"That is a very, very nice reason," the New Lady commented. "Again, so do I."
We left him, I remember, looking about as if he were seeing it all for the first time.
As we drove away I told my New Lady about Nicholas, and she looked along her own thought and shook her head.
"There must be hundreds of them," she said, "and some are poets. But most of them are only lonesome. I wonder which Nicholas is?"
We lingered out-of-doors as long as we might, because the touch of the outdoors was so companioning that to go indoors was a distinct good-by. Is it so with you that some Days, be they never so sunny, yet walk with you in a definite reserve and seem to be looking somewhere else; while other Days come to you like another way of being yourself and will not let you go? I know that some will put it down to mood and not to the Day at all; but, do what I will, I cannot credit this.
It was after five o'clock when we drove into the village, and all Daphne Street was watering its lawns. Of those who were watering some pretended not to see us, but I understood that this they accounted the etiquette due to a new arrival. Some bowed with an excess of cordiality, and this I understood to be the pleasant thought that they would show my guest how friendly we all are. And some laid down the hose and came to the sidewalk's edge to meet the New Lady then and there.
Of these were Mis' Postmaster Sykes an' Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss and my neighbour.
"Pleased to meet you, I'm sure," Mis' Postmaster Sykes said graciously to the New Lady. "I must say it seems good to see a strange face now an' then. I s'pose you feel all travel dust an' mussed up?"
And at Mis' Holcomb's hitching post:—