Of course he talked away from it.  “I guess I’ve left ’em in pretty good shape for the winter at Lion’s Head,” he said.  “I’ve got Whitwell to agree to come up and live in the house with mother, and she’ll have Cynthy with her, anyway; and Frank and Jombateeste can look after the bosses easy enough.”

He had said something like this before, but Westover could see that it comforted him to repeat it, and he encouraged him to do so in full.  He made him talk about getting home in the spring, after the frost was out of the ground, but he questioned involuntarily, while the sick man spoke, whether he might not then be lying under the sands that had never known a frost since the glacial epoch.  When the last warning for visitors to go ashore came, Jackson said, with a wan smile, while he held Westover’s hand:  “I sha’n’t forget this very soon.”

“Write to me,” said Westover.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

Crimson torch of a maple, kindled before its time
Disposition to use his friends
Fear of asking too much and the folly of asking too little
Government is best which governs least
Honesty is difficult
I don’t ever want to take the whip-hand
I sha’n’t forget this very soon
Insensate pride that mothers have in their children’s faults
Iron forks had two prongs
Jefferson
Joyful shame of children who have escaped punishment
Man that could be your friend if he didn’t like you
Married Man:  after the first start-off he don’t try
Nothing in the way of sport, as people commonly understand it
People whom we think unequal to their good fortune
Society interested in a woman’s past, not her future
The great trouble is for the man to be honest with her
We’re company enough for ourselves
Women talked their follies and men acted theirs
World seems to always come out at the same hole it went in at