“He does look like a railroad man.  It may be tunnel, but it isn’t all tunnel.  When the team came back in the afternoon, Patience was again at the window; she had heard meantime from Jabez that a city man was stopping at the Peacock.  There he goes, and looking round more than ever.  They’ve stopped by the bridge and the landlord is pointing out.  It’s not tunnel, it’s scenery.  I tell you, he is a city boarder.  Not that he cares about scenery; it’s for his family.  City families are always trying to find a grand new place, and he has heard of Rivervale and the Peacock Inn.  Maybe the tunnel had something to do with it.”

“Why, it’s like second sight.”

“No, Patience says it’s just judgment.  And she generally hits it.  At any rate, the family is here.”

The explanation of their being there—­it seemed to Philip providential —­was very simple.  Mr. Mavick had plans about the Hoosac Tunnel that required him to look at it.  Mrs. Mavick took advantage of this to commission him to look at a little inn in a retired village of which she had heard, and to report on scenery and climate.  Warm days and cool nights and simplicity was her idea.  Mavick reported that the place seemed made for the family.

Evelyn was not yet out, but she was very nearly out, and after the late notoriety Mrs. Mavick dreaded the regular Newport season.  And, in the mood of the moment, she was tired of the Newport palace.  She always said that she liked simplicity—­a common failing among people who are not compelled to observe it.  Perhaps she thought she was really fond of rural life and country ways.  As she herself said,

“If you have a summer cottage at Newport or Lenox, it is necessary to go off somewhere and rest.”  And then it would be good for Evelyn to live out-of-doors and see the real country, and, as for herself, as she looked in the mirror, “I shall drink milk and go to bed early.  Henderson used to say that a month in New Hampshire made another woman of me.”

Oh, to find a spot where we could be undisturbed, alone and unknown.  That was the program.  But Carmen simply could not be anywhere content if she were unnoticed.  It was not so easy to give up daily luxury, and habits of ease at the expense of attendants, or the ostentation which had become a second nature.  Therefore the “establishment” went along with her to Rivervale, and the shy, modest little woman, who had dropped down into the country simplicity that she so dearly loved, greatly enjoyed the sensation that her coming produced.  It needed no effort on her part to produce the sensation.  The carriage, and coachman and footman in livery, would have been sufficient; and then the idea of one family being rich enough to take the whole hotel!