Finally the visitor departed, promising to come again soon. After a baffled glance at Mrs. Tree's house, which showed an uncompromising front of closed windows and muslin curtains, she made her way to the post-office, where for a stricken hour she harried Mr. Homer Hollopeter. She was his cousin too, in the fifth or sixth degree, and as she cheerfully told him, Darracott blood was a bond, even to the last drop of it. She questioned him as to his income, his housekeeping, his reasons for remaining single, which appeared to her insufficient, not to say childish; she commented on his looks, the fashion of his dress (it was a manifest absurdity for a man of his years to wear a sky-blue neck-tie!), the decorations of his office. She thought a portrait of the President, or George Washington, would be more appropriate than those dingy engravings. Who were--oh, Keats and Shelley? No one admired poetry more than she did; she had read Keats's "Christian Year" only a short time ago; charming! "And what is that landscape, Cousin Homer? Something foreign, evidently. I always think that a government office should be representative _of_ the government. I have a print at home, a bird's-eye view of Washington in 1859, which I will send you if you like. I suppose you have an express frank? No? How mean of Congress! What did you say this mountain was?" Mr. Homer, who had received Mrs. Pryor's remarks in meekness and--so far as might be--in silence, waving his head and arms now and then in mute dissent, now looked up at the mountain photograph; he opened and shut his mouth several times before he found speech. "The picture," he said, slowly, "represents a--a--mountain; a--a--in short,--a mountain!" and not another word could he be got to say about it. Doctor Stedman had a long round to go that day, and it was not till late afternoon that he reached home and found a message from Mrs. Tree saying that she wished to see him. He hastened to the house; Direxia, who had evidently been watching for him, opened the door almost before he knocked. "Nothing serious, I trust, Direxia!" he asked, anxiously. "I have been out of town, and am only just back." "Hush!" whispered Direxia, with a glance toward the parlor door. "I don't know; I can't make out--" "Come in, James Stedman!" called Mrs. Tree from the parlor. "Don't stand there gossiping with Direxia; I didn't send for you to see her." Direxia lifted her hands and eyes with an eloquent gesture. "She is the beat of all!" she murmured, and fled to her kitchen.