"So you won't have any woman that you don't oblige to marry you!" Rufus burst out. "Ha, ha, ha! — ho, ho, ho! —"
Winthrop's mouth gave the slightest good-humoured token of understanding him, — it could not be called a smile. Rufus had his laugh out, and cooled down into deeper gravity than before.
"Well!" — said he, — "I'll go off to my fate, at the limitless wild of the West. It seems a rough sort of fate."
"Make your fate for yourself," said Winthrop.
"You will," said his brother. "And it will be what you will, and that's a fair one. And you will oblige anybody you have a mind to. And marry an heiress."
"Don't look much like it — things at present," said Winthrop.
"I don't see the way very clear."
"As for me, I don't know what ever I shall come to," Rufus added.
"Come to bed at present," said Winthrop. "That is one step."
"One step towards what?"
"Sleep in the first place; and after that, anything."