“At what times, ma’am?” said Winthrop.

He spoke with a straightforward simplicity which a little daunted her.

“O,” she said colouring, “come when you have an hour to spare —­ any time when you have nothing better to do.”

“I will come then,” he said smiling.

CHAPTER XVII.

Now he weighs time,
Even to the utmost grain. 
KING HENRY V.

“Mannahatta, Dec. —­ 1813.

“My dear friends at home,

“I am as well and as happy as I can be anywhere away from you.  That to be sure is but a modicum of happiness and good condition —­ very far from the full perfection which I have known is possible; but you will all be contented, will you not, to hear that I have so much, and that I have no more? I don’t know —­ I think of your dear circle at home —­ and though I cannot wish the heaven over your heads to be a whit less bright, I cannot help wishing that you may miss one constellation.  You can’t have any more than that from poor human nature —­ selfish in the midst of its best generosity.  And yet, mother and Winifred, your faces rise up to shame me; and I must correct my speech and say man’s nature; I do believe that some at least of your side of the world are made of better stuff than mine.

“‘All are not such.’

“But you want to hear of me rather than of yourselves, and I come back to where I began.

“I went to see Mr. De Wort the day after I reached here.  I like him very well.  He received me politely, and very handsomely waived the customary fee ($250) and admitted me to the privileges of his office upon working terms.  So I am working now, for him and for myself, as diligently as I ever worked in my life —­ in a fair way to be a lawyer, Winnie.  By day engrossing deeds and copying long-winded papers, about the quarrels and wrongs of Mr. A. and Mr. B. —­ and at night digging into parchment-covered books, a dryer and barrener soil than any near Wut-a-qut-o or on the old mountain itself, and which must nevertheless be digged into for certain dry and musty fruits of knowledge to be fetched out of them.  I am too busy to get the blues, but when I go out to take an exercise walk now and then at dusk or dawn, I do wish I could transport myself to the neighbourhood of that same mountain, and handle the axe till I had filled mother’s fireplace, or take a turn in the barn at father’s wheat or flax.  I should accomplish a good deal before you were up; but I wouldn’t go away without looking in at you.

“I am in the same house where Rufus lived when he was in Mannahatta, with his friend Mr. Inchbald; and a kinder friend I do not wish for.  He is an Englishman —­ a fine-looking and fine-hearted fellow —­ ready to do everything for me, and putting me upon terms almost too easy for my comfort.  He is a miniature painter, by profession, but I fear does not make much of a living.  That does not