“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 need to brag her up—and I don't feel so over and above certain 't I know what he is. He's a good deal of a mixture, if you want to know how he strikes me. I don't mean I don't like him; I do; the fellow's got a way with him that makes me kind of like him when I see him. He's good-natured and clever; and he's willin' to take any amount of trouble for you; but you can't tell where to have him.” Westover denied the appeal for explicit assent in Whitwell's eye, and he went on: “If I'd done that fellow a good turn, in spite of him, or if I'd held him up to something that he allowed was right, and consented to, I should want to keep a sharp lookout that he didn't play me some ugly trick for it. He's a comical devil,” Whitwell ended, rather inadequately. “How d's it look to you? Seen anything lately that seemed to tally with my idee?”
“No, no; I can't say that I have,” said Westover, reluctantly. He wished to be franker than he now meant to be, but he consulted a scruple that he did not wholly respect; a mere convention it seemed to him, presently. He said: “I've always felt that charm in him, too, and I've seen the other traits, though not so clearly as you seem to have done. He has a powerful will, yes—”
He stopped, and Whitwell asked: “Been up to any deviltry lately?”
“I can't say he has. Nothing that I can call intentional.”
“No,” said Whitwell. “What's he done, though?”
“Really, Mr. Whitwell, I don't know that you have any right to expect me to talk him over, when I'm here as his mother's guest—his own guest—?”
“No. I ha'n't,” said Whitwell. “What about the father of the girl he's goin' to marry?”
Westover could not deny the force of this. “You'd be anxious if I didn't tell you what I had in mind, I dare say, more than if I did.” He told him of Jeff's behavior with Alan Lynde, and of his talk with him about it. “And I think he was honest. It was something that happened, that wasn't meant.”
Whitwell did not assent directly, somewhat to Westover's surprise. He asked: “Fellow ever done anything to Jeff?”
“Not that I know of. I don't know that they ever met before.”