"No girl with at least three possibilities in one town, to say nothing of dozens she may have elsewhere, need be a subject of commiseration," said Mrs. Whipple. "But," began the bishop slowly, "it might be better to eliminate at least one." "Not Warry!" threw in Mrs. Whipple. "Not Saxton," added the general. "I like him; he's polite and thoughtful about us old folks." The bishop had risen, knowing that the climax of a conversation is best given standing. "I shouldn't cut out either of them," he said, smiling. CHAPTER XX ORCHARD LANE After the interim of quiet that Lent always brings in Clarkson, the spring came swiftly. There was a renewal of social activities which ran from dances and teas into outdoor gatherings. Evelyn had enjoyed to the full her experience of home. She had plunged into the frivolities of the town with a zest that was a trifle emphasized through her wish to escape any charge of being pedantic or literary. She was glad that she had gone to college, but she did not wish this fact of her life to be the haunting ghost of her days; and by the end of the winter she felt that she had pretty effectually laid it. In June Mr. Porter began discussing summer plans with Evelyn. He eliminated himself from them; he could not get away, he said. But there was Grant to be considered. The boy was at school in New Hampshire, and Evelyn protested that it was not wise to subject him to the intense heat of a Clarkson summer. The first hot wave sent Porter to bed with a trifling illness, and his doctor took the opportunity to look him over and tell him that it was imperative for him to rest. Thompson came home from Arizona to spend the summer. He and Wheaton were certainly equal to the care of the bank, so they urged upon Porter, and he finally yielded. Evelyn found a hotel on the Massachusetts North Shore which sounded well in the circulars, and her father agreed to it. When they reached Orchard Lane he liked it better than he had expected; the hotel was one of those vast caravansaries where all sorts and conditions assemble; and he was reassured by the click of the telegraph instrument and the presence of the long distance telephone booth in the office. He was a cockney of the rankest kind and it dulled the edge of his isolation to know that he was not entirely cut off from the world. Every night he sat down with cipher telegrams, and constructed from Thompson's statistics the day's business in the bank. He received daily from New York the closing quotations on the shares he was interested in, and as he walked the long hotel verandas he effected a transmigration of spirit which put him back in his swivel chair in the Clarkson National. Evelyn made him drive with her and Grant, and dragged him to the golf course, where she was the star player, and where Grant was learning the game.