“Well!” said Rufus at last getting up with a start, “I will relieve you!  I am sorry I troubled you needlessly —­ I shall know better than to do it again! —­”

He was rushing off, but before he reached the door Winthrop had planted himself in front of it.

“Stand out of my way.”

“I am not in it.  Go back, Will.”

“I won’t, if you please. —­ I’ll thank you to let me open the door.”

“I will not.  Go back to your seat, Rufus —­ I want to speak to you.”

“I was under the impression you did not,” said Rufus, standing still.  “I waited for you to speak.”

“It is safe to conclude that when a man makes you wait, he has something to say.”

“You are more certain of it when he lets you know what it is,” said Rufus.

“Provided he knows first himself.”

“How long does it take you to find out what you have to say?” said Rufus, returning to his ordinary manner and his seat at once.  The fire seemed to have thrown itself off in that last jet of flame.

“I sometimes find I have too much; and then there is apt to be a little delay of choice.”

“A delay to choose? —­ or a choice of delay?” said Rufus.

“Sometimes one and sometimes the other.”

One or the other seemed still in force with Winthrop’s present matter of speech, for he came before the fire and stood mending it, and said nothing.

“Winthrop,” said Rufus gravely, “have you any particular reason to decline doing this business for me?”

Winthrop hesitated slightly, and then came forth one of those same “no’s,” that Winnie knew by heart.

“Have you any particular reason to dislike it?”

“Yes.  They were my friends once.”

“But is your friendship for them stronger than for anybody else?”

“It does not stand in the way of my duty to you, Will.”

“Your duty to me, —­” said the other.

“Yes.  I cannot in this instance call it pleasure.”

It was the turn of Rufus to hesitate; for the face of his brother expressed an absence of pleasure that to him, in the circumstances, was remarkable.

“Then you do not refuse to undertake this job for me?”

“I will do what I can,” said Winthrop, working at a large forestick on the fire.  How Winnie wished he would let it alone, and place himself so that she could see him.

“And don’t you think there is good prospect of our succeeding?”

“If Chancery don’t give it you, I’ll take it to the Court of Errors,” said Winthrop, arranging the log to his satisfaction, and then putting the rest of the fire in order.

“I’m sorry to give you trouble, Governor,” his brother said thoughtfully.

“I’m sorry you’ve got it to give, Will.”

But Rufus went on looking into the fire, and seeming to get deeper into the depths of something less bright as he looked.