Westover's say, here, I don't see why it wa'n't. Jeff's being
so near that got control of her and made her sign his name to somebody
else's words. It shows there's something in it."

"Well, I'm glad to come back alive, anyway," said Jeff, with a joviality
new to Westover. "I tell you, there a'n't many places finer than old
Lion's Head, after all. Don't you think so, Mr. Westover? I want to
get the daylight on it, but it does well by moonlight, even." He looked
round at the tall girl, who had been lingering to hear the talk of
planchette; at the backward tilt he gave his head, to get her in range,
she frowned as if she felt his words a betrayal, and slipped out of the
room; the boy had already gone, and was making himself heard in the low
room overhead.

"There's a lot of folks here this summer, mother says," he appealed from
the check he had got to Jackson. "Every room taken for the whole month,
she says."

"We've been pretty full all July, too," said Jackson, blankly.

"Well, it's a great business; and I've picked up a lot of hints over
there. We're not so smart as we think we are. The Swiss can teach us a
thing or two. They know how to keep a hotel."

"Go to Switzerland?" asked Whitwell.

"I slipped over into the edge of it."

"I want to know! Well, now them Alps, now--they so much bigger 'n the
White Hills, after all?"

"Well, I don't know about all of 'em," said Jeff. "There may be some
that would compare with our hills, but I should say that you could take
Mount Washington up and set it in the lap of almost any one of the Alps
I saw, and it would look like a baby on its mother's knee."

"I want to know!" said Whitwell again. His tone expressed
disappointment, but impartiality; he would do justice to foreign
superiority if he must. "And about the ocean. What about waves runnin?
mountains high?"

"Well, we didn't have it very rough. But I don't believe I saw any waves
much higher than Lion's Head." Jeff laughed to find Whitwell taking him
seriously. "Won't that satisfy you?"

"Oh, it satisfies me. Truth always does. But, now, about London. You
didn't seem to say so much about London in your letters, now. Is it so
big as they let on? Big--that is, to the naked eye, as you may say?"

"There a'n't any one place where you can get a complete bird's-eye view
of it," said Jeff, "and two-thirds of it would be hid in smoke, anyway.
You've got to think of a place that would take in the whole population
of New E