II

The luncheon in Denver at the residence of Mr. Harrod Cash was an experience which Willis had treasured as something never to be equaled again, but after Mr. Harcourt’s house it had the ring of a counterfeit coin. That Denver mineowner’s home was vulgarly blatant, compared with the polished solidity of the Harcourt place. Willis was actually facing his first experience with the peace and order of a settled tradition, and also an example of convention, undiluted by unnecessary extravagance. He could feel dignity and permanence compared to which the house in Denver was as ephemeral as the settings of a stage. The broad front hall led directly to another wide passage, which extended the full length of the house. This hall was carpeted with Oriental rugs. Its walls were lined with low bookshelves and gold-framed pictures, and its light came from the open doors of the rooms on either side and from the glass doors leading to the east and west verandas. Thus it was always a shadowy passage, even in the daylight. Willis could still hear the ticking of the clock, because their footsteps were quieted by the carpet. He had a glimpse through open doors of the drawing room and the library, and there was a clean smell to everything, of wax and flowers, that combined with a satiny sheen of woodwork to give a sense of complete security.

As Selwyn led the way to the west veranda, Willis could see his parents ahead of him, his mother stepping lightly and swiftly, moving her head to peer into the library and the dining room. His father walked deliberately, with the careful gait of a man used to traveling over rough country, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders bent slightly forward. When they came to the open door of the west veranda, Selwyn halted, and spoke in a gentle voice that seemed unnaturally loud after the silent progress down the hall.

“Mr. and Mrs. Wayde,” he said, “and Master Wayde.”

Another silence followed, through which came the humming of the crickets. In the afterglow of the sunset, it was still possible to see the view, mellow and soft through the haze of a hot evening. The lawn and the rose garden in the foreground were clear but the vistas through the oak and beech trees of the fields and pastures to the bend of the river were already indistinct and it was dark enough to see the sparks of the fireflies against the trees.

The disciplined beauty of the view from the west veranda held Willis’s attention for only a brief moment. Then there was a creaking of porch chairs as an elderly lady and a gentleman in a dinner jacket rose to greet them. Somehow he was not at all what Willis expected. Instead of being large he was small and almost frail. His gray hair was brushed back from a high, thin forehead. His nose was straight and long, and his pendulous lower lip always twitched before he spoke, giving an impression that he was about to stammer, even though his words were always measured and precise. His voice, which he seldom raised, had a flat nasal ring which still was modulated and agreeable.

“It’s very kind of you to come to us at such short notice, Mrs. Wayde,” he said. “I hope my note didn’t seem like a summons. My sister was afraid it might, but it seemed to me that a dinner away from home might be a rest for you after such a hot day. I hope everything is comfortable at the cottage.”

Mr. Harcourt smiled graciously, and looked at Willis.

“And this is your son, is it? What’s your first name, Master Wayde?”

Willis cleared his throat. “Willis, sir,” he said.

“I’m glad to meet you, Willis. You must meet my grandson and granddaughter tomorrow, but first you must all meet my sister, Mrs. Blood. She’s paying me her annual parochial summer visit. She wants to be sure we’re not mismanaging the mill.”

Mrs. Blood was an inch taller than Mr. Harcourt, and her white hair, done in a pompadour, made her look taller still. Her eyes were dark and sharp and she had her brother’s smile. She stood up very straight in her black silk dress with her pearls tied around her throat, and her diamond and sapphire rings glittered in the waning light.

“How do you do, Mrs. Wayde,” she said. “My brother tells me you come from the West.”

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Wayde said. “Kansas.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Blood said. “Kansas.”

“What shall we have before dinner?” Mr. Harcourt asked. “Shall it be sherry or a dry Martini?”

“Oh, thank you,” Mrs. Wayde said, “but I never touch anything strong.”

Alfred Wayde laughed loudly.

“Cynthia was born in a dry state,” he said.

“My brother ignores the eighteenth amendment,” Mrs. Blood said. “I should like some sherry, Henry.”

“If it’s all the same with you,” Mr. Wayde said, “I could do with one of those Martinis.”

When Willis sat apart from the rest of them after the sherry and the cocktails came, he did not feel gauche or shy, because in some odd way the house had offered its protection to him, giving him a feeling of being absolutely safe.

“Will you have another cocktail, Alfred?” Mr. Harcourt said.

“I don’t mind if I do,” Willis heard his father answer.

“I won’t join you, if you don’t mind,” Mr. Harcourt said. “We’re having some wine for dinner—Château Lafite.”

“I don’t know much about wines,” Alfred Wayde said. “It’s always hard liquor or nothing on most jobs, except in California.”

“It’s a very lovely view,” Willis heard his mother saying to Mrs. Blood.

Willis did not hear Mrs. Blood’s reply, because a large police dog walked slowly up the steps to the veranda, wagging his tail, and Willis patted his long head.

“That’s Benny,” Mr. Harcourt said. “His real name is Benvenuto Cellini. He doesn’t make friends with everybody.”

“I get on pretty well with dogs, sir,” Willis said.

“You and Benny and I will have to walk around and see the place tomorrow,” Mr. Harcourt said. “Well, here’s Selwyn with your Martini. Would you mind bringing it with you? We’d better go in to dinner.”

When the Harcourt dining table was extended for family birthdays or for luncheon after the annual stockholders’ meeting, more than twenty people could sit at it comfortably. The dining room never seemed too small on these occasions, but conversely, when the table was contracted to a small circle, as it was that night, there was never any sense of sitting in too large a room. The marble-top Chippendale serving table, the magenta brocade curtains drawn over the French windows, the family portraits, and the silver service on the mid-Victorian sideboard only seemed to draw closer. Somehow the dining room was never formidable or forbidding, even with Selwyn and a maid waiting on the table.

That night at the big house Willis must have seen the portrait of the clean-shaven old Mr. William Harcourt, standing against a pastoral background, with his hand resting on the head of an Irish wolfhound. He must have seen the less skillful portraits of Mr. Henry’s own father, George Harcourt, with his gray sideburns, and of Mrs. George Harcourt, Mr. Henry’s mother, in white satin. The Sargent portraits of Mr. Henry and of his wife, who had died in 1910, were in the upstairs hall in those days. He must have seen the screen before the pantry door with its panels done by Lawrence, and the silver tea service and the cans by Paul Revere inherited by Mr. William Harcourt from his Boston wife; and he must have seen the silver coffee urn presented to Mr. William on his seventieth birthday by the stockholders and the employees of the Harcourt Mill. Willis surely must have seen all these objects, but not one of them moved out from the others to obtrude on his consciousness. Instead everything gave the impression of being expected, down to the lace tablecloth and the green Chinese place plates and the Georgian candlesticks and the cut flowers in the center of the table.

The meal was simple enough—cold consommé, guinea hen with bread sauce, and salad, and blueberry pie for dessert, and he was given a glass of ginger ale instead of wine.

“My brother says you can turn your hand to anything, Mr. Wayde,” Mrs. Blood was saying to his father.

“Well, ma’am,” Mr. Wayde said, “I’ve been thrown against a lot of stuff in railroading, building, and mining. They all come down to pretty much the same thing in the end.”

“What do you mean, the same thing?” Mrs. Blood asked.

“Making what you’ve got on hand do what it isn’t meant to do,” Mr. Wayde said.

“Wine, sir?” Selwyn asked him. “Or Scotch and soda?”

“Whisky,” Mr. Wayde said, “and water. Did you ever know Mr. Harrod Cash, ma’am, out in Denver?”

“No,” Mrs. Blood answered, “I don’t know Mr. Cash.”

“No reason why you should, I suppose,” Mr. Wayde said, “except Harrod—you get to first names fast in Denver, ma’am—he gave me a letter to your brother when I got through at Whetstone. Harrod was always strong for Harcourt belting.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Mrs. Blood said, “but what’s Whetstone?”

“The Whetstone Mine, the best silver and lead property in the Rockies, ma’am. I was working in the mill when water came in and flooded number seven and six levels. You never can tell where water is inside a mountain, and that’s a fact.”

“Alf is absent-minded about a lot of things,” Willis heard his mother saying, “but never about machinery.”

“I’ve noticed that myself,” Mr. Harcourt said. “He’s a great comfort to me at the mill. You see, I haven’t a mechanical, only a business, mind.”

“Some people think Alf is lazy,” Mrs. Wayde said. “When I first met Alf, I thought he was. It was at a dancing party at the Y.W.C.A. in Topeka.”

Mr. Harcourt’s lower lip twitched and then he smiled.

“I’d like to know,” he said, “how he ever got to the Y.W.C.A. in Topeka.”

“Oh, a contracting firm was building some water works,” Mrs. Wayde said, “and some of the young fellows on the job came to the dance. I guess Alf went because he’d lost all his money at poker the night before. I was teaching in the high school and living at the ‘Y,’ and my sister Nell and I invited him out to the farm on Sunday with another fellow. He just sat on the piazza with his feet on the rail until the windmill broke down and we were out of water.”

Mr. Harcourt’s lower lip twitched, but he did not speak.

“Well, Alf got right up off the porch and climbed up the windmill. I get dizzy when I look down from a height, don’t you, Mr. Harcourt?”

“Always,” Mr. Harcourt said, “always.”

“You see, Alf doesn’t notice where he is, if his mind is on something. I don’t believe he knows where he is right now.”

They both glanced across the table at Alfred Wayde.

“No, ma’am,” Willis heard his father say to Mrs. Blood, “I’m not a mining engineer, but anyone learns something about rocks when he handles dynamite.”

“Well, Alf came down with a broken cog or something,” Mrs. Wayde said, “and asked where a blacksmith shop was. I said I’d take him down to Sawyer’s and we hitched up the buckboard. Ned Sawyer’s a Baptist and doesn’t work Sundays, but Alf started up the forge himself, and he made a whole new cogwheel right by hand. It took him six hours and he was a sight when he got through, but he got the windmill going.”

“Did you say you play bridge, Mr. Wayde?” Mrs. Blood was saying.

“Yes, ma’am, sometimes,” Alfred Wayde answered, “but Cynthia would rather talk.”

And Mrs. Wayde still was talking.

“If Alf’s interested, he can do anything, but when he loses interest he drifts away to somewhere else. I hope you can keep him interested. With Willis growing up he ought to go to school regularly. I can’t go on teaching him much longer. I hope Alf will like it here and I hope you’ll like him, Mr. Harcourt.”

“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have let him have the cottage, Mrs. Wayde,” Mr. Harcourt said.

“Now you’ve mentioned it,” Mrs. Wayde said, “it isn’t right charging us so little rent, but maybe Alfred got the figure wrong.”

Mr. Harcourt placed his napkin on the table.

“It’s business, Mrs. Wayde,” he said. “Not that I won’t be glad to look across the lawn at night and see lights in the cottage. It’s to my advantage to have you and your husband contented.”

His flat measured voice left no room for argument.

“There are difficulties in running any business. My son Bryson, whom I hope you’ll meet later, will take over eventually, but in the meanwhile when the windmill breaks I have to fix it in my own way. Tomorrow I want to talk to you about sending Willis to school, and if there’s anything you need, please ask me, Mrs. Wayde.”

Willis saw his mother gaze blankly at Mr. Harcourt.

“I’m glad if you appreciate Alf,” she said. “A lot of his bosses haven’t. All I can say is thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” Mr. Harcourt said. He pushed back his chair. “Alfred.”

“A small explosive charge is better than a big one,” Alfred Wayde was saying, “if you’re familiar with the conditions, ma’am. Too much power always is a waste.”

“Alfred,” Mr. Harcourt said again, and Alfred Wayde looked up. “You and I might have our brandy and coffee in the library, and Willis can come with us.”

“I ought to get back to unpack,” Mrs. Wayde said, looking at Mrs. Blood. “Willis can take me home.”

They had all risen from the table, and Mr. Harcourt smiled at Mrs. Blood.

“It’s early still,” he said. “Ruth, please induce Mrs. Wayde to stay a little longer. You haven’t had an opportunity yet to make her feel at home.”

“Yes, Henry,” Mrs. Blood said. “Please don’t leave me alone, Mrs. Wayde.”

As Willis followed Mr. Harcourt and his father into the hall, he heard Mrs. Blood speak again.

“Every time I visit my brother,” she was saying, “he reminds me more and more of our father. When he speaks in that tone of voice, it’s always best to do exactly what he says.”

Willis still knew nothing about the Harcourt Mill, but he was already aware of its pervading influence. Ever since he had passed those stark brick buildings that afternoon, their aura had surrounded him. The mill had been with them in the dining room, and it was with them even more obviously in the library. It was a living organism—any factory always was. Mr. Harcourt was its brain and motivating force, but Mr. Harcourt himself was only a part of it, and Alfred Wayde was also part of it, and in consequence so was Willis. Even Mrs. Blood belonged to it. Her pearl necklace and her rings came from the mill, and the same was true of the food that they had eaten. Willis could think of the leather-backed books of the library and its black leather easy chairs and sofa and all its walnut paneling as coming from the mill.

His father followed Mr. Harcourt into the library, walking with his unconsciously careful step, gazing curiously at the books and the moose head over the mantel.

“Sit down,” Mr. Harcourt said. “Sit down, Willis. Will you have a cigar, Alfred?”

“Thanks,” Alfed Wayde said, “I could do with a cigar.”

“It’s funny,” Mr. Harcourt said, “how few young fellows like you care for a good cigar. I’ll get one in my study.”

He walked through a narrow doorway, and Willis and his father were alone for a moment in the cool softly lighted room. Alfred Wayde lowered himself into one of the heavy leather chairs.

“How’s it going, boy?” he asked.

“Fine,” Willis answered.

“Well, take your weight off your feet. This certainly is a soft seat. Different from Klamath Falls, isn’t it, boy?”

Willis felt a strong desire to laugh. His father could always make him laugh if he put his mind to it.

“Just take it easy,” Alfred Wayde said. “Always take it easy.” But they both stood up when Mr. Harcourt came back.

“Here,” Mr. Harcourt said, “this is a good light Havana. There’s a cutter on the table.”

“No need for a cutter, thanks,” Alfred Wayde said. He pinched off the end of his cigar and Selwyn came in with a tray of after-dinner coffee and brandy.

“Did everything go all right in Building Three today?” Mr. Harcourt asked.

“It’s pretty well cleared out,” Alfred Wayde said. “We’re going to need some new construction under the vats and a new compressor.”

“All right,” Mr. Harcourt said. “I’d like to see those blueprints tomorrow morning if they’re ready.”

“They’re ready,” Alfred Wayde answered.

“Good!” Mr. Harcourt said. “I should have looked at Number Three myself today, but things were pretty busy in the office. I had Decker in and the lawyers were down from Boston.” Mr. Harcourt flicked the ash of his cigar carefully into a brass tray on the table beside him.

“I’m buying those Klaus patents. Bryson isn’t going to like it, but I’m going ahead.”

Willis’s father nodded slowly, without moving his glance from Mr. Harcourt’s face.

“You’re not going to miss any boats if you do,” he said.

Mr. Harcourt sat still for a moment.

“It’s difficult when you get to be my age,” he said, “to branch into new ideas. Well, Bryson isn’t going to like it.”

“You won’t miss any boats,” Alfred Wayde said again. “You’ve got to get into conveyor belting, and the Klaus patents will put you on the ground floor. You won’t ever be the Goodrich Rubber Company, but you’ll have a process no one else owns.”

“I hope so,” Mr. Harcourt said. “We’ll have a business talk tomorrow, but let’s talk about Willis now. His mother was asking about what he will do for school.”

“Oh,” Alfred Wayde said. “Yes, Cynthia wants me to stay put somewhere until Willis gets to college.”

Willis never forgot that scrap of conversation about the conveyor belts. Later, when he was able to understand its significance, he understood why they were living in the garden house. If it had not been for the Klaus patents, the mill would have lost business all through the twenties and would not have survived the depression, and it was his father who had advised the purchase.

Selwyn tapped softly on the open door of the library.

“Mr. and Mrs. Bryson Harcourt are with the ladies in the drawing room,” he said.

The long drawing room with its tall French windows looked over the south terrace. If it represented the late Victorian period of decoration, all its furnishings, down to the useless articles that cluttered the tables, possessed their peculiar relationship. Its two crystal chandeliers from England, its mantel of Italian marble, its groups of chairs and sofas, and its ornate lamps—now converted from kerosene to electricity—were cumbersome taken by themselves, but they all added a personal quality to the room. Somehow they reminded you of the people who had gathered about the grand piano and had walked over the huge wine-colored carpet, which was growing worn. It was one of those rooms that could never be imitated. Even if Willis could have gained possession of all the room’s furniture, it would never have been possible to have arranged those component parts into the pattern he remembered. And the people standing near the fireplace, even down to his mother and father, were part of the pattern.

“Mildred,” Mr. Harcourt said, “you haven’t met Willis Wayde yet, have you? Willis, this is my daughter-in-law, Mrs. Harcourt, and Mr. Harcourt. I’m sorry you didn’t bring the children over, Mildred.”

He spoke as though Willis were a grown-up guest, but then his manner always was the same with everyone. He had been born with that sort of inner assurance you could never pick up from any book of etiquette.

“Happy to meet you, ma’am,” Willis said, and he could hear his own voice from that past balanced awkwardly between childhood and adolescence.

If Mrs. Bryson Harcourt did not look entirely happy to meet him, nevertheless she managed to smile. She was tall and angular in her green silk dress, taller than her husband.

“How do you do?” she said to Willis, and gave his hand a strong quick shake. “I’m sorry I didn’t bring Bill and Bess over, Governor. I just didn’t think about it.”

She always called Mr. Henry Harcourt “Governor.”

“Hello, young fellow,” Mr. Bryson Harcourt said. In many ways he was a picture of what Mr. Henry Harcourt must have been when he was younger. His clean-shaven face was tanned and he had a trace of the Harcourt lower lip, but his features always seemed less in focus than his father’s.

“We can only stay for a minute, Governor,” Mrs. Harcourt said. “We just stopped over to see how you were.”

“I’m bearing up, Mildred,” Mr. Harcourt said. “We had Decker and the lawyers over at the mill today, Bryson.”

“I was at Marblehead racing,” Mr. Bryson said.

“Of course,” Mr. Harcourt answered. “I should have remembered. How did you come out, Bryson?”

“Third,” Mrs. Bryson said. “Almost second, Governor.”

“Mildred always hates to lose,” Mr. Bryson said.

“Of course I do,” Mrs. Harcourt said. “Married couples never ought to sail in the same boat. Bryson, didn’t you tell the Governor you weren’t coming in today?”

“It doesn’t make any difference,” Mr. Harcourt said, “but see me the first thing tomorrow, won’t you, Bryson?”

“All right, Father,” Bryson said. “It must have been a hot day for traveling, Mrs. Wayde. I hope everything in the cottage is all right. I wanted to add on to it when we were married but Mildred wanted to build.”

“I was right, wasn’t I, Governor?” Mrs. Harcourt said.

“Of course Mildred was right,” Mrs. Blood said. “A larger house would not have looked well across the lawn.”

Those brief snatches of dialogue were a part of the façade with which the Harcourts always contrived to surround themselves. There was good nature and affection in the words and even humor, without a trace of strain and no undertone of disappointment. Only time and perspective lent significance and sadness to anything that was said. It was only after Willis knew what the Klaus patents meant that he recalled that Bryson Harcourt had been racing at Marblehead on the day they were purchased. There had not been a trace of anger and not a hint of sorrow. The truth was that the Harcourts were all too fond of each other and knew each other too well to betray obvious emotion. Something must have been said, of course. Willis often wondered what words the father and son had spoken when they met in the mill the next morning, but no one had ever heard that conversation and neither of them ever mentioned it.

His mother was the only one who noticed anything at the time. When they were walking home across the lawn to the cottage, she was the first one who spoke.

“Alf,” she said, “they’re not our kind of people.”

“How do you mean, not our kind of people?” his father asked.

The lawn, Willis was thinking, resembled the heavy carpets in the Harcourt hall.

“They’re not our kind of people,” his mother said again. “Alf, you never notice people.”

“My God, Cynthia,” Alfred Wayde said. “They were just talking, weren’t they?”

“There was something that made Mr. Harcourt angry,” Willis’s mother said.

“Who? Old Harcourt? He didn’t act angry.”

“I know he didn’t. That’s why I say they’re not our kind of people.”

“Well,” Alfred Wayde said, “we got a good feed out of it, and you didn’t have to cook it.”

“Alf,” his mother said, “there’s one thing I don’t like.”

“What don’t you like?” his father asked.

“Somehow he makes me feel we’re all living here, Alf, on charity.”

“Charity?” Alfred Wayde said, and he laughed. “Don’t you believe it, Cynthia. I’m earning everything we get.”

His mother’s voice grew sharp. Willis could not see her face, but he knew that her lips were closed in a tight, disapproving line.

“Then why doesn’t he pay you cash instead of giving us things?” she asked.

It was a good question and his father must have known it.

“Because he would rather give than pay,” he said. “It makes some people feel better—giving than paying.”

That answer of his father’s was one of the wisest things that Willis ever heard him say about people. Mr. Henry Harcourt had to be the center of the Harcourt world, and he was a very good one, too, until he died.

Willis often thought that there was always a greater change when darkness gathered over the Harcourt place than there was anywhere else. The darkness was like a rising tide that covered the gardens and the houses, erasing everything as a still sea erased footprints on a beach. The sound of the night, the incessant calling of the crickets, assuming an intensity that never rose or diminished, covered all vanity and striving. A greater, more mysterious world, one that cared nothing for minutiae, covered the world of the Harcourts. In no other place he knew did he have such a strong feeling that small things did not matter, including his own ambitions, as when night engulfed the Harcourt place.

It was always different in the morning, when the mist and the damp of night rolled back before the sun. The complicated values returned with daylight. Willis was awakened the next morning by the whistle from the mill, which always blew at seven. He heard the thump of his father’s feet on the floor of the bedroom across the upstairs hall, and then he heard his mother calling him to get up and start the fire in the kitchen. They were all following the familiar routine which had been created by other whistles in other places.

“What am I going to do if you take the Ford, Alf?” his mother asked. “I’ve got to get downtown and buy some groceries.”

Alfred Wayde looked up vaguely from his coffee.

“Someone from the other house will be going,” he said. “Call up and ask. They’ll give you a ride to town.”

“No,” his mother said, “I don’t want to be obligated, Alf.”

“All right,” his father said. “I’ll be back at five and drive you over.”

She said she wanted to get the feel of everything in the house and she could only do that when she was alone. She told Willis to go out and walk around and get used to the lay of the land, and keep away from the big house and not bother anyone.

It was quite a walk that Willis took that morning. The dew was still over everything and there was a smell of fresh-cut grass, where two men were working on the lawn with hand-mowers.

When he walked down the road to the stables, the routine of the place was already starting. Two more men were working in the kitchen garden and another was trimming shrubbery. A stoop-shouldered man with a blank and patient face was spraying roses in the cutting garden and talking to himself.

“God damn them bugs,” he was saying.

It was Mr. MacDonald, the head gardener, and Mr. MacDonald was always a dour man. A stout man in blue overalls was standing by the gasoline engine in the pump house. His hands were in his pockets and his face was red and chubby. He took one glance at Willis and then turned away again. It was Mr. Beane, the estate superintendent, who knew every pipe and wire and water conductor on the place. Like Patrick, the people on the place already accepted Willis as a fact, but they did not know where he fitted in any more than Willis knew himself, and they did not want to talk until they knew, but Mr. Harcourt’s police dog felt differently. When Benny saw Willis he wagged his tail and ran ahead of him toward the oak woods beyond the house. Benny was the only one that morning who knew where Willis fitted in. Benny was always agreeable to the employees on the place, but he never went for walks with them, not even with Mr. Beane.

The stretches of woodland behind the walls were as disciplined as the paintings of an English park, and like the brook that ran through the southern end of the property they were all units in the landscape plan. Once each year a party of tree surgeons, watched by Mr. Harcourt and Mr. Beane, cut down dead limbs and crowding brush and saplings, so that the large oaks and pines and beeches were allowed to grow unhindered, with the brook winding softly among their shadows. It was possible to walk freely beneath the trees, but for greater convenience the place was interspersed with well-cleared paths called walks, the names of which soon became familiar—the Brook Walk, the Pine Walk, the Hickory Hill, the Azalea, and the Rhododendron Walks. Without knowing its name yet, Willis walked down the Brook Walk with the police dog trotting ahead of him. The shade of the path and the cool sound of the brook could not dispel the heat above them, and bright shafts of sunlight continually fell across the path. He was walking toward the Bryson Harcourts’ house and he saw it for the first time when the trees thinned out near the edge of a large field. The house lay at the end of a gradual slope, a newer structure than the big house and almost as large, made of brick in Georgian style, forming a minor principality within the general boundary, with its own lawns, gardens, stable, and tennis court. The unexpected sight of it made Willis feel like a trespasser, and sudden shyness made him turn away.

He was walking back toward a bend of the path near the foot of a large white pine tree when the dog sprang forward suddenly and a girl’s voice called, “Down, Benny.” For a second Willis felt an acute desire to hide, but instead he walked slowly around the turn and saw a girl somewhat younger than himself, patting the police dog’s head.

The girl in front of Willis wore a middy blouse and a blue pleated skirt, and her blond hair was done in a heavy braid. Her face was as freckled as his own and her eyes were critical. He never forgot their color—a sort of greenish-blue.

“How did you get in here?” she asked.

“I was just walking around with the dog,” Willis answered.

“Well, he isn’t your dog,” she said.

“I know he isn’t,” Willis said.

“Then how did you find him?” she asked.

“He was over by the big house,” Willis answered, “and he came along with me for company, I guess.”

“Oh,” the girl said. “You’re one of the people that my grandfather gave the garden house to, aren’t you? Beane said there was going to be a boy.”

“Yes,” Willis said, “that’s me, I guess.”

“Well, that’s all right then,” the girl said. “Beane said you were about Bill’s age, but you’re bigger. I thought you were a town boy. They sneak over the wall sometimes.”

“I didn’t sneak over any wall,” Willis said.

“I didn’t say you did,” the girl said, “and you needn’t act angry. This is my grandfather’s place, and it’s my place, partly. At least my brother and I are going to own it some day.”

“I’m not acting angry,” Willis said.

“You don’t need to,” the girl said again. “And I have a right to ask you questions. You don’t know your way around here, do you?”

“No,” Willis said. “I was just looking around. He said I could go anywhere.”

“Who said?”

“Mr. Harcourt said,” he answered.

“All right,” she said, “but I guess you don’t know who I am, do you?”

“I guess you must be the girl,” Willis said.

“What girl?” she asked.

“The girl they were talking about at the big house last night.”

“Oh, you were up there, were you?” she said. “Well, my name’s Bess Harcourt. What’s your name?”

“Willis,” he told her, “Willis Wayde.”

“Did you know this brook is stocked with trout?”

“No,” Willis said.

“He didn’t tell you you could fish, did he?”

“No,” Willis said.

“You could if I told you. Do you know how to cast?”

“Yes,” Willis said.

“I bet you don’t,” she said. “Where did you learn?”

“Out West,” Willis said. “There are a lot of streams better than this out West.”

“I’ve got to study French with Mademoiselle this morning. Do you know French?”

“Not very much,” Willis said.

“I didn’t think you did, but we can go fishing this afternoon. Maybe I’ll bring Bill. Meet me here at three o’clock and put on some old clothes. Where did you get those clothes?”

“In Kansas City,” Willis answered.

“I should think you’d take your coat off anyway,” she said. “Can you play tennis?”

“No,” Willis said.

“Well, maybe Bill’s tutor can teach you. Bill has a tutor from Harvard. Can you ride?”

“Yes,” Willis said, “everybody can ride out West.”

“I don’t mean Western riding,” she said. “I wish you had a haircut, and you wouldn’t look so funny.”

“You don’t look so hot yourself,” Willis said.

“It’s none of your business how I look,” she answered. “I’m not trying to look any way at all.”

“Neither am I,” Willis said.

“Oh, yes, you are,” she answered. “You’re trying to show off. I’ll be here at three o’clock, and don’t keep me waiting.”

“Bess,” a boy’s voice was calling, “Bess!”

“Oh, all right,” Bess called back, “all right.”

“Come on so we can do our damned French,” the boy’s voice called.

Of course it was Bill Harcourt who was calling. A second later Willis saw him, hurrying down the path, a slender, dark-haired boy in white duck trousers.

“It’s all right, Bill,” Bess said. “He’s one of the people in the garden house. His name is Willis Wayde.”

“Oh,” Bill said. He looked at Willis quickly but not critically like Bess.

“It’s nice there’s someone else around here,” he said. “You’ve got to come over and see us.”

“We’re going fishing this afternoon,” Bess said.

“You and your fishing,” Bill said. “All you want is someone to show off in front of. Come on, Bess.”

Everyone had certain functions on the Harcourt place, as Willis learned without resentment. It was part of the order, he began to understand, that Patrick and Mr. Beane and everyone else should address Bill and Bess as Mr. Bill and Miss Bess, when they usually called him Willis. On the other hand, Bill and Bess asked him around quite often to their house, but they hardly ever asked Mr. Beane’s son, Granville, there. It was natural, however, that Willis and Granville became best friends, because they went to high school together. When anyone told him, as the town girls and boys frequently did, that Bill and Bess Harcourt were stuck-up kids, Willis knew that this was not so. Bill and Bess were no different from anyone else, when you got to know them. They only led different lives.

The Bryson Harcourts always moved to Boston in the autumn to a life of which Willis knew nothing, and Bess went to a girls’ private school there, and Bill went to a boys’ boarding school in Milton. Willis was not even curious about what they did, being absorbed in his own problems. They would part casually and without much regret, and when they met they would pick up things where they had left them.

Mr. Harcourt went to Boston, too, in late November, but the big house stayed open, and he or Mr. Bryson were always in it for a night or two every week. The general affairs of the mill were in the hands of Mr. Henry Hewett, the plant manager, who lived with Mrs. Hewett in a square white house just across the street from the mill buildings, but Mr. Harcourt was the one who made the main decisions.