You'd think the wild geese roosted on the flagpole nights, and
the bluefish clogged up the bay so's you could walk on their back fins
without wetting your feet--that is, if you wore rubbers and trod light.
"There!" says Peter T., waving the advertisement and crowing gladsome;
"they'll take to that like your temp'rance aunt to brandy cough-drops.
We'll have to put up barbed wire to keep 'em off."
"Humph!" grunts Cap'n Jonadab. "Anybody but a born fool'll know there
ain't any shooting down here this time of year."
Peter looked at him sorrowful. "Pop," says he, "did you ever hear that
Solomon answered a summer hotel ad? This ain't a Chautauqua, this is
the Old Home House, and its motto is: 'There's a new victim born every
minute, and there's twenty-four hours in a day.' You set back and count
the clock ticks."
Well, that's 'bout all we had to do. We got boarders enough from that
ridiculous advertisement to fill every spare room we had, including
Jonadab's and mine. Me and the cap'n had to bunk in the barn loft; but
there was some satisfaction in that--it give us an excuse to get away
from the "sports" in the smoking room.
The Todds was part of the haul. He was a little, dried-up man, single,
and a minister. Nigh's I could find out, he'd given up preaching by the
request of the doctor and his last congregation. He had a notion that he
was a mighty hunter afore the Lord, like Nimrod in the Bible, and he'd
come to the Old Home to bag a few gross of geese and ducks.
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