not to be expected off here. But in
temptingly cooked everyday food, and in certain extras which were Mother
Boswell's specialties, and which the few people now in the Inn called
for with ever-increasing zest--though they seldom deigned to send any
special word of praise to the anxious cook--Boswell's needed to ask
forbearance of nobody.

"I'll send your stuff up right away," said Tom, as the other man cast
his straw hat upon a chair and went over to a washstand, where hung
several snowy towels. "Have some hot water?"

"Yes--and iced."

"All right." Tom was off on the jump. It was certainly something to have
rented the bridal suite even for the night, but he felt more than
ordinarily curious to know who his guest was.

"Might be a travelling man," he speculated, when he had given Tim his
orders, "though he doesn't exactly seem like one. But he looks like a
fellow who's used to getting what he wants."

When the new guest came downstairs, at the peal of a gong through the
quiet house, Tom saw him cast one keen-eyed glance in turn at each of
the other occupants of the lobby, as they clustered about the door of
the dining-room. Seven of these were women, and of that number at least
five were elderly. Of the two younger ladies, neither presented any
special attractiveness beyond that of entire respectability. The eighth
guest was a man--a middle-aged man who was reading a book and who
carried the book into the dining-room with him, where he continued to
read it at his solitary table.

Tom Boswell was at the elbow of the latest arrival as he entered the
dining-room, a long, low, but airy apartment, as spotless and shining in
its way as the bedroom upstairs had been. There was no head waiter, and
Tom himself piloted the new guest to a small table by a window, looking
off into the mountains on the opposite side of the house from that of
the bridal suite. The women boarders were all behind him, the solitary
man just across the way at a corresponding small table. Certainly the
proprietor of Boswell's Inn possessed that great desideratum for such
an official--tact.

Sue Boswell, aged fifteen, in a blue-and-white print frock and white
apron so crisp that one could not discern a wrinkle in them, waited on
the new guest. She did not ask him what he would have, nor present to
him a card from which to select his meal. She brought him first a small
cup of chicken broth, steaming hot; and though he regarded this at first
as if h