"You can stand it well enough in our climate,sir,"the colonel explained,"till you come to the September heat,that sometimes runs well into October;and then you begin to lose your temper,sir.It's never quite so hot as it is in New York at times,but it's hot longer,sir."He alleged,as if something of the sort were necessary,the example of a famous Southwestern editor who spent all his summers in a New York hotel as the most luxurious retreat on the continent,consulting the weather forecasts,and running off on torrid days to the mountains or the sea,and then hurrying back at the promise of cooler weather.The colonel had not found it necessary to do this yet;and he had been reluctant to leave town,where he was working up a branch of the inquiry which had so long occupied him,in the libraries,and studying the great problem of labor and poverty as it continually presented itself to him in the streets.
He said that he talked with all sorts of people,whom he found monstrously civil,if you took them in the right way;and he went everywhere in the city without fear and apparently without danger.March could not find out that he had ridden his hobby into the homes of want which he visited,or had proposed their enslavement to the inmates as a short and simple solution of the great question of their lives;he appeared to have contented himself with the collection of facts for the persuasion of the cultivated classes.It seemed to March a confirmation of this impression that the colonel should address his deductions from these facts so unsparingly to him;he listened with a respectful patience,for which Fulkerson afterward personally thanked him.
Fulkerson said it was not often the colonel found such a good listener;generally nobody listened but Mrs.Leighton,who thought his ideas were shocking,but honored him for holding them so conscientiously.Fulkerson was glad that March,as the literary department,had treated the old gentleman so well,because there was an open feud between him and the art department.Beaton was outrageously rude,Fulkerson must say;though as for that,the old colonel seemed quite able to take care of himself,and gave Beaton an unqualified contempt in return for his unmannerliness.
The worst of it was,it distressed the old lady so;she admired Beaton as much as she respected the colonel,and she admired Beaton,Fulkerson thought,rather more than Miss Leighton did;he asked March if he had noticed them together.March had noticed them,but without any very definite impression except that Beaton seemed to give the whole evening to the girl.Afterward he recollected that he had fancied her rather harassed by his devotion,and it was this point that he wished to present for his wife's opinion.
"Girls often put on that air,"she said."It's one of their ways of teasing.But then,if the man was really very much in love,and she was only enough in love to be uncertain of herself,she might very well seem troubled.It would be a very serious question.Girls often don't know what to do in such a case.""Yes,"said March,"I've often been glad that I was not a girl,on that account.But I guess that on general principles Beaton is not more in love than she is.I couldn't imagine that young man being more in love with anybody,unless it was himself.He might be more in love with himself than any one else was.""Well,he doesn't interest me a great deal,and I can't say Miss Leighton does,either.I think she can take care of herself.She has herself very well in hand.""Why so censorious?"pleaded March."I don't defend her for having herself in hand;but is it a fault?"Mrs.March did not say.She asked,"And how does Mr.Fulkerson's affair get on?""His affair?You really think it is one?Well,I've fancied so myself,and I've had an idea of some time asking him;Fulkerson strikes one as truly domesticable,conjugable at heart;but I've waited for him to speak.""I should think so."
"Yes.He's never opened on the subject yet.Do you know,I think Fulkerson has his moments of delicacy.""Moments!He's all delicacy in regard to women.""Well,perhaps so.There is nothing in them to rouse his advertising instincts."
IV
The Dryfoos family stayed in town till August.Then the father went West again to look after his interests;and Mrs.Mandel took the two girls to one of the great hotels in Saratoga.Fulkerson said that he had never seen anything like Saratoga for fashion,and Mrs.Mandel remembered that in her own young ladyhood this was so for at least some weeks of the year.She had been too far withdrawn from fashion since her marriage to know whether it was still so or not.In this,as in so many other matters,the Dryfoos family helplessly relied upon Fulkerson,in spite of Dryfoos's angry determination that he should not run the family,and in spite of Christine's doubt of his omniscience;if he did not know everything,she was aware that he knew more than herself.She thought that they had a right to have him go with them to Saratoga,or at least go up and engage their rooms beforehand;but Fulkerson did not offer to do either,and she did not quite see her way to commanding his services.
The young ladies took what Mela called splendid dresses with them;they sat in the park of tall,slim trees which the hotel's quadrangle enclosed,and listened to the music in the morning,or on the long piazza in the afternoon and looked at the driving in the street,or in the vast parlors by night,where all the other ladies were,and they felt that they were of the best there.But they knew nobody,and Mrs.Mandel was so particular that Mela was prevented from continuing the acquaintance even of the few young men who danced with her at the Saturday-night hops.
