CHAPTER XI.

When cockleshells turn silver bells,
When wine dreips red frae ilka tree,
When frost and snaw will warm us a’,
Then I’ll come doun an’ dine wi’ thee. 
JEANNIE DOUGLASS.

The sun was low, near Wut-a-qut-o’s brow, when at last slowly and lingeringly, and with feet that, as it were, spurned each step they made, Elizabeth took her way to the house.  But no sooner did her feet touch the doorstep than her listless and sullen mood gave place to a fit of lively curiosity —­ to see what Winthrop had done.  She turned to the left into the old keeping-room.

It had been very bare in the morning.  Now, it was stocked with neat cane-bottomed chairs, of bird’s-eye maple.  In the middle of the floor rested an ambitious little mahogany table with claw feet.  A stack of green window-blinds stood against the pier between the windows, and at the bottom on the floor lay a paper of screws and hinges.  The floor was still bare, to be sure, and so was the room, but yet it looked hopeful compared with the morning’s condition.  Elizabeth stood opening her eyes in a sort of mazed bewilderment; then hearing a little noise of hammering in the other part of the house, she turned and crossed over to the east room —­ her sleeping-room of old and now.  She went within the door and stood fast.

Her feet were upon a green carpet which covered the room.  Round about were more of the maple chairs, looking quite handsome on their green footing.  There was a decent dressing-table and chest of drawers of the same wood, in their places; and a round mahogany stand which seemed to be meant for no particular place but to do duty anywhere.  And in the corner of the room was Winthrop, with Mrs. Nettley and Clam for assistants, busy putting up a bedstead.  He looked up slightly from his work when Elizabeth shewed herself, but gave her no further attention.  Clam grinned.  Mrs. Nettley was far too intent upon holding her leg of the bedstead true and steady, to notice or know anything else whatever.

Elizabeth looked for a moment, without being able to utter a word; and then turned about and went and stood at the open door, her breast heaving thick and her eyes too full to see a thing before her.  Then she heard Winthrop pass behind her and go into the other room.  Elizabeth followed quickly.  He had stooped to the paper of screws, but stood up when she came in, to speak to her.

“I am ashamed of myself for having so carelessly brought you to a dismantled house.  I had entirely forgotten that it was so, in this degree, —­ though I suppose I must at some time have heard it.”

“It would have made no difference, —­” said Elizabeth, and said no more.

“I will return to the city to-morrow, and send you up immediately whatever you will give order for.  It can be here in a very few days.”

Elizabeth looked at the maple chairs and the mahogany table, and she could not speak, for her words choked her.  Winthrop stooped again to his paper of screws and hinges and began turning them over.