the summer heats to the wild ravines and gorges of DuPage County--and
raise turnips and cabbages there with the rest of them."

Putting aside for the present all thought of the coming summer, Truesdale
set himself to the formation of a circle. He had gone away as a boy and
had come back as a young man. He had grown beyond his old acquaintances,
he thought, and apart from them--of which last there could be no doubt on
either side; and it struck him that the easiest and simplest thing to do
would be to drop them all and to start afresh. To drop everybody and to
start afresh was something he was completely habituated to. He did it
through the year at intervals of from three to six months; during the
busy summer season among the Swiss pensions he had done it once every
fortnight, or oftener. His nature was full of adaptability, receptivity,
fluidity; he made friends everywhere he went, and snatched up
acquaintances at every corner.

Among the first in his new batch were Theodore Brower and Arthur Paston.
They were both older than he, but he declared, _net_, that his
non-travelled compatriots of his own age were impossible. These two new
acquaintances he appeared to like equally well; and Jane, whose kindling
ambition had devoted her brother to a brilliant social career, and whose
forenoon with Mrs. Bates had done little enough to quench the mounting
flame, wondered how such an augury was to be read; for Brower was wholly
out of society, while Paston was understood to be (save for some slight
but inevitable business entanglements) wholly in it. She decided,
finally, that, as Truesdale had met Brower in their own
house--involuntarily, as it were--while he had met Paston outside (as a
result, inferentially, of his own endeavors and advances), the brilliant
future of her brother was in no danger of being compromised. Then she
restored the just balance between the two by the thought that Truesdale