Westover felt all the boldness of the aspiration, but it was at least not in the direction of art.  “Wouldn’t you rather miss him in the management?”

“We should, some.  But he would be here the best part of the summer, in his vacations, and Jackson and I are full able to run the house without him.”

“Jackson seems very well,” said Westover, evasively.

“He’s better.  He’s only thirty-four years old.  His father lived to be sixty, and he had the same kind.  Jeff tell you he had been at Lovewell Academy?”

“Yes; he did.”

“He done well there.  All his teachers that he ever had,” Mrs. Durgin went on, with the mother-pride that soon makes itself tiresome to the listener, “said Jeff done well at school when he had a mind to, and at the Academy he studied real hard.  I guess,” said Mrs. Durgin, with her chuckle, “that he thought that was goin’ to be the end of it.  One thing, he had to keep up with Cynthy, and that put him on his pride.  You seen Cynthy yet?”

“No.  Jeff told me she was in charge of the diningroom.”

“I guess I’m in charge of the whole house,” said Mrs. Durgin.  “Cynthy’s the housekeeper, though.  She’s a fine girl, and a smart girl,” said Mrs. Durgin, with a visible relenting from some grudge, “and she’ll do well wherever you put her.  She went to the Academy the first two winters Jeff did.  We’ve about scooped in the whole Whitwell family.  Franky’s here, and his father’s—­well, his father’s kind of philosopher to the lady boarders.”  Mrs. Durgin laughed, and Westover laughed with her.  “Yes, I want Jeff should go to college, and I want he should be a lawyer.”

Westover did not find that he had anything useful to say to this; so he said:  “I’ve no doubt it’s better than being a painter.”

“I’m not so sure; three hundred dollars for a little thing like that.”  She indicated the photograph of his Lion’s Head, and she was evidently so proud of it that he reserved for the moment the truth as to the price he had got for the painting.  “I was surprised when you sent me a photograph full as big.  I don’t let every one in here, but a good many of the ladies are artists themselves-amateurs, I guess—­and first and last they all want to see it.  I guess they’ll all want to see you, Mr. Westover.  They’ll be wild, as they call it, when they know you’re in the house.  Yes, I mean Jeff shall go to college.”

“Bowdoin or Dartmouth?” Westover suggested.

“Well, I guess you’ll think I’m about as forth-putting as I was when I wanted you to give me a three-hundred-dollar picture for a week’s board.”

“I only got a hundred and sixty, Mrs. Durgin,” said Westover, conscientiously.

“Well, it’s a shame.  Any rate, three hundred’s the price to all my boarders.  My, if I’ve told that story once, I guess I’ve told it fifty times!”

Mrs. Durgin laughed at herself jollily, and Westover noted how prosperity had changed her.  It had freed her tongue, it has brightened her humor, it had cheered her heart; she had put on flesh, and her stalwart frame was now a far greater bulk than he remembered.