"I dare say, mother."
"I don't see how it is possible for your father to do more than put Will in the way he has chosen."
"I know that, mother," Winthrop replied, with again the calm face but the flushing colour; — "he said yesterday — I heard him —"
"What?"
"He said he would try to make a man of Rufus! I must do it for myself, mother. And I will."
His mother hardly doubted it. But she sighed as she looked, and sighed heavily.
"I ought to have made you promise not to be troubled, mamma," he said with a relaxing face.
"I am more careful of my promises than that," she answered.
"But, Winthrop, my boy, what do you want to do first?"
"To learn, mamma!" he said, with a singular flash of fire in his usual cool eye. "To get rid of ignorance, and then to get the power that knowledge gives. Rufus said the other day that knowledge is power, and I know he was right. I feel like a man with his hands tied, because I am so ignorant."
"You are hardly a man yet, Winthrop; you are only a boy in years."