“You have a right to find fault with that,” said Winthrop still laughing, “for certainly it is a quality with which you never provoked anybody.”

Rufus seemed to be swallowing more provocation than he had expressed.

“What were you going to say of me, Rufus?” said the other seriously.

“Nothing —­”

“If you meant to say that I have not the same reason to be disappointed that you have, you are quite right.”

“I meant to say that; and I meant to say that you do not feel any disappointment as much as I do.”

Winthrop did not attempt to mend this position.  He only mended the fire.

“I wish you need not be disappointed!” the mother said sighing, looking at the fire with a very earnest face.

“My dear mother,” said Winthrop cheerfully, “it is no use to wish that in this world.”

“Yes it is —­ for there is a way to escape disappointments, —­ if you would take it.”

“To escape disappointments!” said Rufus.

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“Will you promise to follow it?”

“No mother,” he said, with again a singular play of light and shade over his face; —­ “for it will be sure to be some impossible way.  I mean —­ that an angel’s wings may get over the rough ground where poor human feet must stumble.”

How much the eyes were saying that looked at each other!

“There is provision even for that,” she answered. “’As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings,’ so the Lord declares he did once lead his people, —­ and he will again, —­ over rough ground or smooth.”

“My dear mother,” said Rufus, “you are very good, and I —­ am not very good.”

“I don’t know that that is much to the point,” she said smiling a little.

“Yes it is.”

“Do you mean to say you cannot go the road that others have gone, with the same help?”

“If I should say yes, I suppose you would disallow it,” he replied, beginning to walk up and down again; “but my consciousness remains the same.”

There was both trouble and dissatisfaction in his face.

“Will your consciousness stand this? —­ ’Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall; but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength:  they shall mount up with wings as eagles,’ —­ just what you were wishing for, Rufus; —­ ’they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.’”

He was silent a minute; and then replied, “That will always continue to be realized by some and not by others.”

“If you were as easily disheartened in another line, Rufus, you would never go through College.”

“My dear mother!” he said, “if you were to knock all my opinions to pieces with the Bible, it wouldn’t change me.”

“I know it!” she said.