“The sooner the better.”  Westover got himself away with a very sweet friendship in his heart for this rather anomalous lady, who, more than half her daughter’s life, had lived away from her daughter’s father, upon apparently perfectly good terms with him, and so discreetly and self-respectfully that no breath of reproach had touched her.  Until now, however, her position had not really concerned Westover, and it would not have concerned him now, if it had not been for a design that formed itself in his mind as soon as he knew that Mrs. Vostrand meant to pass the winter in Boston.  He felt at once that he could not do things by halves for a woman who had once done them for him by wholes and something over, and he had instantly decided that he must not only be very pleasant to her himself, but he must get his friends to be pleasant, too.  His friends were some of the nicest people in Boston; nice in both the personal and the social sense; he knew they would not hesitate to sacrifice themselves for him in a good cause, and that made him all the more anxious that the cause should be good beyond question.

Since his last return from Paris he had been rather a fad as a teacher, and his class had been kept quite strictly to the ladies who got it up and to such as they chose to let enter it.  These were not all chosen for wealth or family; there were some whose gifts gave the class distinction, and the ladies were glad to have them.  It would be easy to explain Mrs. Vostrand to these, but the others might be more difficult; they might have their anxieties, and Westover meant to ask the leader of the class to help him receive at the studio tea he had at once imagined for the Vostrands, and that would make her doubly responsible.

He found himself drawing a very deep and long breath before he began to mount the many stairs to his studio, and wishing either that Mrs. Vostrand had not decided to spend the winter in Boston, or else that he were of a slacker conscience and could wear his gratitude more lightly.  But there was some relief in thinking that he could do nothing for a month yet.  He gained a degree of courage by telling the ladies, when he went to find them in their new apartment, that he should want them to meet a few of his friends at tea as soon as people began to get back to town; and he made the most of their instant joy in accepting his invitation.

His pleasure was somehow dashed a little, before he left them, by the announcement of Jeff Durgin’s name.

“I felt bound to send him my card,” said Mrs. Vostrand, while Jeff was following his up in the elevator.  “He was so very kind to us the day we arrived at Zion’s Head; and I didn’t know but he might be feeling a little sensitive about coming over second-cabin in our ship; and—­”

“How like you, Mrs. Vostrand !” cried Westover, and he was now distinctly glad he had not tried to sneak out of doing something for her.  “Your kindness won’t be worse wasted on Durgin than it was on me, in the old days, when I supposed I had taken a second-cabin passage for the voyage of life.  There’s a great deal of good in him; I don’t mean to say he got through his Freshman year without trouble with the college authorities, but the Sophomore year generally brings wisdom.”