It was a strip along the shore, almost worthless, and unsalable at present.

The taxes had been regularly paid each year by Mary Thomas, who had sent money orders from Concord.

The self-denial represented by these orders was not a little.
"Never mind, Bos'n," said Captain Cy, when he returned from the Orham trip.

"Your ancestral estates ain't much now but a sand-flea menagerie.
However, if this section ever does get to be the big summer resort folks are prophesying for it, you may sell out to some millionaire and you and me'll go to Europe.

Meantime, we'll try to keep afloat, if the Harniss Bank don't spring a leak." On the day following this conversation he took a flying trip to Ostable, the county seat, returning the same evening, and saying nothing to anyone about his reasons for going nor what he had done while there.
Bos'n's birthday was the eighteenth of November.