“The fellow looks at me and tries to grin, but he sees I don’t and he comes around serious.

“‘Well,’ says he, eyeing the handle of my gun, ’it was rather a nice day; some warmish, though.’

“‘Particulars, you mealy-mouthed snoozer,’ I says—­’let’s have the specifications—­expatiate—­fill in the outlines.  When you start anything with me in short-hand it’s bound to turn out a storm signal.’

“‘Looked like rain yesterday,’ says the man, ’but it cleared off fine in the forenoon.  I hear the farmers are needing rain right badly up-State.’

“‘That’s the kind of a canter,’ says I.  ’Shake the New York dust off your hoofs and be a real agreeable kind of a centaur.  You broke the ice, you know, and we’re getting better acquainted every minute.  Seems to me I asked you about your family?’

“‘They’re all well, thanks,’ says he.  ‘We—­we have a new piano.’

“‘Now you’re coming it,’ I says.  ’This cold reserve is breaking up at last.  That little touch about the piano almost makes us brothers.  What’s the youngest kid’s name?’ I asks him.

“‘Thomas,’ says he.  ‘He’s just getting well from the measles.’

“‘I feel like I’d known you always,’ says I.  ’Now there was just one more—­are you doing right well with the caffy, now?’

“‘Pretty well,’ he says.  ‘I’m putting away a little money.’

“‘Glad to hear it,’ says I.  ’Now go back to your work and get civilized.  Keep your hands off the weather unless you’re ready to follow it up in a personal manner, It’s a subject that naturally belongs to sociability and the forming of new ties, and I hate to see it handed out in small change in a town like this.’

“So the next day I rolls up my blankets and hits the trail away from New York City.”

For many minutes after Bud ceased talking we lingered around the fire, and then all hands began to disperse for bed.

As I was unrolling my bedding I heard the pinkish-haired young man saying to Bud, with something like anxiety in his voice: 

“As I say, Mr. Kingsbury, there is something really beautiful about this night.  The delightful breeze and the bright stars and the clear air unite in making it wonderfully attractive.”

“Yes,” said Bud, “it’s a nice night.”

VIII

MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD KIN

The burglar stepped inside the window quickly, and then he took his time.  A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before taking anything else.

The house was a private residence.  By its boarded front door and untrimmed Boston ivy the burglar knew that the mistress of it was sitting on some oceanside piazza telling a sympathetic man in a yachting cap that no one had ever understood her sensitive, lonely heart.  He knew by the light in the third-story front windows, and by the lateness of the season, that the master of the house had come home, and would soon extinguish his light and retire.  For it was September of the year and of the soul, in which season the house’s good man comes to consider roof gardens and stenographers as vanities, and to desire the return of his mate and the more durable blessings of decorum and the moral excellencies.