with an apathetic
patience of which his present abeyance was a detail. He would hardly
have thought it anything unfit, and certainly nothing surprising, that
the landlady should have taken the young girl away from where he had
left her, and then in the pleasure of talking with her, and finding her
a centre of interest for the whole domestic force of the hotel, should
have forgotten to bring her back.

The Middlemount House had just been organized on the scale of a first
class hotel, with prices that had risen a little in anticipation of
the other improvements. The landlord had hitherto united in himself the
functions of clerk and head waiter, but he had now got a senior, who was
working his way through college, to take charge of the dining-room, and
had put in the office a youth of a year's experience as under clerk at
a city hotel. But he meant to relinquish no more authority than his wife
who frankly kept the name as well as duty of house-keeper. It was in
making her morning inspection of the dusting that she found Clementina
in the parlor where Lander had told her to sit down till he should come
for her.

"Why, Clem!" she said, "I didn't know you! You have grown so! Youa folks
all well? I decla'e you ah' quite a woman now," she added, as the girl
stood up in her slender, graceful height. "You look as pretty as a pink
in that hat. Make that dress youaself? Well, you do beat the witch! I
want you should come to my room with me."

Mrs. Atwell showered other questions and exclamations on the girl, who
explained how she happened to be there, and said that she supposed she
must stay where she was for fear Mr. Lander should come back and find
her gone; but Mrs. Atwell overruled her with the fact that Mrs. Lander's
breakfast had just gone up to her; and she made her come out and see
the new features of the enlarged house-keeping. In the dining-room there
were some of the waitresses who had been there the summer before, and
recognitions of more or less dignity passed between them and Clementina.
The place was now shut against guests, and the head-waiter was having
it put in order for the one o'clock dinner. As they came near him, Mrs.
Atwell introduced him to Clementina, and he behaved deferentially, as
if she were some young lady visitor whom Mrs. Atwell was showing the
improvements, but he seemed harassed and impatient, as if he were
anxious about his duties, and eager to get at them again. He was a
handsome little fello