The Salt Water Taffy King was not at the private dock when Lawford arrived.  Mr. Israel Tapp was an irritable and impatient man.  He “flew off the handle” at the slightest provocation.  Many times a day he lost his temper and, as Lawford phlegmatically expressed it, “blew up.”

These exhibitions meant nothing particularly to Mr. Tapp.  They were escape-valves for a nervous irritability that had grown during his years of idleness.  Born of a poor Cape family, but with a dislike for fish-seines and lobster-pots, he had turned his attention from the first to the summer visitors, even in his youth beginning to flock to the old-fashioned ports of the Cape.  Catering to their wants was a gold mine but little worked at that time.

He began to sell candy at one of the more popular resorts.  Then he began to make candy.  His Salt Water Taffy became locally famous.  He learned that a good many of the wealthier people who visited the Cape in summer played all the year around.  They went to Atlantic City or to the Florida beaches in the winter.

So Israel Tapp branched out and established salt water taffy kitchens all up and down the coast.  “I.  Tapp, the Salt Water Taffy King” became a catch-word.  It was then but a step to incorporating a company and establishing huge candy factories.  I. Tapp went on by leaps and bounds.  While yet a comparatively young man he found himself a multi-millionaire.  Even a rather expensive family could not spend his income fast enough.

He built the ornate villa at The Beaches and, like Lawford, preferred to live there rather than elsewhere.  His wife and the older girls insisted upon having a town house in Boston and in traveling at certain times to more or less exclusive resorts and to Europe.  Their one ambition was to get into that exclusive social set in which they felt their money should rightfully place them.  But a house on the Back Bay does not always assure one’s entrance to the circles of the “gilded codfish.”

Mr. Tapp went down to the dock again after a time.  Lawford had the Merry Andrew all ready to set out on the proposed fishing trip.  The sloop was a pretty craft, clinker built, and about the fastest sailing boat within miles of Cardhaven.  Lawford was proud of her.

“So you’re back at last, are you?” snapped the Salt Water Taffy King.

He was a portly little man with a red face and a bald brow.  His very strut pronounced him a self-made man.  He glared at his son, whose cool nonchalance he often declared was impudence.

“I’ve been waiting some time for you, dad.  Hop aboard,” Lawford calmly said.

“You took your time in getting back here,” responded his father, by no means mollified.  “And you knew I was waiting.  But you had to stand and talk to a girl over there.  Cicely says it is that picture actress who is staying at Cap’n Abe’s.  Is that so?”

“I presume Cicely is right,” his son answered.  “There is no other here at present to my knowledge.”