“Pa said ’twas filled with paintin’s of ancestors, and books an’ queer furreign rugs a hangin’ on the walls, though thar was plenty beside on the floor. Pa’d been to a museum up to Boston onct, an’ he said as ’twas purty much like that inside the place.
“Wall, when ’twas all finished, the two tuk to livin’ in it with a man servant an’ an old woman to keep an eye on the gal, seemed like.
“’Twan’t swamp around here in those days, ’twas sand, and the Colonel had a plant put in that grew all over – sand verbeny he called it, but folks in Siquaw Center shook their heads, knowin’ as how the day would come when the old sea would rise up an’ claim its own, bein’ as that had all been ocean onct on a time.
“Pa says as how he tol’ the Colonel that he was takin’ big chances, buildin’ a house as hefty as that thar one, on nothin’ but sand, but that wan’t all he built either. Furst off ’twas a high sea wall to keep the ocean back off his place, then ’twas a pier wi’ lights along it, and then he fetched a yacht from somewhere.
“Pa says he’d never seen a craft like it, an’ he’d been a sea-farin’ man ever since the North Star tuk to shinin’, or a powerful long time, anyhow. That yacht, Pa says, was the whitest, mos’ glistenin’ thing he’d ever sot eyes on. An’ graceful! When the sailors, as wore white clothes, tuk to sailin’ it up and down, Pa says folks from Siquaw Center tuk a holiday just to come down to the shore to watch the craft. It slid along so silent and was so all-over white, Gus Pilsley, him as was school teacher days and kep’ the poolhall nights, said it looked like a ‘phantom yacht,’ an’ that’s what folks got to callin’ it.
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