Read That Camden Summer for Free Online

stone's throw above downtown. The Breckenridge house was as old as Camden itself and during the last two decades had been owned by the final survivor of the clan, one Sebastian Dougal Breckenridge. Sebastian had spent his productive years at sea, and the sea
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    had been his only bride. He had been content to live out his last rheumatic days within view of the ocean, where he could look down and see the steamers enter the harbor, watch the fishermen go out each morning and return each evening, listen to the gulls scold as they banked past his windows and remember his salty youth plying the trade routes across the bounding main.
    People around town remembered the days when Sebastian had kept his place shipshape, when petunias had flowered in the beds beneath the front windows, when the anchor that lay scuttled in the soil of the front yard had been kept a glistening white. But many years had passed since Sebastian's creaky old joints could endure the torture of kneeling to weed a garden, or his arthritic arms support a paintbrush, or his feeble mind remind him that the house needed care if it was not to tumble down the hill into Camden Harbor.
    Roberta gaped at the place and felt her stomach drop. "This is it?"
    "Holy smut," one of the girls whispered, followed by only silent disbelief from the backseat.
    "Elfred, you can't be serious. You spent my money on that!"
    "Two hundred dollars isn't much, Birdy. I could have gotten you a much nicer place on Limerock Street for four hundred, but you said two was your limit."
    Two hundred for the house, two hundred for the motorcar, that was what she had planned. Now she owned a hovel and could afford exactly
    one-third of a car, and had no way of getting the rest quickly.
    "Oh, Elfred, how could you? Why, it's nothing more than a ... a derelict! "
    "It's got a good sturdy foundation, and wood stoves that work, and windows that close." "Without glass," she said ' looking up. On
    the second floor one pane had been covered with a sheet of wood. Surely the place had not been painted in a decade. Not by anything except gull shit. There was plenty of that on the shingles, and below the window ledges, and across the front of a shallow front porch where a line of birds trimmed the railing whose spokes were as irregular as an old sea dog's teeth. Through the lower-level windows Roberta glimpsed the effects of Sebastian Dougal Breckenridge - predominantly what looked to be stacks of newspapers and glass floats from Portuguese fishing nets lining the sills.
    "Glass can be replaced," Elfred said of the upstairs window.
    "Not by me, it can't. I'm no glazier, Elfred!" Roberta's disillusionment was fast growing into blazing anger.
    "You said you had three good helpers-, so I took you at your word, that you wanted to save money on a structure that could be fixed up. I assumed that you had set aside some money for that purpose."
    "Well, I didn't! Not this much! I said fix up, Elfred, not rebuild!"
    Roberta sat glaring at her new domicile. "Do you want to go in and look?"
    "No. I want to suspend you from the tallest tree in Camden ... by your heel tendons, Elfred Spear! "
    "Roberta " ... then sell chances on when you'll finally rot and drop off. "
    Elfred covered his mouth with one hand and smiled behind it while she stewed in tight-lipped anger.
    "Oh, come on, Birdy, at least go in and have a look."
    She was so distraught she got out of the automobile without an umbrella and marched up the weedy yard without waiting for anyone.
    "Shoo!" she yelled at the gulls. "Get your streaky asses off my front porch!" Elfred quickly turned off the engine and rushed to catch up with her with an umbrella. He did so at the bottom of the porch steps where she had come up short and set her teeth to keep from cursing at him. Upon closer scrutiny it appeared the porch itself would rot off before Elfred did! The floor had holes in it where feet had gone right through. She stood with her hands on her hips.
    "This is