Hills of the Shatemuc Part 40

"Why yes, dear Winnie; it is a pleasant thing to have comfortable clothes, and it is right to wish for them, provided we can be patient when we don't get them. But still I think dear Governor and Will will be pretty comfortable this winter. We will try to make them so."

"Yes mamma, --but I wanted them to be _smart_."

"It is right to be smart, Winnie, if we aren't _too_ smart."

"I wish I could be always just right, mamma."

"The rightest thing will be for you to go to sleep," said her mother, kissing her eyes and cheeks. "I'll be through my work directly and then you shall sit in my lap and rest -- I don't want to sew to-night. Winnie, the good Shepherd will gather my little lamb with his arm and carry her in his bosom, if she minds his voice; and then he will bring her by and by where she shall walk with him in white, and there will be no spots on the white any more."

"I know. Make haste, mother, and let us sit down together and talk."

So they did, with Asahel at their feet; but they didn't talk much. They kept each other silent and soft companions.h.i.+p, till Winifred's breathing told that she had lost her troubles in sleep on her mother's bosom.

"Poor little soul! she takes it hard," said Karen. "She's 'most as old as her mother now."

"You must get her to play with you, Asahel, as much as you can," Mrs. Landholm said in a whisper.

"Why mamma? aint she well?"

"I don't know -- I'm afraid she wont keep so."

"She's too good to be well," said Karen.

Which was something like true. Not in the vulgar prejudice, as Karen understood it. It was not Winifred's goodness which threatened her well-being; but the very delicate spirits which answered too promptly and strongly every touch; too strong in their acting for a bodily frame in like manner delicate.

CHAPTER XIII.

_Mess_. -- He hath indeed, better bettered expectation, than you must expect me to tell you how.

_Leon_. -- He hath an uncle here in Messina will be very much glad of it.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

Mr. Landholm came back in excellent spirits from s.h.a.garack.

The boys were well entered, Will Junior and Winthrop Soph.o.m.ore, and with very good credit to themselves. This had been their hope and intention, with the view of escaping the cost of one and two years of a college life. President Tuttle had received them very kindly, and everything was promising; the boys in good heart, and their father a proud man.

"Aint it queer, now," he said that evening of his return, as he sat warming his hands before the blaze, "aint it queer that those two fellows should go in like that -- one Junior and t'other Soph.o.m.ore, and when they've had no chance at all beforehand, you may say. Will has been a little better, to be sure; but how on earth Winthrop ever prepared himself I can't imagine. Why the fellow read off Greek there, and I didn't know he had ever seen a word of it."

"He used to learn up in his room o' nights, father," said Asahel.

"He used to carry his books to the field and study while the oxen were resting," said Winifred.

"He did! -- Well, _he'll_ get along. I aint afeard of him. He won't be the last man in the College, I guess."

"I guess not, father," said Asahel.

And now the months sped along with slow step, bringing toil- work for every day. It was cheerfully taken, and patiently wrought through; both at s.h.a.garack and in the little valley at home; but those were doing for themselves, and these were truly doing love's work, for them. All was for them. The crops were grown and the sheep sheared, that Rufus and Winthrop might, not eat and be clothed, -- that was a trifle, -- but have the full good of a College education. The burden and the joy of the toilers was the same. There were delightful speculations round the fireside about the professions the young men would choose; what profound lawyers, what brilliant ministers, should come forth from the learned groves of s.h.a.garack; perhaps, the father hinted, -- statesmen. There were letters from both the boys, to be read and re-read, and loved and prided in, as once those of Rufus. And clothes came home to mend, and new and nice knitted socks went now and then to replace the worn ones; but that commerce was not frequent nor large; where there was so little to make, it was of necessity that there should not be too much to mend; and alas! if s.h.i.+rt- bosoms gave out, the boys b.u.t.toned their coats over them and studied the harder. There were wants they did not tell; those that were guessed at, they knew, cost many a strain at home; and were not all met then. But they had not gone to s.h.a.garack to be' smart,' -- except mentally. That they were.

They were favourites, notwithstanding. Their superiors delighted in their intellectual prominence; their fellows forgave it. Quietly and irresistibly they had won to the head of their respective portions of the establishment, and stayed there; but the brilliancy and fire of Rufus and the manliness and temper of his brother gained them the general good-will, and general consent to the place from which it was impossible to dislodge them. Admiration first followed elder brother, and liking the younger; till it was found that Winthrop was as unconquerable as he was una.s.suming; as sure to be ready as to be right; and a very thorough and large respect presently fell into the train of his deservings. The faculty confided in him; his mates looked up to him. There was happily no danger of any affront to Winthrop which might have called Rufus's fire disagreeably into play. And for himself, he was too universally popular. If he was always in the foreground, everybody knew it was because he _could_ not be anywhere else.

If Winthrop was often brought into the foreground, on great occasions, every soul of them knew it was because no other would have dignified it so well. And besides, neither Winthrop nor Rufus forgot or seemed to forget the grand business for which he was there. With all their diversity of manner and disposition, each was intent on the same thing, -- to do what he had come there to do. Lasting eminence, not momentary pre- eminence, was what they sought; and that was an ambition which most of their compeers had no care to dispute with them.

"Poor fellows!" said a gay young money-purser; "they are working hard, I suppose, to get themselves a place in the eye of the world."

"Yes sir," said the President, who overheard this speech; -- "and they will by and by be where you can't see them."

They came home for a few weeks in the summer, to the unspeakable rejoicing of the whole family; but it was a break of light in a cloudy day; the clouds closed again. Only now and then a stray sunbeam of a letter found its way through.

One year had gone since the boys went to College, and it was late in the fall again. Mr. Underhill, who had been on a journey back into the country, came over one morning to Mr.

Landholm's.

"Good morning!" said the farmer. "Well, you've got back from your journey into the interior."

"Yes," said Mr. Underhill, -- "I've got back."

"How did you find things looking, out there?"

"Middling; -- their winter crops are higher up than yours and mine be."

"Ay. I suppose they've a little the start of us with the sun.

Did you come through s.h.a.garack?"

"Yes -- I stopped there a night."

"Did you see my boys?"

"Yes -- I see 'em."

"Well -- what did they say?" said the father, with his eye alive.

"Well -- not much," said Mr. Underhill.

"They were well, I suppose?"

"First-rate -- only Winthrop looked to me as if he was workin'

pretty hard. He's poorer, by some pounds, I guess, than he was when he was to hum last August."

"Didn't he look as usual?" said the father with a smothered anxiety.

"There wa'n't no other change in him, that I could see, of no kind. I didn't know as Rufus was going to know who I was, at first."

"He hasn't seen much of you for some time."

"No; and folks lose their memory," said Mr. Underhill. "I saw the -- what do you call him? -- the boss of the concern -- president! -- President Tuttle. I saw him and had quite a talk with him."

"The president! How came you to see him?"

"Well, 'taint much to see a man, I s'pose, -- is it? I took a notion I'd see him. I wanted to ask him how Will and Winthrop was a getting along. I told him I was a friend o' yourn."