The hammock was swung at the end of the veranda, in the thickest shade of the vines, and this fragment of dialogue had passed unnoticed.  Rowland submitted a while longer to be cradled, and contented himself with listening to Mr. Hudson’s voice.  It was a soft and not altogether masculine organ, and was pitched on this occasion in a somewhat plaintive and pettish key.  The young man’s mood seemed fretful; he complained of the heat, of the dust, of a shoe that hurt him, of having gone on an errand a mile to the other side of the town and found the person he was in search of had left Northampton an hour before.

“Won’t you have a cup of tea?” Cecilia asked.  “Perhaps that will restore your equanimity.”

“Aye, by keeping me awake all night!” said Hudson.  “At the best, it ’s hard enough to go down to the office.  With my nerves set on edge by a sleepless night, I should perforce stay at home and be brutal to my poor mother.”

“Your mother is well, I hope.”

“Oh, she ’s as usual.”

“And Miss Garland?”

“She ’s as usual, too.  Every one, everything, is as usual.  Nothing ever happens, in this benighted town.”

“I beg your pardon; things do happen, sometimes,” said Cecilia.  “Here is a dear cousin of mine arrived on purpose to congratulate you on your statuette.”  And she called to Rowland to come and be introduced to Mr. Hudson.  The young man sprang up with alacrity, and Rowland, coming forward to shake hands, had a good look at him in the light projected from the parlor window.  Something seemed to shine out of Hudson’s face as a warning against a “compliment” of the idle, unpondered sort.

“Your statuette seems to me very good,” Rowland said gravely.  “It has given me extreme pleasure.”

“And my cousin knows what is good,” said Cecilia.  “He ’s a connoisseur.”

Hudson smiled and stared.  “A connoisseur?” he cried, laughing.  “He ’s the first I ’ve ever seen!  Let me see what they look like;” and he drew Rowland nearer to the light.  “Have they all such good heads as that?  I should like to model yours.”

“Pray do,” said Cecilia.  “It will keep him a while.  He is running off to Europe.”

“Ah, to Europe!” Hudson exclaimed with a melancholy cadence, as they sat down.  “Happy man!”

But the note seemed to Rowland to be struck rather at random, for he perceived no echo of it in the boyish garrulity of his later talk.  Hudson was a tall, slender young fellow, with a singularly mobile and intelligent face.  Rowland was struck at first only with its responsive vivacity, but in a short time he perceived it was remarkably handsome.  The features were admirably chiseled and finished, and a frank smile played over them as gracefully as a breeze among flowers.  The fault of the young man’s whole structure was an excessive want of breadth.  The forehead, though it was high and rounded, was narrow; the jaw and the shoulders were