第7章

"Women would be willing to stay on in a place for a year to see if something wouldn't happen; and if you take 'em away before anything happens, they'll always think that if they'd stayed something would have happened the next day, or maybe the day they left."He stared upward into the pine boughs, and I said: "Yes, that's so.

I suppose we should be like them if we had the same conditions.

Their whole life is an expectation of something to happen. Men have the privilege of making things happen--or trying to.""Oh, I don't know as I want to criticise 'em. As you say, I guess WE should be just so." He dropped his leg, and bent over as if to examine the grass; he ended by taking a blade of it between his teeth before he spoke again, with his head still down. "I don't want to hurry 'em; I want to give 'em a fair show now we're here, and I'll let the stock go as long as I can. But I don't see very much gaiety around."I laughed. "Why, it's all gaiety, in one way. Saratoga is a perpetual Fourth of July, we think.""Oh yes; there's enough going on, and my wife and me we could enjoy it first rate.""If the young lady could?" I ventured, with a smile of sympathetic intelligence.

"Well, yes. You see, we don't know anybody, and I suppose we didn't take that into account. Well, I suppose it's like this: they thought it would be easy to get acquainted in the hotel, and commence having a good time right away. I don't know; my wife had the idea when they cooked it up amongst 'em that she was to come with us. But I SWEAR _I_ don't know how to go about it. I can't seem to make up my mouth to speak to folks first; and then you can't tell whether a man ain't a gambler, or on for the horse-races anyway. So we've been here a week now, and you're the first ones we've spoken to besides the waiters since we came."I couldn't help laughing, their experience was so exactly as I had imagined it when I first saw this disconsolate party. In my triumph at my own penetration, I would not have had their suffering in the past one pang the less; but the simple frankness of his confession fixed me in the wish that the future might be brighter for them. Ithought myself warranted by my wife's imprudence in taking a step toward their further intimacy on my own account, and I said:

"Well, perhaps I ought to tell you that I haven't been inside the Saratoga Club or bet on the races since I've been here. That's my name in full,"--and I gave him my card,--"and I'm in the literary line; that is, I'm the editor of a magazine in New York--the Every Other Week.""Oh yes; I know who you are," said my companion, with my card in his hand. "Fact is, I was round at your place this morning trying to get rooms, and the clerk told me all about you from my description.

I felt as mean as pu'sley goin'; seemed to be takin' kind of an advantage of you.""Not at all; it's a public house," I interrupted; but I thought Ishould be stronger with Mrs. March if I did not give the fact away to her, and I resolved to keep it.

"But they couldn't rest easy till I tried, and I was more than half glad there wasn't any rooms.""Oh, I'm very sorry," I said; and I indulged a real regret from the vantage I had. "It would have been very pleasant to have you there.

Perhaps later--we shall be giving up our rooms at the end of the month.""No," he said, with a long breath. "If I've got to leave 'em, Iguess it'll be just as well to leave 'em where they're acquainted with the house anyway." His remark betrayed a point in his thinking which had not perhaps been reached in his talk with the ladies.