CHAPTER IV
THE BOYCOTT
“I ’M going home to-day,” I announced to Ruth after breakfast the next morning, “to secure Jasper’s consent to buying the House of the Five Pines. I’ll go round on the back street now, while you are busy, and get my washing from Mrs. Dove, so that I can pack it.”
As I passed the big old house it looked so innocent that I scoffed at the stories that it had gathered to itself, as a ship gathers barnacles. “All I need to do is to have it painted,” I thought, “and I will have the finest place on the cape. I’ll see how much it will cost to have a few things done.”
I turned into Turtle’s store, and after a search found the proprietor out in the back room making himself an ice-cream cone. I asked him if he knew any one whom I could get to paint a house.
“What house?” he parried, as if it made all the difference in the world.
“The House of the Five Pines.”
“What do you want to paint that for?”
I tried to keep my temper. “I’m going to buy it.”
“Well, you’ll probably never move in,” was his reply. “I wouldn’t waste no paint on it.”
As I turned out of his hostile door I bumped into a man coming in with open pails of white lead in each hand.