“Professor Hollister wouldn’t let me out till the last minute, and then I stopped an instant to speak to some girls who came on this train. How are you, mother, and you, old Roy? I don’t believe I should have known you. That ague has given you a hard one, and made you shaky on your legs, hasn’t it? Here, lean on me, while we climb these infernally steep stairs. Mother, I’ll carry that satchel. What ails your eye? looks as if you’d been fighting. Here, this way. Don’t go into that musty parlor. Come on to No. —. I’ve got your rooms all engaged, the best in the hotel.” And thus talking, with his invalid brother leaning on his arm, Charlie Churchill led the way to the handsome rooms which overlooked the lake and the hills beyond. Roy was very tired, and he lay down at once, while his mother made some changes in her toilet, and from a travel-soiled, rather dowdy-looking woman in gray, was transformed into a fair, comely and stylish matron, whose rich black silk trailed far behind her, and whose frills of costly lace fell softly about her neck and plump white hands as she went in to dinner with Charlie, who was having a holiday, and who ordered claret and champagne, and offered it to those about him with as much freedom as if it was his money instead of his brother’s which would pay for it all. Roy’s dinner was served in his room, and while waiting for it he studied Edna Browning’s sketch, which had a strange fascination for him, despite the pangs of wounded vanity he felt when he saw what a guy she had made of him. “I wonder if I do look like that,” he said, and he went to the glass and examined himself carefully. “Yes, I do,” he continued. “Put a poke bonnet on me and the likeness is perfect, hollows in my cheeks, fretful expression and all. I’ve been sick and coddled, and petted until I’ve grown a complete baby, and a perfect boor, but there’s no reason why I need to look so confounded cross and ill-tempered, and I won’t either. Edna Browning has done me some good at least. I wonder who the little wretch is. Perhaps Charlie knows; she seems to be here at school.” But Roy did not ask Charlie, for the asking would have involved an explanation, and he would a little rather not show his teasing brother the picture which he put away so carefully in his pocket-book. They drove that afternoon in the most stylish turnout the town afforded, a handsome open barouche, and Roy declined the cushion his mother suggested for his back, and only suffered her to spread his shawl across his lap instead of wrapping it around him to his chin. His overcoat and scarf were all he should need, he said, and he tried to sit up straight, and not look sick, as Charlie, who managed the reins himself, drove them through the principal streets of the town, and then out into the country for a mile or two.