only one against it. I suppose you mean that I'm not fit
for Cynthy. I don't deny it. All I say is I want her, and I don't want
the other one. What are you going to do in a case like that?"

"The way I should look at it," said his mother, "is this: whatever you
are, Cynthy made you. You was a lazy, disobedient, worthless boy, and it
was her carin' for you from the first that put any spirit and any
principle into you. It was her that helped you at school when you was
little things together; and she helped you at the academy, and she's
helped you at college. I'll bet she could take a degree, or whatever it
is, at Harvard better than you could now; and if you ever do take a
degree, you've got her to thank for it."

"That's so," said Jeff. "And what's the reason you didn't want me to
marry her when I came in here last summer and told you I'd asked her to?"

"You know well enough what the reason was. It was part of the same thing
as my wantin' you to be a lawyer; but I might knowed that if you didn't
have Cynthy to go into court with you, and put the words into your mouth,
you wouldn't make a speech that would"--Mrs. Durgin paused for a fitting
figure--"save a flea from the gallows."

Jeff burst into a laugh. "Well, I guess that's so, mother. And now you
want me to throw away the only chance I've got of learning how to run
Lion's Head in the right way by breaking with Cynthy."

"Nobody wants you to run Lion's Head for a while yet," his mother
returned, scornfully. "Jackson is going to run Lion's Head. He'll be home
the end of June, and I'll run Lion's Head till he gets here. You talk,"
she went on, "as if it was in your hands to break with Cynthy, or throw
away the chance with her. The way I look at it, she's broke with you, and
you ha'n't got any chance with her. Oh, Jeff," she suddenly appealed to
him, "tell me all about it! What have you been up to? If I understood it
once, I know I can make her see it in the right light."

"The better you understand it, mother, the less you'll like it; and I
guess Cynthy sees it in the right light already. What did she say?"

"Nothing. She said she'd leave it to you."

"Well, that's like Cynthy. I'll tell you, then," said Jeff; and he told
his mother his whole affair with Bessie Lynde. He had to be very
elemental, and he was aware, as he had never been before, of the
difference between Bessie's world and his mother's world, in trying to
make Bessie's world conceivable to her.