again, I should rather not live anywhere. I was born in Quebec," he
said, as if to explain that he was used to mild climates, and began to
tell of some events of his life at Ha-Ha Bay. "I wish you were going to
stay here awhile with me. You wouldn't find it so bad in the
summer-time, I can assure you. There are bears in the bush, sir," he
said to the colonel, "and you might easily kill one."

"But then I should be helping to spoil your trade in wild beasts,"
replied the colonel, laughing.

Mr. Arbuton looked like one who might be very tired of this. He made no
sign of interest either in the early glooms and privations or the summer
bears of Ha-Ha Bay. He sat in the quaint parlor, with his hat on his
knee, in the decorous and patient attitude of a gentleman making a call.

He had no feeling, Kitty said to herself; but that is a matter about
which we can easily be wrong. It was rather to be said of Mr. Arbuton
that he had always shrunk from knowledge of things outside of a very
narrow world, and that he had not a ready imagination. Moreover, he had
a personal dislike, as I may call it, of poverty; and he did not enjoy
this poverty as she did, because it was strange and suggestive, though
doubtless he would have done as much to relieve distress.

"Rather too much of his autobiography," he said to Kitty, as he waited
outside the door with her, while the Canadian quieted his dog, which was
again keeping himself in practice of catching the moose by making
vicious leaps at the horse's nose. "The egotism of that kind of people
is always so aggressive. But I suppose he's in the habit of throwing
himself upon the sympathy of summer visitors in this way. You can't
offer a man so little as shilling and sixpence who's taken you into his