ek for summer board, and not much more, are often the best of the
American people, or, at least, of the New England people. They may not
know it, and those who are richer may not imagine it. They are apt to be
middle-aged maiden ladies from university towns, living upon carefully
guarded investments; young married ladies with a scant child or two,
and needing rest and change of air; college professors with nothing but
their modest salaries; literary men or women in the beginning of their
tempered success; clergymen and their wives away from their churches in
the larger country towns or the smaller suburbs of the cities; here
and there an agreeable bachelor in middle life, fond of literature and
nature; hosts of young and pretty girls with distinct tastes in art,
and devoted to the clever young painter who leads them to the sources
of inspiration in the fields and woods. Such people are refined, humane,
appreciative, sympathetic; and Westover, fresh from the life abroad
where life is seldom so free as ours without some stain, was glad to
find himself in the midst of this unrestraint, which was so sweet and
pure. He had seen enough of rich people to know that riches seldom
bought the highest qualities, even among his fellow-countrymen who
suppose that riches can do everything, and the first aspects of society
at Lion's Head seemed to him Arcadian. There really proved to be a
shepherd or two among all that troop of shepherdesses, old and young;
though it was in the middle of the week, remote alike from the Saturday
of arrivals and the Monday of departures. To be sure, there was none
quite so young as himself, except Jeff Durgin, who was officially
exterior to the social life.

The painter who gave lessons to the ladies was already a man of forty,
and he was strongly dragoned round by a wife almost as old, who had
taken great pains to secure him for herself, and who worked him to far
greater advantage in his profession than he could possibly have worked
himself: she got him orders; sold his pictures, even in Boston, where
they never buy American pictures; found him pupils, and kept the boldest
of these from flirting with him. Westover, who was so newly from Paris,
was able to console him with talk of the salons and ateliers, which he
had not heard from so directly in ten years. After the first inevitable
moment of jealousy, his wife forgave Westover when she found that he did
not want pupils, and she took a leading part in t