tell her when
she was wrong. After that he corrected her, 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,