r it but to fight Fortune," said Winthrop smiling;
-- "or go without any."

"I would rather go anyhow!" said Elizabeth, -- "than be obliged
to anybody, -- of course except to my father."

"How if you had a husband?" inquired Mrs. Landholm with a
good-humoured face.

It was a turn Elizabeth did not like; she did not answer Mrs.
Landholm as she would have answered her cousin. She hesitated.

"I never talk about that, Mrs. Landholm," she said a little
haughtily, with a very pretty tinge upon her cheek; -- "I would
not be obliged to _anybody_ but my father; -- never."

"Why?" said Mrs. Landholm. "I don't understand."

"Don't you see, Mrs. Landholm, -- the person under obligation
is always the inferior."

"I never felt it so," she replied.

Her guest could not feel, what her son did, the strong
contrast they made. One little head was held as if certainly
the neck had never been bowed under any sort of pressure; the
other, in its meek dignity, spoke the mind of too noble a
level to be either raised or lowered by an accident.

"It is another meaning of the word, mother, from that you arc
accustomed to," Winthrop said.

Elizabeth looked at him, but nothing was to be gained from his
face.

"Will you have the goodness to hand me my riding-whip," she
said shortly.

"You will have to be obliged to me for that," he said as he
picked it up.

"Yes," said Elizabeth; "but I pay for this obligation with a
'thank you'!"

So she did, and with a bow at once a little haughty and not a
little graceful. It was the pure grace of nature, the very
speaking of her mind at the moment. Turning her horse's head
she trotted off, her blue habit fluttering and her little head
carried very gracefully to the wind and her horse's motion.
They stood and looked after her.

"Poor child!" said Mrs. Landholm, -- "she has something to
learn. There is good in her too."

"Ay," said her son, "and there is gold in the earth; but it
wants hands."

"Yes," said Mrs. Landholm, -- "if she only fell into good hands
--"

It might have been tempting, to a certain class of minds, to
look at that pretty little figure flying off at full trot in
all the riot of self-guidance, and to know that it only wanted
good hands to train her into something really fine. But Mrs.
Landholm went back to her ironing, and Winthrop to drive his
oxen a field.

Elizabeth trotted till she had left them out of sight; and
then walked her horse slowly while she thought w