And the colonel said yes, he guessed they had.  Next morning they was up early and out enjoying the view; it is about the best view alongshore, and they had a fit over it.  When breakfast was done the Lamonts takes Asaph one side and the colonel says: 

“Mr. Blueworthy,” he says, “my daughter and I am very much pleased with the Cape and the Cape people.  Some time ago we made up our minds that if we could find the right spot we would build a summer home here.  Preferably we wish to purchase a typical, old-time, Colonial homestead and remodel it, retaining, of course, all the original old-fashioned flavor.  Cost is not so much the consideration as location and the house itself.  We are—­ahem!—­ well, frankly, your place here suits us exactly.”

“We adore it,” says Mabel, emphatic.

“Mr. Blueworthy,” goes on the colonel, “will you sell us your home?  I am prepared to pay a liberal price.”

Poor Asaph was kind of throwed on his beam ends, so’s to speak.  He hemmed and hawed, and finally had to blurt out that he didn’t own the place.  The Lamonts was astonished.  The colonel wanted to know if it belonged to Mrs. Badger.

“Why, no,” says Ase.  “The fact is—­that is to say—­you see—­”

And just then the widow opened the kitchen window and called to ’em.

“Colonel Lamont,” says she, “there’s a sailboat beating up the harbor, and I think the folks on it are looking for you.”

The colonel excused himself, and run off down the hill toward the back side of the point, and Asaph was left alone with the girl.  He see, I s’pose, that here was his chance to make the best yarn out of what was bound to come out anyhow in a few minutes.  So he fetched a sigh that sounded as if ’twas racking loose the foundations and commenced.

He asked Mabel if she was prepared to hear something that would shock her turrible, something that would undermine her confidence in human natur’.  She was a good deal upset, and no wonder, but she braced up and let on that she guessed she could stand it.  So then he told her that her dad and her had been deceived, that that house wa’n’t his nor Mrs. Badger’s; ’twas the Wellmouth poor farm, and he was a pauper.

She was shocked, all right enough, but afore she had a chance to ask a question, he begun to tell her the story of his life.  ’Twas a fine chance for him to spread himself, and I cal’late he done it to the skipper’s taste.  He told her how him and his sister had lived in their little home, their own little nest, over there by the shore, for years and years.  He led her out to where she could see the roof of his old shanty over the sand hills, and he wiped his eyes and raved over it.  You’d think that tumble-down shack was a hunk out of paradise; Adam and Eve’s place in the Garden was a short lobster ’longside of it.  Then, he said, he was took down with an incurable disease.  He tried and tried to get along, but ’twas no go.  He mortgaged the shanty to a grasping money lender—­ meanin’ Poundberry—­and that money was spent.  Then his sister passed away and his heart broke; so they took him to the poorhouse.