“And they say she is from Ohio. It is right odd, isn't it? but two or three of the prettiest women here are from that State. There is Mrs. Martin, sweet as a jacqueminot. I'd introduce you if her husband were here. Ohio! Well, we get used to it. I should have known the father and mother were corn-fed. I suppose you prefer the corn-feds to the Confeds. But there's homespun and homespun. You see those under the trees yonder? Georgia homespun! Perhaps you don't see the difference. I do.”
“I suppose you mean provincial.”
“Oh, dear, no. I'm provincial. It is the most difficult thing to be in these leveling days. But I am not going to interest you in myself. I am too unselfish. Your Miss Benson is a fine girl, and it does not matter about her parents. Since you Yankees upset everything by the war, it is really of no importance who one's mother is. But, mind, this is not my opinion. I'm trying to adjust myself. You have no idea how reconstructed I am.”
And with this Mrs. Farquhar went over to Miss Benson, and chatted for a few moments, making herself particularly agreeable to Mr. Meigs, and actually carried that gentleman off to the spring, and then as an escort to her cottage, shaking her fan as she went away at Mr. King and Irene, and saying, “It is a waste of time for you youngsters not to be in the german.”
The german was just ended, and the participants were grouping themselves on the gallery to be photographed, the usual custom for perpetuating the memory of these exercises, which only take place every other morning. And since something must be done, as there are only six nights for dancing in the week, on the off mornings there are champagne and fruit parties on the lawn.
It was not about the german, however, that King was thinking. He was once more beside the woman he loved, and all the influences of summer and the very spirit of this resort were in his favor. If I cannot win her here, he was saying to himself, the Meigs is in it. They talked about the journey, about Luray, where she had been, and about the Bridge, and the abnormal gayety of the Springs.
“The people are all so friendly,” she said, “and strive so much to put the stranger at his ease, and putting themselves out lest time hang heavy on one's hands. They seem somehow responsible.”
“Yes,” said King, “the place is unique in that respect. I suppose it is partly owing to the concentration of the company in and around the hotel.”
“But the sole object appears to me to be agreeable, and make a real social life. At other like places nobody seems to care what becomes of anybody else.”
“Doubtless the cordiality and good feeling are spontaneous, though something is due to manner, and a habit of expressing the feeling that arises. Still, I do not expect to find any watering-place a paradise. This must be vastly different from any other if it is not full of cliques and gossip and envy underneath. But we do not go to a summer resort to philosophize. A market is a market, you know.”