The wide, shady veranda was articulate of summer and girls and gaiety, and of all that pleasant, prosperous American homeliness that we see so much of in life and hear so little about in fiction.  Hammocks, rocking-chairs and rugs were scattered about in a comfortable, haphazard fashion; a tea-table here was stacked high with novels and magazines; a card-table there bore a violin, a couple of tennis racquets, a silver-handled crop and a box of papa’s second-best cigars. (The really-truly best were under the basketwork sofa.) There was also a sewing-machine, a music-stand, a couple of dogs asleep on the floor, a family Bible full of pressed wild flowers, a twenty-two-bore rifle, and the messy remains of a Latin exercise that the son of the house had recently been engaged upon before being called away to play Indian.

Dolly Hemingway, a handsome, fair-haired, imperious-looking girl, was lolling in a hammock, directing the deliberations of Sattie Felton, aged seventeen, who was sitting on the floor holding a dog’s head in her lap, and of Grace Sinclair, aged twenty, who was in possession of a stool and a box of chocolate creams.  A very important matter was being discussed, and that was why everybody was talking at once, and how it came about that a young man passed unnoticed through the cool darkened rooms of the house and appeared without warning before the little group—­a tall, bulky young man, with an air of diffidence on his honest, sunburned face, and a general awkwardness of movement that seemed to betray a certain doubt as to his welcome.  He stammered out something like “Good morning,” and then stood there, hat in hand, waiting for the massacre to begin.

“Mr. Bassity!” exclaimed Dolly Hemingway, straightening up in the hammock, and staring at him with cold gray eyes.  The bulky young man halted, tried to find some reassurance in the no less chilling faces of Sattie Felton and Grace Sinclair, and then said, “How do you do!” in a voice of extreme dejection.

“It is the custom here,” said Dolly in cutting accents, “for a gentleman, when he calls upon a lady, to announce himself first at the door—­”

“And be told she’s out,” said Mr. Bassity, timidly defiant.  “Call next day, and out, too!  Call next week and still out!”

“When you make a closer study of the social system,” began Miss Hemingway “our social system, which seems in vogue everywhere except the place you came from—­you will discover that such little subterfuges save painful interviews.”

“Oh, now, girls, don’t be hard on me,” said Mr. Bassity, sitting down uninvited and speaking with the most disarming contrition.  “We all used to be such good friends once, and now, for the life of me, I don’t know, what’s the matter.  I valued your friendship tremendously—­valued it more than I can tell, and now I am losing it without even knowing why.  It cuts a fellow; it’s humiliating; it is crool, that’s what it is, awful crool, and I’ll tell you the straight-out truth that I’ve cried over it!”