common consent.

Mrs. Durgin took up her lamp again and looked round on the appointments
of the room, as if she wished Westover to note them, too: the drab
wallpaper, the stiff chairs, the long, hard sofa in haircloth, the high
bureau of mahogany veneer.

"You can come in here and set or lay down whenever you feel like it," she
said. "We use it more than folks generally, I presume; we got in the
habit, havin' it open for funerals."




VII.

Four or five days of perfect weather followed one another, and Westover
worked hard at his picture in the late afternoon light he had chosen for
it. In the morning he tramped through the woods and climbed the hills
with Jeff Durgin, who seemed never to do anything about the farm, and had
a leisure unbroken by anything except a rare call from his mother to help
her in the house. He built the kitchen fire, and got the wood for it; he
picked the belated pease and the early beans in the garden, and shelled
them; on the Monday when the school opened he did a share of the family
wash, which seemed to have been begun before daylight, and Westover saw
him hanging out the clothes before he started off with his books. He
suffered no apparent loss of self-respect in these employments, and,
while he still had his days free, he put himself at Westover's disposal
with an effect of unimpaired equality. He had expected, evidently, that
Westover would want to fish or shoot, or at least join him in the hunt