the solitude they left behind them there, the Owen at first seemed very
gay. But when they had once or twice compared it with the Ty'n-y-Coed,
riding to and fro in the barge which formed the connecting link with the
Saturday evening hops of the latter hotel, Mrs. Pasmer decided that, from
Alice's point of view, they had made a mistake, and she repaired it
without delay. The young people were, in fact, all at the Ty'n-y-Coed,
and though she found the Owen perfectly satisfying for herself and Mr.
Pasmer, she was willing to make the sacrifice of going to a new place: it
was not a great sacrifice for one who had dwelt so long in tents.

There were scarcely any young girls at the Owen, and no young men, of
course. Even at the Ty'n-y-Coed, where young girls abounded, it would not
be right to pretend that there were young men enough. Nowhere, perhaps,
except at Bar Harbour, is the long-lost balance of the sexes trimmed in
New England; and even there the observer, abstractly delighting in the
young girls and their dresses at that grand love-exchange of Rodick's,
must question whether the adjustment is perfectly accurate.

At Campobello there were not more than half enough young men, and there
was not enough flirtation to affect the prevailing social mood of the
place: an unfevered, expectationless tranquillity, in which to-day is
like yesterday, and to-morrow cannot be different. It is a quiet of light
reading, and slowly, brokenly murmured, contented gossip for the ladies,
of old newspapers and old stories and luxuriously meditated cigars for
the men, with occasional combinations for a steam-launch cruise among the
eddies and islands of the nearer waters, or a voyage further off in the
Bay of Fundy to the Grand Menan, and a return for the late dinner which
marks the high civilisation of Campobello, and then an evening of more
reading and gossip and cigars, while the night wind whistles outside, and
the brawl and crash of the balls among the tenpins comes softened from