"Indeed, I'm not at all tired," he protested. "It is all very comforting and homelike; so vastly—" he hesitated, seeking thoughtfully for the word which should convey his meaning without laying him open to the charge of patronizing superciliousness, and she supplied it promptly.
"So different from what you were expecting; I know. You have been thinking of us as barbarians—outer barbarians, perhaps—and you find that we are only harmless provincials. But really, you know, we are improving. I wish you could have known Wahaska as it used to be."
"Before you took it in hand?" he suggested. "I can imagine it."
"Can you? I don't have to imagine it—I can remember: how we used to sit around the edges of the room behaving ourselves just as hard as ever we could, and boring one another to extinction. I'm afraid some of them do it yet, sometimes; but I won't let them do it here."
Once more Griswold let his gaze go at large through the stately rooms. He understood now. His prefigurings had not been so wide of the mark, after all. He had merely reckoned without his hostess.
"It is a miracle," he said, giving her full credit. "I'd like to ask how you wrought it, only I mustn't keep you from your duties."
She laughed joyously, with a little toss of the shapely head which was far more expressive than many words.
"I haven't any duties; I have taught them to amuse themselves. And they are doing it very creditably, don't you think?"
"They are getting along," he admitted. "But tell me: how did you go about it?"
"It was simple enough. When we came here we found a lot of good people who had fallen into the bad habit of boring one another, and a few who hadn't; but the few held themselves aloof. We opened our house to the many, and tried to show them that a church sewing-circle isn't precisely the acme of social enjoyment. That is all."