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“‘Tain’t but a little way to Lowa Merritt,” the conductor explained, defensively. “Eva been the’a?”

“Oh, yes; I passed a week or so there once, after I left college. Are you acquainted there?”

“I’m from the’a. Used to wo’k fo’ the Desmonds–got that summa place up the side of the mountain–before I took to the ro-ad.”

“Oh, yes! Have they still got it?”

“Yes. Or it’s got them. Be glad to sell it, I guess, since the old man lost his money. But Lowa Merritt’s kind o’ gone down as a summa roso’t. Tryin’ ha’d to bring it up, though. Know the Desmonds?”

“No, not personally.”

“Nice fo-aks,” said the conductor, providing himself for conversational purposes with a splinter from the floor. He put it between his teeth and continued: “I took ca’ thei’ hosses, one while, as long’s they had any, before I went on the ro-ad. Old gentleman kep’ up a show till he died; then the fam’ly found out that they hadn’t much of anything but the place left. Girls had to do something, and one of ’em got a place in a school out West–smaht, all of ’em; the second one kind o’ runs the fahm; and the youngest, here, ‘s been fittin’ for a music-teacha. Why, I’ve got a piano for her in this cah that we picked up at Middlemount, now. Been two wintas at the Conservatory in Boston. Got talent enough, they tell me. Undastand ‘t she means to go to Pohtland in the fall and try to get pupils, the’a.”

“Not if I can help it!” thought Gaites, with a swelling heart; and then he blushed for his folly.

VI.

Gaites found some notable changes in the hotel at Lower Merritt since he had last sojourned there. It no longer called itself a Hotel, but an Inn, and it had a brand-new old-fashioned swinging sign before its door; its front had been cut up into several gables, and shingled to the ground with shingles artificially antiquated, so that it looked much grayer than it naturally ought. Within it was equipped for electric lighting; and there was a low-browed aesthetic parlor, where, when Gaites arrived and passed to a belated dinner in the dining-room, an orchestra, consisting of a lady pianist and a lady violinist, was giving the closing piece of the afternoon concert. The dining-room was painted a self-righteous olive-green; it was thoroughly netted against the flies, which used to roost in myriads on the cut-paper around the tops of the pillars, and a college-student head waiter ushered Gaites through the gloom to his place with a warning and hushing hand which made him feel as if he were being shown to a pew during prayers.

He escaped as soon as possible from the refection which, from the soup to the ice-cream, had hardly grown lukewarm, and went out to walk by a way that he knew well, and which had for him now a romantically pathetic interest. It was, of course, the way past the Desmond cottage, which, when he came in sight of it round the shoulder of upland where it stood, was curiously strange, curiously familiar. It needed painting badly, and the grounds had a sadly neglected air. The naked legs of little girls no longer twinkled over the lawn, which was grown neglectedly up to low-bush blackberries.

Gaites hurried past with a lump in his throat, and returned by another road to the Inn, where his long ramble ended just as the dining-room doors were opened behind their nettings for supper. At this cheerfuler moment he found the head waiter much more conversible than at the hour of his retarded dinner, and Gaites made talk with him, as the young follow lingered beside his chair, with one eye on the door for the behoof of other guests.

Gaites said he had found great changes in Lower Merritt since he had been there some years before, and he artfully led the talk up to the Desmonds. The head waiter was rather vague about their past; but he was distinct enough about their present, and said the young ladies happened all to be at home. “I don’t know,” he added, “whether you noticed our lady orchestra when you came in to dinner to-day?”