r with you and Jeff,
Cynthy?"

Cynthia was unrolling the cloud from her hair. She said, as she tied on
her apron: "You must get him to tell you, Mrs. Durgin."

"Then there is something?"

"Yes."

"Has Jeff been using you wrong?"

Cynthia stooped to open the oven door, and to turn the pan of biscuit
she found inside. She shut the door sharply to, and said, as she rose:
"I don't want to tell anything about it, and I sha'n't, Mrs. Durgin. He
can do it, if he wants to. Shall I make the coffee?"

"Yes; you seem to make it better than I do. Do you think I shouldn't
believe you was fair to him?"

"I wasn't thinking of that. But it's his secret. If he wants to keep it,
he can keep it, for all me."

"You ha'n't give each other up?"

"I don't know." Cynthia turned away with a trembling chin, and began to
beat the coffee up with an egg she had dropped into the pot. She put
the breakfast on the table when it was ready, but she would not sit down
with the rest. She said she did not want any breakfast, and she drank a
cup of coffee in the kitchen.

It fell to Jeff mainly to keep the talk going. He had been out at the
barn with Jombateeste since daybreak, looking after the cattle, and the
joy of the weather had got into his nerves and spirits. At first he
had lain awake after he went to bed, but he had fallen asleep about
midnight, and got a good night's rest. He looked fresh and strong and
very handsome. He talked resolutely to every one at the table, but
Jombateeste was always preoccupied with eating at his meals, and Frank
Whitwell had on a Sunday silence, which was perhaps deepened by a
feeling that there was something wrong between his sister and Jeff,
and it would be rash to commit himself to an open friendliness until he
understood the case. His father met Jeff's advances with philosophical
blandness and evasion, and Mrs. Durgin was provisionally dry and severe
both with the Whitwells and her son. After breakfast she went to the
parlor, and Jeff set about a tour of the hotel, inside and out. He
looked carefully to the details of its winter keeping. Then he came
back and boldly joined his mother where she sat before her stove, whose
subdued heat she found pleasant in the lingering cold of the early
spring.

He tossed his hat on the table beside her, and sat down on the other
side of the stove. "Well, I must say the place has been well looked
after. I don't believe Jackson himself could have kept it in better
shap