glamour that surrounded him in the minds of the Edgewood girls
did not emanate wholly from his finicky little person: something
of it was the glamour that belonged to Boston,--remote,
fashionable, gay, rich, almost inaccessible Boston, which none
could see without the expenditure of five or six dollars in
railway fare, with the added extravagance of a night in a hotel,
if one would explore it thoroughly and come home possessed of all
its illimitable treasures of wisdom and experience.

When Claude came to Edgewood for a Sunday, or to spend a vacation
with his aunt, he brought with him something of the magic of a
metropolis. Suddenly, to Rose's eye, Stephen looked larger and
clumsier, his shoes were not the proper sort, his clothes were
ordinary, his neckties were years behind the fashion. Stephen's
dancing, compared with Claude's, was as the deliberate motion of
an ox to the hopping of a neat little robin. When Claude took a
girl's hand in the "grand right-and-left," it was as if he were
about to try on a delicate glove; the manner in which he "held
his lady" in the polka or schottische made her seem a queen.
Mite Shapley was so affected by it that when Rufus attempted to
encircle her for the mazurka she exclaimed, "Don't act as if you
were spearing logs, Rufus!"

Of the two men, Stephen had more to say, but Claude said more. He
was thought brilliant in conversation; but what wonder, when one
considered his advantages and his dazzling experiences! He had
customers who were worth their thousands; ladies whose fingers
never touched dish-water; ladies who wouldn't buy a glove of
anybody else if they went bare-handed to the grave. He lived
with his sister Maude Arthurlena in a house where there were