e extinct than in the hollow verandas, where
the rocking-chairs swung in July and August, and where Westover's steps
in his long tramps up and down woke no echo of the absent feet. In-doors
he kept to the few stove-heated rooms where he dwelt with the family,
and sent only now and then a vague conjecture into the hotel built round
the old farm-house. He meant, before he left, to ask Mrs. Durgin to
let him go through the hotel, but he put it off from day to day, with a
physical shrinking from its cold and solitude.

The days went by in the swiftness of monotony. His excursions to the
barn, his walks on the verandas, his work on his picture, filled up the
few hours of the light, and when the dark came he contentedly joined the
little group in Mrs. Durgin's parlor. He had brought two or three books
with him, and sometimes he read from one of them; or he talked with
Whitwell on some of the questions of life and death that engaged his
speculative mind. Jombateeste preferred the kitchen for the naps he took
after supper before his early bedtime. Frank Whitwell sat with his
books there, where Westover sometimes saw his sister helping him at his
studies. He was loyally faithful and obedient to her in all things. He
helped her with the dishes, and was not ashamed to be seen at this work;
she had charge of his goings and comings in society; he submitted to
her taste in his dress, and accepted her counsel on many points which
he referred to her, and discussed with her in low-spoken conferences. He
seemed a formal, serious boy, shy like his sister; his father let fall
some hints of a religious cast of mind in him. He had an ambition beyond
the hotel; he wished to study for the ministry; and it was not alone
the chance of going home with the girls that made him constant at the
evening meetings. "I don't know where he gits it," said his father,
with a shake of the head that suggested doubt of the wisdom of the son's
preference of theology to planchette.

Cynthia had the same care of her father as of her brother; she kept him
neat, and held him up from lapsing into the slovenliness to which he
would have tended if she had not, as Westover suspected, made constant
appeals to him for the respect due their guest. Mrs. Durgin, for her
part, left everything to Cynthia, with a contented acceptance of her
future rule and an abiding trust in her sense and strength, which
included the details of the light work that employed her rather
luxurio