ame I guess we should know somebody.
It's an awful fashionable place."

"And you have no acquaintances here?"

"No, not really. There's Mrs. Peabody has a cottage here, what they call
a cottage, but there no such house in Cyrusville. We drove past it.
Her daughter was to school with Irene. We've met 'em out riding several
times, and Sally (Miss Peabody) bowed to Irene, and pa and I bowed to
everybody, but they haven't called. Pa says it's because we are at a
hotel, but I guess it's been company or something. They were real good
friends at school."

Mr. King laughed. "Oh, Mrs. Benson, the Peabodys were nobodys only a
few years ago. I remember when they used to stay at one of the smaller
hotels."

"Well, they seem nice, stylish people, and I'm sorry on Irene's
account."

At breakfast the party had topics enough in common to make conversation
lively. The artist was sure he should be delighted with the beauty and
finish of Newport. Miss Lamont doubted if she should enjoy it as much as
the freedom and freshness of the Catskills. Mr. King amused himself
with drawing out Miss Benson on the contrast with Atlantic City. The
dining-room was full of members of the Institute, in attendance upon the
annual meeting, graybearded, long-faced educators, devotees of theories
and systems, known at a glance by a certain earnestness of manner and
intensity of expression, middle-aged women of a resolute, intellectual
countenance, and a great crowd of youthful schoolmistresses, just on the
dividing line between domestic life and self-sacrifice, still full of
sentiment, and still leaning perhaps more to Tennyson and Lowell than to
mathematics and Old English.

"They have a curious, mingled air of primness and gayety, as if gayety
were not quite proper," the artist began. "Some of them look downright
interesting, and I've no doubt they are all excellent women."

"I've no doubt they are all good as gold," put in Mr. King. "These
women are the salt of New England." (Irene looked up quickly and
appreciatively at the speaker.) "No fashionable nonsense about them.
What's in you, Forbes, to shy so at a good woman?"

"I don't shy at a good woman--but three hundred of them! I don't
want all my salt in one place. And see here--I appeal to you, Miss
Lamont--why didn't these girls dress simply, as they do at home, and
not attempt a sort of ill-fitting finery that is in greater contrast to
Newport than simplicity would be?"

"If you were a woma