u? I don't want you should stay, and I
don't know who does. If I was in Cynthia's place, I'd let you work off
your own conditions, now you've give up the law. She'll kill herself,
tryin' to keep you along."

Sometimes her speech became so indistinct that no one but Cynthia could
make it out; and Jeff, listening with a face as nearly discharged as
might be of its laughing irony, had to turn to Cynthia for the word
which no one else could catch, and which the stricken woman remained
distressfully waiting for her to repeat to him, with her anxious eyes
upon the girl's face. He was dutifully patient with all his mother's
whims. He came whenever she sent for him, and sat quiet under the
severities with which she visited all his past unworthiness. "Who you
been hectorin' now, I should like to know," she began on him one evening
when he came at her summons. "Between you and Fox, I got no peace of my
life. Where is the dog?"

"Fox is all right, mother," Jeff responded. "You're feeling a little
better to-night, a'n't you?"

"I don't know; I can't tell," she returned, with a gleam of intelligence
in her eye. Then she said: "I don't see why I'm left to strangers all
the time."

"You don't call Cynthia a stranger, do you, mother?" he asked,
coaxingly.

"Oh--Cynthy!" said Mrs. Durgin, with a glance as of surprise at seeing
her. "No, Cynthy's all right. But where's Jackson and your father? If
I've told them not to be out in the dew once, I've told 'em a hundred
times. Cynthy'd better look after her housekeepin' if she don't want the
whole place to run behind, and not a soul left in the house. What time
o' year is it now?" she suddenly asked, after a little weary pause.

"It's the last of August, mother."

"Oh," she sighed, "I thought it was the beginnin' of May. Didn't you
come up here in May?"

"Yes."

"Well, then--Or, mebbe that's one o' them tormentin' dreams; they do
pester so! What did you come for?"

Jeff was sitting on one side of her bed and Cynthia on the other: She
was looking at the sufferer's face, and she did not meet the glance of
amusement which Jeff turned upon her at being so fairly cornered. "Well,
I don't know," he said. "I thought you might like to see me."

"What 'd he come for?"--the sick woman turned to Cynthia.

"You'd better tell her," said the girl, coldly, to Jeff. "She won't be
satisfied till you do. She'll keep coming back to it."

"Well, mother," said Jeff, still with something of his ha