ion, were of a type that, without special knowledge of
American ways, was entirely recognizable. Albeit Miss Lee, having spent
much time in the mixed society of various European watering-places, was
not by any means an unsophisticated young person, and was not at all a
squeamish one, she was sensibly relieved by finding that the chair
next to hers was occupied by a silvery-haired old lady of the most
unquestionable respectability; and her composure was further restored,
presently, by the return to his chair, on the other side of her of Mr.
Port: who had betaken himself to what the conductor had told him was the
smoking-room, and who, finding himself in a bar-room, surrounded by a
throng of hard-drinking, foul-mouthed men, had sacrificed his
much-loved cigar in order to free himself from such distinctly offensive
surroundings.

At their hotel, and elsewhere, Miss Lee and her uncle encountered many
of their fellow-passengers by the limited train, together with others of
a like sort which previous trains had brought thither; and while, on the
whole, these were about balanced by a more desirable class of visitors,
they were in such force as to give to the life of the place a very
positive tone.

At the end of a week Dorothy avowed herself disappointed. "I never did
think much of poor dear mamma's taste, you know, Uncle Hutchinson," she
said, with her customary frankness, "and what she found to like in this
place I'm sure I can't imagine. It's tawdry and it's vulgar; and as for
its morals, I think that it's worse than Monte Carlo. I suppose that
there is a nice side to it, for I do see a few nice people; but,
somehow, they all seem to stand off from each other as though they were
afraid here to take any chances at all with strangers. And I don't blame
them, Uncle Hutchinson, for I feel just that way myself. What you ought
to have done was to have hired a cottage, and then people would have
taken the trouble to find out about us; and when they'd found that we
were not all sorts of horrid things we should have got into the right
set, and no doubt, at least if we'd stayed here through August, we
should have had a very nice time.

"But we're not having a nice time, here at this noisy hotel, Uncle
Hutchinson, where the band can't keep quiet for half an hour at a time,
and where the only notion that people seem to have of amusement is to
overdress themselves and wear diamonds to dinner and sit in crowds on
the verandas and danc