“Do you think so?” asked Martin, in real surprise.  “I feared possibly that it might annoy her.”

“I know so—­annoy her, fudge!” was father’s comment.

* * * * *

When we went in to dinner, Miss Lavinia at once noticed the change in Martin’s appearance, and said, in a spirit of mischief which of course I alone noticed:—­

“Back from the city, and with new clothes, too,—­how very smart and becoming they are.”

But poor Martin was quite guileless, and looking down at his coat in a puzzled way, as if to make doubly sure, replied, “No, it cannot be my clothes, for they are the same.”  Then, brightening, as the possible reason occurred to him:  “Perhaps it may be my shaven face; you see, the barber made an error in the trimming of my decorations yesterday, and he thought it better to take them entirely off and have them grow afresh, but I had not thought of the matter in the light of an improvement.”

“But it is one, most decidedly,” continued Miss Lavinia, nodding brightly across at him, while father, who now realized the change he could not locate, cried:—­

“Don’t let them grow again, my boy.  You look ten years younger, at the very least, which you know at our age is not to be despised!”

Then we all grew hilarious, and talked together like a lot of school children, and when the boys came in to dessert, as usual, they also were infectiously boisterous over the catching of some bass in the river where Timothy Saunders had taken them that afternoon as a special treat.  They clamoured and begged so for Uncle Martin to stop over the next day for fishing and have one more good time with them, that he, feeling flattered almost to the point of embarrassment, yielded upon Evan’s suggesting that, instead of going by the eight o’clock morning train as he intended, he could wait for one late in the evening, which would get him to town before eleven.  For Martin was to move into his new bachelor apartments the following morning.

The three men lingered long at the table, smoking, the talk punctuated by long periods of silence, each regretting in his own way the present terminating of the summer intercourse, and yet, I fancy, realizing that it had lasted exactly the safe length of time.  To be able to adapt oneself temporarily to the presence of outsiders in a house is a healthy habit, but to adjust a family to do it permanently is to lose what can never be regained.  Miss Lavinia and I agreed upon that long ago, and for this reason I am very much surprised that she has asked her cousin Lydia to spend the winter, with a view of making the arrangement permanent.

The boys brought some of their games downstairs, and succeeded in adding half an hour to their bedtime by coaxing Aunt Lavinia to play with them, until I finally had to almost carry them to bed, they grew so suddenly sleepy from their day’s fishing.

When I returned below stairs after the boys were asleep, father had gone to the village, Evan was walking up and down outside, all the windows and doors were open again, and the sultry air answered the katydids’ cry for “Some-more-heat, some-more-heat.”