When Zenas Bortley moved from the city to a suburban village, in search of better air for the children and for his own asthmatic lungs, he told his wife that now she could have the pleasure of knowing her next-door neighbors—an experience she never had been granted in the city. Mrs. Bortley, born and reared in a thickly settled portion of the metropolis, believed her husband's statement, for had not Zenas always been a country boy until he came to New York to make his fortune? Had he not described to her, again and again, the ideal society of his native village of Grasshopper Falls, where everybody knew everybody else—where one man was as good as another so long as he earned his living, paid his bills and went to church on Sunday, and where every woman was a lady if she had a black silk dress, no matter how plain, in which to receive calls? Had not Zenas' own mother, wife of the bookkeeper of the local lumber company, been asked by the congressman's wife to help entertain some distinguished guests from another State? And it had been so delightful when Mrs. Zenas had been ill or feeble, in her little flat in the city, to hear her husband tell how in the country any man whose wife was feeling poorly could borrow a neighbor's carriage or sleigh and take the dear woman out for an airing. Mrs. Zenas never had an outing except in a horse-car, for her husband, though strong in affection and self-sacrifice, had but a small salary, and the olive-branches which were the family's only riches always needed something which cost about as much as a carriage for an hour or two.
So the Bortleys went to the country, and a blessed change they found it. The children began to grow like weeds, their mother's cheeks became fuller of roses than the garden, and Zenas himself, though he was obliged to breakfast early and sup late in order to make a full day at the store in which he was entry clerk, found his asthma disappearing with unexpected rapidity. His cottage cost less per month than a city flat; he had a little garden which, thanks to his boyhood's experience, yielded many vegetables which tasted better than any he had ever bought from a grocer; the children had a swing under an old apple-tree and rolled in the grass to their hearts' content; the pastor of a church called after seeing the heads of the family in his congregation, and Zenas was invited to join the local club of his political party, and also to subscribe to a course of lectures to be delivered in the local Academy of Music during the following winter.
Yet Zenas was not happy. The neighborly affiliation which he had promised his wife did not come about. He waited for it a few weeks, for he was a dignified little fellow, and had some knowledge of the manners of good society, but when his wife reminded him that the summer had nearly passed and no one had called who had not some semi-business purpose, he informed himself, with a mighty pull at all his faculties, that something ought to be done. What most irritated him was that his next-door neighbor, a handsome woman whose husband, so the agent of Bortley's cottage had said, would be obliged to be away from home for some time, had never called. Mrs. Maytham, the lady in question, was distinguished looking as well as handsome; her house was a palace compared with the house which Zenas had hired, and she drove almost daily behind a fine pair of horses. She was a good woman too, or Zenas was no judge of human nature, and as she had no children, the little man, who could not imagine that any one regarded boys and girls except with the adoration which he bestowed upon his darlings, was sure that if Mrs. Maytham could know his brood, she would in her loneliness have an unfailing source of consolation. As for Mrs. Bortley, Zenas' loyal soul profoundly pitied any one and every one who did not know that estimable woman.