ng man, impartially,
almost impassively.

"Wouldn't you like to see it do some of your sums, Jeff?" said the
mother to the drowsy boy, blinking in a corner. "You better go to bed."

The elder brother rose. "I guess I'll go, too."

The father had not joined their circle in the parlor, now breaking up by
common consent.

Mrs. Durgin took up her lamp again and looked round on the appointments
of the room, as if she wished Westover to note them, too: the drab
wallpaper, the stiff chairs, the long, hard sofa in haircloth, the high
bureau of mahogany veneer.

"You can come in here and set or lay down whenever you feel like it,"
she said. "We use it more than folks generally, I presume; we got in the
habit, havin' it open for funerals."

VII.

Four or five days of perfect weather followed one another, and Westover
worked hard at his picture in the late afternoon light he had chosen for
it. In the morning he tramped through the woods and climbed the hills
with Jeff Durgin, who seemed never to do anything about the farm, and
had a leisure unbroken by anything except a rare call from his mother to
help her in the house. He built the kitchen fire, and got the wood for
it; he picked the belated pease and the early beans in the garden, and
shelled them; on the Monday when the school opened he did a share of
the family wash, which seemed to have been begun before daylight, and
Westover saw him hanging out the clothes before he started off with
his books. He suffered no apparent loss of self-respect in these
employments, and, while he still had his days free, he put himself
at Westover's disposal with an effect of unimpaired equality. He had
expected, evidently, that Westover would want to fish or shoot, or at
least join him in the hunt for woodchucks, which he still carried on
with abated zeal for lack of his company when the painter sat down to
sketch certain bits that struck him. When he found that Westover cared
for nothing in the way of sport, as people commonly understand it, he
did not openly contemn him. He helped him get the flowers he studied,
and he learned to know true mushrooms from him, though he did not follow
his teaching in eating the toadstools, as his mother called them, when
they brought them home to be cooked.

If it could not be said that he shared the affection which began to grow
up in Westover from their companionship, there could be no doubt of
the interest he took in him, though it often seem