Leighton and Lewis were not traveling with the rush of the traffic. It was too early in the year. While the boat was not crowded, it was by no means deserted. It had just that number of passengers on board which an old traveler would like to stipulate for on buying his ticket; enough to keep the saloons from hollow echoes, and not enough to block even a single deck.
"Are these all Americans?" asked Lewis on their third day out.
Leighton glanced rapidly up and down the deck.
"No," he said, "there's hardly a typical American in the lot. Wrong time of year. You see there are more men than women. That's a sure sign this isn't an American pleasure-boat. There are a good many English on board, the traveling kind. They're going over to 'do' America before the heat comes on. What Americans you see are tainted."
"What's a tainted American?" asked Lewis.
"I'm a tainted American, and you are," said Leighton. "A tainted American is one who has lived so long abroad that he goes to America on business."
CHAPTER XLII
The house that Aunt Jed had left to Natalie stood on the lip of a vast basin. From its veranda one looked down into a peaceful cup of life. The variegated green of the valley proclaimed to the wandering eye,
"All sorts are here that all the earth yields!
Variety without end."
There was a patchwork of fields bordered with gray stone walls, of stray bits of pasture, of fallow meadow and glint of running water, of woodland, orchard, and the habitations of man made still by distance.