"Of course. Don't you?"
"Why, I think she's a very good-looking woman," was the reply. "Her husband is coming up later."
Mr. Evans shook his head mournfully. "I'm afraid it won't make any difference to me. I've tried to prattle to her a little, but she doesn't hear me, or, if she does, I've been weighed and found wanting. I talked to her quite a while my first morning here. As soon as I saw her I determined to make hay while the sun shone, but I soon found I couldn't make any, or even cut any ice either. So, since then, I just look at her from afar."
"I'm sure you're too easily discouraged," said Miss Emerson with some acerbity. "You underrate your own attractiveness, Mr. Evans. Any woman who would rather spend her time with that poor, forlorn image of a boy than with men of intellect, cannot be so very interesting, herself."
Mr. Pratt, a tall, slender, long-necked gentleman, here spoke: "I judge from what Mr. Gayne says that the boy is pretty far gone mentally. He said he supposed he really shouldn't have brought him up here. Gayne has a heavy burden on his hands evidently. It's naturally hard to bring one's self to shutting up any one who is your own kin, and, as Gayne says, you're between the devil and the deep sea, for you may put it off too long. It looks like a case of dangerous melancholia to me."
Miss Emerson shuddered. "All I know is that if Mrs. Lowell was as sensitive as I am, she never in the world could bear to have that boy around with her as much as she does. Mr. Gayne, an artist as he is! What he must suffer in that constant association!"
"He doesn't seem to be much with his nephew," remarked Mr. Evans.
"Well, I should think rooming with him was enough," retorted the lady. "He has a cot for the boy right in his own room."
"Well, it isn't my business," yawned the other. "Come on, Pratt. I hear they've taken a horse-mackerel and it's down on the wharf. Let's go and see it."