when no letters came she decided that she had not expected them. She
wondered if he would come back to the Middlemount the next summer; but
when the summer came, she heard that they had another student in his
place. She heard that they had a new clerk, and that the boarders were
not so pleasant. Another year passed, and towards the end of the season
Mrs. Atwell wished her to come and help her again, and Clementina went
over to the hotel to soften her refusal. She explained that her mother
had so much sewing now that she could not spare her; and Mrs. Atwell
said: Well, that was right, and that she must be the greatest kind of
dependence for her mother. "You ah' going on seventeen this year, ain't
you?"

"I was nineteen the last day of August," said Clementina, and Mrs. Atwell
sighed, and said, How the time did fly.

It was the second week of September, but Mrs. Atwell said they were going
to keep the house open till the middle of October, if they could, for the
autumnal foliage, which there was getting to be quite a class of custom
for.

"I presume you knew Mr. Landa was dead," she added, and at Clementina's
look of astonishment, she said with a natural satisfaction, "Mm! died the
thutteenth day of August. I presumed somehow you'd know it, though you
didn't see a great deal of 'em, come to think of it. I guess he was a
good man; too good for her, I guess," she concluded, in the New England
necessity of blaming some one. "She sent us the papah."

There was an early frost; and people said there was going to be a hard
winter, but it was not this that made Clementina's father set to work
finishing his house. His turning business was well started, now, and he