fault if it disappoints me, as it always does. I can imagine what
gaudy hopes by day and by night the bright staging of the potential
drama must awaken in the breast of a young girl when she first sees
it, and how blank she must feel when the curtain goes down and there
has been no play. It was a real anguish to me when that young girl
with the Deerings welcomed my wife and me with a hopeful smile, as
if we were the dramatis personae, and now the performance must be
going to begin. I could see how much our chance acquaintance had
brightened the perspective for her, and how eagerly she had repaired
all her illusions; and I thought how much better it would have been
if she had been left to the dull and spiritless resignation in which
I had first seen her. From that there could no fall, at least, and
now she had risen from it only to sink again.

But, in fact, the whole party seemed falsely cheered by the event of
the afternoon; and in the few moments that we sat with them on their
verandah, before going to the music at the Grand Union, I could hear
the ladies laughing together, while Deering joyously unfolded to me
his plan of going home the next morning and leaving his wife and
Miss Gage behind him. "They will stay in this hotel--they might as
well--and I guess they can get along. My wife feels more acquainted
since she met Mrs. March, and I shan't feel so much like leavin' her
among strangers here I don't know when she's taken such a fancy to
any one as she has to your wife, or Miss Gage either. I guess
she'll want to ask her about the stores."

I said that I believed the fancy was mutual, and that there was
nothing my wife liked better than telling people about stores. I
added, in generalisation, that when a woman had spent all her own
money on dress, it did her quite as much good to see other women