“I suppose,” one of them said, “that she felt more indignant about it because she has been so very good to Mrs. Marven, and her daughter, too.  They were both sick on her hands here for a week after they came, first one and then the other, and she looked after them and did for them like a mother.”

“And yet,” another lady suggested, “what could Mrs. Marven have done?  What did she do?  He wasn’t asked to the picnic, and I don’t see why he should have been treated as a guest.  He was there, purely and simply, to bring the things and take them away.  And, besides, if there is anything in distinctions, in differences, if we are to choose who is to associate with us—­or our daughters—­”

“That is true,” the ladies said, in one form or another, with the tone of conviction; but they were not so deeply convinced that they did not want a man’s opinion, and they all looked at Westover.

He would not respond to their look, and the lady who had argued for Mrs. Marven had to ask:  “What do you think, Mr. Westover?”

“Ah, it’s a difficult question,” he said.  “I suppose that as long as one person believes himself or herself socially better than another, it must always be a fresh problem what to do in every given case.”

The ladies said they supposed so, and they were forced to make what they could of wisdom in which they might certainly have felt a want of finality.

Westover went away from them in a perplexed mind which was not simplified by the contempt he had at the bottom of all for something unmanly in Jeff, who had carried his grievance to his mother like a slighted boy, and provoked her to take up arms for him.

The sympathy for Mrs. Marven mounted again when it was seen that she did not come to dinner, or permit her daughter to do so, and when it became known later that she had refused for both the dishes sent to their rooms.  Her farewells to the other ladies, when they gathered to see her off on the stage, were airy rather than cheery; there was almost a demonstration in her behalf, but Westover was oppressed by a kind of inherent squalor in the incident.

At night he responded to a knock which he supposed that of Frank Whitwell with ice-water, and Mrs. Durgin came into his room and sat down in one of his two chairs.  “Mr. Westover,” she said, “if you knew all I had done for that woman and her daughter, and how much she had pretended to think of us all, I don’t believe you’d be so ready to judge me.”

“Judge you!” cried Westover.  “Bless my soul, Mrs. Durgin!  I haven’t said a word that could be tormented into the slightest censure.”

“But you think I done wrong?”

“I have not been at all able to satisfy myself on that point, Mrs. Durgin.  I think it’s always wrong to revenge one’s self.”

“Yes, I suppose it is,” said Mrs. Durgin, humbly; and the tears came into her eyes.  “I got the tray ready with my own hands that was sent to her room; but she wouldn’t touch it.  I presume she didn’t like having a plate prepared for her!  But I did feel sorry for her.  She a’n’t over and above strong, and I’m afraid she’ll be sick; there a’n’t any rest’rant at our depot.”