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Updated: June 17, 2025
He could always get a rise out of Miss Desmond by referring to the impertinent person who had telegraphed her about it from Kent Harbor, and he could put Gaites into a quiver of anxiety by asking him whether he had heard Mrs. Maze speak of the piano when he was at Kent Harbor, or whether he had happened to see anything of it at any of the junctions on his way to Lower Merritt.
He was so early that the head waiter had to jump from his own unfinished meal, and run to pull out his chair; and Gaites saw that he left at his table the landlord's family, the clerk, the housekeeper, and Miss Axewright. It appeared that she was not only staying in the hotel, but was there on terms which indeed held her above the servants, but separated her from the guests.
She did look at it; then she looked at Gaites's face, into which he had thrown a sort of stony calm; and then she looked back at the piano-case. "No!" she exclaimed and questioned in one. Gaites nodded confirmation. "Then it won't be there in time for the poor thing's birthday?" He nodded again. Mrs.
The head waiter was rather vague about their past; but he was distinct enough about their present, and said the young ladies happened all to be at home. "I don't know," he added, "whether you noticed our lady orchestra when you came in to dinner to-day?" "Yes, I did," said Gaites. "I was very much interested.
He gave the driver the authoritative address, "Sea Board Depot," and left him to take his own way, after resisting a rather silly impulse to bid him go through Charles Street. The man drove up Beacon, and down Temple through Staniford, and naturally Gaites saw nothing of Miss Desmond's piano, which had come into his mind again in starting.
The next day the weather cleared up cold, after the storm, and the fat old ladies, who outnumber everybody but the thin young girls at summer hotels, made the landlord put the steam on in the corridors, and toasted themselves before the log fires on the spectacular hall hearth. Gaites walked all day, and at night he lounged by the lamp, trying to read, and wished himself at Kent Harbor.
There was a note of resentment in Miss Desmond's voice, and it silenced the laughing explanation which Gaites had almost upon his tongue. He fell very grave in answering, "I can't, indeed, Miss Desmond." "Perhaps she found out that it had been a long time on the way, and did it out of pure good-nature, to relieve your anxiety."
The inducement was June Alber, whom she said she had already engaged to go canoeing with Gaites Sunday afternoon. That afternoon was exquisite. The sky was cloudless, and of one blue with the river and the girl's eyes, as Gaites noted while she sat facing him from the bow of the canoe.
She took it with a weary resignation which somehow made Gaites ashamed of the haste with which he had pushed forward to the only good place, and he felt as guilty of keeping her out of it as if he had known she was following him. He kept a remorseful eye upon her as she arranged her bag and umbrella about her, with some paper parcels which she must have had sent to her at the station.
"Leaves this cah the'a," said the man, as if surprised into the admission. "Can I go on her?" Gaites pursued, breathlessly. "Well, I guess you'll have to talk to this man about that," and the station-master indicated, with a nod of his head, the freight conductor, who was swinging himself down from the caboose, now come abreast of them on the track.
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