E FERRY

Next morning, Sunday the 8th, we left the inn at eleven o'clock
for Providence. It was a perfect morning, neither hot nor cold,
sun bright, and the air stirring.

We took the narrow road almost opposite the entrance to the inn,
climbed the hill, threaded the woods, and were soon travelling
almost due south through Framingham, Holliston, Medway, Franklin,
and West Wrentham towards Pawtucket.

That route is direct, the roads are good, the country rolling and
interesting. The villages come in close succession; there are
many quaint places and beautiful homes.

In this section of Massachusetts it does not matter much what
roads are selected, they are all good. Some are macadamized, more
are gravelled, and where there is neither macadam nor gravel, the
roads have been so carefully thrown up that they are good; we
found no bad places at all, no deep sand, and no rough, hard blue
clay.

When we stopped for luncheon at a little village not far from
Pawtucket, the tire which had been put on in Boston was leaking
badly. It was the tire that had been punctured and sent to the
factory for repairs, and the repair proved defective. We managed
to get to Pawtucket, and there tried to stop the leak with liquid
preparations, but by the time we reached Providence the tire was
again flat and--as it proved afterwards--ruined.

Had it not been for the tire, Narragansett Pier would have been
made that afternoon with ease; but there was nothing to do but
wire for a new tire and await its arrival.

It was not until half-past three o'clock Monday that the new one
came from New York, and it was five when we left for the Pier.

The road from Providence to Narragansett Pier is something more
than fair, considerably less than fine; it is hilly and in places
quite sandy. For some distance out of Providence it was dusty and
worn rough by heavy travel.

It was seven o'clock, dark and quite cold, when we drew up in
front of Green's Inn.

The season was over, the Pier quite deserted. A summer resort
after the guests have gone is a mournful, or a delightful, place--
as one views it. To the gregarious individual who seeks and misses
his kind, the place is loneliness itself after the flight of the
gay birds who for a time strutted about in gorgeous plumage
twittering the time away; to the man who loves to be in close and
undisturbed contact with nature, who enjoys communing with the
sea, who would be alone on the beach and silent by