“Why, yes, I wish you would.”
“I can go this afternoon just as well as not,” remarked Betsy quietly.
“Don’t it beat all, the way things come round all right if you just don’t fidget?” she thought.
The middle of the afternoon found her on the way to the pretty inn, set on a slight rise of ground above the river. Mr. Beebe, the proprietor, was a Fairport man, an old friend of Betsy’s, whose provincial ideas had for years been in process of changing and forming by contact with the summer people for whom he catered; and what had once been a barn-like structure known as the Fairport Hotel, now showed as a modern inn, with verandas and a pretense to fashion.
Mr. Beebe welcomed Betsy with effusion, rallied her on her travels and her worldly experience, and at last settled down to listen to her business.
When finally she arose to go, he remarked:—
“Well, seems if there wasn’t any end to the new-fangled notions a feller’s got to listen to and adopt to keep up with the times. I haven’t forgot how clever you were to my wife when she was sick a couple o’ years ago, and I don’t like to turn down anything you ask of me.”
“I appreciate your kindness, Sam, but you ain’t goin’ to lose money by this plan. You know we are all pretty proud o’ the Inn. If Mrs. Bruce wasn’t she’d never a recommended it to the Nixons. They’re folks that are used to the best; and we’d like to see it have all the attractions any resort has. Mark my words, you’ll thank me for this, instead o’ me you, though I ain’t underratin’ your good feelin’. Good-by, Sam.”
Clever Betsy left the place with a springing step.
She found her mistress in a rather injured frame of mind when she reached the cottage. It wore upon the lady that the None-such was going to desert her post for two days.