“Seems he’d been sent out to one of the colleges in the Middle West by his dad, who was dead set on havin’ a lawyer in the family.  But the more he studied, the less he hankered for law.  What he wanted to be was a literature—­a book-agent or a poet, or some such foolishness.  Old Sol, havin’ no more use for a poet than he had for a poor relation, was red hot in a minute.  Was this what he’d been droppin’ good money in the education collection box for?  Was this—­etcetery and so on.  He’d be—­what the church folks say he will be—­if Fred don’t go in for law.  Fred, he comes back that he’ll be the same if he does.  So they disowned each other by mutual consent, as the Irishman said, and the boy marches out of the front door, bag and baggage.  And, as the poetry market seemed to be sort of overly supplied at the present time, he decided he must do somethin’ to earn a dollar, and, seein’ our ad, he comes to Wellmouth Port and the Old Home.

“‘But look here,’ says I, ’we ain’t got no job for a literary.  We need fellers to pass pie and wash dishes.  And that ain’t no poem.’

“Well, he thought perhaps he could help make up advertisin’.

“‘You can’t,’ I told him.  ’One time, when Peter T. Brown was away, me and Cap’n Jonadab cal’lated that a poetry advertisement would be a good idee and we managed to shake out ten lines or so.  It begun: 

     “When you’re feelin’ tired and pale
     To the Old Home House you ought to come without fail.”

“’We thought ’twas pretty slick, but we never got but one answer, and that was a circular from one of them correspondence schools of authors, sayin’ they’d let us in on a course at cut rates.  And the next thing we knew we see that poem in the joke page of a Boston paper.  I never—­’

“He laughed, quiet and sorrowful.  He had the quietest way of speakin’, anyhow, and his voice was a lovely tenor.  To hear it purrin’ out of his big, tall body was as unexpected as a hymn tune in a cent-in-the-slot talkin’ machine.

“‘Too bad,’ he says.  ‘As a waiter, I’m afraid—­’

“Just then the door of one of the Annex houses opened sudden, and there stood Grace Robinson.  The light behind her showed her up plain as could be.  I heard Fred Bearse make a kind of gaspin’ noise in his throat.

“‘What a lovely night!’ she says, half to herself.  Then she calls:  ‘Papa, dear, you really ought to see the stars.’

“Old man Robinson, who I judged was in the settin’ room, snarled out somethin’ which wa’n’t no compliment to the stars.  Then he ordered her to come in afore she catched cold.  She sighed and obeyed orders, shuttin’ the door astern of her.  Next thing I knew that literary tenor grabbed my arm—­’twa’n’t no canary-bird grip, neither.

“‘Who was that?’ he whispers, eager.

“I told him.  ‘That’s the name they give,’ says I, ’but we have doubts about its bein’ the real one.  You see, there’s some mystery about them Robinsons, and—­’