“A trade! —­ May I ask what?” she said, with another surprised and inquisitive look.

“A sort of cobbling trade, Miss Elizabeth —­ the trade of the law.”

“What does the law cobble?”

“People’s name and estate.”

“Cobble?” said Elizabeth.  “What is the meaning of ‘cobble?’”

“I don’t recollect,” said Winthrop.  “What meaning do you give it, Miss Haye?”

“I thought it was a poor kind of mending.”

“I am afraid there is some of that work done in the profession,” said Winthrop smiling.  “Occasionally.  But it is the profession and not the law that is chargeable, for the most part.”

“I wouldn’t be a lawyer if that were not so,” said Elizabeth.  “I wouldn’t be a cobbler of anything.”

“To be anything else might depend on a person’s faculties.”

“I don’t care,” said Elizabeth, —­ “I would not be.  If I could not mend, I would let alone.  I wouldn’t cobble.”

“What if one could neither mend nor let alone?”

“One would have less power over himself than I have, or than you have, Mr. Landholm.”

“One thing at least doesn’t need cobbling,” he said with a smile.

“I never heard such a belittling character of the profession,” she went on.  “Your mother would have given it a very different one, Mr. Landholm.  She would have told you, ’Open thy mouth, judge’ —­ what is it? —­ ‘and plead the cause of the poor.’”

Whether it were the unexpected bringing up of his mother’s name, or the remembrance of her spirit, something procured Miss Elizabeth a quick little bright smile of answer, very different from anything she had had from Winthrop before.  So different, that her eyes went down to her work for several minutes, and she forgot everything else in a sort of wonder at the change and at the beauty of expression his face could put on.

“I didn’t find those words myself,” she added presently; —­ “a foolish man was shewing me the other day what he said was my verse in some chapter of Proverbs; and it happened to be that.”

But Winthrop’s answer went to something in her former speech, for it was made with a little breath of a sigh.

“I think Wut-a-qut-o is a pleasanter place than this, Miss Haye.”

“O, so do I! —­ at least —­ I don’t know that it signifies much to me what sort of a place I am in.  If I can only have the things I want around me, I don’t think I care much.”

“How many things do you want to be comfortable?”

“O, —­ books, —­ and the conveniences of life; and one or two friends that one cares about.”

“Cut off two of those preliminaries, —­ and which one would you keep for comfort, Miss Elizabeth?”

“Couldn’t do without either of ’em.  What’s become of my Merry-go-round, Mr. Winthrop?”

“It lies in the upper loft of the barn, with all the seams open.”

“Why?”