Mrs. Mavick thought herself fortunate in finding, in the social
wilderness of Rivervale, such a presentable young gentleman as Philip.
She had persuaded herself that she greatly enjoyed her simple intercourse
with the inhabitants, and she would have said that she was in deep
sympathy with their lives. No doubt in New York she would relate her
summer adventures as something very amusing, but for the moment this
adaptable woman seemed to herself in a very ingenuous, receptive, and
sympathetic state of mind. Still, there was a limit to the entertaining
power of Aunt Hepsy, which was perceived when she began to repeat her
annals of the neighborhood, and to bring forward again and again the
little nuggets of wisdom which she had evolved in the small circle of her
experience. And similarly Mrs. Mavick became aware that there was a
monotony in the ideas brought forward by the farmers and the farmers'
wives, whether in the kitchen or the best room, which she lighted up by
her gracious presence, that it was possible to be tired of the most
interesting "peculiarities" when once their novelty was exhausted, and
that so-called "characters" in the country fail to satisfy the
requirements of intimate or long companionship. Their world is too
narrowly circumscribed.

The fact that Philip was a native of the place, and so belonged to a
world that was remote from her own, made her free to seek his aid in
making the summer pass agreeably without incurring any risk of social
obligations. Besides, when she had seen more of him, she experienced a
good deal of pleasure in his company. His foreign travel, his reading,
his life in the city, offered many points of mutual interest, and it was
a relief to her to get out of the narrow range of topics in the
provincial thought, and to have her allusions understood. Philip, on his
part, was not slow to see this, or to perceive that in the higher
intellectual ranges, the serious topics which occupied the attention of