"He isn't so short of means as I feared, after all," thought Elizabeth, "since he can afford to carry figs about in his pocket." But she did not know that the young gentleman had made his own dinner off that paper of figs; and she could not guess it, ever when from his other coat pocket he produced some biscuits which were likewise given to eke out the figs in the little black girl's dinner.
She was presently roused to very great marvelling again by seeing him apply his foot to another box, one without a clean side, and roll it over half the length of the shed for the child to sit upon.
"What do you think of life now, Miss Elizabeth ?" he said, leaving his charge to eat her figs and coming again to the young lady's side.
"_That_ isn't life," said Elizabeth.
"It seems without the one quarter of agreeableness," he said.
"But it's horrible, Mr.Winthrop! -- " He was silent, and looked at the girl, who sitting on her coal box was eating figs and biscuits with intense satisfaction.
"She is not a bad-looking child," said Elizabeth.
"She is a very good-looking child," said Winthrop; "at least her face has a great deal of intelligence; and I think, something more." "What more ?" "Feeling, or capacity of feeling." "I wish you had a seat, Mr.Landholm," said Elizabeth, looking round.
"Thank you -- I don't wish for one." "It was very vexatious in Rose to go and leave me!" "There isn't another box for her if she had stayed," said Winthrop.
"She would have me go out with her this afternoon to see her dressmaker, who lives just beyond here a little; and father had the horses.

It was so pleasant an afternoon, I had no notion of a storm." "There's a pretty good notion of a storm now," said Winthrop.
So there was, beyond a doubt; the rain was falling in floods, and the lightning and thunder, though not very near, were very unceasing.

Elizabeth still felt awkward and uneasy, and did not know what to talk about.

She never had talked much to Mr.
Landholm; and his cool matter-of-fact way of answering her remarks, puzzled or baffled her.
"That child sitting there makes me very uncomfortable," she said presently.
"Why, Miss Elizabeth ?" Elizabeth hesitated, and then said she did not know.
"You don't like the verification of my setting forth of life," he said smiling.
"But _that_ is not life, Mr.Winthrop." "What is it ?" "It is the experience of one here and there -- not of people in general." "What do you take to be the experience of people in general ?" "Not mine, to be sure," said Elizabeth after a little thought, -- "nor hers." "Hers is a light shade of what rests upon many." "Why Mr.Winthrop! do you think so ?" "Look at her," he said in a low voice; -- "she has forgotten her empty basket in a sweet fig." "But she must take it up again." "She won't lessen her burden, but she will her power of forgetting." Elizabeth sat still, looking at her vis-a-vis of life, and feeling very uneasily what she had never felt before.

She began therewith to ponder sundry extraordinary propositions about the inequalities of social condition and the relative duties of man to man.
"What right have I," she said suddenly, "to so much more than she has ?" "Very much the sort of right that I have to be an American, while somebody else is a Chinese." "Chance," said Elizabeth.
"No, there is no such thing as chance," he said seriously.
"What then ?" "The fruit of industry, talent, and circumstance." "Not mine." "No, but your father's, who gives it to you." "But why ought I to enjoy more than she does?
-- in the abstract, I mean." "I don't know," said Winthrop.