She turned beamingly to Harkless. "What a family it is!" she laughed.
"Just one big, jolly family. I didn't know people could be like this until
I came to Plattville."
"That is the word for it," he answered, resting his hand on the casement
beside her. "I used to think it was desolate, but that was long ago." He
leaned from the window to look down. In his dark cheek was a glow Carlow
folk had never seen there; and somehow he seemed less thin and tired;
indeed, he did not seem tired at all, by far the contrary; and he carried
himself upright (when he was not stooping to see under the hat), though
not as if he thought about it. "I believe they are the best people I
know," he went on. "Perhaps it is because they have been so kind to me;
but they are kind to each other, too; kind, good people----"
"I know," she said, nodding--a flower on the gauzy hat set to vibrating in
a tantalizing way. "I know. There are fat women who rock and rock on
piazzas by the sea, and they speak of country people as the 'lower
classes.' How happy this big family is in not knowing it is the lower
classes!" "We haven't read Nordau down here," said John. "Old Tom Martin's
favorite work is 'The Descent of Man.' Miss Tibbs admires Tupper, and
'Beulah,' and some of us possess the works of E. P. Roe--and why not?"
"Yes; what of it," she returned, "since you escape Nordau? I think the
conversation we hear from the other windows is as amusing and quite as
loud as most of that I hear in Rouen during the winter; and Rouen, you
know, is just like any other big place nowadays, though I suppose there
are Philadelphians, for instance, who would be slow to believe a statement
like that."
"Oh, but they are not all of Philadelphia----" He left the sentence,
smilingly.
"And yet somebody said, 'The further West I travel the more convinced I am
the Wise Men came from the East.'"
"Yes," he answered. "'From' is the important word in that."
"It was a girl from Southeast Cottonbridge, Massachusetts," said Helen,
"who heard I was from Indiana and asked me if I didn't hate to live so far
away from things." There was a pause, while she leaned out of the window
with her face aside from him. Then she remarked carelessly, "I met her at
Winter Harbor."