“Do you know what I think of you, Cynthy?” asked Jeff, hurrying to keep up with her quick steps.  “You’ve got more courage—­”

“Oh, don’t praise me, or I shall break down!”

“I’ll see that you don’t break down,” said Jeff, tenderly.  “It’s the greatest thing to have you go with me!”

“Why, don’t you see?” she lamented.  “If you went alone, and told your mother that I approved of it, you would look as if you were afraid, and wanted to get behind me; and I’m not going to have that.”

They found.  Mrs. Durgin in the dark entry of the old farmhouse, and Cynthia said, with involuntary imperiousness:  “Come in here, Mrs. Durgin; I want to tell you something.”

She led the way to the old parlor, and she checked Mrs. Durgin’s question, “Has that Miller girl—­”

“It isn’t about her,” said Cynthy, pushing the door to.  “It’s about me and Jeff.”

Mrs. Durgin became aware of Jeff’s presence with an effect of surprise.  “There a’n’t anything more, is there?”

“Yes, there is!” Cynthia shrilled.  “Now, Jeff!”

“It’s just this, mother:  Cynthy thinks I ought to tell you—­and she thinks I ought to have told you last night—­she expected me to—­that I’m not going to study law.”

“And I approve of his not doing it,” Cynthia promptly followed, and she put herself beside Jeff where he stood in front of his mother’s rocking-chair.

She looked from one to the other of the faces before her.  “I’m sorry a son of mine,” she said, with dignity, “had to be told how to act with his mother.  But, if he had, I don’t know as anybody had a better right to do it than the girl that’s going to marry him.  And I’ll say this, Cynthia Whitwell, before I say anything else:  you’ve begun right.  I wish I could say Jeff had.”

There was an uncomfortable moment before Cynthia said:  “He expected to tell you.”

“Oh Yes!  I know,” said his mother, sadly.  She added, sharply:  “And did he expect to tell me what he intended to do for a livin’?”

Jeff took the word.  “Yes, I did.  I intend to keep a hotel.”

“What hotel?” asked Mrs. Durgin, with a touch of taunting in her tone.

“This one.”

The mother of the bold, rebellious boy that Jeff had been stirred in Mrs. Durgin’s heart, and she looked at him with the eyes, that used to condone his mischief.  But she said:  “I guess you’ll find out that there’s more than one has to agree to that.”

“Yes, there are two:  you and Jackson; and I don’t know but what three, if you count Cynthy, here.”

His mother turned to the girl.  “You think this fellow’s got sense enough to keep a hotel?”

“Yes, Mrs. Durgin, I do.  I think he’s got good ideas about a hotel.”

“And what’s he goin’ to do with his college education?”

Jeff interposed.  “You think that all the college graduates turn out lawyers and doctors and professors?  Some of ’em are mighty glad to sweep out banks in hopes of a clerkship; and some take any sort of a place in a mill or a business house, to work up; and some bum round out West ’on cattle ranches; and some, if they’re lucky, get newspaper reporters’ places at ten dollars a week.”