to her house just
now, didn't I?" she asked, with the New England avoidance of the proper
name. She was determined to find out why he was poking about among her
books.

"Miss Hatchard's house? Yes--she's my cousin and I'm staying there," the
young man answered; adding, as if to disarm a visible distrust: "My name
is Harney--Lucius Harney. She may have spoken of me."

"No, she hasn't," said Charity, wishing she could have said: "Yes, she
has."

"Oh, well----" said Miss Hatchard's cousin with a laugh; and after
another pause, during which it occurred to Charity that her answer
had not been encouraging, he remarked: "You don't seem strong on
architecture."

Her bewilderment was complete: the more she wished to appear to
understand him the more unintelligible his remarks became. He reminded
her of the gentleman who had "explained" the pictures at Nettleton, and
the weight of her ignorance settled down on her again like a pall.

"I mean, I can't see that you have any books on the old houses about
here. I suppose, for that matter, this part of the country hasn't been
much explored. They all go on doing Plymouth and Salem. So stupid. My
cousin's house, now, is remarkable. This place must have had a past--it
must have been more of a place once." He stopped short, with the blush
of a shy man who overhears himself, and fears he has been voluble. "I'm
an architect, you see, and I'm hunting up old houses in these parts."

She stared. "Old houses? Everything's old in North Dormer, isn't it? The
folks are, anyhow."

He laughed, and wandered away again.

"Haven't you any kind of a history of the place? I think there was one
written about 1840: a book or pamphlet about its first settlement," he
presently said from the farther end of the room.

She pressed her crochet hook against her lip and pondered. There was
such a work, she knew: "North Dormer and the Early Townships of Eagle
County." She had a special grudge against it because it was a limp
weakly book that was always either falling off the shelf or slipping
back and disappearing if one squeezed it in between sustaining volumes.
She remembered, the last time she had picked it up, wondering how anyone
could have taken the trouble to write a book about North Dormer and its
neighbours: Dormer, Hamblin, Creston and Creston River. She knew them
all, mere lost clusters of houses in the folds of the desolate ridges:
Dormer, where North Dormer went for its apples; Creston River