One Westley Keyts, for example, lounging in the doorway of his meat-shop, renewed acquaintance with the wanderer, who remembered him as a glum-faced but not bad-hearted chap.  Names recalled and hands shaken, Mr. Keyts began to lament the simple ways of an elder day, glancing meanwhile with honest disapproval at a newly installed competitor across the street.  The shop itself was something of an affront, its gilt name more—­“The Bon Ton Market.”  Mr. Keyts pronounced “Bon Ton” in his own fashion, but his contempt was ably and amply expressed.

“Sounds like one of them fancy names for a corset or a patent lamp,” he complained.  “It’s this here summer business that done it.  They swarm in here with their private hacks and their hired help all togged out till you’d think they was generals in the army, and they play that game of sissy-shinny (drop-the-handkerchief for mine, if I got to play any such game), and they’re such great hands to kite around nights when folks had ought to be in their beds.  I tell you, my friend, it ain’t doing this town one bit of good.  The idea of a passel of strong, husky young men settin’ around on porches in their white pants and calling it ‘passing the summer.’ I ain’t never found time to pass any summers.”

The wanderer expressed a proper regret for this decadence.  Mr. Keyts reverted bitterly to the Bon Ton market:—­

“Good name for a tooth powder, or a patent necktie, or an egg-beater.  But a butcher-shop!—­why, it’s a hell of a name for a butcher-shop!”

The wanderer expressed perfect sympathy with this view of the shop legend, and remarked, “By the way, whose big house is that with the columns in front, up where the Prouse and old Blake houses used to be?”

The face of Mr. Keyts became pleasanter.

“Oh, that?—­that’s Cal Blake’s—­Major Blake’s, you know.  He married a girl that come in here from the South with her mother.  I guess that was after you got out of here.  They tore down the two houses and built that big one.  They say it’s like them Southern houses, but I don’t know.  It seems awful plain up the front of it.  Cal’s all right, though.  I guess mebbe he built the house kind of bare that way to please his wife and his mother-in-law.  I’ll bet if he’d had his own way, there’d be some brackets and fret work on the front to liven it up some.  But I’d a done just like him in his place, I would, by Gee!  So would you if you seen his wife. Say! but never mind; you wait right here.  She’ll drive up to git Cal from his office at four-thirty—­it’s right across there over the bank where that young fellow is settin’ in the window—­that’s young Cal Denney, studyin’ law with Blake.  You just wait and see—­she’ll drive up in about six minutes.”

The wanderer waited, out of pure cordiality to Mr. Keyts.  The prospect was not exciting, but the simple faith of the villagers that outsiders must share their interest in local concerns has always seemed too touching a thing to wreck.