VI
“CHANGE AND REST”—SUMMER BARGAINING
Although on the surface Cape Cod seems to offer a haven of refuge to that much overworked appendage to the modern man, the pocket-book, there are dotted here and there upon the highways and byways many comparatively innocent pitfalls.
To a close student of these danger spots, they may be grouped under the heading “Tea-Rooms, Arts and Crafts Stores, and Antique Shops.”
I know of no greater relief than to escape from town and come to the Cape. Once there, the daily routine of office, the absence of any assigned duty, the leisure hours passed in or on the water or idly knocking about the golf links, tend to merge one day into another, so that time flashes past at an alarming rate. But every now and again comes a day when some member of the family suggests that we take the motor and extend our vision. It is upon such occasions that we test the financial astuteness of the aborigines.
One never visits the Cape without discovering how effectively the climate stimulates the appetite. What wonder, therefore, that every village and hamlet possesses a Tea-Room of varying attraction?
The stop is made and the Tea-Room visited, only to find that the family, in addition to ordering the tea, with its accompaniment of toast and cake, or, for the younger members, a bottle of ginger ale or an ice-cream cone, are bent upon securing a souvenir. The Tea-Room is generally furnished with an assortment of articles intended for just such gullibles as ourselves. There are, for instance, baskets of assorted sizes and colors, for flowers, or fruit, or sewing, or pine cones; in fact for everything that should be thrown away, but isn’t. We have several such baskets at home, but that does not prevent some member of the family from buying another. It will do for a Christmas present. Then there are varieties of other things made far away and designed to lure the cheerful motorist, such as charmingly decorated match-cases for elderly people, noisily painted tin pails for the children, dainty knockers, and all manner of knick-knacks for the women of the party. The invariable assortment of what, to a man, seems the essence of uselessness, and yet, I confess it, attractive to an insidious extent.
The pocket-book is touched, not severely, to be sure, but there is a perceptible shrinkage as we file out to continue on our harmless junket.