arted intention of study, and she took hold with him, and together
they fought forward over the ground he had to gain. His mother was almost
willing at last that he should give up his last year in college.

"What is the use?" she asked. "He's give up the law, and he might as well
commence here first as last, if he's goin' to."

The girl had no reason to urge against this; she could only urge her
feeling that he ought to go back and take his degree with the rest of his
class.

"If you're going to keep Lion's Head the way you pretend you are," she
said to him, as she could not say to his mother, "you want to keep all
your Harvard friends, don't you, and have them remember you? Go back,
Jeff, and don't you come here again till after you've got your degree.
Never mind the Christmas vacation, nor the Easter. Stay in Cambridge and
work off your conditions. You can do it, if you try. Oh, don't you
suppose I should like to have you here?" she reproached him.

He went back, with a kind of grudge in his heart, which he confessed in
his first letter home to her, when he told her that she was right and he
was wrong. He was sure now, with the impulse which their work on them in
common had given him, that he should get his conditions off, and he
wanted her and his mother to begin preparing their minds to come to his
Class Day. He planned how they could both be away from the hotel for that
day. The house was to be opened on the 20th of June, but it was not
likely that there would be so many people at once that they could not
give the 21st to Class Day; Frank and his father could run Lion's Head
somehow, or, if they could not, then the opening could be postponed till
the 24th. At all events, they must not fail to come. Cynthia showed the
whole letter to his mother, who refused to think of such a thing, and
then asked, as if the fact had not been fully set before her: "When is it
to be?"

"The 21st of June."

"Well, he's early enough with his invitation," she grumbled.

"Yes, he is," said Cynthia; and she laughed for shame and pleasure as she
confessed, "I was thinking he was rather late."

She hung her head and turned her face away. But Mrs. Durgin understood.
"You be'n expectin' it all along, then."

"I guess so."

"I presume," said the elder woman, "that he's talked to you about it. He
never tells me much. I don't see why you should want to go. What's it
like?"

"Oh, I don't know. But it's the day the graduating class ha