Tom had of course met Joe Helmford at the store and elsewhere; and embracing the frequent country doctrine that all city folk are bound to have "some of their buttons loose," he looked upon the man from the fish hatchery as two-parts fool and the other part "dumb lucky to be able to wear such good clothes!" Helmford was a likable and sociable fellow. He had the knack of getting on with most people, and he had been in the community long enough to learn how best to appeal to the Cape natives. He knew they frequently had a philosophical turn of mind, looked out on life at a rather peculiar angle, but were not lacking in shrewdness and common sense. Cap'n Jonah he liked from the first. Orrin and Sarah's peculiarities he was prepared to overlook. Tom he had not an iota of interest in. Pearl he watched with more concern than he had ever felt for a girl before. Yet this concern was no deeper than the superficial pleasure he felt in seeing her move gracefully about, in watching the changing expressions play upon her pretty features, and in speculating as to just what there was beneath that crown of beautiful hair, which she seemed to have a natural taste in dressing. It must be confessed that this attraction for Mr. Joe Helmford, such as it was, was entirely physical. He had not lived at Cardhaven for eight months or more without having been introduced to a good many girls. He was an outsider, and therefore a person keenly interesting to most young women of the community. For girls who do not meet many men are prone to think that men from afar are better than the local swains. Helmford's lack of interest in women was not his only reason for passing these girls over lightly. There were some in Cardhaven, perhaps, as pretty as Pearl Holden; but they possessed nothing but prettiness to recommend them. And Helmford happened to be a young man who required something more than personal beauty to hold his interest. Pearl's gifts of form and feature were her only attraction, he presumed, as had been the case with those other girls he had met. When she opened her pretty lips it was often to use expressions and terms of speech which amused him but which seemed to imply that Pearl was of another world than his. So little Pearl's attraction for the new boarder remained of small consequence, after all. He was polite to her, as he was to Mrs. Petty. But he noted Tom's hobbledehoy attentions to the girl, and merely shrugged his shoulders. Yet Helmford could not keep his gaze from following her. She had a purely physical attraction for him; Helmford was too much of a gentleman to build any closer fellowship with the girl upon such an unstable foundation.