Mr. Perkins spent the evening smoking upon the porch, his head turned toward the mountains. The next morning, when he had eaten a breakfast which included some wonderful browned griddle-cakes and syrup—another of the Inn's specialties—he strolled away into the middle distance and was observed by various of the guests, from time to time, perched about among the rocks, in idle attitudes.
"He's a queer duck," observed Tom in the kitchen that day, describing Mr. Perkins to his mother. Mrs. Boswell seldom appeared beyond her special domain—that of the kitchen—but left the rest of the housekeeping to her daughters Bertha and Sue; the management of the Inn to Tom and Tim. "Silent as an owl. Seems to like his food—nothing strange about that. He doesn't act sick, exactly, but tired, or bored, or used up, somehow. Eyes like coals and sharper than a ferret's. I can't make him out. He won't talk to anybody, except now and then a word or two to Mr. Griffith. Never looks at the ladies, but I tell you they look at him. Every one of 'em has a different notion about him. Anyhow, he's taken the bridal suit for two weeks. Goes down to the post-office for his mail—gave particular orders not to have it sent up here. That's kind of funny, isn't it? Oh, I meant to tell you before: he's paid for his rooms a week in advance."
"It helps a little," said his sister Bertha. She was twenty-five years old, and if any one of this family had the responsibility of the success of Boswell's Inn heavily and anxiously at heart, it was Bertha. "But it can't make up the difference. Here's July half over, and not a dozen people in the house. What can be the matter? Isn't everything all right?"
"Sure it's all right," insisted Tom. "We just haven't got known, that's all."
"But how are we going to get known, if nobody comes? Our advertisement in the city papers costs dreadfully, and it doesn't seem to bring anybody."
"Now see here," said Tom firmly, "don't you go to getting discouraged. This is our first season. We can't expect to do much the first season. We're prepared for that."
But he realized, quite as clearly as his sister, that they had not been prepared for so complete a failure as they were making. Boswell's Inn stood only sixteen miles away from a large city, a great Western railroad centre, into which, early and late, thousands of tourists were pouring. The road out into the mountains was a good one, the trip easy enough for the owners of motor cars, of whom the city held enough to make a continuous procession all the way if only they could be headed in the right direction. But how to head them? That was what Tom couldn't figure out.
On the third evening after Mr. Perkins's arrival, Tom, strolling gloomily out upon the porch to see if any one was lingering there to prevent his closing up, discovered Perkins sitting alone, smoking. There had not been a new arrival that day; worse, one of the elderly ladies had gone away. She had departed reluctantly, but her absence counted just the same, and Tom was missing her as he had never expected to miss any elderly lady with iron-gray curls and a cast in one eye.
"Nice night," observed Tom to Mr. Perkins.
"First-class."