“And could you let me have my own room, Mrs. Durgin?”
“Why, yes,” she said, “if you don't want something a little nicer.”
“I don't believe you've got anything nicer,” Westover said.
“All right, if you think so,” she retorted. “You can have the old room, anyway.”
X.
Westover could not have said he felt very much at home on his first sojourn at the farm, or that he had cared greatly for the Durgins. But now he felt very much at home, and as if he were in the hands of friends.
It was toward the close of the afternoon that he arrived, and he went in promptly to the meal that was served shortly after. He found that the farm-house had not evolved so far in the direction of a hotel as to have reached the stage of a late dinner. It was tea that he sat down to, but when he asked if there were not something hot, after listening to a catalogue of the cold meats, the spectacled waitress behind his chair demanded, with the air of putting him on his honor:
“You among those that came this afternoon?”
Westover claimed to be of the new arrivals.