ot that I know of."

"Lizzie! -- Mr. Landholm?"

"I mean, not one that I am like to see."

"What do you go to Mannahatta for, then?" said Rose
unbelievingly.

"One must be somewhere, to do something in the world."

"To do what?"

"I don't know -- I suppose I shall find my work."

"Work? -- what work?" -- said Rose wonderingly.

"I don't know yet, Rose. But everybody has something to do in
the world -- so I have, -- and you have."

"I haven't anything. What have we to do, except what we like
to do?"

"I hope I shall like my work," said Elizabeth. "I must like
it, if I am to do it well."

"What do you mean? -- what are you talking of, Lizzie?"

"Listen to me, Rose. Do you think that you and I have been put
in this world with so many means of usefulness, of one sort
and another, and that it was never meant we should do anything
but trifle away them and life till the end of it came? Do you
think God has given us nothing to do for him?"

"_I_ haven't much means of doing anything," said Rose, half
pouting, half sobbing. "Have you taken up your friend Winthrop
Landholm's notions?"

There was a rush to Elizabeth's heart, that his name and hers,
in such a connection, should be named in the same day; but the
colour started and the eyes flushed with tears, and she said
nothing.

"What sort of 'work' do you suppose you are going to do?"

"I don't know. I shall find out, Rose, I hope, in time."

"I guess he can tell you, -- if you were to ask him," said Rose
meaningly.

Elizabeth sat a minute silent, with quickened breath.

"Rose," she said, leaning back into the room that she might
see and be seen, -- "look at me and listen to me."

Rose obeyed.

"Don't say that kind of thing to me again."

"One may say what one has a mind to, in a free land," said
Rose pouting, -- "and one needn't be commanded like a child or
a servant. Don't I know you would never plague yourself with
that old woman if she wasn't Winthrop's old nurse?"

Elizabeth rose and came near to her.

"I will not have this thing said to me!" she repeated. "My
motives, in any deed of charity, are no man's or woman's to
meddle with. Mr. Landholm is most absolutely nothing to me,
nor I to him; except in the respect and regard he has from me,
which he has more or less, I presume, from everybody that has
the happiness of knowing him. Do you understand me, Rose?
clearly?"

Another answer was upon Rose's tongue, but she was cowed, and
only res