after his bout with the baggage, which was following more slowly in its wagon.  There was a good deal of it, and there were half a dozen people—­women, of course—­going to Lion’s Head House.  Westover climbed to the place beside Jeff to let them have the other two seats to themselves, and to have a chance of talking; but the ladies had to be quieted in their several anxieties concerning their baggage, and the letters and telegrams they had sent about their rooms, before they settled down to an exchange of apprehensions among themselves, and left Jeff Durgin free to listen to Westover.

“I don’t know but I ought to have telegraphed you that I was coming,” Westover said; “but I couldn’t realize that you were doing things on the hotel scale.  Perhaps you won’t have room for me?”

“Guess we can put you up,” said Jeff.

“No chance of getting my old room, I suppose?”

“I shouldn’t wonder.  If there’s any one in it, I guess mother could change ’em.”

“Is that so?” asked Westover, with a liking for being liked, which his tone expressed.  “How is your mother?”

Jeff seemed to think a moment before he answered: 

“Just exactly the same.”

“A little older?”

“Not as I can see.”

“Does she hate keeping a hotel as badly as she expected?”

“That’s what she says,” answered Jeff, with a twinkle.  All the time, while he was talking with Westover, he was breaking out to his horses, which he governed with his voice, trotting them up hill and down, and walking them on the short, infrequent levels, in the mountain fashion.

Westover almost feared to ask:  “And how is Jackson?”

“First-rate—­that is, for him.  He’s as well as ever he was, I guess, and he don’t appear a day older.  You’ve changed some,” said Jeff, with a look round at Westover.

“Yes; I’m twenty-nine now, and I wear a heavier beard.”  Westover noticed that Jeff was clean shaved of any sign of an approaching beard, and artistically he rejoiced in the fellow’s young, manly beauty, which was very regular and sculpturesque.  “You’re about eighteen?”

“Nearer nineteen.”

“Is Jackson as much interested in the other world as he used to be?”

“Spirits?”

“Yes.”

“I guess he keeps it up with Mr. Whitwell.  He don’t say much about it at home.  He keeps all the books, and helps mother run the house.  She couldn’t very well get along without him.”

“And where do you come in?”

“Well, I look after the transportation,” said Jeff, with a nod toward his horses—­“when I’m at home, that is.  I’ve been at the Academy in Lovewell the last three winters, and that means a good piece of the summer, too, first and last.  But I guess I’ll let mother talk to you about that.”

“All right,” said Westover.  “What I don’t know about education isn’t worth knowing.”

Jeff laughed, and said to the off horse, which seemed to know that he was meant:  “Get up, there!”