“Never mind,” she told him, almost gayly.  “Maybe the invention will make our fortune.”

At that speech Lawford’s cannibalistic tendencies were greatly and visibly increased.  Louise was no coy and coquettish damsel without a thorough knowledge of her own heart.  Having made up her mind that Lawford was the mate for her, and being confident that her father would approve of any choice she made, she was willing to let the young man know his good fortune.

Nor was Lawford the only person to learn her mind.  Cap’n Abe said: 

“Land sakes! you come ’way down here to the Cape to be took in by a feller like Ford Tapp, Niece Louise?  I thought you was a girl with too much sense for that!”

“But what has love to do with sense, uncle?” she asked him, dimpling.

“Hi-mighty!  I s’pect that’s so.  An’, anyway, he does seem to improve.  He’s really gone to work, they tell me, in one of his father’s candy factories.”

“But that’s the one thing about him I’m not sure I approve of,” sighed Louise.  “We could have so much better times if he and I could play along the shore this summer and not have to think about hateful money.”

“My soul an’ body!” gasped the storekeeper, as though she had spoken irreverently about sacred things.  “Money ain’t never hateful, Niece Louise.”

On Sunday I. Tapp did not accompany his family to church at Paulmouth.  Returning, the big car stopped before Cap’n Abe’s store and Mrs. Tapp came in to call on Louise.  The good woman hugged the girl and wept on her bosom.

“I’m so happy and so sorry, both together, that I’m half sick,” she said.  “Lawford is so proud and joyful that I could cry every time I look at him.  And his father’s so cross and unhappy that I have to cry for him, too.”

Which seemed to prove that Mrs. Tapp was being kept in a moist state most of the time.

“But I know I. Tapp is sorry for what he’s done.  Only there’s no use expectin’ him to admit it, or that he’ll change.  If Fordy won’t marry Dot Johnson I. Tapp will never forgive him.  I don’t know what I shall say to her when she does come.”

“Maybe she will not appear at all,” Louise suggested comfortingly.

“I don’t know.  I got a letter from her mother putting the visit off till later.  But it can’t be put off forever.  Anyhow, when she comes Lawford says he won’t be at home.  I hope the girls will act nice to her.”

“I will,” Louise assured her.  “And I’ll make Mr. Tapp like me yet; you see if I don’t.”

“Oh, I can’t hope for that much, my dear,” sighed the lachrymose lady, shaking her head; but she kissed Louise again.

Lawford waved a hand to her at her chamber window early on Monday morning as L’Enfant Terrible drove him in the roadster to Paulmouth to catch the milk train.  All the girls were proud of their brother because, as Cecile said, he was proving himself to be “such a perfectly good sport after all.”  And perhaps I. Tapp himself admired his son for the pluck he was showing.