said Winthrop facing round upon his brother.

"Well I believe there isn't," said Rufus, taking a prolonged
look at him, -- "but somehow I was thinking -- You're a fine-
looking fellow, Winthrop!"

"You'll find wood in the further end of the closet," said
Winthrop smiling. "I am afraid Mother Hubbard's shelves are
in classical order --that is, with nothing on them."

"I sha'n't want anything more till dinner," said Rufus. "Where
do you dine?"

"At the chop-house to-day."

"I'll meet you there. Won't you be home till night?"

"I never am."

"Well --till dinner," said Rufus waving his hand. And his
brother left him.

Turning away from the table and his emptied dishes and
fragmentary beef-bone, Rufus sat before the little fireplace,
gazing into it at the red coals, and taking casual and then
wistful note of various things about his brother's apartment
that told of the man that lived there.

"Spare!" -- said Rufus to himself, as his eye marked the scanty
carpet, the unpainted few wooden chairs, the curtainless bed,
the rough deal shelves of the closet which shewed at the open
door, and the very economical chimney place, which now, the
wind having gone down, did no longer smoke; -- "Spare! -- but
he'll have a better place to live in, one of these days, and
will furnish it." -- And visions of mahogany and of mirrors
glanced across Rufus's imagination, how unlike the images
around him and before his bodily eye. -- "Spare! -- poor fellow!
-- he's working hard just now; but pay-time will come. And
orderly, --just like him; his books piled in order on the
window-sill -- his papers held down by one on the table, the
clean floor, -- yes," -- and rising Rufus even went and looked
into the closet. There was the little stack of wood and parcel
of kindling, likewise in order; there stood Winthrop's broom
in a corner; and there hung Winthrop's few clothes that were
not folded away in his trunk. Mother Hubbard's department was
in the same spare and thoroughly kept style; and Rufus came
back thoughtfully to his seat before the fire.

"Like him, every bit of it, from the books to the broom. Like
him; -- his own mind is just as free from dust or confusion;
rather more richly furnished. What a mind it is! and what
wealth he'll make out of it, for pocket and for name both. And
I --"

Here Rufus's lucubrations left his brother and went off upon a
sea of calculations, landing at Fleet, Norton & Co. and then
coming back to Mann