I don't like him; I do; the fellow's
got a way with him that makes me kind of like him when I see him. He's
good-natured and clever; and he's willin' to take any amount of trouble
for you; but you can't tell where to have him." Westover denied the
appeal for explicit assent in Whitwell's eye, and he went on: "If I'd
done that fellow a good turn, in spite of him, or if I'd held him up to
something that he allowed was right, and consented to, I should want to
keep a sharp lookout that he didn't play me some ugly trick for it. He's
a comical devil," Whitwell ended, rather inadequately. "How d's it look
to you? Seen anything lately that seemed to tally with my idee?"

"No, no; I can't say that I have," said Westover, reluctantly. He wished
to be franker than he now meant to be, but he consulted a scruple
that he did not wholly respect; a mere convention it seemed to him,
presently. He said: "I've always felt that charm in him, too, and I've
seen the other traits, though not so clearly as you seem to have done.
He has a powerful will, yes--"

He stopped, and Whitwell asked: "Been up to any deviltry lately?"

"I can't say he has. Nothing that I can call intentional."

"No," said Whitwell. "What's he done, though?"

"Really, Mr. Whitwell, I don't know that you have any right to expect me
to talk him over, when I'm here as his mother's guest--his own guest--?"

"No. I ha'n't," said Whitwell. "What about the father of the girl he's
goin' to marry?"

Westover could not deny the force of this. "You'd be anxious if I didn't
tell you what I had in mind, I dare say, more than if I did." He told
him of Jeff's behavior with Alan Lynde, and of his talk with him about
it. "And I think he was honest. It was something that happened, that
wasn't meant."

Whitwell did not assent directly, somewhat to Westover's surprise. He
asked: "Fellow ever done anything to Jeff?"

"Not that I know of. I don't know that they ever met before."

Whitwell kicked his heels on the edge of the stove again. "Then it might
been an accident," he said, dryly.

Westover had to break the silence that followed, and he found himself
defending Jeff, though somehow not for Jeff's sake. He urged that if he
had the strong will they both recognized in him, he would never commit
the errors of a weak man, which were usually the basest.

"How do you know that a strong-willed man a'n't a weak one?" Whitwell
astonished him by asking. "A'n't what we call a strong wi