Lion's Head for a while yet," his mother
returned, scornfully. "Jackson is going to run Lion's Head. He'll be
home the end of June, and I'll run Lion's Head till he gets here. You
talk," she went on, "as if it was in your hands to break with Cynthy, or
throw away the chance with her. The way I look at it, she's broke with
you, and you ha'n't got any chance with her. Oh, Jeff," she suddenly
appealed to him, "tell me all about it! What have you been up to? If I
understood it once, I know I can make her see it in the right light."

"The better you understand it, mother, the less you'll like it; and I
guess Cynthy sees it in the right light already. What did she say?"

"Nothing. She said she'd leave it to you."

"Well, that's like Cynthy. I'll tell you, then," said Jeff; and he
told his mother his whole affair with Bessie Lynde. He had to be
very elemental, and he was aware, as he had never been before, of the
difference between Bessie's world and his mother's world, in trying to
make Bessie's world conceivable to her.

He was patient in going over every obscure point, and illustrating from
the characters and condition of different summer folks the facts
of Bessie's entourage. It is doubtful, however, if he succeeded in
conveying to his mother a clear and just notion of the purely chic
nature of the girl. In the end she seemed to conceive of her simply as
a hussy, and so pronounced her, without limit or qualification, in spite
of Jeff's laughing attempt to palliate her behavior, and to inculpate
himself. She said she did not see what he had done that was so much out
of the way. That thing had led him on from the beginning; she had merely
got her come-uppings, when all was said. Mrs. Durgin believed Cynthia
would look at it as she did, if she could have it put before her
rightly. Jeff shook his head with persistent misgiving. His notion was
that Cynthia saw the affair only too clearly, and that there was no new
light to be thrown on it from her point of view. Mrs. Durgin would not
allow this; she was sure that she could bring Cynthia round; and she
asked Jeff whether it was his getting that fellow drunk that she seemed
to blame him for the most. He answered that he thought that was pretty
bad, but he did not believe that was the worst thing in Cynthia's eyes.
He did not forbid his mother's trying to do what she could with her,
and he went away for a walk, and left the house to the two women.
Jombateeste was in the barn,