It came unexpectedly and in a rather odd manner. One raw, windy March afternoon she was very much surprised to see Sam Keith walk into the store. Sam, since his graduation from college, was, as he expressed it, “moaning on the bar” in Boston—that is to say, he was attending the Harvard Law School with the hope, on his parents' part, that he might ultimately become a lawyer.
“Why, Sam!” exclaimed Mary. “Is this you?”
Sam grinned cheerfully. “'Tis I,” he declared. “I am here. That is to say, the handsome youth whose footfalls you hear approaching upon horseback is none other than our hero. Mary, you are, as usual, a sight to be thankful for. How do you do?”
Mary admitted that she was in good health and then demanded to know what he was doing down on the Cape at that time of the year. He sat down in a chair by the stove and propped his feet against the hearth before replying.
“Why! Haven't you guessed?” he asked, in mock amazement. “Dear me! I'm surprised. I should have thought the weather would have suggested my errand. Hear that zephyr; doesn't it suggest bathing suits and outing flannels and mosquitoes and hammock flirtations? Eh?”
The zephyr was a sixty-mile-an-hour March gale. Sam replied to his own question.
“Answer,” he said, “it does not. Right, my child; go up head. But, honest Injun, I am down here on summer business. That Mr. Raymond, Dad's friend, who was visiting us this summer is crazy about the Cape. He has decided to build a summer home here at South Harniss, and the first requisite being land to build it on he has asked Dad to buy the strip between our own property and the North Inlet, always provided it can be bought. Dad asked me to come down here and see about it, so here I am.”
Mary considered. “Oh, yes,” she said, after a moment, “I know the land you mean. Who owns it?”
“That's what I didn't know,” said Sam. “But I do know now. I asked the first person I met after I got off the train and oddly enough he turned out to be the owner himself. It was old Clifford—Isaiah, Elisha, Hosea—Jeremiah, that's it. I knew it was one of the prophets.”
“So Mr. Clifford owns that land. I didn't know that.”