It was a week or ten days after Miss Havens¹ left, before Peter went down to Bloombury for his midsummer vacation, a week in which he had the greatest difficulty in getting back to the House of the Shining Walls. He set out for it almost immediately with a feeling akin² to the release with which one returns to daily habit after the departure of an unexpected guest. But his thought would no sooner strike into the accustomed paths than Miss Minnie Havens would meet him there unaccountably, to begin again those long intimate conversations which led toward and about the[Pg 75] House, but never quite to it. Peter found himself looking out for those meetings with some notion of dodging³ them, and yet once they were fairly off, he owned them a great relief from Blodgett's. Now that it was withdrawn⁴, he realized in the girl's bright companionship the effect of the rose-red glow of the shade that Aggie⁶ drew down over the front parlour lamp on the evenings when the Gentlemen's Outfitter called. It had prevented his seeing until now, that the chief difference between himself and his fellow boarders, was that for most of them, this was a place where they had come to stay. Having let Miss Havens go on alone to the place she was bound for, he had moments of dreadful sinking, as it occurred to him to wonder if he hadn't made a mistake in the nature of his own destination. Suppose, after all, he should find himself castaway in some oasis⁷ of determined⁸ sprightliness⁹ with Wally Whitaker in whose pocket pretenses¹⁰ of tips and margins¹¹ he began to discern a poorer sort of substitute for the House. He was as much bored by the

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