the American people, or, at least, of
the New England people. They may not know it, and those who are richer
may not imagine it. They are apt to be middle-aged maiden ladies from
university towns, living upon carefully guarded investments; young
married ladies with a scant child or two, and needing rest and change of
air; college professors with nothing but their modest salaries; literary
men or women in the beginning of their tempered success; clergymen and
their wives away from their churches in the larger country towns or the
smaller suburbs of the cities; here and there an agreeable bachelor in
middle life, fond of literature and nature; hosts of young and pretty
girls with distinct tastes in art, and devoted to the clever young
painter who leads them to the sources of inspiration in the fields and
woods. Such people are refined, humane, appreciative, sympathetic; and
Westover, fresh from the life abroad where life is seldom so free as ours
without some stain, was glad to find himself in the midst of this
unrestraint, which was so sweet and pure. He had seen enough of rich
people to know that riches seldom bought the highest qualities, even
among his fellow-countrymen who suppose that riches can do everything,
and the first aspects of society at Lion's Head seemed to him Arcadian.
There really proved to be a shepherd or two among all that troop of
shepherdesses, old and young; though it was in the middle of the week,
remote alike from the Saturday of arrivals and the Monday of departures.
To be sure, there was none quite so young as himself, except Jeff Durgin,
who was officially exterior to the social life.

The painter who gave lessons to the ladies was already a man of forty,
and he was strongly dragoned round by a wife almost as old, who had taken
great pains to secure him for herself, and who worked him to far greater
advantage in his profession than he could possibly have worked himself:
she got him orders; sold his pictures, even in Boston, where they never
buy American pictures; found him pupils, and kept the boldest of these
from flirting with him. Westover, who was so newly from Paris, was able
to console him with talk of the salons and ateliers, which he had not
heard from so directly in ten years. After the first inevitable moment of
jealousy, his wife forgave Westover when she found that he did not want
pupils, and she took a leading part in the movement to have him read
Browning at a picnic, organized b