mly.

"I should -- or at least I might -- be doing something."

"Then you think all the work of the world rests upon the
shoulders of lawyers? I knew they had a good deal to do, but
not so much as that."

"I don't see anything for me to do," Rufus said despondingly.

Rufus got off his couch and began gloomily to walk up and
down.

"How easily those who are doing well themselves can bear the
ill haps of their friends!" he said.

Winthrop went back to his papers and studied them, with his
usual calm face and in silence, for some time. Rufus walked
and cogitated for half an hour.

"I ought not to have said that, Winthrop," were his first
words. "But now look at me!"

"With pleasure," said Winthrop laying down his 'answer' -- "I
have looked at many a worse man."

"Can't you be serious?" said Rufus, a provoked smile forcing
itself upon him.

"I thought I was rarely anything else," said Winthrop. "But
now I look at you, I don't see anything in the world the
matter."

"Yet look at our different positions -- yours and mine."

"I'd as lieve be excused," said Winthrop. "You always made the
best show, in any position."

"Other people don't think so," said Rufus, turning with a
curious struggle of feeling in his face, and turning to hide
it in his walk up and down.

"What ails you, Will? -- I don't know what you mean."

"You deserve it!" said Rufus, swallowing something in his mind
apparently, that cost him some trouble.

"I don't know what I deserve," said Winthrop gravely. "I am
afraid I have not got it."

"How oddly and rightly we were nicknamed in childhood!" Rufus
went on bitterly, half communing with himself. -- "I for fiery
impulse, and you for calm rule."

"I don't want to rule," said Winthrop half laughing. "And I
assure you I make no effort after it."

"You do it, and always will. You have the love and respect and
admiration of everybody that knows you -- in a very high
degree; and there is not a soul in the world that cares for
me, except yourself."

"I do not think that is true, Will," said Winthrop after a
little pause. "But even suppose it were -- those are not the
things one lives for."

"What _does_ one live for then!" Rufus said almost fiercely.

"At least they are not what I live for," said Winthrop
correcting himself.

"What do _you_ live for?"

His brother hesitated.

"For another sort of approbation -- That I may hear 'Well
done,' from the lips of my King, -- by and by."