"How do you like our little village?" asked Mrs. Swan, to turn the conversation, a few moments after.
"I have been here so short a time that I can hardly judge, as yet," replied Clemence. "I think I shall like it better than I at first expected."
"Indeed, I hope you will," said her hostess. "We would like very much to have you settle among us. You must have observed, by this time, that there are few people of liberal education in the place."
"Yet, they are a shrewd, sensible people," said Mr. Swan, "who might, under more favorable auspices, make a figure in the world. There are many kind-hearted, Christian men and women in Waveland, Miss Graystone, notwithstanding their rough and almost repulsive exterior."
"I dare say there are many such," she replied earnestly, thinking of the cold, heartless worldlings she had left behind her in the great, busy city. "I do not judge altogether by outward appearances."
"Nor I," was the cordial answer; "the coat don't make the man, in this community, but if any one is sick, or in trouble, they will always find these rough-handed villagers ready to sympathize and aid."
Mr. Swan never made a truer remark than this last. The primitive inhabitants of Waveland, although they gossipped about each other, and speculated a little beyond the bounds of politeness and decorum, in regard to the affairs of the few strangers, who now and then appeared among them, were, on the whole, a kind-hearted, sober, industrious community. The little village possessed two stores, a hotel, blacksmith shop, a school house in which religious services were also held, and a post office, presided over, in an official capacity, by the village doctor.
There was also a weekly paper published there, by an ambitious youth, called the "Clarion," which contained snappish editorials about its neighbors, aspiring criticisms upon the publications of different authors, always ending in an unmistakable "puff," if they were at all popular, or a feeble attempt at discriminating censure, if the unlucky scribe was unknown to fame, and had (poor wretch,) his way yet to make in the literary world.
Clemence got quite attached to the Swans' during her brief stay with them. She regretted to leave them for the uncongenial society of strangers.
Her next boarding place was at Dr. Little's. He was rightly named, Mrs. Wynn had taken pains to inform her, and they were a well-matched pair.