Finally, to seal the matter completely, Medora led Abner to the place of honour and bade him eat the meal she had prepared. Abner ate and was hers. Even a good boarding-house, he now felt, was a mistake; the best, but a makeshift. During the day the telephone had made common property of the news of Abner's arrival, and the next morning, an hour or so after breakfast, the front yard resounded with the loud cry of, "What ho, neighbours!" and Leverett Whyland was revealed in a trig cart drawn by a handsome cob. "Why, what's that man doing here?" Abner asked Giles, as they stood by the living-room window. "He has a place three or four miles down the river," replied Giles, casting about for his hat. Clytie, meanwhile, had drubbed a glad welcome upon the adjoining window and then rushed out bareheaded to give greeting. "He always comes out here with his family for Christmas," said Stephen. "His family? Is he married? Has he a wife and children?" "Yes." "Yet he goes slam-banging around with a lot of young girls into all sorts of doubtful places?" "Oh, I've heard something about that," said Giles. "Well, you wouldn't have them in charge of a bachelor, would you?" "What's he farming for?" asked Abner, left behind with Medora. "Sentiment," she replied. "He was born down there, and has never wanted to let the old place go. Do you think any the worse of him for that?" Whyland had come to fetch the men and to show them his model farm. They spent the forenoon in going over this expensive place. Bond gave vent to all the "oh's" and "ah's" that indicate the perfect visitor. Abner took their host's various amateurish doings in glum silence. It was all very well to indulge in these costly contraptions as a pastime, but if the man had to get his actual living from the soil where would he be? Almost anybody could stand on two legs. How many on one? "Do you make it pay?" Abner asked bluntly. "Pay? I'm a by-word all over the county. Half the town lives on my lack of 'gumption.'" "H'm," said Abner darkly. He was as far as ever from hitting it off with this smiling, dapper product of artificial city conditions. "I came across some of your Readjusters the other day," observed Whyland, at the door of his hen-house--a prodigal place with a dozen wired-in "runs" for a dozen different varieties of poultry: "Leghorns, Plymouth Rocks, Jerseys, Angoras, Hambletonians and what not," as Bond irresponsibly remarked. "They say they haven't been seeing much of you lately." Abner frowned. Whyland, he felt, was trying to put him at a disadvantage. But, in truth, it could not be denied that he had practically left one circle for another,--was showing himself much more disposed to favour the skylights of the studios than the footlights of the rostrum. "I am still for the cause," he said. "But it can be helped from one side as well as from another. My next book----"