better to sit at her father’s board end than at either end of the highest form at Shagarack.  She knitted, socks and stockings, all the day long, when her mother did not want her; but into them she dropped so many tears that the wool was sometimes wet with them; and as Karen said, half mournfully and half to hide her mourning, “they wouldn’t want shrinking.”  Winthrop came in one day and found her crying in the chimney corner, and taking the half-knit stocking from her hand he felt her tears in it.

“My little Winnie! —­” he said, in that voice with which he sometimes spoke his whole heart.

Winifred sprang to his neck and closing her arms there, wept as if she would weep her life away.  And Rufus who had followed Winthrop in, stood beside them, tear after tear falling quietly on the hearth.  Winthrop’s tears nobody knew but Winifred, and even in the bitterness of her distress she felt and tasted them all.

The November days seemed to grow short and drear with deeper shadows than common, as the last were to see the boys go off for Shagarack.  The fingers that knitted grew more tremulous, and the eyes that wrought early and late were dim with more than weariness; but neither fingers nor eyes gave themselves any holiday.  The work was done at last; the boxes were packed; those poor little boxes!  They were but little, and they had seen service already.  Of themselves they told a story.  And they held now, safely packed up, the College fit-out of the two young men.

“I wonder if Shagarack is a very smart place, mamma?” said Winifred, as she crouched beside the boxes watching the packing.

“Why?”

Winifred was silent and looked thoughtfully into the box.

“Rufus and Governor will not care if it is.”

“They needn’t care,” said Asahel, who was also at the box-side.  “They can bear to be not quite so smart as other folks.  Mr. Haye said he never saw such a pair of young men; and I guess he didn’t.”

Winifred sighed and still looked into the box, with a face that said plainly she would like to have them smart.

“O well, mamma,” she said presently, “I guess they will look pretty nice, with all those new things; and the socks are nice, aren’t they?  If it was only summer —­ nobody can look nicer than Winthrop when he has his white clothes on.”

“It will be summer by and by,” said Mrs. Landholm.

The evening came at last; the supper was over; and the whole family drew together round the fire.  It was not a very talkative evening.  They looked at each other more than they spoke; and they looked at the fire more than they did either.  At last Mr. Landholm went off, recommending to all of them to go to bed.  Asahel, who had been in good spirits on the matter all along, followed his father.  The mother and daughter and the two boys were left alone round the kitchen fire.

They were more silent than ever then, for a good space; and four pair of eyes were bent diligently on the rising and falling flames.  Only Winifred’s sometimes wandered to the face of one or the other of her brothers, but they never could abide long.  It was Mrs. Landholm’s gentle voice that broke the silence.