Jeff came into the ugly old family parlor, where his mother sat mending
by the kerosene-lamp which she had kept through all the household
changes, and pushed enough of her work aside from the corner of the table
to rest his arm upon it.
"Mother, I want you to listen to me, and to wait till I get done. Will
you?"
She looked up at him over her spectacles from the stocking she was
darning; the china egg gleamed through the frayed place. "What notion
have you got in your head, now?"
"It's about Jackson. He isn't well. He's got to leave off work and go
away."
The mother's hand dropped at the end of the yarn she had drawn through
the stocking heel, and she stared at Jeff. Then she resumed her work with
the decision expressed in her tone. "Your father lived to be sixty years
old, and Jackson a'n't forty! The doctor said there wa'n't any reason why
he shouldn't live as long as his father did."
"I'm not saying he won't live to a hundred. I'm saying he oughtn't to
stay another winter here," Jeff said, decisively.
Mrs. Durgin was silent for a time, and then she said. "Jeff, is that your
notion about Jackson, or whose is it?"
"It's mine, now."
Mrs. Durgin waited a moment. Then she began, with a feeling quite at
variance with her words:
"Well, I'll thank Cynthy Whit'ell to mind her own business! Of course,"
she added, and in what followed her feeling worked to the surface in her
words, "I know 't she thinks the world of Jackson, and he does of her;
and I presume she means well. I guess she'd be more apt to notice, if
there was any change, than what I should. What did she say?"
Jeff told, as nearly as he could remember, and he told what Cynthia and
he had afterward jointly worked out as to the best thing for Jackson to
do. Mrs. Durgin listened frowningly, but not disapprovingly, as it
seemed; though at the end she asked: "And what am I going to do, with
Jackson gone?"
Jeff laughed, with his head down. "Well, I guess you and Cynthy could run
it, with Frank and Mr. Whitwell."
"Mr. Whit'ell!" said Mrs. Durgin, concentrating in her accent of his name
the contempt she could not justly pour out on the others.
"Oh," Jeff went on, "I did think that I could take hold with you, if you
could bring yourself to let me off this last year at Harvard."
"Jeff!" said his mother, reproachfully. "You know you don't mean that
you'd give up your last year in college?"
"I do mean it, but I don't expect you to do it; and I don't ask it. I
suggested it to Cynthy, when we got to talking it over, and she saw it
wouldn't do."
"Well, she showed some sense that time," Mrs. Durgin said.
"I don't know when Cynthy hasn't shown sense; except once, and then I
guess it was my fault."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, this afternoon I asked her to marry me some time, and she said she
would." He looked at his mother and laughed, and then he did not laugh.
He had expected her to be pleased; he had thought to pave the way with
this confession for the declaration of his intention not to study law,
and to make his engagement to Cynthia serve him in reconciling his mother
to the other fact. But a menacing suspense followed his words.
His mother broke out at last: "You asked Cynthy Whit'ell to marry you!
And she said she would! Well, I can tell her she won't, then!"
"And I can tell you she will!" Jeff stormed back. He rose to his feet and
stood over his mother.