CHAPTER XV.
I turn to go: my feet are set
To leave the pleasant fields and farms:
They mix in one another's arms
To one pure image of regret.
TENNYSON.
That little space of time was an exceeding sweet one. Governor was at home again, — and Governor was going away again. If anything had been needed to enhance his preciousness, those two little facts would have done it. Such an idea entered nobody's head. He was the very same Winthrop, they all said, that had left them four years ago; only taller, and stronger, and handsomer.
"He's a beautiful strong man!" said Karen, stopping in the act of rolling her cakes, to peer at him out of the kitchen window. "Aint he a handsome feller, Mis' Landholm?"
"Handsome is that handsome does, Karen."
"Don't he do handsome?" said Karen, flouring her roller. "His mother knows he does, I wish I knowed my shortcake'd be arter the same pattern."
Winthrop pulled off his coat and went into the fields as heartily as if he had done nothing but farming all his days; and harvests that autumn came cheerily in. The corn seemed yellower and the apples redder than they had been for a long time. Asahel, now a fine boy of fifteen, was good aid in whatever was going on, without or within doors. Rufus wrote cheerfully from the North, where he still was; and there was hardly a drawback to the enjoyment of the little family at home.
There was one; and as often happens it had grown out of the family's greatest delight. Winifred was not the Winifred of former days. The rosy-cheeked, fat, laughing little roll-about of five years old, had changed by degrees into a slim, pale, very delicate-looking child of twelve. Great nervous irritability, and weakness, they feared of the spine, had displaced the jocund health and sweet spirits which never knew a cloud. It was a burden to them all, the change; and yet — so strangely things are tempered — the affections mustered round the family hearth to hide or repair the damage disease had done there, till it could scarcely be said to be poorer or worse off than before. There did come a pang to every heart but Winifred's own, when they looked upon her; but with that rose so sweet and rare charities, blessing both the giver and the receiver, that neither perhaps was less blessed than of old. Winthrop's face never shewed that there was anything at home to trouble him, unless at times when Winifred was not near; his voice never changed from its cool cheerfulness; and yet his voice had a great deal to say to her, and his face Winifred lived upon all the while he was at home. He never seemed to know that she was weaker than she used to be; but his arm was always round her, or it might be under her, whenever need was; and to be helped by his strength was more pleasant to Winifred than to have strength of her own.
She was sitting on his knee one day, and they were picking out nuts together; when she looked up and spoke, as if the words could not be kept in.
"What shall I do when you are gone!"