“You need a vacation,” said the fat man, looking closely at the other.  “You haven’t been away from town in years.  Better come with me for two weeks, anyhow.  The trout in the Beaverkill are jumping at anything now that looks like a fly.  Harding writes me that he landed a three-pound brown last week.”

“Nonsense!” cried the other man.  “Go ahead, if you like, and boggle around in rubber boots wearing yourself out trying to catch fish.  When I want one I go to a cool restaurant and order it.  I laugh at you fellows whenever I think of you hustling around in the heat in the country thinking you are having a good time.  For me Father Knickerbocker’s little improved farm with the big shady lane running through the middle of it.”

The fat man sighed over his friend and went his way.  The man who thought New York was the greatest summer resort in the country boarded a car and went buzzing down to his office.  On the way he threw away his newspaper and looked up at a ragged patch of sky above the housetops.

“Three pounds!” he muttered, absently.  “And Harding isn’t a liar.  I believe, if I could—­but it’s impossible—­they’ve got to have another month—­another month at least.”

In his office the upholder of urban midsummer joys dived, headforemost, into the swimming pool of business.  Adkins, his clerk, came and added a spray of letters, memoranda and telegrams.

At 5 o’clock in the afternoon the busy man leaned back in his office chair, put his feet on the desk and mused aloud: 

“I wonder what kind of bait Harding used.”

* * * * * * *

She was all in white that day; and thereby Compton lost a bet to Gaines.  Compton had wagered she would wear light blue, for she knew that was his favorite color, and Compton was a millionaire’s son, and that almost laid him open to the charge of betting on a sure thing.  But white was her choice, and Gaines held up his head with twenty-five’s lordly air.

The little summer hotel in the mountains had a lively crowd that year.  There were two or three young college men and a couple of artists and a young naval officer on one side.  On the other there were enough beauties among the young ladies for the correspondent of a society paper to refer to them as a “bevy.”  But the moon among the stars was Mary Sewell.  Each one of the young men greatly desired to arrange matters so that he could pay her millinery bills, and fix the furnace, and have her do away with the “Sewell” part of her name forever.  Those who could stay only a week or two went away hinting at pistols and blighted hearts.  But Compton stayed like the mountains themselves, for he could afford it.  And Gaines stayed because he was a fighter and wasn’t afraid of millionaire’s sons, and—­well, he adored the country.

“What do you think, Miss Mary?” he said once.  “I knew a duffer in New York who claimed to like it in the summer time.  Said you could keep cooler there than you could in the woods.  Wasn’t he an awful silly?  I don’t think I could breathe on Broadway after the 1st of June.”