“Oh no,” I said; “we couldn’t do that sort of thing, even if we wanted.” And in my turn I named the modest hotel where we were, and said that I thought it by all odds the pleasantest place in Saratoga. “But I can’t say,” I added, “that there is a great deal going on there, either. If you want that sort of thing you will have to go to some of the great hotels. We have our little amusements, but they’re all rather mild.” I kept talking to the man, but really addressing myself to the women. “There’s something nearly every evening: prestidigitating, or elocutioning, or a little concert, or charades, or impromptu theatricals, or something of that sort. I can’t say there’s dancing, though really, I suppose, if any one wanted to dance there would be dancing.” I was aware that the women listened intelligently, even if the man did not. The wife drew a long breath, and said, “It must be very pleasant.” The girl said—rather more hungrily, I fancied—“Yes, indeed.” I don’t know why their interest should have prompted me to go on and paint the lily a little, but I certainly did so. I did not stop till the music began again, and I had to stop. By the time the piece was finished I had begun to have my misgivings, and I profited by the brief interval of silence to say to the young girl, “I wouldn’t have you think we are a whirl of gaiety exactly.” “Oh no,” she answered pathetically, as if she were quite past expecting that or anything like it. We were silent again. At the end of the next piece they all rose, and the wife said timidly to me, “Well, good-evening,” as if she might be venturing too far; and her husband came to her rescue with “Well, good-evening, sir.” The young girl merely bowed. I did not stay much longer, for I was eager to get home and tell my wife about my adventure, which seemed to me of a very rare and thrilling kind. I believed that if I could present it to her duly, it would interest her as much as it had interested me. But somehow, as I went on with it in the lamplight of her room, it seemed to lose colour and specific character. “You are always making up these romances about young girls being off and disappointed of a good time ever since we saw that poor little Kitty Ellison with her cousins at Niagara,” said Mrs. March. “You seem to have it on the brain.” “Because it’s the most tragical thing in the world, and the commonest in our transition state,” I retorted. I was somewhat exasperated to have my romance treated as so stale a situation, though I was conscious now that it did want perfect novelty. “It’s precisely for that reason that I like to break my heart over it. I see it every summer, and it keeps me in a passion of pity. Something ought to be done about it.” “Well, don’t _you_ try to do anything, Basil, unless you write to the newspapers.”