The young man inscribed his name on the hotel register, "Robert Ellison, Worcester, Mass.," and then sauntered out to take a look at the town. He watched the omnibus from which he had just dismounted, as it stopped in front of a pretty cottage set back in some pleasant grounds on the slope of the opposite hill, until he saw Miss Millner enter the gate.
"I guess I 'll like it better here than I expected to," was his thought as his eye followed her figure. "This air feels good, the sunshine is fine, and that's a glorious blue sky. They say I 'm likely to become an invalid if I try to live East any longer, and so that's cut out. Well, a fellow could have plenty of out-door life here, and enjoy it, if there are many days like this. It looks as if there 'd be money in these orchards too. I reckon Dr. Millner must live in that cottage. What an inviting looking place it is! I guess I 'd better go back to the hotel and ask the clerk about the physicians here. I might need one sometime."
Discreet inquiry of the hotel clerk as to the population of the town, resident and floating, its general healthfulness, the number of health-seekers, their success, and the number and relative skill of the physicians it supported finally elicited for Ellison all the information his present interest desired concerning Dr. Millner and his family.
He also learned much about the history of Tobin. In its early days it had been a mining camp and, as Tobin's Gulch, had been rich and famous. Then, as the mines petered out, it had dwindled to poverty and two rows of houses. But, after a long while, new people had begun to come. Some of them had planted miles upon miles of orchards and vineyards, others had come to be cured of bodily ills by its climate, at once bracing and caressing, and still others, there for a brief summer sojourn, had spread the knowledge that it was a pleasant and picturesque retreat. So the town had dropped the plebeian "Gulch" from its name and as "Tobin" counted with ever increasing pride the hundreds of cars that carried its fruit from ocean to ocean and the growing numbers of its health-seekers and summer visitors.
"It looks good to me," was Ellison's inward comment as he walked up the street again. "I think I 'll look into this fruit business. That would give me an out-door life, and there seems to be money in it. That's a neat cottage of Dr. Millner's. I 'll walk past and look at the grounds. Hello, here comes that Chinee Kid--what 'd she call him? Wing, wasn't it? Queer-looking little critter, but she seemed to like him. Hello, Wing! Where are you flying to now? Got over your bumps yet?"