Doctor Prance observed, after a
pause which was an illustration of an appearance she had of thinking
that certain things didn't at all imply some others.

"Why, my cousin has got all the distinguished women!" Basil Ransom
exclaimed.

"Is Miss Chancellor your cousin? There isn't much family resemblance.
Miss Birdseye came down for the benefit of the country air, and I came
down to see if I could help her to get some good from it. She wouldn't
much, if she were left to herself. Miss Birdseye has a very fine
character, but she hasn't much idea of hygiene." Doctor Prance was
evidently more and more disposed to be chatty. Ransom appreciated this
fact, and said he hoped she, too, was getting some good from the
country-air--he was afraid she was very much confined to her profession,
in Boston; to which she replied--"Well, I was just taking a little
exercise along the road. I presume you don't realise what it is to be
one of four ladies grouped together in a small frame-house."

Ransom remembered how he had liked her before, and he felt that, as the
phrase was, he was going to like her again. He wanted to express his
good-will to her, and would greatly have enjoyed being at liberty to
offer her a cigar. He didn't know what to offer her or what to do,
unless he should invite her to sit with him on a fence. He did realise
perfectly what the situation in the small frame-house must be, and
entered with instant sympathy into the feelings which had led Doctor
Prance to detach herself from the circle and wander forth under the
constellations, all of which he was sure she knew. He asked her
permission to accompany her on her walk, but she said she was not going
much further in that direction; she was going to turn round. He turned
round with her, and they went back together to the village, in which he
at last began to discover a certain consistency, signs of habitation,
houses disposed with a rough resemblance to a plan. The road wandered
among them with a kind of accommodating sinuosity, and there were even
cross-streets, and an oil-lamp on a corner, and here and there the small
sign of a closed shop, with an indistinctly countrified lettering. There
were lights now in the windows of some of the houses, and Doctor Prance
mentioned to her companion several of the inhabitants of the little
town, who appeared all to rejoice in the prefix of captain. They were
retired shipmasters; there was quite a little nest of these worthies,
two o