he was all on fire.  ‘I want that place, Mr. Whitwell,’ s’d he.  ’Name your price.’  Well, I wa’n’t goin’ to take an advantage of the feller, and I guess he see it.  ‘You’ve offered me three thousand,’ s’d I, ‘n’ I don’t want to be no ways mean about it.  Five thousand buys the place.’  ’It’s mine,’ s’d he; just like that.  I guess he see he had a gentleman to deal with, and we didn’t say a word more.  Don’t you think I done right to sell to him?  I couldn’t ‘a’ got more’n thirty-five hundred out the other feller, to save me, and before Jeff begun his improvements I couldn’t ‘a’ realized a thousand dollars on the prop’ty.”

“I think you did right to sell to him,” said Westover, saddened somewhat by the proof Whitwell alleged of his magnanimity.

“Well, Sir, I’m glad you do.  I don’t believe in crowdin’ a man because you got him in a corner, an’ I don’t believe in bearin’ malice.  Never did.  All I wanted was what the place was wo’th—­to him.  ’Twa’n’t wo’th nothin’ to me!  He’s got the house and the ten acres around it, and he’s got the house on Lion’s Head, includin’ the Clearin’, that the poottiest picnic-ground in the mountains.  Think of goin’ up there this summer?”

“No,” said Westover, briefly.

“Well, I some wish you did.  I sh’d like to know how Jeff’s improvements struck you.  Of course, I can’t judge of ’em so well, but I guess he’s made a pootty sightly thing of it.  He told me he’d had one of the leadin’ Boston architects to plan the thing out for him, and I tell you he’s got something nice.  ’Tain’t so big as old Lion’s Head, and Jeff wants to cater to a different style of custom, anyway.  The buildin’s longer’n what she is deep, and she spreads in front so’s to give as many rooms a view of the mountain as she can.  Know what ‘runnaysonce’ is?  Well, that’s the style Jeff said it was; it’s all pillars and pilasters; and you ride up to the office through a double row of colyums, under a kind of a portico.  It’s all painted like them old Colonial houses down on Brattle Street, buff and white.  Well, it made me think of one of them old pagan temples.  He’s got her shoved along to the south’ard, and he’s widened out a piece of level for her to stand on, so ‘t that piece o’ wood up the hill there is just behind her, and I tell you she looks nice, backin’ up ag’inst the trees.  I tell you, Jeff’s got a head on him!  I wish you could see that dinin’-room o’ his:  all white colyums, and frontin’ on the view.  Why, that devil’s got a regular little theatyre back o’ the dinin’-room for the young folks to act ammyture plays in, and the shows that come along, and he’s got a dance-hall besides; the parlors ain’t much—­folks like to set in the office; and a good many of the rooms are done off into soots, and got their own parlors.  I tell you, it’s swell, as they say.  You can order what you please for breakfast, but for lunch and dinner you got to take what Jeff gives you; but he treats you well.  He’s a Durgin, when