After Westover got back into his own room, some one knocked at his door,
and he found Whitwell outside. He scarcely asked him to come in, but
Whitwell scarcely needed the invitation. "Got everything you want? I told
Cynthy I'd come up and see after you; Frank won't be back in time." He
sat down and put his feet on top of the stove, and struck the heels of
his boots on its edge, from the habit of knocking the caked snow off them
in that way on stove-tops. He did not wait to find out that there was no
responsive sizzling before he asked, with a long nasal sigh, "Well, how
is Jeff gettin' along?"

He looked across at Westover, who had provisionally seated himself on his
bed.

"Why, in the old way." Whitwell kept his eye on him, and he added: "I
suppose we don't any of us change; we develop."

Whitwell smiled with pleasure in the loosely philosophic suggestion. "You
mean that he's the same kind of a man that he was a boy? Well, I guess
that's so. The question is, what kind of a boy was he? I've been mullin'
over that consid'able since Cynthy and him fixed it up together. Of
course, I know it's their business, and all that; but I presume I've got
a right to spee'late about it?"

He referred the point to Westover, who knew an inner earnestness in it,
in spite of Whitwell's habit of outside jocosity. "Every right in the
world, I should say, Mr. Whitwell," he answered, seriously.

"Well, I'm glad you feel that way," said Whitwell, with a little apparent
surprise. "I don't want to meddle, any; but I know what Cynthy is--I no