Lizzie was silent. Dyer shook his head, and tapped his forehead again;
then he lounged out from behind his counter, and settled himself in
one of the armchairs outside the office door.

Nathaniel dropped his head upon his breast, and sunk back into his
dreams. The office was very still, except for two bluebottle flies
butting against the ceiling and buzzing up and down the window-panes.
A hot wind wandered in and flapped a mowing-machine poster on the
wall; then dropped, and the room was still again, except that leaf
shadows moved across the square of sunshine on the bare boards by the
open door. When Lizzie got up to go, he did not hear her kind good-by
until she repeated it, touching his shoulder with her friendly hand.
Then he said, hastily, with a faint frown: "Good-by. Good-by." And
sank again into his daze of disappointment.

Lizzie wiped her eyes furtively before she went out upon the hotel
porch; there Dyer, balancing comfortably on two legs of his chair,
detained her with drawling gossip until Hiram Wells came up, and,
lounging against a zinc-sheathed bar between two hitching-posts, added
his opinion upon Nathaniel May's affairs.

"Well, Lizzie, seen any ghosts?" he began.

"I seen somebody that'll be a ghost pretty soon if you send him off to
the Farm," Lizzie said, sharply.

"Well," Hiram said, "I don't see what's to be done--'less some nice,
likely woman comes along and marries him."