s goin' to fly--"

"Ah," said Westover, "does it make you think of that?"

LIV.

The painter could not make out at first whether the girl herself was
pleased with the picture or not, and in his uncertainty he could not give
it her at once, as he had hoped and meant to do. It was by a kind of
accident he found afterward that she had always been passionately proud
of his having painted her. This was when he returned from the last
sojourn he had made in Paris, whither he went soon after the Whitwells
settled in North Cambridge. He left the picture behind him to be framed
and then sent to her with a letter he had written, begging her to give it
houseroom while he was gone. He got a short, stiff note in reply after he
reached Paris, and he had not tried to continue the correspondence. But
as soon as he returned he went out to see the Whitwells in North
Cambridge. They were still in their little house there; the young widower
had married again; but neither he nor his new wife had cared to take up
their joint life in his first home, and he had found Whitwell such a good
tenant that he had not tried to put up the rent on him. Frank was at
home, now, with an employment that gave him part of his time for his
theological studies; Cynthia had been teaching school ever since the fall
after Westover went away, and they were all, as Whitwell said, in clover.
He was the only member of the family at home when Westover called on the
afternoon of a warm summer day, and he entertained him with a full
account of a visit he had paid Lion's Head earlier in the season.

"Yes, sir," he said, as if he had already stated the fact, "I've sold my
old place there to that devil." He said devil without the least rancor;
with even a smile of good-will, and he enjoyed the astonishment Westover
expressed in his demand:

"Sold Durgin your house?"

"Yes; I see we never wanted to go back there to live, any of us, and I
went up to pass the papers and close the thing out. Well, I did have an
offer for it from a feller that wanted to open a boa'din'-house there and
get the advantage of Jeff's improvements, and I couldn't seem to make up
my mind till I'd looked the ground over. Fust off, you know, I thought
I'd sell to the other feller, because I could see in a minute what a
thorn it 'd be in Jeff's flesh. But, dumn it all! When I met the comical
devil I couldn't seem to want to pester him. Why, here, thinks I, if
we've made an escape from him--and