“I don’t know whether I’d better not leave the whole thing to you, Jeff,” Westover said, after a moment’s reflection.  “I don’t see exactly how I could bring the question into a first interview.”

“Well, perhaps it would be rather rushing it.  But, if I get up something, you’ll come, Mr. Westover?”

“I will, with great pleasure,” said Westover, and he went to make his call.

A half-hour later he was passing the door of the old parlor which Mrs. Durgin still kept for hers, on his way up to his room, when a sound of angry voices came out to him.  Then the voice of Mrs. Durgin defined itself in the words:  “I’m not goin’ to have to ask any more folks for their rooms on your account, Jeff Durgin—­Mr. Westover!  Mr. Westover, is that you?” her voice broke off to call after him as he hurried by, “Won’t you come in here a minute?”

He hesitated, and then Jeff called, “Yes, come in, Mr. Westover.”

The painter found him sitting on the old hair-cloth sofa, with his stick between his hands and knees, confronting his mother, who was rocking excitedly to and fro in the old hair-cloth easy-chair.

“You know these folks that Jeff’s so crazy about?” she demanded.

“Crazy!” cried Jeff, laughing and frowning at the same time.  “What’s crazy in wanting to go off on a drive and choose your own party?”

“Do you know them?” Mrs. Durgin repeated to Westover.

“The Vostrands?  Why, yes.  I knew Mrs. Vostrand in Italy a good many years ago, and I’ve just been calling on her and her daughter, who was a little girl then.”

“What kind of folks are they?”

“What kind?  Really!  Why, they’re very charming people—­”

“So Jeff seems to think.  Any call to show them any particular attention?”

“I don’t know if I quite understand—­”

“Why, it’s just this.  Jeff, here, wants to make a picnic for them, or something, and I can’t see the sense of it.  You remember what happened at that other picnic, with that Mrs. Marven”—­Jeff tapped the floor with his stick impatiently, and Westover felt sorry for him—­“and I don’t want it to happen again, and I’ve told Jeff so.  I presume he thinks it ’ll set him right with them, if they’re thinkin’ demeaning of him because he came over second-cabin on their ship.”

Jeff set his teeth and compressed his lips to bear as best he could, the give-away which his mother could not appreciate in its importance to him: 

“They’re not the kind of people to take such a thing shabbily,” said Westover.  “They didn’t happen to mention it, but Mrs. Vostrand must have got used to seeing young fellows in straits of all kinds during her life abroad.  I know that I sometimes made the cup of tea and biscuit she used to give me in Florence do duty for a dinner, and I believe she knew it.”

Jeff looked up at Westover with a grateful, sidelong glance.