ewarded for it by the gayety of her greeting and the
unaffectedness of her attack of the fresh relay of toasted muffins and
tea.

"Absolutely famished," she told them, "and the shops are _so_
fascinating! You'd forgive me, Mr. Weatheral, if you could see the heaps
and heaps of lovely things simply begging to be bought; it seemed
positively unkind to come away and leave any of them." As she said
nothing whatever about the young man, it seemed unlikely that she could
have him much on her mind. She had a new way, very charming to Peter, of
surrendering the afternoon into his hands; let him ask nothing of her
she seemed to say, but to enjoy herself. She built out of their being
there before her, a very delightful supposition of her mother and Mr.
Weatheral, between them having made a little space for her to be gay in
and simple and lovely after her own kind. If she took any account of
them it was such as a dancer might who, practising a few steps for the
mere joy and pride of it, finds herself unexpectedly surrounded by an
interested and smiling audience.

If, however, with the memory of that afternoon upon him, Peter had gone
down to Fairport in the latter part of July with the expectation of
resuming the part of impresario to her charm, he suffered a sharp
disappointment. He found the Goodwards, not in the expensive caravansary
in which he installed himself, but in a smaller tributary house set back
from the main hotel though not quite disconnected with it; for quiet,
Mrs. Goodward told him, though he guessed quite as much from economy.

"It's wonderful, really, what they do with so little," Clarice, with her
fine discriminations in the obligations of friendship, had generously
let him know. "Eunice hasn't anything, positively not _any_thing in
comparison with what people of her class usually have. And with her
taste, you know, there must be things she's just aching for, that
somehow you can't give her." You couldn't, indeed. Though Peter made
excuses enough for giving her the use of his car, and giving it to her
shorn even of the implication of his society, there were few occasions
when he could do even so much as that. He couldn't even give her his
appreciations.

For at Fairport the Goodwards were quite in the heart of all that Peter
himself failed to understand that he couldn't possibly be. It was not
that he wasn't to the extent at least of sundry invitations given and
accepted, "in" as much of the Best Society a