Hills of the Shatemuc

by Susan Warner

"Then come up to tea. How's your father? —"

So Winthrop was in for it, and went about his afternoon business with the feeling that none would be done in the evening. Which did not make him more diligent, because it could not.

Mr. Haye's house was near the lower end of the Parade, and one of the best in the city. It was a very handsome room in which Winthrop found the family; as luxuriously fitted up as the fashion of those times permitted; and the little group gathered there did certainly look as if all the business of the world was done without them, and a good part of it for them; so undoubtedly easy and comfortable was the flow of their laces and the sweep of their silk gowns; so questionless of toil or endurance was the position of each little figure upon soft cushions, and the play of pretty fingers with delicate do-nothing bobbins and thread. Rose was literally playing with hers, for the true business of the hour seemed to be a gentleman who sat at her feet on an ottoman, and who was introduced to Winthrop as Mr. Satterthwaite. Elizabeth according to her fashion sat a little apart and seemed to be earnestly intent upon some sort of fine net manufacture. They three were all.

Winthrop's reception was after the former manner; from Rose extremely and sweetly free and cordial; from Elizabeth grave and matter-of-fact. She went back to her net-work; and Rose presently found Mr. Satterthwaite very interesting again, and went back to him, so far as looks and talk were concerned. Winthrop could but conclude that he was not interesting, for neither of the ladies certainly found him so. He had an excellent chance to make up his mind about the whole party; for none of them gave him any thing else to do with it.

Rose was a piece of loveliness, to the eye, such as one would not see in many a summer day; with all the sweet flush of youth and health she was not ill-named. Fresh as a rose, fresh-coloured, bright, blooming; sweet too, one would say, for a very pretty smile seemed ever at home on the lips; — to see her but once, she would be noted and remembered as a most rare picture of humanity. But Winthrop had seen her more than once. His eye passed on.

Her cousin had changed for the better; though it might be only the change which years make in a girl at that age, rather than any real difference of character. She had grown handsomer. The cheek was well rounded out now, and had a clear healthy tinge, though not at all Rose's white and red. Elizabeth's colour only came when there was a call for it and then it came promptly. And she was not very apt to smile; when she did, it was more often with a careless or scornful turn, or full and bright with a sense of the ludicrous; never a loving or benevolent smile, such as those that constantly graced Rose's pretty lip. Her mouth kept its old cut of grave independence, Winthrop saw at a glance; and her eye, when by chance she lifted it and it met his, was the very same mixture of coolness and fire that it had been of old; the fire for herself, the coolness for all the rest of the world.

She looked down again at her netting immediately, but the look had probably reminded her that nobody in her father's house was playing the hostess at the moment. A disagreeable reminder it is likely, for she worked away at her netting more vigorously than ever, and it was two or three minutes before her eyes left it again to take note of what Rose and Mr. Satterthwaite were thinking about. Her look amused Winthrop, it was so plain an expression of impatient indignation that they did not do what they left her to do. But seeing they were a hopeless case, after another minute or two of pulling at her netting, she changed her seat for one on his side of the room. Winthrop gave her no help, and she followed up her duty move with a duty commonplace.

"How do you like Mannahatta, Mr. Landholm?"

"I have hardly asked myself the question, Miss Haye."

"Does that mean you don't know?"