in," and then she added
to the other, "You ought to ring first, Arthur, and try your key
afterward."

"The key's all right," said the young man, without paying any attention
to Jeff beyond a glance of recognition; he turned his back, and waited
for the door to be opened.

His sister suggested, with an amiability which Jeff felt was meant in
reparation to him, "Perhaps a night latch never works before dark--or
very well before midnight." The door was opened, and she said to Jeff,
with winning entreaty, "Won't you come in, Mr. Durgin?"

Jeff excused himself, for he perceived that her politeness was not so
much an invitation to him as a defiance to her brother; he gave her
credit for no more than it was worth, and he did not wish any the less
to get even with her because of it.

XXX.

At dinner, in the absence of the butler, Alan Lynde attacked his sister
across the table for letting herself be seen with a jay, who was not
only a jay, but a cad, and personally so offensive to most of the
college men that he had never got into a decent club or society; he had
been suspended the first year, and if he had not had the densest kind
of cheek he would never have come back. Lynde said he would like to know
where she had picked the fellow up.

She answered that she had picked him up, if that was the phrase he
liked, at Mrs. Bevidge's; and then Alan swore a little, so as not to be
heard by their aunt, who sat at the head of the table, and looked down
its length between them, serenely ignorant, in her slight deafness,
of what was going on between them. To her perception Alan was no more
vehement than usual, and Bessie no more smilingly self-contained. He
said he supposed that it was some more of Lancaster's damned missionary
work, then, and he wondered that a gentleman like Morland had ever let
Lancaster work such a jay in on him; he had seen her 'afficher' herself
with the fellow at Morland's tea; he commanded her to stop it; and he
professed to speak for her good.

Bessie returned that she knew how strongly he felt from the way he had
misbehaved when she introduced him to Mr. Durgin, but that she supposed
he had been at the club and his nerves were unstrung. Was that the
reason, perhaps, why he could not make his latchkey work? Mr. Durgin
might be a cad, and she would not say he was not a jay, but so far he
had not sworn at her; and, if he had been suspended and come back, there
were some people who had not been susp