hall be."

Jeff seemed to enjoy the implication of his words. "He wasn't a bad dog.
He was stupid."

When they arrived at the foot of the lane, mounting to the farm,
Westover saw what changes had been made in the house. There were large
additions, tasteless and characterless, but giving the rooms that were
needed. There was a vulgar modernity in the new parts, expressed with a
final intensity in the four-light windows, which are esteemed the last
word of domestic architecture in the country. Jeff said nothing as
they approached the house, but Westover said: "Well, you've certainly
prospered. You're quite magnificent."

They reached the old level in front of the house, artificially widened
out of his remembrance, with a white flag-pole planted at its edge, and
he looked up at the front of the house, which was unchanged, except that
it had been built a story higher back of the old front, and discovered
the window of his old room. He could hardly wait to get his greetings
over with Mrs. Durgin and Jackson, who both showed a decorous pleasure
and surprise at his coming, before he asked:

"And could you let me have my own room, Mrs. Durgin?"

"Why, yes," she said, "if you don't want something a little nicer."

"I don't believe you've got anything nicer," Westover said.

"All right, if you think so," she retorted. "You can have the old room,
anyway."

X.

Westover could not have said he felt very much at home on his first
sojourn at the farm, or that he had cared greatly for the Durgins.
But now he felt very much at home, and as if he were in the hands of
friends.

It was toward the close of the afternoon that he arrived, and he went
in promptly to the meal that was served shortly after. He found that the
farm-house had not evolved so far in the direction of a hotel as to have
reached the stage of a late dinner. It was tea that he sat down to,
but when he asked if there were not something hot, after listening to
a catalogue of the cold meats, the spectacled waitress behind his chair
demanded, with the air of putting him on his honor:

"You among those that came this afternoon?"

Westover claimed to be of the new arrivals.

"Well, then, you can have steak or chops and baked potatoes."

He found the steak excellent, though succinct, and he looked round in
the distinction it conferred upon him, on the older guests, who were
served with cold ham, tongue, and corned-beef. He had expected to
be appointed his