“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 changed a good deal.  There are still distinguished lawyers, and lawyers who get on, but they don’t distinguish themselves in the old way so much, and they get on best by becoming counsel for some powerful corporation.”

“And you think he has talent?” she pursued.  “For that, I mean.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Westover.  “I think he has a good head.  He can do what he likes within certain limits, and the limits are not all on the side I used to fancy.  He baffles me.  But of late I fancy you’ve seen rather more of him than I have.”

“I have urged him to go more to you.  But,” said Mrs. Vostrand, with a burst of frankness, “he thinks you don’t like him.”

“He’s wrong,” said Westover.  “But I might dislike him very much.”

“I see what you mean,” said Mrs. Vostrand, “and I’m glad you’ve been so frank with me.  I’ve been so interested in Mr. Durgin, so interested!  Isn’t he very young?”

The question seemed a bit of indirection to Westover.  But he answered directly enough.  “He’s rather old for a Sophomore, I believe.  He’s twenty-two.”