“Do you suppose she has six miles to go?” said Elizabeth.

“No.”

“I thought you answered as if you believed her when she said so.”

“It isn’t best to tell all one’s thoughts,” said Winthrop smiling.

Elizabeth went back to her box seat.

“I wish the rain would let us go home too,” she said.

“Your wishes are so accustomed to smooth travelling, they don’t know what to make of a hindrance,” said her companion.

Elizabeth knew it was true, and it vexed her.  It seemed to imply that she had not been tried by life, and that nobody knew what she would be till she was tried.  That was a very disagreeable thought.  There again he had the advantage of her.  Nothing is reliable that is not tried.  “And yet,” she said to herself, “I am reliable.  I know I am.”

“What can anybody’s wish make of a hindrance?” was her reply.

“Graff it in well, and anybody can make a pretty large thorn of it.”

“Why Mr. Winthrop! —­ but I mean, in the way of dealing with it pleasantly?”

“Pleasantly? —­ I don’t know,” said he; “unless they could get my mother’s recipe.”

“What does her wish do with a hindrance?”

“It lies down and dies,” he said, with a change of tone which shewed whither his thoughts had gone.

“I think I never wish mine to do that,” said Elizabeth.

“What then?  Remember you are speaking of hindrances absolute —­ that cannot be removed.”

“But Mr. Winthrop, do you think it is possible for one’s wish to lie down and die so?”

“If I had not seen it, I might say that it was not.”

“I don’t understand it —­I don’t know what to make of it,” said Elizabeth.  “I don’t think it is possible for mine.”

Winthrop’s thoughts went back a moment to the sweet calm brow, the rested face, that told of its truth and possibility in one instance..  He too did not understand it, but he guessed where the secret might lie.

“It must be a very happy faculty,” said Elizabeth; —­ “but it seems to me —­ of course it is not so in that instance, —­ but in the abstract, it seems to me rather tame; —­ I don’t like it.  I have no idea of giving up!”

“There is no need of your giving up, in this case,” said Winthrop.  “Do you see that sunshine?”

“And the rainbow!” said Elizabeth.

She sprang to the door; and they both stood looking, while the parting gifts of the clouds were gently reaching the ground, and the sun taking a cleared place in the western heaven, painted over against them, broad and bright, the promissory token that the earth should be overwhelmed with the waters no more.  The rain-drops glittered as they fell; the grass looked up in refreshed green where the sun touched it; the clouds were driving over from the west, leaving broken fragments behind them upon the blue; and the bright and sweet colours of the rainbow swept their circle in the east and almost finished it in the grass at the door of the blacksmith’s shop.  It was a lovely show of beauty that is as fresh the hundredth time as the first.  But though Elizabeth looked at it and admired it, she was thinking of something else.