“Maybe I was, though I cal'late I should have took it out in consideration; I never would have gone to him and asked. But now the—what do you call it?—personage—come to me for somethin', the land knows what.”
“Perhaps HE wants to borrow.”
“Humph! Perhaps he does. Well, then, he's fishin' in the wrong puddle. Emily Howes, stop laughin' and makin' jokes and come into that livin'-room same as I ask you to.”
But this Emily firmly declined to do. “He's not my caller, Auntie,” she said. “He didn't even ask if I were in.”
So Thankful went into the living-room alone to meet the personage. And she closed all doors behind her. “If you won't help you shan't listen,” she declared. “And I don't know's I'll tell you a word after he's gone.”
The call was a long one. It ended in an odd way. Emily, sitting by the dining-room window, heard the front door slam and, looking out, saw Mr. Kendrick stalking down the path, a frown on his face and outraged dignity in his bearing. A moment later Thankful burst into the dining-room. Her cheeks were flushed and she looked excited and angry.
“What do you think that—that walkin' money-bag came here for?” she demanded. “He came here to tell me I'd got to sell this place to him. Yes, sell it to him, 'cause he wanted it. It didn't seem to make any difference what I wanted. Well, it will make a difference, I tell you that!”
When she had calmed sufficiently she told of the interview with her neighbor. E. Holliday had lost no time in stating his position. The High Cliff House, it appeared, was a source of annoyance to him and his. A boarding-house, no matter how genteel or well-conducted a boarding-house it may be, could not longer be tolerated in that situation. The boarders irritated him by trespassing upon his premises, by knocking their tennis balls into his garden beds, by bathing and skylarking on the beach in plain sight from his verandas. And the house and barn interfered with his view. He wished to be perfectly reasonable in the matter; Mrs. Barnes, of course, understood that. He was willing to pay for the privilege of having his own way. But, boiled down and shorn of politeness and subterfuge, his proposition was that Thankful should sell her property to him, after which he would either tear down the buildings on that property, or move them to a less objectionable site.
“But, Auntie,” cried Emily, “of course you told him you didn't want to sell.”
“Sartin I did. I told him all I had was invested here, that my first season had been a good one considerin' 'twas the first, and that my prospects were all I had a right to hope for. I told him I was sorry if my boarders had plagued him and I'd try to see they didn't do so any more. But I couldn't think of sellin' out.”