"You're a funny girl, Mary-'Gusta." "I suppose I am; but I'm not as funny as I should be if I tried to BE somebody else.

No, Uncle Shad, you'll just have to bear with me as I am, funniness and all." A few days after this Keith, senior, came into the store.

He was not arrayed in the white flannels but was wearing a rather shabby but very comfortable tweed jacket and trousers and a white canvas hat of the kind which Hamilton and Company sold for fifty cents.

His shirt was of the soft-collared variety and his shoes were what South Harniss called "sneakers." John Keith's visits to Cape Cod were neither very frequent nor lengthy.
His wife and family came in June and remained until late September, but his sojourns were seldom longer than a week at a time and there were intervals of a month or more between them.

In Chicago he was the head of a large business and that business demanded close attention.