“Winnie,” said he one evening, when he came home and found her lying on her couch as usual, —­ “how would you like to go up and pay Karen a visit?”

“Karen?” —­ said Winnie, —­ “where?”

“At home. —­ At Wut-a-qut-o.”

“Wut-a-qut-o!” said Winnie; —­ “is Karen there?  I thought Shahweetah was sold.”

“It isn’t sold yet —­ it won’t be till September —­ and Karen is there yet, keeping house with her brother Anderese.”

“Anderese! —­ is old Anderese there?” said Winnie.  “O I should like to go, Governor!” she said raising herself on her elbow.  “Can we?”

“Yes, if you like.  Hildebrand Cowslip is down here with his father’s sloop —­ how would you like to go up in her?”

“In the sloop? —­ O how good!” said Winnie bringing her thin hands together.  “Can we?  But dear Governor, you can’t be away?”

“Yes —­ just as well as not.  There isn’t much doing in August —­ everybody takes a resting time; and so you and I will, Winnie,” said he, bending down to kiss her.

Winnie looked up at him gratefully and lovingly with her wistful large eyes, the more expressive from the setting of illness and weakness in the face.

“I’d like you to have a rest, dear Governor.”

He stood stroking back the ringlets from the thin blue-veined temple.

“Wouldn’t it do you good to see Wut-a-qut-o again?”

“O I am sure it would! —­ And you too, wouldn’t it?”

“I am good enough already,” said Winthrop looking down at her.

“Too good,” said Winnie looking up at him.  “I guess you want pulling down!”

She had learned to read his face so well, that it was with a pang she saw the look with which he turned off to his work.  A stranger could not have seen in it possibly anything but his common grave look; to Winnie there was the slight shadow of something which seemed to say the “pulling down” had not to be waited for.  So slight that she could hardly tell it was there, yet so shadowy she was sure it had come from something.  It was not in the look merely —­ it was in the air, —­ it was, she did not know what, but she felt it and it made her miserable.  She could not see it after the first minute; his face and shoulders, as he sat reading his papers, had their usual calm stability; Winnie lay looking at him, outwardly calm too, but mentally tossing and turning.

She could not bear it.  She crawled off her couch and came and sat down at his feet, throwing her arms around his knee and looking up at him.

“Dear Governor! —­ I wish you had whatever would do you good!”

“The skill of decyphering would do me a little good just now,” said her brother.  She could detect nothing peculiar in look or word, though Winnie’s eyes did their best.

“But somehow I don’t feel as if you had,” she went on to say.

“Where is your faith?” —­ he said quietly, as he made a note in the margin of the paper he was reading.  Winnie could make nothing of him.