ly declined to go afterwards. As for
walking on anything but level sidewalks or gravel-paths, she could not
think of such a thing. The idea of her climbing a hill or getting
herself over a fence seemed ridiculous to anybody that knew her.

So it was that we were continually forced to leave her behind, or deny
ourselves the chief recreation of the country. I was sincerely
disinclined to slight her in any way, and desirous of contributing to
her pleasure, but what could I do? A fellow can't get an iceberg to
enjoy tropical sunshine. Our dislike to leave the old lady alone,
although she insisted that she didn't mind it at all, led us to pass a
large portion of each day, sometimes all day, about the house. It was
"deuced stupid," to use Marston's elegant phrase, but there was little
to do for it. To be sure, there was Desmond, "old Dives," Fred called
him. He seldom went out of sight of the house, but he had a perfect
mail-bag of newspapers and letters every morning, and spent the forenoon
indoors, holding sweet communion with them and answering his
correspondents. In the afternoon he sat on the piazza by the hour,
contemplating the mountain-top that had such a fascination for him. He
had a prodigious amount of information on all manner of subjects, and a
quick and accurate judgment; but he was generally very reticent, as he
tipped back in his chair and twisted his fingers in and out of that fine
gold chain. My mother-in-law, from her shady nook of the piazza, would
glance at him occasionally from her work or her book, as much as to say,
"It is strange people can't make some effort to be agreeable, instead of
being so stiff and dignified all the afternoon"; but he seemed
unconscious of her looks and her mental comments. His thoughts were
probably in the marts of trade.

Fred was continually going off to distant towns, or down to the great
hotels in the mountains, for livelier diversion. His wife often insisted
on going with him, to his evident disgust, not because she cared to be
in his company, but because she wanted to go to the same places and
could not well go alone. Now, Fred wasn't a bad fellow at heart. I had
known him for years, and used to like him exceedingly. But he was left
without a father at an early age, with a considerable fortune, and his
mother was indulgent and not overwise. He got rather fast as he grew up,
and then he contracted a thoughtless marriage with Lizzie Carleton, a
handsome and stylish young