gentlemen, whom they gathered about them.

Lester Leland, who had taken up his abode temporarily in that vicinity,
was a frequent visitor and sometimes brought a brother artist with him.
Dick's cronies came too, and old friends of the family from far and near.

Elsie sent an early invitation to Lucy Ross to bring her daughters and
spend some weeks at the cottage.

The reply was a hasty note from Lucy saying that she deeply regretted her
inability to accept, but they were extremely busy making preparations to
spend the season at Saratoga, had already engaged their rooms and could
not draw back; beside that Gertrude and Kate had set their hearts on
going. "However," she added, "she would send Phil in her place, he must
have a little vacation and insisted he would rather visit their old
friends the Travillas, than go anywhere else in the world; he would put up
at a hotel (being a young man, he would of course prefer that) but hoped
to spend a good deal of time at the cottage."

He did so, and attached himself almost exclusively to the younger Elsie,
with an air of proprietorship which she did not at all relish.

She tried to let him see it without being rude; but the blindness of
egotism and vast self-appreciation was upon him and he thought her only
charmingly coy; probably with the intent to thus conceal her love and
admiration.

He was egregiously mistaken. She found him, never the most interesting of
companions at times an intolerable bore; and was constantly contrasting
his conversation which ran upon trade and money making, stocks, bonds and
mortgages, to the exclusion of nearly everything else except fulsome
flatteries of herself--with that of Lester Leland, who spoke with
enthusiasm of his art; who was a lover of Nature and Nature's God; whose
thoughts dwelt among lofty themes, while at the same time he was entirely
free from vanity, his manner as simple and unaffected as that of a little
child.

He was a favorite with all the family; his society enjoyed especially by
the ladies.

He devoted himself more particularly to sculpture, but also sketched
finely from nature, as did both Elsie and Violet; the latter was beginning
to show herself a genius in both that and music, Elsie had recently under
Leland's instructions, done some very pretty wood carving and modeling in
clay, and this similarity of tastes made them very congenial.

Philip's stay was happily not lengthened, business calling him back to New
Y