Meantime, Ira had been provided with his apartment. Chin Chin had arrayed him in a summer costume, easy and elegant, and he was dining vigorously, rejoiced to have someone near him again on whom his impatient oaths in Loo Choo and kindred dialects were not thrown away. Of a large number of letters, he first opened Dunstan’s. It was brief, merely informing him what had been done with the luggage. Mr. Waddy paused, however, over the closing sentences: “I have a short hiatus in my life before the political campaign fairly commences, and shall yawn through it at Newport with Paulding. Why won’t you drop in and see something of our world after your long absence? You will be amused and perhaps instructed in the new social discoveries. Your relatives, the Waddies, have a house there, a capital lounging place, and are expected back from Europe soon to occupy it. “We made little Budlong rather unhappy for leaving you. Chin Chin shut off his cheroots. Miss Arabella wouldn’t forgive him for abandoning ‘that charming Mr. Waddy.’ However, she consoled herself with Miromenil, that sprig of the _haute noblesse_. You will find them all at Newport.” “Fine lad, Dunstan,” said Waddy, “but somewhat melancholy--probably spent too much money in Europe. Perhaps he’s lost his heart to Miss Waddie; but he didn’t talk like a disappointed lover; only sad, not bitter. Well, when I’ve finished my business here and Granby comes, I may as well begin my home experience with Newport--as well there as anywhere.” When the cobbler, being shaken, responded with only a death-rattle of dry ice, Mr. Waddy lighted his cheroot and strolled into the Common. It was loveliest moonlight. He sat on a bench reclined against an elm. The policeman coming by, stopped, willing to chat of crime. It was too pure a night for any thought save reveries of pensive peace; so Waddy gagged him with a cigar. An hour afterward, at midnight, the same, re-passing, found the smoker still posted on his bench. So for hours of that delicious night of summer he sat beneath the flickering elm shadows. Sweet breezes from overland, where roses were, came and played among the branches. There was no sorrow nor sighing in the voices of this summer wind--only love, love! Did Mr. Waddy hear them? Had some hopeful Cupid peered into his face, he would have fled affrighted at its stern misery. Across the ripples and beyond the silver islands of the bay, at Nahant, where one of the first hops of the season was now careering, the Wilkes party were spending a day or two. They were all hopping merrily to-night, Gyas the brave and the brave Cloanthus alternating with Miss Julia. Miss Milly Center had also been brought down to join the Wilkeses, by her Boston friends; and Mr. Billy Dulger, moth to her flame, had followed, disregarding the claims of his papa’s counting-house in New York. They all danced and flirted and were well pleased, though not very susceptible truly to the exalting influences of the moonlit sea.