Peterkin counted two millions now, and boasted the finest, or at least, the most expensive house in the county, not even excepting Tracy Park, which still held its own for solidity and old-fashioned dignity, and was the show place to the strangers visiting in Shannondale.

When Peterkin made $20,000 in one day from some speculation in stocks, he said to Mr. St. Claire, who was now a judge, and with whom he pretended to be on terms of great familiarity: 

‘I say, judge, I’m goin’ to build a buster, and whip the crowd.  I’ve lived about long enough in that little nine-by-ten hole, and I’ll be dumbed if I don’t show ’em what I can do.  I’ll have towers, and bay-windows, and piazzers, with checkered work all ’round ’em, and a preservatory, and all kinds of new fangled doin’s.  May Jane and Ann ’Liza want that Queen Anny style, but I tell ’em no such squatty things for me.  They can have all the little winder panes and stained glass, cart loads on’t, if they want; but I’ll have the rooms big and high, so a feller won’t bump his head.  Yes, sir!  I’m in for a smasher!’

And he built ‘a smasher’ on the site of the old house, behind which the ‘Liza Ann,’ or what there was left of it, was lying; and when the house was done, and furnished with the most gaudy and expensive furniture he could find in Boston and New York, he said it had just as good a right to a name as any body.  There was Tracy Park, and Grassy Springs, and Brier Hill, and Collingwood, and he’d be dumbed if he’d be outdone by any of ’em.

’He’d like to call it ‘Liza Ann,’ he said to Arthur, whom he met one day in the park, and to whom he began to talk of his new house.  ’He’d like to call it ’Liza Ann, after the old boat, for that craft was the beginnin’ of his bein’ any body; but May Jane and Ann ’Liza wouldn’t hear to it.  They wanted some new-frangled foreign name; could Mr. Tracy suggest something?’

’How would “Le Bateau” do?  It is the French for “the boat,” and might cover your difficulty,’ Arthur said, without a thought that his suggestion would be adopted.

But it was, immediately.

’That’s jest the checker.  ’Liza Ann with a new name, Lub—­lub—­what d’ye call her?’ Peterkin said, and Arthur replied: 

‘Le Bateau.’

’Yes, yes—­Lubber-toe; that’ll suit May Jane tip-top.  Beats all what high notions she’s got!  Why, I don’t s’pose she any more remembers that she used to wash Miss Atherton’s stun steps than you remember somethin’ that never happened.  Do you?’

Arthur thought very likely that she did not, and Peterkin went on: 

‘You say it means a boat in French; canal, do you s’pose?’

Arthur did not think it mattered what boat, and Peterkin continued: 

’Lubber-toe!  Sounds droll, but I like it, I’ll see an engraver to-day but how do you spell the plaguy thing!’

Arthur wrote it on a slip of paper, which he handed Peterkin, who began slowly: