I had the rather uncomfortable feeling on the way home that I had been preachy; and the moment you became preachy begin to build up barriers between yourself and your friends:  but that’s a defect of character I’ve never been able, quite, to overcome.  I keep thinking I’ve got the better of it, but along will come a beautiful temptation and down I go—­and come out as remorseful as I was that afternoon on the way home from Mary Starkweather’s.

A week or two later I happened to meet Richard Starkweather on the street in Hempfield.  He was on his way home.

“Yes,” he said, “we’re in the old house again until spring, anyway.  I haven’t been so comfortable in a year.  And, say,” here he looked at me quizzically, “Mary has joined the new cemetery association; you know they’re trying to improve the resting places of the forefathers, and, by George, if they didn’t elect her chairman at the first meeting.  She’s a wonder!”

CHAPTER XIII

HIS MAJESTY—­BILL RICHARDS

Well, I have just been having an amusing and delightful adventure and have come to know a Great Common Person.  His name is Bill Richards, and he is one of the hereditary monarchs of America.  He belongs to our ruling dynasty.

I first saw Bill about two weeks ago, and while I was strongly interested in him I had no idea, at the time, that I should ever come to know him well.  It was a fine June day, and I was riding on the new trolley line that crosses the hills to Hewlett—­a charming trip through a charming country—­and there in the open car just in front of me sat Bill himself.  One huge bare forearm rested on the back of the seat, the rich red blood showing through the weathered brown of the skin.  His clean brown neck rose strongly from the loose collar of his shirt, which covered but could not hide the powerful lines of his shoulders.  He wore blue denim and khaki, and a small round felt hat tipped up jauntily at the back.  He had crisp, coarse light hair rather thin—­not by age, but by nature—­so that the ruddy scalp could be seen through it, and strong jaws and large firm features, and if the beard was two days old, his face was so brown, so full of youthful health, that it gave no ill impression.

He could not sit still for the very life that was in him.  He seemed to have some grand secret with the conductor and frequently looked around at him, his eyes full of careless laughter, and once or twice he called out—­some jocose remark.  He helped the conductor, in pantomime, to pull the cord and stop or start the car, and he watched with the liveliest interest each passenger getting on or getting off.  A rather mincing young girl with a flaring red ribbon at her throat was to him the finest comedy in the world, so that he had to wink a telegram to the conductor about her.  An old woman with a basket of vegetables who delayed the car was exquisitely funny.