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“On the bills of fare!” muttered the hermit; “but what do I care for the world’s babble? Yes, she was of the highest and grandest type. Then,” he continued, “then I thought the world could never contain another equal to her. So I forsook it and repaired to this mountain fastness to spend the remainder of my life alone–to devote and dedicate my remaining years to her memory.”

“It’s grand,” said Miss Trenholme, “absolutely grand. I think a hermit’s life is the ideal one. No bill-collectors calling, no dressing for dinner–how I’d like to be one! But there’s no such luck for me. If I don’t marry this season I honestly believe mamma will force me into settlement work or trimming hats. It isn’t because I’m getting old or ugly; but we haven’t enough money left to butt in at any of the swell places any more. And I don’t want to marry–unless it’s somebody I like. That’s why I’d like to be a hermit. Hermits don’t ever marry, do they ?”

“Hundreds of ’em,” said the hermit, “when they’ve found the right one.”

“But they’re hermits,” said the youngest and beautifulest, “because they’ve lost the right one, aren’t they?”

“Because they think they have,” answered the recluse, fatuously. “Wisdom comes to one in a mountain cave as well as to one in the world of ‘swells,’ as I believe they are called in the argot.”

“When one of the ‘swells’ brings it to them,” said Miss Trenholme. “And my folks are swells. That’s the trouble. But there are so many swells at the seashore in the summer-time that we hardly amount to more than ripples. So we’ve had to put all our money into river and harbor appropriations. We were all girls, you know. There were four of us. I’m the only surviving one. The others have been married off. All to money. Mamma is so proud of my sisters. They send her the loveliest pen-wipers and art calendars every Christmas. I’m the only one on the market now. I’m forbidden to look at any one who hasn’t money.”

“But–” began the hermit.

“But, oh,” said the beautifulest “of course hermits have great pots of gold and doubloons buried somewhere near three great oak-trees. They all have.”

“I have not,” said the hermit, regretfully.

“I’m so sorry,” said Miss Trenholme. “I always thought they had. I think I must go now.”

Oh, beyond question, she was the beautifulest.

“Fair lady–” began the hermit.

“I am Beatrix Trenholme–some call me Trix,” she said. “You must come to the inn to see me.”

“I haven’t been a stone’s–throw from my cave in ten years,” said the hermit.

“You must come to see me there,” she repeated. “Any evening except Thursday.”

The hermit smiled weakly.

“Good-bye,” she said, gathering the folds of her pale-blue skirt. “I shall expect you. But not on Thursday evening, remember.”

What an interest it would give to the future menu cards of the Viewpoint Inn to have these printed lines added to them: “Only once during the more than ten years of his lonely existence did the mountain hermit leave his famous cave. That was when he was irresistibly drawn to the inn by the fascinations of Miss Beatrix Trenholme, youngest and most beautiful of the celebrated Trenholme sisters, whose brilliant marriage to–“

Aye, to whom?

The hermit walked back to the hermitage. At the door stood Bob Binkley, his old friend and companion of the days before he had renounced the world–Bob, himself, arrayed like the orchids of the greenhouse in the summer man’s polychromatic garb–Bob, the millionaire, with his fat, firm, smooth, shrewd face, his diamond rings, sparkling fob-chain, and pleated bosom. He was two years older than the hermit, and looked five years younger.

“You’re Hamp Ellison, in spite of those whiskers and that going-away bathrobe,” he shouted. “I read about you on the bill of fare at the inn. They’ve run your biography in between the cheese and ‘Not Responsible for Coats and Umbrellas.’ What ‘d you do it for, Hamp? And ten years, too–geewhilikins!”