Solon had glanced up brightly, but gloom again overspread his face as she continued:—­

“Yet I shall make it not the least of my works—­if a poor weak woman may so presume—­to help you in correcting certain faults of style and taste in your sheet, for it goes each week into many homes where the light must be sorely needed, and surely you and I would not be adequately sensible of our responsibilities if we continued to let it go as it is. Would we?” And again she glowed upon Solon with the condescending sweetness of a Sabbath-school teacher to the littlest boy in her class.

But now we both breathed more freely, for she allowed the wretched Argus to drop from her disapproving fingers, and began to ask us questions, as to a place of worship, a house suitable for residence purposes, a school for little Roscoe, and the nature of those clubs or societies for mental improvement that might exist among us.  And she asked about Families.  We were obliged to confess that there were no Families in Little Arcady, in the true sense of the term, though we did not divine its true sense until she favored us with the detail that her second cousin had married a relative of the Adams family.  We said honestly that we were devoid of Families in that sense.  None of us had ever been able to marry an Adams.  No Adams with a consenting mind—­not even a partial Adams—­had ever come among us.

Still, Mrs. Potts wore her distinction gracefully, and was even a little apologetic.

“In Boston, you know, we rather like to know ‘who’s who,’ as the saying is.”

“Out here,” said Solon, “we like to know what’s what.”  He had revived wonderfully after his beloved Argus was dropped.  But at his retort the lady merely elevated her rather fine brows and remarked, “Really, Mr. Denney, you speak much as you write—­you must not let me forget to give you that little book I spoke of.”

As we went down the stairs Solon placed “One Hundred Common Errors in Speaking and Writing” close under his arm, adroitly shielding the title from public scrutiny.  We stood a moment in the autumn silence outside the hotel door, watching a maple across the street, the line of its boughs showing strong and black amid its airy yellow plumage.  The still air was full of leaves that sailed to earth in leisurely sadness.  We were both thoughtful.

“Mrs. Potts is a very alert and capable woman,” I said at last, having decided that this would be the most suitable thing to say.

“I tell you she has powers,” said Solon, in a tone almost of awe.

“She will teach you to make something of yourself,” I hazarded.

“One minute she makes me want to fight, and the next I surrender,” he answered pathetically.

We separated on this, Solon going toward the Argus office with slow steps and bowed head, while I went thoughtfully abroad to ease my nerves by watching the splendid death of summer.  Above the hills, now royally colored, as by great rugs of brown and crimson velvet flung over their flanks, I seemed to hear the echoes of ironic laughter—­the laughter of perverse gods who had chosen to avenge the slight put upon an inferior Potts.