“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 barn-door.
“Yes,” Mrs. Durgin admitted, “he’s
an American; and he learnt his trade at one of the
best hotels in Portland. He’s pretty headstrong,
but I guess he does what he’s told—in
the end. The meanyous? Oh, Franky Whitwell
prints then. He’s got an amateur printing-office
in the stable-loft.”
One morning toward the end of August, Whitwell, who
was starting homeward, after leaving his ladies, burdened
with their wishes and charges for the morrow, met
Westover coming up the hill with his painting-gear
in his hand. “Say!” he hailed him.
“Why don’t you come down to the house
to-night? Jackson’s goin’ to come,
and, if you ha’n’t seen him work the plantchette
for a spell, you’ll be surprised. There
a’n’t hardly anybody he can’t have
up. You’ll come? Good enough!”
