" Cynthia said she did not know, but when the
point was referred to Mrs. Fredericks, she was sure Cynthia could not
go alone, and she acquainted them both, as far as she could, with that
mystery of chaperonage which had never touched their lives before.
Whitwell seemed to think that his daughter would give the matter up;
and perhaps she might have done so, though she seemed reluctant, if
Mrs. Fredericks had not further instructed them that it was the highest
possible honor Mr. Westover was offering them, and that if he had
proposed to paint her daughter she would simply have gone and lived with
him while he was doing it.

Whitwell found some compensation for the time lost to his study of
Boston in the conversation of the painter, which he said was worth a
hundred cents on the dollar every time, though it dealt less with the
metaphysical aspect of the latest facts of science than the philosopher
could have wished. He did not, to be sure, take very much stock in the
picture as it advanced, somewhat fitfully, with a good many reversions
to its original state of sketch. It appeared to him always a slight and
feeble representation of Cynthia, though, of course, a native politeness
forbade him to express his disappointment. He avowed a faith in
Westover's ability to get it right in the end, and always bade him go
on, and take as much time to it as he wanted.

He felt less uneasy than at first, because he had now found a little
furnished house in the woodenest outskirts of North Cambridge, which he
hired cheap from the recently widowed owner, and they were keeping house
there. Jombateeste lived with them, and worked in the brick-yards. Out
of hours he helped Cynthia, and kept the ugly little place looking trim
and neat, and left Whitwell free for the tramps home to nature, which he
began to take over the Belmont uplands as soon as the spring opened. He
was not homesick, as Cynthia was afraid he might be; his mind was
fully occupied by the vast and varied interests opened to it by the
intellectual and material activities of the neighboring city; and he
found ample scope for his physical energies in doing Cynthia's errands,
as well as studying the strange flora of the region. He apparently
thought that he had made a distinct rise and advance in the world.
Sometimes, in the first days of his satisfaction with his establishment,
he expressed the wish that Jackson could only have seen how he was
fixed, once. In his preoccupation w