The young girl and the wife transferred their gaze to me, with an
intensified appeal in it. The man looked away with a certain shame-
-the shame of a man who feels that his wife has made him make an ass
of himself. I tried to treat his question, by the quantity and
quality of my answer, as one of the most natural things in the
world; and I probably deceived them all by this effort, though I am
sure that I was most truthful and just concerning the claims of the
different hotels to be the centre of excitement. I thought I had
earned the right to ask at the end, "Are you stopping at the Grand
Union?"

"No," he said; and he mentioned one of the smaller hotels, which
depend upon the great houses for the entertainment of their guests.
"Are you there?" he asked, meaning the Grand Union.

"Oh no," I said; "we couldn't do that sort of thing, even if we
wanted." And in my turn I named the modest hotel where we were, and
said that I thought it by all odds the pleasantest place in
Saratoga. "But I can't say," I added, "that there is a great deal
going on there, either. If you want that sort of thing you will
have to go to some of the great hotels. We have our little
amusements, but they're all rather mild." I kept talking to the
man, but really addressing myself to the women. "There's something
nearly every evening: prestidigitating, or elocutioning, or a
little concert, or charades, or impromptu theatricals, or something
of that sort. I can't say there's dancing, though really, I
suppose, if any one wanted to dance there would be dancing."

I was aware that the women listened intelligently, even if the man