Elizabeth sat still and did not look at her book.  Miss Cadwallader hugged herself in her wrapper and muttered under her breath something about “stupid.”

“Are your feet warm?” said Elizabeth.

“Yes.”

“Then come! —­”

Within their own room, she shut the door and without speaking went about with a certain quick energy which she accompanied with more than her usual dignified isolation.

“Who are you angry with now?” said her cousin.

“Nobody.”

“Yes you are, you are angry with me.”

“It is of no sort of use to be angry with you.”

“Why?”

“Because I believe you could not be wise if you were to try.”

“I think it is my place to be angry now,” said Miss Rose; giving no other indication of it however than a very slight pouting of her under lip.  “And all because I said ‘stupid!’ Well I don’t care —­ they are all stupid —­Rufus was as stupid this afternoon as he could be; and there is no need, for he can be anything else.  He was as stupid as he could be.”

“What have you to do with Rufus?” said Elizabeth stamping slightly.

“Just what you have to do with Winthrop —­ amuse myself.”

“You know I don’t!” said Elizabeth.  “How dare you say it!  I do not choose to have such things said to me.  You know, if that was all, that Winthrop does not amuse anybody —­ nobody ever sees him from meal-time to meal-time.  You find Rufus very amusing, and he can talk very well, considering; but nobody knows whether the other one can be amusing, for ho never tried, so far as I know.”

“I know,” said her cousin; “they are a stupid set, all of them.”

“They are not a stupid set,” said Elizabeth; “there is not a stupid one of them, from the father down.  They are anything but stupid.”

“What does Winthrop do with himself?  Rufus isn’t so busy.”

“I don’t know,” said Elizabeth; “and I am sure I don’t care.  He goes for eels, I think, every other night.  He has been after them to-night.  He is always after birds or fish or rabbits, when he isn’t on the farm.”

“I wonder what people find so much to do on a farm.  I should think they’d grow stupid. —­ It is funny,” said Miss Cadwallader as she got into bed, “how people in the country always think you must read the Bible.”

Elizabeth lay a little while thinking about it and then fell asleep.  She had slept, by the mind’s unconscious measurement, a good while, when she awoke again.  It startled her to see that a light came flickering through the cracks of her door from the kitchen.  She slipped out of bed and softly and quickly lifted the latch.  But it was not the house on fire.  The light came from Mrs. Landholm’s candle dying in its socket; beyond the candle, on the hearth, was the mistress of the house on her knees.  Elizabeth would have doubted even then what she was