Hills of the Shatemuc Part 30

"What does Winthrop do with himself? Rufus isn't so busy."

"I don't know," said Elizabeth; "and I am sure I don't care.

He goes for eels, I think, every other night. He has been after them to-night. He is always after birds or fish or rabbits, when he isn't on the farm."

"I wonder what people find so much to do on a farm. I should think they'd grow stupid. -- It is funny," said Miss Cadwallader as she got into bed, "how people in the country always think you must read the Bible."

Elizabeth lay a little while thinking about it and then fell asleep. She had slept, by the mind's unconscious measurement, a good while, when she awoke again. It startled her to see that a light came flickering through the cracks of her door from the kitchen. She slipped out of bed and softly and quickly lifted the latch. But it was not the house on fire.

The light came from Mrs. Landholm's candle dying in its socket; beyond the candle, on the hearth, was the mistress of the house on her knees. Elizabeth would have doubted even then what she was about, but for the soft whisper of words which came to her ear. She shut the door as softly and quickly again, and got into bed with a kind of awe upon her. She had certainly heard people stand up in the pulpit and make prayers, and it seemed suitable that other people should bend upon cus.h.i.+ons and bow heads while they did so; but that in a common-roofed house, on no particular occasion, anybody should kneel down to pray when he was alone and for his own sake, was something that had never come under her knowledge; and it gave her a disagreeable sort of shock. She lay awake and watched to see how soon Mrs. Landholm's light would go away; it died, the faint moonlight stole in through the window unhindered; and still there was no stir in the next room. Elizabeth watched and wondered; till after a long half hour she heard a light step in the kitchen and then a very light fall of the latch.

She sprang up to look at the moon; it had but little risen; she calculated the time of its rising for several nights back, and made up her mind that it must be long past twelve. And this a woman who was tired every day with her day's work and had been particularly tired to-night! for Elizabeth had noticed it. It made her uncomfortable. Why should _she_ spend her tired minutes in praying, after the whole house was asleep? and why was it that Elizabeth could not set her down as a fool for her pains? And on the contrary there grew up in her mind, on the instant, a respect for the whole family that wrapped them about like a halo.

One morning when Elizabeth came through the kitchen to mount her horse, Mrs. Landholm was doing some fine ironing. The blue habit stopped a moment by the ironing-table.

"How dreadfully busy you are, Mrs. Landholm."

"Not so busy that I shall not come out and see you start," she answered. "I always love to do that."

"Winnie," said Elizabeth putting a bank bill into the little girl's hand, "I shall make you my messenger. Will you give that to the man who takes care of my horse, for I never see him, and tell him I say he does his work beautifully."

Winifred blushed and hesitated, and handing the note back said that she had rather not.

"Won't you give it to him!"

The little girl coloured still more. "He don't want it."

"Keep your money, my dear," said Mrs. Landholm; "there is no necessity for your giving him anything."

"But why shouldn't I give it to him if I like it?" said Elizabeth in great wonderment.

"It is a boy that works for my father, Miss Haye," said Winthrop gravely; "your money would be thrown away upon him."

"But in this he works for me."

"He don't know that."

"If he don't -- Money isn't thrown away upon anybody, that ever I heard of," said Elizabeth; "and besides, what if I choose to throw it away?"

"You can. Only that it is doubtful whether it would be picked up."

"You think he wouldn't take it?"

"I think it is very likely."

"What a fool! -- Then I shall send away my horse!" said Elizabeth; "for either he must be under obligation to me, or I to him; and I don't choose the latter."

"Do you expect to get through the world without being under obligation to anybody?" said Winthrop smiling.

But Elizabeth had turned, and marching out of the house did not make any reply.

"What's the objection to being under obligation, Miss Elizabeth?" said Mrs. Landholm. Elizabeth was mounting her horse, in which operation Winthrop a.s.sisted her.

"It don't suit me!"

"Fortune's suits do not always fit," said Winthrop. "But then --"

"Then what?" --

"She never alters them."

Elizabeth's eyes fired, and an answer was on her lip, but meeting the very composed face of the last speaker, as he put her foot in the stirrup, she thought better of it. She looked at him and asked,

"What if one does not choose to wear them?"

"Nothing for it but to fight Fortune," said Winthrop smiling; -- "or go without any."

"I would rather go anyhow!" said Elizabeth, -- "than be obliged to anybody, -- of course except to my father."

"How if you had a husband?" inquired Mrs. Landholm with a good-humoured face.

It was a turn Elizabeth did not like; she did not answer Mrs.

Landholm as she would have answered her cousin. She hesitated.

"I never talk about that, Mrs. Landholm," she said a little haughtily, with a very pretty tinge upon her cheek; -- "I would not be obliged to _anybody_ but my father; -- never."

"Why?" said Mrs. Landholm. "I don't understand."

"Don't you see, Mrs. Landholm, -- the person under obligation is always the inferior."

"I never felt it so," she replied.

Her guest could not feel, what her son did, the strong contrast they made. One little head was held as if certainly the neck had never been bowed under any sort of pressure; the other, in its meek dignity, spoke the mind of too n.o.ble a level to be either raised or lowered by an accident.

"It is another meaning of the word, mother, from that you arc accustomed to," Winthrop said.

Elizabeth looked at him, but nothing was to be gained from his face.

"Will you have the goodness to hand me my riding-whip," she said shortly.

"You will have to be obliged to me for that," he said as he picked it up.

"Yes," said Elizabeth; "but I pay for this obligation with a 'thank you'!"

So she did, and with a bow at once a little haughty and not a little graceful. It was the pure grace of nature, the very speaking of her mind at the moment. Turning her horse's head she trotted off, her blue habit fluttering and her little head carried very gracefully to the wind and her horse's motion.

They stood and looked after her.

"Poor child!" said Mrs. Landholm, -- "she has something to learn. There is good in her too."

"Ay," said her son, "and there is gold in the earth; but it wants hands."

"Yes," said Mrs. Landholm, -- "if she only fell into good hands --"