But once more Kendrick interrupted.

“One moment, please, Miss Howes,” he said, earnestly.  “Do I understand—­do you mean that you wish me to accept Cousin Holliday’s retainer?”

Emily paused.

“Why,” she answered, after an instant’s hesitation, “I—­I really don’t see why my wish one way or the other should be very strong.  But—­but as a friend of yours—­of course we are all your friends, Mr. Kendrick—­as one of your friends I—­we, naturally, like to see you rise in your profession.”

“Then you advise me to accept?”

“If my advice is worth anything—­yes.  Good night.”

Next day, when Captain Obed made his customary call at the ex-barber-shop, he ventured to ask the question uppermost in his mind.

“Have you decided yet, John?” he asked.

His friend looked at him.

“Meaning—­what?” he queried.

“Meanin’—­you know what I mean well enough.  Have you decided to take your cousin’s offer?”

“I’ve done more than that, Captain.  I have accepted the offer and the retaining fee, too.”

Captain Obed sprang forward and held out his hand.

“Bully for you, John!” he shouted.  “That’s the best thing you ever done in your life.  Now you’ve really started.”

Kendrick smiled.  “Yes,” he admitted, “I have started.  Where I may finish is another matter.”

“Oh, you’ll finish all right.  Don’t be a Jeremiah, John.  Well, well!  This is fine.  Won’t all hands be pleased!”

“Yes, won’t they!  Especially Brother Daniels.  Daniels will be overcome with joy.  Captain, have a cigar.  Have two cigars.  I have begun to spend my retainer already, you see.”

CHAPTER IX

The August days were busy ones at the High Cliff House.  Every room was filled and the tables in the dining-room well crowded.  Thankful told Captain Bangs that she could not spare time even to look out of the window.  “And yet Emily and I are about the only ones who don’t look out,” she added.  “There’s enough goin’ on to look at, that’s sartin.”

There was indeed.  Mr. E. Holliday Kendrick having taken possession of his new estate, immediately set about the improving and enlarging which Mr. Daniels had quoted him as contemplating.  Carpenters, painters and gardeners were at work daily.  The Kendrick motor cars and the Kendrick servants were much in evidence along East Wellmouth’s main road.  What had been done by the great man and his employees and what would be done in the near future kept the gossips busy.  He was planning a new rose garden—­“the finest from Buzzard’s Bay down”; he had torn out the “whole broadside” of the music-room and was “cal’latin’” to make it twice as large as formerly; he was to build a large conservatory on the knoll by the stables.  Hannah Parker declared she could not see the need of this.  “There’s a tower onto the main buildin’ already,” she said, “pretty nigh as high as a lighthouse.  I should think a body could see fur enough from that tower, without riggin’ up a conservatory.  Well, Mrs. Kendrick needn’t ask me to go up in it.  I went to the top of the conservatory on Scargo Hill one time and I was so dizzy in the head I thought sure I’d fall right over the railin’.”