“The 1804 dollar!” he gasped. “That’s a low-down trick to play on me!”
“Why?” she asked, innocently. “It is worth at least its face value. In fact—as you may recall—my father paid $2,700 for it. When I placed it on view at the Museum, the curator told me its present value is nearer $3,600. You see, there are only three of them, extant. So, since you really insist on $1 a week for our board, it may as well be paid with a dollar that is worth the—”
“I surrender!” groaned Thaxton.
“You’d have saved so much trouble—people always would save themselves so much trouble,” she sighed, plaintively, “by just letting me have my own way in the first place. Thaxton, I am going to pay you $200 a week, board. As summer hotel rates go, now, it is a moderate price for what we’re going to get. And I’ll see we get it. We’ll be here, luggage and all, at about eleven in the morning. And now suppose you ring for Horoson. I want to talk to her about all sorts of arrangements. You’d never understand. And you’d only be in the way, while we’re talking. So, run out to the car. I left Doris there. Run along.”
Summoning his housekeeper,—who had also kept house for Osmun Vail,—Thaxton departed bewilderedly to the car where Doris was awaiting her aunt’s return.
“Are you going to let us come here, Thax?” hailed the girl, eagerly. “I do hope so! I wanted, ever so much, to go in while Auntie was making her beautifully preposterous request. But she said I mustn’t. She said there might be a terrible scene; and that you might use language. She said she is too innocent to understand the lurid things you might say, if you lost your temper; but that I’m more sophisticated; and that it’d be bad for me. Was there a ‘terrible scene,’ Thax?”
“Don’t call me ‘Thax!’” he admonished, icily. “It isn’t good form to shower familiar nick-names on your hotelkeeper. It gives him a notion he can be familiar or else that you’re trying to be familiar. It’s bad, either way. Call me ‘Mine Host.’ And in moments of reproof, call me ‘Fellow.’ If only I can acquire a bald head and a red nose and a bay window (and a white apron to drape over it) I’ll be able to play the sorry rôle with no more discomfort than if I were having my backteeth pulled. In the meantime, I’m as sore as a mashed thumb. What on earth possessed her to do such a thing?”
“Why, she looks on it as a stroke of genius!” said Doris. “Any one can go visiting. But no one ever went boarding in this way, before. It’s just like Auntie. She’s ever so wonderful. She isn’t a bit like any one else. Aren’t you going to be at all glad to have us here?”
Chapter III
AN INVOLUNTARY LANDLORD
THAXTON VAIL was eating a solitary breakfast, next morning, when, wholly unannounced, a long and ecstatic youth burst in upon him. The intruder was Willis Chase, who had roomed with Thaxton at Williams and who still was his fairly close and most annoyingly irresponsible friend.