It soon became a custom among my playmates to make our barn their rendezvous.  Gypsy proved a strong attraction.  Captain Nutter bought me a little two-wheeled cart, which she drew quite nicely, after kicking out the dasher and breaking the shafts once or twice.  With our lunch-baskets and fishing-tackle stowed away under the seat, we used to start off early in the afternoon for the sea-shore, where there were countless marvels in the shape of shells, mosses, and kelp.  Gypsy enjoyed the sport as keenly as any of us, even going so far, one day, as to trot down the beach into the sea where we were bathing.  As she took the cart with her, our provisions were not much improved.  I shall never forget how squash-pie tastes after being soused in the Atlantic Ocean.  Soda-crackers dipped in salt water are palatable, but not squash-pie.

There was a good deal of wet weather during those first six weeks at Rivermouth, and we set ourselves at work to find some indoor amusement for our half-holidays.  It was all very well for Amadis de Gaul and Don Quixote not to mind the rain; they had iron overcoats, and were not, from all we can learn, subject to croup and the guidance of their grandfathers.  Our case was different.

“Now, boys, what shall we do?” I asked, addressing a thoughtful conclave of seven, assembled in our barn one dismal rainy afternoon.

“Let’s have a theatre,” suggested Binny Wallace.

The very thing!  But where?  The loft of the stable was ready to burst with hay provided for Gypsy, but the long room over the carriage-house was unoccupied.  The place of all places!  My managerial eye saw at a glance its capabilities for a theatre.  I had been to the play a great many times in New Orleans, and was wise in matters pertaining to the drama.  So here, in due time, was set up some extraordinary scenery of my own painting.  The curtain, I recollect, though it worked smoothly enough on other occasions, invariably hitched during the performances; and it often required the united energies of the Prince of Denmark, the King, and the Grave-digger, with an occasional band from “the fair Ophelia” (Pepper Whitcomb in a low-necked dress), to hoist that bit of green cambric.

The theatre, however, was a success, as far as it went.  I retired from the business with no fewer than fifteen hundred pins, after deducting the headless, the pointless, and the crooked pins with which our doorkeeper frequently got “stuck.”  From first to last we took in a great deal of this counterfeit money.  The price of admission to the “Rivermouth Theatre” was twenty pins.  I played all the principal parts myself—­not that I was a finer actor than the other boys, but because I owned the establishment.