so popular."

I turned in the seat to stare at her.

"Popular!" I repeated. "Hephzy, I have a good deal of respect for your
brain, generally speaking, but there are times when I think it shows
signs of softening."

She did not resent my candor; she paid absolutely no attention to it.

"I don't mean popular with everybody, rag, tag and bobtail and all,
like--well, Eben Salters," she went on. "But the folks that count all
respect and like you, Hosy. I know they do."

Mr. Salters is our leading local statesman--since the departure of the
Honorable Heman Atkins. He has filled every office in his native village
and he has served one term as representative in the State House at
Boston. He IS popular.

"It is marvelous how affection can be concealed," I observed, with
sarcasm. Hephzy was back at me like a flash.

"Of course they don't tell you of it," she said. "If they did you'd
probably tell 'em to their faces that they were fibbin' and not speak to
'em again. But they do like you, and I know it."

It was useless to carry the argument further. When Hephzy begins
chanting my praises I find it easier to surrender--and change the
subject.

In Boston we shopped. It seems to me that we did nothing else. I
bought what I needed the very first day, clothes, hat, steamer coat and
traveling cap included. It did not take me long; fortunately I am of the
average height and shape and the salesmen found me easy to please. My
shopping tour was ended by three o'clock and I spent the remainder
of the afternoon at a bookseller's. There was a set of "Early English
Poets" there, nineteen little, fat, chunky volumes, not new and shiny
and grand, but middle-aged and shabby and comfortable, which appealed to
me. The price, however, was high; I had the uneasy feeling that I ought
not to afford it. Then the bookseller himself, who also was fat and
comfortably shabby, and who had beguiled from me the information that I
was about to travel, suggested that the "Poets" would make very pleasant
reading en route.

"I have found," he said, beaming over his spectacles, "that a little
book of this kind," patting one of the volumes, "which may be carried in
the pocket, is a rare traveling companion. When you wish his society
he is there, and when you tire of him you can shut him up. You can't do
that with all traveling companions, you know. Ha! ha!"

He chuckled over his joke and I chuckled with him. Humor of that kind is
expensive, for I bough