spending theirs; and Deering said he guessed that was about so. He
gave me a push on the shoulder to make me understand how keenly he
appreciated the joke, and I perceived that we had won his heart too.

We joined the ladies, and I thought that my sufferings for her
authorised me to attach myself more especially to Miss Gage, and to
find out all I could about her. We walked ahead of the others, and
I was aware of her making believe that it was quite the same as if
she were going to the music with a young man. Not that she seemed
disposed to trifle with my grey hairs; I quickly saw that this would
not be in character with her; but some sort of illusion was
essential to her youth, and she could not help rejuvenating me.
This was quite like the goddess she looked, I reflected, but
otherwise she was not formidably divine; and, in fact, I suppose the
goddesses were, after all, only nice girls at heart. This one, at
any rate, I decided, was a very nice girl when she was not sulking;
and she was so brightened by her little adventure, which was really
no adventure, that I could not believe I had ever seen her sulking.

The hotel people did not keep us from going into the court of the
hotel, as I was afraid they might, and we all easily found places.
In the pauses of the music I pointed out such notables and
characters as I saw about us, and tried to possess her of as much of
the Saratoga world as I knew. It was largely there in that bold
evidence it loves, and in that social solitude to which the Saratoga
of the hotels condemns the denizens of her world. I do not mean
that the Saratoga crowd is at all a fast-looking crowd. There are
sporting people and gamblers; but the great mass of the frequenters
are plain, honest Americans, out upon a holiday from all parts of
the country, and of an innocence too inveterate to have grasped the