"Don't you want to buy a farm here, and settle down?" asked Mrs. Lenox scornfully. "Live on hymns and long clams?"
Meanwhile the interior of the bathing-house was changing its aspect. Part of the partition of boards had been removed and a long table improvised, running the length of the house, and made of planks laid on trestles. White cloths hid the rudeness of this board, and dishes and cups and viands were giving it a most hospitable look. A whiff of coffee aroma came now and then through the door at the back of the house, which opened near the place of cookery; piles of white bread and brown gingerbread, and golden butter and rosy ham and new cheese, made a most abundant and inviting display; and, after the guests were seated, Mr. Sears came in bearing a great dish of the clams, smoking hot.
Well, Mrs. Lenox was hungry, through the combined effects of salt air and an early dinner; she found bread and butter and coffee and ham most excellent, but looked askance at the dish of clams; which, however, she saw emptied with astonishing rapidity. Noticing at last a striking heap of shells beside her husband's plate, the lady's fastidiousness gave way to curiosity; and after that,—it was well that another big dishful was coming, or somebody would have been obliged to go short.
At ten o'clock that evening Mr. and Mrs. Lenox took the night train to
Boston.
"I never passed a pleasanter afternoon in my life," was the gentleman's comment as the train started.
"Pretty faces go a great way always with you men!" answered his wife.
"There is something more than a pretty face there. And she is improved—changed, somehow—since a year ago. What do you think now of your brother's choice, Julia?"
"It would have been his ruin!" said the lady violently.
"I declare I doubt it. I am afraid he'll never find a better. I am afraid you have done him mistaken service."
"George, this girl is nobody."