nt X a good deal to talk about," thought Olivia.

"Home, please, by the long road," said Pauline to the groom, and he
sprang to the box beside the coachman, and they were instantly in rapid
motion. "That'll let us have twenty minutes more together," she went
on to Olivia. "There are several people stopping at the house."

The way led through Munroe Avenue, the main street of Saint X. Olivia
was astonished at the changes--the town of nine years before spread and
remade into an energetic city of twenty-five thousand.

"Fred told me I'd hardly recognize it," said she, "but I didn't expect
this. It's another proof how far-sighted Hampden Scarborough is.
Everybody advised him against coming here, but he would come. And the
town has grown, and at the same time he's had a clear field to make a
big reputation as a lawyer in a few years, not to speak of the power
he's got in politics."

"But wouldn't he have won no matter where he was?" suggested Pauline.

"Sooner or later--but not so soon," replied Olivia.

"No--a tree doesn't have to grow so tall among a lot of bushes before
it's noticed as it does in a forest."

"And you've never seen him since Battle Field?" As Olivia put this
question she watched her cousin narrowly without seeming to do so.

"But," replied Pauline--and Olivia thought that both her face and her
tone were a shade off the easy and the natural--"since he came I've
been living in New York and haven't stayed here longer than a few days
until this summer. And he's been in Europe since April. No," she went
on, "I've not seen a soul from Battle Field. It's been like a
painting, finished and hanging on the wall one looks toward oftenest,
and influencing one's life every day."

They talked on of Battle Field, of the boys and girls they had
known--how Thiebaud was dead and Mollie Crittenden had married the man
who was governor of California; what Howe was not doing, the novels
Chamberlayne was writing; the big women's college in Kansas that Grace
Wharton was vice-president of. Then of Pierson--in the state senate
and in a fair way to get to Congress the next year. Then Scarborough
again--how he had distanced all the others; how he might have the
largest practice in the state if he would take the sort of clients most
lawyers courted assiduously; how strong he was in politics in spite of
the opposition of the professionals--strong because he had a genius for
organization and also had the ear and the c