ts. It isn't because I'm getting old or
ugly; but we haven't enough money left to butt in at any of the swell
places any more. And I don't want to marry--unless it's somebody I like.
That's why I'd like to be a hermit. Hermits don't ever marry, do they?"

"Hundreds of 'em," said the hermit, "when they've found the right one."

"But they're hermits," said the youngest and beautifulest, "because
they've lost the right one, aren't they?"

"Because they think they have," answered the recluse, fatuously.
"Wisdom comes to one in a mountain cave as well as to one in the world
of 'swells,' as I believe they are called in the argot."

"When one of the 'swells' brings it to them," said Miss Trenholme. "And
my folks are swells. That's the trouble. But there are so many swells
at the seashore in the summer-time that we hardly amount to more than
ripples. So we've had to put all our money into river and harbor
appropriations. We were all girls, you know. There were four of us. I'm
the only surviving one. The others have been married off. All to money.
Mamma is so proud of my sisters. They send her the loveliest pen-wipers
and art calendars every Christmas. I'm the only one on the market now.
I'm forbidden to look at any one who hasn't money."

"But--" began the hermit.

"But, oh," said the beautifulest, "of course hermits have great pots of
gold and doubloons buried somewhere near three great oak-trees. They all
have."

"I have not," said the hermit, regretfully.

"I'm so sorry," said Miss Trenholme. "I always thought they had. I think
I must go now."

Oh, beyond question, she was the beautifulest.

"Fair lady--" began the hermit.

"I am Beatrix Trenholme--some call me Trix," she said. "You must come
to the inn to see me."

"I haven't been a stone's-throw from my cave in ten years," said the
hermit.

"You must come to see me there," she repeated. "Any evening except
Thursday."

The hermit smiled weakly.

"Good-bye," she said, gathering the folds of her pale-blue skirt. "I
shall expect you. But not on Thursday evening, remember."

What an interest it would give to the future menu cards of the Viewpoint
Inn to have these printed lines added to them: "Only once during the
more than ten years of his lonely existence did the mountain hermit
leave his famous cave. That was when he was irresistibly drawn to the
inn by the fascinations of Miss Beatrix Trenholme, youngest and most
beautiful of the celebrated Trenholme si