Better go easy and suggest a waiting-game before she goes
in heavy."
"But Miss Smith needs money--" the New England conscience prompted. John
Taylor cut in sharply:
"We all need money, and I know people who need Mrs. Grey's more than
Miss Smith does at present."
Miss Taylor found the Lake George colony charming. It was not
ultra-fashionable, but it had wealth and leisure and some breeding.
Especially was this true of a circumscribed, rather exclusive, set which
centred around the Vanderpools of New York and Boston. They, or rather
Mr. Vanderpool's connections, were of Old Dutch New York stock; his
father it was who had built the Lake George cottage.
Mrs. Vanderpool was a Wells of Boston, and endured Lake George now and
then during the summer for her husband's sake, although she regarded it
all as rather a joke. This summer promised to be unusually lonesome for
her, and she was meditating a retreat to the Massachusetts north shore
when she chanced to meet Mary Taylor, at a miscellaneous dinner, and
found her interesting. She discovered that this young woman knew things,
that she could talk books, and that she was rather pretty. To be sure
she knew no people, but Mrs. Vanderpool knew enough to even things.
"By the bye, I met some charming Alabama people last winter, in
Montgomery--the Cresswells; do you know them?" she asked one day, as
they were lounging in wicker chairs on the Vanderpool porch.
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