ight there in that little wood-colored house at the
other end of the lane. There ain't no call to go home with her."

Westover turned and saw the boy kneeling at the edge of a clump of
bushes, where he must have struck; he was rubbing, with a tuft of grass,
at the dirt ground into the knees of his trousers.

The little, girl turned hawkishly upon him. "Not for anything you can
do, Jeff Durgin!"

The boy did not answer.

"There!" she said, giving a final pull and twitch to the dress of her
brother, and taking him by the hand tenderly. "Now, come right along,
Franky."

"Let me have your other hand," said Westover, and, with the little boy
between them, they set off toward the point where the lane joined the
road on the northward. They had to pass the bushes where Jeff Durgin was
crouching, and the little girl turned and made a face at him. "Oh, oh! I
don't think I should have done that," said Westover.

"I don't care!" said the little girl. But she said, in explanation and
partial excuse: "He tries to scare all the girls. I'll let him know 't
he can't scare one!"

Westover looked up toward the Durgin house with a return of interest in
the canvas he had left in the lane on the easel. Nothing had happened
to it. At the door of the barn he saw the farmer and his eldest son
slanting forward and staring down the hill at the point he had come
from. Mrs. Durgin was looking out from the shelter of the porch, and she
turned and went in with Jeff's dog at her skirts when Westover came in
sight with the children.

V.

Westover had his tea with the family, but nothing was said or done to
show that any of them resented or even knew of what had happened to the
boy from him. Jeff himself seemed to have no grudge. He went out with
Westover, when the meal was ended, and sat on the steps of the porch
with him, watching the painter watch the light darken on the lonely
heights and in the lonely depths around. Westover smoked a pipe, and the
fire gleamed and smouldered in it regularly with his breathing; the boy,
on a lower' step, pulled at the long ears of his dog and gazed up at
him.

They were both silent till the painter asked: "What do you do here when
you're not trying to scare little children to death?"

The boy hung his head and said, with the effect of excusing a long
arrears of uselessness: "I'm goin' to school as soon as it commences."

"There's one branch of your education that I should like to undertake
if I