n the
trees along the mall between the lawns of the avenue were venturing forth
in a hardy experiment of the Boston May, Mrs. Vostrand asked Westover if
she had told him that Mr. Vostrand was actually coming on to Boston. He
rejoiced with her in this prospect, and he reciprocated the wish which
she said Mr. Vostrand had always had for a meeting with himself.

A fortnight later, when the leaves had so far inured themselves to the
weather as to have fully expanded, she announced another letter from Mr.
Vostrand, saying that, after all, he should not be able to come to
Boston, but hoped to be in New York before she sailed.

"Sailed!" cried Westover.

"Why, yes! Didn't you know we were going to sail in June? I thought I had
told you!"

"No--"

"Why, yes. We must go out to poor Checco, now; Mr. Vostrand insists upon
that. If ever we are a united family again, Mr. Westover--if Mr. Vostrand
can arrange his business, when Checco is ready to enter Harvard--I mean
to take a house in Boston. I'm sure I should be contented to live nowhere
else in America. The place has quite bewitched me--dear old, sober,
charming Boston! I'm sure I should like to live here all the rest of my
life. But why in the world do people go out of town so early? Those
houses over there have been shut for a whole month past!"

They were sitting at Mrs. Vostrand's window looking out on the avenue,
where the pale globular electrics were swimming like jelly-fish in the
clear evening air, and above the ranks of low trees the houses on the
other side were close-shuttered from basement to attic.

Westover answered: "Some go because they have such pleasant houses at the
shore, and some because they want to dodge their taxes."

"To dodge their taxes?" she repeated, and he had to explain how if people
were in their country-houses before the 1st of May they would not have to
pay the high personal tax of the city; and she said that she would write
that to Mr. Vostrand; it would be another point in favor of Boston.
Women, she declared, would never have thought of such a thing; she
denounced them as culpably ignorant of so many matters that concerned
them, especially legal matters. "And you think," she asked, "that Mr.
Durgin will be a good lawyer? That he will-distinguish himself?"

Westover thought it rather a short-cut to Jeff from the things they had
been talking of, but if she wished to speak of him he had no reason to
oppose her wish. "I've heard it's all