“Now, don’t you two get to scrapping about your old villages,” said Bob. “Neither one of them is worth living in. Why don’t you live in Portland? Then you won’t feel ashamed of your town.”
“Huh!” jeered Tom. “Portland! S’pose I did live there and some one asked me what place I was from. ‘Portland,’ I’d say. ‘Oh! Maine or Oregon?’ they’d ask. No, sir, I don’t want a city I have to explain. There’s only one Chicago.”
“That’s one good feature of it,” said Dan.
“Is that su-su-so?” began Tom pugnaciously. But Nelson intervened.
“You’re wrong about Portland, Tommy,” he said. “They wouldn’t ask you ‘Maine or Oregon’; they’d say ‘Cement or salmon?’”
“We don’t make Portland cement in my town,” said Bob disgustedly.
“Of course they don’t,” Dan agreed. “Portland is famous only as having been the birthplace of Henry Longworth Wadsfellow and of Robert Wade Hethington.”
“There’s another life-saving station, Tommy,” said Nelson. “What’s its name?”
“Pamet River. Now, there’s a fool name; Pamet. But I suppose they got crazy in the head like a fish when they got this far. I’ll bet the rest of the names are terrors.”
“I heard that years and years ago all this part of the Cape was thick forest,” observed Bob.