out in Iowa."

March gave him his name, and added that he was from New York.

"Yes. I thought you was Eastern. But that wasn't an Eastern man you was
just with?"

"No; he's from Chicago. He's a Mr. Stoller."

"Not the buggy man?"

"I believe he makes buggies."

"Well, you do meet everybody here." The Iowan was silent for a moment,
as if, hushed by the weighty thought. "I wish my wife could have seen
him. I just want her to see the man that made our buggy. I don't know
what's keeping her, this morning," he added, apologetically. "Look at
that fellow, will you, tryin' to get away from those women!" A young
officer was doing his best to take leave of two ladies, who seemed to be
mother and daughter; they detained him by their united arts, and clung
to him with caressing words and looks. He was red in the face with his
polite struggles when he broke from them at last. "How they do hang on
to a man, over here!" the Iowa man continued. "And the Americans are as
bad as any. Why, there's one ratty little Englishman up at our place,
and our girls just swarm after him; their mothers are worse. Well,
it's so, Jenny," he said to the lady who had joined them and whom March
turned round to see when he spoke to her. "If I wanted a foreigner I
should go in for a man. And these officers! Put their mustaches up at
night in curl-papers, they tell me. Introduce you to Mrs. Otterson, Mr.
March. Well, had your first glass, yet, Jenny? I'm just going for my
second tumbler."

He took his wife back to the spring, and began to tell her about
Stoller; she made no sign of caring for him; and March felt inculpated.
She relented a little toward him as they drank together; when he said
he must be going to breakfast with his wife, she asked where he
breakfasted, and said, "Why, we go to the Posthof, too." He answered
that then they should be sure some time to meet there; he did not
venture further; he reflected that Mrs. March had her reluctances too;
she distrusted people who had amused or interested him before she met
them.

XXIX.

Burnamy had found the Posthof for them, as he had found most of the
other agreeable things in Carlsbad, which he brought to their knowledge
one by one, with such forethought that March said he hoped he should be
cared for in his declining years as an editor rather than as a father;
there was no tenderness like a young contributor's.

Many people from the hotels on the hill found at Pupp's just the time