Occasionally, but not often, he missed the train. He had too keen a
sense of the ridiculous to miss the train often. When he was detained
over for two or three days, or the better part of the week, he wrote
Edith dashing, hurried letters, speaking of ever so many places he had
been to and ever so many people he had seen--yes, Carmen and Miss Tavish
and everybody who was in town, and he did not say too much about the hot
city and its discomforts.
Henderson's affairs kept him in town, Miss Tavish still postponed Bar
Harbor, and Carmen willingly remained. She knew the comfort of a big New
York house when the season is over, when no social duties are required,
and one is at leisure to lounge about in cool costumes, to read or dream,
to open the windows at night for the salt breeze from the bay, to take
little excursions by boat or rail, to dine al fresco in the garden of
some semi-foreign hotel, to taste the unconventional pleasures of the
town, as if one were in some foreign city. She used to say that New York
in matting and hollands was almost as nice as Buda-Pesth. These were
really summer nights, operatic sorts of nights, with music floating in
the air, gay groups in the streets, a stage imitation of nature in the
squares with the thick foliage and the heavy shadows cast on the asphalt
by the electric lights, the brilliant shops, the nonsense of the summer
theatres, where no one expected anything, and no one was disappointed,
the general air of enjoyment, and the suggestion of intrigue.
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