“You are of the city, then?”

“With the firm of Hunt, Sharp & Tweedle.”

“Ah, my husband knows them, I believe.”

“I have seen Mr. Mavick,” and Philip bowed again.

“How lucky!”

Mrs. Mavick had an eye for a fine young fellow—­she never denied that —­and Philip’s manly figure and easy air were not lost on her.  Presently she said: 

“We are here for a good part of the summer.  Mr. Mavick’s business keeps him in the city and we have to poke about a good deal alone.  Now, Miss Alice, I am so glad I have met your cousin.  Perhaps he will show us some of the interesting places and the beauties of the country he knows so well.”  And she looked sideways at Philip.

“Yes, he knows the country,” said Alice, without committing herself.

“I am sure I shall be delighted to do what I can for you whenever you need my services,” said Philip, who had reasons for wishing to know the Mavicks which Alice did not share.

“That’s so good of you!  Excursions, picnics oh, we will arrange.  You must come and help me arrange.  And I hope,” with a smile to Alice, “you can persuade your cousin to join us sometimes.”

Alice bowed, they all bowed, and Mrs. Mavick said au revoir, and went swinging her parasol down the driveway.  Then she turned and called back, “This is the first long walk I have taken.”  And then she said to herself, “Rather stiff, except the young man and the queer old maid.  But what a pretty girl the younger must have been ten years ago!  These country flowers!”

XII

Mrs. Mavick thought herself fortunate in finding, in the social wilderness of Rivervale, such a presentable young gentleman as Philip.  She had persuaded herself that she greatly enjoyed her simple intercourse with the inhabitants, and she would have said that she was in deep sympathy with their lives.  No doubt in New York she would relate her summer adventures as something very amusing, but for the moment this adaptable woman seemed to herself in a very ingenuous, receptive, and sympathetic state of mind.  Still, there was a limit to the entertaining power of Aunt Hepsy, which was perceived when she began to repeat her annals of the neighborhood, and to bring forward again and again the little nuggets of wisdom which she had evolved in the small circle of her experience.  And similarly Mrs. Mavick became aware that there was a monotony in the ideas brought forward by the farmers and the farmers’ wives, whether in the kitchen or the best room, which she lighted up by her gracious presence, that it was possible to be tired of the most interesting “peculiarities” when once their novelty was exhausted, and that so-called “characters” in the country fail to satisfy the requirements of intimate or long companionship.  Their world is too narrowly circumscribed.