Hills of the Shatemuc Part 158

"To take care of that old woman?"

"No -- I can't do much for her -- but I can see that she is taken care of."

"But how would she have done if you had never come here?"

"I don't know. I don't know what that has to do with it, seeing that I am here."

"You wouldn't stay for her now, if she wasn't somebody's old nurse."

Elizabeth did not answer.

"But how long _do_ you mean to stay here, Lizzie? -- any how?"

"Till I must go -- till it is less pleasant here than somewhere else."

"And when will you think that?"

"Not for a good while."

"But _when_, Lizzie?"

"I don't know. I suppose when the cold weather comes in earnest."

"I'm sure it has come now!" said Rose shrugging her shoulders.

"I'm s.h.i.+vering every morning after the fire goes out. What sort of cold weather do you mean?"

"I mean snow and ice."

"Snow and ice -- And then you will go -- where will you go?"

said Rose discontentedly.

"I suppose, to Mannahatta."

"Will you go the first snow?"

"I cannot tell yet, Rose."

There was a pause. Elizabeth had not stirred from her position. Her head rested yet on her hand, her eyes looked steadily out of the window.

"It will seem so lonely there!" said Rose whimpering.

"Yes! -- more lonely than here."

"I meant in the house. But there one can get out and see some one."

"There isn't a soul in Mannahatta I care to see."

"Lizzie! --"

"Not that I know of."

"Lizzie! -- Mr. Landholm?"

"I mean, not one that I am like to see."

"What do you go to Mannahatta for, then?" said Rose unbelievingly.

"One must be somewhere, to do something in the world."

"To do what?"

"I don't know -- I suppose I shall find my work."

"Work? -- what work?" -- said Rose wonderingly.

"I don't know yet, Rose. But everybody has something to do in the world -- so I have, -- and you have."

"I haven't anything. What have we to do, except what we like to do?"

"I hope I shall like my work," said Elizabeth. "I must like it, if I am to do it well."

"What do you mean? -- what are you talking of, Lizzie?"

"Listen to me, Rose. Do you think that you and I have been put in this world with so many means of usefulness, of one sort and another, and that it was never meant we should do anything but trifle away them and life till the end of it came? Do you think G.o.d has given us nothing to do for him?"

"_I_ haven't much means of doing anything," said Rose, half pouting, half sobbing. "Have you taken up your friend Winthrop Landholm's notions?"

There was a rush to Elizabeth's heart, that his name and hers, in such a connection, should be named in the same day; but the colour started and the eyes flushed with tears, and she said nothing.

"What sort of 'work' do you suppose you are going to do?"

"I don't know. I shall find out, Rose, I hope, in time."

"I guess he can tell you, -- if you were to ask him," said Rose meaningly.

Elizabeth sat a minute silent, with quickened breath.

"Rose," she said, leaning back into the room that she might see and be seen, -- "look at me and listen to me."

Rose obeyed.

"Don't say that kind of thing to me again."

"One may say what one has a mind to, in a free land," said Rose pouting, -- "and one needn't be commanded like a child or a servant. Don't I know you would never plague yourself with that old woman if she wasn't Winthrop's old nurse?"

Elizabeth rose and came near to her.

"I will not have this thing said to me!" she repeated. "My motives, in any deed of charity, are no man's or woman's to meddle with. Mr. Landholm is most absolutely nothing to me, nor I to him; except in the respect and regard he has from me, which he has more or less, I presume, from everybody that has the happiness of knowing him. Do you understand me, Rose?