shaven; some drops of perspiration stood upon it, and upon his
forehead, which showed itself well up toward his crown under the
damp strings of his scanty hair. He looked at the young goddess in
white duck with a sort of trouble in his friendly countenance, and
his wife (if it was his wife) seemed to share his concern, though
she smiled, while he let the corners of his straight mouth droop.
She was smaller than the young girl, and I thought almost as young;
and she had the air of being somehow responsible for her, and cowed
by her, though the word says rather more than I mean. She was not
so well dressed; that is, not so stylishly, though doubtless her
costume was more expensive. It seemed the inspiration of a village
dressmaker; and her husband's low-cut waistcoat, and his expanse of
plaited shirt-front, betrayed a provincial ideal which she would
never decry--which she would perhaps never find different from the
most worldly. He had probably, I swiftly imagined, been wearing
just that kind of clothes for twenty years, and telling his tailor
to make each new suit like the last; he had been buying for the same
period the same shape of Panama hat, regardless of the continually
changing type of straw hats on other heads. I cannot say just why,
as he tilted his chair back on its hind-legs, I felt that he was
either the cashier of the village bank at home, or one of the
principal business men of the place. Village people I was quite
resolute to have them all; but I left them free to have come from
some small manufacturing centre in western Massachusetts or southern
Vermont or central New York. It was easy to see that they were not
in the habit of coming away from their place, wherever it was; and I
wondered whether they were finding their account in the present
excursion.

I myself think Saratoga one of the most delightful spectacles in the