he head waiters whom
they had met at other hotels, and who were working their way through
Dartmouth or Williams or Yale, and it required all the force of Jeff's
robust personality to dissipate their erroneous impressions of him. He
took their daughters out of their arms and from under their noses on
long drives upon his buckboard, and it became a convention with them
to treat his attentions somewhat like those of a powerful but faithful
vassal.

Whether he was indifferent, or whether the young ladies were coy, none
of these official flirtations came to anything. He seemed not to care
for one more than another; he laughed and joked with them all, and had
an official manner with each which served somewhat like a disparity of
years in putting them at their ease with him. They agreed that he was
very handsome, and some thought him very talented; but they questioned
whether he was quite what you would call a gentleman. It is true that
this misgiving attacked them mostly in the mass; singly, they were
little or not at all troubled by it, and they severally behaved in an
unprincipled indifference to it.

Mrs. Durgin had the courage of her own purposes, but she had the fear
of Jeff's. After the first pang of the disappointment which took final
shape from his declaration that he was going to marry Cynthia, she did
not really care much. She had the habit of the girl; she respected her,
she even loved her. The children, as she thought of them, had known each
other from their earliest days; Jeff had persecuted Cynthia throughout
his graceless boyhood, but he had never intimidated her; and his mother,
with all her weakness for him, felt that it was well for him that his
wife should be brave enough to stand up against him.

She formulated this feeling no more than the others, but she said to
Westover, whom Jeff bade her tell of the engagement: "It a'n't exactly
as I could 'a' wished it to be. But I don't know as mothers are ever
quite suited with their children's marriages. I presume it's from always
kind of havin' had her round under my feet ever since she was born, as
you may say, and seein' her family always so shiftless. Well, I can't
say that of Frank, either. He's turned out a fine boy; but the father!
Cynthy is one of the most capable girls, smart as a trap, and bright as
a biscuit. She's masterful, too! she NEED to have a will of her own with
Jeff."

Something of the insensate pride that mothers have in their children's