“How ought I to enjoy so much more than she has?”

“Modestly, I should think.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you were to give the half of your fortune to one such, for instance,” he said with a slight smile, “do you fancy you would have adjusted two scales of the social balance to hang even?”

“No,” said Elizabeth, —­ “I suppose not.”

“You would have given away what she could not keep; you would have put out of your power what would not be in hers; and on the whole, she would be scantly a gainer and the world would be a loser.”

“Yet surely,” said Elizabeth, “something is due from my hand to hers.”

Her companion was quite silent, rather oddly, she thought; and her meditations came back for a moment from social to individual distinctions and differences.  Then, really in a puzzle as to the former matter, she repeated her question.

“But what can one do to them, then, Mr. Winthrop? —­ or what should be one’s aim?”

“Put them in the way of exercising the talent and industry and circumstance which have done such great things for us.”

“So that by the time they have the means they will be ready for them? —­ But dear me! that is a difficult matter!” said Elizabeth.

Her companion smiled a little.

“But they haven’t any talent, Mr. Landholm, —­ nor industry nor circumstance either.  To be sure those latter wants might be made up.”

“Most people have talent, of one sort or another,” said Winthrop.  “There’s a little specimen pretty well stocked.”

“Do you think so?”

“Try her.”

“I don’t know how to try her!” said Elizabeth.  “I wish you would.”

“I don’t know how, either,” said Winthrop.  “Circumstances have been doing it this some time.”

“I wish she hadn’t come in,” said Elizabeth.  “She has unsettled all my ideas.”

“They will rest the better for being unsettled.”

Elizabeth looked at him, but he did not acknowledge the look.  Presently, whether to try how benevolence worked, or to run away from her feeling of awkwardness, she got up and moved a few steps towards the place where the little blackey sat.

“Have you had dinner enough?” she said, standing and looking down upon her as a very disagreeable social curiosity.

“There aint no more, if I hain’t,” said the curiosity, with very dauntless eyes.

“Where do you get your dinner every day?”

“’Long street,” said the girl, turning her eyes away from Elizabeth and looking out into the storm.

“Do you often go without any?”

“When the folks don’t give me none.”

“Does that happen often?”

“They didn’t give me none to-day.”

“What do you do then?”

The eyes came back from the door to Elizabeth, and then went to Winthrop.

“What do you do then?” Elizabeth repeated.