Early in April, when Mary announced that she was ready to put into operation her biggest and most ambitious plan, suggested the year before by Barbara Howe--the tea-room and gift-shop plan--the Captain did not offer strenuous opposition.
"I can't see much sense in it," he admitted. "I don't know's I know what it's all about. Nigh as I can make out you're figgerin' to open up some kind of a high-toned eatin' house. Is that it?"
"Why, no, Uncle Shad, not exactly," explained Mary.
"Then what is it--a drinkin' house? I presume likely that's it, bein' as you call it a 'tea-room.' Kind of a temperance saloon, eh?
Can't a feller get coffee in it, if he wants to? I don't wake up nights much hankerin' for tea myself."
"Listen, Uncle Shad: A tea-room--at least a tearoom of the sort I intend to have--is a place where the summer people, the women and girls especially, will come and sit at little tables and drink tea and eat cakes and ice cream and look off at the ocean, if the weather is pleasant--"
"Yes, and at the fog, if 'tain't; and talk about their neighbor's clothes and run down the characters of their best friends. Yes, yes, I see; sort of a sewin' circle without the sewin'. All right, heave ahead and get your tea-room off the ways if you want to. If anybody can make the thing keep afloat you can, Mary-'Gusta."
So Mary, thus encouraged, went on to put her scheme into effect.
She had been planning the details for some time. About halfway down the lane leading to the house from the store was another small story-and-a-half dwelling of the old-fashioned Cape Cod type. It stood upon a little hill and commanded a wide view of ocean and beach and village. There were some weather-beaten trees and a tangle of shrubs about it. It had been untenanted for a good while and was in rather bad repair.
Mary arranged with the owner, a Bayport man, to lease this house and land at a small rental for three years. In the lease was included consent to the making of necessary alterations and repairs and the privilege of purchasing, at a price therein named, at the end of the three years, should the tenant wish to do so.
Then with the aid of soap and water, white paint and whitewash, attractive but inexpensive wall papers, and odds and ends of quaint old furniture, of which the parlor and best bedroom of the Gould-
Hamilton home supplied the larger quantity, she proceeded to make over the interior of the little building. To every bit of nautical bric-a-brac, pictures of old sailing ships and sea curios she gave especial prominence. Then the lawn was mowed, the tangled shrubbery untangled and clipped and pruned; cheap but pretty lattices made to look like the shrouds of a ship, over which climbing roses were supposed--some day--to twine, were placed against the walls, and rustic tables set about under the trees and the grape arbor with ship lanterns hung above them. The driveway down to the lane was rolled and hardened, and a sign, painted by Joshua Bemis, the local "House, Boat and Sign Painter, Tinsmith and Glazier"--see Mr. Bemis's advertisement in the Advocate--was hung on a frame by the gateway.
Captain Shad's remarks when he first saw that sign may be worth quoting. Mary had not consulted him concerning it; she deemed it best not to do so. When it was in place, however, she led him out to inspect. Shadrach adjusted his spectacles and read as follows:
THE FOR'ARD LOOKOUT
TEA AND GIFTS
DAINTY THINGS TO EAT
PRETTY THINGS TO BUY
ALL'S WELL!
There was the picture of a full-rigged ship, with every stitch set alow and aloft, sailing through a sea of thick green and white paint toward a kind of green wall with green feather dusters growing out of it.
Shadrach subjected this work of art to a long and searching stare.
At last he spoke.
"Carryin' every rag she can h'ist," he observed; "nobody at the wheel, land dead ahead and breakers under the bows. Looks to me as if 'twas liable to be a short v'yage and a lively one. But the for'ard lookout says all's well and he ought to know; he's had more experience aboard gift-shop ships, I presume likely, than I have.
What's those bristly things stickin' up along shore there--eel grass or tea grounds?"
For the first few weeks after the tea-room was really "off the ways" the optimistic declaration of the For'ard Lookout seemed scarcely warranted by the facts. Mary was inclined to think that all was by no means well. In fitting out the new venture she had been as economical as she dared, but she had been obliged to spend money and to take on a fresh assortment of debts. Then, too, she had engaged the services of a good cook and two waitresses, so there was a weekly expense bill to consider. And the number of motor cars which turned in at the new driveway was disappointingly small.
But the number grew larger. As people had talked about Hamilton and Company's assortment of Christmas goods, so now they began to talk about the "quaintness and delightful originality" of the For'ard Lookout. The tea was good; the cakes and ices were good; on pleasant days the view was remarkably fine, and the pretty things in the gift shop were temptingly displayed. So, as May passed and June came, and the cottages and hotels began to open, the business of the new tea-room and gift shop grew from fair to good and from that to very good indeed.
Mary divided her time between the store and the tearoom, doing her best to keep a supervising eye on each. She was in no mood to meet people and kept out of the way of strangers as much as possible; even of her former acquaintances who came to the For'ard Lookout she saw but few. If she had not been too busy she might have found it amusing, the contrasting studies in human nature afforded by these former acquaintances in their attitude toward her.
For instance, Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Mullet and daughter, Irene, the latter now through school and "finished" until her veneering actually glittered, sat drinking tea at a table on the lawn. Said Mrs. Mullet:
