“What are you thinking about, Winthrop?” she said softly, bending down near enough to lay a loving hand on his brow.

He looked up quickly and smiled, one of those smiles which his mother saw oftener than anybody, but she not often, —­ a smile very revealing in its character, —­ and said,

“Don’t ask me, mamma.”

“Who should ask you, if not I?”

“There is no need to trouble you with it, mother.”

“You can’t help that —­ it will trouble me now, whether I know it or not; for I see it is something that troubles you.”

“You have too good eyes, mother,” he said smiling again, but a different smile.

“My ears are just as good.”

“Mamma, I don’t want to displease you,” he said looking up.

“You can’t do that —­ you never did yet, Winthrop, my boy,” she answered, bending down again and this time her lips to his forehead.  “Speak —­ I am not afraid.”

He was silent a moment, and then mastering himself as it were with some difficulty, he said,

“Mamma, I want to be somebody!”

The colour flushed back and forth on his face, once and again, but beyond that, every feature kept its usual calm.

A shadow fell on his mother’s face, and for several minutes she stood and he sat in perfect silence; he not stirring his eyes from the fire, she not moving hers from him.  When she spoke, the tone was changed, and though quiet he felt the trouble in it.

“What sort of a somebody, Winthrop?”

“Mamma,” he said, “I can’t live here!  I want to know more and to be more than I can here.  I can, I am sure, if I only can find a way; and I am sure I can find a way.  It is in me, and it will come out.  I don’t want anybody to give me any help, nor to think of me; I can work my own way, if you’ll only let me and not be troubled about me.”

He had risen from his chair to speak this.  His mother kept her face in the shadow and said quietly,

“What way will you take, Winthrop?”

“I don’t know, ma’am, yet; I haven’t found out.”

“Do you know the difficulties in the way?”

“No, mother.”

It was said in the tone not of proud but of humble determination.

“My boy, they are greater than you think for, or than I like to think of at all.”

“I dare say, mother.”

“I don’t see how it is possible for your father to do more than put Will in the way he has chosen.”

“I know that, mother,” Winthrop replied, with again the calm face but the flushing colour; —­ “he said yesterday —­ I heard him —­”

“What?”

“He said he would try to make a man of Rufus!  I must do it for myself, mother.  And I will.”

His mother hardly doubted it.  But she sighed as she looked, and sighed heavily.

“I ought to have made you promise not to be troubled, mamma,” he said with a relaxing face.

“I am more careful of my promises than that,” she answered.  “But, Winthrop, my boy, what do you want to do first?”