This was just after the fall of the leaf.  The winter was a mild one, and so fruitful in business belonging to the farm that Winthrop’s own private concerns had little chance.  Latin was pushed a little, and Greek entered upon; neither of them could be forwarded much, with all the stress that hope or despair could make.  Snowstorm, and thaw, and frost, and sun, came after and after each other, and as surely and constantly the various calls upon Winthrop’s time; and every change seemed to put itself between him and his books.  Mr. Landholm was kept late in Vantassel, by a long session, and the early spring business came all upon his son’s hands.

Letters were rather infrequent things in those days, waiting, as they usually did, for private carriage.  It was near the end of March that the rare event of two letters in one day happened to the quiet little household.

Winthrop got one at the post-office, with the Vantassel mark; and coming home found his mother sitting before the fire with another in her hand, the matter of which she was apparently studying.

“A letter, mamma?”

“Yes —­ from Will.”

“How did it come?”

“It came by Mr. Underhill.”

“What’s the matter? what does he say?”

“Not much —­ you can see for yourself.”

“And here’s one from papa.”

Mrs. Landholm took it, and Winthrop took Rufus’s.

“Little River, March 18, 1809.

“What does papa mean to do?  Something must be done, for I cannot stay here for ever; neither in truth do I wish it.  If I am ever to make anything, it is time now.  I am twenty-one, and in mind and body prepared, I think, for any line of enterprise to which fortune may call me.  Or if nothing can be done with me, —­ if what has been spent must be thrown away —­ it is needless to throw away any more; it would be better for me to come home and settle down to the lot for which I seemed to be born.  Nothing can be gained by waiting longer, but much lost.

“I am not desponding, but seriously this transition life I am leading at present is not very enlivening.  I am neither one thing nor the other; I am in a chrysalis state, which is notoriously a dull one; and I have the further aggravation, which I suppose never occurs to the nymph bona fide, of a miserable uncertainty whether my folded-up wings are those of a purple butterfly or of a poor drudge of a beetle.  Besides, it is conceivable that the chrysalis may get weary of his case, and mine is not a silken one.  I have been here long enough.  My aunt Landholm is very kind; but I think she would like an increase of her household accommodations, and also that she would prefer working it by the rule of subtraction rather than by the more usual and obvious way of addition.  She is a good soul, but really I believe her larder contains nothing but pork, and her pantry nothing but —­ pumpkins!  She has actually contrived,