“Oh, don’t,” interrupted the young man lightly. “They told me at the postoffice she took boarders sometimes, and I came to see if there was a chance for me.” He handed a card to the girl with an air of not knowing that he was doing it. Her very eyelids seemed to blush as she looked at it and read the name—Mr. C. Daun Diller. “I am writing up the Puget Sound country for a New York paper, and I should like to make my headquarters here at Whatcom, but I can’t stand the hotels in your new towns. It’s the most amazing thing!” he went on, smiling at her as she stood twisting the card in her fingers, not knowing exactly what to do with it. “You go to sleep at night in a Puget Sound village with the fronts of the stores painted green, blue and red, spasmodic patches of sidewalk here and there, dust ankle deep, and no street-lights—and you wake in the morning in a _city_! A city with fine stone blocks and residences, stone pavements, electric lights and railways, gas, splendid water-works,”—he was checking off now, excitedly, on his fingers,—“sewerage, big mills, factories, canneries, public schools that would make the East stare, churches, libraries”—he stopped abruptly, and, dropping his arms limply to his sides, added—“and not a hotel! Not a comfortable bed or a good meal to be had for love or money!” “Yes, that’s so,” said Lavinia, reluctantly. “But you can’t expect us to get everything all at onct. Why, Whatcom’s boom only started in six months ago.” Mr. C. Daun Diller looked amused. “Oh, if it were this town only,” he said, sitting down on one of the hair-cloth chairs and feeling himself slide gently forward, “I shouldn’t have mentioned it. But the truth is, there are only three decent hotels in the whole Puget Sound country. But I know”—here he smiled at her again—“that it’s not safe to breathe a word against Puget Sound to a Puget-Sounder.” “No, it ain’t,” said the girl, responding to the smile and the respectfully bantering tone. Then she moved to the door. “Well, I’ll see what maw says to it,” she said, and vanished. Mr. C. Daun Diller stood up and pushed his hands down into his pockets, whistling softly. He walked over to the organ and looked at the music. There were three large books: “The Home Circle,” “The Golden Chord,” and “The Family Treasure;” a “simplified” copy of “The Maiden’s Prayer,” and a book of “Gospel Songs.” The young man smiled. “All the same,” he said, as if in answer to a disparaging remark made by some one else, “she’s about the handsomest girl I ever saw. I’m getting right down anxious to see myself what ‘maw’ will ‘say to it.’” After a long while Mrs. Vaiden appeared in a crisply-starched gingham dress and a company manner—both of which had been freshly put on for the occasion. Mr. Diller found her rather painfully polite, and he began to wonder, after paying his first week’s board, whether he could endure two or three months of her; but he was quite, quite sure that he could endure a full year of the daughter.