An early outburst of this feeling came on the third day after their arrival, when Mrs. Hope asked Phil and Clover to dinner, and did not ask Mrs. Watson.  She had discussed the point with her husband, but the doctor “jumped on” the idea forcibly, and protested that if that old thing was to come too, he would “have a consultation in Pueblo, and be off in the five thirty train, sure as fate.”

“It’s not that I care,” Mrs. Watson assured Clover plaintively.  “I’ve had so much done for me all my life that of course—­But I do like to be properly treated.  It isn’t as if I were just anybody.  I don’t suppose Mrs. Hope knows much about Boston society anyway, but still—­And I should think a girl from South Framingham (didn’t you say she was from South Framingham?) would at least know who the Abraham Peabodys are, and they’re Henry’s—­But I don’t imagine she was much of anybody before she was married; and out here it’s all hail fellow and well met, they say, though in that case I don’t see—­Well, well, it’s no matter, only it seems queer to me; and I think you’d better drop a hint about it when you’re there, and just explain that my daughter lives next door to the Lieutenant-Governor when she is in the country, and opposite the Assistant-Bishop in town, and has one of the Harvard Overseers for a near neighbor, and is distantly related to the Reveres!  You’d think even a South Framingham girl must know about the lantern and the Old South, and how much they’ve always been respected at home.”

Clover pacified her as well as she could, by assurances that it was not a dinner-party, and they were only asked to meet one girl whom Mrs. Hope wanted her to know.

“If it were a large affair, I am sure you would have been asked too,” she said, and so left her “old woman of the sea” partly consoled.

It was the most lovely evening possible, as Clover and Phil walked down the street toward Dr. Hope’s.  Soft shadows lay over the lower spurs of the ranges.  The canyons looked black and deep, but the peaks still glittered in rosy light.  The mesa was in shadow, but the nearer plain lay in full sunshine, hot and yellow, and the west wind was full of mountain fragrance.

Phil gave little skips as he went along.  Already he seemed like a different boy.  All the droop and languor had gone, and given place to an exhilaration which half frightened Clover, who had constant trouble in keeping him from doing things which she knew to be imprudent.  Dr. Hope had warned her that invalids often harmed themselves by over-exertion under the first stimulus of the high air.

“Why, how queer!” she exclaimed, stopping suddenly before one of the pretty places just above Mrs. Marsh’s boarding-house.

“What?”

“Don’t you see?  That yard!  When we came by here yesterday it was all green grass and rose-bushes, and girls were playing croquet; and now, look, it’s a pond!”