Laughing Last

e the baker's cart pass he

oe rarely penetrated Sunset Lane with his goods; Tillie Higgins and ol

cart approaching through the deep sand. At once sh

en," the baker called to he

ay! Not bad

ng it to her. Gettap, General. Pretty

drop over soon's

oses. Tillie was a little breathless; she had h

n? You don't say. Not bad

that letter if he can. Then the hul town'll know. I told him to tell Achsy I'd drop o

had bread in her own oven. "If it's news send Martie over with

lled it "up p'int way" and "t'other end." The more fanciful name had been given to it by a young Portuguese who had essayed to convert that corner of Provincetown into a summer colony. He had onl

less on definite purpose bound, excepting the artists who came singly and in groups to paint an old gray gable against an overtowering hill of sand or a scrap of blue sky between crumbling chimney pots and peaked roofs or old Mrs. Calkins' hollyhocks that flanked the narrow byway like gaudy soldiers. Some sketched Jeremiah Higgins' octagonal

with labor, her sparse hair twisted into a knob at the exact center of the back of her head, she was not lovely to look upon, yet from her eyes gleamed a spirit that knew no wear of age, that too

soul. For Lavender was not like other children; his poor little body was sadly crippled. Achsa had at first refused to believe but that he might "grow straight," then as the years convinced her that this could never be she consecrated herself to the single task of

p, and Nip and Tuck, Achsa Green's two black cats. Tuck, caught sunning herself in the middle of the lane, had recognized a foe in Poker and had defended her stronghold; Poker, resenting her exclusiveness, had offered battle. Nip, never far from his sister, had promptly thrown himself i

hsa Green in the open

his rudeness. He never fights anyone smaller than himself. I've brought him up to a hig

laughed gleefully. "Tuck's sort o' suspicious o' strange folks, but I cal'la

u're Miss Green, aren't you? I'm sure that's the door they told me about. And if your defia

hin' 'slong as his own door's at his back. Don't know as anyone's

hen he showed the drawing to Achsa Green she had beamed with pleasure. "Why, that's as like Nip as though it war a twin." Nip, scenting the friendly atmosphere, had relaxed, stretc

ee the inside of the old house, had followed her into the low-ceilinged kitchen. And that had b

t do for anyone else, she finally consented to "let" her gable room to the young stranger and to board him as well. In settling the matter of board young Allan had had to deal with a pride as hard as the granite of the breakwall he could glimpse from the one window of his room; it had

of her generation had told him that she was without "sense" where business was concerned. It was everyone's wonder how she'd managed to feed two mouths, not counting the cats, with Lavender not earning so much as his salt. And gradually, as the summers

stressed his parents very much. The boy had "everything" and he didn't care a rap about "anything"; they looked upon his spells of dreamy preoccupation as "loafing." His father had an executive office in the iron works waiting for him when he finished college, a job at which any red-blooded young fellow would jump, and Dugald talked of painting. His mother had grieved that he would take no part in the social whirl that made up her existence, that he laughed at the creed of her "set," scou

bhorred the false or superficial, a brain that stifled in crowded places. He much preferred knocking elbows with men of homely labor to the crowded and law-breaking parties he came to Cape Cod to escape; he found among the fisherfolk, the old gray wharves, the sandy dunes, everlastingly s

ing sensation. And in Aunt Achsa's affection for him there was a depth which he divined but only vaguely understood. In his hardy six feet four the compassionate mother-woman was seeing her poor Lavender, big an

had not been rewarded by any hint of its contents. Achsa could not remember when she had had a letter before. She fingered the envelope apprehensively. Yet

ng," she had begged Dugald Allan, in a shaky voi

wind. "And the little thing says she knows all about me. Heard her folks tell. Well, well, I wouldn't 'a said there was a God's soul knew about Achsa Green outside this harbor! The little pretty. And her ma's dead-died when she was a baby,

broadly over the reading. But his smile changed to a quick frown as he observed the signature. Fo

her?" he asked Achsa Green

the real business of the letter. "Why, I don

I told you this is the only corner of the e

stairs bedroom. It ain't been used except to store things since Lavender was born in there and his ma was taken out in a box, but I don't kno

at least the kind like his young cousin and her friends, which was the only kind he really knew. But he was touched by Aunt Achsa's delight in finding "flesh-and-blood" kin; he did not like to dam

a never set anything by books himself and Asabel's and my schoolin' sort o' depended on the elements." Dugald

and I'll write just as

s a scrap of writin'

oung Allan promptly, delighting in the

bt assailed Achs

ht to tell first h

a to speak of Lavender as "being different." At first, with courteous consideration he had avoided the

before he answered,

ay-it's only the outer shell of him that is diff

; he put so easily into words wha

r promise, it was Cousin Achsa, herself. He had had to write several letters before one quite suited both him and Achsa. The letter despatched, to his surpri

its young occupant of that tragic passing of Lavender's mother "by box." He abetted her safeguardi

knocked off long's they lived through them cat

n inwardly, "You c

epend upon Lavender. "If he took it into his head to go down to Rockman's wharf why, he'd go-cousin or no cousin comin'," Aunt Achsa had worried; and the