"O this is not Rufus, — this is Winthrop, my dear," said Mr. Forriner. "Cousin Winthrop has just come down from — I forget — from home. What does brother Landholm call his place, cousin?"
"We sometimes call it after our mountain, 'Wut-a-qut-o.'"
How sweet the syllables seemed in Winthrop's lips!
"What?" put in the lady.
Winthrop repeated.
"I should never remember it. — Then this is another cousin?" she remarked to Mr. Forriner; — "and not the one that was here before?"
"No, my dear. It is Rufus that is in the country up North somewhere — Cousin Winthrop is coming here to be a lawyer, he tells me."
"Will you sit up, cousin?" said the lady somewhat dryly, after a minute's pause, as her handmaid set a Britannia metal tea- pot on the board. The meaning of the request being that he should move his chair up to the table, Winthrop did so; for to do the family justice he had sat down some time before.
"How will your mother do without you at home?" inquired Mrs. Forriner, when she had successfully apportioned the milk and sugar in the cups.
"I have not been at home for three years past."