mething, and I can't see the sense of it. You remember what happened
at that other picnic, with that Mrs. Marven"--Jeff tapped the floor with
his stick impatiently, and Westover felt sorry for him--"and I don't
want it to happen again, and I've told Jeff so. I presume he thinks
it 'll set him right with them, if they're thinkin' demeaning of him
because he came over second-cabin on their ship."

Jeff set his teeth and compressed his lips to bear as best he could,
the give-away which his mother could not appreciate in its importance to
him:

"They're not the kind of people to take such a thing shabbily," said
Westover. "They didn't happen to mention it, but Mrs. Vostrand must have
got used to seeing young fellows in straits of all kinds during her life
abroad. I know that I sometimes made the cup of tea and biscuit she used
to give me in Florence do duty for a dinner, and I believe she knew it."

Jeff looked up at Westover with a grateful, sidelong glance.

His mother said: "Well, then, that's all right, and Jeff needn't do
anything for them on that account. And I've made up my mind about one
thing: whatever the hotel does has got to be done for the whole hotel.
It can't pick and choose amongst the guests." Westover liked so little
the part of old family friend which he seemed, whether he liked it or
not, to bear with the Durgins, that he would gladly have got away now,
but Mrs. Durgin detained him with a direct appeal. "Don't you think so,
Mr. Westover?"

Jeff spared him the pain of a response. "Very well," he said to his
mother; "I'm not the hotel, and you never want me to be. I can do this
on my own account."

"Not with my coach and not with my hosses," said his mother.

Jeff rose. "I might as well go on down to Cambridge, and get to work on
my conditions."

"Just as you please about that," said Mrs. Durgin, with the same
impassioned quiet that showed in her son's handsome face and made it one
angry red to his yellow hair. "We've got along without you so far, this
summer, and I guess we can the rest of the time. And the sooner you work
off your conditions the better, I presume."

The next morning Jeff came to take leave of him, where Westover had
pitched his easel and camp-stool on the slope behind the hotel.

"Why, are you really going?" he asked. "I was in hopes it might have
blown over."

"No, things don't blow over so easy with mother," said Jeff, with an
embarrassed laugh, but no resentment. "She gen