Eaton himself made one of those who went away; he would have had Peg for company, but she urged--what was true, since the old lady had grown frail and weakly--that she ought not to leave her mother for so long a space. Eaton agreed with entire good humor to this, and so left Peg behind, and never a qualm or mark of hesitation, while he sought his ease by the sea. Eaton from his own view-point might well spare Peg from his plans; he was extremely a man's man, and owning, withal, a hand for the bottle and a mighty promptitude for cards, would the better amuse himself with no wife to be a mortgage on his liberty. Summer is for society what winter is to war; the forces lie all in quarters, and beyond caring for their arms or practicing a drill against the campaign day to dawn, there arises nothing to be called a movement. Indeed, as I've explained, the women--who, as Peg would have it, are the fighting line--for the most part were fled to beach and hill. The town was in its sleep, and society would awaken it only with the advent of the snows. In the last there were still our three cabinet wives, that is, the ladies Berrien, Branch, and Ingham, to be left about us. These would soon depart; but by this claim or that, they had been brought to lag behind when the great covey of their flounced fellows went whirring away to be cool. Peg never had visited these folk, nor they her, and on those few occasions when official exigency threw them together, the cabinet three, who, like the General's fleeting niece, were utterly beneath the sway of the Vice-President's wife--herself a woman of unquestioned place and breeding, and a natural queen, besides,--took heed to hold aloof from Peg. On her side, Peg passed them by or looked them through as though they had not been, and, if I am to judge, came off from these tiltings with prestige all undimmed. It would have been as good as the play, were I not prey and spoil to so much soreness in the business, to have watched those tacit joustings of Peg with our old mailed warriors of the drawing rooms. The dauntless Peg crossed glances with the most seasoned of her bad-wishers, and left them ever the worse for those thrustings. If she were wounded, no one learned the bleeding fact; and not even I should know. From the laugh to ring true, and the fine spirit of her, I was fain to conclude that Peg, so far from shrinking, joyed in such silken combats to take place among the flowers and with the music of orchestras stirring the blood; and in the last I am sure she did.