obello being yet a new thing, it was not open to
the objection that you were sure to meet such and such people, more
or less common or disagreeable, there; whatever happened, it could be
lightly handled in the retrospect as the adventure of a partial and
fragmentary summer when really she hardly cared where they went.

They did not get away from Boston before the middle of July, and after
the solitude they left behind them there, the Owen at first seemed very
gay. But when they had once or twice compared it with the Ty'n-y-Coed,
riding to and fro in the barge which formed the connecting link with
the Saturday evening hops of the latter hotel, Mrs. Pasmer decided that,
from Alice's point of view, they had made a mistake, and she repaired it
without delay. The young people were, in fact, all at the Ty'n-y-Coed,
and though she found the Owen perfectly satisfying for herself and Mr.
Pasmer, she was willing to make the sacrifice of going to a new place:
it was not a great sacrifice for one who had dwelt so long in tents.

There were scarcely any young girls at the Owen, and no young men, of
course. Even at the Ty'n-y-Coed, where young girls abounded, it would
not be right to pretend that there were young men enough. Nowhere,
perhaps, except at Bar Harbour, is the long-lost balance of the
sexes trimmed in New England; and even there the observer, abstractly
delighting in the young girls and their dresses at that grand
love-exchange of Rodick's, must question whether the adjustment is
perfectly accurate.

At Campobello there were not more than half enough young men, and there
was not enough flirtation to affect the prevailing social mood of the
place: an unfevered, expectationless tranquillity, in which to-day is
like yesterday, and to-morrow cannot be different. It is a quiet of
light reading, and slowly, brokenly murmured, contented gossip for the
ladies, of old newspapers and old stories and luxuriously meditated
cigars for the men, with occasional combinations for a steam-launch
cruise among the eddies and islands of the nearer waters, or a voyage
further off in the Bay of Fundy to the Grand Menan, and a return for the
late dinner which marks the high civilisation of Campobello, and then
an evening of more reading and gossip and cigars, while the night wind
whistles outside, and the brawl and crash of the balls among the tenpins
comes softened from the distant alleys. There are pleasant walks,
which people seldom take, i