“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 God 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? clearly?”

Another answer was upon Rose’s tongue, but she was cowed, and only responded a meek ‘yes.’  Elizabeth turned and walked off in stately fashion to the door of the kitchen.  The latch was raised, and then she let it fall again, came back, and stood again with a very different face and voice before her guest.

“Rose,” she said gravely, “I didn’t speak just in the best way to you; but I do not always recollect myself quickly enough.  You mustn’t say that sort of thing to me —­ I can’t bear it.  I am sorry for anything in my manner that was disagreeable to you just now.”

And before Rose had in the least made up her mind how to answer her, Elizabeth had quitted the room.

“She ain’t goin’ never!” said Clam, meeting and passing her mistress as she entered the kitchen. “I don’t believe!  She’s a goin’ to stay.”

Karen sat in her wonted rocking-chair before the fire, rocking a very little jog on her rockers.  Elizabeth came up to the side of the fireplace and stood there, silent and probably meditative.  She had at any rate forgotten Karen, when the old woman spoke, in a feebler voice than usual.