I will not admit that it was only a pretty girl from Philadelphia who came to Sand Hills that first week in July. It was the rosy goddess herself, dove-drawn across the sea, in the warm path of the morning sun—although the tremulous, old-fashioned handwriting on the hotel register only showed that the early train had brought—
“Samuel Rittenhouse, Philadelphia.
Miss Rittenhouse, do.”
It was the Honorable Samuel Rittenhouse, ex-Chief-Justice of Pennsylvania, the honored head of the Pennsylvania bar, and the legal representative of the Philadelphia contingent of the new Breeze Hotel and Park Company.
In the evening Horace called upon him in his rooms with a cumbersome stack of papers, and patiently waded through explanations and repetitions until Mr. Rittenhouse’s testy courtesy—he had the nervous manner of age apprehensive of youthful irreverence—melted into a complacent and fatherly geniality. Then, when the long task was done and his young guest arose, he picked up the card that lay on the table and trained his glasses on it.
“‘H. K. Walpole?’” he said: “are you a New Yorker, sir?”
“From the north of the State,” Horace told him.
“Indeed, indeed. Why, let me see—you must be the son of my old friend Walpole—of Otsego—wasn’t it?” said the old gentleman, still tentatively.
“St. Lawrence, sir.”
“Yes, St. Lawrence—of course, of course. Why, I knew your father well, years ago, sir. We were at college together.”
“At Columbia?”