The large front rooms, those overlooking the bluff and the sea, Thankful
had intended reserving for guests from the city, but when Mr. Heman
Daniels expressed a wish to engage and occupy one of them, that on the
left of the hall, she reconsidered and Mr. Daniels obtained his desire.
It was hard to refuse a personage like Mr. Daniels anything. He was not
an elderly man; neither was he, strictly speaking, a young one. His age
was, perhaps, somewhere in the late thirties or early forties and he was
East Wellmouth's leading lawyer, in fact its only one.
Heman was a bachelor and rather good-looking. That his bachelorhood was
a matter of choice and not necessity was a point upon which all of East
Wellmouth agreed. He was a favorite with the ladies, most of them, and,
according to common report, there was a rich widow in Bayport who
would marry him at a minute's notice if he gave the notice. So far,
apparently, he had not given it. He was a "smart" lawyer, everyone said
that, and it is probable that he himself would have been the last to
deny the accusation. He was dignified and suave and gracious, also
persuasive when he chose to be.
He had been boarding with the Holts, but, like the majority of the hotel
lodgers and "mealers," was very willing to change. The location of the
High Cliff House was, so he informed Thankful, the sole drawback to its
availability as a home for him.
"If a bachelor may be said to have a home, Mrs. Barnes," he added,
graciously.
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