“I thought the Grojeans were absent—their house has been all the time shut up,” Caracal said to Ethel; “but I caught sight of them yesterday. They must be back.”
“We’ll go to-day and invite them to tennis,” Ethel said. “It will give so much pleasure to Mademoiselle Yvonne—and perhaps Will might be glad to see her again,” Ethel added to herself.
In the afternoon the auto, in all its splendor, flew along the way to the home of the Grojeans.
Caracal was delighted. Miss Rowrer had been very gracious to him. He would have gone oftener to Camp Rosemont, but he had been content to shine from afar on account of the drafts and mosquitos under the accursed tents. He kept to his lodgings at the Lion d’Or, a little inn full of flies and smelling of cabbage-soup.
“What a beautiful road this is!” Ethel observed. “You would say it was an avenue in a park, everything has such a refined air, so prinked and pretty, with its flowers set here and there!”
Every one was impressed by the gardens of flowers and the finished, distinguished look of everything. Will had the deepest enjoyment of it. His head may have been full of business, he may have handled his millions in his sleep, but he felt himself taken by this provincial charm. His love for it was the love of that which contrasts with one’s self. When he saw the hills crowned with oak and the inclosures bordered with roses, the variegated fields alive with vine and corn, a sweet country and a strong one, whose people greeted him with smiles, he seemed to forget all care, to be reading a poem.
“Will,” Ethel remarked, “is in love with France.”
Caracal kept his impressions to himself. A loftier anxiety was weighing on him: “The House of Glass” was about to appear. It was a thunderbolt which would soon burst and he would be famous; and, after the town, the country should have its turn! His work should be the life-encyclopedia of our day. He already had notes on the mosquitos, remarks on the grunting of pigs in their sties and the smells of the manure-heap. His novel would begin well.
“Tell me, M. Caracal,” Ethel chanced to ask just as he was thinking of all this, “have you found a title for your novel on country life which we were talking about the other day?”
“I am hunting for one, Miss Rowrer,” answered Caracal.