "That's true about everybody but us folks in the United States. We are awful fortunate, we are. We ain't savages. We was born in a free country, and we've been brought up right, I declare! I beg your pardon, Mrs. Knowles; I forgot you wasn't born in Bayport."

Frances smiled. "No apology is needed, Mr. Tidditt," she said. "I confess to having been born a--savage."