Captain Sam laughed.  “Well, anyhow,” he said, “don’t talk any more foolishness about not livin’ in your own house.  If I was you—­”

Mr. Winslow interrupted.  “Sam,” he said, “the way to find out what you would do if you was me is to make sure what you’d do—­and then do t’other thing, or somethin’ worse.”

“Oh, Jed, be reasonable.”

Jed looked over his spectacles.  “Sam,” he drawled, “if I was reasonable I wouldn’t be me.”

And he lived no longer in the old house.  Having made up his mind, he built a small two-room addition to his workshop and lived in that.  Later he added a sleeping room—­a sort of loft—­and a little covered porch on the side toward the sea.  Here, in pleasant summer twilights or on moonlight nights, he sat and smoked.  He had a good many callers and but few real friends.  Most of the townspeople liked him, but almost all considered him a joke, an oddity, a specimen to be pointed out to those of the summer people who were looking for “types.”  A few, like Mr. Gabriel Bearse, who distinctly did not understand him and who found his solemn suggestions and pointed repartee irritating at times, were inclined to refer to him in these moments of irritation as “town crank.”  But they did not really mean it when they said it.  And some others, like Leander Babbitt or Captain Hunniwell, came to ask his advice on personal matters, although even they patronized him just a little.  He had various nicknames, “Shavings” being the most popular.

His peculiar business, the making of wooden mills, toys and weather vanes, had grown steadily.  Now he shipped many boxes of these to other seashore and mountain resorts.  He might have doubled his output had he chosen to employ help or to enlarge his plant, but he would not do so.  He had rented the old Winslow house furnished once to a summer tenant, but he never did so again, although he had many opportunities.  He lived alone in the addition to the little workshop, cooking his own meals, making his own bed, and sewing on his own buttons.

And on the day following that upon which Leander Babbitt enrolled to fight for Uncle Sam, Jedidah Edgar Wilfred Winslow was forty-five years old.

He was conscious of that fact when he arose.  It was a pleasant morning, the sun was rising over the notched horizon of the tumbling ocean, the breeze was blowing, the surf on the bar was frothing and roaring cheerily—­and it was his birthday.  The morning, the sunrise, the surf and all the rest were pleasant to contemplate—­his age was not.  So he decided not to contemplate it.  Instead he went out and hoisted at the top of the short pole on the edge of the bluff the flag he had set there on the day when the United States declared war against the Hun.  He hoisted it every fine morning and he took it in every night.