There was no rival tea-room within ten miles. Father realized with a thumping heart that he had indeed chosen well in selecting Grimsby Head. Ten, twelve, even fifteen orders a day came from the motorists. The chronic summerites, they who came to Grimsby Center each year, walked over to see the new tea-room and to purchase Mother’s home-made doughnuts. On June 27th the Applebys made a profit of $4.67, net.
As they rested in the rose-arbor at dusk of that day, Father burst out in desperate seriousness: “Oh my dear, my dear, it is going to go! I was beginning to get scared. I couldn’t have forgiven myself if I’d let you in for something that would have been a failure. Golly! I’ve been realizing that we would have been pretty badly up against it if the tea-room hadn’t panned out right. I’d have wanted to shoot myself if I’d been and gone and led you into want, old honey!”
Then, after the first of July, when the Cape Cod season really began, business suddenly fell away to nothing. They couldn’t understand it. In panic they reduced the price of tea to five cents. No result. They had about one customer a day. They had not looked to Grimsby Center for the cause. That they might personally attend to business they had been sending the maid to the Center for their supplies, while they stuck at home—and wore out their hearts in vain hoping, in terrified wonder as to why the invisible gods had thus smitten them. Not for a week, a week of draining expense without any income to speak of, did they find out.
One July evening they walked to Grimsby Center. Half-way down they came to a new sign, shaped like a tea-pot, declaring in a striking block of print:
MISS MITCHIN OF BROOKLINE ANNOUNCES THE QUAINTEST TEA-ROOM ON THE CAPE. HISTORIC SOULE MANSION, GRIMSBY CENTER. CRUMPETS AND SALLY LUNNS WITH FRESH STRAWBERRY JAM. OPEN JULY 1.
And the Applebys had never heard of crumpets or Sally Lunns.
While the light turned the moors to a wistful lavender, the little old couple stood in a hollow of the road, looking mutely up at the sign that mocked them from its elevation on a bare gravel bank beside the way. Father’s shoulders braced; he bit his lips; he reached out for Mother’s hand and patted it. He led her on, and it was he who spoke first:
“Oh, that kind of miffle-business won’t hurt us any. Girly-girly stuff, that’s what it is. Regular autoists would rather have one of your home-made doughnuts than all the crumples in the world, and you can just bet your bottom dollar on that, Sary Jane.”
He even chuckled, but it was a feeble chuckle, and he could find no other solace to give as they trudged toward Grimsby Center, two insignificant people, hand in hand, dim in the melancholy light which made mysterious the stretching moors. Presently they and the black highroad disappeared. Only the sandy casual trails and mirror-bright tiny pools stood out in the twilight.
Yet there was light enough for them to see the silhouettes of two more tea-pot signs before they entered Grimsby Center.