idn't do anything for him, Mrs. Durgin; I couldn't," Westover
protested.

"You done what you could, and I know that you saw the thing in the right
light, or you wouldn't 'a' tried to do anything. Jeff told me every word
about it. I know he was with a pretty harum-scarum crowd. But it was a
lesson to him; and I wa'n't goin' to have him come back here, right away,
and have folks talkin' about what they couldn't understand, after the way
the paper had it."

"Did it get into the papers?"

"Mm." Mrs. Durgin nodded. "And some dirty, sneakin' thing, here, wrote a
letter to the paper and told a passel o' lies about Jeff and all of us;
and the paper printed Jeff's picture with it; I don't know how they got a
hold of it. So when he got that chance to go, I just said, 'Go.' You'll
see he'll keep all straight enough after this, Mr. Westover."

"Old woman read you any of Jeff's letters?" Whit-well asked, when his
chance for private conference with Westover came. "What was the rights of
that scrape he got into?"

Westover explained as favorably to Jeff as he could; the worst of the
affair was the bad company he was in.

"Well, where there's smoke there's some fire. Cou't discharged him and
college suspended him. That's about where it is? I guess he'll keep out
o' harm's way next time. Read you what he said about them scenes of the
Revolution in Paris?"

"Yes; he seems to have looked it all up pretty thoroughly."

"Done it for me, I guess, much as anything. I was always talkin' it up
with him. Jeff's kep' his eyes open, that's a fact. He's got a head on
him, more'n I ever thought."

Westover decided that Mrs. Durgin's prepotent behavior toward Mrs. Marven
the summer before had not hurt her materially, with the witnesses even.
There were many new boarders, but most of those whom he had already met
were again at Lion's Head. They said there was no air like it, and no
place so comfortable. If they had sold their birthright for a mess of
pottage, Westover had to confess that the pottage was very good. Instead
of the Irish woman at ten dollars a week who had hitherto been Mrs.
Durgin's cook, under her personal surveillance and direction, she had now
a man cook, whom she boldly called a chef and paid eighty dollars a
month. He wore the white apron and white cap of his calling, but Westover
heard him speak Yankee through his nose to one of the stablemen as they
exchanged hilarities across the space between the basement and the
bar