"Not if you could rest as well here, but you want rest,
Winnie."

"I couldn't rest so well _anywhere!_" -- said Winifred
energetically.

"Then let me take the big chair and give you a chance."

He took it, and took her in his arms again, where she nestled
herself down as if she had been a child; with an action that
touchingly told him anew that she could rest so well nowhere
else.

"Governor --" she said, when her head had found its place --
"you haven't kissed me."

"I did, Winnie, -- it must have been before you were awake."

But he kissed her again; and drawing one or two long breaths,
of heart-weariness and heart-rest, Winnie went to sleep.

The grey dawn brightened rapidly; and a while after, Karen
came in. It was fair morning then. She stood by the hearth,
opposite the two, looking at them.

"Has she been here all night?" she whispered.

Winthrop nodded.

"Poor lamb! -- Ye're come in good time, Master Winthrop."

She turned and began to address herself to the long gone-out
fire in the chimney.

"What are you going to do, Karen?" he said softly.

She looked back at him, with her hand in the ashes.

"Haven't you watched to-night?"

"I've watched a many nights," she said shaking her head and
beginning again to rake for coals in the cold fireplace, --
"this aint the first. _That_ aint nothin'. I'll watch now, dear,
'till the day dawn and the shadows flee away'; -- what else
should Karen do? 'Taint much longer, and I'll be where there's
no night again. O come, sweet day! --" said the old woman
clasping her hands together as she crouched in the fireplace,
and the tears beginning to trickle down, -- "when the mother
and the childr'n'll all be together, and Karen somewheres --
and our home won't be broken up no more! --"

She raked away among the ashes with an eager trembling hand.

"Karen, --" said Winthrop softly, -- "Leave that."

"What, dear?" -- she said.

"Leave that."

"Who'll do it, dear?"

"I will."

She obeyed him, as perhaps she would have done for no one
else. Rising up, Winthrop carried his sleeping sister without
wakening her, and laid her on the bed in her own little room,
which opened out of the kitchen; then he came back and went to
work in the fireplace. Karen yielded it to him with equal
admiration and unwillingness; remarking to herself as her
relieved hands went about other business, that, "for sure,
nobody could build a fire handsomer than Mr. Winthrop"; -- and
that