I should not have wished him back in Little Arcady, but I did breathe a prayer that he might in some early Greek elysium be indeed "Potts forever." Might it not be?
Had not that other paper on "the message of Emerson" hinted of "compensation" in a jargon that sounded authoritative?
And now, as I breakfasted, my attention was invited anew to that fateful, never ending extension of the Potts-made ripples in our little pool.

I was threatened with the loss of my domestic stay; again might I be forced to the City Hotel's refectory of a thousand blended smells and spotty table-linen; or even to irksome adventure at the board of the self-lauded Budd.
There was selfish wonder in my heart as I listened to Clem, who, now that my second cup of coffee competed with the May blossoms, stood by to tell me of his worldly advancement and the nearing of a time when Miss Caroline should come among us to be independent.
His stubborn industry had counted.

The vegetable and melon crop of the year before had been abundant and well sold, despite sundry raids upon the latter by nameless boys, who, he assured me, "hain't had no raght raisin'." And he had further swelled that hoard of "reglah gole money" in Bundy's bank by his performances of house-cleaning, catering, and his work as janitor; not a little, too, by sales of the fish he caught.

He was believed to possess a secret charm that made his fish-bait irresistible.

Certainly his fortune in this matter was superior to that of any other frequenter of the bass nooks below the dam.
And now he had waxed so heavy of purse that a woman could come between us,--a selfish woman, I made no doubt, pampered survival of a pernicious and now happily destroyed system, who would not only unsettle my domestic tranquillity, but would, in all likelihood, fetch another alien ferment into our already sorely tried existence as a town needing elevation.