Chapter XI

Thou art a dew-drop which the morn brings forth, Ill fitted to sustain unkindly shocks, Or to be trailed along the soiling earth. WORDSWORTH.

One day in September it chanced that the house was left entirely to the womenkind. Even Asahel had been taken off by his father to help in some light matter which his strength was equal to. Rufus and Winthrop were on the upland, busy with the fall ploughing; and it fell to little Winifred to carry them their dinner.

The doors stood open, as usual, for it was still warm weather, and the rest of the family were all scattered at their several occupations. Miss Cadwallader on the bed, asleep; Karen somewhere in her distant premises out of hearing; Elizabeth sat with her book in the little passage-way by the open front door, screened however by another open door from the keeping- room where Mrs. Landholm sat alone at her sewing. By and by came in Winifred, through the kitchen. She came in and stood by the fireplace silent.

"Well, dear," said the mother looking up from her work, -- "did you find them?"

The child's answer was to spring to her side, throw her arms round her neck, and burst into convulsive tears.

"Winifred!" -- said Mrs. Landholm, putting an arm round the trembling child, and dropping her work, -- "what ails you, dear? -- tell me."

The little girl only clung closer to her neck and shook in a passion of feeling, speechless; till the mother's tone became alarmed and imperative.

"It's nothing, mother, it's nothing," she said, clasping her hard, -- "only -- only --"

The words were lost again in what seemed to be uncontrollable weeping.

"Only what, dear? -- what?"

"Winthrop was crying."

And having said that, scarce audibly, Winifred gave way and cried aloud.

"Winthrop crying! -- Nonsense, dear, -- you were mistaken."

"I wasn't -- I saw him."

"What was the matter?"

"I don't know."

"What made you think he was crying?"

"I _saw_ him!" cried the child, who seemed as if she could hardly bear the question and answer.

"You were mistaken, daughter; -- he would not have let you see him."

"He didn't -- he didn't know I was there."

"Where were you?"

"I was behind the fence --I stopped to look at him -- he didn't see me."

"Where was he?"

"He was ploughing."

"What did you see, Winifred?"

"I saw him -- oh mamma! -- I saw him put his hand to his eyes, -- and I saw the tears fall --"

Her little head was pressed against her mother's bosom, and many more tears fell for his than his had been.

Mrs. Landholm was silent a minute or two, stroking Winifred's head and kissing her.

"And when you went into the field, Winifred, -- how was he then?"

"Just as always."

"Where was Rufus?"

"He was on the other side."

Again Mrs. Landholm was silent.

"Cheer up, daughter," she said tenderly; -- "I think I know what was the matter with Winthrop, and it's nothing so very bad -- it'll be set right by and by, I hope. Don't cry any more about it."

"What _is_ the matter with him, mamma?" said the child looking up with eyes of great anxiety and intentness.

"He wants to read and to learn, and I think it troubles him that he can't do that."

"Is that it? But mamma, can't he?" said his sister with a face not at all lightened of its care.

"He can't just now very well --you know he must help papa on the farm."

"But can't he by and by, mamma?"

"I hope so; -- we will try to have him," said the mother, while tears gathered now in her grave eyes as her little daughter's were dried. "But you know, dear Winnie, that God knows best what is good for dear Governor, and for us; and we must just ask him to do that, and not what we fancy."

"But mother," said the little girl, "isn't it right for me to ask him to let Winthrop go to school and learn, as he wants to?"

"Yes, daughter," said the mother, bending forward till her face rested on the little brow upturned to her, and the gathered tears falling, -- "let us thank God that we may ask him anything -- we have that comfort -- 'In everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving,' we may make our requests known unto him -- only we must be willing after all to have him judge and choose for us."

The child clasped her mother's neck and kissed her again and again.

"Then I won't cry any more, mamma, now that I know what the matter is."

But Elizabeth noticed when Winthrop came in at night, how his little sister attached herself to his side, and with what a loving lip and longing eye.

"Your little sister is very fond of you," she could not help saying, one moment when Winifred had run off.

"Too fond," he said.

"She has a most sensitive organization," said Rufus. "She is too fond of everything that she loves."

"She is not too fond of _you_," thought Elizabeth, as Winifred came back to her other brother, with some little matter which she thought concerned her and him. "'Sensitive organization!' What queer people these are!"

They were so queer, that Elizabeth thought she would like to see what was the farming work with which their hands were filled and which swallowed up the daily life of these people; and the next day she proposed to go with Winifred when she went the rounds again with her baskets of dinner. Miss Cadwallader was glad of any thing that promised a little variety, so she very willingly made one.

It was a pleasant September day, the great heats gone, a gentler state of the air and the light; summer was just falling gracefully into her place behind the advancing autumn. It was exceeding pleasant walking, through the still air, and Elizabeth and her cousin enjoyed it. But little Winifred was loaded down with two baskets, one in each hand. They went so for some time.

"Winnie," said Elizabeth at last, "give me one of those -- I'll carry it."

"O no!" said the little girl looking up in some surprise, -- "they're not very heavy -- I don't want any help."

"Give it to me; you shan't carry 'em both."

"Then take the other one," said Winifred, -- "thank you, Miss Elizabeth -- I'm just going to take this in to father, in the field here."

"In the field where? I don't see anybody."

"O because the corn is so high. You'll see 'em directly. This is the bend-meadow lot. Father's getting in the corn."

A few more steps accordingly brought them to a cleared part of the field, where the tall and thick cornstalks were laid on the ground. There, at some distance, they saw the group of workers, picking and husking the yellow corn, the farm wagon standing by. Little Winifred crept under the fence and went to them with her basket, and her companions stood at the fence looking. There were Mr. Landholm, and Asahel, Mr. Doolittle and another man, seen here and there through the rows of corn. Asahel sat by a heap, husking; Mr. Landholm was cutting down stalks; and bushel baskets stood about, empty, or with their yellow burden shewing above the top.

"I should think farmer's work would be pleasant enough," Rose remarked, as they stood leaning over the fence.

"It looks pretty," said Elizabeth. "But I shouldn't like to pull corn from morning to night; and I don't believe you would."

"O, but men have to work, you know," said Miss Cadwallader.

Winifred came back to them and they went on their way, but Elizabeth would not let her take the basket again. It was a pretty way; past the spring where Sam Doolittle had pushed Winthrop in and Rufus had avenged him; and then up the rather steep woody road that led to the plain of the tableland. The trees stood thick, but the ascent was so rapid that they could only in places hinder the view; and as the travellers went up, the river spread itself out more broad, and Shahweetah lay below them, its boundaries traced out as on a map. A more commanding view of the opposite shore, a new sight of the southern mountains, a deeper draught from nature's free cup, they gained as they went up higher and higher. Elizabeth had seen it often before; she looked and drank in silence; though to-day September was peeping between the hills and shaking his sunny hair in the vallies; -- not crowned like the receding summer with insupportable brilliants.

"I am sorry papa is coming so soon!" said Elizabeth, after she had stood awhile near the top, looking.

"Why I thought you wanted to go home," said her cousin.

"So I do; -- but I don't want to go away from here."

"What do you want to stay for?"

"It is so lovely! --"

"_What_ is so lovely?" asked Miss Cadwallader with a tone of mischief.

Elizabeth turned away and began to walk on, an expression of great disgust upon her face.

"I wish I was blessed with a companion who had three grains of wit!" she said.

Miss Cadwallader's light cloud of ill-humour, it seldom looked more, came on at this; and she pouted till they reached the fence of the ploughed field where the young men were at work. Here Elizabeth gave up her basket to Winifred; and creeping through the bars they all made for the nearest plough. It happened to be Winthrop's.

"What's the matter?" said he as they came up. "Am I wanted for guard or for oarsman?"

"Neither -- for nothing," said Elizabeth. "Go on, won't you? I want to see what you are doing."

"Ploughing?" said he. "Have you never seen it?"

He went on and they walked beside him; Winifred laughing, while the others watched, at least Elizabeth did minutely, the process of the share in turning up the soil.

"Is it hard work?" she asked.

"No, not here; not when the business is understood."

"Like rowing, I suppose there is a sleight in it?"

"A good deal so."

"What has been growing here?"

"Corn."

"And now when you get to the fence you must just turn about and make another ridge close along by this one?"

"Yes."

"Goodness! -- What's going to be sown here?"

"Wheat."

"And all this work is just to make the ground soft for the seeds!"

"Why wouldn't it do just as well to make holes in the ground and put the seeds in?" said Miss Cadwallader; -- "without taking so much trouble?"

"It is not merely to make the ground soft," said Winthrop gravely, while Elizabeth's bright eye glanced at him to mark his behaviour. "The soil might be broken without being so thoroughly turned. If you see, Miss Elizabeth, -- the slice taken off by the share is laid bottom upwards."

"I see -- well, what is that for?"

"To give it the benefit of the air."

"The benefit of the air! --"

"The air has a sort of enriching and quickening influence upon the soil; -- if the land has time and chance, it can get back from the air a great deal of what it lost in the growing of crops."

"The soil loses, then?"

"Certainly; it loses a great deal to some crops."

"What, for instance?"

"Wheat is a great feeder," said Winthrop; "so is Indian corn."

"By its being 'a great feeder', you mean that it takes a great deal of the nourishing quality of the soil?"

"Yes."

"How many things I do not know!" said Elizabeth wistfully.

In the little pause which ensued, Winifred took her chance to say,

"Here's your dinner, Governor."

"Then when the ground is ploughed, is there anything else to be done before it is ready for the wheat?"

"Only harrowing."

Elizabeth mused a little while.

"And how much will the wheat be worth, Winthrop, from all this field?"

"Perhaps two hundred dollars; or two hundred and fifty."

"Two hundred and fifty. -- And then the expenses are something."

"Less to us," said Winthrop, "because we do so much of the labour ourselves."

"Here's your dinner, Winthrop," said Winifred; -- "shall I set it under the tree?"

"Yes -- no, Winifred, -- you may leave it here."

"Then stop and eat it now, Governor, won't you? -- don't wait any longer."

He gave his little sister a look and a little smile, that told of an entirely other page of his life, folded in with the ploughing experience; a word and look very different from any he had given his questioners. Other indications Elizabeth's eye had caught under 'the tree,' -- a single large beech tree which stood by the fence some distance off. Two or three books lay there.

"Do you find time for reading here in the midst of your ploughing, Mr. Winthrop?"

"Not much -- sometimes a little in the noon-spell," he answered, colouring slightly.

They left him and walked on to visit Rufus. Elizabeth led near enough to the tree to make sure, what her keen eye knew pretty well already, that one of the books was the very identical old brown-covered Greek and Latin dictionary that she had seen in the boat. She passed on and stood silent by Rufus's plough.

"Well, we've come to see you, Rufus," said Miss Cadwallader.

"I thought you had come to see my brother," said he.

"I didn't come to see either one or the other," said Elizabeth. "I came to see what you are doing."

"I hope you are gratified," said the young man a little tartly.

"What's the use of taking so much trouble to break up the ground?" said Rose.

"Because, unfortunately, there is no way of doing it without trouble," said Rufus, looking unspoken bright things into the furrow at his feet.

"But why couldn't you just make holes in the ground and put the seed in?"

"For a reason that you will appreciate, Miss Rose, if you will put on your bonnet the wrong way, with the front precisely where the back should be."

"I don't understand," -- said the young lady, with something of an inclination to pout, Will's face was so full of understanding.

"It isn't necessary that you should understand such a business," he said, becoming grave. "It is our fortune to do it, and it is yours to have nothing to do with it, -- which is much better."

"I have the happiness to disagree with you, Mr. Rufus," said Elizabeth.

"In what?"

"In thinking that we have nothing to do with it, or that it is not necessary we should understand it."

"I don't see the happiness, Miss Elizabeth; for your disagreement imposes upon you a necessity which I should think better avoided."

"Which ploughs the best, Rufus?" said Rose; -- "you or Winthrop?"

"There is one kind of ploughing," said Rufus biting his lip, "which Winthrop doesn't understand at all."

"And you understand them all, I suppose?"

He didn't answer.

"What is the kind he does not understand, Mr. Rufus?" said Elizabeth.

"Ploughing with another man's heifer."

"Why, what's that, Rufus? I don't know what you mean," said Miss Cadwallader.

No more did Elizabeth, and she had no mind to engage the speaker on unequal terms. She called her cousin off and took the road home, leaving Winifred to speak to her brother and follow at her leisure.

"How different those two people are," she remarked.

"Which one do you like best?"

"Winthrop, a great deal."

"I know you like him the best," said her cousin wilfully.

"Of course you do, for I tell you."

"_I_ don't. I like the other a great deal the best."

"He wasn't very glad to see us," said Elizabeth.

"Why wasn't he? Yes he was. He was as glad as the other one."

"The other one didn't care twopence about it."

"And what did this one care?"

"He cared, --" said Elizabeth.

"Well, I like he should -- the other one don't care about anything."

"Yes he does," said Elizabeth.

"I shall give Mr. Haye a hint --that he had better not send you here another summer," said Rose wittily; -- "there is no telling what anybody will care for. I wouldn't have thought it of you."

"Can't you be sensible about anything!" said Elizabeth, with a sort of contemptuous impatience. "If I had anybody else to talk to, I would not give you the benefit of my thoughts. I tell them to you because I have nobody else; and I really wish you could make up your mind to answer me as I deserve; -- or not at all."

"You are a strange girl," said Miss Cadwallader, when they had walked in company with ill-humour as far as the brow of the hill.

"I am glad you think so."

"You are a great deal too old for your age."

"I am not!" said Elizabeth, who shading her eyes with her hand had again stopped to look over the landscape. "I should be very sorry to think that. You are two years older, Rose, in body, than I am; and ten years older in spirit, this minute."

"Does the spirit grow old faster than the body?" said Rose laughing.

"Yes -- sometimes. -- How pretty all that is!"

'That' meant the wide view, below and before them, of river and hill and meadow. It was said with a little breath of a sigh, and Elizabeth turned away and began to go down the road.

Winifred gave it as her opinion to her mother privately, after they got home, that Miss Haye was a very ill-behaved young lady.