“Can’t you be sensible about anything!” said Elizabeth, with a sort of contemptuous impatience.  “If I had anybody else to talk to, I would not give you the benefit of my thoughts.  I tell them to you because I have nobody else; and I really wish you could make up your mind to answer me as I deserve; —­ or not at all.”

“You are a strange girl,” said Miss Cadwallader, when they had walked in company with ill-humour as far as the brow of the hill.

“I am glad you think so.”

“You are a great deal too old for your age.”

“I am not!” said Elizabeth, who shading her eyes with her hand had again stopped to look over the landscape.  “I should be very sorry to think that.  You are two years older, Rose, in body, than I am; and ten years older in spirit, this minute.”

“Does the spirit grow old faster than the body?” said Rose laughing.

“Yes —­ sometimes. —­ How pretty all that is!”

‘That’ meant the wide view, below and before them, of river and hill and meadow.  It was said with a little breath of a sigh, and Elizabeth turned away and began to go down the road.

Winifred gave it as her opinion to her mother privately, after they got home, that Miss Haye was a very ill-behaved young lady.

CHAPTER XII.

The thing we long for, that we are,
For one transcendent moment,
Before the Present, poor and bare,
Can make its sneering comment. 
Still through our paltry stir and strife
Glows down the wished Ideal,
And Longing moulds in clay what Life
Carves in the marble Real. 
LOWELL.

Mr. Haye came the latter part of September to fetch his daughter and his charge home; and spent a day or two in going over the farm and making himself acquainted with the river.  He was a handsome man, and very comfortable in face and figure.  The wave of prosperity had risen up to his very lips, and its ripples were forever breaking there in a succession of easy smiles.  He made himself readily at home in the family; with a well-mannered sort of good-humour, which seemed to belong to his fine broadcloth and beautifully plaited ruffles.  Mr. Landholm was not the only one who enjoyed his company.  Between him and Rufus and Miss Cadwallader and Mr. Haye, the round game of society was kept up with great spirit.

One morning Mr. Haye was resting himself with a book in his daughter’s room; he had had a long tramp with the farmer.  Rose went out in search of something more amusing.  Elizabeth sat over her book for awhile, then looked up.

“Father,” she said, “I wish you could do something to help that young man.”

“What young man?”

“Winthrop Landholm.”

“What does he want help for?”

“He is trying to get an education —­ trying hard, I fancy,” said Elizabeth, putting down her book and looking at her father, —­ “he wants to make himself something more than a farmer.”