Cape Cod Stories. Joseph Crosby Lincoln

going to stay in the barn for a day or so, and that we needn't mention that he was there, we thought that was funny.

      But Peter done a lot of funny things the next day. One of 'em was to set a feller painting a side of the house by the count's window, that didn't need painting at all. And when the feller quit for the night, Brown told him to leave the ladder where 'twas.

      That evening the same crowd was together in the setting room. Peter was as lively as a cricket, talking, talking, all the time. By and by he says:

      “Oh, say, I want you to see the new barber. He can shave anything from a note to a porkypine. Come in here, Chianti!” he says, opening the door and calling out. “I want you.”

      And in come the new Italian man, smiling and bowing and looking “meek and lowly, sick and sore,” as the song says.

      Well, we laughed at Brown's talk and asked the Italian all kinds of fool questions and nobody noticed that the count wan't saying nothing. Pretty soon he gets up and says he guesses he'll go to his room, 'cause he feels sort of sick.

      And I tell you he looked sick. He was yellower than he was the other night, and he walked like he hadn't got his sea legs on. Old Dillaway was terrible sorry and kept asking if there wan't something he could do, but the count put him off and went out.

      “Now that's too bad!” says Brown. “Spaghetti, you needn't wait any longer.”

      So the other Italian went out, too.

      And then Peter T. Brown turned loose and talked the way he done when me and Jonadab first met him. He just spread himself. He told of this bargain that he'd made and that sharp trade he had turned, while we set there and listened and laughed like a parsel of fools. And every time that Ebenezer'd get up to go to bed, Peter'd trot out a new yarn and he'd have to stop to listen to that. And it got to be eleven o'clock and then twelve and then one.

      It was just about quarter past one and we was laughing our heads off at one of Brown's jokes, when out under the back window there was a jingle and a thump and a kind of groaning and wiggling noise.

      “What on earth is that?” says Dillaway.

      “I shouldn't be surprised,” says Peter, cool as a mack'rel on ice, “if that was his royal highness, the count.”

      He took up the lamp and we all hurried outdoors and 'round the corner. And there, sure enough, was the count, sprawling on the ground with his leather satchel alongside of him, and his foot fast in a big steel trap that was hitched by a chain to the lower round of the ladder. He rared up on his hands when he see us and started to say something about an outrage.

      “Oh, that's all right, your majesty,” says Brown. “Hi, Chianti, come here a minute! Here's your old college chum, the count, been and put his foot in it.”

      When the new barber showed up the count never made another move, just wilted like a morning-glory after sunrise. But you never see a worse upset man than Ebenezer Dillaway.

      “But what does this mean?” says he, kind of wild like. “Why don't you take that thing off his foot?”

      “Oh,” says Peter, “he's been elongating my pedal extremity for the last month or so; I don't see why I should kick if he pulls his own for a while. You see,” he says, “it's this way:

      “Ever since his grace condescended to lend the glory of his countenance to this humble roof,” he says, “it's stuck in my mind that I'd seen the said countenance somewhere before. The other night when our conversation was trifling with the razor subject and the Grand Lama here”—that's the name he called the count—“was throwing in details about his carving his friends, it flashed across me where I'd seen it. About a couple of years ago I was selling the guileless rural druggists contiguous to Scranton, Pennsylvania, the tasty and happy combination called 'Dr. Bulger's Electric Liver Cure,' the same being a sort of electric light for shady livers, so to speak. I made my headquarters at Scranton, and, while there, my hair was shortened and my chin smoothed in a neat but gaudy barber shop, presided over by my friend Spaghetti here, and my equally valued friend the count.”

      “So,” says Peter, smiling and cool as ever, “when it all came back to me, as the song says, I journeyed to Scranton accompanied by a photograph of his lordship. I was lucky enough to find Macaroni in the same old shop. He knew the count's classic profile at once. It seems his majesty had hit up the lottery a short time previous for a few hundred and had given up barbering. I suppose he'd read in the papers that the imitation count line was stylish and profitable and so he tried it on. It may be,” says Brown, offhand, “that he thought he might marry some rich girl. There's some fool fathers, judging by the papers, that are willing to sell their daughters for the proper kind of tag on a package like him.”

      Old man Dillaway kind of made a face, as if he'd ate something that tasted bad, but he didn't speak.

      “And so,” says Peter, “Spaghetti and I came to the Old Home together, he to shave for twelve per, and I to set traps, etcetera. That's a good trap,” he says, nodding, “I bought it in Boston. I had the teeth filed down, but the man that sold it said 'twould hold a horse. I left the ladder by his grace's window, thinking he might find it handy after he'd seen his friend of other days, particularly as the back door was locked.

      “And now,” goes on Brown, short and sharp, “let's talk business. Count,” he says, “you are set back on the books about sixty odd for old home comforts. We'll cut off half of that and charge it to advertising. You draw well, as the man said about the pipe. But the other thirty you'll have to work out. You used to shave like a bird. I'll give you twelve dollars a week to chip in with Macaroni here and barber the boarders.”

      But Dillaway looked anxious.

      “Look here, Brown,” he says, “I wouldn't do that. I'll pay his board bill and his traveling expenses if he clears out this minute. It seems tough to set him shaving after he's been such a big gun around here.”

      I could see right off that the arrangement suited Brown first rate and was exactly what he'd been working for, but he pretended not to care much for it.

      “Oh! I don't know,” he says. “I'd rather be a sterling barber than a plated count. But anything to oblige you, Mr. Dillaway.”

      So the next day there was a nobleman missing at the “Old Home House,” and all we had to remember him by was a trunk full of bricks. And Peter T. Brown and the “queen” was roosting in the Lover's Nest; and the new Italian was busy in the barber shop. He could shave, too. He shaved me without a pull, and my face ain't no plush sofy, neither.

      And before the season was over the engagement was announced. Old Dillaway took it pretty well, considering. He liked Peter, and his having no money to speak of didn't count, because Ebenezer had enough for all hands. The old man said he'd been hoping for a son-in-law sharp enough to run the “Consolidated Stores” after he was gone, and it looked, he said, as if he'd found him.