l make it warm for him. She's had her mind set on his
studyin' law so long, 't she won't give up in a hurry. She can't see that
Jackson ain't fit to help her run the hotel any more--till he's had a
rest, anyway--and I believe she thinks her and Frank could run it--and
you. She'll make an awful kick," said Whitwell, solemnly. "I hope you
didn't encourage him, Cynthy?"

"I should encourage him," said the girl. "He's got the right to shape his
own life, and nobody else has got the right to do it; and I should tell
his mother so, if she ever said anything to me about it."

"All right," said Whitwell. "I suppose you know what you're about."

"I do, father. Jeff would make a good landlord; he's got ideas about a
hotel, and I can see that they're the right ones. He's been out in the
world, and he's kept his eyes open. He will make Lion's Head the best
hotel in the mountains."

"It's that already."

"He doesn't think it's half as good as he can make it."

"It wouldn't be half what it is now, if it wa'n't for you and Frank."

"I guess he understands that," said Cynthia. "Frank would be the clerk."

"Got it all mapped out!" said Whitwell, proudly, in his turn. "Look out
you don't slip up in your calculations. That's all."

"I guess we cha'n't slip up."

XIII.

Jeff came into the ugly old family parlor, where his mother sat mending
by the kerosene-lamp which she had kept through all the household
changes, and pushed enough of her work aside from the corner of the table
to rest his arm upon it.

"Mother, I want you to listen to me, and to wait till I get done. Will
you?"

She looked up at him over her spectacles from the stocking she was
darning; the china egg gleamed through the frayed place. "What notion
have you got in your head, now?"

"It's about Jackson. He isn't well. He's got to leave off work and go
away."

The mother's hand dropped at the end of the yarn she had drawn through
the stocking heel, and she stared at Jeff. Then she resumed her work with
the decision expressed in her tone. "Your father lived to be sixty years
old, and Jackson a'n't forty! The doctor said there wa'n't any reason why
he shouldn't live as long as his father did."

"I'm not saying he won't live to a hundred. I'm saying he oughtn't to
stay another winter here," Jeff said, decisively.

Mrs. Durgin was silent for a time, and then she said. "Jeff, is that your
notion about Jackson, or whose is it?"

"It's mine, now."

Mrs