a gravity that mocked her from
his bold eyes.

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," she said, indifferently. "Where is
your hotel? In Boston--New York--Chicago?"

"It's in the country--it's a summer hotel," he said, as before.

She looked away from him toward the other room. "There's my brother. I
didn't know he was coming."

"Shall I go and tell him where you are?" Jeff asked, following the
direction of her eyes.

"No, no; he can find me," said the girl, sinking back in her chair again.
He left her to resume the talk where she chose, and she said: "If it's
something ancestral, of course--"

"I don't know as it's that, exactly. My grandfather used to keep a
country tavern, and so it's in the blood, but the hotel I mean is
something that we've worked up into from a farm boarding-house."

"You don't talk like a country person," the girl broke in, abruptly.

"Not in Cambridge. I do in the country."

"And so," she prompted, "you're going to turn it into a hotel when you've
got out of Harvard."

"It's a hotel already, and a pretty big one; but I'm going to make the
right kind of hotel of it when I take hold of it."

"And what is the right kind of a hotel?"

"That's a long story. It would make you tired."

"It might, but we've got to spend the time somehow. You could begin, and
then if I couldn't stand it you could stop."

"It's easier to stop first and begin some other time. I guess I'll let
you imagine my hotel, Miss Lynde."

"Oh, I understand now," said the girl. "The table will be the great
thing. You will stuff people."

"Do you mean that I'm trying to stuff you?"

"How do I know? You never can tell what men really mean."

Jeff laughed with mounting pleasure in her audacity, that imparted a
sense of tolerance for him such as he had experienced very seldom from
the Boston girls he had met; after all, he had met but few. It flattered
him to have her doubt what he had told her in his reckless indifference;
it implied that he was fit for better things than hotel-keeping.

"You never can tell how much a woman believes," he retorted.

"And you keep trying to find out?"

"No, but I think that they might believe the truth."

"You'd better try them with it!"

"Well, I will. Do you really want to know what I'm going to do when I get
through?"

"Let me see!" Miss Lynde leaned forward, with her elbow on her knee and
her chin in her hand, and softly kicked the edge of her skirt with the
toe of her sh