"Hot quite; one happy man gave them all. He was here a week; he gave us one every day. Think how happy he must have been."
She smiled at his inquiring glance.
"He wanted things his own way, and could afford it," she said. "His name was Ingles."
Ogden did some lounging up and down the street. He crossed a bridge where one lake fell into the other over a mill-dam, and found himself in another cluster of cottages. They stood on a bluff and looked down the three miles of the lower lake. Both shores were diversified by promontories and islands, and the red roofs of other cottages showed everywhere over the tufted foliage of the shores.
"How it balances—how it composes!" he said of the view, as he recrossed the bridge. "And how it's kept!" he said of the town, as he retraced his steps to the hotel. "Really"—with unconscious patronage—"it's the only thing West, so far, that has tone and finish."
He took a boat. The next day, the same. The town was full, but was lying back quietly for the excitement of the morrow; he had the water almost to himself.
Sloops and cat-boats were being rigged for a coming regatta. A scow for fireworks was being anchored two or three hundred yards from shore. He paddled about with a trolling-line. But the line was neglected. He had a good deal to think about; here was place and time to do it.
His future was assured. He could now marry. He wanted to marry. There was only the question—which?
He had surrendered his primitive theory that marriage was a matter which concerned only the two principals. Kittie's marriage—who had come to be more deeply concerned in it than he?
He thought of Abbie Brainard, and he thought of her family—a divorced sister; a disreputable brother, whose future was to sound, perhaps, depths yet undreamed of; another brother, whose coming marriage was but conclusive evidence of the coarseness of the family grain.