first unwilling to accept his escort--it too clearly resembled a tacit
consent to his idleness. But his quiet persistence, together with
his evident cynicism as to the results of these professional tours,
accomplished, as usual, his end; and the wondering village might observe
on hot June mornings its benefactress, languidly accompanied by a
slender man in white flannels, balancing a large white green-lined
umbrella, picking his way daintily along the dusty paths, with a covered
basket dangling from one hand and a gray-green volume distending one
white pocket.

There was material, too, for the interested observer in the picture of
Miss Gould distributing reading matter, fruit, and lectures on household
economy in the cottages of the mill-hands, while her lodger pitched
pennies with the delighted children outside. It was on one of these
occasions that Miss Gould took the opportunity to address Mr. Thomas
Waters, late of the paper and cardboard manufacturing force, on the
wickedness and folly of his present course of action. Mr. Waters had
left his position on the strength of his wife's financial success.
Mrs. Waters was a laundress, and the summer boarders, together with
Mr. Welles, who alone went far toward establishing the fortunes of
the family, had combined to place the head of the house in his present
condition of elegant leisure. "I wonder at you, Tom Waters, after all
the interest we've taken in you \ Are you not horribly ashamed to depend
on your wife in this lazy way?" Miss Gould demanded of the once member
of the Reformed Drunkards' League. "How many times have I explained to
you that nothing--absolutely nothing--is so disgraceful as a man who
will not work? What were you placed in the world for? How do you justify
your existence?"

"How," replied her unabashed audience, with a wave of his pipe toward
the front yard, where Mr. Welles was amiably superintending a wrestling
match, "does he justify hisn?"

Had Miss Gould been less consistent and less in earnest, there were many
replies open to her. As it was, she colored violently, bit her lip,
made an inaudible remark, and with a bitter glance at the author of
her confusion, now cheering on to the conflict the scrambling Waters
children, she called their mother to account for their presence in the
yard at this time on a school-day, and for the first time in her life
left the house without exacting a solemn promise of amendment from the
head of the family.