ath of the
ice-fields of Labrador against the New England coast, and the buds on
the trees along the mall between the lawns of the avenue were venturing
forth in a hardy experiment of the Boston May, Mrs. Vostrand asked
Westover if she had told him that Mr. Vostrand was actually coming on to
Boston. He rejoiced with her in this prospect, and he reciprocated
the wish which she said Mr. Vostrand had always had for a meeting with
himself.

A fortnight later, when the leaves had so far inured themselves to the
weather as to have fully expanded, she announced another letter from
Mr. Vostrand, saying that, after all, he should not be able to come to
Boston, but hoped to be in New York before she sailed.

"Sailed!" cried Westover.

"Why, yes! Didn't you know we were going to sail in June? I thought I
had told you!"

"No--"

"Why, yes. We must go out to poor Checco, now; Mr. Vostrand insists
upon that. If ever we are a united family again, Mr. Westover--if
Mr. Vostrand can arrange his business, when Checco is ready to enter
Harvard--I mean to take a house in Boston. I'm sure I should be
contented to live nowhere else in America. The place has quite bewitched
me--dear old, sober, charming Boston! I'm sure I should like to live
here all the rest of my life. But why in the world do people go out of
town so early? Those houses over there have been shut for a whole month
past!"

They were sitting at Mrs. Vostrand's window looking out on the avenue,
where the pale globular electrics were swimming like jelly-fish in the
clear evening air, and above the ranks of low trees the houses on the
other side were close-shuttered from basement to attic.

Westover answered: "Some go because they have such pleasant houses at
the shore, and some because they want to dodge their taxes."

"To dodge their taxes?" she repeated, and he had to explain how if
people were in their country-houses before the 1st of May they would
not have to pay the high personal tax of the city; and she said that she
would write that to Mr. Vostrand; it would be another point in favor of
Boston. Women, she declared, would never have thought of such a
thing; she denounced them as culpably ignorant of so many matters that
concerned them, especially legal matters. "And you think," she asked,
"that Mr. Durgin will be a good lawyer? That he will-distinguish
himself?"

Westover thought it rather a short-cut to Jeff from the things they had
been talking of, but if sh