For a day or two she staid in Bronson, sleeping and eating in Mrs. Hayden’s grand house, and feeling all her sympathies enlisted for shriveled-up Mr. Hayden, who in the morning came shivering to the table from his cold bath, and swallowed his oatmeal and hot water dutifully, but with an expression on his thin, sallow face which showed how his stomach rebelled against it and craved the juicy steak and fragrant coffee with which his blooming wife regaled herself, because she was strong and could bear it. Once Bee ventured to suggest that steak and beef-tea might be a more nutritious diet even for a dyspeptic than oatmeal and barley, varied with dry toast and baked apples; but Mrs. Hayden _knew_. She had read up on _stomachs_, and _nerves_, and _digestion_, and knew every symptom of dyspepsia, and its cause, and what it needed, and how a person ought to feel; and her husband submitted quietly, and said, “Julie was right,” and grew thinner, and paler, and weaker every day with cold baths and starvation; but he kept the respect of his wife because he _tried_ to be well, and that was a great thing to do, for in his estimation she was a wonderful woman, and represented the wisdom of the world. On the third day Beatrice left Bronson, to look, she said, for some quiet, pleasant nook, where she could spend a few weeks during the hot weather. She found such a place in Holburton, whither she came one warm July afternoon, when the town was at its best. It was not an unheard-of thing for city people to pass a few weeks in Holburton during the hot weather, and no one was surprised when Miss Belknap registered her name on the hotel books, and said she was looking for some quiet and reasonable boarding-house for an invalid with two children. Several were recommended to her, and with the list in her hand she started out to reconnoiter. Mrs. Roxie Fleming was the fourth name on her paper, but she went there first, and was pleased with the place at once, because it looked so cool and inviting under the wealth of hop vines which covered one side of it. The day was warm, and Mrs. Fleming, in her clean purple calico gown, sat sewing on the door-steps, while a woman with a deep pasteboard bonnet on her head, concealing her face from view, was sweeping the grass in the back yard. But she turned as she heard the gate open, and seeing Beatrice, came forward until she saw her mother; then she withdrew, leaving Mrs. Fleming to confer with the stranger. She had rooms to let, she said; did the lady wish them for herself? and she looked curiously at Beatrice, who was so different from the boarders who usually came to her, for her rooms were low and scantily furnished, and not at all like the apartments city people desired. Miss Belknap wanted board for herself and a friend with two children; two sleeping-rooms and a parlor would do nicely for them all, and she was willing to pay whatever it was worth.