ether
to blame if it went to his head, and after the talk had been of
Burymouth, in which he professed so acceptable an interest, and then of
novels, of which he had read about as many as they, he confided to the
whole table his experience with Miss Phyllis Desmond's piano. He managed
the psychology of the little incident so well that he imparted the very
quality he meant them to feel in it.

"How perfectly charming!" said one of the ladies. "I don't wonder you
fell in love with the name. It's fit for a shepherdess of high degree."

"If _I_ were a man," said the girl across the table who was not less
sweetly a girl because she would never see thirty-nine again, "I should
simply drop everything and follow that piano to Phyllis Desmond's door."

"It's quite what I should like to do," Gaites responded, with a
well-affected air of passionate regret. "But I'm promised at Kent
Harbor--"

She did not wait for him to say more, but submitted, "Oh, well, if
you're going to Kent _Harbor_, of course!" as if that would excuse and
explain any sort of dereliction; and then the talk went on about Kent
Harbor till Mrs. Birkwall asked, generally, as if it were part of the
Kent Harbor inquiry, "Didn't I hear that the Ashwoods were going to
their place at Upper Merritt, this year?"

Then there arose a dispute, which divided the company into nearly equal
parties; as to whether the Ashwoods had got home from Europe yet. But it
all ended in bringing the talk back to Phyllis Desmond's piano again,
and in urging its pursuit upon Gaites, as something he owed to romance;
at least he ought to do it for their sake, for now they should all be
upon pins and needles till they knew who she was, and what she _could_
be doing at Lower Merritt, N. H.

At one time he had it on his tongue to say that there seemed to be
something like infection in his interest in that piano, and he was going
to speak of the young girl who seemed to share it, simply because she
saw him staring at it, and who faltered so long with him before the
freight-depot that she came near getting no seat in the train for
Burymouth. But just at that moment the dispute about the Ashwoods
renewed itself upon some fresh evidence which one of the ladies
recollected and offered; and Gaites's chance passed. When it came again
he had no longer the wish to seize it. A lingering soreness from his
experience with that young girl made itself felt in his nether
consciousness. He forbore the mo