"Dumn 'em! Let 'em get their own breakfast!" said Whitwell, recklessly. "And, father," the girl went on as if he had not spoken, "don't you talk to Mrs. Durgin about it, will you?" "No, no. I sha'n't speak to her. I'll just tell Frank you and me are goin' to stay down here to-night. She'll suspicion something, but she can figure it out for herself. Or she can make Jeff tell her. It can't be kept from her." "Well, let him be the one to tell her. Whatever happens, I shall never speak of it to a soul besides you." "All right, Cynthy. You'll have the night to think it over--I guess you won't sleep much--and I'll trust you to do what's the best thing about it." XLV. Cynthia found Mrs. Durgin in the old farm-house kitchen at work getting breakfast when she came up to the hotel in the morning. She was early, but the elder woman had been earlier still, and her heavy face showed more of their common night-long trouble than the girl's. She demanded, at sight of her, "What's the matter with you and Jeff, Cynthy?" Cynthia was unrolling the cloud from her hair. She said, as she tied on her apron: "You must get him to tell you, Mrs. Durgin." "Then there is something?" "Yes." "Has Jeff been using you wrong?" Cynthia stooped to open the oven door, and to turn the pan of biscuit she found inside. She shut the door sharply to, and said, as she rose: "I don't want to tell anything about it, and I sha'n't, Mrs. Durgin. He can do it, if he wants to. Shall I make the coffee?" "Yes; you seem to make it better than I do. Do you think I shouldn't believe you was fair to him?" "I wasn't thinking of that. But it's his secret. If he wants to keep it, he can keep it, for all me." "You ha'n't give each other up?" "I don't know." Cynthia turned away with a trembling chin, and began to beat the coffee up with an egg she had dropped into the pot. She put the breakfast on the table when it was ready, but she would not sit down with the rest. She said she did not want any breakfast, and she drank a cup of coffee in the kitchen.