She needed a sympathetic counselor and advisor.

But he could not advise or help because neither he nor any one else in Orham was supposed to know of her trouble and its nature.

Even if she knew that he knew, would she accept the counsel of Shavings Winslow?
Hardly! No sensible person would.

How the townsfolk would laugh if they knew he had even so much as dreamed of offering it.
He was too downcast even to sing one of his lugubrious hymns or to whistle.

Instead he looked at the letter pinned on a beam beside him and dragged from the various piles one half-dozen crow vanes, one half-dozen gull vanes, one dozen medium-sized mills, one dozen small mills, three sailors, etc., etc., as set forth upon that order.