as much good
advice as he would bear. I was going to urge him to move upon the
obstructive Mrs. Bentley with all his persuasive force, and I had
formulated some arguments for him which I thought he might use with
success. I did not tell my wife that this was my purpose, but all the
same I cherished it, and I gathered energy for the enforcement of my
views for Glendenning's happiness from the very dejection I was cast
into by the outward effect of the Gormanville streets. They were all in
a funeral blaze of their shade trees, which were mostly maples, but were
here and there a stretch of elms meeting in arches almost consciously
Gothic over the roadway; the maples were crimson and gold, and the elms
the pale yellow that they affect in the fall. A silence hung under their
sad splendors which I found deepen when I got into what the inhabitants
called the residential part. About the business centre there was some
stir, and here in the transaction of my affairs I was in the thick of it
for a while. Everybody remembered me in a pleasant way, and I had to
stop and pass the time of day, as they would have said, with a good many
whom I could not remember at once. It seemed to me that the maples in
front of St. Michael's rectory were rather more depressingly gaudy than
elsewhere in Gormanville; but I believe they were only thicker. I found
Glendenning in his study, and he was so far from being cast down by
their blazon that I thought him decidedly cheerfuller than when I saw
him last. He met me with what for him was ardor; and as he had asked me
most cordially about my family, I thought it fit to inquire how the
ladies at the Bentley place were.

"Why, very well, very well indeed," he answered, brightly. "It's very
odd, but Edith and I were talking about you all only last night, and
wishing we could see you again. Edith is most uncommonly well. During
the summer Mrs. Bentley had some rather severer attacks than usual, and
the care and anxiety told upon Edith, but since the cooler weather has
come she has picked up wonderfully." He did not say that Mrs. Bentley
had shared this gain, and I imagined that he had a reluctance to confess
she had not. He went on, "You're going to stay and spend the night with
me, aren't you?"

"No," I said; "I'm obliged to be off by the four-o'clock train. But if I
may be allowed to name the hospitality I could accept, I should say
luncheon."

"Good!" cried Glendenning, gayly. "Let us go and have it