he past and West
Walnut Street scandals of the present which this estimable matron
poured into her ears by the hour at a time. And in a quiet corner of the
veranda (Mr. Brown's eyesight having failed a little, so that he found
reading rather difficult) she read aloud to the latter from _Watson's
Annals_; and listened with a pleased satisfaction to his comments upon
her selections from this, the Philadelphia Bible, and to the numerous
anecdotes of a genealogical and antiquarian cast which thus were
recalled to his mind. Possibly the readings from _Watson_ were continued
in the afternoons--when Miss Lee and Mr. Brown regularly went down to
the Rocks. So extraordinary was all this that Mr. Port admitted frankly
to himself that he could make neither head nor tail of it; but he had an
inborn conviction that such an unnatural state of affairs was not likely
to last There was good Scriptural authority, he called to mind grimly,
for the assertion that the leopard did not change his spots nor the
Ethiopian his skin.

X.

In accordance with the substantial customs of his fellow-citizens,
Mr. Port always returned to Philadelphia sharp on the 1st of
September--calmly ignoring the heat and the mosquitoes, which are the
dominant characteristics of Philadelphia during that month, and resting
secure in the knowledge that the course which he pursued was that which
his father and his grandfather had pursued before him. It was on the
eve of his departure from Narragansett that his doubts and perplexities
occasioned by Dorothy's surprising conduct were resolved.

Being seated in a snug corner of the veranda in company with Mr.
Pennington Brown, Mr. Port was smoking a comforting cigar. Mr. Brown,
who also was smoking, did not seem to find his cigar comforting. He
smoked it in so fitful a fashion that it repeatedly went out; and
his nervousness seemed to be increased each time that he lighted it.
Further, his comment upon Mr. Port's discourse--which was a more than
ordinarily thoughtful and accurate weighing of the relative merits of
thin and thick soups--obviously were delivered quite at random. At
first Mr. Port was disposed to resent this inattention to his soulful
utterances; but as the subject was one in which, as he well knew, his
friend was profoundly interested, he presently became uneasy.

"What's the matter, Brown?" he asked, in a tone of kindly concern. "Is
your rheumatism bothering you? I've been afraid that your absurd