ning a very dignified answer to Winthrop's
'good-morning' as he passed through the kitchen.
"Are you going down to Cowslip's mill, Governor?" said Mrs.
Landholm.
"Yes, ma'am."
"You will lose your breakfast."
"I must take the turn of the tide. Never mind breakfast."
"Going down after my trunks?" said Elizabeth.
"Yes, ma'am."
"I'll go too. Wait a minute!"
And she was in her room before a word could be said.
"But Miss Haye," said Mrs. Landholm, as she came out with
bonnet and shawl, "you won't go without your breakfast? It
will be ready long before you can get back."
"Breakfast can wait."
"But you will want it."
"No -- I don't care if I do."
And down she ran to the rocks, followed by Asahel.
There was a singular still sweetness in the early summer
morning on the water. The air seemed to have twice the life it
had the evening before; the light was fair, beyond words to
tell. Here its fresh gilding was upon a mountain slope; there
it stretched in a long misty beam athwart a deep valley; it
touched the broken points of rock, and glanced on the river,
and seemed to make merry with the birds; fresh, gladsome and
pure as their song. No token of man's busy life yet in the
air; the birds had it. Only over Shahweetah valley, and from
Mr. Underhill's chimney on the other side of the river, and
from Sam Doolittle's in the bay, thin wreaths of blue smoke
slowly went up, telling that there, -- and there, -- and there,
-- man was getting ready for his day's work, and woman had
begun hers! Only those, and the soft stroke of Winthrop's
oars; but to Elizabeth that seemed only play. She sat
perfectly still, her eye varying from their regular dip to the
sunny rocks of the headland, to the coloured mountain heads,
the trees, the river, the curling smoke, -- and back again to
the oars; with a grave, intent, deep notice-taking. The water
was neither for nor against them now; and with its light load
and its good oars the boat flew. Diver's Rock was passed; then
they got out of the sunshine into the cool shadow of the
eastern shore below the bay, and fell down the river fast to
the mill. Not a word was spoken by anybody till they got
there.
Nor then by Elizabeth, till she saw Mr. Cowslip and Winthrop
bringing her trunks and boxes to the boat-side.
"Hollo! you've got live cargo too, Governor," said the old
miller. "That aint fair, -- Mornin'! -- The box is safe."
"Are you going to put those things in her
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