of those points reported finding day after day the same young lady stretched out on the same shawl, drying the same yellow hair, who had apparently never gone upstairs since the season began.  But the recurrence of this phenomenon in this spot at the very moment when the young man came by might have been accounted for upon other theories.  Jocelyn’s was so secluded that she could not have expected any one to find her there twice, and if she had expected this she would not have permitted it.  Probably he saw a different young lady each time.

Many of the same boarders come year after year, and these tremble at the suggestion of a change for the better in Jocelyn’s.  The landlord has always believed that Jocelyn’s would come up, some day, when times got better.  He believes that the narrow-gauge railroad from New Leyden —­arrested on paper at the disastrous moment when the fortunes of Jocelyn’s felt the general crash—­will be pushed through yet; and every summer he promises that next summer they are going to have a steam-launch running twice a day from Leyden Harbor.  But at present his house is visited once a day by a barge, as the New England coast-folks call the vehicle in which they convey city boarders to and from the station, and the old frequenters of the place hope that the station will never be nearer Jocelyn’s than at present.  Some of them are rich enough to afford a sojourn at more fashionable resorts; but most of them are not, though they are often people of polite tastes and of aesthetic employments.  They talk with slight of the large watering-places, and probably they would not like them, though it is really economy that inspires their passion for Jocelyn’s with most of them, and they know of the splendid weariness of Newport mostly by hearsay.  New arrivals are not favored, but there are not often new arrivals at Jocelyn’s.  The chief business of the barge is to bring fresh meat for the table and the gaunt bag which contains the mail; for in the first flush of the enterprise the place was made a post-office, and the landlord is postmaster; he has the help of the lady-boarders in his official duties.

Scattered about among the young birches there are several of those pine frames known as shells, within easy walk of the hotel, where their inmates board.  They are picturesque interiors, and are on informal terms with the public as to many domestic details.  The lady of the house, doing her back hair at her dressing-room glass, is divided from her husband, smoking at the parlor fire-place, only by a partition of unlathed studding.  The arrest of development in these shells is characteristic of everything about the place.  None of the improvements invented since the hard times began have been added to Jocelyn’s; lawntennis is still unknown there; but there is a croquet-ground before the hotel, where the short, tough grass is kept in tolerable order.  The wickets are pretty rusty, and it is usually the children who play; but toward the close of a certain, afternoon a young lady was pushing the balls about there.  She seemed to be going over a game just played, and trying to trace the cause of her failure.  She made bad shots, and laughed at her blunders.  Another young lady drooped languidly on a bench at the side of the croquet-ground, and followed her movements with indifference.