stood with his back to the fire.
"It strikes me, Susan," said he, looking reflectively in front of him,
"that our lives are very seldom built with a hall through the middle and
the rooms alike on both sides. I don't think we'd like it if they were.
They would be stupid and humdrum. The right sort of a life should have
its ups and downs, its ins and outs, its different levels, its outside
stairs and its inside stairs, its balconies, windows and roofs of
different periods and different styles. This is education. These things
are the advantages that our lives get from the lives of others.
"Now, for myself, I like the place I live in to resemble my life and
that of the people about me. And I am sure that nothing could be better
suited to all that than the Squirrel Inn.
"All sorts of things come into our lives, and when a thing like Lanigan
Beam comes into it, what could be better than to lodge it in a place
where it can go no farther? and if something of a high order, something
backed up by Matthew Vassar, but which is a little foreign, and not
altogether of our kind, how well to be able to put that in a noble and
elevated position, where it can have every advantage and can go and
come, without being naturalized or made a part of us. Think, too, how
high excellence can be worthily lodged, with the comforts of the North
and the beauties of the South, as in the case of Mrs. Cristie's rooms;
and how blooded service is not forced into a garret, but is quartered in
a manner which shows that the blood is recognized and the service
ignored."
"If I had known what she was when she came," remarked Mrs. Petter, "I
should have put her on the top floor."
"Think, too," continued the landlord, "of noble sentiments, high
aspirations, and deep learning, lodged of their own free will--for it
appears that there was no necessity for it--so near as to answer every
need of social domesticity, and yet in a manner so free and apart as to
allow undisturbed and undisturbing reveries beneath the stars, and such
other irregular manifestations of genius as are common to the gifted."
"Such as coming late to meals," interpolated the lady.
"Think, too," Mr. Petter went on to say, speaking in a more earnest
voice--"think, too, of a life or a house in which there is no place for
a Calthea Rose; in which she cannot exist, and which, I am happy to say,
she has always opposed and condemned."
Mrs. Petter slightly yawned.
"All that sounds very well," she said, "and there may be truth in it;
but, after all, here we are alone by ourselves, and, so far as I can
see, no chance of being less lonely next season, for your rules keep
out all common folks, and we can't count on the people who were here
this year coming again."
Mr. Petter smiled. "There is no reason to suppose," he said, "that next
season we shall not be favored with the company of the Rockmores of
Germantown."
And with that he walked away to place in its proper position on the
shelf in the tap-room the squirrel of the past season.
[Illustration]