He stalked gloomily on to the post-office. Gertie Kendrick, on the arm of Sam Thatcher, passed him and he did not even notice her. Gertie whispered to Sam that he, Albert, was a big stuck-up nothing, but she looked back over Sam's shoulder, nevertheless. Albert climbed the post-office steps and walked over to the rack of letter boxes. The Snow box contained little of interest to him, and he was turning away when he heard his name spoken.
“Good evening, Mr. Speranza,” said a feminine voice.
Albert turned again, to find Jane Kelsey and another young lady, a stranger, standing beside him. Miss Kelsey was one of South Harniss's summer residents. The Kelsey “cottage,” which was larger by considerable than the Snow house, was situated on the Bay Road, the most exclusive section of the village. Once, and not so many years before, the Bay Road was contemptuously referred to as “Poverty Lane” and dwellers along its winding, weed-grown track vied with one another in shiftless shabbiness. But now all shabbiness had disappeared and many-gabled “cottages” proudly stood where the shanties of the Poverty Laners once humbly leaned.
Albert had known Jane Kelsey for some time. They had met at one of the hotel tea-dances during his second summer in South Harniss. He and she were not intimate friends exactly, her mother saw to that, but they were well acquainted. She was short and piquant, had a nose which freckled in the Cape Cod sunshine, and she talked and laughed easily.
“Good evening, Mr. Speranza,” she said, again. “You looked so very forlorn I couldn't resist speaking. Do tell us why you are so sad; we're dying to know.”
Albert, taken by surprise, stammered that he didn't know that he was sad. Miss Kelsey laughed merrily and declared that everyone who saw him knew it at once. “Oh, excuse me, Madeline,” she added. “I forgot that you and Mr. Speranza had not met. Of course as you're going to live in South Harniss you must know him without waiting another minute. Everybody knows everybody down here. He is Albert Speranza--and we sometimes call him Albert because here everybody calls everyone else by their first names. There, now you know each other and it's all very proper and formal.”