We met up with old Pete again. Although nearly ninety, he was worrying his faithful spouse into a deep and dark melancholia. Pete drove the big bus, rigged up for our use out of one of his old farm wagons. It was usually filled with “actresses”--wicked females from the city who wore gay clothes and put paint on their faces. What a good time old Pete did have once out on the highway! What a chatter, chatter, chatter he did maintain! Never had he dreamed of such intimacy with ladies out of a the-ayter! But a wife was ever a wife. So no matter how old and decrepit Pete was, to Mrs. Pete he still had charm, so why wouldn’t he be alluring to these city girls? Every night Mrs. Pete was Johnny-on-the-spot, when the bus unloaded its quota of fair femininity at the Inn, waiting to lead her errant swain right straight home. Our friends the Goddefroys still held open house for us. Dear old Mr. Goddefroy told us of the disquieting notes that had crept into Cuddebackville’s former tranquil life, due to our lavish expenditures the first summer--told Mr. Griffith he was “knocking the place to hell.” But they still loved us. In a smart little trap they’d jog over to location bringing buckets of fresh milk and boxes of apples and pears. Toward late afternoon of a warm summer day, when working close to their elaborate “cottage,” the “Boss” would appear with bottles of Bass’s Ale, and bottles of C-and-C Ginger Ale, both of which he’d pour over great chunks of ice into a great shining milk bucket--shandygaff! Was it good? For the simple moving picture age in which we were living we seemed to get a good deal out of life. We enjoyed the other social diversions of the year before--canoeing, motoring, table-tipping. But one night, the night on which the Macpherson magicians broke up Mr. Griffith’s beautiful sleep, nearly saw the end of table-tipping. Retiring early after a hard day David was awakened by noisy festivities downstairs, and getting good and mad about it he rapped a shoe on the floor. The group on occult demonstration bent, thinking how wonderfully their spooks were working, instead of quieting down became hilarious. The morning found them much less optimistic about spirit rapping. We did an Irish story of the days when the harp rang through Tara’s Hall--the famous “Wilful Peggy”--in which pretty Mary never looked prettier nor acted more wilfully. But the something that had happened to Mary since our first visits to Cuddebackville made her a different Mary now. One day we were idling over by the Canal bank when, with the most wistful expression and in the most wistful tone, Mary spoke, “You know, Mrs. Griffith, I used to think this canal was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen, and now it just seems to me like a dirty, muddy stream.” What had happened to her love’s young dream to so change the scenery for her?