and he amused himself by studying
forms of respect so delicate that they should not alarm her pride;
Clementina reassured him in terms as fine as his own. She did not accept
his instructions implicitly; she meant to bring them to the bar of
Gregory's knowledge. If he approved of them, then she would submit.

Milray easily possessed himself of the history of her life and of all its
circumstances, and he said he would like to meet her father and make the
acquaintance of a man whose mind, as Clementina interpreted it to him, he
found so original.

He authorized his wife to arrange with Mrs. Atwell for a monopoly of
Clementina's time while he stayed at Middlemount, and neither he nor Mrs.
Milray seemed surprised at the good round sum, as the landlady thought
it, which she asked in the girl's behalf.

IX.

The Milrays stayed through August, and Mrs. Milray was the ruling spirit
of the great holiday of the summer, at Middlemount. It was this year that
the landlords of the central mountain region had decided to compete in a
coaching parade, and to rival by their common glory the splendor of the
East Side and the West Side parades. The boarding-houses were to take
part, as well as the hotels; the farms where only three or four summer
folks were received, were to send their mountain-wagons, and all were to
be decorated with bunting. An arch draped with flags and covered with
flowers spanned the entrance to the main street at Middlemount Centre,
and every shop in the village was adorned for the event.

Mrs. Milray made the landlord tell her all about coaching parades, and
the champions of former years on the East Side and the West Side, and
then she said that the Middlemount House must take the prize from them
all this year, or she should never come near his house again. He
answered, with a dignity and spirit he rarely showed with Mrs. Milray's
class of custom, "I'm goin' to drive our hossis myself."

She gave her whole time to imagining and organizing the personal display
on the coach. She consulted with the other ladies as to the kind of
dresses that were to be worn, but she decided everything herself; and
when the time came she had all the young men ravaging the lanes and
pastures for the goldenrod and asters which formed the keynote of her
decoration for the coach.

She made peace and kept it between factions that declared themselves
early in the affair, and of all who could have criticized her for taking
the le