re easily because, mixed with this pain,
was a certain insecurity as to her quality which he was afraid might
impart itself to those patrician presences at the table. They would be
nice, and they would be appreciative,--but would they feel that she was
a lady, exactly, when he owned to the somewhat poverty-stricken
simplicity of her dress in some details, more especially her thread
gloves, which he could not consistently make kid? He was all the more
bound to keep her from slight because he felt a little, a very little
ashamed of her.

He woke next morning in a wide, low, square chamber to the singing of
robins in the garden, from which at breakfast he had luscious
strawberries, and heaped bowls of June roses. When he started for his
train, he parted with Mrs. Birkwall as old friends as he was with her
husband; and he completed her conquest by running back to her from the
gate, and asking, with a great air of secrecy, but loud enough for
Birkwall to hear, whether she thought she could find him another girl in
Burymouth, with just such a house and garden, and exactly like herself
in every way.

"Hundreds!" she shouted, and stood a graceful figure between the fluted
pillars of the portal, waving her hand to them till they were out of
sight behind the corner of the high board fence, over which the garden
trees hung caressingly, and brushed Gaites's shoulder in a shy, fond
farewell.

It had all been as nice as it could be, and he said so again and again
to Birkwall, who _would_ go to the train with him, and who would _not_
let him carry his own hand-bag. The good fellow clung hospitably to it,
after Gaites had rechecked his trunk for Kent Harbor, and insisted upon
carrying it as they walked up and down the platform together at the
station. It seemed that the train from Boston which the Kent Harbor
train was to connect with was ten minutes late, and after some turns
they prolonged their promenade northward as far as the freight-depot,
Birkwall in the abstraction of a plot for a novel which he was seizing
these last moments to outline to his friend, and Gaites with a secret
shame for the hope which was springing in his breast.

On a side track stood a freight-car, from which the customary men in
silk caps were pulling the freight, and standing it about loosely on the
platform. The car was detached from the parent train, which had left it
not only orphaned on this siding, but apparently disabled; for Gaites
heard the men