from the root of a tree
where he had folded it down. "I don't seem to care much for anything in
the middle of the day; breakfast's my best meal," and he followed Jeff
off into the woods.

"Really," said the lady, "what did they expect?" But the question was so
difficult that no one seemed able to make the simple answer.

The incident darkened the day and spoiled its pleasure; it cast a
lessening shadow into the evening when the guests met round the fire in
the large, ugly new parlor at the hotel.

The next morning the ladies assembled again on the piazza to decide what
should be done with the beautiful day before them. Whitwell stood at the
foot of the flag-staff with one hand staying his person against it, like
a figure posed in a photograph to verify proportions in the different
features of a prospect.

The heroine of the unhappy affair of the picnic could not forbear
authorizing herself to invoke his opinion at a certain point of the
debate, and "Mr. Whitwell," she called to him, "won't you please come
here a moment?"

Whitwell slowly pulled himself across the grass to the group, and at the
same moment, as if she had been waiting for him to be present, Mrs.
Durgin came out of the office door and advanced toward the ladies.

"Mrs. Marven," she said, with the stony passivity which the ladies used
to note in her when they came over to Lion's Head Farm in the tally-hos,
"the stage leaves here at two o'clock to get the down train at three. I
want you should have your trunks ready to go on the wagon a little before
two."

"You want I should have my--What do you mean, Mrs. Durgin?"

"I want your rooms."

"You want my rooms?"

Mrs. Durgin did not answer. She let her steadfast look suffice; and Mrs.
Marven went on in a rising flutter: "Why, you can't have my rooms! I
don't understand you. I've taken my rooms for the whole of August, and
they are mine; and--"

"I have got to have your rooms," said Mrs. Durgin.

"Very well, then, I won't give them up," said the lady. "A bargain's a
bargain, and I have your agreement--"

"If you're not out of your rooms by two o'clock, your things will be put
out; and after dinner to-day you will not eat another bite under my
roof."

Mrs. Durgin went in, and it remained for the company to make what they
could of the affair. Mrs. Marven did not wait for the result. She was not
a dignified person, but she rose with hauteur and whipped away to her
rooms, hers no longer, to make h