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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Queechy, Susan Warner
+(AKA Elizabeth Wetherell)
+
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+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
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+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: Queechy
+
+Author: Susan Warner
+        (AKA Elizabeth Wetherell)
+
+Release Date: September, 2005 [EBook #8874]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on August 18, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUEECHY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: She stopped a moment when she came upon the bridge.]
+
+
+
+Queechy.
+
+by
+
+Elizabeth Wetherell.
+
+
+
+Illustrated
+
+By Frederic Dielman.
+
+
+
+"I hope I may speak of woman without offence to ladies."
+
+The Guardian
+
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+
+
+      I.  Curtain Rises at Queechy
+     II.  Things Loom Out Dimly Through the Smoke
+    III.  You Amuse Me and I'll Amuse You
+     IV.  Aunt Miriam
+      V.  As to Whether a Flower Can Grow in the Woods
+     VI.  Queechy at Dinner
+    VII.  The Curtain Falls Upon the Scene
+   VIII.  The Fairy Leaves the House
+     IX.  How Mr. Carleton Happened To Be Not at Home
+      X.  The Fairy and the Englishman
+     XI.  A Little Candle
+    XII.  Spars Below
+   XIII.  The Fairy Peeps into an English House, but Does Not Stay There
+    XIV.  Two Bibles in Paris
+     XV.  Very Literary
+    XVI.  Dissolving View--Ending with a Saw-Mill in the Distance
+   XVII.  Rain and Water--Cresses for Breakfast
+  XVIII.  Mr. Rossitur's Wits Sharpened upon a Ploughshare
+    XIX.  Fleda Goes After Help and Finds Dr. Quackenboss
+     XX.  Society in Queechy
+    XXI.  "The Sweetness of a Man's Friend by a Hearty Counsel"
+   XXII.  Wherein a Great Many People Pay Their Respects in Form and
+          Substance
+  XXIII.  The Captain Out-Generalled by the Fairy
+   XXIV.  A Breath of the World at Queechy
+    XXV.  "As Good a Boy as You Need to Have"
+   XXVI.  Pine Knots
+  XXVII.  Sweet--In Its Consequences
+ XXVIII.  The Brook's Old Song--And the New
+   XXIX.  Flighty and Unsatisfactory
+    XXX.  Disclosures--By Mr. Skillcorn
+   XXXI.  Mr. Olmney's Cause Argued
+  XXXII.  Sometimes Inconvenient "From the Loophole of Retreat to Peep at
+          Such a World"
+ XXXIII.  Fleda's White Muslin
+  XXXIV.  How the Fairy Engaged the Two Englishmen
+   XXXV.  Fleda Forgets Herself
+  XXXVI.  The Roses and the Gentlemen
+ XXXVII.  "An Unseen Enemy Round the Corner"
+XXXVIII.  The Fairy at Her Work Again
+  XXXIX.  A Night of Uncertain Length
+     XL.  A Thorn Enters
+    XLI.  Dealings with the Press
+   XLII.  Ends with Sweet Music
+  XLIII.  How Fleda Was Watched by Blue Eyes
+   XLIV.  What Pleasant People One Meets in Society
+    XLV.  How Much Trouble One May Have about a Note
+   XLVI.  Aromatic Vinegar
+  XLVII.  The Fur Cloak on a Journey
+ XLVIII.  Quarrenton to Queechy
+   XLIX.  Montepoole Becomes a Point of Interest
+      L.  The House on "The Hill" Once More
+     LI.  The First One That Left Queechy
+    LII.  The Last Sunset There
+   LIII.  Fleda Alone on an Isthmus
+    LIV.  The Moorish Temple before Breakfast
+
+
+
+
+List of Illustrations.
+
+
+She stopped a moment when she came upon the bridge. (_Frontispiece_)
+She made a long job of her bunch of holly.
+"I wasn't thinking of myself in particular."
+"Who's got it now, Cynthy?"
+Fleda coloured and looked at her grandfather.
+Fleda was sitting, her face bowed in her hands.
+She stood back and watched.
+Then he seated himself beside her.
+The children were always together.
+"He is not a pug."
+"They will expect me at home."
+"Well, sir, you know the road by Deacon Patterson's?"
+"O uncle Rolf, don't have anything to do with him."
+"Look at these roses, and don't ask me for papers!"
+She knelt down before him.
+"How lovely it is, Hugh!"
+Philetus was left to "shuck" and bring home a load of the fruit.
+"And there goes Mr. Carleton!" said Constance.
+Fleda saw with a start that it was Mr. Carleton.
+"I am sure Mr. Thorn will excuse me."
+"My dear child," he said, holding her face in both his hands.
+Mrs. Rossitur sat there alone.
+Barby's energies and fainting remedies were again put in use.
+Then he stood and watched her.
+"Well, take your place," said Thorn.
+"I told him, 'O you were not gone yet!'"
+"How are they all at home?"
+"Is this the gentleman that's to be your husband?"
+Slowly and lingeringly they moved away.
+The roses could not be sweeter to any one.
+
+
+
+
+
+Queechy.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I.
+
+
+
+  A single cloud on a sunny day
+    When all the rest of heaven is clear,
+    A frown upon the atmosphere,
+    That hath no business to appear,
+  When skies are blue and earth is gay.
+
+  Byron.
+
+
+Come, dear grandpa!--the old mare and the wagon are at the
+gate--all ready."
+
+"Well, dear!"--responded a cheerful hearty voice, "they must wait a bit; I
+haven't got my hat yet."
+
+"O I'll get that."
+
+And the little speaker, a girl of some ten or eleven years old, dashed
+past the old gentleman and running along the narrow passage which led to
+his room soon returned with the hat in her hand.
+
+"Yes, dear,--but that ain't all. I must put on my great-coat--and I must
+look and see if I can find any money--"
+
+"O yes--for the post-office. It's a beautiful day, grandpa. Cynthy!--won't
+you come and help grandpa on with his great-coat?--And I'll go out and
+keep watch of the old mare till you're ready."
+
+A needless caution. For the old mare, though spirited enough for her
+years, had seen some fourteen or fifteen of them and was in no sort of
+danger of running away. She stood in what was called the back meadow, just
+without the little paling fence that enclosed a small courtyard round the
+house. Around this courtyard rich pasture-fields lay on every side, the
+high road cutting through them not more than a hundred or two feet from
+the house.
+
+The little girl planted herself on the outside of the paling and setting
+her back to it eyed the old mare with great contentment; for besides other
+grounds for security as to her quiet behaviour, one of the men employed
+about the farm, who had harnessed the equipage, was at the moment busied
+in putting some clean straw in the bottom of the vehicle.
+
+"Watkins," said the child presently to this person, "here is a strap that
+is just ready to come unbuckled."
+
+"What do you know about straps and buckles?" said the man rather grumly.
+But he came round however to see what she meant, and while he drew the one
+and fastened the other took special good care not to let Fleda know that
+her watchful eyes had probably saved the whole riding party from ruin; as
+the loosing of the strap would of necessity have brought on a trial of the
+old mare's nerves which not all her philosophy could have been expected to
+meet. Fleda was satisfied to see the buckle made fast, and that Watkins,
+roused by her hint or by the cause of it, afterwards took a somewhat
+careful look over the whole establishment. In high glee then she climbed
+to her seat in the little wagon, and her grandfather coming out coated and
+hatted with some difficulty mounted to his place beside her.
+
+"I think Watkins might have taken the trouble to wash the wagon,
+without hurting himself," said Fleda; "it is all specked with mud since
+last time."
+
+"Ha'n't he washed it!" said the old gentleman in a tone of displeasure.
+"Watkins!"--
+
+"Well."--
+
+"Why didn't you wash the wagon as I told you?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"It's all over slosh."
+
+"That's Mr. Didenhover's work--he had it out day 'fore yesterday; and if
+you want it cleaned, Mr. Ringgan, you must speak to him about it. Mr.
+Didenhover may file his own doings; it's more than I'm a going to."
+
+The old gentleman made no answer, except to acquaint the mare with the
+fact of his being in readiness to set out. A shade of annoyance and
+displeasure for a moment was upon his face; but the gate opening from the
+meadow upon the high road had hardly swung back upon its hinges after
+letting them out when he recovered the calm sweetness of demeanour that
+was habitual with him, and seemed as well as his little granddaughter to
+have given care the go-by for the time. Fleda had before this found out
+another fault in the harness, or rather in Mr. Didenhover, which like a
+wise little child she kept to herself. A broken place which her
+grandfather had ordered to be properly mended was still tied up with the
+piece of rope which had offended her eyes the last time they had driven
+out. But she said not a word of it, because "it would only worry grandpa
+for nothing;" and forgetting it almost immediately she moved on with him
+in a state of joyous happiness that no mud-stained wagon nor untidy
+rope-bound harness could stir for an instant. Her spirit was like a clear
+still-running stream which quietly and surely deposits every defiling and
+obscuring admixture it may receive from its contact with the grosser
+elements around; the stream might for a moment be clouded; but a little
+while, and it would run as clear as ever. Neither Fleda nor her
+grandfather cared a jot for the want of elegancies which one despised, and
+the other if she had ever known had well nigh forgotten. What mattered it
+to her that the little old green wagon was rusty and worn, or that years
+and service had robbed the old mare of all the jauntiness she had ever
+possessed, so long as the sun shone and the birds sang? And Mr. Ringgan,
+in any imaginary comparison, might be pardoned for thinking that _he_ was
+the proud man, and that his poor little equipage carried such a treasure
+as many a coach and four went without.
+
+"Where are we going first, grandpa? to the post-office?"
+
+"Just there!"
+
+"How pleasant it is to go there always, isn't it, grandpa? You have the
+paper to get, and I--I don't very often get a letter, but I have always
+the _hope_ of getting one; and that's something. Maybe I'll have one
+to-day, grandpa?"
+
+"We'll see. It's time those cousins of yours wrote to you."
+
+"O _they_ don't write to me--it's only Aunt Lucy; I never had a letter
+from a single one of them, except once from little Hugh,--don't you
+remember, grandpa? I should think he must be a very nice little boy,
+shouldn't you?"
+
+"Little boy? why I guess he is about as big as you are, Fleda--he is
+eleven years old, ain't he?"
+
+"Yes, but I am past eleven, you know, grandpa, and I am a little girl."
+
+This reasoning being unanswerable Mr. Ringgan only bade the old
+mare trot on.
+
+It was a pleasant day in autumn. Fleda thought it particularly pleasant
+for riding, for the sun was veiled with thin hazy clouds. The air was mild
+and still, and the woods, like brave men, putting the best face upon
+falling fortunes. Some trees were already dropping their leaves; the
+greater part standing in all the varied splendour which the late frosts
+had given them. The road, an excellent one, sloped gently up and down
+across a wide arable country, in a state of high cultivation and now
+shewing all the rich variety of autumn. The redish buckwheat patches, and
+fine wood tints of the fields where other grain had been; the bright green
+of young rye or winter wheat, then soberer coloured pasture or meadow
+lands, and ever and anon a tuft of gay woods crowning a rising ground, or
+a knot of the everlasting pines looking sedately and steadfastly upon the
+fleeting glories of the world around them, these were mingled and
+interchanged and succeeded each other in ever-varying fresh combinations.
+With its high picturesque beauty the whole scene had a look of thrift and
+plenty and promise which made it eminently cheerful. So Mr. Ringgan and
+his little granddaughter both felt it to be. For some distance the grounds
+on either hand the road were part of the old gentleman's farm; and many a
+remark was exchanged between him and Fleda as to the excellence or
+hopefulness of this or that crop or piece of soil; Fleda entering into all
+his enthusiasm, and reasoning of clover leys and cockle and the proper,
+harvesting of Indian corn and other like matters, with no lack of interest
+or intelligence.
+
+"O grandpa," she exclaimed suddenly, "won't you stop a minute and let me
+get out. I want to get some of that beautiful bittersweet."
+
+"What do you want that for?" said he. "You can't get out very well."
+
+"O yes I can--please, grandpa! I want some of it _very_ much--just
+one minute!"
+
+He stopped, and Fleda got out and went to the roadside, where a
+bittersweet vine had climbed into a young pine tree and hung it as it were
+with red coral. But her one minute was at least four before she had
+succeeded in breaking off as much as she could carry of the splendid
+creeper; for not until then could Fleda persuade herself to leave it. She
+came back and worked her way up into the wagon with one hand full as it
+could hold of her brilliant trophies.
+
+"Now what good'll that do you?" inquired Mr. Ringgan good-humouredly, as
+he lent Fleda what help he could to her seat.
+
+"Why grandpa, I want it to put with cedar and pine in a jar at home--it
+will keep for ever so long, and look beautiful. Isn't that handsome?--only
+it was a pity to break it."
+
+"Why yes, it's handsome enough," said Mr. Ringgan, "but you've got
+something just by the front door there at home that would do just as
+well--what do you call it?--that naming thing there?"
+
+"What, my burning bush? O grandpa! I wouldn't cut that for any thing in
+the world! It's the only pretty thing about the house; and besides," said
+Fleda, looking up with a softened mien, "you said that it was planted by
+my mother. O grandpa! I wouldn't cut that for any thing."
+
+Mr. Ringgan laughed a pleased laugh. "Well, dear!" said he, "it shall grow
+till it's as big as the house, if it will."
+
+"It won't do that," said Fleda. "But I am very glad I have got this
+bittersweet--this is just what I wanted. Now if I can only find
+some holly--"
+
+"We'll come across some, I guess, by and by," said Mr. Ringgan; and Fleda
+settled herself again to enjoy the trees, the fields, the roads, and all
+the small handiwork of nature, for which her eyes had a curious
+intelligence. But this was not fated to be a ride of unbroken pleasure.
+
+"Why what are those bars down for?" she said as they came up with a field
+of winter grain. "Somebody's been in here with a wagon. O grandpa! Mr.
+Didenhover has let the Shakers have my butternuts!--the butternuts that
+you told him they mustn't have."
+
+The old gentleman drew up his horse. "So he has!" said he.
+
+Their eyes were upon the far end of the deep lot, where at the edge of one
+of the pieces of woodland spoken of, a picturesque group of men and boys
+in frocks and broad-brimmed white hats were busied in filling their wagon
+under a clump of the now thin and yellow leaved butternut trees.
+
+"The scoundrel!" said Mr. Ringgan under his breath.
+
+"Would it be any use, grandpa, for me to jump down and run and tell them
+you don't want them to take the butternuts?--I shall have so few."
+
+"No, dear, no," said her grandfather, "they have got 'em about all by this
+time; the mischief's done. Didenhover meant to let 'em have 'em unknown to
+me, and pocket the pay himself. Get up!"
+
+Fleda drew a long breath, and gave a hard look at the distant wagon where
+_her_ butternuts were going in by handfuls. She said no more.
+
+It was but a few fields further on that the old gentleman came to a sudden
+stop again.
+
+"Ain't there some of my sheep over yonder there, Fleda,--along with Squire
+Thornton's?"
+
+"I don't know, grandpa," said Fleda,--"I can't see--yes, I do see--yes,
+they are, grandpa; I see the mark."
+
+"I thought so!" said Mr. Ringgan bitterly; "I told Didenhover, only three
+days ago, that if he didn't make up that fence the sheep would be out, or
+Squire Thornton's would be in;--only three days ago!--Ah well!" said he,
+shaking the reins to make the mare move on again,--"it's all of a
+piece.--Every thing goes--I can't help it."
+
+"Why do you keep him, grandpa, if he don't behave right?" Fleda ventured
+to ask gently.
+
+"'Cause I can't get rid of him, dear," Mr. Ringgan answered rather
+shortly.
+
+And till they got to the post-office he seemed in a disagreeable kind of
+muse, which Fleda did not choose to break in upon. So the mile and a half
+was driven in sober silence.
+
+"Shall I get out and go in, grandpa?" said Fleda when he drew up before
+the house.
+
+"No, deary," said he in his usual kind tone; "you sit still. Holloa
+there!--Good-day, Mr. Sampion--have you got any thing for me?" The man
+disappeared and came out again.
+
+"There's your paper, grandpa," said Fleda.
+
+"Ay, and something else," said Mr. Ringgan: "I declare!--Miss Fleda
+Ringgan--care of E. Ringgan, Esq.'--There, dear, there it is."
+
+"Paris!" exclaimed Fleda, as she clasped the letter and both her hands
+together. The butternuts and Mr Didenhover were forgotten at last. The
+letter could not be read in the jolting of the wagon, but, as Fleda
+said, it was all the pleasanter, for she had the expectation of it the
+whole way home.
+
+"Where are we going now, grandpa?"
+
+"To Queechy Run."
+
+"That will give us a nice long ride. I am very glad. This has been a
+good day. With my letter and my bittersweet I have got enough, haven't
+I, grandpa?"
+
+Queechy Run was a little village, a very little village, about half a mile
+from Mr. Ringgan's house. It boasted however a decent brick church of some
+size, a school-house, a lawyer's office, a grocery store, a dozen or two
+of dwelling-houses, and a post-office; though for some reason or other Mr.
+Ringgan always chose to have his letters come through the Sattlersville
+post-office, a mile and a half further off. At the door of the lawyer's
+office Mr. Ringgan again stopped, and again shouted "Holloa!"--
+
+"Good-day, sir. Is Mr. Jolly within?"
+
+"He is, sir."
+
+"Will you ask him to be so good as to step here a moment? I cannot very
+well get out."
+
+Mr. Jolly was a comfortable-looking little man, smooth and sleek, pleasant
+and plausible, reasonably honest too, as the world goes; a nice man to
+have to do with, the world went so easy with his affairs that you were
+sure he would make no unnecessary rubs in your own. He came now fresh and
+brisk to the side of the wagon, with that uncommon hilarity which people
+sometimes assume when they have a disagreeable matter on hand that must be
+spoken of.
+
+"Good-morning, sir! Fine day, Mr. Jolly."
+
+"Beautiful day, sir! Splendid season! How do you do, Mr. Ringgan?"
+
+"Why, sir, I never was better in my life, barring this lameness, that
+disables me very much. I can't go about and see to things any more as I
+used to. However--we must expect evils at my time of life. I don't
+complain. I have a great deal to be thankful for."
+
+"Yes, sir,--we have a great deal to be thankful for," said Mr. Jolly
+rather abstractedly, and patting the old mare with kind attention.
+
+"Have you seen that fellow McGowan?" said Mr. Ringgan abruptly, and in a
+lower tone.
+
+"I have seen him," said Mr. Jolly, coming back from the old mare to
+business.
+
+"He's a hard customer I guess, ain't he?"
+
+"He's as ugly a cur as ever was whelped!"
+
+"What does he say?"
+
+"Says he must have it."
+
+"Did you tell him what I told you?"
+
+"I told him, sir, that you had not got the returns from your farm that you
+expected this year, owing to one thing and 'nother; and that you couldn't
+make up the cash for him all at once; and that he would have to wait a
+spell, but that he'd be sure to get it in the long run. Nobody ever
+suffered by Mr. Ringgan yet, as I told him."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, sir,--he was altogether refractible--he's as pig-headed a fellow as
+I ever see."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"He gave me names, and swore he wouldn't wait a day longer--said he'd
+waited already six months."
+
+"He has so. I couldn't meet the last payment. There's a year's rent due
+now. I can't help it. There needn't have been an hour,--if I could go
+about and attend to things myself. I have been altogether disappointed in
+that Didenhover."
+
+"I expect you have."
+
+"What do you suppose he'll do, Mr. Jolly?--McGowan, I mean."
+
+"I expect he'll do what the law'll let him, Mr. Ringgan; I don't know
+what'll hinder him."
+
+"It's a worse turn than I thought my infirmities would ever play me," said
+the old gentleman after a short pause,--"first to lose the property
+altogether, and then not to be permitted to wear out what is left of life
+in the old place--there won't be much."
+
+"So I told him, Mr. Ringgan. I put it to him. Says I, 'Mr. McGowan, it's a
+cruel hard business; there ain't a man in town that wouldn't leave Mr.
+Ringgan the shelter of his own roof as long as he wants any, and think it
+a pleasure,--if the rent was anyhow.'"
+
+"Well--well!" said the old gentleman, with a mixture of dignity and
+bitterness,--"it doesn't much matter. My head will find a shelter somehow,
+above ground or under it. The Lord will provide.--Whey! stand still, can't
+ye! what ails the fool? The creature's seen years enough to be steady," he
+added with a miserable attempt at his usual cheerful laugh.
+
+Fleda had turned away her head and tried not to hear when the lowered
+tones of the speakers seemed to say that she was one too many in the
+company. But she could not help catching a few bits of the conversation,
+and a few bits were generally enough for Fleda's wit to work upon; she had
+a singular knack at putting loose ends of talk together. If more had been
+wanting, the tones of her grandfather's voice would have filled up every
+gap in the meaning of the scattered words that came to her ear. Her heart
+sank fast as the dialogue went on, and she needed no commentary or
+explanation to interpret the bitter little laugh with which it closed. It
+was a chill upon all the rosy joys and hopes of a most joyful and hopeful
+little nature.
+
+The old mare was in motion again, but Fleda no longer cared or had the
+curiosity to ask where they were going. The bittersweet lay listlessly in
+her lap; her letter, clasped to her breast, was not thought of; and tears
+were quietly running one after the other down her cheeks and falling on
+her sleeve; she dared not lift her handkerchief nor turn her face towards
+her grandfather lest they should catch his eye. Her grandfather?--could it
+be possible that he must be turned out of his old home in his old age?
+could it be possible? Mr. Jolly seemed to think it might be, and her
+grandfather seemed to think it must. Leave the old house! But where would
+he go?--Son or daughter he had none left; resources be could have none, or
+this need not happen. Work he could not; be dependent upon the charity of
+any kin or friend she knew he would never; she remembered hearing him once
+say he could better bear to go to the almshouse than do any such thing.
+And then, if they went, he would have his pleasant room no more where the
+sun shone in so cheerfully, and they must leave the dear old kitchen where
+they had been so happy, and the meadows and hills would belong to somebody
+else; and she would gather her stores of buttercups and chestnuts under
+the loved old trees never again. But these things were nothing, though the
+image of them made the tears come hot and fast, these were nothing in her
+mind to the knowledge or the dread of the effect the change would have
+upon Mr. Ringgan. Fleda knew him and knew it would not be slight. Whiter
+his head could not be, more bowed it well might, and her own bowed in
+anticipation as her childish fears and imaginings ran on into the possible
+future. Of McGowan's tender mercies she had no hope. She had seen him
+once, and being unconsciously even more of a physiognomist than most
+children are, that one sight of him was enough to verify all Mr. Jolly had
+said. The remembrance of his hard sinister face sealed her fears. Nothing
+but evil could come of having to do with such a man. It was however still
+not so much any foreboding of the future that moved Fleda's tears as the
+sense of her grandfather's present pain,--the quick answer of her gentle
+nature to every sorrow that touched him. His griefs were doubly hers.
+Both from his openness of character and her penetration, they could rarely
+be felt unshared; and she shared them always in more than due measure.
+
+In beautiful harmony, while the child had forgotten herself in keen
+sympathy with her grandfather's sorrows, he on the other hand had half
+lost sight of them in caring for her. Again, and this time not before any
+house but in a wild piece of woodland, the little wagon came to a stop.
+
+"Ain't there some holly berries that I see yonder?" said Mr.
+Ringgan,--"there, through those white birch stems? That's what you were
+wanting, Fleda, ain't it? Give your bittersweet to me while you go get
+some,--and here, take this knife dear, you can't break it. Don't cut
+yourself."
+
+Fleda's eyes were too dim to see white birch or holly, and she had no
+longer the least desire to have the latter; but with that infallible tact
+which assuredly is the gift of nature and no other, she answered, in a
+voice that she forced to be clear, "O yes, thank you, grandpa;"--and
+stealthily dashing away the tears clambered down from the rickety little
+wagon and plunged with a cheerful _step_ at least through trees and
+underbrush to the clump of holly. But if anybody had seen Fleda's
+face!--while she seemed to be busied in cutting as large a quantity as
+possible of the rich shining leaves and bright berries. Her grandfather's
+kindness and her effort to meet it had wrung her heart; she hardly knew
+what she was doing, as she cut off sprig after sprig and threw them down
+at her feet; she was crying sadly, with even audible sobs. She made a long
+job of her bunch of holly. But when at last it must come to an end she
+choked back her tears, smoothed her face, and came back to Mr. Ringgan
+smiling and springing over the stones and shrubs in her way, and
+exclaiming at the beauty of her vegetable stores. If her cheeks were red
+he thought it was the flush of pleasure and exercise, and she did not let
+him get a good look at her eyes.
+
+"Why you've got enough to dress up the front room chimney," said he.
+"That'll be the best thing you can do with 'em, won't it?"
+
+"The front room chimney! No, indeed I won't, grandpa. I don't want 'em
+where nobody can see them, and you know we are never in there now it is
+cold weather."
+
+"Well, dear! anyhow you like to have it. But you ha'n't a jar in the house
+big enough for them, have you?"
+
+"O I'll manage--I've got an old broken pitcher without a handle, grandpa,
+that'll do very well."
+
+"A broken pitcher! that isn't a very elegant vase," said he.
+
+"O you wouldn't know it is a pitcher when I have fixed it. I'll cover up
+all the broken part with green, you know. Are we going home now, grandpa?"
+
+"No, I want to stop a minute at uncle Joshua's."
+
+Uncle Joshua was a brother-in-law of Mr. Ringgan, a substantial farmer and
+very well to do in the world! He was found not in the house but abroad in
+the field with his men, loading an enormous basket-wagon with corn-stalks.
+At Mr. Ringgan's shout he got over the fence and came to the wagon-side.
+His face showed sense and shrewdness, but nothing of the open nobility of
+mien which nature had stamped upon that of his brother.
+
+[Illustration: She made a long job of her bunch of holly.]
+
+"Fine morning, eh?" said he. "I'm getting in my corn stalks."
+
+"So I see," said Mr. Ringgan. "How do you find the new way of curing
+them answer?"
+
+"Fine as ever you see. Sweet as a nut. The cattle are mad after them. How
+are you going to be off for fodder this winter?"
+
+"It's more than I can tell you," said Mr. Ringgan. "There ought to be
+more than plenty; but Didenhover contrives to bring everything out at the
+wrong end. I wish I was rid of him."
+
+"He'll never get a berth with _me_, I can tell you," said uncle
+Joshua laughing.
+
+"Brother," said Mr. Ringgan, lowering his tone again, "have you any loose
+cash you could let me have for six months or so?"
+
+Uncle Joshua took a meditative look down the road, turned a quid of
+tobacco in his cheek, and finally brought his eyes again to Mr. Ringgan
+and answered.
+
+"Well, I don't see as I can," said he. "You see Josh is just a going to
+set up for himself at Kenton, and he'll want some help of me; and I expect
+that'll be about as much as I can manage to lay my hands on."
+
+"Do you know who has any that he would be likely to lend?" said Mr.
+Ringgan.
+
+"No, I don't. Money is rather scarce. For your rent, eh?"
+
+"Yes, for my rent! The farm brings me in nothing but my living. That
+Didenhover is ruining me, brother Joshua."
+
+"He's feathering his own nest, I reckon."
+
+"You may swear to that. There wa'n't as many bushels of grain, by
+one-fourth, when they were threshed out last year, as I had calculated
+there would be in the field. I don't know what on earth he could have done
+with it. I suppose it'll be the same thing over this year."
+
+"Maybe he has served you as Deacon Travis was served by one of his help
+last season--the rascal bored holes in the granary floor and let out the
+corn so, and Travis couldn't contrive how his grain went till the floor
+was empty next spring, and then he see how it was."
+
+"Ha!--did he catch the fellow?"
+
+"Not he--he had made tracks before that. A word in your ear--I wouldn't
+let Didenhover see much of his salary till you know how he will come out
+at the end."
+
+"He has got it already!" said Mr. Ringgan, with a nervous twitch at the
+old mare's head; "he wheedled me out of several little sums on one
+pretence and another,--he had a brother in New York that he wanted to send
+some to, and goods that he wanted to get out of pawn, and so on,--and I
+let him have it! and then there was one of those fatting steers that he
+proposed to me to let him have on account, and I thought it was as good a
+way of paying him as any; and that made up pretty near the half of what
+was due to him."
+
+"I warrant you his'n was the fattest of the whole lot. Well, keep a tight
+hold of the other half, brother Elzevir, that's my advice to you."
+
+"The other half he was to make upon shares."
+
+"Whew I--well--I wish you well rid of him; and don't make such another
+bargain again. Good-day to ye!"
+
+It was with a keen pang that little Fleda saw the down-hearted look of her
+grandfather as again he pave the old mare notice to move on. A few minutes
+passed in deep thought on both sides.
+
+"Grandpa," said Fleda, "wouldn't Mr. Jolly perhaps know of somebody that
+might have some money to lend?"
+
+"I declare!" said the old gentleman after a moment, "that's not a bad
+thought. I wonder I didn't have it myself."
+
+They turned about, and without any more words measured back their way to
+Queechy Run. Mr. Jolly came out again, brisk and alert as ever; but after
+seeming to rack his brains in search of any actual or possible
+money-lender was obliged to confess that it was in vain; he could not
+think of one.
+
+"But I'll tell you what, Mr. Ringgan," he concluded, "I'll turn it over in
+my mind to-night and see if I can think of any thing that'll do, and if I
+can I'll let you know. If we hadn't such a nether millstone to deal with,
+it would be easy enough to work it somehow."
+
+So they set forth homewards again.
+
+"Cheer up, dear!" said the old gentleman heartily, laying one hand on his
+little granddaughter's lap,--"it will be arranged somehow. Don't you worry
+your little head with business. God will take care of us."
+
+"Yes, grandpa!" said the little girl, looking up with an instant sense of
+relief at these words; and then looking down again immediately to burst
+into tears.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II.
+
+
+
+  Have you seen but a bright lily grow,
+    Before rude hands have touch'd it?
+  Ha' you mark'd but the fall o' the snow,
+    Before the soil hath smutch'd it?
+
+  Ben Jonson.
+
+
+Where a ray of light can enter the future, a child's hope can find a
+way--a way that nothing less airy and spiritual can travel. By the time
+they reached their own door Fleda's spirits were at par again.
+
+"I am very glad we have got home, aren't you, grandpa?" she said as she
+jumped down; "I'm so hungry. I guess we are both of us ready for supper,
+don't you think so?"
+
+She hurried up stairs to take off her wrappings and then came down to the
+kitchen, where standing on the broad hearth and warming herself at the
+blaze, with all the old associations of comfort settling upon her heart,
+it occurred to her that foundations so established _could not_ be shaken.
+The blazing fire seemed to welcome her home and bid her dismiss fear; the
+kettle singing on its accustomed hook looked as if quietly ridiculing the
+idea that they could be parted company; her grandfather was in his
+cushioned chair at the corner of the hearth, reading the newspaper, as she
+had seen him a thousand times; just in the same position, with that
+collected air of grave enjoyment, one leg crossed over the other, settled
+back in his chair but upright, and scanning the columns with an intent but
+most un-careful face. A face it was that always had a rare union of
+fineness and placidness. The table stood spread in the usual place, warmth
+and comfort filled every corner of the room, and Pleda began to feel as if
+she had been in an uncomfortable dream, which was very absurd, but from
+which she was very glad she had awoke.
+
+"What have you got in this pitcher, Cynthy?" said she. "Muffins!--O let me
+bake them, will you? I'll bake them."
+
+"Now Fleda," said Cynthy, "just you be quiet. There ain't no place where
+you can bake 'em. I'm just going to clap 'em in the reflector--that's the
+shortest way I can take to do 'em. You keep yourself out o' muss."
+
+"They won't be muffins if you bake 'em in the reflector, Cynthy; they
+aren't half so good. Ah, do let me I I won't make a bit of muss."
+
+"Where'll you do 'em?"
+
+"In grandpa's room--if you'll just clean off the top of the stove for
+me--now do, Cynthy! I'll do 'em beautifully and you won't have a bit of
+trouble.--Come!"
+
+"It'll make an awful smoke, Flidda; you'll fill your grandpa's room with
+the smoke, and he won't like that, I guess."
+
+"O he won't mind it," said Fleda. "Will you, grandpa?"
+
+"What, dear?"--said Mr. Ringgan, looking up at her from his paper
+with a relaxing face which indeed promised to take nothing amiss that
+she might do.
+
+"Will you mind if I fill your room with smoke?"
+
+"No, dear!" said he, the strong heartiness of his acquiescence almost
+reaching a laugh,--"No, dear!--fill it with anything you like!"
+
+There was nothing more to be said; and while Fleda in triumph put on an
+apron and made her preparations, Cynthy on her part, and with a very good
+grace, went to get ready the stove; which being a wood stove, made of
+sheet iron, with a smooth even top, afforded in Fleda's opinion the very
+best possible field for muffins to come to their perfection. Now Fleda
+cared little in comparison for the eating part of the business; her
+delight was by the help of her own skill and the stove-top to bring the
+muffins to this state of perfection; her greatest pleasure in them was
+over when they were baked.
+
+A little while had passed, Mr. Ringgan was still busy with his newspaper,
+Miss Cynthia Gall going in and out on various errands, Fleda shut up in
+the distant room with the muffins and the smoke; when there came a knock
+at the door, and Mr. Ringgan's "Come in!"--was followed by the entrance of
+two strangers, young, well-dressed, and comely. They wore the usual badges
+of seekers after game, but their guns were left outside.
+
+The old gentleman's look of grave expectancy told his want of
+enlightening.
+
+"I fear you do not remember me, Mr. Ringgan," said the foremost of the two
+coming up to him,--"my name is Rossitur--Charlton Rossitur--a cousin of
+your little grand-daughter. I have only"--
+
+"O I know you now!" said Mr. Ringgan, rising and grasping his hand
+heartily,--"you are very welcome, sir. How do you do? I recollect you
+perfectly, but you took me by surprise.--How do you do, sir? Sit
+down--sit down."
+
+And the old gentleman had extended his frank welcome to the second of his
+visitors almost before the first had time to utter,
+
+"My friend Mr. Carleton."
+
+"I couldn't imagine what was coming upon me," said Mr. Ringgan,
+cheerfully, "for you weren't anywhere very near my thoughts; and I
+don't often see much of the gay world that is passing by me. You have
+grown since I saw you last, Mr. Rossitur. You are studying at West
+Point, I believe."
+
+"No sir; I _was_ studying there, but I had the pleasure of bringing that
+to an end last June."
+
+"Ah!--Well, what are you now? Not a cadet any longer, I suppose."
+
+"No sir--we hatch out of that shell lieutenants."
+
+"Hum.--And do you intend to remain in the army?"
+
+"Certainly sir, that is my purpose and hope."
+
+"Your mother would not like that, I should judge. I do not understand how
+she ever made up her mind to let you become that thing which hatches out
+into a lieutenant. Gentle creatures she and her sister both were.--How was
+it, Mr. Rossitur? were you a wild young gentleman that wanted training?"
+
+"I have had it sir, whether I wanted it or no."
+
+"Hum!--How is he, Mr. Carleton?--sober enough to command men?"
+
+"I have not seen him tried, sir," said this gentleman smiling; "but from
+tho inconsistency of the orders he issues to his dogs I doubt it
+exceedingly."
+
+"Why Carleton would have no orders issued to them at all, I believe," said
+young Rossitur; "he has been saying 'hush' to me all day."
+
+The old gentleman laughed in a way that indicated intelligence with one of
+the speakers,--which, appeared not.
+
+"So you've been following the dogs to-day," said he. "Been successful?"
+
+"Not a bit of it," said Rossitur. "Whether we got on the wrong grounds, or
+didn't get on the right ones, or the dogs didn't mind their business, or
+there was nothing to fire at, I don't know; but we lost our patience and
+got nothing in exchange."
+
+"Speak for yourself," said the other. "I assure you I was sensible of no
+ground of impatience while going over such a superb country as this."
+
+"It _is_ a fine country," said Mr. Ringgan,--"all this tract; and I ought
+to know it, for I have hunted every mile of it for many a mile around.
+There used to be more game than partridges in these hills when I was a
+young man;--bears and wolves, and deer, and now and then a panther, to say
+nothing of rattlesnakes."
+
+"That last mentioned is an irregular sort of game, is it not?" said Mr.
+Carleton smiling.
+
+"Well, game is what you choose to make it," said the old gentleman. "I
+have seen worse days' sport than I saw once when we were out after
+rattlesnakes and nothing else. There was a cave, sir, down under a
+mountain a few miles to the south of this, right at the foot of a bluff
+some four or five hundred feet sheer down,--it was known to be a resort of
+those creatures; and a party of us went out,--it's many years ago now,--to
+see if we couldn't destroy the nest--exterminate the whole horde. We had
+one dog with us,--a little dog, a kind of spaniel; a little white and
+yellow fellow,--and he did the work! Well, sir,--how many of those vermin
+do you guess that little creature made a finish of that day?--of large and
+small, sir, there were two hundred and twelve."
+
+"He must have been a gallant little fellow."
+
+"You never saw a creature, sir, take to a sport better; he just dashed in
+among them, from one to another,--he would catch a snake by the neck and
+give it a shake, and throw it down and rush at another;--poor fellow, it
+was his last day's sport,--he died almost as soon as it was over; he must
+have received a great many bites. The place is known as the rattlesnakes'
+den to this day, though there are none there now, I believe."
+
+"My little cousin is well, I hope," said Mr. Rossitur.
+
+"She? yes, bless her I she is always well. Where is she? Fairy, where are
+you?--Cynthy, just call Elfieda here."
+
+"She's just in the thick of the muffins, Mr. Ringgan."
+
+"Let the muffins burn! Call her."
+
+Miss Cynthia accordingly opened a little way the door of the passage, from
+which a blue stifling smoke immediately made its way into the room, and
+called out to Fleda. whose little voice was heard faintly responding from
+the distance.
+
+"It's a wonder she can hear through all that smoke," remarked Cynthia.
+
+"She," said Mr. Ringgan, laughing,--"she's playing cook or housekeeper in
+yonder, getting something ready for tea. She's a busy little spirit, if
+ever there was one. Ah! there she is. Come here, Fleda--here's your cousin
+Rossitur from West Point--and Mr. Carleton."
+
+Fleda made her appearance flushed with the heat of the stove and the
+excitement of turning the muffins, and the little iron spatula she used
+for that purpose still in her hand; and a fresh and larger puff of the
+unsavoury blue smoke accompanied her entrance. She came forward however
+gravely and without the slightest embarrassment to receive her cousin's
+somewhat unceremonious "How do, Fleda?"--and keeping the spatula still in
+one hand shook hands with him with the other. But at the very different
+manner in which Mr. Carleton _rose_ and greeted her, the flush on Fleda's
+cheek deepened, and she cast down her eyes and stepped back to her
+grandfather's side with the demureness of a young lady just undergoing the
+ceremony of presentation.
+
+"You come upon us out of a cloud, Fleda," said her cousin. "Is that the
+way you have acquired a right to the name of Fairy?"
+
+"I am sure, no," said Mr. Carleton.
+
+Fleda did not lift up her eyes, but her mounting colour shewed that she
+understood both speeches.
+
+"Because if you are in general such a misty personage," Mr. Rossitur went
+on half laughing, "I would humbly recommend a choice of incense."
+
+"O I forgot to open the windows!" exclaimed Fleda ingenuously. "Cynthy,
+won't you please go and do it? And take this with you," said she, holding
+out the spatula.
+
+"She is as good a fairy as _I_ want to see," said her grandfather, passing
+his arm fondly round her. "She carries a ray of sunshine in her right
+hand; and that's as magic-working a wand as any fairy ever wielded,--hey,
+Mr. Carleton?"
+
+Mr. Carleton bowed. But whether the sunshine of affection in Fleda's
+glance and smile at her grandfather made him feel that she was above a
+compliment, or whether it put the words out of his head, certain it is
+that he uttered none.
+
+"So you've had bad success to-day," continued Mr. Ringgan. "Where have you
+been? and what after? partridges?"
+
+"No sir," said Mr. Carleton, "my friend Rossitur promised me a rare bag
+of woodcock, which I understand to be the best of American feathered game;
+and in pursuance of his promise led me over a large extent of meadow and
+swamp land this morning, with which in the course of several hours I
+became extremely familiar, without flushing a single bird."
+
+"Meadow and swamp land?" said the old gentleman. "Whereabouts?"
+
+"A mile or more beyond the little village over here where we left our
+horses," said Rossitur. "We beat the ground well, but there were no signs
+of them even."
+
+"We had not the right kind of dog," said Mr. Carleton.
+
+"We had the kind that is always used here," said Rossitur; "nobody knows
+anything about a Cocker in America."
+
+"Ah, it was too wet," said Mr. Ringgan. "I could have told you that. There
+has been too much rain. You wouldn't find a woodcock in that swamp after
+such a day as we had a few days ago. But speaking of game, Mr. Rossitur, I
+don't know anything in America equal to the grouse. It is far before
+woodcock. I remember, many years back, going a grouse shooting, I and a
+friend, down in Pennsylvania,--we went two or three days running, and the
+birds we got were worth a whole season of woodcock.--But gentlemen, if you
+are not discouraged with your day's experience and want to try again,
+_I'll_ put you in a way to get as many woodcock as will satisfy you--if
+you'll come here to-morrow morning I'll go out with you far enough to shew
+you the way to the best ground _I_ know for shooting that game in all this
+country; you'll have a good chance for partridges too in the course of the
+day; and that ain't bad eating, when you can't get better--is it, Fairy?"
+he said, with a sudden smiling appeal to the little girl at his side. Her
+answer again was only an intelligent glance.
+
+The young sportsmen both thanked him and promised to take advantage of
+his kind offer. Fleda seized the opportunity to steal another look at the
+strangers; but meeting Mr. Carleton's eyes fixed on her with a remarkably
+soft and gentle expression she withdrew her own again as fast as
+possible, and came to the conclusion that the only safe place for them
+was the floor.
+
+"I wish I was a little younger and I'd take my gun and go along with you
+myself," said the old gentleman pleasantly; "but," he added sighing,
+"there is a time for everything, and my time for sporting is past."
+
+"You have no right to complain, sir," said Mr. Carleton, with a meaning
+glance and smile which the old gentleman took in excellent good part.
+
+"Well," said he, looking half proudly, half tenderly, upon the little
+demure figure at his side, "I don't say that I have. I hope I thank God
+for his mercies, and am happy. But in this world, Mr. Carleton, there is
+hardly a blessing but what draws a care after it. Well--well--these things
+will all be arranged for us!"
+
+It was plain, however, even to a stranger, that there was some subject
+of care not vague nor undefined pressing upon Mr. Ringgan's mind as he
+said this.
+
+"Have you heard from my mother lately, Fleda?" said her cousin.
+
+"Why yes," said Mr. Ringgan,--"she had a letter from her only to-day. You
+ha'n't read it yet, have you, Fleda?"
+
+"No grandpa," said the little girl; "you know I've been busy."
+
+"Ay," said the old gentleman; "why couldn't you let Cynthia bake the
+cakes, and not roast yourself over the stove till you're as red as a
+turkey-cock?"
+
+"This morning I was like a chicken," said Fleda laughing, "and now like a
+turkey-cock."
+
+"Shall I tell mamma, Fleda," said young Rossitur, "that you put off
+reading her letter to bake muffins?"
+
+Fleda answered without looking up, "Yes, if he pleased."
+
+"What do you suppose she will think?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"She will think that you love muffins better than her."
+
+"No," said Fleda, quietly but firmly,--"she will not think that, because
+it isn't true."
+
+The gentlemen laughed, but Mr. Carleton declared that Fleda's reasoning
+was unanswerable.
+
+"Well, I will see you to-morrow," said Mr. Rossitur, "after you have read
+the letter, for I suppose you will read it sometime. You should have had
+it before,--it came enclosed to me,--but I forgot unaccountably to mail it
+to you till a few days ago."
+
+"It will be just as good now, sir," said Mr. Ringgan.
+
+"There is a matter in it though," said Rossitur, "about which my mother
+has given me a charge. We will see you to-morrow. It was for that partly
+we turned out of our way this evening."
+
+"I am very glad you did," said Mr. Ringgan. "I hope your way will bring
+you here often. Won't you stay and try some of these same muffins
+before you go?"
+
+But this was declined, and the gentlemen departed; Fleda, it must be
+confessed, seeing nothing in the whole leave-taking but Mr. Carleton's
+look and smile. The muffins were a very tame affair after it.
+
+When supper was over she sat down fairly to her letter, and read it twice
+through before she folded it up. By this time the room was clear both of
+the tea equipage and of Cynthia's presence, and Fleda and her grandfather
+were alone in the darkening twilight with the blazing wood fire; he in
+his usual place at the side, and she on the hearth directly before it;
+both silent, both thinking, for some time. At length Mr. Ringgan spoke,
+breaking as it were the silence and his seriousness with the same effort.
+
+"Well dear!" said he cheerfully,--"what does she say?"
+
+"O she says a great many things, grandpa; shall I read yon the letter?"
+
+"No dear, I don't care to hear it; only tell me what she says."
+
+"She says they are going to stay in Paris yet a good while longer."
+
+"Hum!"--said Mr. Ringgan. "Well--that ain't the wisest thing I should like
+to hear of her doing."
+
+"Oh but it's because uncle Rossitur likes to stay there, I suppose, isn't
+it, grandpa?"
+
+"I don't know, dear. Maybe your aunt's caught the French fever. She
+used to be a good sensible woman; but when people will go into a
+whirligig, I think some of their wits get blown away before they come
+out. Well--what else?"
+
+"I am sure she is very kind," said Fleda. "She wants to have me go out
+there and live with her very much. She says I shall have everything I like
+and do just as I please, and she will make a pet of me and give me all
+sorts of pleasant things. She says she will take as good care of me as
+ever I took of the kittens. And there's a long piece to you about it, that
+I'll give you to read as soon as we have a light. It is very good of her,
+isn't it, grandpa? I love aunt Lucy very much."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Ringgan after a pause, "how does she propose to get
+you there?"
+
+"Why," said Fleda,--"isn't it curious?--she says there is a Mrs. Carleton
+here who is a friend of hers, and she is going to Paris in a little while,
+and aunt Lucy asked her if she wouldn't bring me, if you would let me go,
+and she said she would with great pleasure, and aunt Lucy wants me to come
+out with her."
+
+"Carleton!--Hum--" said Mr. Ringgan; "that must be this young man's
+mother?"
+
+"Yes, aunt Lucy says she is here with her son,--at least she says they
+were coming."
+
+"A very gentlemanly young man, indeed," said Mr. Ringgan.
+
+There was a grave silence. The old gentleman sat looking on the floor;
+Fleda sat looking into the fire, with all her might.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Ringgan after a little, "how would you like it, Fleda?"
+
+"What, grandpa?"
+
+"To go out to Paris to your aunt, with this Mrs. Carleton?"
+
+"I shouldn't like it at all," said Fleda smiling, and letting her eyes go
+back to the fire. But looking after the pause of a minute or two again to
+her grandfather's face, she was struck with its expression of stern
+anxiety. She rose instantly, and coming to him and laying one hand gently
+on his knee, said in tones that fell as light on the ear as the touch of a
+moonbeam on the water, "_You_ do not want me to go, do you, grandpa?"
+
+"No dear!" said the old gentleman, letting his hand fall upon hers,--"no
+dear!--that is the last thing I want!"
+
+But Fleda's keen ear discerned not only the deep affection but something
+of _regret_ in the voice, which troubled her. She stood, anxious and
+fearing, while her grandfather lifting his hand again and again let it
+fall gently upon hers; and amid all the fondness of the action Fleda
+somehow seemed to feel in it the same regret.
+
+"You'll not let aunt Lucy, nor anybody else, take me away from you, will
+you, grandpa?" said she after a little, leaning both arms affectionately
+on his knee and looking up into his face.
+
+"No indeed, dear!" said he, with an attempt at his usual heartiness,--"not
+as long as I have a place to keep you. While I have a roof to put my head
+under, it shall cover yours."
+
+To Fleda's hope that would have said enough; but her grandfather's face
+was so moved from its wonted expression of calm dignity that it was plain
+_his_ hope was tasting bitter things. Fleda watched in silent grief and
+amazement the watering eye and unnerved lip; till her grandfather
+indignantly dashing away a tear or two drew her close to his breast and
+kissed her. But she well guessed that the reason why he did not for a
+minute or two say anything, was because he could not. Neither could she.
+She was fighting with her woman's nature to keep it down,--learning the
+lesson early!
+
+"Ah well,"--said Mr Ringgan at length, in a kind of tone that might
+indicate the giving up a struggle which he had no means of carrying on, or
+the endeavour to conceal it from the too keen-wrought feelings of his
+little granddaughter,--"there will be a way opened for us somehow. We must
+let our Heavenly Father take care of us."
+
+"And he will, grandpa," whispered Fleda.
+
+"Yes dear!--We are selfish creatures. Your father's and your mother's
+child will not be forgotten."
+
+"Nor you either, dear grandpa," said the little girl, laying her soft
+cheek alongside of his, and speaking by dint of a great effort.
+
+"No," said he, clasping her more tenderly,--"no--it would he wicked in me
+to doubt it. He has blessed me all my life long with a great many more
+blessings than I deserved; and if he chooses to take away the sunshine of
+my last days I will bow my head to his will, and believe that he does all
+things well, though I cannot see it."
+
+"Don't, dear grandpa," said Fleda, stealing her other arm round his neck
+and hiding her face there,--"please don't!--"
+
+He very much regretted that he had said too much. He did not however know
+exactly how to mend it. He kissed her and stroked her soft hair, but that
+and the manner of it only made it more difficult for Fleda to recover
+herself, which she was struggling to do; and when he tried to speak in
+accents of cheering his voice trembled. Fleda's heart was breaking, but
+she felt that she was making matters worse, and she had already concluded
+on a mature review of circumstances that it was her duty to be cheerful.
+So after a few very heartfelt tears which she could not help, she raised
+her head and smiled, even while she wiped the traces of them away.
+
+"After all, grandpa," said she, "perhaps Mr. Jolly will come here in the
+morning with some good news, and then we should be troubling ourselves
+just for nothing."
+
+"Perhaps he will," said Mr. Ringgan, in a way that sounded much more like
+"Perhaps he won't!" But Fleda was determined now not to _seem_ discouraged
+again. She thought the best way was to change the conversation.
+
+"It is very kind in aunt Lucy, isn't it, grandpa, what she has
+written to me?"
+
+"Why no," said Mr. Ringgan, decidedly, "I can't say I think it is any very
+extraordinary manifestation of kindness in anybody to want you."
+
+Fleda smiled her thanks for this compliment.
+
+"It might be a kindness in me to give you to her."
+
+"It wouldn't be a kindness to me, grandpa."
+
+"I don't know about that," said he gravely. They were getting back to the
+old subject. Fleda made another great effort at a diversion.
+
+"Grandpa, was my father like my uncle Rossitur in any thing?"
+
+The diversion was effected.
+
+"Not he, dear!" said Mr. Ringgan. "Your father had ten times the man in
+him that ever your uncle was."
+
+"Why what kind of a man is uncle Rossitur, grandpa?"
+
+"Ho dear! I can't tell. I ha'n't seen much of him. I wouldn't judge a man
+without knowing more of him than I do of Mr. Rossitur. He seemed an
+amiable kind of man. But no one would ever have thought of looking at him,
+no more than at a shadow, when your father was by."
+
+The diversion took effect on Fleda herself now. She looked up pleased.
+
+"You remember your father, Fleda?"
+
+"Yes grandpa, but not very well always;--I remember a great many
+things about him, but I can't remember exactly how he looked,--except
+once or twice."
+
+"Ay, and he wa'n't well the last time you remember him. But he was a
+noble-looking man--in form and face too--and his looks were the worst part
+of him. He seemed made of different stuff from all the people around,"
+said Mr. Ringgan sighing, "and they felt it too I used to notice, without
+knowing it. When his cousins were 'Sam' and 'Johnny' and 'Bill,' he was
+always, that is, after he grew up, '_Mr. Walter._' I believe they were a
+little afeard of him. And with all his bravery and fire he could be as
+gentle as a woman."
+
+"I know that," said Fleda, whose eyes were dropping soft tears and
+glittering at the same time with gratified feeling. "What made him be a
+soldier, grandpa?"
+
+"Oh I don't know, dear!--he was too good to make a farmer of--or his high
+spirit wanted to rise in the world--he couldn't rest without trying to be
+something more than other folks. I don't know whether people are any
+happier for it."
+
+"Did _he_ go to West Point, grandpa?"
+
+"No dear!--he started without having so much of a push as that; but he was
+one of those that don't need any pushing; he would have worked his way up,
+put him anywhere you would, and he did,--over the heads of West Pointers
+and all, and would have gone to the top, I verily believe, if he had lived
+long enough. He was as fine a fellow as there was in all the army. _I_
+don't believe there's the like of him left in it."
+
+"He had been a major a good while, hadn't he, grandpa?"
+
+"Yes. It was just after he was made captain that he went to Albany, and
+there he saw your mother. She and her sister, your aunt Lucy, were wards
+of the patroon. I was in Albany, in the legislature, that winter, and I
+knew them both very well; but your aunt Lucy had been married some years
+before. She was staying there that winter without her husband--he was
+abroad somewhere."
+
+Fleda was no stranger to these details and had learned long ago what was
+meant by 'wards' and 'the patroon.'
+
+"Your father was made a major some years afterwards," Mr. Ringgan went on,
+"for his fine behaviour out here at the West--what's the name of the
+place?--I forget it just now--fighting the Indians. There never was
+anything finer done."
+
+"He was brave, wasn't he, grandpa?"
+
+"Brave!--he had a heart of iron sometimes, for as soft as it was at
+others. And he had an eye, when he was roused, that I never saw anything
+that would stand against. But your father had a better sort of courage
+than the common sort--he had enough of _that_--but this is a rarer
+thing--he never was afraid to do what in his conscience he thought was
+right. Moral courage I call it, and it is one of the very noblest
+qualities a man can have."
+
+"That's a kind of courage a woman may have," said Fleda.
+
+"Yes--you may have that; and I guess it's the only kind of courage
+_you'll_ ever be troubled with," said her grandfather looking laughingly
+at her. "However, any man may walk up to the cannon's mouth, but it is
+only one here and there that will walk out against men's opinions
+because he thinks it is right. That was one of the things I admired most
+in your father."
+
+"Didn't my mother have it too?" said Fleda.
+
+"I don't know--she had about everything that was good. A gweet, pretty
+creature she was, as I ever saw."
+
+"Was she like aunt Lucy?"
+
+"No, not much. She was a deal handsomer than your aunt is or ever could
+have been. She was the handsomest woman, I think, that ever I set eyes
+upon; and a sweet, gentle, lovely creature. _You_'ll never match her,"
+said Mr. Ringgan, with a curious twist of his head and sly laughing twist
+of his eyes at Fleda;--"you may be as _good_ as she was, but you'll never
+be as good-looking."
+
+Fleda laughed, nowise displeased.
+
+"You've got her hazel eyes though," remarked Mr. Ringgan, after a minute
+or two, viewing his little granddaughter with a sufficiently satisfied
+expression of countenance.
+
+"Grandpa," said she, "don't you think Mr. Carleton has handsome eyes?"
+
+"Mr. Carleton?--hum--I don't know; I didn't look at his eyes. A very
+well-looking young man though--very gentlemanly too."
+
+Fleda had heard all this and much more about her parents some dozens of
+times before; but she and her grandfather were never tired of going it
+over. If the conversation that recalled his lost treasures had of
+necessity a character of sadness and tenderness, it yet bespoke not more
+regret that he had lost them than exulting pride and delight in what they
+had been,--perhaps not so much. And Fleda delighted to go back and feed
+her imagination with stories of the mother whom she could not remember,
+and of the father whose fair bright image stood in her memory as the
+embodiment of all that is high and noble and pure. A kind of guardian
+angel that image was to little Fleda. These ideal likenesses of her father
+and mother, the one drawn from history and recollection, the other from
+history only, had been her preservative from all the untoward influences
+and unfortunate examples which had surrounded her since her father's death
+some three or four years before had left her almost alone in her
+grandfather's house. They had created in her mind a standard of the true
+and beautiful in character, which nothing she saw around her, after of
+course her grandfather, and one other exception, seemed at all to meet;
+and partly from her own innate fineness of nature, and partly from this
+pure ideal always present with her, she had shrunk almost instinctively
+from the few varieties of human nature the country-side presented to her,
+and was in fact a very isolated little being, living in a world of her
+own, and clinging with all her strong outgoings of affection to her
+grandfather only; granting to but one other person any considerable share
+in her regard or esteem. Little Fleda was not in the least misanthropical;
+she gave her kindly sympathies to all who came in her way on whom they
+could possibly be bestowed; but these people were nothing to her: her
+spirit fell off from them, even in their presence; there was no affinity.
+She was in truth what her grandfather had affirmed of her father, made of
+different stuff from the rest of the world. There was no tincture of pride
+in all this; there was no conscious feeling of superiority; she could
+merely have told you that she did not care to hear these people talk, that
+she did not love to be with them; though she _would_ have said so to no
+earthly creature but her grandfather, if even to him.
+
+[Illustration: "I wasn't thinking of myself in particular."]
+
+"It must be pleasant," said Fleda, after looking for some minutes
+thoughtfully into the fire,--"it must be a pleasant thing to have a father
+and mother."
+
+"Yes dear!" said her grandfather, sighing,--"you have lost a great deal!
+But there is your aunt Lucy--you are not dependent altogether on me."
+
+"Oh grandpa!" said the little girl laying one hand again pleadingly on his
+knee;--"I didn't mean--I mean--I was speaking in general--I wasn't
+thinking of myself in particular."
+
+"I know, dear!" said he, as before taking the little hand in his own and
+moving it softly up and down on his knee. But the action was sad, and
+there was the same look of sorrowful stern anxiety. Fleda got up and put
+her arm over his shoulder, speaking from a heart filled too full.
+
+"I don't want aunt Lucy--I don't care about aunt Lucy; I don't want
+anything but you, grandpa. I wish you wouldn't talk so."
+
+"Ah well, dear," said he, without looking at her,--he couldn't bear to
+look at her,--"it's well it is so. I sha'n't last a great while--it isn't
+likely--and I am glad to know there is some one you can fall back upon
+when I am gone."
+
+Pleda's next words were scarcely audible, but they contained a reproach to
+him for speaking so.
+
+"We may as well look at it, dear," said he gravely; "it must come to
+that--sooner or later--but you mustn't distress yourself about it
+beforehand. Don't cry--don't, dear!" said he, tenderly kissing her. "I
+didn't mean to trouble you so. There--there--look up, dear--let's take the
+good we have and be thankful for it. God will arrange the rest, in his own
+good way. Fleda!--I wouldn't have said a word if I had thought it would
+have worried you so."
+
+He would not indeed. But he had spoken as men so often speak, out of the
+depths of their own passion or bitterness, forgetting that they are
+wringing the cords of a delicate harp, and not knowing what mischief
+they have done till they find the instrument all out of tune,--more
+often not knowing it ever. It is pity,--for how frequently a discord is
+left that jars all life long; and how much more frequently still the
+harp, though retaining its sweetness and truth of tone to the end, is
+gradually unstrung.
+
+Poor Fleda could hardly hold up her head for a long time, and recalling
+bitterly her unlucky innocent remark which had led to all this trouble she
+almost made up her mind with a certain heroine of Miss Edgeworth's, that
+"it is best never to mention things." Mr. Ringgan, now thoroughly alive to
+the wounds he had been inflicting, held his little pet in his arms,
+pillowed her head on his breast, and by every tender and soothing action
+and word endeavoured to undo what he had done. And after a while the agony
+was over, the wet eyelashes were lifted up, and the meek sorrowful little
+face lay quietly upon Mr. Ringgan's breast, gazing out into the fire as
+gravely as if the Panorama of life were there. She little heeded at first
+her grandfather's cheering talk, she knew it was for a purpose.
+
+"Ain't it most time for you to go to bed?" whispered Mr. Ringgan when he
+thought the purpose was effected.
+
+"Shall I tell Cynthy to get you your milk, grandpa?" said the little girl
+rousing herself.
+
+"Yes dear.--Stop,--what if you and me was to have some roast
+apples?--wouldn't you like it?"
+
+"Well--yes, I should, grandpa," said Fleda, understanding perfectly why he
+wished it, and wishing it herself for that same reason and no other.
+
+"Cynthy, let's have some of those roast apples," said Mr. Ringgan, "and a
+couple of bowls of milk here."
+
+"No, I'll get the apples myself, Cynthy," said Fleda.
+
+"And you needn't take any of the cream off, Cynthy," added Mr. Ringgan.
+
+One corner of the kitchen table was hauled up to the fire, to be
+comfortable, Fleda said, and she and her grandfather sat down on the
+opposite sides of it to do honour to the apples and milk; each with the
+simple intent of keeping up appearances and cheating the other into
+cheerfulness. There is however, deny it who can, an exhilarating effect in
+good wholesome food taken when one is in some need of it; and Fleda at
+least found the supper relish exceeding well. Every one furthermore knows
+the relief of a hearty flow of tears when a secret weight has been
+pressing on the mind. She was just ready for anything reviving. After the
+third mouthful she began to talk, and before the bottom of the bowls was
+reached she had smiled more than once. So her grandfather thought no harm
+was done, and went to bed quite comforted; and Fleda climbed the steep
+stairs that led from his door to her little chamber just over his head. It
+was small and mean, immediately under the roof, with only one window.
+There were plenty of better rooms in the house, but Fleda liked this
+because it kept her near her grandfather; and indeed she had always had it
+ever since her father's death, and never thought of taking any other.
+
+She had a fashion, this child, in whom the simplicity of practical life
+and the poetry of imaginative life were curiously blended,--she had a
+fashion of going to her window every night when the moon or stars were
+shining to look out for a minute or two before she went to bed; and
+sometimes the minutes were more than any good grandmother or aunt would
+have considered wholesome for little Fleda in the fresh night air. But
+there was no one to watch or reprimand; and whatever it was that Fleda
+read in earth or sky, the charm which held her one bright night was sure
+to bring her to her window the next. This evening a faint young moon
+lighted up but dimly the meadow and what was called the "east-hill,"
+over-against which the window in question looked. The air was calm and
+mild; there was no frost to-night; the stillness was entire, and the stars
+shone in a cloudless sky. Fleda set open the window and looked out with a
+face that again bore tokens of the experiences of that day. She wanted the
+soothing speech of nature's voice; and child as she was she could hear it.
+She did not know, in her simplicity, what it was that comforted and
+soothed her, but she stood at her window enjoying.
+
+It was so perfectly still, her fancy presently went to all those people
+who had hushed their various work and were now resting, or soon would be,
+in the unconsciousness and the helplessness of sleep. The
+_helplessness_,--and then that Eye that never sleeps; that Hand that keeps
+them all, that is never idle, that is the safety and the strength alike of
+all the earth and of them that wake or sleep upon it,--
+
+"And if he takes care of them all, will he not take care of poor little
+me?" thought Fleda. "Oh how glad I am I know there is a God!--How glad I
+am I know he is such a God! and that I can trust in him; and he will make
+everything go right. How I forget this sometimes! But Jesus does not
+forget his children. Oh I am a happy little girl!--Grandpa's saying what
+he did don't make it so--perhaps I shall die the first--but I hope not,
+for what would become of him!--But this and everything will all be
+arranged right, and I have nothing to do with it but to obey God and
+please him, and he will take care of the rest. He has forbidden _us_ to be
+careful about it too."
+
+With grateful tears of relief Fleda shut the window and began to undress
+herself, her heart so lightened of its burden that her thoughts presently
+took leave to go out again upon pleasure excursions in various
+directions; and one of the last things in Fleda's mind before sleep
+surprised her was, what a nice thing it was for any one to bow and smile
+so as Mr. Carleton did!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III.
+
+
+
+  I know each lane, and every alley green,
+  Dingle or bushy dell of this wild wood,
+  And every bosky bourn from side to side
+  My daily walks and ancient neighbourhood.
+
+  Milton.
+
+
+Fleda and her grandfather had but just risen from a tolerably early
+breakfast the next morning, when the two young sportsmen entered the room.
+
+"Ha!" said Mr. Ringgan,--"I declare! you're stirring betimes. Come five
+or six miles this morning a'ready. Well--that's the stuff to make
+sportsmen of. Off for the woodcock, hey?--And I was to go with you and
+shew you the ground.--I declare I don't know how in the world I can do it
+this morning, I'm so very stiff--ten times as bad as I was yesterday. I
+had a window open in my room last night, I expect that must have been the
+cause. I don't see how I could have overlooked it, but I never gave it a
+thought, till this morning I found myself so lame I could hardly get out
+of bed.--I am very sorry, upon my word?"
+
+"I am very sorry we must lose your company, sir," said the young
+Englishman, "and for such a cause; but as to the rest!--I dare say your
+directions will guide us sufficiently."
+
+"I don't know about that," said the old gentleman. "It is pretty hard to
+steer by a chart that is only laid down in the imagination. I set out once
+to go in New York from one side of the city over into the other, and the
+first thing I knew I found myself travelling along half a mile out of
+town. I had to get in a stage and ride back and take a fresh start. Out at
+the West they say when you are in the woods you can tell which is north by
+the moss growing on that side of the trees; but if you're lost you'll be
+pretty apt to find the moss grows on _all_ sides of the trees. I couldn't
+make out any waymarks at all, in such a labyrinth of brick corners. Well,
+let us see--if I tell you now it is so easy to mistake one hill for
+another--Fleda, child, you put on your sun-bonnet and take these gentlemen
+back to the twenty-acre lot, and from there you can tell 'em how to go so
+I guess they won't mistake it."
+
+"By no means!" said Mr. Carleton; "we cannot give her so much trouble; it
+would be buying our pleasure at much too dear a rate."
+
+"Tut, tut," said the old gentleman; "she thinks nothing of trouble, and
+the walk'll do her good. She'd like to be out all day, I believe, if she
+had any one to go along with, but I'm rather a stupid companion for such a
+spry little pair of feet. Fleda, look here,--when they get to the lot they
+can find their own way after that. You know where the place is--where your
+cousin Seth shot so many woodcock last year, over in Mr. Hurlbut's
+land,--when you get to the big lot you must tell these gentlemen to go
+straight over the hill, not Squire Thornton's hill, but mine, at the back
+of the lot,--they must go straight over it till they come to cleared land
+on the other side; then they must keep along by the edge of the wood, to
+the right, till they come to the brook; they must _cross the brook_, and
+follow up the opposite bank, and they'll know the ground when they come to
+it, or they don't deserve to. Do you understand?--now run and get your hat
+for they ought to be off."
+
+Fleda went, but neither her step nor her look shewed any great willingness
+to the business.
+
+"I am sure, Mr. Ringgan," said Mr. Carleton, "your little granddaughter
+has some reason for not wishing to take such a long walk this morning.
+Pray allow us to go without her."
+
+"Pho, pho," said the old gentleman, "she wants to go."
+
+"I guess she's skeered o' the guns," said Cynthy, happy to get a chance to
+edge in a word before such company;--"it's that ails her."
+
+"Well, well,--she must get used to it," said Mr. Ringgan. "Here she is!"
+
+Fleda had it in her mind to whisper to him a word of hope about Mr. Jolly;
+but she recollected that it was at best an uncertain hope, and that if her
+grandfather's thoughts were off the subject it was better to leave them
+so. She only kissed him for good-by, and went out with the two gentlemen.
+
+As they took up their guns Mr. Carleton caught the timid shunning glance
+her eye gave at them.
+
+"Do you dislike the company of these noisy friends of ours, Miss
+Fleda?" said he.
+
+Fleda hesitated, and finally said "she didn't much like to be very near
+them when they were fired."
+
+"Put that fear away then," said he, "for they shall keep a respectful
+silence so long as they have the honour to be in your company. If the
+woodcock come about us as tame as quails our guns shall not be provoked to
+say anything till your departure gives them leave."
+
+Fleda smiled her thanks and set forward, privately much confirmed in her
+opinion that Mr. Carleton had handsome eyes.
+
+At a little distance from the house Fleda left the meadow for an old
+apple-orchard at the left, lying on a steep side hill. Up this hill-side
+they toiled; and then found themselves on a ridge of table-land,
+stretching back for some distance along the edge of a little valley or
+bottom of perfectly flat smooth pasture-ground. The valley was very
+narrow, only divided into fields by fences running from side to side. The
+table-land might be a hundred feet or more above the level of the bottom,
+with a steep face towards it. A little way back from the edge the woods
+began; between them and the brow of the hill the ground was smooth and
+green, planted as if by art with flourishing young silver pines and once
+in a while a hemlock, some standing in all their luxuriance alone, and
+some in groups. With now and then a smooth grey rock, or large
+boulder-stone which had somehow inexplicably stopped on the brow of the
+hill instead of rolling down into what at some former time no doubt was a
+bed of water,--all this open strip of the table-land might have stood with
+very little coaxing for a piece of a gentleman's pleasure-ground. On the
+opposite side of the little valley was a low rocky height, covered with
+wood, now in the splendour of varied red and green and purple and brown
+and gold; between, at their feet, lay the soft quiet green meadow; and off
+to the left, beyond the far end of the valley, was the glory of the autumn
+woods again, softened in the distance. A true October sky seemed to
+pervade all, mildly blue, transparently pure, with that clearness of
+atmosphere that no other month gives us; a sky that would have conferred a
+patent of nobility on any landscape. The scene was certainly contracted
+and nowise remarkable in any of its features, but Nature had shaken out
+all her colours over the land, and drawn a veil from the sky, and breathed
+through the woods and over the hill-side the very breath of health,
+enjoyment, and vigour.
+
+When they were about over-against the middle of the valley, Mr. Carleton
+suddenly made a pause and stood for some minutes silently looking. His two
+companions came to a halt on either side of him, one not a little pleased,
+the other a little impatient.
+
+"Beautiful!" Mr. Carleton said at length.
+
+"Yes," said Fleda gravely, "I think it's a pretty place. I like it up
+here."
+
+"We sha'n't catch many woodcock among these pines," said young Rossitur.
+
+"I wonder," said Mr. Carleton presently, "how any one should have called
+these 'melancholy days.'"
+
+"Who has?" said Rossitur.
+
+"A countryman of yours," said his friend glancing at him. "If he had been
+a countryman of mine there would have been less marvel. But here is none
+of the sadness of decay--none of the withering--if the tokens of old age
+are seen at all it is in the majestic honours that crown a glorious
+life--the graces of a matured and ripened character. This has nothing in
+common, Rossitur, with those dull moralists who are always dinning decay
+and death into one's ears;--this speaks of Life. Instead of freezing all
+one's hopes and energies, it quickens the pulse with the desire to
+_do_.--'The saddest of the year'--Bryant was wrong."
+
+"Bryant?--oh!"--said young Rossitur; "I didn't know who you were
+speaking of."
+
+"I believe, now I think of it, he was writing of a somewhat later time of
+the year,--I don't know, how all this will look in November."
+
+"I think it is very pleasant in November," said little Fleda sedately.
+
+"Don't you know Bryant's 'Death of the Flowers,' Rossitur?" said his
+friend smiling. "What have you been doing all your life?"
+
+"Not studying the fine arts at West Point, Mr. Carleton."
+
+"Then sit down here and let me mend that place in your education. Sit
+down! and I'll give you something better than woodcock. You keep a
+game-bag for thoughts, don't you?"
+
+Mr. Rossitur wished Mr. Carleton didn't. But he sat down, however, and
+listened with an unedified face; while his friend, more to please himself
+it must be confessed than for any other reason, and perhaps with half a
+notion to try Fleda, repeated the beautiful words. He presently saw they
+were not lost upon one of his hearers; she listened intently.
+
+"It is very pretty," said Rossitur when he had done. "I believe I have
+seen it before somewhere."
+
+"There is no 'smoky light' to day," said Fleda.
+
+"No," said Mr. Carleton, smiling to himself. "Nothing but that could
+improve the beauty of all this, Miss Fleda."
+
+"_I_ like it better as it is," said Fleda.
+
+"I am surprised at that," said young Rossitur. "I thought you lived
+on smoke."
+
+There was nothing in the words, but the tone was not exactly polite. Fleda
+granted him neither smile nor look.
+
+"I am glad you like it up here," she went on, gravely doing the honours
+of the place. "I came this way because we shouldn't have so many fences
+to climb."
+
+"You are the best little guide possible, and I have no doubt would always
+lead one the right way," said Mr. Carleton.
+
+Again the same gentle, kind, _appreciating_ look. Fleda unconsciously drew
+a step nearer. There was a certain undefined confidence established
+between them.
+
+"There's a little brook down there in spring," said she pointing to a
+small grass grown water-course in the meadow, hardly discernible from the
+height,--"but there's no water in it now. It runs quite full for a while
+after the snow breaks up; but it dries away by June or July."
+
+"What are those trees so beautifully tinged with red and orange?--down
+there by the fence in the meadow."
+
+"I am not woodsman enough to inform you," replied Rossitur.
+
+"Those are maples," said Fleda, "sugar maples. The one all orange is
+a hickory."
+
+"How do you know?" said Mr. Carleton, turning to her. "By your wit
+as a fairy?"
+
+"I know by the colour," said Fleda modestly,--"and by the shape too."
+
+"Fairy," said Mr. Rossitur, "if you have any of the stuff about you, I
+wish you would knock this gentleman over the head with your wand and put
+the spirit of moving into him. He is going to sit dreaming here all day."
+
+"Not at all," said his friend springing up.--"I am ready for you--but I
+want other game than woodcock just now I confess."
+
+They walked along in silence, and had near reached the extremity of the
+table-land, which towards the end of the valley descended into ground of a
+lower level covered with woods; when Mr. Carleton who was a little ahead
+was startled by Fleda's voice exclaiming in a tone of distress, "Oh not
+the robins!"--and turning about perceived Mr. Rossitur standing still with
+levelled gun and just in the act to shoot. Fleda had stopped her ears. In
+the same instant Mr. Carleton had thrown up the gun, demanding of Rossitur
+with a singular change of expression--"what he meant!"
+
+"Mean?" said the young gentleman, meeting with an astonished face the
+indignant fire of his companion's eyes,--"why I mean not to meddle with
+other people's guns, Mr. Carleton. What do _you_ mean?"
+
+"Nothing but to protect myself."
+
+"Protect yourself!" said Rossitur, heating as the other cooled,--from
+what, in the name of wonder?"
+
+"Only from having my word blown away by your fire," said Carleton,
+smiling. "Come, Rossitur, recollect yourself--remember our compact."
+
+"Compact! one isn't bound to keep compacts with unearthly personages,"
+said Rossitur, half sulkily and half angrily; "and besides I made none."
+
+Mr. Carleton turned from him very coolly and walked on.
+
+They left the table-land and the wood, entered the valley again, and
+passed through a large orchard, the last of the succession of fields which
+stretched along it. Beyond this orchard the ground rose suddenly, and on
+the steep hill-side there had been a large plantation of Indian corn. The
+corn was harvested, but the ground was still covered with numberless
+little stacks of the corn-stalks. Half way up the hill stood three ancient
+chestnut trees; veritable patriarchs of the nut tribe they were, and
+respected and esteemed as patriarchs should be.
+
+"There are no 'dropping nuts' to-day, either," said Fleda, to whom the
+sight of her forest friends in the distance probably suggested the
+thought, for she had not spoken for some time. "I suppose there hasn't
+been frost enough yet."
+
+"Why you have a good memory, Fairy," said Mr. Carleton. "Do you give the
+nuts leave to fall of themselves?"
+
+"Oh sometimes grandpa and I go a nutting," said the little girl getting
+lightly over the fence,--"but we haven't been this year."
+
+"Then it is a pleasure to come yet?"
+
+"No," said Fleda quietly, "the trees near the house have been stripped;
+and the only other nice place there is for us to go to, Mr. Didenhover let
+the Shakers have the nuts. I sha'n't get any this year."
+
+"Live in the woods and not get any nuts! that won't do, Fairy. Here are
+some fine chestnuts we are coming to--what would hinder our reaping a good
+harvest from them?"
+
+"I don't think there will be any on them," said Fleda; "Mr. Didenhover has
+been here lately with the men getting in the coin,--I guess they have
+cleared the trees."
+
+"Who is Mr. Didenhover?"
+
+"He is grandpa's man."
+
+"Why didn't you bid Mr. Didenhover let the nuts alone?"
+
+"O he wouldn't mind if he was told," said Fleda. "He does everything just
+as he has a mind to, and nobody can hinder him. Yes--they've cleared the
+trees--I thought so."
+
+"Don't you know of any other trees that are out of this Mr.
+Didenhover's way?"
+
+"Yes," said Fleda,--"I know a place where there used to be beautiful
+hickory trees, and some chestnuts too, I think; but it is too far off for
+grandpa, and I couldn't go there alone. This is the twenty-acre lot," said
+she, looking though she did not say it, "Here I leave you."
+
+"I am glad to hear it," said her cousin. "Now give us our directions,
+Fleda, and thank you for your services."
+
+"Stop a minute," said Mr. Carleton. "What if you and I should try to find
+those same hickory trees, Miss Fleda? Will you take me with you?--or is it
+too long a walk?"
+
+"For me?--oh no!" said Fleda with a face of awakening hope; "but," she
+added timidly, "you were going a shooting, sir?"
+
+"What on earth are you thinking of, Carleton?" said young Rossitur. "Let
+the nuts and Fleda alone, do!"
+
+"By your leave, Mr. Rossitur," said Carleton. "My murderous intents have
+all left me, Miss Fleda,--I suppose your wand has been playing about
+me--and I should like nothing better than to go with you over the hills
+this morning. I have been a nutting many a time in my own woods at home,
+and I want to try it for once in the New World. Will you take me?"
+
+"O thank you, sir!" said Fleda,--"but we have passed the turning a long
+way--we must go back ever so far the same way we came to get to the place
+where we turn off to go up the mountain."
+
+"I don't wish for a prettier way,--if it isn't so far as to tire
+you, Fairy?"
+
+"Oh it won't tire me!" said Fleda overjoyed.
+
+"Carleton!" exclaimed young Kossitur. "Can you be so absurd! Lose this
+splendid day for the woodcock when we may not have another while we
+are here!"
+
+"You are not a true sportsman, Mr. Rossitur," said the other coolly, "or
+you would know what it is to have some sympathy with the sports of others.
+But _you_ will have the day for the woodcock, and bring us home a great
+many I hope. Miss Fleda, suppose we give this impatient young gentleman
+his orders and despatch him."
+
+"I thought you were more of a sportsman," said the vexed West
+Pointer,--"or your sympathy would be with me."
+
+"I tell you the sporting mania was never stronger on me," said the other
+carelessly. "Something less than a rifle however will do to bring down the
+game I am after. We will rendezvous at the little village over yonder,
+unless I go home before you, which I think is more probable. Au revoir!"
+
+With careless gracefulness he saluted his disconcerted companion, who
+moved off with ungraceful displeasure. Fleda and Mr. Carleton then began
+to follow back the road they had come, in the highest good humour both.
+Her sparkling face told him with even greater emphasis than her words,
+
+"I am so much obliged to you, sir."
+
+"How you go over fences!" said he,--"like a sprite, as you are."
+
+"O I have climbed a great many," said Fleda, accepting however, again with
+that infallible instinct, the help which she did not need--"I shall be so
+glad to get some nuts, for I thought I wasn't going to have any this year;
+and it is so pleasant to have them to crack in the long winter evenings."
+
+"You must find them long evenings indeed, I should think."
+
+"O no we don't," said Fleda. "I didn't mean they were long in _that_ way.
+Grandpa cracks the nuts, and I pick them out, and he tells me stories; and
+then you know he likes to go to bed early. The evenings never seem long."
+
+"But you are not always cracking nuts."
+
+"O no, to be sure not; but there are plenty of other pleasant things to
+do. I dare say grandpa would have bought some nuts, but I had a great deal
+rather have those we get ourselves, and then the fun of getting them,
+besides, is the best part."
+
+Fleda was tramping over the ground at a furious rate.
+
+"How many do you count upon securing to-day?" said Mr. Carleton gravely.
+
+"I don't know," said Fleda with a business face,--"there are a good
+many trees, and fine large ones, and I don't believe anybody has found
+them out--they are so far out of the way; there ought to be a good
+parcel of nuts."
+
+"But," said Mr. Carleton with perfect gravity, "if we should be lucky
+enough to find a supply for your winter's store, it would be too much for
+you and me to bring home, Miss Fleda, unless you have a broomstick in the
+service of fairydom."
+
+"A broomstick!" said Fleda.
+
+"Yes,--did you never hear of the man who had a broomstick that would fetch
+pails of water at his bidding?"
+
+"No," said Fleda laughing. "What a convenient broomstick! I wish we had
+one. But I know what I can do, Mr. Carleton,--if there should be too many
+nuts for us to bring home I can take Cynthy afterwards and get the rest of
+them. Cynthy and I could go--grandpa couldn't even if he was as well as
+usual, for the trees are in a hollow away over on the other side of the
+mountain. It's a beautiful place."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Carleton smiling curiously to himself, "in that case I
+shall be even of more use than I had hoped. But sha'n't we want a basket,
+Miss Fleda?"
+
+"Yes indeed," said Fleda,--"a good large one--I am going to run down to
+the house for it as soon as we get to the turning-off place, if you'll be
+so good as to sit down and wait for me, sir,--I won't be long after it."
+
+"No," said he; "I will walk with you and leave my gun in safe quarters.
+You had better not travel so fast, or I am afraid you will never reach the
+hickory trees."
+
+Fleda smiled and said there was no danger, but she slackened her pace, and
+they proceeded at a more reasonable rate till they reached the house.
+
+Mr. Carleton would not go in, placing his gun in an outer shelter. Fleda
+dashed into the kitchen, and after a few minutes' delay came out again
+with a huge basket, which Mr. Carleton took from her without suffering his
+inward amusement to reach his face, and a little tin pail which she kept
+under her own guardianship. In vain Mr. Carleton offered to take it with
+the basket or even to put it in the basket, where he shewed her it would
+go very well; it must go nowhere but in Fleda's own hand.
+
+Fleda was in restless haste till they had passed over the already twice
+trodden ground and entered upon the mountain road. It was hardly a road;
+in some places a beaten track was visible, in others Mr. Carleton wondered
+how his little companion found her way, where nothing but fresh-fallen
+leaves and scattered rocks and stones could be seen, covering the whole
+surface. But her foot never faltered, her eye read way-marks where his saw
+none, she went on, he did not doubt unerringly, over the leaf-strewn and
+rock-strewn way, over ridge and hollow, with a steady light swiftness that
+he could not help admiring. Once they came to a little brawling stream of
+spring water, hardly three inches deep anywhere but making quite a wide
+bed for itself in its bright way to the lowlands. Mr. Carleton was
+considering how he should contrive to get his little guide over it in
+safety, when quick,--over the little round stones which lifted their heads
+above the surface of the water, on the tips of her toes, Fleda tripped
+across before he had done thinking about it. He told her he had no doubt
+now that she was a fairy and had powers of walking that did not belong to
+other people. Fleda laughed, and on her little demure figure went picking
+out the way always with that little tin pail hanging at her side,
+like--Mr. Carleton busied himself in finding out similes for her. It
+wasn't very easy.
+
+For a long distance their way was through a thick woodland, clear of
+underbrush and very pleasant walking, but permitting no look at the
+distant country. They wound about, now uphill and now down, till at last
+they began to ascend in good earnest; the road became better marked, and
+Mr. Carleton came up with his guide again. Both were obliged to walk more
+slowly. He had overcome a good deal of Fleda's reserve and she talked to
+him now quite freely, without however losing the grace of a most exquisite
+modesty in everything she said or did.
+
+"What do you suppose I have been amusing myself with all this while, Miss
+Fleda?" said he, after walking for some time alongside of her in silence.
+"I have been trying to fancy what you looked like as you travelled on
+before me with that mysterious tin pail."
+
+"Well what _did_ I look like?" said Fleda laughing.
+
+"Little Red Riding-Hood, the first thing, carrying her grandmother the pot
+of butter."
+
+"Ah but I haven't got any butter in this as it happens," said Fleda, "and
+I hope you are not anything like the wolf, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"I hope not," said he laughing. "Well, then I thought you might be one of
+those young ladies the fairy-stories tell of, who set out over the world
+to seek their fortune. That might hold, you know, a little provision to
+last for a day or two till you found it."
+
+"No," said Fleda,--"I should never go to seek my fortune."
+
+"Why not, pray."
+
+"I don't think I should find it any the sooner."
+
+Mr. Carleton looked at her and could not make up his mind! whether or not
+she spoke wittingly.
+
+"Well, but after all are we not seeking our fortune?" said he. "We
+are doing something very like it. Now up here on the mountain top
+perhaps we shall find only empty trees--perhaps trees with a harvest
+of nuts on them."
+
+"Yes, but that wouldn't be like finding a fortune," said Fleda;--"if we
+were to come to a great heap of nuts all picked out ready for us to carry
+away, _that_ would be a fortune; but now if we find the trees full we have
+got to knock them down and gather them up and shuck them."
+
+"Make our own fortunes, eh?" said Mr. Carleton smiling. "Well people do
+say those are the sweetest nuts, I don't know how it may be. Ha! that is
+fine. What an atmosphere!"
+
+They had reached a height of the mountain that cleared them a view, and
+over the tops of the trees they looked abroad to a very wide extent of
+country undulating with hill and vale,--hill and valley alike far below at
+their feet. Fair and rich,--the gently swelling hills, one beyond another,
+in the patchwork dress of their many-coloured fields,--the gay hues of the
+woodland softened and melted into a rich autumn glow,--and far away,
+beyond even where this glow was sobered and lost in the distance, the
+faint blue line of the Catskill; faint, but clear and distinct through the
+transparent air. Such a sky!--of such etherealized purity as if made for
+spirits to travel in and tempting them to rise and free themselves from
+the soil; and the stillness,--like nature's hand laid upon the soul,
+bidding it think. In view of all that vastness and grandeur, man's
+littleness does bespeak itself. And yet, for every one, the voice of the
+scene is not more humbling to pride than rousing to all that is really
+noble and strong in character. Not only "What thou art,"--but "What thou
+mayest be!" What place thou oughtest to fill,--what work thou hast to
+do,--in this magnificent world. A very extended landscape however genial
+is also sober in its effect on the mind. One seems to emerge from the
+narrowness of individual existence, and take a larger view of Life as well
+as of Creation.
+
+Perhaps Mr. Carleton felt it so, for after his first expression of
+pleasure he stood silently and gravely looking for a long time. Little
+Fleda's eye loved it too, but she looked her fill and then sat down on a
+stone to await her companion's pleasure, glancing now and then up at his
+face which gave her no encouragement to interrupt him. It was gravely and
+even gloomily thoughtful. He stood so long without stirring that poor
+Fleda began to have sad thoughts of the possibility of gathering all the
+nuts from the hickory trees, and she heaved a very gentle sigh once or
+twice; but the dark blue eye which she with reason admired remained fixed
+on the broad scene below, as if it were reading or trying to read there a
+difficult lesson. And when at last he turned and began to go up the path
+again he kept the same face, and went moodily swinging his arm up and
+down, as if in disturbed thought. Fleda was too happy to be moving to care
+for her companion's silence; she would have compounded for no more
+conversation so they might but reach the nut trees. But before they had
+got quite so far Mr. Carleton broke the silence, speaking in precisely the
+same tone and manner he had used the last time.
+
+"Look here, Fairy," said he, pointing to a small heap of chestnut burs
+piled at the foot of a tree,--"here's a little fortune for you already."
+
+"That's a squirrel!" said Fleda, looking at the place very attentively.
+
+"There has been nobody else here. He has put them together, ready to be
+carried off to his nest."
+
+"We'll save him that trouble," said Mr. Carleton. "Little rascal! he's a
+Didenhover in miniature."
+
+"Oh no!" said Fleda; "he had as good a right to the nuts I am sure as we
+have, poor fellow.--Mr. Carleton--"
+
+Mr. Carleton was throwing the nuts into the basket. At the anxious and
+undecided tone in which his name was pronounced he stopped and looked up,
+at a very wistful face.
+
+"Mightn't we leave these nuts till we come back? If we find the trees over
+here full we sha'n't want them; and if we don't, these would be only a
+handful--"
+
+"And the squirrel would be disappointed?" said Mr. Carleton smiling. "You
+would rather we should leave them to him?"
+
+Fleda said yes, with a relieved face, and Mr. Carleton still smiling
+emptied his basket of the few nuts he had put in, and they walked on.
+
+In a hollow, rather a deep hollow, behind the crest of the hill, as Fleda
+had said, they came at last to a noble group of large hickory trees, with
+one or two chestnuts standing in attendance on the outskirts. And also as
+Fleda had said, or hoped, the place was so far from convenient access that
+nobody had visited them; they were thick hung with fruit. If the spirit of
+the game had been wanting or failing in Mr. Carleton, it must have roused
+again into full life at the joyous heartiness of Fleda's exclamations. At
+any rate no boy could have taken to the business better. He cut, with her
+permission, a stout long pole in the woods; and swinging himself lightly
+into one of the trees shewed that he was a master in the art of whipping
+them. Fleda was delighted but not surprised; for from the first moment of
+Mr. Carleton's proposing to go with her she bad been privately sure that
+he would not prove an inactive or inefficient ally. By whatever slight
+tokens she might read this, in whatsoever fine characters of the eye, or
+speech, or manner, she knew it; and knew it just as well before they
+reached the hickory trees as she did afterwards.
+
+When one of the trees was well stripped the young gentleman mounted into
+another, while Fleda set herself to hull and gather up the nuts under the
+one first beaten. She could make but little headway however compared with
+her companion; the nuts fell a great deal faster than she could put them
+in her basket. The trees were heavy laden and Mr. Carleton seemed
+determined to have the whole crop; from the second tree he went to the
+third. Fleda was bewildered with her happiness; this was doing business in
+style. She tried to calculate what the whole quantity would be, but it
+went beyond her; one basketful would not take it, nor two, not three,--it
+wouldn't _begin to_, Fleda said to herself. She went on hulling and
+gathering with all possible industry.
+
+After the third tree was finished Mr. Carleton threw down his pole, and
+resting himself upon the ground at the foot told Fleda he would wait a few
+moments before he began again. Fleda thereupon left off her work too, and
+going for her little tin pail presently offered it to him temptingly
+stocked with pieces of apple-pie. When he had smilingly taken one, she
+next brought him a sheet of white paper with slices of young cheese.
+
+"No, thank you," said he.
+
+"Cheese is very good with apple-pie," said Fleda competently.
+
+"Is it?" said he laughing. "Well--upon that--I think you would teach me a
+good many things, Miss Fleda, if I were to stay here long enough."
+
+"I wish you would stay and try, sir," said Fleda, who did not know exactly
+what to make of the shade of seriousness which crossed his face. It was
+gone almost instantly.
+
+"I think anything is better eaten out in the woods than it is at home,"
+said Fleda.
+
+"Well I don't know," said her friend. "I have no doubt that is the case
+with cheese and apple-pie, and especially under hickory trees which one
+has been contending with pretty sharply. If a touch of your wand, Fairy,
+could transform one of these shells into a goblet of Lafitte or
+Amontillado we should have nothing to wish for."
+
+'Amontillado' was Hebrew to Fleda, but 'goblet' was intelligible.
+
+"I am sorry!" she said,--"I don't know where there is any spring up
+here,--but we shall come to one going down the mountain."
+
+"Do you know where all the springs are?"
+
+"No, not all, I suppose," said Fleda, "but I know a good many. I have gone
+about through the woods so much, and I always look for the springs."
+
+"And who roams about through the woods with you?"
+
+"Oh nobody but grandpa," said Fleda. "He used to be out with me a great
+deal, but he can't go much now,--this year or two."
+
+"Don't you go to school?"
+
+"O no!" said Fleda smiling.
+
+"Then your grandfather teaches you at home?"
+
+"No,"--said Fleda,--"father used to teach me,--grandpa doesn't
+teach me much."
+
+"What do you do with yourself all day long?"
+
+"O plenty of things," said Fleda, smiling again. "I read, and talk to
+grandpa, and go riding, and do a great many things."
+
+"Has your home always been here, Fairy?" said Mr. Carleton after a few
+minutes' pause.
+
+Fleda said "No sir," and there stopped; and then seeming to think that
+politeness called upon her to say more, she added,
+
+"I have lived with grandpa ever since father left me here when he was
+going away among the Indians,--I used to be always with him before."
+
+"And how long ago is that?"
+
+"It is--four years, sir;--more, I believe. He was sick when he came back,
+and we never went away from Queechy again."
+
+Mr. Carleton looked again silently at the child, who had given him these
+pieces of information with a singular grave propriety of manner, and even
+as it were reluctantly.
+
+"And what do you read, Fairy?" he said after a minute;--"stories of
+fairy-land?"
+
+"No," said Fleda, "I haven't any. We haven't a great many books--there are
+only a few up in the cupboard, and the Encyclopædia; father had some
+books, but they are locked up in a chest. But there is a great deal in the
+Encyclopædia."
+
+"The Encyclopædia!" said Mr. Carleton;--"what do you read in that? what
+can you find to like there?"
+
+"I like all about the insects, and birds and animals; and about
+flowers,--and lives of people, and curious things. There are a great
+many in it."
+
+"And what are the other books in the cupboard, which you read?"
+
+"There's Quentin Durward," said Fleda,--"and Rob Roy, and Guy Mannering in
+two little bits of volumes; and the Knickerbocker, and the Christian's
+Magazine, and an odd volume of Redgauntlet, and the Beauties of Scotland."
+
+"And have you read all these, Miss Fleda?" said her companion, commanding
+his countenance with difficulty.
+
+"I haven't read quite all of the Christian's Magazine, nor all of the
+Beauties of Scotland."
+
+"All the rest?"
+
+"O yes," said Fleda,--"and two or three times over. And there are three
+great red volumes besides, Robertson's history of something, I believe. I
+haven't read that either."
+
+"And which of them all do you like the best?"
+
+"I don't know," said Fleda,--"I don't know but I like to read the
+Encyclopædia as well as any of them. And then I have the newspapers to
+read too."
+
+"I think, Miss Fleda," said Mr. Carleton a minute after, "you had
+better let me take you with my mother over the sea, when we go back
+again,--to Paris."
+
+"Why, sir?"
+
+"You know," said he half smiling, "your aunt wants you, and has engaged my
+mother to bring you with her if she can."
+
+"I know it," said Fleda. "But I am not going."
+
+It was spoken not rudely but in a tone of quiet determination.
+
+"Aren't you too tired, sir?" said she gently, when she saw Mr. Carleton
+preparing to launch into the remaining hickory trees.
+
+"Not I!" said he. "I am not tired till I have done, Fairy. And besides,
+cheese is workingman's fare, you know, isn't it?"
+
+"No," said Fleda gravely,--"I don't think it is."
+
+"What then?" said Mr. Carleton, stopping as he was about to spring into
+the tree, and looking at her with a face of comical amusement.
+
+"It isn't what _our_ men live on," said Fleda, demurely eying the fallen
+nuts, with a head full of business.
+
+They set both to work again with renewed energy, and rested not till the
+treasures of the trees had been all brought to the ground, and as large a
+portion of them as could be coaxed and shaken into Fleda's basket had been
+cleared from the hulls and bestowed there. But there remained a vast
+quantity. These with a good deal of labour Mr. Carleton and Fleda gathered
+into a large heap in rather a sheltered place by the side of a rock, and
+took what measures they might to conceal them. This was entirely at
+Fleda's instance.
+
+"You and your maid Cynthia will have to make a good many journeys, Miss
+Fleda, to get all these home, unless you can muster a larger basket."
+
+"O _that's_ nothing," said Fleda. "It will be all fun. I don't care how
+many times we have to come. You are _very_ good, Mr. Carleton."
+
+"Do you think so?" said he. "I wish I did. I wish you would make your wand
+rest on me, Fairy."
+
+"My wand?" said Fleda.
+
+"Yes--you know your grandfather says you are a fairy and carry a wand.
+What does he say that for, Miss Fleda?"
+
+Fleda said she supposed it was because he loved her so much; but the rosy
+smile with which she said it would have let her hearer, if he had needed
+enlightening, far more into the secret than she was herself. And if the
+simplicity in her face had not been equal to the wit, Mr. Carleton would
+never have ventured the look of admiration he bestowed on her. He knew it
+was safe. _Approbation_ she saw, and it made her smile the rosier; but the
+admiration was a step beyond her; Fleda could make nothing of it.
+
+They descended the mountain now with a hasty step, for the day was wearing
+well on. At the spot where he had stood so long when they went up, Mr.
+Carleton paused again for a minute. In mountain scenery every hour makes a
+change. The sun was lower now, the lights and shadows more strongly
+contrasted, the sky of a yet calmer blue, cool and clear towards the
+horizon. The scene said still the same that it had said a few hours
+before, with a touch more of sadness; it seemed to whisper, "All things
+have an end--thy time may not be for ever--do what thou wouldest
+do--'while ye have light believe in the light that ye may be children of
+the light.'"
+
+Whether Mr. Carleton read it so or not, he stood for a minute motionless
+and went down the mountain looking so grave that Fleda did not venture to
+speak to him, till they reached the neighbourhood of the spring.
+
+"What are you searching for, Miss Fleda?" said her friend.
+
+She was making a busy quest here and there by the side of the
+little stream.
+
+"I was looking to see if I could find a mullein leaf," said Fleda.
+
+"A mullein leaf? what do you want it for?"
+
+"I want it--to make a drinking cup of," said Fleda, her intent bright eyes
+peering keenly about in every direction.
+
+"A mullein leaf! that is too rough; one of these golden leaves--what are
+they?--will do better, won't it?"
+
+"That is hickory," said Fleda. "No; the mullein leaf is the best because
+it holds the water so nicely.--Here it is!--"
+
+And folding up one of the largest leaves into a most artist-like cup, she
+presented it to Mr. Carleton.
+
+"For me, was all that trouble?" said he. "I don't deserve it."
+
+"You wanted something, sir," said Fleda. "The water is very cold
+and nice."
+
+He stooped to the bright little stream and filled his rural goblet
+several times.
+
+"I never knew what it was to have a fairy for my cup-bearer before," said
+he. "That was better than anything Bordeaux or Xeres ever sent forth."
+
+He seemed to have swallowed his seriousness, or thrown it away with the
+mullein leaf. It was quite gone.
+
+"This is the best spring in all grandpa's ground," said Fleda. "The water
+is as good as can be."
+
+"How came you to be such a wood and water spirit? you must live out of
+doors. Do the trees ever talk to you? I sometimes think they do to me."
+
+"I don't know--I think _I_ talk to _them_," said Fleda.
+
+"It's the same thing," said her companion smiling. "Such beautiful woods!"
+
+"Were you never in the country before in the fall, sir?"
+
+"Not here--in my own country often enough--but the woods in England do not
+put on such a gay face, Miss Fleda, when they are going to be stripped of
+their summer dress--they look sober upon it--the leaves wither and grow
+brown and the woods have a dull russet colour. Your trees are true
+Yankees--they 'never say die!'"
+
+"Why, are the Americans more obstinate than the English?" said Fleda.
+
+"It is difficult to compare unknown quantities," said Mr. Carleton
+laughing and shaking his head. "I see you have good ears for the key-note
+of patriotism."
+
+Fleda looked a little hard at him, but he did not explain; and indeed they
+were hurrying along too much for talking, leaping from stone to stone, and
+running down the smooth orchard slope. When they reached the last fence,
+but a little way from the house, Fleda made a resolute pause.
+
+"Mr. Carleton--" said she.
+
+Mr. Carleton put down his basket, and looked in some surprise at the
+hesitating anxious little face that looked up at him.
+
+"Won't you please not say anything to grandpa about my going away?"
+
+"Why not, Fairy?" said he kindly.
+
+"Because I don't think I ought to go."
+
+"But may it not be possible," said he, "that your grandfather can judge
+better in the matter than you can do?"
+
+"No," said Fleda, "I don't think he can. He would do anything he thought
+would be most for my happiness; but it wouldn't be for my happiness," she
+said with an unsteady lip,--"I don't know what he would do if I went!"
+
+"You think he would have no sunshine if your wand didn't touch him?" said
+Mr. Carleton smiling.
+
+"No sir," said Fleda gravely,--"I don't think that,--but won't you please,
+Mr. Carleton, not to speak about it?"
+
+"But are you sure," he said, sitting down on a stone hard by and taking
+one of her hands, "are you sure that you would not like to go with us? I
+wish you would change your mind about it. My mother will love you very
+much, and I will take the especial charge of you till we give you to your
+aunt in Paris;--if the wind blows a little too rough I will always put
+myself between it and you," he added smiling.
+
+Fleda smiled faintly, but immediately begged Mr. Carleton "not to say
+anything to put it into her grandfather's head."
+
+"It must be there already, I think, Miss Fleda; but at any rate you know
+my mother must perform her promise to your aunt Mrs. Rossitur; and she
+would not do that without letting your grandfather know how glad she would
+be to take you."
+
+Fleda stood silent a moment, and then with a touching look of waiting
+patience in her sweet face suffered Mr. Carleton to help her over the
+fence; and they went home.
+
+To Fleda's unspeakable surprise it was found to be past four o'clock, and
+Cynthy had supper ready. Mr. Ringgan with great cordiality invited Mr.
+Carleton to stay with them, but he could not; his mother would expect him
+to dinner.
+
+"Where is your mother?"
+
+"At Montepoole, sir; we have been to Niagara, and came this way on our
+return; partly that my mother might fulfil the promise she made Mrs.
+Rossitur--to let you know, sir, with how much pleasure she will take
+charge of your little granddaughter and convey her to her friends in
+Paris, if you can think it best to let her go."
+
+"Hum!--she is very kind." said Mr. Ringgan, with a look of grave and not
+unmoved consideration which Fleda did not in the least like;--"How long
+will you stay at Montepoole, sir?"
+
+It might be several days, Mr. Carleton said.
+
+"Hum--You have given up this day to Fleda, Mr. Carleton,--suppose you take
+to-morrow for the game, and come here and try our country fare when you
+have got through shooting?--you and young Mr. Rossitur?--and I'll think
+over this question and let you know about it."
+
+Fleda was delighted to see that her friend accepted this invitation with
+apparent pleasure.
+
+"You will be kind enough to give my respects to your mother," Mr. Ringgan
+went on, "and thanks for her kind offer. I may perhaps--I don't
+know--avail myself of it. If anything should bring Mrs. Carleton this way
+we should like to see her. I am glad to see my friends," he said, shaking
+the young gentleman's hand,--"as long as I have a house to ask 'em to!"
+
+"That will be for many years, I trust," said Mr. Carleton respectfully,
+struck with something in the old gentleman's manner.
+
+"I don't know, sir!" said Mr. Ringgan, with again the dignified look of
+trouble;--"it may not be!--I wish you good day, sir."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV.
+
+
+
+  A mind that in a calm angelic mood
+  Of happy wisdom, meditating good,
+  Beholds, of all from her high powers required,
+  Much done, and much designed, and more desired.
+
+  Wordsworth.
+
+
+"I've had such a delicious day, dear grandpa,"--said little Fleda as they
+sat at supper;--"you can't think how kind Mr. Carleton has been."
+
+"Has he?--Well dear--I'm glad on't,--he seems a very nice young man."
+
+"He's a smart-lookin' feller," said Cynthy, who was pouring out the tea.
+
+"And we have got the greatest quantity of nuts!" Fleda went on,--"enough
+for all winter. Cynthy and I will have to make ever so many journeys to
+fetch 'em all; and they are splendid big ones. Don't you say anything to
+Mr. Didenhover, Cynthy."
+
+"I don't desire to meddle with Mr. Didenhover unless I've got to," said
+Cynthy with an expression of considerable disgust. "You needn't give no
+charges to me."
+
+"But you'll go with me, Cynthy?"
+
+"I s'pose I'll have to," said Miss Gall dryly, after a short interval of
+sipping tea and helping herself to sweetmeats.
+
+This lady had a pervading acidity of face and temper, but it was no more.
+To take her name as standing for a fair setting forth of her character
+would be highly injurious to a really respectable composition, which the
+world's neglect (there was no other imaginable cause) had soured a little.
+
+Almost Fleda's first thought on coming home had been about Mr. Jolly. But
+she knew very well, without asking, that he had not been there; she would
+not touch the subject.
+
+"I haven't had such a fine day of nutting in a great while, grandpa," she
+said again; "and you never saw such a good hand as Mr. Carleton is at
+whipping the trees."
+
+"How came he to go with you?"
+
+"I don't know,--I suppose it was to please me, in the first place; but I am
+sure he enjoyed it himself; and he liked the pie and cheese, too, Cynthy."
+
+"Where did your cousin go?"
+
+"O he went off after the woodcock. I hope he didn't find any."
+
+"What do you think of those two young men, Fairy?"
+
+"In what way, grandpa?"
+
+"I mean, which of them do you like the best?"
+
+"Mr. Carleton."
+
+"But t'other one's your cousin," said Mr. Ringgan, bending forward and
+examining his little granddaughter's face with a curious pleased look, as
+he often did when expecting an answer from her.
+
+"Yes," said Fleda, "but he isn't so much of a gentleman."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"I don't think he is," said Fleda quietly.
+
+"But why. Fairy?"
+
+"He doesn't know how to keep his word as well, grandpa."
+
+"Ay, ay? let's hear about that," said Mr. Ringgan.
+
+A little reluctantly, for Cynthia was present, Fleda told the story of the
+robins, and how Mr. Carleton would not let the gun be fired.
+
+"Wa'n't your cousin a little put out by that?"
+
+"They were both put out," said Fleda, "Mr. Carleton was very angry for a
+minute, and then Mr. Rossitur was angry, but I think he could have been
+angrier if he had chosen."
+
+Mr. Ringgan laughed, and then seemed in a sort of amused triumph about
+something.
+
+"Well dear!" he remarked after a while,--"you'll never buy wooden nutmegs,
+I expect."
+
+Fleda laughed and hoped not, and asked him why he said so. But he
+didn't tell her.
+
+"Mr. Ringgan," said Cynthy, "hadn't I better run up the hill after supper,
+and ask Mis' Plumfield to come down and help to-morrow? I suppose you'll
+want considerable of a set out; and if both them young men comes you'll
+want some more help to entertain 'em than I can give you, it's likely?"
+
+"Do so--do so," said the old gentleman. "Tell her who I expect, and ask
+her if she can come and help you, and me too."
+
+"O and I'll go with you, Cynthy," said Fleda. "I'll get aunt Miriam to
+come, I know."
+
+"I should think you'd be run off your legs already, Flidda," said Miss
+Cynthia; "what ails you to want to be going again?"
+
+But this remonstrance availed nothing. Supper was hurried through, and
+leaving the table standing Cynthia and Fleda set off to "run up the hill."
+
+They were hardly a few steps from the gate when they heard the clatter of
+horses' hoofs behind them, and the two young gentlemen came riding
+hurriedly past, having joined company and taken their horses at Queechy
+Run. Rossitur did not seem to see his little cousin and her companion; but
+the doffed cap and low inclination of the other rider as they flew by
+called up a smile and blush of pleasure to Fleda's face; and the sound of
+their horses' hoofs had died away in the distance before the light had
+faded from her cheeks or she was quite at home to Cynthia's observations.
+She was possessed with the feeling, what a delightful thing it was to have
+people do things in such a manner.
+
+"That was your cousin, wa'n't it?" said Cynthy, when the spell was off.
+
+"No," said Fleda, "the other one was my cousin."
+
+"Well--I mean one of them fellers that went by. He's a soldier, ain't he?'
+
+"An officer," said Fleda.
+
+"Well, it does give a man an elegant look to be in the militie, don't it?
+I should admire to have a cousin like that. It's dreadful becoming to have
+that--what is it they call it?--to let the beard grow over the mouth. I
+s'pose they can't do that without they be in the army can they?"
+
+"I don't know," said Fleda. "I hope not. I think it is very ugly."
+
+"Do you? Oh!--I admire it. It makes a man look so spry!"
+
+A few hundred yards from Mr. Ringgan's gate the road began to wind up a
+very long heavy hill. Just at the hill's foot it crossed by a rude bridge
+the bed of a noisy brook that came roaring down from the higher grounds,
+turning sundry mill and factory wheels in its way. About half way up the
+hill one of these was placed, belonging to a mill for sawing boards. The
+little building stood alone, no other in sight, with a dark background of
+wood rising behind it on the other side of the brook; the stream itself
+running smoothly for a small space above the mill, and leaping down madly
+below, as if it disdained its bed and would clear at a bound every
+impediment in its way to the sea. When the mill was not going the quantity
+of water that found its way down the hill was indeed very small, enough
+only to keep up a pleasant chattering with the stones; but as soon as the
+stream was allowed to gather all its force and run free its loquacity was
+such that it would prevent a traveller from suspecting his approach to the
+mill, until, very near, the monotonous hum of its saw could be heard. This
+was a place Fleda dearly loved. The wild sound of the waters and the
+lonely keeping of the scene, with the delicious smell of the new-sawn
+boards, and the fascination of seeing the great logs of wood walk up to
+the relentless, tireless up-and-down-going steel; as the generations of
+men in turn present themselves to the course of those sharp events which
+are the teeth of Time's saw; until all of a sudden the master spirit, the
+man-regulator of this machinery, would perform some conjuration on lever
+and wheel,--and at once, as at the touch of an enchanter, the log would be
+still and the saw stay its work;--the business of life came to a stand,
+and the romance of the little brook sprang up again. Fleda never tired of
+it--never. She would watch the saw play and stop, and go on again; she
+would have her ears dinned with the hoarse clang of the machinery, and
+then listen to the laugh of the mill-stream; she would see with untiring
+patience one board after another cut and cast aside, and log succeed to
+log; and never turned weary away from that mysterious image of Time's
+doings. Fleda had besides, without knowing it, the eye of a painter. In
+the lonely hillside, the odd-shaped little mill, with its accompaniments
+of wood and water, and the great logs of timber lying about the ground in
+all directions and varieties of position, there was a picturesque charm
+for her, where the country people saw nothing but business and a place fit
+for it. Their hands grew hard where her mind was refining. Where they made
+dollars and cents, she was growing rich in stores of thought and
+associations of beauty. How many purposes the same thing serves!
+
+[Illustration: "Who's got it now, Cynthy?"]
+
+"That had ought to be your grandpa's mill this minute," observed Cynthy.
+
+"I wish it was!" sighed Fleda. "Who's got it now, Cynthy?"
+
+"O it's that chap McGowan, I expect;--he's got pretty much the hull of
+everything. I told Mr. Ringgan I wouldn't let him have it if it was me, at
+the time. Your grandpa'd be glad to get it back now, I guess."
+
+Fleda guessed so too; but also guessed that Miss Gall was probably very
+far from being possessed of the whole rationale of the matter. So she made
+her no answer.
+
+After reaching the brow of the hill the road continued on a very gentle
+ascent towards a little settlement half a quarter of a mile off; passing
+now and then a few scattered cottages or an occasional mill or turner's
+shop. Several mills and factories, with a store and a very few
+dwelling-houses were all the settlement; not enough to entitle it to the
+name of a village. Beyond these and the mill-ponds, of which in the course
+of the road there were three or four, and with a brief intervening space
+of cultivated fields, a single farm house stood alone; just upon the
+borders of a large and very fair sheet of water from which all the others
+had their supply.--So large and fair that nobody cavilled at its taking
+the style of a lake and giving its own pretty name of Deepwater both to
+the settlement and the farm that half embraced it. This farm was Seth
+Plumfield's.
+
+At the garden gate Fleda quitted Cynthy and rushed forward to meet her
+aunt, whom she saw coming round the corner of the house with her gown
+pinned up behind her from attending to some domestic concern among the
+pigs, the cows, or the poultry.
+
+"O aunt Miriam," said Fleda eagerly, "we are going to have company to tea
+to-morrow--won't you come and help us?"
+
+Aunt Miriam laid her hands upon Fleda's shoulders and looked at Cynthy.
+
+"I came up to see if you wouldn't come down to-morrow, Mis' Plumfield,"
+said that personage, with her usual dry business tone, always a little on
+the wrong side of sweet;--"your brother has taken a notion to ask two
+young fellers from the Pool to supper, and they're grand folks I s'pose,
+and have got to have a fuss made for 'em. I don't know what Mr. Ringgan was
+thinkin' of, or whether he thinks I have got anything to do or not; but
+anyhow they're a comin', I s'pose, and must have something to eat; and I
+thought the best thing I could do would be to come and get you into the
+works, if I could. I should feel a little queer to have nobody but me to
+say nothin' to them at the table."
+
+"Ah do come, aunt Miriam!" said Fleda; "it will be twice as pleasant if
+you do; and besides, we want to have everything very nice, you know."
+
+Aunt Miriam smiled at Fleda, and inquired of Miss Gall what she had in
+the house.
+
+"Why I don't know, Mis' Plumfield," said the lady, while Fleda threw her
+arms round her aunt and thanked her,--"there ain't nothin' particler--pork
+and beef and the old story. I've got some first-rate pickles. I calculated
+to make some sort o' cake in the morning."
+
+"Any of those small hams left?"
+
+"Not a bone of 'em--these six weeks, _I_ don't see how they've gone, for
+my part. I'd lay any wager there were two in the smoke-house when I took
+the last one out. If Mr. Didenhover was a little more like a weasel I
+should think he'd been in."
+
+"Have you cooked that roaster I sent down?"
+
+"No, Mis' Plumfield, I ha'n't--it's such a plaguy sight of trouble!" said
+Cynthy with a little apologetic giggle;--"I was keepin' it for some day
+when I hadn't much to do."
+
+"I'll take the trouble of it. I'll be down bright and early in the
+morning, and we'll see what's best to do. How's your last churning,
+Cynthy?"
+
+"Well--I guess it's pretty middlin,' Mis' Plumfield."
+
+"'Tisn't anything very remarkable, aunt Miriam," said Fleda shaking her
+head.
+
+"Well, well," said Mrs. Plumfield smiling, "run away down home now, and
+I'll come to-morrow, and I guess we'll fix it. But who is it that grandpa
+has asked?"
+
+Fleda and Cynthy both opened at once.
+
+"One of them is my cousin, aunt Miriam, that was at West Point, and the
+other is the nicest English gentleman you ever saw--you will like him very
+much--he has been with me getting nuts all to-day."
+
+"They're a smart enough couple of chaps," said Cynthia; "they look as if
+they lived where money was plenty."
+
+"Well I'll come to-morrow," repeated Mrs. Plumfield, "and we'll see about
+it. Good night, dear!"
+
+She took Fleda's head in both her hands and gave her a most affectionate
+kiss; and the two petitioners set off homewards again.
+
+Aunt Miriam was not at all like her brother, in feature, though the moral
+characteristics suited the relationship sufficiently well. There was the
+expression of strong sense and great benevolence; the unbending
+uprightness, of mind and body at once; and the dignity of an essentially
+noble character, not the same as Mr. Ringgan's, but such as well became
+his sister. She had been brought up among the Quakers, and though now and
+for many years a staunch Presbyterian, she still retained a tincture of
+the calm efficient gentleness of mind and manner that belongs so
+inexplicably to them. More womanly sweetness than was in Mr. Ringgan's
+blue eye a woman need not wish to have; and perhaps his sister's had not
+so much. There was no want of it in her heart, nor in her manner, but the
+many and singular excellencies of her character were a little overshadowed
+by super-excellent housekeeping. Not a taint of the littleness that
+sometimes grows therefrom,--not a trace of the narrowness of mind that
+over-attention to such pursuits is too apt to bring;--on every important
+occasion aunt Miriam would come out free and unshackled from all the
+cobweb entanglements of housewifery; she would have tossed housewifery to
+the winds if need were (but it never was, for in a new sense she always
+contrived to make both ends meet). It was only in the unbroken everyday
+course of affairs that aunt Miriam's face shewed any tokens of that
+incessant train of _small cares_ which had never left their impertinent
+footprints upon the broad high brow of her brother. Mr. Ringgan had no
+affinity with small cares; deep serious matters received his deep and
+serious consideration; but he had as dignified a disdain of trifling
+annoyances or concernments as any great mastiff or Newfoundlander ever had
+for the yelping of a little cur.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V.
+
+
+
+  Ynne London citye was I borne,
+  Of parents of grete note;
+  My fadre dydd a nobile arms
+  Emblazon onne hys cote.
+
+  Chatterton.
+
+
+In the snuggest and best private room of the House at Montepoole a party
+of ladies and gentlemen were gathered, awaiting the return of the
+sportsmen. The room had been made as comfortable as any place could be in
+a house built for "the season," after the season was past. A splendid fire
+of hickory logs was burning brilliantly and making amends for many
+deficiencies; the closed wooden shutters gave the reality if not the look
+of warmth, for though the days might be fine and mild the mornings and
+evenings were always very cool up there among the mountains; and a table
+stood at the last point of readiness for having dinner served. They only
+waited for the lingering woodcock-hunters.
+
+It was rather an elderly party, with the exception of one young man whose
+age might match that of the absent two. He was walking up and down the
+room with somewhat the air of having nothing to do with himself. Another
+gentleman, much older, stood warming his back at the fire, feeling about
+his jaws and chin with one hand and looking at the dinner-table in a sort
+of expectant reverie. The rest, three ladies, sat quietly chatting. All
+these persons were extremely different from one another in individual
+characteristics, and all had the unmistakable mark of the habit of good
+society; as difficult to locate and as easy to recognize as the sense of
+_freshness_ which some ladies have the secret of diffusing around
+themselves;--no definable sweetness, nothing in particular, but making a
+very agreeable impression.
+
+One of these ladies, the mother of the perambulating young officer (he
+was a class-mate of Rossitur's), was extremely plain in feature, even more
+than _ordinary_. This plainness was not however devoid of sense, and it
+was relieved by an uncommon amount of good-nature and kindness of heart.
+In her son the sense deepened into acuteness, and the kindness of heart
+retreated, it is to be hoped, into some hidden recess of his nature; for
+it very rarely shewed itself in open expression. That is, to an eye keen
+in reading the natural signs of emotion; for it cannot be said that his
+manner had any want of amenity or politeness.
+
+The second lady, the wife of the gentleman on the hearth-rug, or rather on
+the spot where the hearth-rug should have been, was a strong contrast to
+this mother and son; remarkably pretty, delicate and even lovely; with a
+black eye however that though in general soft could shew a mischievous
+sparkle upon occasion; still young, and one of those women who always were
+and always will be pretty and delicate at any age.
+
+The third had been very handsome, and was still a very elegant woman, but
+her face had seen more of the world's wear and tear. It had never known
+placidity of expression beyond what the habitual command of good-breeding
+imposed. She looked exactly what she was, a perfect woman of the world. A
+very good specimen,--for Mrs. Carleton had sense and cultivation and even
+feeling enough to play the part very gracefully; yet her mind was bound in
+the shackles of "the world's" tyrannical forging and had never been free;
+and her heart bowed submissively to the same authority.
+
+"Here they are! Welcome home," exclaimed this lady, as her son and his
+friend at length made their appearance;--"Welcome home--we are all
+famishing; and I don't know why in the world we waited for you, for I am
+sure you don't deserve it. What success? What success, Mr. Rossitur?"
+
+"'Faith ma'am, there's little enough to boast of, as far as I am
+concerned. Mr. Carleton may speak for himself."
+
+"I am very sorry, ma'am, you waited for me," said that gentleman. "I am a
+delinquent I acknowledge. The day came to an end before I was at all
+aware of it."
+
+"It would not do to flatter you so far as to tell you why we waited," said
+Mrs. Evelyn's soft voice. And then perceiving that the gentleman at whom
+she was looking gave her no answer she turned to the other. "How many
+woodcock, Mr. Rossitur?"
+
+"Nothing to shew, ma'am," he replied. "Didn't see a solitary one. I heard
+some partridges, but I didn't mean to have room in my bag for them."
+
+"Did you find the right ground, Rossitur?"
+
+"I had a confounded long tramp after it if I didn't," said the
+discomfited sportsman, who did not seem to have yet recovered his
+good humour.
+
+"Were you not together?" said Mrs. Carleton. "Where were you, Guy?"
+
+"Following the sport another way, ma'am; I had very good success too."
+
+"What's the total?" said Mr. Evelyn. "How much game did you bag?"
+
+"Really, sir, I didn't count. I can only answer for a bag full."
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen!" cried Rossitur, bursting forth,--"What will you
+say when I tell you that Mr. Carleton deserted me and the sport in a most
+unceremonious manner, and that he,--the cynical philosopher, the reserved
+English gentleman, the gay man of the world,--you are all of 'em by turns,
+aren't you, Carleton?--_he!_--has gone and made a very cavaliero servante
+of himself to a piece of rusticity, and spent all to-day in helping a
+little girl pick up chestnuts!"
+
+"Mr. Carleton would be a better man if he were to spend a good many more
+days in the same manner," said that gentleman, dryly enough. But the
+entrance of dinner put a stop to both laughter and questioning for a time,
+all of the party being well disposed to their meat.
+
+When the pickerel from the lakes, and the poultry and half-kept joints had
+had their share of attention, and a pair of fine wild ducks were set on
+the table, the tongues of the party found something to do besides eating.
+
+"We have had a very satisfactory day among the Shakers, Guy," said Mrs.
+Carleton; "and we have arranged to drive to Kenton to-morrow--I suppose you
+will go with us?"
+
+"With pleasure, mother, but that I am engaged to dinner about five or six
+miles in the opposite direction."
+
+"Engaged to dinner!--what with this old gentleman where you went last
+night? And you too, Mr. Rossitur?"
+
+"I have made no promise, ma'am, but I take it I must go."
+
+"Vexatious! Is the little girl going with us, Guy?"
+
+"I don't know yet--I half apprehend, yes; there seems to be a doubt in her
+grandfather's mind, not whether he can let her go, but whether he can keep
+her, and that looks like it."
+
+"Is it your little cousin who proved the successful rival of the woodcock
+to-day, Carleton?" said Mrs. Evelyn. "What is she?"
+
+"I don't know, ma'am, upon my word. I presume Carleton will tell you she
+is something uncommon and quite remarkable."
+
+"Is she, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"What, ma'am?"
+
+"Uncommon?"
+
+"Very."
+
+"Come! That _is_ something, from _you_," said Rossitur's brother officer,
+Lieut. Thorn.
+
+"What's the uncommonness?" said Mrs. Thorn, addressing herself rather to
+Mr. Rossitur as she saw Mr. Carleton's averted eye;--"Is she handsome,
+Mr. Rossitur?"
+
+"I can't tell you, I am sure, ma'am. I saw nothing but a nice child enough
+in a calico frock, just such as one would see in any farm-house. She
+rushed into the room when she was first called to see us, from somewhere
+in distant regions, with an immense iron ladle a foot and a half long in
+her hand with which she had been performing unknown feats of housewifery;
+and they had left her head still encircled with a halo of kitchen-smoke.
+If as they say 'coming events cast their shadows before,' she was the
+shadow of supper."
+
+"Oh Carleton, Carleton!" said Mrs. Evelyn, but in a tone of very gentle
+and laughing reproof,--"for shame! What a picture! and of your cousin!"
+
+"Is she a pretty child, Guy?" said Mrs. Carleton, who did not relish her
+son's grave face.
+
+"No ma'am--something more than that."
+
+"How old?"
+
+"About ten or eleven."
+
+"That's an ugly age."
+
+"She will never be at an ugly age."
+
+"What style of beauty?"
+
+"The highest--that degree of mould and finish which belongs only to the
+finest material."
+
+"That is hardly the kind of beauty one would expect to see in such a
+place," said Mrs. Carleton. "From one side of her family to be sure she
+has a right to it."
+
+"I have seen very few examples of it anywhere," said her son.
+
+"Who were her parents?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"Her mother was Mrs. Rossitur's sister,--her father--"
+
+"Amy Carleton!" exclaimed Mrs. Evelyn,--"O I knew her! Was Amy Carleton
+her mother? O I didn't know whom you were talking of. She was one of my
+dearest friends. Her daughter may well be handsome--she was one of the
+most lovely persons I ever knew; in body and mind both. O I loved Amy
+Carleton very much. I must see this child."
+
+"I don't know who her father was," Mrs. Carleton went on.
+
+"O her father was Major Ringgan," said Mrs. Evelyn. "I never saw him, but
+I have heard him spoken of in very high terms. I always heard that Amy
+married very well."
+
+"Major Ringgan!" said Mrs. Thorn;--"his name is very well known; he was
+very distinguished."
+
+"He was a self-made man entirely," said Mrs. Evelyn, in a tone that
+conveyed a good deal more than the simple fact.
+
+"Yes, he was a self made man," said Mrs. Thorn, "but I should never think
+of that where a man distinguishes himself so much; he was very
+distinguished."
+
+"Yes, and for more than officer-like qualities," said Mrs. Evelyn. "I have
+heard his personal accomplishments as a gentleman highly praised."
+
+"So that little Miss Ringgan's right to be a beauty may be considered
+clearly made out," said Mr. Thorn.
+
+"It is one of those singular cases," said Mr. Carleton, "where purity of
+blood proves itself, and one has no need to go back to past generations to
+make any inquiry concerning it."
+
+"Hear him!" cried Rossitur;--"and for the life of me I could see nothing
+of all this wonder. Her face is not at all striking."
+
+"The wonder is not so much in what it _is_ as in what it indicates," said
+Mr. Carleton.
+
+"What does it indicate?" said his mother.
+
+"Suppose you were to ask me to count the shades of colour in a rainbow,"
+answered he.
+
+"Hear him!" cried Thorn again.
+
+"Well, I hope she will go with us and we shall have a chance of seeing
+her," said Mrs. Carleton.
+
+"If she were only a few years older it is my belief you would see enough
+of her, ma'am," said young Rossitur.
+
+The haughty coldness of Mr. Carleton's look at this speech could not be
+surpassed.
+
+"But she has beauty of feature too, has she not?" Mrs. Carleton asked
+again of her son.
+
+"Yes, in very high degree. The contour of the eye and brow I never
+saw finer."
+
+"It is a little odd," said Mrs. Evelyn with the slightest touch of a
+piqued air, (she had some daughters at home)--"that is a kind of beauty
+one is apt to associate with high breeding, and certainly you very rarely
+see it anywhere else; and Major Ringgan, however distinguished and
+estimable, as I have no doubt he was,--And this child must have been
+brought up with no advantages, here in the country."
+
+"My dear madam," said Mr. Carleton smiling a little, "this high breeding
+is a very fine thing, but it can neither be given nor bequeathed; and we
+cannot entail it."
+
+"But it can be taught, can't it?"
+
+"If it could be taught it is to be hoped it would be oftener learned,"
+said the young man dryly.
+
+"But what do we mean, then, when we talk of the high breeding of certain
+classes--and families? and why are we not disappointed when we look to
+find it in connection with certain names and positions in society?"
+
+"I do not know," said Mr. Carleton.
+
+"You don't mean to say, I suppose, Mr. Carleton," said Thorn bridling a
+little, "that it is a thing independent of circumstances, and that there
+is no value in blood?"
+
+"Very nearly--answering the question as you understand it."
+
+"May I ask how you understand it?"
+
+"As you do, sir."
+
+"Is there no high breeding then in the world?" asked good-natured Mrs.
+Thorn, who could be touched on this point of family.
+
+"There is very little of it. What is commonly current under the name is
+merely counterfeit notes which pass from hand to hand of those who are
+bankrupt in the article."
+
+"And to what serve then," said Mrs. Evelyn colouring, "the long lists of
+good old names which even you, Mr. Carleton, I know, do not disdain?"
+
+"To endorse the counterfeit notes," said Mr. Carleton smiling.
+
+"Guy you are absurd!" said his mother. "I will not sit at the table and
+listen to you if you talk such stuff. What do you mean?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, mother, you have misunderstood me," said he seriously.
+"Mind, I have been talking, not of ordinary conformity to what the world
+requires, but of that fine perfection of mental and moral constitution
+which in its own natural necessary acting leaves nothing to be desired, in
+every occasion or circumstance of life. It is the pure gold, and it knows
+no tarnish; it is the true coin, and it gives what it proffers to give; it
+is the living plant ever-blossoming, and not the cut and art-arranged
+flowers. It is a thing of the mind altogether; and where nature has not
+curiously prepared the soil it is in vain to try to make it grow. _This_
+is not very often met with?"
+
+"No indeed," said Mrs. Carleton;--"but you are so fastidiously nice in all
+your notions!--at this rate nothing will ever satisfy you."
+
+"I don't think it is so very uncommon," said Mrs. Thorn. "It seems to me
+one sees as much of it as can be expected, Mr. Carleton."
+
+Mr. Carleton pared his apple with an engrossed air.
+
+"O no, Mrs. Thorn," said Mrs. Evelyn, "I don't agree with you--I don't
+think you often see such a combination as Mr. Carleton has been speaking
+of--very rarely!--but, Mr. Carleton, don't you think it is generally found
+in that class of society where the habits of life are constantly the most
+polished and refined?"
+
+"Possibly," answered he, diving into the core of his apple.
+
+"No, but tell me;--I want to know what you think."
+
+"Cultivation and refinement have taught people to recognize and analyze
+and imitate it; the counterfeits are most current in that society,--but as
+to the reality I don't know--it is nature's work and she is a little
+freaky about it."
+
+"But Guy!" said his mother impatiently;--"this is not selling but giving
+away one's birthright. Where is the advantage of birth if breeding is not
+supposed to go along with it. Where the parents have had intelligence and
+refinement do we not constantly see them inherited by the children? and in
+an increasing degree from generation to generation?"
+
+"Very extraordinary!" said Mrs. Thorn.
+
+"I do not undervalue the blessings of inheritance, mother, believe me, nor
+deny the general doctrine; though intelligence does not always descend,
+and manners die out, and that invaluable legacy, _a name_, may be thrown
+away. But this delicate thing we are speaking of is not intelligence nor
+refinement, but comes rather from a happy combination of qualities,
+together with a peculiarly fine nervous constitution;--the _essence_ of it
+may consist with an omission, even with an awkwardness, and with a sad
+ignorance of conventionalities."
+
+"But even if that be so, do you think it can ever reach its full
+development but in the circumstances that are favourable to it?" said
+Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"Probably not often; the diamond in some instances wants the graver;--but
+it is the diamond. Nature seems now and then to have taken a princess's
+child and dropped it in some odd corner of the kingdom, while she has left
+the clown in the palace."
+
+"From all which I understand," said Mr. Thorn, "that this little chestnut
+girl is a princess in disguise."
+
+"Really, Carleton!"--Rossitur began.
+
+Mrs. Evelyn leaned back in her chair and quietly eating a piece of apple
+eyed Mr. Carleton with a look half amused and half discontented, and
+behind all that, keenly attentive.
+
+"Take for example those two miniatures you were looking at last night,
+Mrs. Evelyn," the young man went on;--"Louis XVI. and Marie
+Antoinette--what would you have more unrefined, more heavy, more _animal_,
+than the face of that descendant of a line of kings?"
+
+Mrs. Evelyn bowed her head acquiescingly and seemed to enjoy her apple.
+
+"_He_ had a pretty bad lot of an inheritance sure enough, take it all
+together," said Rossitur.
+
+"Well," said Thorn,--"is this little stray princess as well-looking as
+t'other miniature?"
+
+"Better, in some respects," said Mr. Carleton coolly.
+
+"Better!" cried Mrs. Carleton.
+
+"Not in the brilliancy of her beauty, but in some of its
+characteristics;--better in its promise."
+
+"Make yourself intelligible, for the sake of my nerves, Guy," said his
+mother. "Better looking than Marie Antoinette!"
+
+"My unhappy cousin is said to be a fairy, ma'am," said Mr. Rossitur; "and
+I presume all this may be referred to enchantment."
+
+"That face of Marie Antoinette's," said Mr. Carleton smiling, "is an
+undisciplined one--uneducated."
+
+"Uneducated!" exclaimed Mrs. Carleton.
+
+"Don't mistake me, mother,--I do not mean that it shows any want of
+reading or writing, but it does indicate an untrained character--a mind
+unprepared for the exigencies of life."
+
+"She met those exigencies indifferent well too," observed Mr. Thorn.
+
+"Ay--but pride, and the dignity of rank, and undoubtedly some of the finer
+qualities of a woman's nature, might suffice for that, and yet leave her
+utterly unfitted to play wisely and gracefully a part in ordinary life."
+
+"Well, she had no such part to play," said Mrs. Carleton.
+
+"Certainly, mother--but I am comparing faces."
+
+"Well--the other face?"
+
+"It has the same style of refined beauty of feature, but--to compare
+them in a word, Marie Antoinette looks to me like a superb exotic that
+has come to its brilliant perfection of bloom in a hot-house--it would
+lose its beauty in the strong free air--it would change and droop if it
+lacked careful waiting upon and constant artificial excitement;--the
+other," said Mr. Carleton musingly,--is a flower of the woods, raising
+its head above frost and snow and the rugged soil where fortune has
+placed it, with an air of quiet patient endurance;--a storm wind may
+bring it to the ground, easily--but if its gentle nature be not broken,
+it will look up again, unchanged, and bide its time in unrequited beauty
+and sweetness to the end."
+
+"The exotic for me!" cried Rossitur,--"if I only had a place for her. I
+don't like pale elegancies."
+
+"I'd make a piece of poetry of that if I was you, Carleton," said
+Mr. Thorn.
+
+"Mr. Carleton has done that already," said Mrs. Evelyn smoothly.
+
+"I never heard you talk so before, Guy," said his mother looking at him.
+His eyes had grown dark with intensity of expression while he was
+speaking, gazing at visionary flowers or beauties through the dinner-table
+mahogany. He looked up and laughed as she addressed him, and rising turned
+off lightly with his usual sir.
+
+"I congratulate you, Mrs. Carleton," Mrs. Evelyn whispered as they went
+from the table, "that this little beauty is not a few years older."
+
+"Why?" said Mrs. Carleton. "If she is all that Guy says, I would give
+anything in the world to see him married."
+
+"Time enough," said Mrs. Evelyn with a knowing smile.
+
+"I don't know," said Mrs. Carleton,--"I think he would be happier. He is a
+restless spirit--nothing satisfies him--nothing fixes him. He cannot rest
+at home--he abhors politics--he flits way from country to country and
+doesn't remain long anywhere."
+
+"And you with him."
+
+"And I with him. I should like to see if a wife could not persuade him to
+stay at home."
+
+"I guess you have petted him too much," said Mrs. Evelyn slyly.
+
+"I cannot have petted him too much, for he has never disappointed me."
+
+"No--of course not; but it seems you find it difficult to lead him."
+
+"No one ever succeeded in doing that," said Mrs. Carleton, with a smile
+that was anything but an ungratified one. "He never wanted driving, and to
+lead him is impossible. You may try it, and while you think you are going
+to gain your end, if he thinks it worth while, you will suddenly find that
+he is leading you. It is so with everybody--in some inexplicable way."
+
+Mrs. Evelyn thought the mystery was very easily explicable as far as the
+mother was concerned; and changed the conversation.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI.
+
+
+
+  To them life was a simple art
+    Of duties to be done,
+  A game where each man took his part,
+    A race where all must run;
+  A battle whose great scheme and scope
+    They little cared to know,
+  Content, as men-at-arms, to cope
+    Each with his fronting foe.
+
+  Milnes.
+
+
+On so great and uncommon an occasion as Mr. Ringgan's giving a
+dinner-party the disused front parlour was opened and set in order; the
+women-folks, as he called them, wanting the whole back part of the house
+for their operations. So when the visitors arrived, in good time, they
+were ushered into a large square bare-looking room--a strong contrast even
+to their dining-room at the Poolwhich gave them nothing of the welcome of
+the pleasant farmhouse kitchen, and where nothing of the comfort of the
+kitchen found its way but a very strong smell of roast pig. There was the
+cheerless air of a place where nobody lives, or thinks of living. The very
+chairs looked as if they had made up their minds to be forsaken for a term
+of months; it was impossible to imagine that a cheerful supper had ever
+been laid upon the stiff cold-looking table that stood with its leaves
+down so primly against the wall. All that a blazing fire could do to make
+amends for deficiencies, it did; but the wintry wind that swept round the
+house shook the paper window-shades in a remorseless way; and the utmost
+efforts of said fire could not prevent it from coming in and giving
+disagreeable impertinent whispers at the ears of everybody.
+
+Mr. Ringgan's welcome, however, was and would have been the same thing
+anywhere--genial, frank, and dignified; neither he nor it could be changed
+by circumstances. Mr. Carleton admired anew, as he came forward, the fine
+presence and noble look of his old host; a look that it was plain had
+never needed to seek the ground; a brow that in large or small things had
+never been crossed by a shadow of shame. And to a discerning eye the face
+was not a surer index of a lofty than of a peaceful and pure mind; too
+peace-loving and pure perhaps for the best good of his affairs in the
+conflict with a selfish and unscrupulous world. At least now, in the time
+of his old age and infirmity; in former days his straightforward wisdom
+backed by an indomitable courage and strength had made Mr. Ringgan no safe
+subject for either braving or overreaching.
+
+Fleda's keen-sighted affection was heartily gratified by the manner in
+which her grandfather was greeted by at least one of his guests, and that
+the one about whose opinion she cared the most. Mr. Carleton seemed as
+little sensible of the cold room as Mr. Ringgan himself. Fleda felt sure
+that her grandfather was appreciated; and she would have sat delightedly
+listening to what the one and the other were presently saying, if she had
+not taken notice that her cousin looked _astray_. He was eying the fire
+with a profound air and she fancied he thought it poor amusement. Little
+as Fleda in secret really cared about that, with an instant sacrifice of
+her own pleasure she quietly changed her position for one from which she
+could more readily bring to bear upon Mr. Rossitur's distraction the very
+light artillery of her conversation; and attacked him on the subject of
+the game he had brought home. Her motive and her manner both must have
+been lost upon the young gentleman. He forthwith set about amusing himself
+in a way his little entertainer had not counted upon, namely, with giving
+a chase to her wits; partly to pass away the time, and partly to gratify
+his curiosity, as he said, "to see what Fleda was made of." By a curious
+system of involved, startling, or absurd questions, he endeavoured to
+puzzle or confound or entrap her. Fleda however steadily presented a grave
+front to the enemy, and would every now and then surprise him with an
+unexpected turn or clever doubling, and sometimes, when he thought he had
+her in a corner, jump over the fence and laugh at him from the other side.
+Mr. Rossitur's respect for his little adversary gradually increased, and
+finding that she had rather the best of the game he at last gave it up,
+just as Mr. Ringgan was asking Mr. Carleton if he was a judge of stock?
+Mr. Carleton saying with a smile "No, but he hoped Mr. Ringgan would give
+him his first lesson,"--the old gentleman immediately arose with that
+alacrity of manner he always wore when he had a visitor that pleased him,
+and taking his hat and cane led the way out; choosing, with a man's true
+carelessness of housewifery etiquette, the kitchen route, of all others.
+Not even admonished by the sight of the bright Dutch oven before the fire
+that he was introducing his visitors somewhat too early to the pig, he led
+the whole party through, Cynthia scuttling away in haste across the
+kitchen with something that must not be seen, while aunt Miriam looked out
+at the company through the crack of the pantry door, at which Fleda
+ventured a sly glance of intelligence.
+
+It was a fine though a windy and cold afternoon; the lights and shadows
+were driving across the broad upland and meadows.
+
+"This is a fine arable country," remarked Mr. Carleton.
+
+"Capital, sir,--capital, for many miles round, if we were not so far from
+a market. I was one of the first that broke ground in this township,--one
+of the very first settlers--I've seen the rough and the smooth of it, and
+I never had but one mind about it from the first. All this--as far as you
+can see--I cleared myself; most of it with my own hand."
+
+"That recollection must attach you strongly to the place, I should
+think, sir."
+
+"Hum--perhaps I cared too much for it," he replied, "for it is taken away
+from me. Well--it don't matter now."
+
+"Is it not yours?"
+
+"No sir!--it _was_ mine, a great many years; but I was obliged to part
+with it, two years ago, to a scoundrel of a fellow--McGowan up here--he
+got an advantage over me. I can't take care of myself any more as I
+used to do, and I don't find that other people deal by me just as I
+could wish--"
+
+He was silent for a moment and then went on,--
+
+"Yes sir! when I first set myself down here, or a little further that way
+my first house was,--a pretty rough house, too,--there wa'n't two settlers
+beside within something like ten miles round.--I've seen the whole of it
+cleared, from the cutting of the first forest trees till this day."
+
+"You have seen the nation itself spring up within that time," remarked
+his guest.
+
+"Not exactly--that question of our nationality was settled a little before
+I came here. I was born rather too late to see the whole of that play--I
+saw the best of it though--boys were men in those days. My father was in
+the thick of it from beginning to end."
+
+"In the army, was he?"
+
+"Ho yes, sir! he and every child he had that wasn't a girl--there wasn't a
+man of the name that wa'n't on the right side. I was in the army myself
+when I was fifteen. I was nothing but a fifer--but I tell you sir! there
+wasn't a general officer in the country that played his part with a
+prouder heart than I did mine!"
+
+"And was that the general spirit of the ranks?"
+
+"Not altogether," replied the old gentleman, passing his hand several
+times abstractedly over his white hair, a favourite gesture with
+him,--"not exactly that--there was a good deal of mixture of different
+materials, especially in this state; and where the feeling wasn't pretty
+strong it was no wonder if it got tired out; but the real stuff, the true
+Yankee blood, was pretty firm! Ay, and some of the rest! There was a good
+deal to try men in those days. Sir, I have seen many a time when I had
+nothing to dine upon but my fife, and it was more than that could do to
+keep me from feeling very empty!"
+
+"But was this a common case? did this happen often?" said Mr. Carleton.
+
+"Pretty often--pretty often, sometimes," answered the old gentleman.
+"Things were very much out of order, you see, and in some parts of the
+country it was almost impossible to get the supplies the men needed.
+Nothing would have kept them together,--nothing under heaven--but the love
+and confidence they had in one name. Their love of right and independence
+wouldn't have been strong enough, and besides a good many of them got
+disheartened. A hungry stomach is a pretty stout arguer against abstract
+questions. I have seen my father crying like a child for the wants and
+sufferings he was obliged to see and couldn't relieve."
+
+"And then you used to relieve yourselves, grandpa," said Fleda.
+
+"How was that, Fairy?"
+
+Fleda looked at her grandfather, who gave a little preparatory laugh and
+passed his hand over his head again.
+
+"Why yes," said he,--"we used to think the tories, King George's men you
+know, were fair game; and when we happened to be in the neighbourhood of
+some of them that we knew were giving all the help they could to the
+enemy, we used to let them cook our dinners for us once in a while."
+
+"How did you manage that, sir?"
+
+"Why, they used to have little bake-ovens to cook their meats and so on,
+standing some way out from the house,--did you never gee one of
+them?--raised on four little heaps of stone; the bottom of the oven is one
+large flat stone, and the arch built over it;--they look like a great
+bee-hive. Well--we used to watch till we saw the good woman of the house
+get her oven cleverly heated, and put in her batch of bread, or her meat
+pie, or her pumpkin and apple pies!--whichever it was--there didn't any of
+'em come much amiss--and when we guessed they were pretty nigh done, three
+or four of us would creep in and whip off the whole--oven and all!--to a
+safe place. I tell you," said he with a knowing nod of his head at the
+laughing Fleda,--"those were first-rate pies!"
+
+"And then did you put the oven back again afterwards, grandpa?"
+
+"I guess not often, dear!" replied the old gentleman.
+
+"What do you think of such lawless proceedings, Miss Fleda?" said Mr.
+Carleton, laughing at or with her.
+
+"O I like it," said Fleda. "You liked those pies all the better, didn't
+you, grandpa, because you had got them from the tories?"
+
+"That we did! If we hadn't got them maybe King George's men would, in some
+shape. But we weren't always so lucky as to get hold of an oven full. I
+remember one time several of us had been out on a foraging expedition----
+there, sir, what do you think of that for a two and a half year old?"
+
+They had come up with the chief favourite of his barn-yard, a fine
+deep-coloured Devon bull.
+
+"I don't know what one might see in Devonshire," he remarked presently,
+"but I know _this_ country can't shew the like of him!"
+
+A discussion followed of the various beauties and excellencies of the
+animal; a discussion in which Mr. Carleton certainly took little part,
+while Mr. Ringgan descanted enthusiastically upon 'hide' and 'brisket' and
+'bone,' and Rossitur stood in an abstraction, it might be scornful, it
+might be mazed. Little Fleda quietly listening and looking at the
+beautiful creature, which from being such a treasure to her grandfather
+was in a sort one to her, more than half understood them all; but Mr.
+Ringgan was too well satisfied with the attention of one of his guests to
+miss that of the other.
+
+"That fellow don't look as if _he_ had ever known short commons," was
+Rossitur's single remark as they turned away.
+
+"You did not give us the result of your foraging expedition, sir," said
+Mr. Carleton in a different manner.
+
+"Do, grandpa," said Fleda softly.
+
+"Ha!--Oh it is not worth telling," said the old gentleman, look ing
+gratified;--"Fleda has heard my stories till she knows them by heart--she
+could tell it as well herself. What was it?--about the pig?--We had been
+out, several of us, one afternoon to try to get up a supper--or a dinner,
+for we had had none--and we had caught a pig. It happened that I was the
+only one of the party that had a cloak, and so the pig was given to me to
+carry home, because I could hide it the best. Well sir!--we were coming
+home, and had set our mouths for a prime supper, when just as we were
+within a few rods of our shanty who should come along but our captain! My
+heart sank as it never has done at the thought of a supper before or
+since, I believe! I held my cloak together as well as I could, and kept
+myself back a little, so that if the pig shewed a cloven foot behind me,
+the captain might not see it. But I almost gave up all for lost when I saw
+the captain going into the hut with us. There was a kind of a rude
+bedstead standing there; and I set myself down upon the side of it, and
+gently worked and eased my pig off under my cloak till I got him to roll
+down behind the bed. I knew," said Mr. Ringgan laughing, "I knew by the
+captain's eye as well as I knew anything, that he smelt a rat; but he kept
+our counsel, as well as his own; and when he was gone we took the pig out
+into the woods behind the shanty and roasted him finely, and we sent and
+asked Capt. Sears to supper; and he came and helped us eat the pig with a
+great deal of appetite, and never asked no questions how we came by him!"
+
+"I wonder your stout-heartedness did not fail, in the course of so long a
+time," said Mr. Carleton.
+
+"Never sir!" said the old gentleman. "I never doubted for a moment what
+the end would be. My father never doubted for a moment. We trusted in God
+and in Washington!"
+
+"Did you see actual service yourself?"
+
+"No sir--I never did. I wish I had. I should like to have had the honour
+of striking one blow at the rascals. However they were hit pretty well. I
+ought to be contented. My father saw enough of fighting--he was colonel of
+a regiment--he was at the affair of Burgoyne. _That_ gave us a lift in
+good time. What rejoicing there was everywhere when that news came! I
+could have fifed all day upon an empty stomach and felt satisfied. People
+reckoned everywhere that the matter was settled when that great piece of
+good fortune was given us. And so it was!--wa'n't it, dear?" said the old
+gentleman, with one of those fond, pleased, sympathetic looks to Fleda
+with which he often brought up what he was saying.
+
+"General Gates commanded there?" said Mr. Carleton.
+
+"Yes sir--Gates was a poor stick--I never thought much of him. That fellow
+Arnold distinguished himself in the actions before Burgoyne's surrender.
+He fought like a brave man. It seems strange that so mean a scamp should
+have had so much blood in him?"
+
+"Why, are great fighters generally good men, grandpa?" said Fleda.
+
+"Not exactly, dear!" replied her grandfather;--"but such
+little-minded rascality is not just the vice one would expect to find
+in a gallant soldier."
+
+"Those were times that made men," said Mr. Carleton musingly.
+
+"Yes," answered the old gentleman gravely,--"they were times that called
+for men, and God raised them up. But Washington was the soul of the
+country, sir!"
+
+"Well, the time made him," said Mr. Carleton.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said the old gentleman with a very decided little
+turn of his head,--"I think he made the time. I don't know what it would
+have been, sir, or what it would have come to, but for him. After all, it
+is rather that the things which try people shew what is in them;--I hope
+there are men enough in the country yet, though they haven't as good a
+chance to shew what they are."
+
+"Either way," said his guest smiling; "it is a happiness, Mr. Ringgan, to
+have lived at a time when there was something worth living for."
+
+"Well--I don't know--" said the old gentleman;--"those times would make
+the prettiest figure in a story or a romance, I suppose; but I've tried
+both, and on the whole," said he with another of his looks at Fleda,--"I
+think I like these times the best!"
+
+Fleda smiled her acquiescence. His guest could not help thinking to
+himself that however pacific might be Mr. Ringgan's temper, no man in
+those days that tried men could have brought to the issue more stern
+inflexibility and gallant fortitude of bearing. His frame bore evidence
+of great personal strength, and his eye, with all its mildness, had an
+unflinching dignity that _could_ never have quailed before danger or
+duty. And now, while he was recalling with great animation and pleasure
+the scenes of his more active life, and his blue eye was shining with the
+fire of other days, his manner had the self-possession and quiet
+sedateness of triumph that bespeak a man always more ready to do than to
+say. Perhaps the contemplation of the noble Roman-like old figure before
+him did not tend to lessen the feeling, even the sigh of regret, with
+which the young man said,
+
+"There was something then for a man to do!"
+
+"There is always that," said the old gentleman quietly. "God has given
+every man his work to do; and 'tain't difficult for him to find out what.
+No man is put here to be idle."
+
+"But," said his companion, with a look in which not a little haughty
+reserve was mingled with a desire to speak out his thoughts, "half the
+world are busy about hum-drum concerns and the other half doing nothing,
+or worse."
+
+"I don't know about that," said Mr. Ringgan;--"that depends upon the way
+you take things. 'Tain't always the men that make the most noise that are
+the most good in the world. Hum-drum affairs needn't be hum-drum in the
+doing of 'em. It is my maxim," said the old gentleman looking at his
+companion with a singularly open pleasant smile,--"that a man may be great
+about a'most anything--chopping wood, if he happens to be in that line. I
+used to go upon that plan, sir. Whatever I have set my hand to do, I have
+done it as well as I knew how to; and if you follow that rule out you'll
+not be idle, nor hum-drum neither. Many's the time that I have mowed what
+would be a day's work for another man, before breakfast."
+
+Rossitur's smile was not meant to be seen. But Mr. Carleton's, to the
+credit of his politeness and his understanding both, was frank as the old
+gentleman's own, as he answered with a good-humoured shake of his head,
+
+"I can readily believe it, sir, and honour both your maxim and your
+practice. But I am not exactly in that line."
+
+"Why don't you try the army?" said Mr. Ringgan with a look of interest.
+
+"There is not a cause worth fighting for," said the young man, his brow
+changing again. "It is only to add weight to the oppressor's hand, or
+throw away life in the vain endeavour to avert it. I will do neither."
+
+"But all the world is open before such a young man as you," said
+Mr. Ringgan.
+
+"A large world," said Mr. Carleton with his former mixture of
+expression,--"but there isn't much in it."
+
+"Politics?" said Mr. Ringgan.
+
+"It is to lose oneself in a seething-pot, where the scum is the most
+apparent thing."
+
+"But there is society?" said Rossitur.
+
+"Nothing better or more noble than the succession of motes that flit
+through a sunbeam into oblivion."
+
+"Well, why not then sit down quietly on one's estates and enjoy them, one
+who has enough?"
+
+"And be a worm in the heart of an apple."
+
+"Well then," said Rossitur laughing, though not knowing exactly how far he
+might venture, "there is nothing left for you, as I don't suppose you
+would take to any of the learned professions, but to strike out some new
+path for yourself--hit upon some grand invention for benefiting the human
+race and distinguishing your own name at once."
+
+But while he spoke his companion's face had gone back to its usual look
+of imperturbable coolness; the dark eye was even haughtily unmoved, till
+it met Fleda's inquiring and somewhat anxious glance. He smiled.
+
+"The nearest approach I ever made to that," said he, "was when I went
+chestnuting the other day. Can't you find some more work for me, Fairy?"
+
+Taking Fleda's hand with his wonted graceful lightness of manner he walked
+on with her, leaving the other two to follow together.
+
+"You would like to know, perhaps," observed Mr. Rossitur in rather a low
+tone,--"that Mr. Carleton is an Englishman."
+
+"Ay, ay?" said Mr. Ringgan. "An Englishman, is he?--Well sir,--what is it
+that I would like to know?"
+
+"_That"_ said Rossitur. "I would have told you before if I could. I
+supposed you might not choose to speak quite so freely, perhaps, on
+American affairs before him."
+
+"I haven't two ways of speaking, sir, on anything," said the old gentleman
+a little dryly. "Is your friend very tender on that chapter?"
+
+"O not that I know of at all," said Rossitur; "but you know there is a
+great deal of feeling still among the English about it--they have never
+forgiven us heartily for whipping them; and I know Carleton is related to
+the nobility and all that, you know; so I thought--"
+
+"Ah well!" said the old gentleman,--"we don't know much about
+nobility and such gimcracks in this country. I'm not much of a
+courtier. I am pretty much accustomed to speak my mind as I think
+it.--He's wealthy, I suppose?"
+
+"He's more than that, sir. Enormous estates! He's the finest fellow in the
+world--one of the first young men in England."
+
+"You have been there yourself and know?" said Mr. Ringgan, glancing at his
+companion.
+
+"If I have not, sir, others have told me that do."
+
+"Ah well," said Mr. Ringgan placidly,--"we sha'n't quarrel, I guess. What
+did he come out here for, eh?"
+
+"Only to amuse himself. They are going back again in a few weeks, and I
+intend accompanying them to join my mother in Paris. Will my little cousin
+be of the party?"
+
+They were sauntering along towards the house. A loud calling of her name
+the minute before had summoned Fleda thither at the top of her speed; and
+Mr. Carleton turned to repeat the same question.
+
+The old gentleman stopped, and striking his stick two or three times
+against the ground looked sorrowfully undetermined.
+
+"Well, I don't know!--" he said at last,--"it's a pretty hard
+matter--she'd break her heart about it, I suppose,--"
+
+"I dare urge nothing, sir," said Mr. Carleton. "I will only assure you
+that if you entrust your treasure to us she shall be cherished as you
+would wish, till we place her in the hands of her aunt."
+
+"I know that, sir,--I do not doubt it," said Mr. Ringgan, "but--I'll tell
+you by and by what I conclude upon," he said with evident relief of manner
+as Fleda came bounding back to them. "Mr. Rossitur, have you made your
+peace with Fleda?"
+
+"I was not aware that I had any to make, sir," replied the young
+gentleman. "I will do it with pleasure if my little cousin will tell me
+how. But she looks as if she needed enlightening as much as myself."
+
+"She has something against you, I can tell you," said the old gentleman,
+looking amused, and speaking as if Fleda were a curious little piece of
+human mechanism which could hear its performances talked of with all the
+insensibility of any other toy. "She gives it as her judgment that Mr.
+Carleton is the most of a gentleman, because he keeps his promise."
+
+"Oh grandpa!"--
+
+Poor Fleda's cheek was hot with a distressful blush. Rossitur coloured
+with anger. Mr. Carleton's smile had a very different expression.
+
+"If Fleda will have the goodness to recollect," said Rossitur, "I cannot
+be charged with breaking a promise, for I made none."
+
+"But Mr. Carleton did," said Fleda.
+
+"She is right, Mr. Rossitur, she is right," said that gentleman; "a
+fallacy might as well elude Ithuriel's spear as the sense of a pure
+spirit--there is no need of written codes. Make your apologies, man, and
+confess yourself in the wrong."
+
+"Pho, pho," said the old gentleman,--"she don't take it very much to heart.
+I guess _I_ ought to be the one to make the apologies," he added, looking
+at Fleda's face.
+
+But Fleda commanded herself, with difficulty, and announced that dinner
+was ready.
+
+"Mr. Rossitur tells me, Mr. Carleton, you are an Englishman," said his
+host. "I have some notion of that's passing through my head before, but
+somehow I had entirely lost sight of it when I was speaking so freely to
+you a little while ago--about our national quarrel--I know some of your
+countrymen owe us a grudge yet."
+
+"Not I, I assure you," said the young Englishman. "I am ashamed of them
+for it. I congratulate you on being Washington's countryman and a sharer
+in his grand struggle for the right against the wrong."
+
+Mr. Ringgan shook his guest's hand, looking very much pleased; and having
+by this time arrived at the house the young gentlemen were formally
+introduced at once to the kitchen, their dinner, and aunt Miriam.
+
+It is not too much to say that the entertainment gave perfect satisfaction
+to everybody--better fate than attends most entertainments. Even Mr.
+Rossitur's ruffled spirit felt the soothing influence of good cheer, to
+which he happened to be peculiarly sensible, and came back to its average
+condition of amenity.
+
+Doubtless that was a most informal table, spread according to no rules
+that for many generations at least have been known in the refined world;
+an anomaly in the eyes of certainly one of the company. Yet the board had
+a character of its own, very far removed from vulgarity, and suiting
+remarkably well with the condition and demeanour of those who presided
+over it--a comfortable, well-to-do, substantial look, that could afford to
+dispense with minor graces; a self-respect that was not afraid of
+criticism. Aunt Miriam's successful efforts deserve to be celebrated.
+
+In the middle of the table the polished amber of the pig's arched back
+elevated itself,--a striking object,--but worthy of the place he filled,
+as the honours paid him by everybody abundantly testified. Aunt Miriam had
+sent down a basket of her own bread, made out of the new flour, brown and
+white, both as sweet and fine as it is possible for bread to be; the
+piled-up slices were really beautiful. The superb butter had come from
+aunt Miriam's dairy too, for on such an occasion she would not trust to
+the very doubtful excellence of Miss Cynthia's doings. Every spare place
+on the table was filled with dishes of potatoes and pickles and
+sweetmeats, that left nothing to be desired in their respective kinds; the
+cake was a delicious presentment of the finest of material; and the pies,
+pumpkin pies, such as only aunt Miriam could make, rich compounds of
+everything _but_ pumpkin, with enough of that to give them a name--Fleda
+smiled to think how pleased aunt Miriam must secretly be to see the homage
+paid her through them. And most happily Mrs. Plumfield had discovered that
+the last tea Mr. Ringgan had brought from the little Queechy store was not
+very good, and there was no time to send up on "the hill" for more, so she
+made coffee. Verily it was not Mocha, but the thick yellow cream with
+which the cups were filled readily made up the difference. The most
+curious palate found no want.
+
+Everybody was in a high state of satisfaction, even to Miss Cynthia Grail;
+who, having some lurking suspicion that Mrs. Plumfield might design to cut
+her out of her post of tea-making, had slipped herself into her usual
+chair behind the tea-tray before anybody else was ready to sit down. No
+one at table bestowed a thought upon Miss Cynthia, but as she thought of
+nothing else she may be said to have had her fair share of attention. The
+most unqualified satisfaction however was no doubt little Fleda's.
+Forgetting with a child's happy readiness the fears and doubts which had
+lately troubled her, she was full of the present, enjoying with a most
+unselfish enjoyment everything that pleased anybody else. _She_ was glad
+that the supper was a fine one, and so approved, because it was her
+grandfather's hospitality and her aunt Miriam's housekeeping; little
+beside was her care for pies or coffee. She saw with secret glee the
+expression of both her aunt's and Mr. Ringgan's face; partly from pure
+sympathy, and partly because, as she knew, the cause of it was Mr.
+Carleton, whom privately Fleda liked very much. And after all perhaps he
+had directly more to do with her enjoyment than all other causes together.
+
+Certainly that was true of him with respect to the rest of the
+dinner-table. None at that dinner-table had ever seen the like. With all
+the graceful charm of manner with which he would have delighted a courtly
+circle, he came out from his reserve and was brilliant, gay, sensible,
+entertaining, and witty, to a degree that assuredly has very rarely been
+thrown away upon an old farmer in the country and his un-polite sister.
+They appreciated him though, as well as any courtly circle could have
+done, and he knew it. In aunt Miriam's strong sensible face, when not full
+of some hospitable care, he could see the reflection of every play of his
+own; the grave practical eye twinkled and brightened, giving a ready
+answer to every turn of sense or humour in what he was saying. Mr.
+Ringgan, as much of a child for the moment as Fleda herself, had lost
+everything disagreeable and was in the full genial enjoyment of talk,
+rather listening than talking, with his cheeks in a perpetual dimple of
+gratification, and a low laugh of hearty amusement now and then rewarding
+the conversational and kind efforts of his guest with a complete triumph.
+Even the subtle charm which they could not quite recognise wrought
+fascination. Miss Cynthia declared afterwards, half admiring and half
+vexed, that he spoiled her supper, for she forgot to think how it tasted.
+Rossitur--his good humour was entirely restored; but whether even Mr.
+Carleton's power could have achieved that without the perfect seasoning of
+the pig and the smooth persuasion of the richly-creamed coffee, it may
+perhaps be doubted. He stared, mentally, for he had never known his friend
+condescend to bring himself out in the same manner before; and he wondered
+what he could see in the present occasion to make it worth while.
+
+But Mr. Carleton did not think his efforts thrown away. He understood and
+admired his fine old host and hostess; and with all their ignorance of
+conventionalities and absence of what is called _polish_ of manner, he
+could enjoy the sterling sense, the good feeling, the true hearty
+hospitality, and the dignified courtesy which both of them shewed. No
+matter of the outside; this was in the grain. If mind had lacked much
+opportunity it had also made good use of a little; his host, Mr. Carleton
+found, had been a great reader, was well acquainted with history and a
+very intelligent reasoner upon it; and both he and his sister shewed a
+strong and quick aptitude for intellectual subjects of conversation. No
+doubt aunt Miriam's courtesy had not been taught by a dancing master, and
+her brown-satin gown had seen many a fashion come and go since it was
+made, but a _lady_ was in both; and while Rossitur covertly smiled, Mr.
+Carleton paid his sincere respect where he felt it was due. Little Fleda's
+quick eye hardly saw, but more than half felt, the difference. Mr.
+Carleton had no more eager listener now than she, and perhaps none whose
+unaffected interest and sympathy gave him more pleasure.
+
+[Illustration: Fleda coloured and looked at her grandfather.]
+
+When they rose from the table Mr. Ringgan would not be _insinuated_ into
+the cold front room again.
+
+"No, no," said he,--"what's the matter?--the table? Push the table back,
+and let it take care of itself,--come, gentlemen, sit down--draw up your
+chairs round the fire, and a fig for ceremony! Comfort, sister Miriam,
+against politeness, any day in the year;--don't you say so too, Fairy?
+Come here by me."
+
+"Miss Fleda," said Mr. Carleton, "will you take a ride with me to
+Montepoole to-morrow? I should like to make you acquainted with my mother."
+
+Fleda coloured and looked at her grandfather.
+
+"What do you say, deary?" he inquired fondly; "will you go?--I believe,
+sir, your proposal will prove a very acceptable one. You will go, won't
+you, Fleda?"
+
+Fleda would very much rather not! But she was always exceedingly afraid
+of hurting people's feelings; she could not bear that Mr. Carleton should
+think she disliked to go with him, so she answered yes, in her usual
+sober manner.
+
+Just then the door opened and a man unceremoniously walked in, his
+entrance immediately following a little sullen knock that had made a
+mockery of asking permission. An ill-looking man, in the worst sense; his
+face being a mixture of cunning, meanness, and insolence. He shut the
+door and came with a slow leisurely step into the middle of the room
+without speaking a word. Mr. Carleton saw the blank change in Fleda's
+face. She knew him.
+
+"Do you wish to see me, Mr. McGowan?" said Mr. Ringgan, not without
+something of the same change.
+
+"I guess I ha'n't come here for nothing," was the gruff retort.
+
+"Wouldn't another time answer as well?"
+
+"I don't mean to find you here another time," said the man chuckling,--"I
+have given you notice to quit, and now I have come to tell you you'll
+clear out. I ain't a going to be kept out of my property for ever. If I
+can't get my money from you, Elzevir Ringgan, I'll see you don't get no
+more of it in your hands."
+
+"Very well, sir," said the old gentleman;--"You have said all that is
+necessary."
+
+"You have got to hear a little more, though," returned the other, "I've an
+idea that there's a satisfaction in speaking one's mind. I'll have that
+much out of you! Mr. Ringgan, a man hadn't ought to make an agreement to
+pay what he doesn't _mean_ to pay, and what he has made an agreement to
+pay he ought to meet and be up to, if he sold his soul for it! You call
+yourself a Christian, do you, to stay in another man's house, month after
+month, when you know you ha'n't got the means to give him the rent for it!
+That's what _I_ call stealing, and it's what I'd live in the County House
+before I'd demean myself to do I and so ought you."
+
+"Well, well! neighbour," said Mr. Ringgan, with patient dignity,--"it's no
+use calling names. You know as well as I do how all this came about. I
+hoped to be able to pay you, but I haven't been able to make it out,
+without having more time."
+
+"Time!" said the other. "Time to cheat me out of a little more houseroom.
+If I was agoing to live on charity, Mr. Ringgan, I'd come out and say so,
+and not put my hand in a man's pocket this way. You'll quit the house by
+the day after to morrow, or if you don't I'll let you hear a little more
+of me that you won't like!"
+
+He stalked out, shutting the door after him with a bang. Mr. Carleton had
+quitted the room a moment before him.
+
+Nobody moved or spoke at first, when the man was gone, except Miss
+Cynthia, who as she was taking something from the table to the pantry
+remarked, probably for Mr. Rossitur's benefit, that "Mr. Ringgan had to
+have that man punished for something he did a few years ago when he was
+justice of the peace, and she guessed likely that was the reason he had a
+grudge agin him ever since." Beyond this piece of dubious information
+nothing was said. Little Fleda stood beside her grandfather with a face of
+quiet distress; the tears silently running over her flushed cheeks, and
+her eyes fixed upon Mr. Ringgan with a tender touching look of sympathy,
+most pure from self-recollection.
+
+Mr. Carleton presently came in to take leave of the disturbed family. The
+old gentleman rose and returned his shake of the hand with even a degree
+more than usual of his manly dignity, or Mr. Carleton thought so.
+
+"Good day to you, sir!" he said heartily. "We have had a great deal of
+pleasure in your society, and I shall always be very happy to see
+you--wherever I am." And then following him to the door and wringing his
+hand with a force he was not at all aware of, the old gentleman added in a
+lower tone, "I shall let her go with you!"
+
+Mr. Carleton read his whole story in the stern self-command of brow, and
+the slight convulsion of feature which all the self-command could not
+prevent. He returned warmly the grasp of the hand answering merely, "I
+will see you again."
+
+Fleda wound her arms round her grandfather's neck when they were gone, and
+did her best to comfort him, assuring him that "they would be just as
+happy somewhere else." And aunt Miriam earnestly proffered her own home.
+But Fleda knew that her grandfather was not comforted. He stroked her head
+with the same look of stern gravity and troubled emotion which had grieved
+her so much the other day. She could not win him to a smile, and went to
+bed at last feeling desolate. She had no heart to look out at the night.
+The wind was sweeping by in wintry gusts; and Fleda cried herself to sleep
+thinking how it would whistle round the dear old house when their ears
+would not be there to hear it.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII.
+
+
+
+  He from his old hereditary nook
+  Must part; the summons came,--our final leave we took.
+
+  Wordsworth.
+
+
+Mr. Carleton came the next day, but not early, to take Fleda to Montepoole.
+She had told her grandfather that she did not think he would come, because
+after last night he must know that she would not want to go. About twelve
+o'clock however he was there, with a little wagon, and Fleda was fain to
+get her sun bonnet and let him put her in. Happily it was her maxim never
+to trust to uncertainties, so she was quite ready when he came and they
+had not to wait a minute.
+
+Though Fleda had a little dread of being introduced to a party of
+strangers and was a good deal disappointed at being obliged to keep her
+promise, she very soon began to be glad. She found her fear gradually
+falling away before Mr. Carleton's quiet kind reassuring manner; he took
+such nice care of her; and she presently made up her mind that he would
+manage the matter so that it would not be awkward. They had so much
+pleasant talk too. Fleda had found before that she could talk to Mr.
+Carleton, nay she could not help talking to him; and she forgot to think
+about it. And besides, it was a pleasant day, and they drove fast, and
+Fleda's particular delight was driving; and though the horse was a little
+gay she had a kind of intuitive perception that Mr. Carleton knew how to
+manage him. So she gave up every care and was very happy.
+
+When Mr. Carleton asked after her grandfather, Fleda answered with great
+animation, "O he's very well! and such a happy thing--You heard what that
+man said last night, Mr. Carleton, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well it is all arranged;--this morning Mr. Jolly--he's a friend of
+grandpa's that lives over at Queechy Run and knew about all this--he's a
+lawyer--he came this morning and told grandpa that he had found some one
+that could lend him the money he wanted and there was no trouble about it;
+and we are so happy, for we thought we should have to go away from where
+we live now, and I know grandpa would have felt it dreadfully. If it
+hadn't been for that,--I mean, for Mr. Jolly's coming--I couldn't have
+gone to Montepoole to-day."
+
+"Then I am very glad Mr. Jolly made his appearance," said Mr. Carleton.
+
+"So am I," said Fleda;--"but I think it was a little strange that Mr.
+Jolly wouldn't tell us who it was that he had got the money from. Grandpa
+said he never saw Mr. Jolly so curious."
+
+When they got to the Pool Fleda's nervousness returned a little; but she
+went through the dreaded introduction with great demureness and perfect
+propriety. And throughout the day Mr. Carleton had no reason to fear
+rebuke for the judgment which he had pronounced upon his little paragon.
+All the flattering attention which was shewn her, and it was a good deal,
+could not draw Fleda a line beyond the dignified simplicity which seemed
+natural to her; any more than the witty attempts at raillery and
+endeavours to amuse themselves at her expense, in which some of the
+gentlemen shewed their wisdom, could move her from her modest
+self-possession. _Very_ quiet, _very_ modest, as she invariably was,
+awkwardness could not fasten upon her; her colour might come and her timid
+eye fall; it often did; but Fleda's wits were always in their place and
+within call. She would shrink from a stranger's eye, and yet when spoken
+to her answers were as ready and acute as they were marked for simplicity
+and gentleness. She was kept to dinner; and though the arrangement and
+manner of the service must have been strange to little Fleda, it was
+impossible to guess from word or look that it was the first time within
+her recollection that she had ever seen the like. Her native instincts
+took it all as quietly as any old liberalized traveller looks upon the
+customs of a new country. Mr. Carleton smiled as he now and then saw a
+glance of intelligence or admiration pass between one and another of the
+company; and a little knowing nod from Mrs. Evelyn and many a look from
+his mother confessed he had been quite right.
+
+Those two, Mrs. Evelyn and Mrs. Carleton, were by far the most kind and
+eager in their attention to Fleda. Mrs. Thorn did little else but look at
+her. The gentlemen amused themselves with her. But Mr. Carleton, true to
+the hopes Fleda had founded upon his good-nature, had stood her friend all
+the day, coming to her help if she needed any, and placing himself easily
+and quietly between her and anything that threatened to try or annoy her
+too much. Fleda felt it with grateful admiration. Yet she noticed, too,
+that he was a very different person at this dinner-table from what he had
+been the other day at her grandfather's. Easy and graceful, always, he
+filled his own place, but did not seem to care to do more; there was even
+something bordering on haughtiness in his air of grave reserve. He was not
+the life of the company here; he contented himself with being all that the
+company could possibly require of him.
+
+On the whole Fleda was exceedingly well pleased with her day, and thought
+all the people in general very kind. It was quite late before she set out
+to go home again; and then Mrs. Evelyn and Mrs. Carleton were extremely
+afraid lest she should take cold, and Mr. Carleton without saying one
+word about it wrapped her up so very nicely after she got into the wagon,
+in a warm cloak of his mother's. The drive home, through the gathering
+shades of twilight, was to little Fleda thoroughly charming. It was
+almost in perfect silence, but she liked that; and all the way home her
+mind was full of a shadowy beautiful world that seemed to lie before and
+around her.
+
+It was a happy child that Mr. Carleton lifted from the wagon when they
+reached Queechy. He read it in the utter lightheartedness of brow and
+voice, and the spring to the ground which hardly needed the help of
+his hands.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Carleton," she said when she had reached her own door; (he
+would not go in) "I have had a very nice time!"
+
+He smiled.
+
+"Good night," said he. "Tell your grandfather I will come to-morrow to see
+him about some business."
+
+Fleda ran gayly into the kitchen. Only Cynthia was there.
+
+"Where is grandpa, Cynthy?"
+
+"He went off into his room a half an hour ago. I believe he's laying down.
+He ain't right well, I s'pect. What's made you so late?"
+
+"O they kept me," said Fleda. Her gayety suddenly sobered, she took off
+her bonnet and coat and throwing them down in the kitchen stole softly
+along the passage to her grandfather's room. She stopped a minute at the
+door and held her breath to see if she could hear any movement which might
+tell her he was not asleep. It was all still, and pulling the iron latch
+with her gentlest hand Fleda went on tiptoe into the room. He was lying on
+the bed, but awake, for she had made no noise and the blue eyes opened and
+looked upon her as she came near.
+
+"Are you not well, dear grandpa?" said the little girl.
+
+Nothing made of flesh and blood ever spoke words of more spirit-like
+sweetness,--not the beauty of a fine organ, but such as the sweetness of
+angel-speech might be; a whisper of love and tenderness that was hushed by
+its own intensity. He did not answer, or did not notice her first
+question; she repeated it.
+
+"Don't you feel well?"
+
+"Not exactly, dear!" he replied.
+
+There was the shadow of somewhat in his tone, that fell upon his little
+granddaughter's heart and brow at once. Her voice next time, though not
+suffered to be anything but clear and cheerful still, had in part the
+clearness of apprehension.
+
+"What is the matter?"
+
+"Oh--I don't know, dear!"
+
+She felt the shadow again, and he seemed to say that time would shew her
+the meaning of it. She put her little hand in one of his which lay outside
+the coverlets, and stood looking at him; and presently said, but in a very
+different key from the same speech to Mr. Carleton,
+
+"I have had a very nice time, dear grandpa."
+
+Her grandfather made her no answer. He brought the dear little hand to
+his lips and kissed it twice, so earnestly that it was almost
+passionately; then laid it on the side of the bed again, with his own
+upon it, and patted it slowly and fondly and with an inexpressible kind
+of sadness in the manner. Fleda's lip trembled and her heart was
+fluttering, but she stood so that he could not see her face in the dusk,
+and kept still till the rebel features were calm again and she had
+schooled the heart to be silent.
+
+Mr. Ringgan had closed his eyes, and perhaps was asleep, and his little
+granddaughter sat quietly down on a chair by the bedside to watch by him,
+in that gentle sorrowful patience which women often know but which hardly
+belongs to childhood. Her eye and thoughts, as she sat there in the dusky
+twilight, fell upon the hand of her grandfather which still fondly held
+one of her own; and fancy travelled fast and far, from what it was to what
+it had been. Rough, discoloured, stiff, as it lay there now, she thought
+how it had once had the hue and the freshness and the grace of youth, when
+it had been the instrument of uncommon strength and wielded an authority
+that none could stand against. Her fancy wandered over the scenes it had
+known; when it had felled trees in the wild forest, and those fingers,
+then supple and slight, had played the fife to the struggling men of the
+Revolution; how its activity had outdone the activity of all other hands
+in clearing and cultivating those very fields where her feet loved to run;
+how in its pride of strength it had handled the scythe and the sickle and
+the flail, with a grace and efficiency that no other could attain; and how
+in happy manhood that strong hand had fondled and sheltered and led the
+little children that now had grown up and were gone!--Strength and
+activity, ay, and the fruits of them, were passed away;--his children were
+dead;--his race was run;--the shock of corn was in full season, ready to
+be gathered. Poor little Fleda! her thought had travelled but a very
+little way before the sense of these things entirely overcame her; her
+head bowed on her knees, and she wept tears that all the fine springs of
+her nature were moving to feed--many, many,--but poured forth as quietly
+as bitterly; she smothered every sound. That beautiful shadowy world with
+which she had been so busy a little while ago,--alas! she had left the
+fair outlines and the dreamy light and had been tracking one solitary path
+through the wilderness, and she saw how the traveller foot-sore and
+weather-beaten comes to the end of his way. And after all, he comes to
+_the end_.--"Yes, and I must travel through life and come to the end,
+too," thought little Fleda,--"life is but a passing through the world; my
+hand must wither and grow old too, if I live long enough, and whether or
+no, I must come to _the end_.--Oh, there is only one thing that ought to
+be very much minded in this world!"
+
+That thought, sober though it was, brought sweet consolation. Fleda's
+tears, if they fell as fast, grew brighter, as she remembered with
+singular tender joy that her mother and her father had been ready to see
+the end of their journey, and were not afraid of it, that her grandfather
+and her aunt Miriam were happy in the same quiet confidence and she
+believed she herself was a lamb of the Good Shepherd's flock. "And he
+will let none of his lambs be lost," she thought. "How happy I am! How
+happy we all are!"
+
+Her grandfather still lay quiet as if asleep, and gently drawing her hand
+from under his, Fleda went and got a candle and sat down by him again to
+read, carefully shading the light so that it might not awake him.
+
+He presently spoke to her, and more cheerfully.
+
+"Are you reading, dear?"
+
+"Yes, grandpa!" said the little girl looking up brightly. "Does the candle
+disturb you?"
+
+"No, dear!--What have you got there?"
+
+"I just took up this volume of Newton that has the hymns in it."
+
+"Read out."
+
+Fleda read Mr. Newton's long beautiful hymn, "The Lord will provide;" but
+with her late thoughts fresh in her mind it was hard to get through the
+last verses;--
+
+ "No strength of our own,
+    Or goodness we claim;
+  But since we have known
+    The Saviour's great name,
+  In this, our strong tower,
+    For safety we hide:
+  The Lord is our power,
+    The Lord will provide.
+
+ "When life sinks apace,
+    And death is in view,
+  This word of his grace
+    Shall comfort us through.
+  No fearing nor doubting,--
+    With Christ on our side,
+  We hope to die shouting,
+    The Lord will provide."
+
+The little reader's voice changed, almost broke, but she struggled
+through, and then was quietly crying behind her hand.
+
+"Read it again," said the old gentleman after a pause.
+
+There is no 'cannot' in the vocabulary of affection. Fleda waited a
+minute or two to rally her forces, and then went through it again, more
+steadily than the first time.
+
+"Yes--" said Mr. Ringgan calmly, folding his hands,--"that will do! That
+trust won't fail, for it is founded upon a rock. 'He is a rock; and he
+knoweth them that put their trust in him!' I have been a fool to doubt
+ever that he would make all things work well--The Lord will provide!"
+
+"Grandpa," said Fleda, but in an unsteady voice, and shading her face with
+her hand still,--"I can remember reading this hymn to my mother once when
+I was so little that 'suggestions' was a hard word to me."
+
+"Ay, ay,--I dare say," said the old gentleman,--"your mother knew that
+Rock and rested her hope upon it,--where mine stands now. If ever there
+was a creature that might have trusted to her own doings, I believe she
+was one, for I never saw her do anything wrong,--as I know. But she knew
+Christ was all. Will you follow him as she did, dear?"
+
+Fleda tried in vain to give an answer.
+
+"Do you know what her last prayer for you was, Fleda?"
+
+"No, grandpa."
+
+"It was that you might be kept 'unspotted from the world.' I heard her
+make that prayer myself." And stretching out his hand the old gentleman
+laid it tenderly upon Fleda's bowed head, saying with strong earnestness
+and affection, even _his_ voice somewhat shaken, "God grant that
+prayer!--whatever else he do with her, keep my child from the evil!--and
+bring her to join her father and mother in heaven!--and me!"
+
+He said no more;--but Fleda's sobs said a great deal. And when the sobs
+were hushed, she still sat shedding quiet tears, sorrowed and disturbed by
+her grandfather's manner. She had never known it so grave, so solemn; but
+there was that shadow of something else in it besides, and she would have
+feared if she had known what to fear. He told her at last that she had
+better go to bed, and to say to Cynthy that he wanted to see her. She was
+going, and had near reached the door, when he said,
+
+"Elfleda!"
+
+She hastened back to the bedside.
+
+"Kiss me."
+
+He let her do so twice, without moving, and then holding her to his
+breast he pressed one long earnest passionate kiss upon her lips, and
+released her,
+
+Fleda told Cynthy that her grandfather wished her to come to him, and then
+mounted the stairs to her little bedroom. She went to the window and
+opening it looked out at the soft moonlit sky; the weather was mild again
+and a little hazy, and the landscape was beautiful. But little Fleda was
+tasting realities, and she could not go off upon dream-journeys to seek
+the light food of fancy through the air. She did not think to-night about
+the people the moon was shining on; she only thought of one little sad
+anxious heart,--and of another down stairs, more sad and anxious still,
+she feared;--what could it be about? Now that Mr. Jolly had settled all
+that troublesome business with McGowan?--
+
+As she stood there at the window, gazing out aimlessly into the still
+night,--it was very quiet,--she heard Cynthy at the back of the house
+calling out, but as if she were afraid of making too much noise,
+"Watkins!--Watkins!"
+
+The sound had business, if not anxiety, in it. Fleda instinctively held
+her breath to listen. Presently she heard Watkins reply; but they were
+round the corner, she could not easily make out what they said. It was
+only by straining her ears that she caught the words,
+
+"Watkins, Mr. Ringgan wants you to go right up on the hill to Mis'
+Plumfield's and tell her he wants her to come right down--he thinks"--the
+voice of the speaker fell, and Fleda could only make out the last
+words,--"Dr. James." More was said, but so thick and low that she could
+understand nothing.
+
+She had heard enough. She shut the window, trembling, and fastened again
+the parts of her dress she had loosened; and softly and hastily went down
+the stairs into the kitchen.
+
+"Cynthy!--what is the matter with grandpa?"
+
+"Why ain't you in bed, Flidda?" said Cynthy with some sharpness. "That's
+what you had ought to be. I am sure your grandpa wants you to be abed."
+
+"But tell me," said Fleda anxiously.
+
+"I don't know as there's anything the matter with him," said Cynthy.
+"Nothing much, I suppose. What makes you think anything is the matter?"
+
+"Because I heard you telling Watkins to go for aunt Miriam." Fleda could
+not say,--"and the doctor."
+
+"Well your grandpa thought he'd like to have her come down, and he don't
+feet right well,--so I sent Watkins up; but you'd better go to bed,
+Flidda; you'll catch cold if you sit up o'night."
+
+Fleda was unsatisfied, the more because Cynthy would not meet the keen
+searching look with which the little girl tried to read her face. She was
+not to be sent to bed, and all Cynthy's endeavours to make her change her
+mind were of no avail. Fleda saw in them but fresh reason for staying, and
+saw besides, what Cynthy could not hide, a somewhat of wandering and
+uneasiness in her manner which strengthened her resolution. She sat down
+in the chimney corner, resolved to wait till her aunt Miriam came; there
+would be satisfaction in her, for aunt Miriam always told the truth, the
+whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
+
+It was a miserable three-quarters of an hour. The kitchen seemed to wear a
+strange desolate look, though seen in its wonted bright light of fire and
+candles, and in itself nice and cheerful as usual. Fleda looked at it also
+through that vague fear which casts its own lurid colour upon everything.
+The very flickering of the candle blaze seemed of ill omen, and her
+grandfather's empty chair stood a signal of pain to little Fleda whenever
+she looked at it. She sat still, in submissive patience, her cheek pale
+with the working of a heart too big for that little body. Cynthia was
+going in and out of her grandfather's room, but Fleda would not ask her
+any more questions, to be disappointed with word-answers; she waited, but
+the minutes seemed very long,--and very sad.
+
+The characteristic outward calm which Fleda had kept, and which belonged
+to a nature uncommonly moulded to patience and fortitude, had yet perhaps
+heightened the pressure of excited fear within. When at last she saw the
+cloak and hood of aunt Miriam coming through the moonlight to the kitchen
+door, she rushed to open it, and quite overcome for the moment threw her
+arms around her and was speechless. Aunt Miriam's tender and quiet voice
+comforted her.
+
+"You up yet, Fleda! Hadn't you better go to bed? 'Tisn't good for you."
+
+"That's what I've been a telling her," said Cynthy, "but she wa'n't a mind
+to listen to me."
+
+But the two little arms embraced aunt Miriam's cloak and wrappers and the
+little face was hid there still, and Fleda's answer was a half smothered
+ejaculation.
+
+"I am _so_ glad you are come, dear aunt Miriam!"
+
+Aunt Miriam kissed her again, and again repeated her request.
+
+"O no--I can't go to bed," said Fleda crying;--"I can't till I know--I am
+_sure_ something is the matter, or Cynthy wouldn't look so. _Do_ tell me,
+aunt Miriam!"
+
+"I can't tell you anything, dear, except that grandpa is not well--that
+is all I know--I am going in to see him. I will tell you in the morning
+how he is."
+
+"No," said Fleda, "I will wait here till you come out. I couldn't sleep."
+
+Mrs. Plumfield made no more efforts to persuade her, but rid herself of
+cloak and hood and went into Mr. Ringgan's room. Fleda placed herself
+again in her chimney corner. Burying her face in her hands, she sat
+waiting more quietly; and Cynthy, having finished all her business, took a
+chair on the hearth opposite to her. Both were silent and motionless,
+except when Cynthy once in a while got up to readjust the sticks of wood
+on the fire. They sat there waiting so long that Fleda's anxiety began to
+quicken again.
+
+"Don't you think the doctor is a long time coming, Cynthy?" said she
+raising her head at last. Her question, breaking that forced silence,
+sounded fearful.
+
+"It seems kind o' long," said Cynthy. "I guess Watkins ha'n't found
+him to hum."
+
+Watkins indeed presently came in and reported as much, and that the wind
+was changing and it was coming off cold; and then his heavy boots were
+heard going up the stairs to his room overhead; but Fleda listened in vain
+for the sound of the latch of her grandfather's door, or aunt Miriam's
+quiet foot-fall in the passage; listened and longed, till the minutes
+seemed like the links of a heavy chain which she was obliged to pass over
+from hand to hand, and the last link could not be found. The noise of
+Watkins' feet ceased overhead, and nothing stirred or moved but the
+crackling flames and Cynthia's elbows, which took turns each in resting
+upon the opposite arm, and now and then a tell-tale gust of wind in the
+trees. If Mr. Ringgan was asleep, why did not aunt Miriam come out and see
+them,--if he was better, why not come and tell them so. He had been asleep
+when she first went into his room, and she had come back for a minute then
+to try again to get Fleda to bed; why could she not come out for a minute
+once more. Two hours of watching and trouble had quite changed little
+Fleda; the dark ring of anxiety had come under each eye in her little pale
+face; she looked herself almost ill.
+
+Aunt Miriam's grave step was heard coming out of the room at last,--it did
+not sound cheerfully in Fleda's ears. She came in, and stopping to give
+some direction to Cynthy, walked up to Fleda. Her face encouraged no
+questions. She took the child's head tenderly in both her hands, and told
+her gently, but it was in vain that she tried to make her voice quite as
+usual, that she had better go to bed--that she would be sick.
+
+Fleda looked up anxiously in her face.
+
+"How is he?"
+
+But her next word was the wailing cry of sorrow,--"Oh grandpa!--"
+
+The old lady took the little child in her arms and they both sat there by
+the fire until the morning dawned.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII.
+
+
+
+               Patience and sorrow strove
+  Who should express her goodliest.
+
+  King Lear.
+
+
+When Mr. Carleton knocked at the front door the next day about two o'clock
+it was opened to him by Cynthy. He asked for his late host.
+
+"Mr. Ringgan is dead."
+
+"Dead!" exclaimed the young man much shocked;--"when? how?"
+
+"Won't you come in, sir?" said Cynthy;--"maybe you'll see Mis' Plumfield."
+
+"No, certainly," replied the visitor. "Only tell me about Mr. Ringgan."
+
+"He died last night."
+
+"What was the matter with him?"
+
+"I don't know," said Cynthy in a business-like tone of voice,--"I
+s'pose the doctor knows, but he didn't say nothing about it. He died
+very sudden."
+
+"Was he alone?"
+
+"No--his sister was with him; he had been complaining all the evening
+that he didn't feel right, but I didn't think nothing of it and I didn't
+know as he did; and towards evening he went and laid down, and Flidda was
+with him a spell, talking to him; and at last he sent her to bed and
+called me in and said he felt mighty strange and he didn't know what it
+was going to be, and that he had as lieve I should send up and ask Mis'
+Plumfield to come down, and perhaps I might as well send for the doctor
+too. And I sent right off, but the doctor wa'n't to hum, and didn't get
+here till long after. Mis' Plumfield, she come; and Mr. Ringgan was
+asleep then, and I didn't know as it was going to be anything more after
+all than just a turn, such as anybody might take; and Mis' Plumfield went
+in and sot by him; and there wa'n't no one else in the room; and after a
+while he come to, and talked to her, she said, a spell; but he seemed to
+think it was something more than common ailed him; and all of a sudden he
+just riz up half way in bed and then fell back and died,--with no more
+warning than that."
+
+"And how is the little girl?"
+
+"Why," said Cynthy, looking off at right angles from her visitor, "she's
+middling now, I s'pose, but she won't be before long, or else she must be
+harder to make sick than other folks.--We can't get her out of the room,"
+she added, bringing her eyes to bear, for an instant, upon the young
+gentleman,--"she stays in there the hull time since morning--I've tried,
+and Mis' Plumfield's tried, and everybody has tried, and there can't none
+of us manage it; she will stay in there and it's an awful cold room when
+there ain't no fire."
+
+Cynthy and her visitor were both taking the benefit of the chill blast
+which rushed in at the open door.
+
+"_The room_?" said Mr. Carleton. "The room where the body lies?"
+
+"Yes--it's dreadful chill in there when the stove ain't heated, and she
+sits there the hull time. And she ha'n't 'got much to boast of now: she
+looks as if a feather would blow her away."
+
+The door at the further end of the hall opened about two inches and a
+voice called out through the crack,
+
+"Cynthy!--Mis' Plumfield wants to know if that is Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well she'd like to see him. Ask him to walk into the front room,
+she says."
+
+Cynthy upon this shewed the way, and Mr. Carleton walked into the same
+room where a very few days before he had been so kindly welcomed by his
+fine old host. Cold indeed it was now, as was the welcome he would have
+given. There was no fire in the chimney, and even all the signs of the
+fire of the other day had been carefully cleared away; the clean empty
+fireplace looked a mournful assurance that its cheerfulness would not soon
+come back again. It was a raw disagreeable day, the paper window shades
+fluttered uncomfortably in the wind, which had its way now; and the very
+chairs and tables seemed as if they had taken leave of life and society
+for ever. Mr. Carleton walked slowly up and down, his thoughts running
+perhaps somewhat in the train where poor little Fleda's had been so busy
+last night, and wrapped up in broadcloth as he was to the chin, he
+shivered when he heard the chill wind moaning round the house and rustling
+the paper hangings and thought of little Fleda's delicate frame, exposed
+as Cynthia had described it. He made up his mind it must not be.
+
+Mrs. Plumfield presently came in, and met him with the calm dignity of
+that sorrow which needs no parade and that truth and meekness of character
+which can make none. Yet there was nothing like stoicism, no affected or
+proud repression of feeling; her manner was simply the dictate of good
+sense borne out by a firm and quiet spirit. Mr. Carleton was struck with
+it, it was a display of character different from any he had ever before
+met with; it was something he could not quite understand. For he wanted
+the key. But all the high respect he had felt for this lady from the first
+was confirmed and strengthened.
+
+After quietly receiving Mr. Carleton's silent grasp of the hand, aunt
+Miriam said,
+
+"I troubled you to stop, sir, that I might ask you how much longer you
+expect to stop at Montepoole."
+
+Not more than two or three days, he said.
+
+"I understood," said aunt Miriam after a minute's pause, "that Mrs.
+Carleton was so kind as to say she would take care of Elfleda to France
+and put her in the hands of her aunt."
+
+"She would have great pleasure in doing it," said Mr. Carleton. "I can
+promise for your little niece that she shall have a mother's care so long
+as my mother can render it."
+
+Aunt Miriam was silent, and he saw her eyes fill.
+
+"You should not have had the pain of seeing me to-day," said he gently,
+"if I could have known it would give you any; but since I am here, may I
+ask, whether it is your determination that Fleda shall go with us?"
+
+"It was my brother's," said aunt Miriam, sighing;--"he told me--last
+night--that he wished her to go with Mrs. Carleton--if she would still be
+so good as to take her."
+
+"I have just heard about her, from the housekeeper," said Mr, Carleton,
+"what has disturbed me a good deal. Will you forgive me, if I venture to
+propose that she should come to us at once. Of course we will not leave
+the place for several days--till you are ready to part with her."
+
+Aunt Miriam hesitated, and again the tears flushed to her eyes.
+
+"I believe it would be best," she said,--"since it must be--I cannot get
+the child away from her grandfather--I am afraid I want firmness to do
+it--and she ought not to be there--she is a tender little creature--"
+
+For once self-command failed her--she was obliged to cover her face.
+
+"A stranger's hands cannot be more tender of her than ours will be," said
+Mr. Carleton, his warm pressure of aunt Miriam's hand repeating the
+promise. "My mother will bring a carriage for her this afternoon, if you
+will permit."
+
+"If you please, sir,--since it must be, it does not matter a day sooner or
+later," repeated aunt Miriam,--"if she can be got away.--I don't know
+whether it will be possible."
+
+Mr. Carleton had his own private opinion on that point. He merely promised
+to be there again in a few hours and took his leave.
+
+He came, with his mother, about five o'clock in the afternoon. They were
+shewn this time into the kitchen, where they found two or three neighbours
+and friends with aunt Miriam and Cynthy. The former received them with the
+same calm simplicity that Mr. Carleton had admired in the morning, but
+said she was afraid their coming would be in vain; she had talked with
+Fleda about the proposed plan and could not get her to listen to it. She
+doubted whether it would be possible to persuade her. And yet--
+
+Aunt Miriam's self-possession seemed to be shaken when she thought of
+Fleda; she could not speak of her without watering eyes.
+
+"She's fixing to be sick as fast as ever she can," remarked Cynthia dryly,
+in a kind of aside meant for the audience;--"there wa'n't a grain of
+colour in her face when I went in to try to get her out a little while
+ago; and Mis' Plumfield ha'n't the heart to do anything with her, nor
+nobody else."
+
+"Mother, will you see what you can do?" said Mr. Carleton.
+
+Mrs. Carleton went, with an expression of face that her son, nobody else,
+knew meant that she thought it a particularly disagreeable piece of
+business. She came back after the lapse of a few minutes, in tears.
+
+"I can do nothing with her," she said hurriedly;--"I don't know what to
+say to her; and she looks like death. Go yourself, Guy; you can manage her
+if any one can."
+
+Mr. Carleton went immediately.
+
+The room into which a short passage admitted him was cheerless indeed. On
+a fair afternoon the sun's rays came in there pleasantly, but this was a
+true November day; a grey sky and a chill raw wind that found its way in
+between the loose window-sashes and frames. One corner of the room was
+sadly tenanted by the bed which held the remains of its late master and
+owner. At a little table between the windows, with her back turned towards
+the bed, Fleda was sitting, her face bowed in her hands, upon the old
+quarto bible that lay there open; a shawl round her shoulders.
+
+Mr. Carleton went up to the side of the table and softly spoke her name.
+Fleda looked up at him for an instant, and then buried her face in her
+hands on the book as before. That look might have staggered him, but that
+Mr. Carleton rarely was staggered in any purpose when he had once made up
+his mind. It did move him,--so much that he was obliged to wait a minute
+or two before he could muster firmness to speak to her again. Such a
+look,--so pitiful in its sorrow, so appealing in its helplessness, so
+imposing in its purity,--he had never seen, and it absolutely awed him.
+Many a child's face is lovely to look upon for its innocent purity, but
+more commonly it is not like this; it is the purity of snow, unsullied,
+but not unsullyable; there is another kind more ethereal, like that of
+light, which you feel is from another sphere and will not know soil. But
+there were other signs in the face that would have nerved Mr. Carleton's
+resolution if he had needed it. Twenty-four hours had wrought a sad
+change. The child looked as if she had been ill for weeks. Her cheeks were
+colourless; the delicate brow would have seemed pencilled on marble but
+for the dark lines which weeping and watching, and still more sorrow, had
+drawn underneath; and the beautiful moulding of the features shewed under
+the transparent skin like the work of the sculptor. She was not crying
+then, but the open pages of the great bible had been wet with very many
+tears since her head had rested there.
+
+[Illustration: Fleda was sitting, her face bowed in her hands.]
+
+"Fleda," said Mr. Carleton after a moment,--"you must come with me."
+
+The words were gently and tenderly spoken, yet they had that tone which
+young and old instinctively know it is vain to dispute. Fleda glanced up
+again, a touching imploring look it was very difficult to bear, and her
+"Oh no--I cannot,"--went to his heart. It was not resistance but entreaty,
+and all the arguments she would have urged seemed to lie in the mere tone
+of her voice. She had no power of urging them in any other way, for even
+as she spoke her head went down again on the bible with a burst of sorrow.
+Mr. Carleton was moved, but not shaken in his purpose. He was silent a
+moment, drawing back the hair that fell over Fleda's forehead with a
+gentle caressing touch; and then he said, still lower and more tenderly
+than before, but without flinching, "You must come with me, Fleda."
+
+"Mayn't I stay," said Fleda, sobbing, while he could see in the tension of
+the muscles a violent effort at self-control which he did not like to
+see,--"mayn't I stay till--till--the day after to-morrow?"
+
+"No, dear Fleda," said he, still stroking her head kindly,--"I will bring
+you back, but you must go with me now, Your aunt wishes it and we all
+think it is best. I will bring you back."--
+
+She sobbed bitterly for a few minutes. Then she begged in smothered words
+that he would leave her alone a little while. He went immediately.
+
+She checked her sobs when she heard the door close upon him, or as soon as
+she could, and rising went and knelt down by the side of the bed. It was
+not to cry, though what she did could not be done without many tears,--it
+was to repeat with equal earnestness and solemnity her mother's prayer,
+that she might be kept pure from the world's contact. There beside the
+remains of her last dear earthly friend, as it were before going out of
+his sight forever, little Fleda knelt down to set the seal of faith and
+hope to his wishes, and to lay the constraining hand of Memory upon her
+conscience. It was soon done,--and then there was but one thing more to
+do. But oh, the tears that fell as she stood there before she could go on;
+how the little hands were pressed to the bowed face, as if _they_ would
+have borne up the load they could not reach; the convulsive struggle,
+before the last look could be taken, the last good-by said! But the sobs
+were forced back, the hands wiped off the tears, the quivering features
+were bidden into some degree of calmness; and she leaned forward, over the
+loved face that in death had kept all its wonted look of mildness and
+placid dignity. It was in vain to try to look through Fleda's blinded
+eyes; the hot tears dropped fast, while her trembling lips kissed--and
+kissed,--those cold and silent that could make no return; and then feeling
+that it was the last, that the parting was over, she stood again by the
+side of the bed as she had done a few minutes before, in a convulsion of
+grief, her face bowed down and her little frame racked with feeling too
+strong for it; shaken visibly, as if too frail to bear the trial to which
+it was put.
+
+Mr. Carleton had waited and waited, as he thought long enough, and now at
+last came in again, guessing how it was with her. He put his arm round the
+child and gently drew her away, and sitting down took her on his knee; and
+endeavoured rather with actions than with words to soothe and comfort her;
+for he did not know what to say. But his gentle delicate way, the soft
+touch with which he again stroked back her hair or took her hand, speaking
+kindness and sympathy, the loving pressure of his lips once or twice to
+her brow, the low tones in which he told her that she was making herself
+sick,--that she must not do so,--that she must let him take care of
+her,--were powerful to soothe or quiet a sensitive mind, and Fleda felt
+them. It was a very difficult task, and if undertaken by any one else
+would have been more likely to disgust and distress her. But his spirit
+had taken the measure of hers, and he knew precisely how to temper every
+word and tone so as just to meet the nice sensibilities of her nature. He
+had said hardly anything, but she had understood all he meant to say, and
+when he told her at last, softly, that it was getting late and she must
+let him take her away, she made no more difficulty; rose up and let him
+lead her out of the room without once turning her head to look back.
+
+Mrs. Carleton looked relieved that there was a prospect of getting away,
+and rose up with a happy adjusting of her shawl round her shoulders. Aunt
+Miriam came forward to say good-by, but it was very quietly said. Fleda
+clasped her round the neck convulsively for an instant, kissed her as if a
+kiss could speak a whole heartful, and then turned submissively to Mr.
+Carleton and let him lead her to the carriage.
+
+There was no fault to be found with Mrs. Carleton's kindness when they
+were on the way. She held the forlorn little child tenderly in her arm,
+and told her how glad she was to have her with them, how glad she should
+be if she were going to keep her always; but her saying so only made Fleda
+cry, and she soon thought it best to say nothing. All the rest of the way
+Fleda was a picture of resignation; transparently pale, meek and pure, and
+fragile seemingly, as the delicatest wood-flower that grows. Mr. Carleton
+looked grieved, and leaning forward he took one of her hands in his own
+and held it affectionately till they got to the end of their journey. It
+marked Fleda's feeling towards him that she let it lie there without
+making a motion to draw it away. She was so still for the last few miles
+that her friends thought she had fallen asleep; but when the carriage
+stopped and the light of the lantern was flung inside, they saw the grave
+hazel eyes broad open and gazing intently out of the window.
+
+"You will order tea for us in your dressing-room, mother?" said Mr.
+Carleton.
+
+"_Us_--who is _us?_"
+
+"Fleda and me,--unless you will please to make one of the party."
+
+"Certainly I will, but perhaps Fleda might like it better down stairs.
+Wouldn't you, dear?"
+
+"If you please, ma'am," said Fleda. "Wherever you please."
+
+"But which would you rather, Fleda?" said Mr. Carleton.
+
+"I would _rather_ have it up-stairs," said Fleda gently, "but it's
+no matter."
+
+"We will have it up-stairs," said Mrs. Carleton. "We will be a nice little
+party up there by ourselves. You shall not come down till you like."
+
+"You are hardly able to walk up," said Mr. Carleton tenderly. "Shall I
+carry you?"
+
+The tears rushed to Fleda's eyes, but she said no, and managed to mount
+the stairs, though it was evidently an exertion. Mrs. Carleton's
+dressing-room, as her son had called it, looked very pleasant when they
+got there. It was well lighted and warmed and something answering to
+curtains had been summoned from its obscurity in store-room or garret and
+hung up at the windows,--"them air fussy English folks had made such a
+pint of it," the landlord said. Truth was, that Mr. Carleton as well as
+his mother wanted this room as a retreat for the quiet and privacy which
+travelling in company as they did they could have nowhere else. Everything
+the hotel could furnish in the shape of comfort had been drawn together to
+give this room as little the look of a public house as possible. Easy
+chairs, as Mrs. Carleton remarked with a disgusted face, one could not
+expect to find in a country inn; there were instead as many as half a
+dozen of "those miserable substitutes" as she called rocking-chairs, and
+sundry fashions of couches and sofas, in various degrees of elegance and
+convenience. The best of these, a great chintz-covered thing, full of
+pillows, stood invitingly near the bright fire. There Mr. Carleton placed
+little Fleda, took off her bonnet and things, and piled the cushions about
+her just in the way that would make her most easy and comfortable. He said
+little, and she nothing, but her eyes watered again at the kind tenderness
+of his manner. And then he left her in peace till the tea came.
+
+The tea was made in that room for those three alone. Fleda knew that Mr.
+and Mrs. Carleton staid up there only for her sake, and it troubled her,
+but she could not help it. Neither could she be very sorry so far as one
+of them was concerned. Mr. Carleton was too good to be wished away. All
+that evening his care of her never ceased. At tea, which the poor child
+would hardly have shared but for him, and after tea, when in the absence
+of bustle she had leisure to feel more fully her strange circumstances and
+position, he hardly permitted her to feel either, doing everything for
+her ease and pleasure and quietly managing at the same time to keep back
+his mother's more forward and less happily adapted tokens of kind feeling.
+Though she knew he was constantly occupied with her Fleda could not feel
+oppressed; his kindness was as pervading and as unobtrusive as the summer
+air itself; she felt as if she was in somebody's hands that knew her wants
+before she did, and quietly supplied or prevented them, in a way she could
+not tell how. It was very rarely that she even got a chance to utter the
+quiet and touching "thank you," which invariably answered every token of
+kindness or thoughtfulness that permitted an answer. How greatly that
+harsh and sad day was softened to little Fleda'a heart by the good feeling
+and fine breeding of one person. She thought when she went to bed that
+night, thought seriously and gratefully, that since she must go over the
+ocean and take that long journey to her aunt, how glad she was, how
+thankful she ought to be, that she had so very kind and pleasant people to
+go with. Kind and pleasant she counted them both; but what more she
+thought of Mr. Carleton it would be hard to say. Her admiration of him was
+very high, appreciating as she did to the full all that charm of manner
+which she could neither analyze nor describe.
+
+Her last words to him that night, spoken with a most wistful anxious
+glance into his face, were,
+
+"You will take me back again, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+He knew what she meant.
+
+"Certainly I will. I promised you, Fleda."
+
+"Whatever Guy promises you may be very sure he will do," said his mother
+with a smile.
+
+Fleda believed it. But the next morning it was very plain that this
+promise he would not be called upon to perform; Fleda would not be well
+enough to go to the funeral. She was able indeed to get up, but she lay
+all day upon the sofa in the dressing-room. Mr. Carleton had bargained for
+no company last night; to-day female curiosity could stand it no longer;
+and Mrs. Thorn and Mrs. Evelyn came up to look and gossip openly and to
+admire and comment privately, when they had a chance. Fleda lay perfectly
+quiet and still, seeming not much to notice or care for their presence;
+they thought she was tolerably easy in body and mind, perhaps tired and
+sleepy, and like to do well enough after a few days. How little they knew!
+How little they could imagine the assembly of Thought which was holding in
+that child's mind; how little they deemed of the deep, sad, serious look
+into life which that little spirit was taking. How far they were from
+fancying while they were discussing all manner of trifles before her,
+sometimes when they thought her sleeping, that in the intervals between
+sadder and weighter things her nice instincts were taking the gauge of
+all their characters; unconsciously, but surely; how they might have been
+ashamed if they had known that while they were busy with all affairs in
+the universe but those which most nearly concerned them, the little child
+at their side whom they had almost forgotten was secretly looking up to
+her Father in heaven, and asking to be kept pure from the world! "Not unto
+the wise and prudent;"--how strange it may seem in one view of the
+subject,--in another, how natural, how beautiful, how reasonable!
+
+Fleda did not ask again to be taken to Queechy. But as the afternoon drew
+on she turned her face away from the company and shielded it from view
+among the cushions, and lay in that utterly motionless state of body which
+betrays a concentrated movement of the spirits in some hidden direction.
+To her companions it betrayed nothing. They only lowered their tones a
+little lest they should disturb her.
+
+It had grown dark, and she was sitting up again, leaning against the
+pillows and in her usual quietude, when Mr. Carleton came in. They had not
+seen him since before dinner. He came to her side and taking her hand made
+some gentle inquiry how she was.
+
+"She has had a fine rest," said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"She has been sleeping all the afternoon," said Mrs. Carleton,--"she
+lay as quiet as a mouse, without stirring;--you were sleeping, weren't
+you, dear?"
+
+Fleda's lips hardly formed the word "no," and her features were quivering
+sadly. Mr. Carleton's were impenetrable.
+
+"Dear Fleda," said he, stooping down and speaking with equal gravity and
+kindliness of manner,--"you were not able to go."
+
+Fleda's shake of the head gave a meek acquiescence. But her face was
+covered, and the gay talkers around her were silenced and sobered by the
+heaving of her little frame with sobs that she could not keep back. Mr.
+Carleton secured the permanence of their silence for that evening. He
+dismissed them the room again and would have nobody there but himself and
+his mother.
+
+Instead of being better the next day Fleda was not able to get up; she was
+somewhat feverish and exceedingly weak. She lay like a baby, Mrs. Carleton
+said, and gave as little trouble. Gentle and patient always, she made no
+complaint, and even uttered no wish, and whatever they did made no
+objection. Though many a tear that day and the following paid its faithful
+tribute to the memory of what she had lost, no one knew it; she was never
+seen to weep; and the very grave composure of her face and her passive
+unconcern as to what was done or doing around her alone gave her friends
+reason to suspect that the mind was not as quiet as the body. Mr. Carleton
+was the only one who saw deeper; the only one that guessed why the little
+hand often covered the eyes so carefully, and read the very, very grave
+lines of the mouth that it could not hide.
+
+As soon as she could bear it he had her brought out to the
+dressing-room again, and laid on the sofa; and it was several days
+before she could be got any further. But there he could be more with
+her and devote himself more to her pleasure; and it was not long before
+he had made himself necessary to the poor child's comfort in a way
+beyond what he was aware of.
+
+He was not the only one who shewed her kindness. Unwearied care and most
+affectionate attention were lavished upon her by his mother and both her
+friends; they all thought they could not do enough to mark their feeling
+and regard for her. Mrs. Carleton and Mrs. Evelyn nursed her by night and
+by day. Mrs. Evelyn read to her. Mrs. Thorn would come often to look and
+smile at her and say a few words of heart-felt pity and sympathy. Yet
+Fleda could not feel quite at home with any one of them. They did not see
+it. Her manner was affectionate and grateful, to the utmost of their wish;
+her simple natural politeness, her nice sense of propriety, were at every
+call; she seemed after a few days to be as cheerful and to enter as much
+into what was going on about her as they had any reason to expect she
+could; and they were satisfied. But while moving thus smoothly among her
+new companions, in secret her spirit stood aloof; there was not one of
+them that could touch her, that could understand her, that could meet the
+want of her nature. Mrs. Carleton was incapacitated for it by education;
+Mrs. Evelyn by character; Mrs. Thorn by natural constitution. Of them all,
+though by far the least winning and agreeable in personal qualifications,
+Fleda would soonest have relied on Mrs. Thorn, could soonest have loved
+her. Her homely sympathy and kindness made their way to the child's heart;
+Fleda felt them and trusted them. But there were too few points of
+contact. Fleda thanked her, and did not wish to see her again. With Mrs.
+Carleton Fleda had almost nothing at all in common. And that
+notwithstanding all this lady's politeness, intelligence, cultivation, and
+real kindness towards herself. Fleda would readily have given her credit
+for them all; and yet, the nautilus may as soon compare notes with the
+navigator, the canary might as well study Maelzel's Metronome, as a child
+of nature and a woman of the world comprehend and suit each other. The
+nature of the one must change or the two must remain the world wide apart.
+Fleda felt it, she did not know why. Mrs. Carleton was very kind, and
+perfectly polite; but Fleda had no pleasure in her kindness, no trust in
+her politeness; or if that be saying too much, at least she felt that for
+some inexplicable reason both were unsatisfactory. Even the tact which
+each possessed in an exquisite degree was not the same in each; in one it
+was the self-graduating power of a clever machine,--in the other, the
+delicateness of the sensitive plant. Mrs. Carleton herself was not without
+some sense of this distinction; she confessed, secretly, that there was
+something in Fleda out of the reach of her discernment, and consequently
+beyond the walk of her skill; and felt, rather uneasily, that more
+delicate hands were needed to guide so delicate a nature. Mrs. Evelyn came
+nearer the point. She was very pleasant, and she knew how to do things in
+a charming way; and there were times, frequently, when Fleda thought she
+was everything lovely. But yet, now and then a mere word, or look, would
+contradict this fair promise, a something of _hardness_ which Fleda could
+not reconcile with the soft gentleness of other times; and on the whole
+Mrs. Evelyn was unsure ground to her; she could not adventure her
+confidence there.
+
+With Mr. Carleton alone Fleda felt at home. He only, she knew, completely
+understood and appreciated her. Yet she saw also that with others he was
+not the same as with her. Whether grave or gay there was about him an air
+of cool indifference, very often reserved and not seldom haughty; and the
+eye which could melt and glow when turned upon her, was sometimes as
+bright and cold as a winter sky. Fleda felt sure however that she might
+trust him entirely so far as she herself was concerned; of the rest she
+stood in doubt. She was quite right in both cases. Whatever else there
+might be in that blue eye, there was truth in it when it met hers; she
+gave that truth her full confidence and was willing to honour every
+draught made upon her charity for the other parts of his character.
+
+He never seemed to lose sight of her. He was always doing something for
+which Fleda loved him, but so quietly and happily that she could neither
+help his taking the trouble nor thank him for it. It might have been
+matter of surprise that a gay young man of fashion should concern himself
+like a brother about the wants of a little child; the young gentlemen down
+stairs who were not of the society in the dressing-room did make
+themselves very merry upon the subject, and rallied Mr. Carleton with the
+common amount of wit and wisdom about his little sweetheart; a raillery
+which met the most flinty indifference. But none of those who saw Fleda
+ever thought strange of anything that was done for her; and Mrs. Carleton
+was rejoiced to have her son take up the task she was fain to lay down. So
+he really, more than any one else, had the management of her; and Fleda
+invariably greeted his entrance into the room with a faint smile, which
+even the ladies who saw agreed was well worth working for.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX.
+
+
+
+  If large possessions, pompous titles, honourable charges, and
+  profitable commissions, could have made this proud man happy, there
+  would have been nothing wanting.--L'Estrange.
+
+
+Several days had passed. Fleda'a cheeks had gained no colour, but she had
+grown a little stronger, and it was thought the party might proceed on
+their way without any more tarrying; trusting that change and the motion
+of travelling would do better things for Fleda than could be hoped from
+any further stay at Montepoole. The matter was talked over in an evening
+consultation in the dressing-room, and it was decided that they would set
+off on the second day thereafter.
+
+Fleda was lying quietly on her sofa, with her eyes closed, having had
+nothing to say during the discussion. They thought she had perhaps not
+heard it. Mr. Carleton's sharper eyes, however, saw that one or two tears
+were glimmering just under the eyelash. He bent down over her and
+whispered,
+
+"I know what you are thinking of Fleda, do I not?"
+
+"I was thinking of aunt Miriam," Fleda said in an answering whisper,
+without opening her eyes.
+
+"I will take care of that."
+
+Fleda looked up and smiled most expressively her thanks, and in five
+minutes was asleep. Mr. Carleton stood watching her, querying how long
+those clear eyes would have nothing to hide,--how long that bright purity
+could resist the corrosion of the world's breath; and half thinking that
+it would be better for the spirit to pass away, with its lustre upon it,
+than stay till self-interest should sharpen the eye, and the lines of
+diplomacy write themselves on that fair brow. "Better so; better so."
+
+"What are you thinking of so gloomily, Guy?" said his Mother.
+
+"That is a tender little creature to struggle with a rough world."
+
+"She won't have to struggle with it," said Mrs. Carleton.
+
+"She will do very well," said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"I don't think she'd find it a rough world, where _you_ were, Mr.
+Carleton," said Mrs. Thorn.
+
+"Thank you ma'am," he said smiling. "But unhappily my power reaches very
+little way."
+
+"Perhaps," said Mrs. Evelyn with a sly smile,--"that might be arranged
+differently--Mrs. Rossitur--I have no doubt--would desire nothing better
+than a smooth world for her little niece--and Mr. Carleton's power might
+be unlimited in its extent."
+
+There was no answer, and the absolute repose of all the lines of the
+young gentleman's face bordered too nearly on contempt to encourage the
+lady to pursue her jest any further.
+
+The next day Fleda was well enough to bear moving. Mr. Carleton had her
+carefully bundled up, and then carried her down stairs and placed her in
+the little light wagon which had once before brought her to the Pool.
+Luckily it was a mild day, for no close carriage was to be had for love or
+money. The stage coach in which Fleda had been fetched from her
+grandfather's was in use, away somewhere. Mr. Carleton drove her down to
+aunt Miriam's, and leaving her there he went off again; and whatever he
+did with himself it was a good two hours before he came back. All too
+little yet they were for the tears and the sympathy which went to so many
+things both in the past and in the future. Aunt Miriam had not said half
+she wished to say, when the wagon was at the gate again, and Mr. Carleton
+came to take his little charge away.
+
+He found her sitting happily in aunt Miriam's lap. Fleda was very grateful
+to him for leaving her such a nice long time, and welcomed him with even a
+brighter smile than usual. But her head rested wistfully on her aunt's
+bosom after that; and when he asked her if she was almost ready to go, she
+hid her face there and put her arms about her neck. The old lady held her
+close for a few minutes, in silence.
+
+"Elfleda," said aunt Miriam gravely and tenderly,--"do you know what was
+your mother's prayer for you?"
+
+"Yes,"--she whispered.
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"That I--might be kept--"
+
+"Unspotted from the world!" repeated aunt Miriam, in a tone of tender and
+deep feeling;--"My sweet blossom!--how wilt thou keep so? Will you
+remember always your mother's prayer?"
+
+"I will try."
+
+"How will you try, Fleda?
+
+"I will pray."
+
+Aunt Miriam kissed her again and again, fondly repeating, "The Lord hear
+thee!--The Lord bless thee!--The Lord keep thee!--as a lily among thorns,
+my precious little babe;--though in the world, not of it.--"
+
+"Do you think that is possible?" said Mr. Carleton significantly, when a
+few moments after they had risen and were about to separate. Aunt Miriam
+looked at him in surprise and asked,
+
+"What, sir?"
+
+"To live in the world and not be like the world?"
+
+She cast her eyes upon Fleda, fondly smoothing down her soft hair with
+both hands for a minute or two before she answered,
+
+"By the help of one thing sir, yes!"
+
+"And what is that?" said he quickly.
+
+"The blessing of God, with whom all things are possible."
+
+His eyes fell, and there was a kind of incredulous sadness in his half
+smile which aunt Miriam understood better than he did. She sighed as she
+folded Fleda again to her breast and whisperingly bade her "Remember!" But
+Fleda knew nothing of it; and when she had finally parted from aunt Miriam
+and was seated in the little wagon on her way home, to her fancy the best
+friend she had in the world was sitting beside her.
+
+Neither was her judgment wrong, so far as it went. She saw true where she
+saw at all. But there was a great deal she could not see.
+
+Mr. Carleton was an unbeliever. Not maliciously,--not wilfully,--not
+stupidly;--rather the fool of circumstance. His skepticism might be traced
+to the joint workings of a very fine nature and a very bad education. That
+is, education in the broad sense of the term; of course none of the means
+and appliances of mental culture had been wanting to him.
+
+He was an uncommonly fine example of what nature alone can do for a man. A
+character of nature's building is at best a very ragged affair, without
+religion's finishing hand; at the utmost a fine ruin--no more. And if that
+be the _utmost_, of nature's handiwork, what is at the other end of the
+scale?--alas! the rubble stones of the ruin; what of good and fair nature
+had reared there was not strong enough to stand alone. But religion cannot
+work alike on every foundation; and the varieties are as many as the
+individuals. Sometimes she must build the whole, from the very ground; and
+there are cases where nature's work stands so strong and fair that
+religion's strength may be expended in perfecting and enriching and
+carrying it to an uncommon height of grace and beauty, and dedicating the
+fair temple to a new use.
+
+Of religion Mr. Carleton had nothing at all, and a true Christian
+character had never crossed his path near enough for him to become
+acquainted with it. His mother was a woman of the world; his father had
+been a man of the world; and what is more, so deep-dyed a politician that
+to all intents and purposes, except as to bare natural affection, he was
+nothing to his son and his son was nothing to him. Both mother and father
+thought the son a piece of perfection, and mothers and fathers have very
+often indeed thought so on less grounds. Mr. Carleton saw, whenever he
+took time to look at him, that Guy had no lack either of quick wit or
+manly bearing; that he had pride enough to keep him from low company and
+make him abhor low pursuits; if anything more than pride and better than
+pride mingled with it, the father's discernment could not reach so far. He
+had a love for knowledge too, that from a child made him eager in seeking
+it, in ways both regular and desultory; and tastes which his mother
+laughingly said would give him all the elegance of a woman, joined to the
+strong manly character which no one ever doubted he possessed. _She_
+looked mostly at the outside, willing if that pleased her to take
+everything else upon trust; and the grace of manner which a warm heart and
+fine sensibilities and a mind entirely frank and above board had given
+him, from his earliest years had more than met all her wishes. No one
+suspected the stubbornness and energy of will which was in fact the
+back-bone of his character. Nothing tried it. His father's death early
+left little Guy to his mother's guardianship. Contradicting him was the
+last thing she thought of, and of course it was attempted by no one else.
+
+If she would ever have allowed that he had a fault, which she never would,
+it was one that grew out of his greatest virtue, an unmanageable truth of
+character; and if she ever unwillingly recognised its companion virtue,
+firmness of will, it was when she endeavoured to combat certain
+troublesome demonstrations of the other. In spite of all the grace and
+charm of manner in which he was allowed to be a model, and which was as
+natural to him as it was universal, if ever the interests of truth came in
+conflict with the dictates of society he flung minor considerations behind
+his back and came out with some startling piece of bluntness at which his
+mother was utterly confounded. These occasions were very rare; he never
+sought them. Always where it was possible he chose either to speak or be
+silent in an unexceptionable manner. But sometimes the barrier of
+conventionalities, or his mother's unwise policy, pressed too hard upon
+his integrity or his indignation; and he would then free the barrier and
+present the shut-out truth in its full size and proportions before his
+mother's shocked eyes. It was in vain to try to coax or blind him; a
+marble statue is not more unruffled by the soft air of summer; and Mrs.
+Carleton was fain to console herself with the reflection that Guy's very
+next act after one of these breaks would be one of such happy fascination
+that the former would be forgotten; and that in this world of
+discordancies it was impossible on the whole for any one to come nearer
+perfection. And if there was inconvenience there were also great comforts
+about this character of truthfulness.
+
+So nearly up to the time of his leaving the University the young heir
+lived a life of as free and uncontrolled enjoyment as the deer on his
+grounds, happily led by his own fine instincts to seek that enjoyment in
+pure and natural sources. His tutor was proud of his success; his
+dependants loved his frank and high bearing; his mother rejoiced in his
+personal accomplishments, and was secretly well pleased that his tastes
+led him another way from the more common and less safe indulgences of
+other young men. He had not escaped the temptations of opportunity and
+example. But gambling was not intellectual enough, jockeying was too
+undignified, and drinking too coarse a pleasure for him. Even hunting and
+coursing charmed him but for a few times; when he found he could out-ride
+and out leap all his companions, he hunted no more; telling his mother,
+when she attacked him on the subject, that he thought the hare the
+worthier animal of the two upon a chase; and that the fox deserved an
+easier death. His friends twitted him with his want of spirit and want of
+manliness; but such light shafts bounded back from the buff suit of cool
+indifference in which their object was cased; and his companions very soon
+gave over the attempt either to persuade or annoy him, with the conclusion
+that "nothing could be done with Carleton."
+
+The same wants that had displeased him in the sports soon led him to
+decline the company of those who indulged in them. From the low-minded,
+from the uncultivated, from the unrefined in mind and manner, and such
+there are in the highest class of society as well as in the less-favoured,
+he shrank away in secret disgust or weariness. There was no affinity. To
+his books, to his grounds, which he took endless delight in overseeing, to
+the fine arts in general, for which he had a great love and for one or two
+of them a great talent,--he went with restless energy and no want of
+companionship; and at one or the other, always pushing eagerly forward
+after some point of excellence or some new attainment not yet reached, and
+which sprang up after one another as fast as ever "Alps on Alps," he was
+happily and constantly busy. Too solitary, his mother thought,--caring
+less for society than she wished to see him; but that she trusted would
+mend itself. He would be through the University and come of age and go
+into the world as a matter of necessity.
+
+But years brought a change--not the change his mother looked for. That
+restless active energy which had made the years of his youth so happy,
+became, in connection with one or two other qualities, a troublesome
+companion when he had reached the age of manhood and obeying manhood's
+law had "put away childish things." On what should it spend itself? It
+had lost none of its strength; while his fastidious notions of excellence
+and a far-reaching clear-sightedness which belonged to his truth of
+nature, greatly narrowed the sphere of its possible action. He could not
+delude himself into the belief that the oversight of his plantations and
+the perfecting his park scenery could be a worthy end of existence; or
+that painting and music were meant to be the stamina of life; or even
+that books were their own final cause. These things had refined and
+enriched him;--they might go on doing so to the end of his days;--but
+_for what_? For what?
+
+It is said that everybody has his niche, failing to find which nobody
+fills his place or acts his part in society. Mr. Carleton could not find
+his niche, and he consequently grew dissatisfied everywhere. His mother's
+hopes from the University and the World, were sadly disappointed.
+
+At the University he had not lost his time. The pride of character which
+joined with less estimable pride of birth was a marked feature in his
+composition, made him look with scorn upon the ephemeral pursuits of one
+set of young men; while his strong intellectual tastes drew him in the
+other direction; and the energetic activity which drove him to do
+everything well that he once took in hand, carried him to high
+distinction. Being there he would have disdained to be anywhere but at the
+top of the tree. But out of the University and in possession of his
+estates, what should he do with himself and them?
+
+A question easy to settle by most young men! very easy to settle by Guy,
+if he had had the clue of Christian truth to guide him through the
+labyrinth. But the clue was wanting, and the world seemed to him a world
+of confusion.
+
+A certain clearness of judgment is apt to be the blessed handmaid of
+uncommon truth of character; the mind that knows not what it is to play
+tricks upon its neighbours is rewarded by a comparative freedom from
+self-deception. Guy could not sit down upon his estates and lead an insect
+life like that recommended by Rossitur. His energies wanted room to expend
+themselves. But the world offered no sphere that would satisfy him; even
+had his circumstances and position laid all equally open. It was a busy
+world, but to him people seemed to be busy upon trifles, or working in a
+circle, or working mischief; and his nice notions of what _ought to be_
+were shocked by what he saw _was_, in every direction around him. He was
+disgusted with what he called the drivelling of some unhappy specimens of
+the Church which had come in his way; he disbelieved the truth of what
+such men professed. If there had been truth in it, he thought, they would
+deserve to be drummed out of the profession. He detested the crooked
+involvments and double-dealing of the law. He despised the butterfly life
+of a soldier; and as to the other side of a soldier's life, again he
+thought, what is it for?--to humour the arrogance of the proud,--to pamper
+the appetite of the full,--to tighten the grip of the iron hand of
+power;--and though it be sometimes for better ends, yet the soldier cannot
+choose what letters of the alphabet of obedience he will learn. Politics
+was the very shaking of the government sieve, where if there were any
+solid result it was accompanied with a very great flying about of chaff
+indeed. Society was nothing but whip syllabub,--a mere conglomeration of
+bubbles,--as hollow and as unsatisfying. And in lower departments of human
+life, as far as he knew, he saw evils yet more deplorable. The Church
+played at shuttlecock with men's credulousness, the law with their
+purses, the medical profession with their lives, the military with their
+liberties and hopes. He acknowledged that in all these lines of action
+there was much talent, much good intention, much admirable diligence and
+acuteness brought out--but to what great general end? He saw in short that
+the machinery of the human mind, both at large and in particular, was out
+of order. He did not know what was the broken wheel the want of which set
+all the rest to running wrong.
+
+This was a strange train of thought for a very young man, but Guy had
+lived much alone, and in solitude one is like a person who has climbed a
+high mountain; the air is purer about him, his vision is freer; the eye
+goes straight and clear to the distant view which below on the plain a
+thousand things would come between to intercept. But there was some
+morbidness about it too. Disappointment in two or three instances where he
+had given his full confidence and been obliged to take it back had
+quickened him to generalize unfavourably upon human character, both in the
+mass and in individuals. And a restless dissatisfaction with himself and
+the world did not tend to a healthy view of things. Yet truth was at the
+bottom; truth rarely arrived at without the help of revelation. He
+discerned a want he did not know how to supply. His fine perceptions felt
+the jar of the machinery which other men are too busy or too deaf to hear.
+It seemed to him hopelessly disordered.
+
+This habit of thinking wrought a change very unlike what his mother had
+looked for. He mingled more in society, but Mrs. Carleton saw that the eye
+with which he looked upon it was yet colder than it wont to be. A cloud
+came over the light gay spirited manner he had used to wear. The charm of
+his address was as great as ever where he pleased to shew it, but much
+more generally now he contented himself with a cool reserve, as impossible
+to disturb as to find fault with. His temper suffered the same eclipse. It
+was naturally excellent. His passions were not hastily moved. He had never
+been easy to offend; his careless good-humour and an unbounded proud
+self-respect made him look rather with contempt than anger upon the things
+that fire most men; though when once moved to displeasure it was stern and
+abiding in proportion to the depth of his character. The same good-humour
+and cool self-respect forbade him even then to be eager in shewing
+resentment; the offender fell off from his esteem and apparently from the
+sphere of his notice as easily as a drop of water from a duck's wing, and
+could with as much ease regain his lost lodgment, but unless there were
+wrong to be righted or truth to be vindicated he was in general safe from
+any further tokens of displeasure. In those cases Mr. Carleton was an
+adversary to be dreaded. As cool, as unwavering, as persevering there as
+in other things, he there as in other things no more failed of his end.
+And at bottom these characteristics remained the same; it was rather his
+humour than his temper that suffered a change. That grew more gloomy and
+less gentle. He was more easily irritated and would shew it more freely
+than in the old happy times had ever been.
+
+Mrs. Carleton would have been glad to have those times back again. It
+could not be. Guy could not be content any longer in the Happy Valley of
+Amhara. Life had something for him to do beyond his park palings. He had
+carried manly exercises and personal accomplishments to an uncommon point
+of perfection; he knew his library well and his grounds thoroughly, and
+had made excellent improvement of both; it was in vain to try to persuade
+him that seed-time and harvest were the same thing, and that he had
+nothing to do but to rest in what he had done; shew his bright colours
+and flutter like a moth in the sunshine, or sit down like a degenerate
+bee in the summer time and eat his own honey. The power of action which
+he knew in himself could not rest without something to act upon. It
+longed to be doing.
+
+But what?
+
+Conscience is often morbidly far-sighted. Mr. Carleton had a very large
+tenantry around him and depending upon him, in bettering whose condition,
+if he had but known it, all those energies might have found full play. It
+never entered into his head. He abhorred _business_,--the detail of
+business; and his fastidious taste especially shrank from having anything
+to do among those whose business was literally their life. The eye
+sensitively fond of elegance, the extreme of elegance, in everything, and
+permitting no other around or about him, could not bear the tokens of
+mental and bodily wretchedness among the ignorant poor; he escaped from
+them as soon as possible; thought that poverty was one of the
+irregularities of this wrong-working machine of a world, and something
+utterly beyond his power to do away or alleviate; and left to his steward
+all the responsibility that of right rested on his own shoulders.
+
+And at last unable to content himself in the old routine of things he
+quitted home and England, even before he was of age, and roved from place
+to place, trying, and trying in vain, to soothe the vague restlessness
+that called for a very different remedy.
+
+  "On change de ciel,--l'on ne change point du sol."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X.
+
+
+
+  Faire Christabelle, that ladye bright,
+  Was had forth of the towre:
+  But ever she droopeth in her minde,
+  As, nipt by an ungentle winde,
+  Doth some faire lillye flowre.
+
+  Syr Cauline
+
+
+That evening, the last of their stay at Montepoole, Fleda was thought well
+enough to take her tea in company. So Mr. Carleton carried her down,
+though she could have walked, and placed her on the sofa in the parlour.
+
+Whatever disposition the young officers might have felt to renew their
+pleasantry on the occasion, it was shamed into silence. There was a pure
+dignity about that little pale face which protected itself. They were
+quite struck, and Fleda had no reason to complain of want of attention
+from any of the party. Mr. Evelyn kissed her. Mr. Thorn brought a little
+table to the side of the sofa for her cup of tea to stand on, and handed
+her the toast most dutifully; and her cousin Rossitur went back and forth
+between her and the tea-urn. All of the ladies seemed to take immense
+satisfaction in looking at her, they did it so much; standing about the
+hearth-rug with their cups in their hands, sipping their tea. Fleda was
+quite touched with everybody's kindness, but somebody at the back of the
+sofa whom she did not see was the greatest comfort of all.
+
+"You must let me carry you up-stairs when you go, Fleda," said her cousin.
+"I shall grow quite jealous of your friend Mr. Carleton."
+
+"No," said Fleda smiling a little,--"I shall not let any one but him carry
+me up,--if he will."
+
+"We shall all grow jealous of Mr. Carleton," said Thorn "He means to
+monopolize you, keeping you shut up there up-stairs."
+
+"He didn't keep me shut up," said Fleda.
+
+Mr. Carleton was welcome to monopolize her, if it depended on her vote.
+
+"Not fair play, Carleton," continued the young officer, wisely shaking his
+head,--"all start alike, or there's no fun in the race. You've fairly
+distanced us--left us nowhere."
+
+He might have talked Chinese and been as intelligible to Fleda, and as
+interesting to Guy, for all that appeared.
+
+"How are we going to proceed to-morrow, Mr. Evelyn?" said Mrs. Carleton.
+"Has the missing stage-coach returned yet? or Will it be forthcoming in
+the morning?"
+
+"Promised, Mrs. Carleton. The landlord's faith stands pledged for it."
+
+"Then it won't disappoint us, of course. What a dismal way of travelling!"
+
+"This young country hasn't grown up to post-coaches yet," said Mrs.
+Evelyn.
+
+"How many will it hold?" inquired Mrs. Carleton.
+
+"Hum!--Nine inside, I suppose."
+
+"And we number ten, with the servants.
+
+"Just take us," said Mr. Evelyn. "There's room on the box for one."
+
+"It will not take me," said Mr. Carleton.
+
+"How will you go? ride?" said his mother "I should think you would, since
+you have found a horse you like so well."
+
+"By George! I wish there was another that _I_ liked," said Rossitur, "and
+I'd go on horseback too. Such weather. The landlord says it's the
+beginning of Indian summer."
+
+"It's too early for that," said Thorn.
+
+"Well, eight inside will do very well for one day," said Mrs. Carleton.
+"That will give little Fleda a little more space to lie at her ease."
+
+"You may put Fleda out of your calculations too, mother," said Mr.
+Carleton. "I will take care of her."
+
+"How in the world," exclaimed his mother,--"if you are on horseback?"
+
+And Fleda twisted herself round so as to give a look of bright inquiry at
+his face. She got no answer beyond a smile, which however completely
+satisfied her. As to the rest he told his mother that he had arranged it
+and they should see in the morning. Mrs. Carleton was far from being at
+ease on the subject of his arrangements, but she let the matter drop.
+
+Fleda was secretly very much pleased. She thought she would a great deal
+rather go with Mr. Carleton in the little wagon than in the stage-coach
+with the rest of the people. Privately she did not at all admire Mr. Thorn
+or her cousin Rossitur. They amused her though; and feeling very much
+better and stronger in body, and at least quiet in mind, she sat in
+tolerable comfort on her sofa, looking and listening to the people who
+were gayly talking around her.
+
+In the gaps of talk she sometimes thought she heard a distressed sound in
+the hall. The buzz of tongues covered it up,--then again she heard
+it,--and she was sure at last that it was the voice of a dog. Never came
+an appeal in vain from any four-footed creature to Fleda's heart. All the
+rest being busy with their own affairs, she quietly got up and opened the
+door and looked out, and finding that she was right went softly into the
+hall. In one corner lay her cousin Rossitur's beautiful black pointer,
+which she well remembered and had greatly admired several times. The poor
+creature was every now and then uttering short cries, in a manner as if he
+would not, but they were forced from him.
+
+"What is the matter with him?" asked Fleda, stepping fearfully towards
+the dog, and speaking to Mr. Carleton who had come out to look after
+her. As she spoke the dog rose and came crouching and wagging his tail
+to meet them.
+
+"O Mr. Carleton!" Fleda almost screamed,--"look at him! O what is the
+matter with him! he's all over bloody! Poor creature!"--
+
+"You must ask your cousin, Fleda," said Mr. Carleton, with as much cold
+disgust in his countenance as it often expressed; and that is saying a
+good deal.
+
+Fleda could speak in the cause of a dog, where she would have been silent
+in her own. She went back to the parlour and begged her cousin with a
+face of distress to come out into the hall,--she did not say for what.
+Both he and Thorn followed her. Rossitur's face darkened as Fleda
+repeated her inquiry, her heart so full by this time as hardly to allow
+her to make any.
+
+"Why the dog didn't do his duty and has been punished," he said gloomily.
+
+"Punished?" said Fleda.
+
+"Shot," said Mr. Carleton coolly.
+
+"Shot!" exclaimed Fleda, bursting into heart-wrung tears,--"Shot!--O how
+_could_ any one do it! Oh how could you, how could you, cousin Charlton?"
+
+It was a picture. The child was crying bitterly, her fingers stroking the
+poor dog's head with a touch in which lay, O what tender healing, if the
+will had but had magnetic power. Carleton's eye glanced significantly from
+her to the young officers. Rossitur looked at Thorn.
+
+"It was not Charlton--it was I, Miss Fleda," said the latter. "Charlton
+lent him to me to-day, and he disobeyed me, and so I was angry with him
+and punished him a little severely; but he'll soon get over it."
+
+But all Fleda's answer was, "I am very sorry!--I am very sorry!--poor
+dog!!"--and to weep such tears as made the young gentlemen for once
+ashamed of themselves. It almost did the child a mischief. She did not get
+over it all the evening. And she never got over it as far as Mr. Thorn was
+concerned.
+
+Mrs. Carleton hoped, faintly, that Guy would come to reason by the next
+morning and let Fleda go in the stage-coach with the rest of the people.
+But he was as unreasonable as ever, and stuck to his purpose. She had
+supposed however, with Fleda, that the difference would be only an open
+vehicle and his company instead of a covered one and her own. Both of
+them were sadly discomfited when on coming to the hall door to take their
+carriages it was found that Mr. Carleton's meaning was no less than to
+take Fleda before him on horseback. He was busy even then in arranging a
+cushion on the pommel of the saddle for her to sit upon. Mrs. Carleton
+burst into indignant remonstrances; Fleda silently trembled.
+
+But Mr. Carleton had his own notions on the subject, and they were not
+moved by anything his mother could say. He quietly went on with his
+preparations; taking very slight notice of the raillery of the young
+officers, answering Mrs. Evelyn with polite words, and silencing his
+mother as he came up with one of those looks out of his dark eyes to
+which she always forgave the wilfulness for the sake of the beauty and
+the winning power. She was completely conquered, and stepped back with
+even a smile.
+
+"But, Carleton!" cried Rossitur impatiently,--"you can't ride so! you'll
+find it deucedly inconvenient."
+
+"Possibly," said Mr. Carleton.
+
+"Fleda would be a great deal better off in the stage-coach."
+
+"Have you studied medicine, Mr. Rossitur?" said the young man. "Because I
+am persuaded of the contrary."
+
+"I don't believe your horse will like it," said Thorn.
+
+"My horse is always of my mind, sir; or if he be not I generally succeed
+in convincing him."
+
+"But there is somebody else that deserves to be consulted," said Mrs.
+Thorn. "I wonder how little Fleda will like it."
+
+"I will ask her when we get to our first stopping-place," said Mr.
+Carleton smiling. "Come, Fleda!"
+
+Fleda would hardly have said a word if his purpose had been to put her
+under the horse's feet instead of on his back. But she came forward with
+great unwillingness and a very tremulous little heart. He must have
+understood the want of alacrity in her face and manner, though he took no
+notice of it otherwise than by the gentle kindness with which he led her
+to the horse-block and placed her upon it. Then mounting, and riding the
+horse up close to the block, he took Fleda in both hands and bidding her
+spring, in a moment she was safely seated before him.
+
+At first it seemed dreadful to Fleda to have that great horse's head so
+near her, and she was afraid that her feet touching him would excite his
+most serious disapprobation. However a minute or so went by and she could
+not see that his tranquillity seemed to be at all ruffled, or even that he
+was sensible of her being upon his shoulders. They waited to see the
+stage-coach off, and then gently set forward. Fleda feared very much again
+when she felt the horse moving under her, easy as his gait was, and
+looking after the stagecoach in the distance, now beyond call, she felt a
+little as if she was a great way from help and dry land, cast away on a
+horse's back. But Mr. Carleton's arm was gently passed round her, and she
+knew it held her safely and would not let her fall, and he bent down his
+face to her and asked her so kindly and tenderly, and with such a look
+too, that seemed to laugh at her fears, whether she felt afraid?--and with
+such a kind little pressure of his arm that promised to take care of
+her,--that Fleda's courage mounted twenty degrees at once. And it rose
+higher every minute; the horse went very easily, and Mr. Carleton held her
+so that she could not be tired, and made her lean against him; and before
+they had gone a mile Fleda began to be delighted. Such a charming way of
+travelling! Such a free view of the country!--and in this pleasant weather
+too, neither hot nor cold, and when all nature's features were softened by
+the light veil of haze that hung over them and kept off the sun's glare.
+Mr. Carleton was right. In the stage-coach Fleda would have sat quiet in a
+corner and moped the time sadly away, now she was roused, excited,
+interested, even cheerful; forgetting herself, which was the very thing of
+all others to be desired for her. She lost her fears; she was willing to
+have the horse trot or canter as fast as his rider pleased; but the
+trotting was too rough for her, so they cantered or paced along most of
+the time, when the hills did not oblige them to walk quietly up and down,
+which happened pretty often. For several miles the country was not very
+familiar to Fleda. It was however extremely picturesque; and she sat
+silently and gravely looking at it, her head lying upon Mr. Carleton's
+breast, her little mind very full of thoughts and musings, curious, deep,
+sometimes sorrowful, but not unhappy.
+
+"I am afraid I tire you, Mr. Carleton!" said she in a sudden fit of
+recollection, starting up.
+
+His look answered her, and his arm drew her back to her place again.
+
+"Are _you_ not tired, Elfie?"
+
+"Oh no!----You have got a new name for me, Mr. Carleton,' said she a
+moment after, looking up and smiling.
+
+"Do you like it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You are my good genius," said he,--"so I must have a peculiar title for
+you, different from what other people know you by."
+
+"What is a genius, sir?" said Fleda.
+
+"Well a sprite then," said he smiling.
+
+"A sprite!" said Fleda.
+
+"I have read a story of a lady, Elfie, who had a great many little
+unearthly creatures, a kind of sprites, to attend upon her. Some sat in
+the ringlets of her hair and took charge of them; some hid in the folds of
+her dress and made them lie gracefully; another lodged in a dimple in her
+cheek, and another perched on her eyebrows, and so on."
+
+"To take care of her eyebrows?" said Fleda laughing.
+
+"Yes--to smooth out all the ill-humoured wrinkles and frowns, I suppose."
+
+"But am I such a sprite?" said Fleda.
+
+"Something like it."
+
+"Why what do I do?" said Fleda, rousing herself in a mixture of
+gratification and amusement that was pleasant to behold.
+
+"What office would you choose, Elfie? what good would you like to do me?"
+
+It was a curious wistful look with which Fleda answered his question, an
+innocent look, in which Mr. Carleton read perfectly that she felt
+something was wanting in him, and did not know exactly what. His smile
+almost made her think she had been mistaken.
+
+"You are just the sprite you would wish to be, Elfie," he said.
+
+Fleda's head took its former position, and she sat for some time musing
+over his question and answer, till a familiar waymark put all such
+thoughts to flight. They were passing Deepwater Lake, and would presently
+be at aunt Miriam's. Fleda looked now with a beating heart. Every foot of
+ground was known to her. She was seeing it perhaps for the last time. It
+was with even an intensity of eagerness that she watched every point and
+turn of the landscape, endeavouring to lose nothing in her farewell view,
+to give her farewell look at every favourite clump of trees and old rock,
+and at the very mill-wheels, which for years whether working or at rest
+had had such interest for her. If tears came to bid their good-by too,
+they were hastily thrown off, or suffered to roll quietly down; _they_
+might bide their time; but eyes must look now or never. How pleasant, how
+pleasant, the quiet old country seemed to Fleda as they went long!--in
+that most quiet light and colouring; the brightness of the autumn glory
+gone, and the sober warm hue which the hills still wore seen under that
+hazy veil. All the home-like peace of the place was spread out to make it
+hard going away. Would she ever see any other so pleasant again? Those
+dear old hills and fields, among which she had been so happy,--they were
+not to be her home any more; would she ever have the same sweet happiness
+anywhere else?--"The Lord will provide!" thought little Fleda with
+swimming eyes.
+
+It was hard to go by aunt Miriam's. Fleda eagerly looked, as well as she
+could, but no one was to be seen about the house. It was just as well. A
+sad gush of tears must come then, but she got rid of them as soon as
+possible, that she might not lose the rest of the way, promising them
+another time. The little settlement on "the hill" was passed,--the
+factories and mills and mill-ponds, one after the other; they made Fleda
+feel very badly, for here she remembered going with her grandfather to see
+the work, and there she had stopped with him at the turner's shop to get
+a wooden bowl turned, and there she had been with Cynthy when she went to
+visit an acquaintance; and there never was a happier little girl than
+Fleda had been in those old times. All gone!--It was no use trying to help
+it; Fleda put her two hands to her face and cried at last a silent but not
+the less bitter leave-taking of the shadows of the past.
+
+She forced herself into quiet again, resolved to look to the last. As they
+were going down the hill past the saw-mill Mr. Carleton noticed that her
+head was stretched out to look back at it, with an expression of face he
+could not withstand. He wheeled about immediately and went back and stood
+opposite to it. The mill was not working to-day. The saw was standing
+still, though there were plenty of huge trunks of trees lying about in all
+directions waiting to be cut up. There was a desolate look of the place.
+No one was there; the little brook, most of its waters cut oft', did not
+go roaring and laughing down the hill, but trickled softly and plaintively
+over the stones. It seemed exceeding sad to Fleda.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Carleton," she said after a little earnest fond looking at
+her old haunt;--"you needn't stay any longer."
+
+But as soon as they had crossed the little rude bridge at the foot of the
+hill they could see the poplar trees which skirted the courtyard fence
+before her grandfather's house. Poor Fleda's eyes could hardly serve her.
+She managed to keep them open till the horse had made a few steps more
+and she had caught the well-known face of the old house looking at her
+through the poplars. Her fortitude failed, and bowing her little head she
+wept so exceedingly that Mr. Carleton was fain to draw bridle and try to
+comfort her.
+
+"My dear Elfie!--do not weep so," he said tenderly. "Is there anything you
+would like?--Can I do anything for you?"
+
+He had to wait a little. He repeated his first query.
+
+"O--it's no matter," said Fleda, striving to conquer her tears, which
+found their way again,--"if I only could have gone into the house once
+more!--but it's no matter--you needn't wait, Mr. Carleton--"
+
+The horse however remained motionless.
+
+"Do you think you would feel better, Elfie, if you had seen it again?"
+
+"Oh yes!--But never mind, Mr. Carleton,--you may go on."
+
+Mr. Carleton ordered his servant to open the gate, and rode up to the back
+of the house.
+
+"I am afraid there is nobody here, Elfie," he said; "the house seems
+all shut up."
+
+"I know how I can get in," said Fleda,--"there's a window down stairs--I
+don't believe it is fastened,--if you wouldn't mind waiting, Mr.
+Carleton,--I won't keep you long?"
+
+The child had dried her tears, and there was the eagerness of something
+like hope in her face. Mr. Carleton dismounted and took her off.
+
+"I must find a way to get in too, Elfie,--I cannot let you go alone."
+
+"O I can open the door when I get in," said Fleda.
+
+"But you have not the key."
+
+"There's no key--it's only hoi ted on the inside, that door. I can open
+it."
+
+She found the window unfastened, as she had expected; Mr. Carleton held it
+open while she crawled in and then she undid the door for him. He more
+than half questioned the wisdom of his proceeding. The house had a dismal
+look; cold, empty, deserted,--it was a dreary reminder of Fleda's loss,
+and he feared the effect of it would be anything but good. He followed and
+watched her, as with an eager business step she went through the hall and
+up the stairs, putting her head into every room and giving an earnest
+wistful look all round it. Here and there she went in and stood a moment,
+where associations were more thick and strong; sometimes taking a look out
+of a particular window, and even opening a cupboard door, to give that
+same kind and sorrowful glance of recognition at the old often resorted to
+hiding place of her own or her grandfather's treasures and trumpery. Those
+old corners seemed to touch Fleda more than all the rest; and she turned
+away from one of them with a face of such extreme sorrow that Mr. Carleton
+very much regretted he had brought her into the house. For her sake,--for
+his own, it was a curious show of character. Though tears were sometimes
+streaming, she made no delay and gave him no trouble; with the calm
+steadiness of a woman she went regularly through the house, leaving no
+place unvisited, but never obliging him to hasten her away. She said not
+a word during the whole time; her very crying; was still; the light tread
+of her little feet was the only sound in the silent empty rooms; and the
+noise of their footsteps in the halls and of the opening and shutting
+doors echoed mournfully through the house.
+
+She had left her grandfather's room for the last. Mr. Carleton did not
+follow her in there, guessing that she would rather be alone. But she did
+not come back, and he was forced to go to fetch her.
+
+The chill desolateness of that room had been too much for poor little
+Fleda. The empty bedstead, the cold stove, the table bare of books, only
+one or two lay upon the old bible,--the forlorn order of the place that
+bespoke the master far away, the very sunbeams that stole in at the
+little windows and met now no answering look of gladness or gratitude,--it
+had struck the child's heart too heavily, and she was standing crying by
+the window. A second time in that room Mr. Carleton sat down and drew his
+little charge to his breast and spoke words of soothing and sympathy.
+
+"I am very sorry I brought you here, dear Elfie," he said kindly. "It was
+too hard for you."
+
+"O no!"--even through her tears Fleda said,--"she was very glad."
+
+"Hadn't we better try to overtake our friends?" he whispered after
+another pause.
+
+She immediately, almost immediately, put away her tears, and with a quiet
+obedience that touched him went with him from the room; fastened the door
+and got out again at the little window.
+
+"O Mr. Carleton!" she said with great earnestness when they had almost
+reached the horses, "won't you wait for me _one_ minute more?--I just
+want a piece of the burning bush "--
+
+[Illustration: She stood back and watched.]
+
+Drawing her hand from him she rushed round to the front of the house. A
+little more slowly Mr. Carleton followed, and found her under the burning
+bush, tugging furiously at a branch beyond her strength to break off.
+
+"That's too much for you, Elfie," said he, gently taking her hand from
+the tree,--"let my hand try."
+
+She stood back and watched, tears running down her face, while he got a
+knife from his pocket and cut off the piece she had been trying for,
+nicely, and gave it to her. The first movement of Fleda's head was down,
+bent over the pretty spray of red berries; but by the time she stood at
+the horse's side she looked up at Mr. Carleton and thanked him with a face
+of more than thankfulness.
+
+She was crying however, constantly till they had gone several miles on
+their way again, and Mr. Carleton doubted he had done wrong. It passed
+away, and she had been sitting quite peacefully for some time, when he
+told her they were near the place where they were to stop and join their
+friends. She looked up most gratefully in his face.
+
+"I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Carleton, for what you did!"
+
+"I was afraid I had made a mistake, Elfie."
+
+"Oh, no, you didn't."
+
+"Do you think you feel any easier after it, Elfie?"
+
+"Oh yes!--indeed I do," said she looking up again,--"thank you, Mr.
+Carleton."
+
+A gentle kind pressure of his arm answered her thanks.
+
+"I ought to be a good sprite to you, Mr. Carleton," Fleda said after
+musing a little while,--"you are so very good to me!"
+
+Perhaps Mr. Carleton felt too much pleasure at this speech to make any
+answer, for he made none.
+
+"It is only selfishness, Elfie," said he presently, looking down to the
+quiet sweet little face which seemed to him, and was, more pure than
+anything of earth's mould he had ever seen.--"You know I must take care of
+you for my own sake."
+
+Fleda laughed a little.
+
+"But what will you do when we get to Paris?"
+
+"I don't know. I should like to have you always, Elfie."
+
+"You'll have to get aunt Lucy to give me to you," said Fleda.
+
+"Mr. Carleton," said she a few minutes after, "is that story in a book?"
+
+"What story?"
+
+"About the lady and the little sprites that waited on her."
+
+"Yes, it is in a book; you shall see it, Elfie.--Here we are!"
+
+And here it was proposed to stay till the next day, lest Fleda might not
+be able to bear so much travelling at first. But the country inn was not
+found inviting; the dinner was bad and the rooms were worse;
+uninhabitable, the ladies said; and about the middle of the afternoon they
+began to cast about for the means of reaching Albany that night. None very
+comfortable could be had; however it was thought better to push on at any
+rate than wear out the night in such a place. The weather was very mild;
+the moon at the full.
+
+"How is Fleda to go this afternoon?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"She shall decide herself," said Mrs. Carleton. "How will you go, my
+sweet Fleda?"
+
+Fleda was lying upon a sort of rude couch which had been spread for her,
+where she had been sleeping incessantly ever since she arrived, the hour
+of dinner alone excepted. Mrs. Carleton repeated her question.
+
+"I am afraid Mr. Carleton must be tired," said Fleda, without
+opening her eyes.
+
+"That means that you are, don't it?" said Rossitur.
+
+"No," said Fleda gently.
+
+Mr. Carleton smiled and went out to press forward the arrangements. In
+spite of good words and good money there was some delay. It was rather
+late before the cavalcade left the inn; and a journey of several hours was
+before them. Mr. Carleton rode rather slowly too, for Fleda's sake, so the
+evening had fallen while they were yet a mile or two from the city.
+
+His little charge had borne the fatigue well, thanks partly to his
+admirable care, and partly to her quiet pleasure in being with him. She
+had been so perfectly still for some distance that he thought she had
+dropped asleep. Looking down closer however to make sure about it he saw
+her thoughtful clear eyes most unsleepily fixed upon the sky.
+
+"What are you gazing at, Elfie?"
+
+The look of thought changed to a look of affection as the eyes were
+brought to bear upon him, and she answered with a smile,
+
+"Nothing,--I was looking at the stars."
+
+"What are you dreaming about?"
+
+"I wasn't dreaming," said Fleda,--"I was thinking."
+
+"Thinking of what?"
+
+"O of pleasant things."
+
+"Mayn't I know them?--I like to hear of pleasant things."
+
+"I was thinking,--" said Fleda, looking up again at the stars, which shone
+with no purer ray than those grave eyes sent back to them,--"I was
+thinking--of being ready to die."
+
+The words, and the calm thoughtful manner in which they were said,
+thrilled upon Mr. Carleton with a disagreeable shock.
+
+"How came you to think of such a thing?" said he lightly.
+
+"I don't know,"--said Fleda, still looking at the stars,--"I suppose--I
+was thinking--"
+
+"What?" said Mr. Carleton, inexpressibly curious to get at the workings of
+the child's mind, which was not easy, for Fleda was never very forward to
+talk of herself;--"what were you thinking? I want to know how you could
+get such a thing into your head."
+
+"It wasn't very strange," said Fleda. "The stars made me think of heaven,
+and grandpa's being there, and then I thought how he was ready to go there
+and that made him ready to die--"
+
+"I wouldn't think of such things, Elfie," said Mr. Carleton after a
+few minutes.
+
+"Why not, sir?" said Fleda quickly.
+
+"I don't think they are good for you."
+
+"But Mr. Carleton," said Fleda gently,--"if I don't think about it, how
+shall _I_ ever be ready to die?"
+
+"It is not fit for you," said he, evading the question,--"it is not
+necessary now,--there's time enough. You are a little body and should have
+none but gay thoughts."
+
+"But Mr. Carleton," said Fleda with timid earnestness,--"don't you think
+one could have gay thoughts better if one knew one was ready to die?"
+
+"What makes a person ready to die, Elfie?" said her friend, disliking to
+ask the question, but yet more unable to answer hers, and curious to hear
+what she would say.
+
+"O--to be a Christian," said Fleda.
+
+"But I have seen Christians," said Mr. Carleton, "who were no more ready
+to die than other people."
+
+"Then they were make-believe Christians," said Fleda decidedly.
+
+"What makes you think so?" said her friend, carefully guarding his
+countenance from anything like a smile.
+
+"Because," said Fleda, "grandpa was ready, and my father was ready, and my
+mother too; and I know it was because they were Christians."
+
+"Perhaps your kind of Christians are different from my kind," said Mr.
+Carleton, carrying on the conversation half in spite of himself. "What do
+you mean by a Christian, Elfie?"
+
+"Why, what the Bible means," said Fleda, looking at him with innocent
+earnestness.
+
+Mr. Carleton was ashamed to tell her he did not know what that was, or he
+was unwilling to say what he felt would trouble the happy confidence she
+had in him. He was silent; but as they rode on, a bitter wish crossed his
+mind that he could have the simple purity of the little child in his arms;
+and he thought he would give his broad acres supposing it possible that
+religion could be true,--in exchange for that free happy spirit that looks
+up to all its possessions in heaven.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI.
+
+
+
+  Starres are poore books and oftentimes do misse;
+  This book of starres lights to eternall blisse.
+
+  George Herber.
+
+
+The voyage across the Atlantic was not, in itself, at all notable. The
+first half of the passage was extremely unquiet, and most of the
+passengers uncomfortable to match. Then the weather cleared; and the rest
+of the way, though lengthened out a good deal by the tricks of the wind,
+was very fair and pleasant.
+
+Fifteen days of tossing and sea-sickness had brought little Fleda to look
+like the ghost of herself. So soon as the weather changed and sky and sea
+were looking gentle again, Mr. Carleton had a mattress and cushions laid
+in a sheltered corner of the deck for her, and carried her up. She had
+hardly any more strength than a baby.
+
+"What are you looking at me so for, Mr. Carleton?" said she, a little
+while after he had carried her up, with a sweet serious smile that seemed
+to know the answer to her question.
+
+He stooped down and clasped her little thin hand, as reverentially as if
+she really had not belonged to the earth.
+
+"You are more like a sprite than I like to see you just now," said he,
+unconsciously fastening the child's heart to himself with the magnetism of
+those deep eyes.--"I must get some of the sailors' salt beef and sea
+biscuit for you--they say that is the best thing to make people well."
+
+"O I feel better already," said Fleda, and settling her little face upon
+the cushion and closing her eyes, she added,--"thank you, Mr. Carleton!"
+
+The fresh air began to restore her immediately; she was no more sick, her
+appetite came back; and from that time, without the help of beef and
+sea-biscuit, she mended rapidly. Mr. Carleton proved himself as good a
+nurse on the sea as on land. She seemed to be never far from his
+thoughts. He was constantly finding out something that would do her good
+or please her; and Fleda could not discover that he took any trouble
+about it; she could not feel that she was a burden to him; the things
+seemed to come as a matter of course. Mrs. Carleton was not wanting in
+any shew of kindness or care, and yet, when Fleda looked back upon the
+day, it somehow was Guy that had done everything for her; she thought
+little of thanking anybody but him.
+
+There were other passengers that petted her a great deal, or would have
+done so, if Fleda's very timid retiring nature had not stood in the way.
+She was never bashful, nor awkward; but yet it was only a very peculiar,
+sympathetic, style of address that could get within the wall of reserve
+which in general hid her from other people. Hid, what it could; for
+through that reserve a singular modesty, sweetness, and gracefulness of
+spirit would shew themselves. But there was much more behind. There were
+no eyes however on board that did not look kindly on little Fleda,
+excepting only two pair. The Captain shewed her a great deal of flattering
+attention, and said she was a pattern of a passenger; even the sailors
+noticed and spoke of her and let slip no occasion of shewing the respect
+and interest she had raised. But there were two pair of eyes, and one of
+them Fleda thought most remarkably ugly, that were an exception to the
+rest; these belonged to her cousin Rossitur and Lieut. Thorn. Rossitur had
+never forgiven her remarks upon his character as a gentleman and declared
+preference of Mr. Carleton in that capacity; and Thorn was mortified at
+the invincible childish reserve which she opposed to all his advances; and
+both, absurd as it seems, were jealous of the young Englishman's advantage
+over them. Both not the less, because their sole reason for making her a
+person of consequence was that he had thought fit to do so. Fleda would
+permit neither of them to do anything for her that she could help.
+
+They took their revenge in raillery, which was not always good-natured.
+Mr. Carleton never answered it in any other way than by his look of cold
+disdain,--not always by that; little Fleda could not be quite so unmoved.
+Many a time her nice sense of delicacy confessed itself hurt, by the deep
+and abiding colour her cheeks would wear after one of their ill mannered
+flings at her. She bore them with a grave dignity peculiar to herself, but
+the same nice delicacy forbade her to mention the subject to any one; and
+the young gentlemen contrived to give the little child in the course of
+the voyage a good deal of pain. She shunned them at last as she would the
+plague. As to the rest Fleda liked her life on board ship amazingly. In
+her quiet way she took all the good that offered and seemed not to
+recognise the ill.
+
+Mr. Carleton had bought for her a copy of The Rape of the Lock, and
+Bryant's poems. With these, sitting or lying among her cushions, Fleda
+amused herself a great deal; and it was an especial pleasure when he would
+sit down by her and read and talk about them. Still a greater was to watch
+the sea, in its changes of colour and varieties of agitation, and to get
+from Mr. Carleton, bit by bit, all the pieces of knowledge concerning it
+that he had ever made his own. Even when Fleda feared it she was
+fascinated; and while the fear went off the fascination grew deeper.
+Daintily nestling among her cushions she watched with charmed eyes the
+long rollers that came up in detachments of three to attack the good ship,
+that like a slandered character rode patiently over them; or the crested
+green billows, or sometimes the little rippling waves that shewed old
+Ocean's placidest face; while with ears as charmed as if he had been
+delivering a fairy tale she listened to all Mr. Carleton could tell her of
+the green water where the whales feed, or the blue water where Neptune
+sits in his own solitude, the furtherest from land, and the pavement under
+his feet outdoes the very canopy overhead in its deep colouring; of the
+transparent seas where the curious mysterious marine plants and animals
+may be clearly seen many feet down, and in the North where hundreds of
+feet of depth do not hide the bottom; of the icebergs; and whirling great
+fields of ice, between which if a ship gets she had as good be an almond
+in a pair of strong nut crackers. How the water grows colder and murkier
+as it is nearer the shore; how the mountain waves are piled together; and
+how old Ocean, like a wise man, however roughened and tumbled outwardly by
+the currents of Life, is always calm at heart. Of the signs of the
+weather; the out-riders of the winds, and the use the seaman makes of the
+tidings they bring; and before Mr. Carleton knew where he was he found
+himself deep in the science of navigation, and making a star-gazer of
+little Fleda. Sometimes kneeling beside him as he sat on her mattress,
+with her hand leaning on his shoulder, Fleda asked, listened, and looked;
+as engaged, as rapt, as interested, as another child would be in Robinson
+Crusoe, gravely drinking in knowledge with a fresh healthy taste for it
+that never had enough. Mr. Carleton was about as amused and as interested
+as she. There is a second taste of knowledge that some minds get in
+imparting it, almost as sweet as the first relish. At any rate Fleda never
+felt that she had any reason to fear tiring him; and his mother
+complaining of his want of sociableness said she believed Guy did not like
+to talk to anybody but that little pet of his and one or two of the old
+sailors. If left to her own resources Fleda was never at a loss; she
+amused herself with her books, or watching the sailors, or watching the
+sea, or with some fanciful manufacture she had learned from one of the
+ladies on board, or with what the company about her were saying and doing.
+
+One evening she had been some time alone, looking out upon the restless
+little waves that were tossing and tumbling in every direction. She had
+been afraid of them at first and they were still rather fearful to her
+imagination. This evening as her musing eye watched them rise and fall her
+childish fancy likened them to the up-springing chances of
+life,--uncertain, unstable, alike too much for her skill and her strength
+to manage. She was not more helpless before the attacks of the one than of
+the other. But then--that calm blue Heaven that hung over the sea. It was
+like the heaven of power and love above her destinies; only this was far
+higher and more pure and abiding. "He knoweth them that trust in him."
+"There shall not a hair of your head perish."
+
+Not these words perhaps, but something like the sense of them was in
+little Fleda's head. Mr. Carleton coming up saw her gazing out upon the
+water with an eye that seemed to see nothing.
+
+"Elfie!--Are you looking into futurity?"
+
+"No,--yes,--not exactly," said Fleda smiling.
+
+"No, yes, and not exactly!" said he throwing himself down beside her.--"
+What does all that mean?"
+
+"I wasn't exactly looking into futurity," said Fleda.
+
+"What then?--Don't tell me you were 'thinking;' I know that dready. What?"
+
+Fleda was always rather shy of opening her cabinet of thoughts. She
+glanced at him, and hesitated, and then yielded to a fascination of eye
+and smile that rarely failed of its end. Looking off to the sea again, as
+if she had left her thoughts there, she said,
+
+"I was only thinking of that beautiful hymn of Mr. Newton's."
+
+"What hymn?"
+
+"That long one, 'The Lord will provide.'"
+
+"Do you know it?--Tell it to me, Elfie--let us see whether I shall think
+it beautiful."
+
+Fleda knew the whole and repeated it.
+
+  "Though troubles assail,
+  And dangers affright,
+  Though friends should all fall,
+  And foes all unite;
+  Yet one thing secures us
+  Whatever betide,
+  The Scripture assures us
+  'The Lord will provide.'
+
+  "The birds without barn
+  Or storehouse are fed;
+  From them let us learn
+  To trust for our bread.
+  His saints what is fitting
+  Shall ne'er be denied,
+  So long as 'tis written,
+  'The Lord will provide.'
+
+  "His call we obey,
+  Like Abraham of old,
+  Not knowing our way,
+  But faith makes us bold.
+  And though we are strangers,
+  We have a good guide,
+  And trust in all dangers
+  'The Lord will provide.'
+
+  "We may like the ships
+  In tempests be tossed
+  On perilous deeps,
+  But cannot be lost.
+  Though Satan enrages
+  The wind and the tide,
+  The promise engages
+  'The Lord will provide.'
+
+  "When Satan appears
+  To stop up our path,
+  And fills us with fears,
+  We triumph by faith.
+  He cannot take from us,
+  Though oft he has tried,
+  This heart-cheering promise,
+  'The Lord will provide.'
+
+  "He tells us we're weak,
+  Our hope is in vain,
+  The good that we seek
+  We ne'er shall obtain;
+  But when such suggestions
+  Our spirits have tried,
+  This answers all questions.
+  'The Lord will provide.'
+
+  "No strength of our own,
+  Or goodness we claim;
+  But since we have known
+  The Saviour's great name
+  In this, our strong tower,
+  For safety we hide;
+  The Lord is our power!
+  'The Lord will provide.'
+
+  "When life sinks apace,
+  And death is in view,
+  This word of his grace
+  Shall comfort us through.
+  No fearing nor doubting,
+  With Christ on our side,
+  We hope to die shouting,
+  'The Lord will provide.'"
+
+Guy listened very attentively to the whole. He was very far from
+understanding the meaning of several of the verses, but the bounding
+expression of confidence and hope he did understand, and did feel.
+
+"Happy to be so deluded!" he thought.--"I almost wish I could share the
+delusion!"
+
+He was gloomily silent when she had done, and little Fleda's eyes were so
+full that it was a little while before she could look towards him and ask
+in her gentle way, "Do you like it, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+She was gratified by his grave, "Yes!"
+
+"But, Elfie," said he smiling again, "you have not told me your
+thoughts yet. What had these verses to do with the sea you were looking
+at so hard?"
+
+"Nothing--I was thinking," said Fleda slowly,--"that the sea seemed
+something like the world,--I don't mean it was like, but it made me think
+of it; and I thought how pleasant it is to know that God takes care of
+his people."
+
+"Don't he take care of everybody?"
+
+"Yes--in one sort of way," said Fleda; "but then it is only his children
+that he has promised to keep from everything that will hurt them."
+
+"I don't see how that promise is kept, Elfie. I think those who call
+themselves so meet with as many troubles as the rest of the world, and
+perhaps more."
+
+"Yes," said Fleda quickly, "they have troubles, but then God won't let the
+troubles do them any harm."
+
+A subtle evasion, thought Mr. Carleton.--"Where did you learn that,
+Elfie?"
+
+"The Bible says so," said Fleda.
+
+"Well, how do you know it from that?" aid Mr. Carleton, impelled, he
+hardly knew whether by his bad or his good angel, to carry on the
+conversation.
+
+"Why," said Fleda, looking as if it were a very simple question and Mr.
+Carleton were catechising her,--"you know, Mr. Carleton, the Bible was
+written by men who were taught by God exactly what to say, so there could
+be nothing in it that is not true."
+
+"How do you know those men were so taught?"
+
+"The Bible says so."
+
+A child's answer!--but with a child's wisdom in it, not learnt of the
+schools. "He that is of God heareth God's words." To little Fleda, as to
+every simple and humble intelligence, the Bible proved itself; she had no
+need to go further.
+
+Mr. Carleton did not smile, for nothing would have tempted him to hurt
+her feelings; but he said, though conscience did not let him do it
+without a twinge,
+
+"But don't you know, Elfie, there are some people who do not believe
+the Bible?"
+
+"Ah but those are bad people," replied Fleda quickly;--"all good people
+believe it."
+
+A child's reason again, but hitting the mark this time. Unconsciously,
+little Fleda had brought forward a strong argument for her cause. Mr.
+Carleton felt it, and rising up that he might not be obliged to say
+anything more, he began to pace slowly up and down the deck, turning the
+matter over.
+
+Was it so? that there were hardly any good men (he thought there might be
+a few) who did not believe in the Bible and uphold its authority? and
+that all the worst portion of society was comprehended in the other
+class?--and if so, how had he overlooked it? He had reasoned most
+unphilosophically from a few solitary instances that had come under his
+own eye; but applying the broad principle of induction it could not be
+doubted that the Bible was on the side of all that is sound, healthful,
+and hopeful, in this disordered world. And whatever might be the character
+of a few exceptions, it was not supposable that a wide system of hypocrisy
+should tell universally for the best interests of mankind. Summoning
+history to produce her witnesses, as he went on with his walk up and down,
+he saw with increasing interest, what he had never seen before, that the
+Bible had come like the breath of spring upon the moral waste of mind;
+that the ice-bound intellect and cold heart of the world had waked into
+life under its kindly influence and that all the rich growth of the one
+and the other had come forth at its bidding. And except in that
+sun-lightened tract, the world was and had been a waste indeed. Doubtless
+in that waste, intellect had at different times put forth sundry barren
+shoots, such as a vigorous plant can make in the absence of the sun, but
+also like them immature, unsound, and groping vainly after the light in
+which alone they could expand and perfect themselves; ripening no seed for
+a future and richer growth. And flowers the wilderness had none. The
+affections were stunted and overgrown.
+
+All this was so,--how had he overlooked it? His unbelief had come from a
+thoughtless, ignorant, one-sided view of life and human things. The
+disorder and ruin which he saw, where he did not also see the adjusting
+hand at work, had led him to refuse his credit to the Supreme Fabricator.
+He thought the waste would never be reclaimed, and did not know how much
+it already owed to the sun of revelation; but what was the waste where
+that light had not been!--Mr. Carleton was staggered. He did not know what
+to think. He began to think he had been a fool.
+
+Poor little Fleda was meditating less agreeably the while. With the sure
+tact of truth she had discerned that there was more than jest in the
+questions that had been put to her. She almost feared that Mr. Carleton
+shared himself the doubts he had so lightly spoken of, and the thought
+gave her great distress. However, when he came to take her down to tea,
+with all his usual manner, Fleda's earnest look at him ended in the
+conviction that there was nothing very wrong under that face.
+
+For several days Mr. Carleton pondered the matter of this evening's
+conversation, characteristically restless till he had made up his mind. He
+wished very much to draw Fleda to speak further upon the subject, but it
+was not easy; she never led to it. He sought in vain an opportunity to
+bring it in easily, and at last resolved to make one.
+
+"Elfie," said he one morning when all the rest of the passengers were
+happily engaged at a distance with the letter-bags,--"I wish you would let
+me hear that favourite hymn of yours again,--I like it very much."
+
+Fleda was much gratified, and immediately with great satisfaction
+repeated the hymn. Its peculiar beauty struck him yet more the second
+time than the first.
+
+"Do you understand those two last verses?" said he when she had done.
+
+Fleda said "Yes!" rather surprised.
+
+"I do not," he said gravely.
+
+Fleda paused a minute or two, and then finding that it depended on her to
+enlighten him, said in her modest way,
+
+"Why it means that we have no goodness of our own, and only expect to be
+forgiven and taken to heaven for the Saviour's sake."
+
+Mr. Carleton asked, "How_for his sake_?"
+
+"Why you know, Mr. Carleton, we don't deserve to go there, and if we are
+forgiven at all it must be for what he has done."
+
+"And what is that, Elfie?"
+
+"He died for us," said Fleda, with a look of some anxiety into Mr.
+Carleton's face.
+
+"Died for us!--And what end was that to serve, Elfie?" said he, partly
+willing to hear the full statement of the matter, and partly willing to
+see how far her intelligence could give it.
+
+"Because we are sinners," said Fleda, "and God has said that sinners
+shall die."
+
+"Then how can he keep his word and forgive at all?"
+
+"Because Christ has died _for us_," said Fleda eagerly;--"instead of us."
+
+"Do you understand the justice of letting one take the place of others?"
+
+"He was willing, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda, with a singular wistful
+expression that touched him.
+
+"Still, Elfie," said he after a minute's silence,--"how could the ends of
+justice be answered by the death of one man in the place of millions?"
+
+"No, Mr. Carleton, but he was God as well as man," Fleda said, with a
+sparkle in her eye which perhaps delayed her companion's rejoinder.
+
+"What should induce him, Elfie," he said gently, "to do such a thing for
+people who had displeased him?"
+
+"Because he loved us, Mr. Carleton."
+
+She answered with so evident a strong and clear appreciation of what she
+was saying that it half made its way into Mr. Carleton's mind by the force
+of sheer sympathy. Her words came almost as something new.
+
+Certainly Mr. Carleton had heard these things before, though perhaps
+never in a way that appealed so directly to his intelligence and his
+candour. He was again silent an instant, pondering, and so was Fleda.
+
+"Do you know, Elfie," said Mr. Carleton, "there are some people who do not
+believe that the Saviour was anything more than a man?"
+
+"Yes I know it," said Fleda;--"it is very strange!"
+
+"Why is it strange?"
+
+"Because the Bible says it so plainly."
+
+"But those people hold I believe that the Bible does not say it?"
+
+"I don't see how they could have read the Bible," said Fleda. "Why he said
+so himself."
+
+"Who said so?"
+
+"Jesus Christ. Don't _you_ believe it, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+She saw he did not, and the shade that had come over her face was
+reflected in his before he said "No."
+
+"But perhaps I shall believe it yet, Elfie," he said kindly. "Can you shew
+me the place in your Bible where Jesus says this of himself?"
+
+Fleda looked in despair. She hastily turned over the leaves of her Bible
+to find the passages he had asked for, and Mr. Carleton was cut to the
+heart to see that she twice was obliged to turn her face from him and
+brush her hand over her eyes, before she could find them. She turned to
+Matt. xxvi. 63, 64, 65, and without speaking gave him the book, pointing
+to the passage. He read it with great care, and several times over.
+
+"You are right, Elfie," he said. "I do not see how those who honour the
+authority of the Bible and the character of Jesus Christ can deny the
+truth of his own declaration. If that is false so must those be."
+
+Fleda took the Bible and hurriedly sought out another passage.
+
+"Grandpa shewed me these places," she said, "once when we were talking
+about Mr. Didenhover--_he_ didn't believe that. There are a great many
+other places, grandpa said; but one is enough;"--
+
+She gave him the latter part of the twentieth chapter of John.--
+
+"You see, Mr. Carleton, he let Thomas fall down and worship him and call
+him God; and if he had _not_ been, you know----God is more displeased
+with that than with any thing.'
+
+"With what, Elfie?"
+
+"With men's worshipping any other than himself. He says he 'will not give
+his glory to another.'"
+
+"Where is that?"
+
+"I am afraid I can't find it," said Fleda,--"it is somewhere in
+Isaiah, I know"--
+
+She tried in vain; and failing, then looked up in Mr. Carleton's face to
+see what impression had been made.
+
+"You see Thomas believed when he _saw_" said he, answering her;--"I will
+believe too when I see."
+
+"Ah if you wait for that--" said Fleda.
+
+Her voice suddenly checked, she bent her face down again to her little
+Bible, and there was a moment's struggle with herself.
+
+"Are you looking for something more to shew me?" said Mr. Carleton kindly,
+stooping his face down to hers.
+
+"Not much," said Fleda hurriedly; and then making a great effort she
+raised her head and gave him the book again.
+
+"Look here, Mr. Carleton,--Jesus said, 'Blessed are they that have _not_
+seen and yet have believed.'"
+
+Mr. Carleton was profoundly struck, and the thought recurred to him
+afterwards and was dwelt upon.--"Blessed are they that have _not_ seen,
+and yet have believed." It was strange at first, and then he wondered that
+it should ever have been so. His was a mind peculiarly open to conviction,
+peculiarly accessible to truth; and his attention being called to it he
+saw faintly now what he had never seen before, the beauty of the principle
+of _faith_;--how natural, how reasonable, how _necessary_, how honourable
+to the Supreme Being, how happy even for man, that the grounds of his
+trust in God being established, his acceptance of many other things should
+rest on that trust alone.
+
+Mr. Carleton now became more reserved and unsociable than ever. He wearied
+himself with thinking. If be could have got at the books, he would have
+spent his days and nights in studying the evidences of Christianity, but
+the ship was bare of any such books, and he never thought of turning to
+the most obvious of all, the Bible itself. His unbelief was shaken; it was
+within an ace of falling in pieces to the very foundation; or rather he
+began to suspect how foundationless it had been. It came at last to one
+point with him;--If there were a God, he would not have left the world
+without a revelation,--no more would he have suffered that revelation to
+defeat its own end by becoming corrupted or alloyed, if there was such a
+revelation it could be no other than the Bible;--and his acceptance of
+the whole scheme of Christianity now hung upon the turn of a hair. Yet he
+could not resolve himself. He balanced the counter-doubts and arguments,
+on one side and on the other, and strained his mind to the task;--he could
+not weigh them nicely enough. He was in a maze; and seeking to clear and
+calm his judgment that he might see the way out, it was in vain that he
+tried to shake his dizzied head from the effect of the turns it had made.
+By dint of anxiety to find the right path reason had lost herself in the
+wilderness.
+
+Fleda was not, as Mr. Carleton had feared she would be, at all alienated
+from him by the discovery that had given her so much pain. It wrought in
+another way, rather to add a touch of tender and anxious interest to the
+affection she had for him. It gave her however much more pain than he
+thought. If he had seen the secret tears that fell on his account he would
+have been grieved; and if he had known of the many petitions that little
+heart made for him--he could hardly have loved her more than he did.
+
+One evening Mr. Carleton had been a long while pacing up and down the deck
+in front of little Fleda's nest, thinking and thinking, without coming to
+any end. It was a most fair evening, near sunset, the sky without a cloud
+except two or three little dainty strips which set off its blue. The ocean
+was very quiet, only broken into cheerful mites of waves that seemed to
+have nothing to do but sparkle. The sun's rays were almost level now, and
+a long path of glory across the sea led off towards his sinking disk.
+Fleda sat watching and enjoying it all in her happy fashion, which always
+made the most of everything good, and was especially quick in catching any
+form of natural beauty.
+
+Mr. Carleton's thoughts were elsewhere; too busy to take note of things
+around him. Fleda looked now and then as he passed at his gloomy brow,
+wondering what he was thinking of, and wishing that he could have the same
+reason to be happy that she had. In one of his turns his eye met her
+gentle glance; and vexed and bewildered as he was with study there was
+something in that calm bright face that impelled him irresistibly to ask
+the little child to set the proud scholar right. Placing himself beside
+her, he said,
+
+"Elfie, how do you know there is a God?--what reason have you for thinking
+so, out of the Bible?"
+
+It was a strange look little Fleda gave him. He felt it at the time, and
+he never forgot it. Such a look of reproach, sorrow, and _pity_, he
+afterwards thought, as an angel's face might have worn. The _question_ did
+not seem to occupy her a moment. After this answering look she suddenly
+pointed to the sinking sun and said,
+
+"Who made that, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+Mr. Carleton's eyes, following the direction of hers, met the long bright
+rays whose still witness-bearing was almost too powerful to be borne. The
+sun was just dipping majestically into the sea, and its calm
+self-assertion seemed to him at that instant hardly stronger than its
+vindication of its Author.
+
+A slight arrow may find the joint in the armour before which many
+weightier shafts have fallen powerless. Mr. Carleton was an unbeliever no
+more from that time.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+
+
+  He borrowed a box of the ear of the Englishman, and swore he would pay
+  him again when he was able.--Merchant of Venice.
+
+
+One other incident alone in the course of the voyage deserves to be
+mentioned; both because it served to bring out the characters of several
+people, and because it was not,--what is?--without its lingering
+consequences.
+
+Thorn and Rossitur had kept up indefatigably the game of teasing Fleda
+about her "English admirer," as they sometimes styled him. Poor Fleda
+grew more and more sore on the subject. She thought it was very strange
+that two grown men could not find enough to do to amuse themselves
+without making sport of the comfort of a little child. She wondered they
+could take pleasure in what gave her so much pain; but so it was; and
+they had it up so often that at last others caught it from them; and
+though not in malevolence yet in thoughtless folly many a light remark
+was made and question asked of her that set little Fleda's sensitive
+nerves a quivering. She was only too happy that they were never said
+before Mr. Carleton; that would have been a thousand times worse. As it
+was, her gentle nature was constantly suffering from the pain or the fear
+of these attacks.
+
+"Where's Mr. Carleton?" said her cousin coming up one day.
+
+"I don't know," said Fleda,--"I don't know but he is gone up into one of
+the tops."
+
+"Your humble servant leaves you to yourself a great while this morning, it
+seems to me. He is growing very inattentive."
+
+"I wouldn't permit it, Miss Fleda, if I were you," said Thorn maliciously.
+"You let him have his own way too much."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't talk so, cousin Charlton!" said Fleda.
+
+"But seriously," said Charlton, "I think you had better call him to
+account. He is very suspicious lately. I have observed him walking by
+himself and looking very glum indeed. I am afraid he has taken some fancy
+into his head that would not suit you. I advise you to enquire into it."
+
+"I wouldn't give myself any concern about it!" said Thorn lightly,
+enjoying the child's confusion and his own fanciful style of
+backbiting,--"I'd let him go if he has a mind to, Miss Fleda. He's no such
+great catch. He's neither lord nor knight--nothing in the world but a
+private gentleman, with plenty of money I dare say, but you don't care for
+that;--and there's as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it. I don't
+think much of him!"
+
+He is wonderfully better than _you_, thought Fleda as she looked in the
+young gentleman's face for a second, but she said nothing.
+
+"Why, Fleda," said Charlton laughing, "it wouldn't be a killing affair,
+would it? How has this English admirer of yours got so far in your
+fancy?--praising your pretty eyes, eh?--Eh?" he repeated, as Fleda kept a
+dignified silence.
+
+"No," said Fleda in displeasure,--"he never says such things."
+
+"No?" said Charlton. "What then? What does he say? I wouldn't let him make
+a fool of me if I were you. Fleda!--did he ever ask you for a kiss?"
+
+"No!" exclaimed Fleda half beside herself and bursting into tears;--"I
+wish you wouldn't talk so! How can you?"
+
+They had carried the game pretty far that time, and thought best to leave
+it. Fleda stopped crying as soon as she could, lest somebody should see
+her; and was sitting quietly again, alone as before, when one of the
+sailors whom she had never spoken to came by, and leaning over towards her
+with a leer as he passed, said,
+
+"Is this the young English gentleman's little sweetheart?"
+
+Poor Fleda! She had got more than she could bear. She jumped up and ran
+down into the cabin; and in her berth Mrs. Carleton found her some time
+afterwards, quietly crying, and most sorry to be discovered. She was
+exceeding unwilling to tell what had troubled her. Mrs. Carleton, really
+distressed, tried coaxing, soothing, reasoning, promising, in a way the
+most gentle and kind that she could use.
+
+"Oh it's nothing--it's nothing," Fleda said at last eagerly,--"it's
+because I am foolish--it's only something they said to me."
+
+"Who, love?"
+
+Again was Fleda most unwilling to answer, and it was after repeated urging
+that she at last said,
+
+"Cousin Charlton and Mr. Thorn."
+
+"Charlton and Mr. Thorn!--What did they say? What did they say,
+darling Fleda?"
+
+"O it's only that they tease me," said Fleda, trying hard to put an end to
+the tears which caused all this questioning, and to speak as if they were
+about a trifle. But Mrs. Carleton persisted.
+
+"What do they say to tease you, love? what is it about?--Guy, come in
+here and help me to find out what is the matter with Fleda."
+
+Fleda hid her face in Mrs. Carleton's neck, resolved to keep her lips
+sealed. Mr. Carleton came in, but to her great relief his question was
+directed not to her but his mother.
+
+"Fleda has been annoyed by something those young men, her cousin and Mr.
+Thorn, have said to her;--they tease her, she says, and she will not tell
+me what it is."
+
+Mr. Carleton did not ask, and he presently left the state-room.
+
+"O I am afraid he will speak to them!" exclaimed Fleda as soon as he was
+gone.--"O I oughtn't to have said that!"--
+
+Mrs. Carleton tried to soothe her and asked what she was afraid of. But
+Fleda would not say any more. Her anxious fear that she had done mischief
+helped to dry her tears, and she sorrowfully resolved she would keep her
+griefs to herself next time.
+
+Rossitur and Thorn were in company with a brother officer and friend of
+the latter when Mr. Carleton approached them.
+
+"Mr. Rossitur and Mr. Thorn," said he, "you have indulged yourselves in a
+style of conversation extremely displeasing to the little girl under my
+mother's care. You will oblige me by abandoning it for the future."
+
+There was certainly in Mr. Carleton's manner a sufficient degree of the
+cold haughtiness with which he usually expressed displeasure; though his
+words gave no other cause of offence. Thorn retorted rather insolently,
+
+"I shall oblige myself in the matter, and do as I think proper."
+
+"I have a right to speak as I please to my own cousin," said Rossitur
+sulkily,--"without asking anybody's leave. I don't see what you have to
+do with it."
+
+"Simply that she is under my protection and that I will not permit her to
+be annoyed."
+
+"I don't see how she is under your protection," said Rossitur.
+
+"And I do not see how the potency of it will avail in this case,' said his
+companion.
+
+"Neither position is to be made out in words," said Mr. Carleton calmly.
+"You see that I desire there be no repetition of the offence. The rest I
+will endeavour to make clear if I am compelled to it."
+
+"Stop, sir!" said Thorn, as the young Englishman was turning away, adding
+with an oath,--"I won't bear this! You shall answer this to me, sir!"
+
+"Easily," said the other.
+
+"And me too," said Rossitur. "You have an account to settle with me,
+Carleton."
+
+"I will answer what you please," said Carleton carelessly,--"and as soon
+as we get to land--provided you do not in the mean time induce me to
+refuse you the honour."
+
+However incensed, the young men endeavoured to carry it off with the same
+coolness that their adversary shewed. No more words passed. But Mrs.
+Carleton, possibly quickened by Fleda's fears, was not satisfied with the
+carriage of all parties, and resolved to sound her son, happy in knowing
+that nothing but truth was to be had from him. She found an opportunity
+that very afternoon when he was sitting alone on the deck. The
+neighbourhood of little Fleda she hardly noticed. Fleda was curled up
+among her cushions, luxuriously bending over a little old black Bible
+which was very often in her hand at times when she was quiet and had no
+observation to fear.
+
+"Reading!--always reading?" said Mrs. Carleton, as she came up and took a
+place by her son.
+
+"By no means!" he said, closing his book with a smile;--"not enough to
+tire any one's eyes on this voyage, mother."
+
+"I wish you liked intercourse with living society," said Mrs. Carleton,
+leaning her arm on his shoulder and looking at him rather wistfully.
+
+"You need not wish that,--when it suits me," he answered.
+
+"But none suits you. Is there any on board?"
+
+"A small proportion," he said, with the slight play of feature which
+always effected a diversion of his mother's thoughts, no matter in what
+channel they had been flowing.
+
+"But those young men," she said, returning to the charge,--"you hold
+yourself very much aloof from them?"
+
+He did not answer, even by a look, but to his mother the perfectly quiet
+composure of his face was sufficiently expressive.
+
+"I know what you think, but Guy, you always had the same opinion of them?"
+
+"I have never shewn any other."
+
+"Guy," she said speaking low and rather anxiously,--"have you got into
+trouble with those young men?"
+
+"_I_ am in no trouble, mother," he answered somewhat haughtily; "I cannot
+speak for them."
+
+Mrs. Carleton waited a moment.
+
+"You have done something to displease them, have you not?"
+
+"They have displeased me, which is somewhat more to the purpose.
+
+"But their folly is nothing to you?"
+
+"No,--not their folly."
+
+"Guy," said his mother, again pausing a minute, and pressing her hand more
+heavily upon his shoulder, "you will not suffer this to alter the friendly
+terms you have been on?--whatever it be,--let it pass."
+
+"Certainly--if they choose to apologize and behave themselves."
+
+"What, about Fleda?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I have no idea they meant to trouble her--I suppose they did not at all
+know what they were doing,--thoughtless nonsense,--and they could have had
+no design to offend you. Promise me that you will not take any further
+notice of this!"
+
+He shook off her beseeching hand as he rose up, and answered haughtily,
+and not without something like an oath, that he _would_.
+
+Mrs. Carleton knew him better than to press the matter any further; and
+her fondness easily forgave the offence against herself, especially as her
+son almost immediately resumed his ordinary manner.
+
+It had well nigh passed from the minds of both parties, when in the
+middle of the next day Mr. Carleton asked what had become of Fleda?--he
+had not seen her except at the breakfast table. Mrs. Carleton said she
+was not well.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"She complained of some headache--I think she made herself sick
+yesterday--she was crying all the afternoon, and I could not get her to
+tell me what for. I tried every means I could think of, but she would not
+give me the least clue--she said 'no' to everything I guessed--I can't
+bear to see her do so--it makes it all the worse she does it so
+quietly--it was only by a mere chance I found she was crying at all, but I
+think she cried herself ill before she stopped. She could not eat a
+mouthful of breakfast."
+
+Mr. Carleton said nothing and with a changed countenance went directly
+down to the cabin. The stewardess, whom he sent in to see how she was,
+brought back word that Fleda was not asleep but was too ill to speak to
+her. Mr. Carleton went immediately into the little crib of a state-room.
+There he found his little charge, sitting bolt upright, her feet on the
+rung of a chair and her hands grasping the top to support herself. Her
+eyes were closed, her face without a particle of colour, except the dark
+shade round the eyes which bespoke illness and pain. She made no attempt
+to answer his shocked questions and words of tender concern, not even by
+the raising of an eyelid, and he saw that the intensity of pain at the
+moment was such as to render breathing itself difficult. He sent off the
+stewardess with all despatch after iced water and vinegar and brandy, and
+himself went on an earnest quest of restoratives among the lady passengers
+in the cabin, which resulted in sundry supplies of salts and cologne; and
+also offers of service, in greater plenty still, which he all refused.
+Most tenderly and judiciously he himself applied various remedies to the
+suffering child, who could not direct him otherwise than by gently putting
+away the things which she felt would not avail her. Several were in vain.
+But there was one bottle of strong aromatic vinegar which was destined to
+immortalize its owner in Fleda's remembrance. Before she had taken three
+whiffs of it her colour changed. Mr. Carleton watched the effect of a few
+whiffs more, and then bade the stewardess take away all the other things
+and bring him a cup of fresh strong coffee. By the time it came Fleda was
+ready for it, and by the time Mr. Carleton had administered the coffee he
+saw it would do to throw his mother's shawl round her and carry her up on
+deck, which he did without asking any questions. All this while Fleda had
+not spoken a word, except once when he asked her if she felt better. But
+she had given him, on finishing the coffee, a full look and half smile of
+such pure affectionate gratitude that the young gentleman's tongue was
+tied for some time after.
+
+With happy skill, when he had safely bestowed Fleda among her cushions on
+deck, Mr. Carleton managed to keep off the crowd of busy inquirers after
+her well-doing, and even presently to turn his mother's attention another
+way, leaving Fleda to enjoy all the comfort of quiet and fresh air at
+once. He himself, seeming occupied with other things, did no more but keep
+watch over her, till he saw that she was able to bear conversation again.
+Then he seated himself beside her and said softly,
+
+[Illustration: Then he seated himself beside her.]
+
+"Elfie,--what were you crying about all yesterday afternoon?"
+
+Fleda changed colour, for soft and gentle as the tone was she heard in
+it a determination to have the answer; and looking up beseechingly into
+his face she saw in the steady full blue eye that it was a determination
+she could not escape from. Her answer was an imploring request that he
+would not ask her. But taking one of her little hands and carrying it to
+his lips, he in the same tone repeated his question. Fleda snatched away
+her hand and burst into very frank tears; Mr. Carleton was silent, but
+she knew through silence that he was only quietly waiting for her to
+answer him.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't ask me, sir," said poor Fleda, who still could not
+turn her face to meet his eye;--"It was only something that happened
+yesterday."
+
+"What was it, Elfie?--You need not be afraid to tell me."
+
+"It was only--what you said to Mrs. Carleton yesterday,--when she was
+talking--"
+
+"About my difficulty with those gentlemen?"
+
+"Yes," said Fleda, with a new gush of tears, as if her grief stirred
+afresh at the thought.
+
+Mr. Carleton was silent a moment; and when he spoke there was no
+displeasure and more tenderness than usual in his voice.
+
+"What troubled you in that, Elfie? tell me the whole."
+
+"I was sorry, because,--it wasn't right," said Fleda, with a grave
+truthfulness which yet lacked none of her universal gentleness and
+modesty.
+
+"What wasn't right?"
+
+"To speak--I am afraid you won't like me to say it, Mr. Carleton."
+
+"I will, Elfie,--for I ask you."
+
+"To speak to Mrs. Carleton so, and besides,--you know what you said, Mr.
+Carleton--"
+
+"It was _not_ right," said he after a minute,--"and I very seldom
+use such an expression, but you know one cannot always be on one's
+guard, Elfie?"
+
+"But," said Fleda with gentle persistence, "one can always do what
+is right."
+
+The deuce one can!--thought Mr, Carleton to himself. "Elfie,--was that
+all that troubled you?--that I had said what was not right?"
+
+"It wasn't quite that only," said Fleda hesitating,--"What else?"
+
+She stooped her face from his sight and he could but just understand
+her words.
+
+"I was disappointed--"
+
+"What, in me!"
+
+Her tears gave the answer; she could add to them nothing but an assenting
+nod of her head.
+
+They would have flowed in double measure if she had guessed the pain she
+had given. Her questioner heard her with a keen pang which did not leave
+him for days. There was some hurt pride in it, though other and more
+generous feelings had a far larger share. He, who had been admired,
+lauded, followed, cited, and envied, by all ranks of his countrymen and
+countrywomen;--in whom nobody found a fault that could be dwelt upon amid
+the lustre of his perfections and advantages;--one of the first young men
+in England, thought so by himself as well as by others;--this little pure
+being had been _disappointed_ in him. He could not get over it. He
+reckoned the one judgment worth all the others. Those whose direct or
+indirect flatteries had been poured at his feet were the proud, the
+worldly, the ambitious, the interested, the corrupted;--their praise was
+given to what they esteemed, and that, his candour said, was the least
+estimable part of him. Beneath all that, this truth-loving,
+truth-discerning little spirit had found enough to weep for. She was right
+and they were wrong. The sense of this was so keen upon him that it was
+tea or fifteen minutes before he could recover himself to speak to his
+little reprover. He paced up and down the deck, while Fleda wept more and
+more from the fear of having offended or grieved him. But she was soon
+reassured on the former point. She was just wiping away her tears, with
+the quiet expression of patience her face often wore, when Mr. Carleton
+sat down beside her and took one of her hands.
+
+"Elfie," said he,--"I promise you I will never say such a thing again."
+
+He might well call her his good angel, for it was an angelic look the
+child gave him. So purely humble, grateful, glad,--so rosy with joyful
+hope,--the eyes were absolutely sparkling through tears. But when she saw
+that his were not dry, her own overflowed. She clasped her other hand to
+his hand and bending down her face affectionately upon it, she wept,--if
+ever angels weep,--such tears as they.
+
+"Elfie," said Mr. Carleton, as soon as he could,--"I want you to go down
+stairs with me; so dry those eyes, or my mother will be asking all sorts
+of difficult questions."
+
+Happiness is a quick restorative. Elfie was soon ready to go where he
+would.
+
+They found Mrs. Carleton fortunately wrapped up in a new novel, some
+distance apart from the other persons in the cabin. The novel was
+immediately laid aside to take Fleda on her lap and praise Guy's nursing.
+
+"But she looks more like a wax figure yet than anything else, don't
+she, Guy?"
+
+"Not like any that ever I saw," said Mr. Carleton gravely. "Hardly
+substantial enough. Mother, I have come to tell you I am ashamed of myself
+for having given you such cause of offence yesterday."
+
+Mrs. Carleton's quick look, as she laid her hand on her son's arm, said
+sufficiently well that she would have excused him from making any apology
+rather than have him humble himself in the presence of a third person.
+
+"Fleda heard me yesterday," said he; "it was right she should hear
+me to-day."
+
+"Then my dear Guy," said his mother with a secret eagerness which she did
+not allow to appear,--"if I may make a condition for my forgiveness, which
+you had before you asked for it,--will you grant me one favour?"
+
+"Certainly, mother,--if I can."
+
+"You promise me?"
+
+"As well in one word as in two."
+
+"Promise me that you will never, by any circumstances, allow yourself to
+be drawn into--what is called _an affair of honour_."
+
+Mr. Carleton's brow changed, and without making any reply, perhaps to
+avoid his mother's questioning gaze, he rose up and walked two or three
+times the length of the cabin. His mother and Fleda watched him
+doubtfully.
+
+"Do you see how you have got me into trouble, Elfie?" said he, stopping
+before them.
+
+Fleda looked wonderingly, and Mrs. Carleton exclaimed, "What trouble?"
+
+"Elfie," said he, without immediately answering his mother, "what would
+your conscience do with two promises both of which cannot be kept?"
+
+"What such promises have you made?" said Mrs Carleton eagerly.
+
+"Let me hear first what Fleda says to my question."
+
+"Why," said Fleda, looking a little bewildered,--"I would keep the
+right one."
+
+"Not the one first made?" said he smiling.
+
+"No," said Fleda,--"not unless it was the right one."
+
+"But don't you think one ought to keep one's word, in any event?"
+
+"I don't think anything can make it right to do wrong," Fleda said
+gravely, and not without a secret trembling consciousness to what point
+she was speaking.
+
+He left them and again took several turns up and down the cabin before
+he sat down.
+
+"You have not given me your promise yet, Guy," said his mother, whose eye
+had not once quitted him. "You said you would."
+
+"I said, if I could."
+
+"Well?--you can?"
+
+"I have two honourable meetings of the proscribed kind now on hand, to
+which I stand pledged."
+
+Fleda hid her face in an agony. Mrs. Carleton's agony was in every line of
+hers as she grasped her son's wrist exclaiming, "Guy, promise me!" She had
+words for nothing else. He hesitated still a moment, and then meeting his
+mother's look he said gravely and steadily,
+
+"I promise you, mother, I never will."
+
+His mother threw herself upon his breast and hid her face there, too much
+excited to have any thought of her customary regard to appearances;
+sobbing out thanks and blessings even audibly. Fleda's gentle head was
+bowed in almost equal agitation; and Mr. Carleton at that moment had no
+doubt that he had chosen well which promise to keep.
+
+There remained however a less agreeable part of the business to manage.
+After seeing his mother and Fleda quite happy again, though without
+satisfying in any degree the curiosity of the former, Guy went in search
+of the two young West Point officers. They were together, but without
+Thorn's friend, Capt. Beebee. Him Carleton next sought and brought to the
+forward deck where the others were enjoying their cigars; or rather
+Charlton Rossitur was enjoying his, with the happy self satisfaction of a
+pair of epaulettes off duty. Thorn had too busy a brain to be much of a
+smoker. Now, however, when it was plain that Mr. Carleton had something to
+say to them, Charlton's cigar gave way to his attention; it was displaced
+from his mouth and held in abeyance; while Thorn puffed away more intently
+than ever.
+
+"Gentlemen," Carleton began,--"I gave you yesterday reason to expect that
+so soon as circumstances permitted, you should have the opportunity which
+offended honour desires of trying sounder arguments than those of reason
+upon the offender. I have to tell you to-day that I will not give it you.
+I have thought further of it."
+
+"Is it a new insult that you mean by this, sir?" exclaimed Rossitur in
+astonishment. Thorn's cigar did not stir.
+
+"Neither new nor old. I mean simply that I have changed my mind."
+
+"But this is very extraordinary!" said Rossitur. "What reason do
+you give?"
+
+"I give none, sir."
+
+"In that case," said Capt. Beebee, "perhaps Mr. Carleton will not object
+to explain or unsay the things which gave offence yesterday."
+
+"I apprehend there is nothing to explain, sir,--I think I must have been
+understood; and I never take back my words, for I am in the habit of
+speaking the truth."
+
+"Then we are to consider this as a further, unprovoked, unmitigated insult
+for which you will give neither reason nor satisfaction!" cried Rossitur.
+
+"I have already disclaimed that, Mr. Rossitur."
+
+"Are we, on mature deliberation, considered unworthy of tha _honour_ you
+so condescendingly awarded to us yesterday?"
+
+"My reasons have nothing to do with you, sir, nor with your friend; they
+are entirely personal to myself."
+
+"Mr. Carleton must be aware," said Capt. Beebee, "that his conduct, if
+unexplained, will bear a very strange construction."
+
+Mr. Carleton was coldly silent.
+
+"It never was heard of," the Captain went on,--"that a gentleman declined
+both to explain and to give satisfaction for any part of his conduct which
+had called for it."
+
+"It never was heard that a _gentleman_ did," said Thorn, removing his
+cigar a moment for the purpose of supplying the emphasis which his friend
+had carefully omitted to make.
+
+"Will you say, Mr. Carleton," said Rossitur, "that you did not mean to
+offend us yesterday in what you said?"
+
+"No, Mr. Rossitur."
+
+"You will not!" cried the Captain.
+
+"No, sir; for your friends had given me, as I conceived, just cause
+of displeasure; and I was, and am, careless of offending those who
+have done so."
+
+"You consider yourself aggrieved, then, in the first place?" said Beebee.
+
+"I have said so, sir."
+
+"Then," said the Captain, after a puzzled look out to sea, "supposing that
+my friends disclaim all intention to offend you in that case--"
+
+"In that case I should be glad, Capt. Beebee, that they had changed their
+line of tactics--there is nothing to change in my own."
+
+"Then what are we to understand by this strange refusal of a meeting, Mr.
+Carleton? what does it mean?"
+
+"It means one thing in my own mind, sir, and probably another in yours;
+but the outward expression I choose to give it is that I will not reward
+uncalled-for rudeness with an opportunity of self-vindication."
+
+"You are," said Thorn sneeringly, "probably careless as to the figure your
+own name will cut in connection with this story?"
+
+"Entirely so," said Mr. Carleton, eying him steadily.
+
+"You are aware that your character is at our mercy?"
+
+A slight bow seemed to leave at their disposal the very small portion of
+his character he conceived to lie in that predicament.
+
+"You will expect to hear yourself spoken of in terms that befit a man who
+has cowed out of an engagement he dared not fulfil?"
+
+"Of course," said Carleton haughtily, "by my present refusal I give you
+leave to say all that, and as much more as your ingenuity can furnish in
+the same style; but not in my hearing, sir."
+
+"You can't help yourself," said Thorn, with the same sneer. "You have rid
+yourself of a gentleman's means of protection,--what others will you use?
+
+"I will leave that to the suggestion of the moment. I do not doubt it will
+be found fruitful."
+
+Nobody doubted it who looked just then on his steady sparkling eye.
+
+"I consider the championship of yesterday given up of course," Thorn went
+on in a kind of aside, not looking at anybody, and striking his cigar
+against the guards to clear it of ashes;--"the champion has quitted the
+field; and the little princess but lately so walled in with defences must
+now listen to whatever knight and squire may please to address to her.
+Nothing remains to be seen of her defender but his spurs."
+
+"They may serve for the heels of whoever is disposed to annoy her," said
+Mr. Carleton. "He will need them."
+
+He left the group with the same air of imperturbable self-possession which
+he had maintained during the conference. But presently Rossitur, who had
+his private reasons for wishing to keep friends with an acquaintance who
+might be of service in more ways than one, followed him and declared
+himself to have been, in all his nonsense to Fleda, most undesirous of
+giving displeasure to her temporary guardian, and sorry that it had fallen
+out so. He spoke frankly, and Mr. Carleton, with the same cool
+gracefulness with which he had carried on the quarrel, waived his
+displeasure, and admitted the young gentleman apparently to stand as
+before in his favour. Their reconciliation was not an hour old when Capt.
+Beebee joined them.
+
+"I am sorry I must trouble you with a word more on this disagreeable
+subject, Mr. Carleton," he began, after a ceremonious salutation,--"My
+friend, Lieut. Thorn, considers himself greatly outraged by your
+determination not to meet him. He begs to ask, by me, whether it is your
+purpose to abide by it at all hazards?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"There is some misunderstanding here, which I greatly regret.--I hope you
+will see and excuse the disagreeable necessity I am under of delivering
+the rest of my friend's message."
+
+"Say on, sir."
+
+"Mr. Thorn declares that if you deny him the common courtesy which no
+gentleman refuses to another, he will proclaim your name with the most
+opprobrious adjuncts to all the world, and in place of his former regard
+he will hold you in the most unlimited contempt, which he will have no
+scruple about shewing on all occasions."
+
+Mr. Carleton coloured a little, but replied coolly,
+
+"I have not lived in Mr. Thorn's favour. As to the rest, I forgive
+him!--except indeed he provoke me to measures for which I never will
+forgive him."
+
+"Measures!" said the Captain.
+
+"I hope not! for my own self-respect would be more grievously hurt than
+his. But there is an unruly spring somewhere about my composition that
+when it gets wound up is once in a while too much for me."
+
+"But," said Rossitur, "pardon me,--have you no regard to the effect of his
+misrepresentations?"
+
+"You are mistaken, Mr. Rossitur," said Carleton slightly;--this is but
+the blast of a bellows,--not the Simoom."
+
+"Then what answer shall I have the honour of carrying back to my friend?"
+said Capt. Beebee, after a sort of astounded pause of a few minutes.
+
+"None, of my sending, sir."
+
+Capt. Beebee touched his cap, and went back to Mr. Thorn, to whom he
+reported that the young Englishman was thoroughly impracticable, and that
+there was nothing to be gained by dealing with him; and the vexed
+conclusion of Thorn's own mind, in the end, was in favour of the wisdom of
+letting him alone.
+
+In a very different mood, saddened and disgusted, Mr. Carleton shook
+himself free of Rossitur and went and stood alone by the guards looking
+out upon the sea. He did not at all regret his promise to his mother, nor
+wish to take other ground than that he had taken. Both the theory and the
+practice of duelling he heartily despised, and he was not weak enough to
+fancy that he had brought any discredit upon either his sense or his
+honour by refusing to comply with an unwarrantable and barbarous custom.
+And he valued mankind too little to be at all concerned about their
+judgment in the matter. His own opinion was at all times enough for him.
+But the miserable folly and puerility of such an altercation as that in
+which he had just been engaged, the poor display of human character, the
+little low passions which bad been called up, even in himself, alike
+destitute of worthy cause and aim, and which had perhaps but just missed
+ending in the death of some and the living death of others,--it all
+wrought to bring him back to his old wearying of human nature and
+despondent eying of the everywhere jarrings, confusions, and discordances
+in the moral world. The fresh sea-breeze that swept by the ship,
+roughening the play of the waves, and brushing his own cheek with its
+health-bearing wing, brought with it a sad feeling of contrast. Free, and
+pure, and steadily directed, it sped on its way, to do its work. And like
+it all the rest of the natural world, faithful to the law of its Maker,
+was stamped with the same signet of perfection. Only man, in all the
+universe, seemed to be at cross purposes with the end of his being. Only
+man, of all animate or inanimate things, lived an aimless, fruitless,
+broken life,--or fruitful only in evil. How was this? and whence? and when
+would be the end? and would this confused mass of warring elements ever be
+at peace? would this disordered machinery ever work smoothly, without let
+or stop any more, and work out the beautiful something for which sure it
+was designed? And could any hand but its first Maker mend the broken wheel
+or supply the spring that was wanting?
+
+Has not the Desire of all nations been often sought of eyes that were
+never taught where to look for him.
+
+Mr. Carleton was standing still by the guards, looking thoughtfully out to
+windward to meet the fresh breeze, as if the Spirit of the Wilderness were
+in it and could teach him the truth that the Spirit of the World knew not
+and had not to give, when he became sensible of something close beside
+him; and looking down met little Fleda's upturned face, with such a look
+of purity, freshness, and peace, it said as plainly as ever the dial-plate
+of a clock that _that_ little piece of machinery was working right. There
+was a sunlight upon it, too, of happy confidence and affection. Mr.
+Carleton's mind experienced a sudden revulsion. Fleda might see the
+reflection of her own light in his face as he helped her up to a stand
+where she could be more on a level with him; putting his arm round her to
+guard against any sudden roll of the ship.
+
+"What makes you wear such a happy face?" said he, with an expression half
+envious, half regretful.
+
+"I don't know!" said Fleda innocently. "You, I suppose."
+
+He looked as bright as she did, for a minute.
+
+"Were you ever angry, Elfie?"
+
+"I don't know--" said Fleda. "I don't know but I have."
+
+He smiled to see that although evidently her memory could not bring the
+charge, her modesty would not deny it.
+
+"Were you not angry yesterday with your cousin and that unmannerly
+friend of his?"
+
+"No," said Fleda, a shade crossing her face,--"I was not _angry_ "--
+
+And as she spoke her hand was softly put upon Mr. Carleton's; as if partly
+in the fear of what might have grown out of _his_ anger, and partly in
+thankfulness to him that he had rendered it unnecessary. There was a
+singular delicate timidity and tenderness in the action.
+
+"I wish I had your secret, Elfie," said Mr. Carleton, looking wistfully
+into the clear eyes that met his.
+
+"What secret?" said Fleda smiling.
+
+"You say one can always do right--is that the reason you are
+happy?--because you follow that out?"
+
+"No," said Fleda seriously. "But I think it is a great deal pleasanter."
+
+"I have no doubt at all of that, neither, I dare say, have the rest of the
+world; only somehow when it comes to the point they find it is easier to
+do wrong. What's your secret, Elfie?"
+
+"I haven't any secret," said Fleda. But presently, seeming to bethink
+herself, she added gently and gravely,
+
+"Aunt Miriam says--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"She says that when we love Jesus Christ it is easy to please him."
+
+"And do you love him, Elfie?" Mr Carleton asked after a minute.
+
+Her answer was a very quiet and sober "Yes."
+
+He doubted still whether she were not unconsciously using a form of speech
+the spirit of which she did not quite realize. That one might "not see and
+yet believe," he could understand; but for _affection_ to go forth towards
+an unseen object was another matter. His question was grave and acute.
+
+"By what do you judge that you do, Elfie?"
+
+"Why, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda, with an instant look of appeal, "who else
+_should_ I love?"
+
+"If not him "--her eye and her voice made sufficiently plain. Mr. Carleton
+was obliged to confess to himself that she spoke intelligently, with
+deeper intelligence than he could follow. He asked no more questions. Yet
+truth shines by its own light, like the sun. He had not perfectly
+comprehended her answers, but they struck him as something that deserved
+to be understood, and he resolved to make the truth of them his own.
+
+The rest of the voyage was perfectly quiet. Following the earnest advice
+of his friend Capt. Beebee, Thorn had given up trying to push Mr. Carleton
+to extremity; who on his part did not seem conscious of Thorn's existence.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII.
+
+
+
+  There the most daintie paradise on ground
+  Itselfe doth offer to his sober eye,--
+  -----The painted flowres, the trees upshooting hye,
+  The dales for shade, the hills for breathing space,
+  The trembling groves, the christall running by;
+  And that, which all faire works doth most aggrace,
+  The art which all that wrought appeared in no place.
+
+  Færy Queene.
+
+
+They had taken ship for London, as Mr. and Mrs. Carleton wished to visit
+home for a day or two before going on to Paris. So leaving Charlton to
+carry news of them to the French capital, so soon as he could persuade
+himself to leave the English one, they with little Fleda in company posted
+down to Carleton, in ----shire.
+
+It was a time of great delight to Fleda, that is, as soon as Mr. Carleton
+had made her feel at home in England; and somehow he had contrived to do
+that and to scatter some clouds of remembrance that seemed to gather about
+her, before they had reached the end of their first day's journey. To be
+out of the ship was itself a comfort, and to be alone with kind friends
+was much more. With great joy Fleda put her cousin Charlton and Mr. Thorn
+at once out of sight and out of mind; and gave herself with even more than
+her usual happy readiness to everything the way and the end of the way had
+for her. Those days were to be painted days in Fleda's memory.
+
+She thought Carleton was a very odd place. That is, the house, not the
+village which went by the same name. If the manner of her two companions
+had not been such as to put her entirely at her ease she would have felt
+strange and shy. As it was she felt half afraid of losing herself in the
+house, to Fleda's unaccustomed eyes it was a labyrinth of halls and
+staircases, set with the most unaccountable number and variety of rooms;
+old and new, quaint and comfortable, gloomy and magnificent; some with
+stern old-fashioned massiveness of style and garniture; others absolutely
+bewitching (to Fleda's eyes and understanding) in the rich beauty and
+luxuriousness of their arrangements. Mr. Carleton's own particular haunts
+were of these; his private room, the little library as it was called, the
+library, and the music-room, which was indeed rather a gallery of fine
+arts, so many treasures of art were gathered there. To an older and
+nice-judging person these rooms would have given no slight indications of
+their owner's mind--it had been at work on every corner of them. No
+particular fashion had been followed in anything, nor any model consulted
+but that which fancy had built to the mind's order. The wealth of years
+had drawn together an enormous assemblage of matters, great and small,
+every one of which was fitted either to excite fancy, or suggest thought,
+or to satisfy the eye by its nice adaptation. And if pride had had the
+ordering of them, all these might have been but a costly museum, a
+literary alphabet that its possessor could not put together, an ungainly
+confession of ignorance on the part of the intellect that could do nothing
+with this rich heap of material. But pride was not the genius of the
+place. A most refined taste and curious fastidiousness had arranged and
+harmonized all the heterogeneous items; the mental hieroglyphics had been
+ordered by one to whom the reading of them was no mystery. Nothing struck
+a stranger at first entering, except the very rich effect and faultless
+air of the whole, and perhaps the delicious facilities for every kind of
+intellectual cultivation which appeared on every hand; facilities which it
+must be allowed do seem in general _not_ to facilitate the work they are
+meant to speed. In this case however it was different. The mind that
+wanted them bad brought them together to satisfy its own craving.
+
+These rooms were Guy's peculiar domain. In other parts of the house,
+where his mother reigned conjointly with him, their joint tastes had
+struck out another style of adornment which might be called a style of
+superb elegance. Not superb alone, for taste had not permitted so heavy a
+characteristic to be predominant; not merely elegant, for the fineness of
+all the details would warrant an ampler word. A larger part of the house
+than both these together had been left as generations past had left it, in
+various stages of, refinement, comfort and comeliness. It was a day or two
+before Fleda found out that it was all one; she thought at first that it
+was a collection of several houses that had somehow inexplicably sat down
+there with their backs to each other; it was so straggling and irregular a
+pile of building, covering so much ground, and looking so very unlike the
+different parts to each other. One portion was quite old; the other parts
+ranged variously between the present and the far past. After she once
+understood this it was a piece of delicious wonderment and musing and
+great admiration to Fleda; she never grew weary of wandering round it and
+thinking about it, for from a child fanciful meditation was one of her
+delights. Within doors she best liked Mr. Carleton's favourite rooms.
+Their rich colouring and moderated light and endless stores of beauty and
+curiosity made them a place of fascination.
+
+Out of doors she found still more to delight her. Morning, noon, and night
+she might be seen near the house gazing, taking in pictures of natural
+beauty which were for ever after to hang in Fleda's memory as standards of
+excellence in that sort. Nature's hand had been very kind to the place,
+moulding the ground in beautiful style. Art had made happy use of the
+advantage thus given her; and now what appeared was neither art nor
+nature, but a perfection that can only spring from the hands of both.
+Fleda's eyes were bewitched. She stood watching the rolling slopes of
+green turf, _so_ soft and lovely, and the magnificent trees, that had kept
+their ground for ages and seen generations rise and fall before their
+growing strength and grandeur. They were scattered here and there on the
+lawn, and further back stood on the heights and stretched along the ridges
+of the undulating ground, the outposts of a wood of the same growth still
+beyond them.
+
+"How do you like it, Elfie?" Mr. Carleton asked her the evening of the
+first day, as he saw her for a length of time looking out gravely and
+intently from before the hall door.
+
+"I think it is beautiful!" said Fleda. "The ground is a great deal
+smoother here than it was at home."
+
+"I'll take you to ride to-morrow," said he smiling, "and shew you rough
+ground enough."
+
+"As you did when we came from Montepoole?" raid Fleda rather eagerly.
+
+"Would you like that?"
+
+"Yes, very much,--if _you_ would like it, Mr. Carleton."
+
+"Very well," said he. "So it shall be."
+
+And not a day passed during their short stay that he did not give her one
+of those rides. He shewed her rough ground, according to his promise, but
+Fleda still thought it did not look much like the mountains "at home." And
+indeed unsightly roughnesses had been skilfully covered or removed; and
+though a large part of the park, which was a very extensive one, was
+wildly broken and had apparently been left as nature left it, the hand of
+taste had been there; and many an unsuspected touch instead of hindering
+had heightened both the wild and the beautiful character. Landscape
+gardening had long been a great hobby of its owner.
+
+"How far does your ground come, Mr Carleton?" inquired Fleda on one of
+these rides, when they had travelled a good distance from home.
+
+"Further than you can see, Elfie."
+
+"Further than I can see!--It must be a very large farm!"
+
+"This is not a farm where we are now," said he;--"did you mean
+that?--this is the park; we are almost at the edge of it on this side."
+
+"What is the difference between a farm and a park?" said Fleda.
+
+"The grounds of a farm are tilled for profit; a park is an uncultivated
+enclosure kept merely for men and women and deer to take pleasure in."
+
+"_I_ have taken a good deal of pleasure in it," said Fleda. "And have you
+a farm besides, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"A good many, Elfie."
+
+Fleda looked surprised, and then remarked that it must be very nice to
+have such a beautiful piece of ground just for pleasure.
+
+She enjoyed it to the full during the few days she was there. And one
+thing more, the grand piano in the music-room. The first evening of their
+arrival she was drawn by the far-off sounds, and Mrs. Carleton seeing it
+went immediately to the music-room with her. The room had no light, except
+from the moonbeams that stole in through two glass doors which opened upon
+a particularly private and cherished part of the grounds, in summer-time
+full of flowers; for in the very refinement of luxury delights had been
+crowded about this favourite apartment. Mr. Carleton was at the
+instrument, playing. Fleda sat down quietly in one corner and
+listened,--in a rapture of pleasure she had hardly ever known from any
+like source. She did not think it could be greater, till after a time, in
+a pause of the music, Mrs. Carleton asked her son to sing a particular
+ballad, and that one was followed by two or three more. Fleda left her
+corner, she could not contain herself, and favoured by the darkness came
+forward and stood quite near; and if the performer bad bad light to see
+by, he would have been gratified with the tribute paid to his power by the
+unfeigned tears that ran down her cheeks. This pleasure was also repeated
+from evening to evening.
+
+"Do you know we set off for Paris to-morrow?" said Mrs. Carleton the last
+evening of their stay, as Fleda came up to the door after a prolonged
+ramble in the park, leaving Mr. Carleton with one or two gardeners at a
+little distance.
+
+"Yes!" said Fleda, with a sigh that was more than half audible.
+
+"Are you sorry?" said Mrs. Carleton smiling.
+
+"I cannot be glad," said Fleda, giving a sober look over the lawn.
+
+"Then you like Carleton?"
+
+"Very much!--It is a prettier place than Queechy."
+
+"But we shall have you here again, dear Fleda," said Mrs. Carleton
+restraining her smile at this, to her, very moderate complement.
+
+"Perhaps not," said Fleda quietly.--"Mr. Carleton said," she added a
+minute after with more animation, "that a park was a place for men and
+women and deer to take pleasure in. I am sure it is for children too!"
+
+"Did you have a pleasant ride this morning?"
+
+"O very!--I always do. There isn't anything I like so well."
+
+"What, as to ride on horseback with Guy?" said Mrs. Carleton looking
+exceedingly benignant.
+
+"Yes,--unless--"
+
+"Unless what, my dear Fleda?"
+
+"Unless, perhaps,--I don't know,--I was going to say, unless perhaps to
+hear him sing."
+
+Mrs. Carleton's delight was unequivocally expressed; and she promised
+Fleda that she should have both rides and songs there in plenty another
+time; a promise upon which Fleda built no trust at all.
+
+The short journey to Pans was soon made. The next morning Mrs. Carleton
+making an excuse of her fatigue left Guy to end the care he had rather
+taken upon himself by delivering his little charge into the hands of her
+friends. So they drove to the Hotel------, Rue------, where Mr. Rossitur
+had apartments in very handsome style. The found him alone in the saloon.
+
+"Ha! Carleton--come back again. Just in time--very glad to see you. And
+who is this?--Ah, another little daughter for aunt Lucy."
+
+Mr. Rossitur, who gave them this greeting very cordially, was rather a
+fine looking man, decidedly agreeable both in person and manner. Fleda was
+pleasantly disappointed after what her grandfather had led her to expect.
+There might be something of sternness in his expression; people gave him
+credit for a peremptory, not to say imperious temper; but if truly, it
+could not often meet with opposition. The sense and gentlemanly character
+which marked his face and bearing had an air of smooth politeness which
+seemed habitual. There was no want of kindness nor even of tenderness in
+the way he drew Fleda within his arm and held her there, while he went on
+talking to Mr. Carleton; now and then stooping his face to look in at her
+bonnet and kiss her, which was his only welcome. He said nothing to her
+after his first question.
+
+He was too busy talking to Guy. He seemed to have a great deal to tell
+him. There was this for him to see, and that for him to hear, and charming
+new things which had been done or doing since Mr. Carleton left Paris. The
+impression upon Fleda's mind after listening awhile was that the French
+capital was a great Gallery of the Fine Arts, with a magnified likeness of
+Mr. Carleton's music room at one end of it. She thought her uncle must be
+most extraordinarily fond of pictures and works of art in general, and
+must have a great love for seeing company and hearing people sing. This
+latter taste Fleda was disposed to allow might be a very reasonable one.
+Mr. Carleton, she observed, seemed much more cool on the whole subject.
+But meanwhile where was aunt Lucy?--and had Mr. Rossitur forgotten the
+little armful that he held so fast and so perseveringly? No, for here was
+another kiss, and another look into her face, so kind that Fleda gave him
+a piece of her heart from that time.
+
+"Hugh!" said Mr. Rossitur suddenly to somebody she had not seen
+before,--"Hugh!--here is your little cousin. Take her off to your mother."
+
+A child came forward at this bidding hardly larger than herself. He was a
+slender graceful little figure, with nothing of the boy in his face or
+manner; delicate as a girl, and with something almost melancholy in the
+gentle sweetness of his countenance. Fleda's confidence was given to it on
+the instant, which had not been the case with anything in her uncle, and
+she yielded without reluctance the hand he took to obey his father's
+command. Before two steps had been taken however, she suddenly broke away
+from him and springing to Mr. Carleton's side silently laid her hand in
+his. She made no answer whatever to a ligit word or two of kindness that
+he spoke just for her ear. She listened with downcast eyes and a lip that
+he saw was too unsteady to be trusted, and then after a moment more,
+without looking, pulled away her hand and followed her cousin. Hugh did
+not once get a sight of her face on the way to his mother's room, but
+owing to her exceeding efforts and quiet generalship he never guessed the
+cause. There was nothing in her face to raise suspicion when he reached
+the door and opening it announced her with,
+
+"Mother, here's cousin Fleda come."
+
+Fleda had seen her aunt before, though several years back, and not long
+enough to get acquainted with her. But no matter;--it was her mother's
+sister sitting there, whose face gave her so lovely a welcome at that
+speech of Hugh's, whose arms were stretched out so eagerly towards her;
+and springing to them as to a very haven of rest Fleda wept on her
+bosom those delicious tears that are only shed where the heart is at
+home. And even before they were dried the ties were knit that bound her
+to her new sphere.
+
+"Who came with you, dear Fleda?" said Mrs. Rossitur then. "Is Mrs.
+Carleton here? I must go and thank her for bringing you to me."
+
+"_Mr_. Carleton is here," said Hugh.
+
+"I must go and thank him then. Jump down, dear Fleda--I'll be back in
+a minute."
+
+Fleda got off her lap, and stood looking in a kind of enchanted maze,
+while her aunt hastily arranged her hair at the glass. Looking, while
+fancy and memory were making strong the net in which her heart was caught.
+She was trying to see something of her mother in one who had shared her
+blood and her affection so nearly. A miniature of that mother was left to
+Fleda, and she had studied it till she could hardly persuade herself that
+she had not some recollection of the original; and now she thought she
+caught a precious shadow of something like it in her aunt Lucy. Not in
+those pretty bright eyes which had looked through kind tears so lovingly
+upon her; but in the graceful ringlets about the temples, the delicate
+contour of the face, and a something, Fleda could only have said it was "a
+something," about the mouth _when at rest_, the shadow of her mother's
+image rejoiced her heart. Rather that faint shadow of the loved lost one
+for little Fleda, than any other form or combination of beauty on earth.
+As she stood fascinated, watching the movements of her aunt's light
+figure, Fleda drew a long breath with which went off the whole burden of
+doubt and anxiety that had lain upon her mind ever since the journey
+began. She had not known it was there, but she felt it go. Yet even when
+that sigh of relief was breathed, and while fancy and feeling were weaving
+their rich embroidery into the very tissue of Fleda's happiness, most
+persons would have seen merely that the child looked very sober, and have
+thought probably that she felt very tired and strange. Perhaps Mrs.
+Rossitur thought so, for again tenderly kissing her before she left the
+room she told Hugh to take off her things and make her feel at home.
+
+Hugh upon this made Fleda sit down and proceeded to untie her tippet
+strings and take off her coat with an air of delicate tenderness which
+shewed he had great pleasure in his task, and which made Fleda take a good
+deal of pleasure in it too.
+
+"Are you tired, cousin Fleda?" said he gently.
+
+"No," said Fleda. "O no."
+
+"Charlton said you were tired on board ship."
+
+"I wasn't tired," said Fleda, in not a little surprise; "I liked it
+very much."
+
+"Then maybe I mistook. I know Charlton said _he_ was tired, and I thought
+he said you were too. You know my brother Charlton, don't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Are you glad to come to Paris?"
+
+"I am glad now," said Fleda. "I wasn't glad before."
+
+"I am very glad," said Hugh. "I think you will like it. We didn't know you
+were coming till two or three days ago when Charlton got here. Do you like
+to take walks?"
+
+"Yes, very much."
+
+"Father and mother will take us delightful walks in the Tuileries, the
+gardens you know, and the Champs Elysées, and Versailles, and the
+Boulevards, and ever so many places; and it will be a great deal
+pleasanter now you are here. Do you know French?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then you'll have to learn. I'll help you if you will let me. It is very
+easy. Did you get my last letter?"
+
+"I don't know," said Fleda,--"the last one I had came with one of aunt
+Lucy's, telling me about Mrs. Carleton--I got it just before "--
+
+Alas! before what? Fleda suddenly remembered, and was stopped short. From
+all the strange scenes and interests which lately had whirled her along,
+her spirit leaped back with strong yearning recollection to her old home
+and her old ties; and such a rain of tears witnessed the dearness of what
+she had lost and the tenderness of the memory that had let them slip for a
+moment, that Hugh was as much distressed as startled. With great
+tenderness and touching delicacy he tried to soothe her and at the same
+time, though guessing to find out what was the matter, lest he should make
+a mistake.
+
+"Just before what?" said he, laying his hand caressingly on his little
+cousin's shoulder;--"Don't grieve so, dear Fleda!"
+
+"It was only just before grandpa died," said Fleda.
+
+Hugh had known of that before, though like her he had forgotten it for a
+moment. A little while his feeling was too strong to permit any further
+attempt at condolence; but as he saw Fleda grow quiet he took courage to
+speak again.
+
+"Was he a good man?" he asked softly.
+
+"Oh yes!"
+
+"Then," said Hugh, "you know he is happy now, Fleda. If he loved Jesus
+Christ he is gone to be with him. That ought to make you glad as well
+as sorry."
+
+Fleda looked up, though tears were streaming yet, to give that full happy
+answer of the eye that no words could do. This was consolation and
+sympathy. The two children had a perfect understanding of each other from
+that time forward; a fellowship that never knew a break nor a weakening.
+
+Mrs. Rossitur found on her return that Hugh had obeyed her charge to the
+letter. He had made Fleda feel at home. They were sitting close together,
+Hugh's hand affectionately clasping hers, and he was holding forth on some
+subject with a gracious politeness that many of his elders might have
+copied; while Fleda listened and assented with entire satisfaction. The
+rest of the morning she passed in her aunt's arms; drinking draughts of
+pleasure from those dear bright eyes; taking in the balm of gentlest words
+of love, and soft kisses, every one of which was felt at the bottom of
+Fleda's heart, and the pleasure of talking over her young sorrows with one
+who could feel them all and answer with tears as well as words of
+sympathy. And Hugh stood by the while looking at his little orphan cousin
+as if she might have dropped from the clouds into his mother's lap, a rare
+jewel or delicate flower, but much more delicate and precious than they or
+any other possible gift.
+
+Hugh and Fleda dined alone. For as he informed her his father never would
+have children at the dinner-table when he had company; and Mr. and Mrs.
+Carleton and other people were to be there to-day, Fleda made no remark
+on the subject, by word or look, but she thought none the less. She
+thought it was a very mean fashion. _She_ not come to the table when
+strangers were there! And who would enjoy them more? When Mr. Rossitur
+and Mr Carleton had dined with her grandfather, had she not taken as much
+pleasure in their society, and in the whole thing, as any other one of
+the party? And at Carleton, had she not several times dined with a
+tableful, and been unspeakably amused to watch the different manners and
+characteristics of people who were strange to her? However, Mr. Rossitur
+had other notions. So she and Hugh had their dinner in aunt Lucy's
+dressing-room, by themselves; and a very nice dinner it was, Fleda
+thought; and Rosaline, Mrs. Rossitur's French maid, was well affected and
+took admirable care of them. Indeed before the close of the day Rosaline
+privately informed her mistress, "qu'elle serait entêtée sûrement de cet
+enfant dans trois jours;" and "que son regard vraiment lui serrait le
+coeur." And Hugh was excellent company, failing all other, and did the
+honours of the table with the utmost thoughtfulness, and amused Fleda the
+whole time with accounts of Paris and what they would do and what she
+should see; and how his sister Marion was at school at a convent, and
+what kind of a place a convent was; and how he himself always staid at
+home and learned of his mother and his father; "or by himself," he said,
+"just as it happened;" and he hoped they would keep Fleda at home too. So
+Fleda hoped exceedingly, but this stern rule about the dining had made
+her feel a little shy of her uncle; she thought perhaps he was not kind
+and indulgent to children like her aunt Lucy; and if he said she must go
+to a convent she would not dare to ask him to let her stay. The next time
+she saw him however, she was obliged to change her opinion again, in
+part; for he was very kind and indulgent, both to her and Hugh; and more
+than that he was very amusing. He shewed her pictures, and told her new
+and interesting things; and finding that she listened eagerly he seemed
+pleased to prolong her pleasure, even at the expense of a good deal of
+his own time.
+
+Mr. Rossitur was a man of cultivated mind and very refined and fastidious
+taste. He lived for the pleasures of Art and Literature and the society
+where these are valued. For this, and not without some secret love of
+display, he lived in Paris; not extravagant in his pleasures, nor silly in
+his ostentation, but leading, like a gentleman, as worthy and rational a
+life as a man can lead who lives only to himself, with no further thought
+than to enjoy the passing hours. Mr. Rossitur enjoyed them elegantly, and
+for a man of the world, moderately, bestowing however few of those
+precious hours upon his children. It was his maxim that they should be
+kept out of the way whenever their presence might by any chance interfere
+with the amusements of their elders; and this maxim, a good one certainly
+in some hands, was in his reading of it a very broad one. Still when he
+did take time to give his family he was a delightful companion to those of
+them who could understand him. If they shewed no taste for sensible
+pleasure he had no patience with them nor desire of their company. Report
+had done him no wrong in giving him a stern temper; but this almost never
+came out in actual exercise; Fleda knew it only from an occasional hint
+now and then, and by her childish intuitive reading of the lines it had
+drawn round the mouth and brow. It had no disagreeable bearing on his
+everyday life and manner; and the quiet fact probably served but to
+heighten the love and reverence in which his family held him very high.
+
+Mr. Rossitur did once moot the question whether Fleda should not join
+Marion at her convent. But his wife looked very grave and said that she
+was too tender and delicate a little thing to be trusted to the hands of
+strangers; Hugh pleaded, and argued that she might share all his lessons;
+and Fleda's own face pleaded more powerfully. There was something
+appealing in its extreme delicacy and purity which seemed to call for
+shelter and protection from every rough breath of the world; and Mr.
+Rossitur was easily persuaded to let her remain in the stronghold of home.
+Hugh had never quitted it. Neither father nor mother ever thought of such
+a thing. He was the cherished idol of the whole family. Always a delicate
+child, always blameless in life and behaviour, his loveliness of mind and
+person, his affectionateness, the winning sweetness that was about him
+like a halo, and the slight tenure by which they seemed to hold him, had
+wrought to bind the hearts of father and mother to this child, as it were,
+with the very life-strings of both. Not his mother was more gentle with
+Hugh than his much sterner father. And now little Fleda, sharing somewhat
+of Hugh's peculiar claims upon their tenderness and adding another of her
+own, was admitted, not to the same place in their hearts,--that could not
+be,--but to their honour be it spoken, to the same place in all outward
+shew of thought and feeling. Hugh had nothing that Fleda did not have,
+even to the time, care, and caresses of his parents. And not Hugh rendered
+them a more faithful return of devoted affection.
+
+[Illustration: The children were always together.]
+
+Once made easy on the question of school, which was never seriously
+stirred again, Fleda's life became very happy. It was easy to make her
+happy; affection and sympathy would have done it almost anywhere; but in
+Paris she had much more; and after time had softened the sorrow she
+brought with her, no bird ever found existence less of a burden, nor sang
+more light-heartedly along its life. In her aunt she had all but the name
+of a mother; in her uncle, with kindness and affection, she had amusement,
+interest, and improvement; in Hugh everything;--love, confidence,
+sympathy, society, help; their tastes, opinions, pursuits, went hand in
+hand. The two children were always together. Fleda's spirits were brighter
+than Hugh's, and her intellectual tastes stronger and more universal. That
+might be as much from difference of physical as of mental constitution.
+Hugh's temperament led him somewhat to melancholy, and to those studies
+and pleasures which best side with subdued feeling and delicate nerves.
+Fleda's nervous system was of the finest too, but, in short, she was as
+like a bird as possible. Perfect health, which yet a slight thing was
+enough to shake to the foundation;--joyous spirits, which a look could
+quell;--happy energies, which a harsh hand might easily crush for ever.
+Well for little Fleda that so tender a plant was permitted to unfold in so
+nicely tempered an atmosphere. A cold wind would soon have killed it.
+Besides all this there were charming studies to be gone through every day
+with Hugh; some for aunt Lucy to hear, some for masters and mistresses.
+There were amusing walks in the Boulevards, and delicious pleasure taking
+in the gardens of Paris, and a new world of people and manners and things
+and histories for the little American. And despite her early rustic
+experience Fleda had from nature an indefeasible taste for the elegancies
+of life; it suited her well to see all about her, in dress, in furniture,
+in various appliances, as commodious and tasteful as wealth and refinement
+could contrive it; and she very soon knew what was right in each kind.
+There were now and then most gleeful excursions in the environs of Paris,
+when she and Hugh found in earth and air a world of delights more than
+they could tell anybody but each other. And at home, what peaceful times
+they two had,--what endless conversations, discussions, schemes,
+air-journeys of memory and fancy, backward and forward; what sociable
+dinners alone, and delightful evenings with Mr. and Mrs. Rossitur in the
+saloon when nobody or only a very few people were there; how pleasantly in
+those evenings the foundations were laid of a strong and enduring love for
+the works of art, painted, sculptured, or engraven, what a multitude of
+curious and excellent bits of knowledge Fleda's ears picked up from the
+talk of different people. They were capital ears; what they caught they
+never let fall. In the course of the year her gleanings amounted to more
+than many another person's harvest.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV.
+
+
+
+  Heav'n bless thee;
+  Thou hast the sweetest face I ever look'd on.
+
+  Shakspeare.
+
+
+One of the greatest of Fleda's pleasures was when Mr. Carleton came to
+take her out with him. He did that often. Fleda only wished he would have
+taken Hugh too, but somehow he never did. Nothing but that was wanting to
+make the pleasure of those times perfect. Knowing that she saw the _common
+things_ in other company, Guy was at the pains to vary the amusement when
+she went with him. Instead of going to Versailles or St. Cloud, he would
+take her long delightful drives into the country and shew her some old or
+interesting place that nobody else went to see. Often there was a history
+belonging to the spot, which Fleda listened to with the delight of eye and
+fancy at once. In the city, where they more frequently walked, still he
+shewed her what she would perhaps have seen under no other guidance. He
+made it his business to give her pleasure; and understanding the
+inquisitive active little spirit he had to do with he went where his own
+tastes would hardly have led him. The Quai aux Fleurs was often visited,
+but also the Halle aux Blés, the great Halle aux Vins, the Jardin des
+Plantes, and the Marché des Innocens. Guy even took the trouble, more for
+her sake than his own, to go to the latter place once very early in the
+morning, when the market-bell had not two hours sounded, while the
+interest and prettiness of the scene were yet in their full life. Hugh was
+in company this time, and the delight of both children was beyond words,
+as it would have been beyond anybody's patience that had not a strong
+motive to back it. They never discovered that Mr. Carleton was in a hurry,
+as indeed he was not. They bargained for fruit with any number of people,
+upon all sorts of inducements, and to an extent of which they had no
+competent notion, but Hugh had his mother's purse, and Fleda was skilfully
+commissioned to purchase what she pleased for Mrs. Carleton. Verily the
+two children that morning bought pleasure, not peaches. Fancy and
+Benevolence held the purse strings, and Economy did not even look on. They
+revelled too, Fleda especially, amidst the bright pictures of the odd, the
+new, and the picturesque, and the varieties of character and incident,
+that were displayed around them; even till the country people began to go
+away and the scene to lose its charm. It never lost it in memory; and many
+a time in after life Hugh and Fleda recurred to something that was seen
+or done "that morning when we bought fruit at the Innocens."
+
+Besides these scenes of everyday life, which interested and amused Fleda
+to the last degree, Mr. Carleton shewed her many an obscure part of Paris
+where deeds of daring and of blood had been, and thrilled the little
+listener's ear with histories of the Past. He judged her rightly. She
+would rather at any time have gone to walk with him, than with anybody
+else to see any show that could be devised. His object in all this was in
+the first place to give her pleasure, and in the second place to draw out
+her mind into free communion with his own, which he knew could only be
+done by talking sense to her. He succeeded as he wished. Lost in the
+interest of the scenes he presented to her eye and mind, she forgot
+everything else and shewed him herself; precisely what he wanted to see.
+
+It was strange that a young man, an admired man of fashion, a flattered
+favourite of the gay and great world, and furthermore a reserved and proud
+repeller of almost all who sought his intimacy, should seek and delight in
+the society of a little child. His mother would have wondered if she had
+known it. Mrs. Rossitur did marvel that even Fleda should have so won upon
+the cold and haughty young Englishman; and her husband said he probably
+chose to have Fleda with him because he could make up his mind to like
+nobody else. A remark which perhaps arose from the utter failure of every
+attempt to draw him and Charlton nearer together. But Mr. Rossitur was
+only half right. The reason lay deeper.
+
+Mr. Carleton had admitted the truth of Christianity, upon what he
+considered sufficient grounds, and would now have steadily fought for it,
+as he would for anything else that he believed to be truth. But there he
+stopped. He had not discovered nor tried to discover whether the truth of
+Christianity imposed any obligation upon him. He had cast off his
+unbelief, and looked upon it now as a singular folly. But his belief was
+almost as vague and as fruitless as his infidelity had been. Perhaps, a
+little, his bitter dissatisfaction with the world and human things, or
+rather his despondent view of them, was mitigated. If there was, as he now
+held, a Supreme Orderer of events, it might be, and it was rational to
+suppose there would be, in the issues of time, an entire change wrought in
+the disordered and dishonoured state of his handiwork. There might be a
+remedial system somewhere,--nay, it might be in the Bible; he meant to
+look some day. But that _he_ had anything to do with that change--that the
+working of the remedial system called for hands--that _his_ had any charge
+in the matter had never entered into his imagination or stirred his
+conscience. He was living his old life at Paris, with his old
+dissatisfaction, perhaps a trifle less bitter. He was seeking pleasure in
+whatever art, learning, literature, refinement, and luxury can do for a
+man who has them all at command; but there was something within him that
+spurned this ignoble existence and called for higher aims and worthier
+exertion. He was not vicious, he never had been vicious, or, as somebody
+else said, his vices were all refined vices; but a life of mere
+self-indulgence although pursued without self-satisfaction, is constantly
+lowering the standard and weakening the forces of virtue,--lessening the
+whole man. He felt it so; and to leave his ordinary scenes and occupations
+and lose a morning with little Fleda was a freshening of his better
+nature; it was like breathing pure air after the fever heat of a sick
+room; it was like hearing the birds sing after the meaningless jabber of
+Bedlam. Mr. Carleton indeed did not put the matter quite so strongly to
+himself. He called Fleda his good angel. He did not exactly know that the
+office this good angel performed was simply to hold a candle to his
+conscience. For conscience was not by any means dead in him; it only
+wanted light to see by. When he turned from the gay and corrupt world in
+which he lived, where the changes were rung incessantly upon
+self-interest, falsehood, pride, and the various more or less refined
+forms of sensuality, and when he looked upon that pure bright little face,
+so free from selfishness, those clear eyes so innocent of evil, the
+peaceful brow under which a thought of double-dealing had never hid, Mr.
+Carleton felt himself in a healthier region. Here as elsewhere, he
+honoured and loved the image of truth; in the broad sense of truth;--that
+which suits the perfect standard of right. But his pleasure in this case
+was invariably mixed with a slight feeling of self-reproach; and it was
+this hardly recognised stir of his better nature, this clearing of his
+mental eye-sight under the light of a bright example, that made him call
+the little torch-bearer his good angel. If this were truth, this purity,
+uprightness, and singleness of mind, as conscience said it was, where was
+he? how far wandering from his beloved Idol!
+
+One other feeling saddened the pleasure he had in her society--a belief
+that the ground of it could not last. "If she could grow up so!"--he said
+to himself. "But it is impossible. A very few years, and all that clear
+sunshine of the mind will be overcast;--there is not a cloud now!"--
+
+Under the working of these thoughts Mr. Carleton sometimes forgot to
+talk to his little charge, and would walk for a length of way by her
+side wrapped up in sombre musings. Fleda never disturbed him then, but
+waited contentedly and patiently for him to come out of them, with her
+old feeling wondering what he could be thinking of and wishing he were
+as happy as she. But he never left her very long; he was sure to waive
+his own humour and give her all the graceful kind attention which nobody
+else could bestow so well. Nobody understood and appreciated it better
+than Fleda.
+
+One day, some months after they had been in Paris, they were sitting in
+the Place de la Concorde, Mr. Carleton was in one of these thinking fits.
+He had been giving Fleda a long detail of the scenes that had taken place
+in that spot--a history of it from the time when it had lain an unsightly
+waste;--such a graphic lively account as he knew well how to give. The
+absorbed interest with which she had lost everything else in what he was
+saying had given him at once reward and motive enough as he went on.
+Standing by his side, with one little hand confidingly resting on his
+knee, she gazed alternately into his face and towards the broad
+highly-adorned square by the side of which they had placed themselves, and
+where it was hard to realize that the ground had once been soaked in blood
+while madness and death filled the air; and her changing face like a
+mirror gave him back the reflection of the times he held up to her view.
+And still standing there in the same attitude after he had done she had
+been looking out towards the square in a fit of deep meditation. Mr.
+Carleton had forgotten her for awhile in his own thoughts, and then the
+sight of the little gloved hand upon his knee brought him back again.
+
+"What are you musing about, Elfie, dear?" he said cheerfully, taking the
+hand in one of his.
+
+Fleda gave a swift glance into his face, as if to see whether it would be
+safe for her to answer his question; a kind of exploring look, in which
+her eyes often acted as scouts for her tongue. Those she met pledged their
+faith for her security; yet Fleda's look went back to the square and then
+again to his face in silence.
+
+"How do you like living in Paris?" said he. "You should know by
+this time."
+
+"I like it very much indeed," said Fleda.
+
+"I thought you would."
+
+"I like Queechy better though," she went on gravely, her eyes turning
+again to the square.
+
+"Like Queechy better! Were you thinking of Queechy just now when I
+spoke to you?"
+
+"Oh no!"--with a smile.
+
+"Were you going over all those horrors I have been distressing you with?"
+
+"No," said Fleda;--"I _was_ thinking of them, awhile ago."
+
+"What then?" said he pleasantly. "You were looking so sober I should like
+to know how near your thoughts were to mine."
+
+"I was thinking," said Fleda, gravely, and a little unwillingly, but Guy's
+manner was not to be withstood,--"I was wishing I could be like the
+disciple whom Jesus loved."
+
+Mr. Carleton let her see none of the surprise he felt at this answer.
+
+"Was there one more loved than the rest?"
+
+"Yes--the Bible calls him 'the disciple whom Jesus loved.' That was John."
+
+"Why was he preferred above the others?"
+
+"I don't know. I suppose he was more gentle and good than the others, and
+loved Jesus more. I think aunt Miriam said so when I asked her once."
+
+Mr. Carleton thought Fleda had not far to seek for the fulfilment
+of her wish.
+
+"But how in the world, Elfie, did you work round to this gentle and good
+disciple from those scenes of blood you set out with?"
+
+"Why," said Elfie,--"I was thinking how unhappy and bad people are,
+especially people here, I think; and how much must be done before they
+will all be brought right;--and then I was thinking of the work Jesus gave
+his disciples to do; and so I wished I could be like _that_
+disciple.--Hugh and I were talking about it this morning."
+
+"What is the work he gave them to do?" said Mr. Carleton, more and more
+interested.
+
+"Why," said Fleda, lifting her gentle wistful eyes to his and then looking
+away,--"to bring everybody to be good and happy."
+
+"And how in the world are they to do that?" said Mr. Carleton, astonished
+to see his own problem quietly handled by this child.
+
+"By telling them about Jesus Christ, and getting them to believe and love
+him," said Fleda, glancing at him again,--"and living so beautifully that
+people cannot help believing them."
+
+"That last is an important clause," said Mr. Carleton thoughtfully. "But
+suppose people will not hear when they are spoken to, Elfie?"
+
+"Some will, at any rate," said Fleda,--"and by and by everybody will."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Because the Bible says so."
+
+"Are you sure of that, Elfie?"
+
+"Why yes, Mr. Carleton--God has promised that the world shall be full of
+good people, and then they will be all happy. I wish it was now."
+
+"But if that be so, Elfie, God can make them all good without our help?"
+
+"Yes, but I suppose he chooses to do it with our help, Mr. Carleton," said
+Fleda with equal naïveté and gravity.
+
+"But is not this you speak of," said he, half smiling,--"rather the
+business of clergymen? you have nothing to do with it?"
+
+"No," said Fleda,--"everybody has something to do with it, the Bible says
+so; ministers must do it in their way and other people in other ways;
+everybody has his own work. Don't you remember the parable of the ten
+talents, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+Mr. Carleton was silent for a minute.
+
+"I do not know the Bible quite as well as you do, Elfie," he said
+then,--"nor as I ought to do."
+
+Elfie's only answer was by a look somewhat like that he well remembered on
+shipboard he had thought was angel-like,--a look of gentle sorrowful
+wistfulness which she did not venture to put into words. It had not for
+that the less power. But he did not choose to prolong the conversation.
+They rose up and began to walk homeward, Elfie thinking with all the
+warmth of her little heart that she wished very much Mr. Carleton knew the
+Bible better; divided between him and "that disciple" whom she and Hugh
+had been talking about.
+
+"I suppose you are very busy now, Elfie," observed her companion, when
+they had walked the length of several squares in silence.
+
+"O yes!" said Fleda. "Hugh and I are as busy as we can be. We are busy
+every minute."
+
+"Except when you are on some chase after pleasure?"
+
+"Well," said Fleda laughing,--"that is a kind of business; and all the
+business is pleasure too. I didn't mean that we were always busy about
+_work_. O Mr. Carleton we had such a nice time the day before
+yesterday!"--And she went on to give him the history of a very successful
+chase after pleasure which they had made to St. Cloud.
+
+"And yet you like Queechy better?"
+
+"Yes," said Fleda, with a gentle steadiness peculiar to herself,--if I had
+aunt Lucy and Hugh and uncle Rolf there and everybody that I care for, I
+should like it a great deal better."
+
+"Unspotted" yet, he thought.
+
+"Mr. Carleton," said Fleda presently,--"do you play and sing every day
+here in Paris?"
+
+"Yes," said he smiling,--"about every day. Why?"
+
+"I was thinking how pleasant it was at your house, in England."
+
+"Has Carleton the honour of rivalling Queechy in your liking?"
+
+"I haven't lived there so long, you know," said Fleda. "I dare say it
+would if I had. I think it is quite as pretty a place."
+
+Mr. Carleton smiled with a very pleased expression. Truth and politeness
+had joined hands in her answer with a child's grace.
+
+He brought Fleda to her own door and there was leaving her.
+
+"Stop!--O Mr. Carleton," cried Fleda, "come in just for one minute--I want
+to shew you something."
+
+He made no resistance to that. She led him to the saloon, where it
+happened that nobody was, and repeating "One minute!"--rushed out of the
+room. In less than that time she came running back with a beautiful
+half-blown bud of a monthly rose in her hand, and in her face such a bloom
+of pleasure and eagerness as more than rivalled it. The rose was fairly
+eclipsed. She put the bud quietly but with a most satisfied air of
+affection into Mr. Carleton's hand. It had come from a little tree which
+he had given her on one of their first visits to the Quai aux Fleurs. She
+had had the choice of what she liked best, and had characteristically
+taken a flourishing little rose-bush that as yet shewed nothing but leaves
+and green buds; partly because she would have the pleasure of seeing its
+beauties come forward, and partly because she thought having no flowers it
+would not cost much. The former reason however was all that she had given
+to Mr. Carleton's remonstrances.
+
+"What is all this, Elfie?" said he. "Have you been robbing your
+rose tree?"
+
+"No," said Elfie;--"there are plenty more buds! Isn't it lovely? This is
+the first one. They've been a great while coming out."
+
+His eye went from the rose to her; he thought the one was a mere emblem of
+the other. Fleda was usually very quiet in her demonstrations; it was as
+if a little green bud had suddenly burst into a flush of loveliness; and
+he saw, it was as plain as possible, that good-will to him had been the
+moving power. He was so much struck and moved that his thanks, though as
+usual perfect in their kind, were far shorter and graver than he would
+have given if he had felt less. He turned away from the house, his mind
+full of the bright unsullied purity and single-hearted good-will that had
+looked out of that beaming little face; he seemed to see them again in the
+flower held in his hand, and he saw nothing else as he went.
+
+Mr. Carleton preached to himself all the way home, and his text was a
+rose.
+
+Laugh who will. To many it may seem ridiculous, and to most minds it would
+have been impossible, but to a nature very finely wrought and highly
+trained, many a voice that grosser senses cannot hear comes with an
+utterance as clear as it is sweet-spoken; many a touch that coarser nerves
+cannot heed reaches the springs of the deeper life; many a truth that
+duller eyes have no skill to see shews its fair features, hid away among
+the petals of a rose, or peering out between the wings of a butterfly, or
+reflected in a bright drop of dew. The material is but a veil for the
+spiritual; but then eyes must be quickened, or the veil becomes an
+impassable cloud.
+
+That particular rose was to Mr. Carleton's eye a most perfect emblem and
+representative of its little giver. He traced out the points of
+resemblance as he went along. The delicacy and character of refinement for
+which that kind of rose is remarkable above many of its more superb
+kindred; a refinement essential and unalterable by decay or otherwise, as
+true a characteristic of the child as of the flower; a delicacy that
+called for gentle handling and tender cherishing;--the sweetness, rare
+indeed, but asserting itself as it were timidly, at least with equally
+rare modesty,--the very style of the beauty, that with all its loveliness
+would not startle nor even catch the eye among its more showy neighbours;
+and the breath of purity that seemed to own no kindred with earth, nor
+liability to infection.
+
+As he went on with his musing, and drawing out this fair character from
+the type before him, the feeling of _contrast_, that he had known before,
+pressed upon Mr. Carleton's mind, the feeling of self-reproach, and the
+bitter wish that he could be again what he once had been, something like
+this. How changed now he seemed to himself--not a point of likeness left.
+How much less honourable, how much less worth, how much less dignified,
+than that fair innocent child. How much better a part she was acting in
+life--what an influence she was exerting,--as pure, as sweet-breathed, and
+as unobtrusive, as the very rose in his hand. And he--doing no good to an
+earthly creature and losing himself by inches.
+
+He reached his room, put the flower in a glass on the table, and walked up
+and down before it. It had come to a struggle between the sense of what
+was and the passionate wish for what might have been.
+
+"It is late, sir," said his servant opening the door,--"and you were--"
+
+"I am not going out."
+
+"This evening, sir?"
+
+"No--not at all to-day. Spenser!--I don't wish to see any body--let no one
+come near me."
+
+The servant retired and Guy went on with his walk and his meditations,
+looking back over his life and reviewing, with a wiser ken now, the steps
+by which he had come. He compared the selfish disgust with which he had
+cast off the world with the very different spirit of little Fleda's look
+upon it that morning, the useless, self-pleasing, vain life he was
+leading, with her wish to be like the beloved disciple and do something to
+heal the troubles of those less happy than herself. He did not very well
+comprehend the grounds of her feeling or reasoning, but he began to see,
+mistily, that his own had been mistaken and wild.
+
+His steps grew slower, his eye more intent, his brow quiet.
+
+"She is right and I am wrong," he thought. "She is by far the nobler
+creature--worth, many such as I. _Like her_ I cannot be--I cannot regain
+what I have lost,--I cannot undo what years have done. But I can be
+something other than I am! If there be a system of remedy, as there well
+may, it may as well take effect on myself first. She says everybody has
+his work, I believe her. It must in the nature of things be so. I will
+make it my business to find out what mine is, and when I have made that
+sure I will give myself to the doing of it. An Allwise Governor must look
+for service of me. He shall have it. Whatever my life be, it shall be to
+some end. If not what I would, what I can. If not the purity of the rose,
+that of tempered steel!"
+
+Mr. Carleton walked his room for three hours; then rung for his servant
+and ordered him to prepare everything for leaving Paris the second day
+thereafter.
+
+The next morning over their coffee he told his mother of his purpose.
+
+"Leave Paris!--To-morrow!--My dear Guy, that is rather a sudden notice."
+
+"No mother--for I am going alone."
+
+His mother immediately bent an anxious and somewhat terrified look
+upon him. The frank smile she met put half her suspicions out of her
+head at once.
+
+"What is the matter?"
+
+"Nothing at all--if by 'matter' you mean mischief."
+
+"You are not in difficulty with those young men again?"
+
+"No mother," said he coolly. "I am in difficulty with no one but myself."
+
+"With yourself! But why will you not let me go with you?"
+
+"My business will go on better if I am quite alone."
+
+"What business?"
+
+"Only to settle this question with myself," said he smiling.
+
+"But Guy! you are enigmatical this morning. Is it the question that of all
+others I wish to see settled?"
+
+"No mother," said he laughing and colouring a little,--"I don't want
+another half to take care of till I have this one under management."
+
+"I don't understand you," said Mrs. Carleton "There is no hidden reason
+under all this that you are keeping from me?"
+
+"I won't say that. But there is none that need give you the least
+uneasiness. There are one or two matters I want to study out--I cannot do
+it here, so I am going where I shall be free."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I think I shall pass the summer between Switzerland and Germany."
+
+"And when and where shall I meet you again?"
+
+"I think at home;--I cannot say when."
+
+"At home!" said his mother with a brightening face. "Then you are
+beginning to be tired of wandering at last?"
+
+"Not precisely, mother,--rather out of humour."
+
+"I shall be glad of anything," said his mother, gazing at him admiringly,
+"that brings you home again, Guy."
+
+"Bring me home a better man, I hope, mother," said he kissing her as he
+left the room. "I will see you again by and by."
+
+"'A better man!'" thought Mrs. Carleton, as she sat with full eyes, the
+image of her son filling the place where his presence had been;--"I would
+be willing never to see him better and be sure of his never being worse!"
+
+Mr. Carleton's farewell visit found Mr. and Mrs. Rossitur not at home.
+They had driven out early into the country to fetch Marion from her
+convent for some holiday. Fleda came alone into the saloon to receive him.
+
+"I have your rose in safe keeping, Elfie," he said. "It has done me more
+good than ever a rose did before."
+
+Fleda smiled an innocently pleased smile. But her look changed when he
+added,
+
+"I have come to tell you so and to bid you good-bye."
+
+"Are you going away, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But you will be back soon?"
+
+"No, Elfie,--I do not know that I shall ever come back."
+
+He spoke gravely, more gravely than he was used; and Fleda's acuteness saw
+that there was some solid reason for this sudden determination. Her face
+changed sadly, but she was silent, her eyes never wavering from those that
+read hers with such gentle intelligence.
+
+"You will be satisfied to have me go, Elfie, when I tell you that I am
+going on business which I believe to be duty. Nothing else takes me away.
+I am going to try to do right," said he smiling.
+
+Elfie could not answer the smile. She wanted to ask whether she should
+never see him again, and there was another thought upon her tongue too;
+but her lip trembled and she said nothing.
+
+"I shall miss my good fairy," Mr. Carleton went on lightly;--"I don't know
+how I shall do without her. If your wand was long enough to reach so far I
+would ask you to touch me now and then, Elfie."
+
+Poor Elfie could not stand it. Her head sank. She knew she had a wand that
+could touch him, and well and gratefully she resolved that its light
+blessing should "now and then" rest on his head; but he did not understand
+that; he was talking, whether lightly or seriously, and Elfie knew it was
+a little of both,--he was talking of wanting her help, and was ignorant of
+the help that alone could avail him. "Oh that he knew but that!"--What
+with this feeling and sorrow together the child's distress was exceeding
+great; and the tokens of grief in one so accustomed to hide them were the
+more painful to see. Mr. Carleton drew the sorrowing little creature
+within his arm and endeavoured with a mixture of kindness and lightness in
+his tone to cheer her.
+
+"I shall often remember you, dear Elfie," he said;--"I shall keep your
+rose always and take it with me wherever I go.--You must not make it too
+hard for me to quit Paris--you are glad to have me go on such an errand,
+are you not?"
+
+She presently commanded herself, bade her tears wait till another time as
+usual, and trying to get rid of those that covered her face, asked him,
+"What errand?"
+
+He hesitated.
+
+"I have been thinking of what we were talking of yesterday, Elfie,"
+he said at length. "I am going to try to discover my duty, and then
+to do it."
+
+But Fleda at that clasped his hand, and squeezing it in both hers bent
+down her little head over it to hide her face and the tears that streamed
+again. He hardly knew how to understand or what to say to her. He half
+suspected that there were depths in that childish mind beyond his
+fathoming. He was not however left to wait long. Fleda, though she might
+now and then be surprised into shewing it, never allowed her sorrow of any
+kind to press upon the notice or the time of others. She again checked
+herself and dried her face.
+
+"There is nobody else in Paris that will be so sorry for my leaving it,"
+said Mr. Carleton, half tenderly and half pleasantly.
+
+"There is nobody else that has so much cause," said Elfie, near bursting
+out again, but she restrained herself.
+
+"And you will not come here again, Mr. Carleton?" she said after a
+few minutes.
+
+"I do not say that--it is possible--if I do, it will be to see you,
+Elfie."
+
+A shadow of a smile passed over her face at that. It was gone instantly.
+
+"My mother will not leave Paris yet," he went on,--"you will see
+her often."
+
+But he saw that Fleda was thinking of something else; she scarce seemed to
+hear him. She was thinking of something that troubled her.
+
+"Mr. Carleton--" she began, and her colour changed.
+
+"Speak, Elfie."
+
+Her colour changed again. "Mr. Carleton--will you be displeased if I say
+something?"
+
+"Don't you know me better than to ask me that, Elfie?" he said gently.
+
+"I want to ask you something,--if you won't mind my saying it."
+
+"What is it?" said he, reading in her face that a request was behind. "I
+will do it."
+
+Her eyes sparkled, but she seemed to have some difficulty in going on.
+
+"I will do it, whatever it is," he said watching her.
+
+"Will you wait for one moment, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"Half an hour."
+
+She sprang away, her face absolutely flashing pleasure through her tears.
+It was much soberer, and again doubtful and changing colour, when a few
+minutes afterwards she came back with a book in her hand. With a striking
+mixture of timidity, modesty, and eagerness in her countenance she came
+forward, and putting the little volume, which was her own Bible, into Mr.
+Carleton's hands said under her breath, "Please read it." She did not
+venture to look up.
+
+He saw what the book was; and then taking the gentle hand which had given
+it, he kissed it two or three times. If it had been a princess's he could
+not with more respect.
+
+"You have my promise, Elfie," he said. "I need not repeat it?"
+
+She raised her eyes and gave him a look so grateful, so loving, so happy,
+that it dwelt for ever in his remembrance. A moment after it had faded,
+and she stood still where he had left her, listening to his footsteps as
+they went down the stairs. She heard the last of them, and then sank upon
+her knees by a chair and burst into a passion of tears. Their time was
+now and she let them come. It was not only the losing a loved and
+pleasant friend, it was not only the stirring of sudden and disagreeable
+excitement;--poor Elfie was crying for her Bible. It had been her
+father's own--it was filled with his marks--it was precious to her above
+price--and Elfie cried with all her heart for the loss of it. She had
+done what she had on the spur of the emergency--she was satisfied she had
+done right; she would not take it back if she could; but not the less her
+Bible was gone, and the pages that loved eyes had looked upon were for
+hers to look upon no more. Her very heart was wrung that she should have
+parted with it,--and yet,--what could she do?--It was as bad as the
+parting with Mr. Carleton.
+
+That agony was over, and even that was shortened, for "Hugh would find
+out that she had been crying." Hours had passed, and the tears were
+dried, and the little face was bending over the wonted tasks with a
+shadow upon its wonted cheerfulness,--when Rosaline came to tell her that
+Victor said there was somebody in the passage who wanted to see her and
+would not come in.
+
+It was Mr. Carleton himself. He gave her a parcel, smiled at her without
+saying a word, kissed her hand earnestly, and was gone again. Fleda ran to
+her own room, and took the wrappers off such a beauty of a Bible as she
+had never seen; bound in blue velvet, with clasps of gold and her initials
+in letters of gold upon the cover. Fleda hardly knew whether to be most
+pleased or sorry; for to have its place so supplied seemed to put her lost
+treasure further away than ever. The result was another flood of very
+tender tears; in the very shedding of which however the new little Bible
+was bound to her heart with cords of association as bright and as
+incorruptible as its gold mountings.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV.
+
+
+
+    Her sports were such as carried riches of knowledge upon the stream of
+    light.--Sidney.
+
+
+Fleda had not been a year in Paris when her uncle suddenly made up his
+mind to quit it and go home. Some trouble in money affairs, felt or
+feared, brought him to this step, which a month before he had no definite
+purpose of ever taking. There was cloudy weather in the financial world of
+New York and he wisely judged it best that his own eyes should be on the
+spot to see to his own interests. Nobody was sorry for this determination.
+Mrs. Rossitur always liked what her husband liked, but she had at the same
+time a decided predilection for home. Marion was glad to leave her convent
+for the gay world, which her parents promised she should immediately
+enter. And Hugh and Fleda had too lively a spring of happiness within
+themselves to care where its outgoings should be.
+
+So home they came, in good mood, bringing with them all manner of Parisian
+delights that Paris could part with. Furniture, that at home at least they
+might forget where they were; dresses, that at home or abroad nobody might
+forget where they had been; pictures and statuary and engravings and
+books, to satisfy a taste really strong and well cultivated. And indeed
+the other items were quite as much for this purpose as for any other. A
+French cook for Mr. Rossitur, and even Rosaline for his wife, who declared
+she was worth all the rest of Paris. Hugh cared little for any of these
+things; he brought home a treasure of books and a flute, to which he was
+devoted. Fleda cared for them all, even Monsieur Emile and Rosaline, for
+her uncle's and aunt's sake; but her special joy was a beautiful little
+King Charles which had been sent her by Mr. Carleton a few weeks before.
+It came with the kindest of letters, saying that some matters had made it
+inexpedient for him to pass through Paris on his way home, but that he
+hoped nevertheless to see her soon. That intimation was the only thing
+that made Fleda sorry to leave Paris. The little dog was a beauty,
+allowed to be so not only by his mistress but by every one else; of the
+true black and tan colours; and Fleda's dearly loved and constant
+companion.
+
+The life she and Hugh led was little changed by the change of place. They
+went out and came in as they had done in Paris, and took the same quiet
+but intense happiness in the same quiet occupations and pleasures; only
+the Tuileries and Champs Elysées had a miserable substitute in the
+Battery, and no substitute at all anywhere else. And the pleasant drives
+in the environs of Paris were missed too and had nothing in New York to
+supply their place. Mrs. Rossitur always said it was impossible to get out
+of New York by land, and not worth the trouble to do it by water. But then
+in the house Fleda thought there was a great gain. The dirty Parisian
+Hotel was well exchanged for the bright, clean, well-appointed house in
+State street. And if Broadway was disagreeable, and the Park a weariness
+to the eyes, after the dressed gardens of the French capital, Hugh and
+Fleda made it up in the delights of the luxuriously furnished library and
+the dear at-home feeling of having the whole house their own.
+
+They were left, those two children, quite as much to themselves as ever.
+Marion was going into company, and she and her mother were swallowed up in
+the consequent necessary calls upon their time. Marion never had been
+anything to Fleda. She was a fine handsome girl, outwardly, but seemed to
+have more of her father than her mother in her composition, though
+colder-natured and more wrapped up in self than Mr. Rossitur would be
+called by anybody that knew him. She had never done anything to draw Fleda
+towards her, and even Hugh had very little of her attention. They did not
+miss it. They were everything to each other.
+
+Everything,--for now morning and night there was a sort of whirlwind in
+the house which carried the mother and daughter round and round and
+permitted no rest; and Mr. Rossitur himself was drawn in. It was worse
+than it had been in Paris. There, with Marion in her convent, there were
+often evenings when they did not go abroad nor receive company and spent
+the time quietly and happily in each other's society. No such evenings
+now; if by chance there were an unoccupied one Mrs. Rossitur and her
+daughter were sure to be tired and Mr. Rossitur busy.
+
+Hugh and Fleda in those bustling times retreated to the library; Mr.
+Rossitur would rarely have that invaded; and while the net was so eagerly
+cast for pleasure among the gay company below, pleasure had often slipped
+away and hid herself among the things on the library table, and was
+dancing on every page of Hugh's book and minding each stroke of Fleda's
+pencil and cocking the spaniel's ears whenever his mistress looked at him.
+King, the spaniel, lay on a silk cushion on the library table, his nose
+just touching Fleda's fingers. Fleda's drawing was mere amusement; she
+and Hugh were not so burthened with studies that they had not always their
+evenings free, and to tell truth, much more than their evenings. Masters
+indeed they had; but the heads of the house were busy with the interests
+of their grown-up child, and perhaps with other interests; and took it for
+granted that all was going right with the young ones.
+
+"Haven't we a great deal better time than they have down stairs, Fleda?"
+said Hugh one of these evenings.
+
+"Hum--yes--" answered Fleda abstractedly, stroking into order some old man
+in her drawing with great intentness.--"King!--you rascal--keep back and
+be quiet, sir!--"
+
+Nothing could be conceived more gentle and loving than Fleda's tone of
+fault-finding, and her repulse only fell short of a caress.
+
+"What's he doing?"
+
+"Wants to get into my lap."
+
+"Why don't you let him?"
+
+"Because I don't choose to--a silk cushion is good enough for his majesty.
+King!--" (laying her soft cheek against the little dog's soft head and
+forsaking her drawing for the purpose.)
+
+"How you do love that dog!" said Hugh.
+
+"Very well--why shouldn't I?--provided he steals no love from anybody
+else," said Fleda, still caressing him.
+
+"What a noise somebody is making down stairs!" said Hugh. "I don't think I
+should ever want to go to large parties, Fleda, do you?"
+
+"I don't know," said Fleda, whose natural taste for society was strongly
+developed;--"it would depend upon what kind of parties they were."
+
+"I shouldn't like them, I know, of whatever kind," said Hugh. "What are
+you smiling at?"
+
+"Only Mr. Pickwick's face, that I am drawing here."
+
+Hugh came round to look and laugh, and then began again.
+
+"I can't think of anything pleasanter than this room as we are now."
+
+"You should have seen Mr. Carleton's library," said Fleda in a musing
+tone, going on with her drawing.
+
+"Was it so much better than this?"
+
+Fleda's eyes gave a slight glance at the room and then looked down again
+with a little shake of her head sufficiently expressive.
+
+"Well," said Hugh, "you and I do not want any better than this, do
+we, Fleda?"
+
+Fleda's smile, a most satisfactory one, was divided between him and King.
+
+"I don't believe," said Hugh, "you would have loved that dog near so well
+if anybody else had given him to you."
+
+"I don't believe I should!--not a quarter," said Fleda with sufficient
+distinctness.
+
+"I never liked that Mr. Carleton as well as you did."
+
+"That is because you did not know him," said Fleda quietly.
+
+"Do you think he was a good man, Fleda?"
+
+"He was very good to me," said Fleda, "always. What rides I did have on
+that great black horse of his!"--
+
+"A black horse?"
+
+"Yes, a great black horse, strong, but so gentle, and he went so
+delightfully. His name was Harold. Oh I should like to see that
+horse!--When I wasn't with him, Mr. Carleton used to ride another, the
+greatest beauty of a horse, Hugh; a brown Arabian--so slender and
+delicate--her name was Zephyr, ind she used to go like the wind, to be
+sure. Mr. Carleton said he wouldn't trust me on such a fly-away thing."
+
+"But you didn't use to ride alone?" said Hugh.
+
+"Oh no!--and _I_ wouldn't have been afraid if he had chosen to take me
+on any one."
+
+"But do you think, Fleda, he was a _good_ man? as I mean?"
+
+"I am sure he was better than a great many others," answered Fleda
+evasively;--"the worst of him was infinitely better than the best of half
+the people down stairs,--Mr. Sweden included."
+
+"Sweden"--you don't call his name right."
+
+"The worse it is called the better, in my opinion," said Fleda.
+
+"Well, I don't like him; but what makes you dislike him so much?"
+
+"I don't know--partly because uncle Rolf and Marion like him so much, I
+believe--I don't think there is any moral expression in his face."
+
+"I wonder why they like him," said Hugh.
+
+It was a somewhat irregular and desultory education that the two children
+gathered under this system of things. The masters they had were rather for
+accomplishments and languages than for anything solid; the rest they
+worked out for themselves. Fortunately they both loved books, and rational
+books; and hours and hours, when Mrs. Rossitur and her daughter were
+paying or receiving visits, they, always together, were stowed away behind
+the book-cases or in the library window poring patiently over pages of
+various complexion; the soft turning of the leaves or Fleda's frequent
+attentions to King the only sound in the room. They walked together,
+talking of what they had read, though indeed they ranged beyond that into
+nameless and numberless fields of speculation, where if they sometimes
+found fruit they as often lost their way. However the habit of ranging was
+something. Then when they joined the rest of the family at the
+dinner-table, especially if others were present, and most especially if a
+certain German gentleman happened to be there who the second winter after
+their return Fleda thought came very often, she and Hugh would be sure to
+find the strange talk of the world that was going on unsuited and
+wearisome to them, and they would make their escape up stairs again to
+handle the pencil and to play the flute and to read, and to draw plans for
+the future, while King crept upon the skirts of his mistress's gown and
+laid his little head on her feet. Nobody ever thought of sending them to
+school. Hugh was a child of frail health, and though not often very ill
+was often near it; and as for Fleda, she and Hugh were inseparable; and
+besides by this time her uncle and aunt would almost as soon have thought
+of taking the mats off their delicate shrubs in winter as of exposing her
+to any atmosphere less genial than that of home.
+
+For Fleda this doubtful course of mental training wrought singularly well.
+An uncommonly quick eye and strong memory and clear head, which she had
+even in childhood, passed over no field of truth or fancy without making
+their quiet gleanings; and the stores thus gathered, though somewhat
+miscellaneous and unarranged, were both rich and uncommon, and more than
+any one or she herself knew. Perhaps such a mind thus left to itself knew
+a more free and luxuriant growth than could ever have flourished within
+the confinement of rules. Perhaps a plant at once so strong and so
+delicate was safest without the hand of the dresser. At all events it was
+permitted to spring and to put forth all its native gracefulness alike
+unhindered and unknown. Cherished as little Fleda dearly was, her mind
+kept company with no one but herself,--and Hugh. As to externals,--music
+was uncommonly loved by both the children, and by both cultivated with
+great success. So much came under Mrs. Rossitur's knowledge. Also every
+foreign Signor and Madame that came into the house to teach them spoke
+with enthusiasm of the apt minds and flexile tongues that honoured their
+instructions. In private and in public the gentle, docile, and
+affectionate children answered every wish both of taste and judgment. And
+perhaps, in a world where education is _not_ understood, their guardians
+might be pardoned for taking it for granted that all was right where
+nothing appeared that was wrong; certainly they took no pains to make sure
+of the fact. In this case, one of a thousand, their neglect was not
+punished with disappointment. They never found out that Hugh's mind wanted
+the strengthening that early skilful training might have given it. His
+intellectual tastes were not so strong as Fleda's; his reading was more
+superficial; his gleanings not so sound and in far fewer fields, and they
+went rather to nourish sentiment and fancy than to stimulate thought or
+lay up food for it. But his parents saw nothing of this.
+
+The third winter had not passed, when Fleda's discernment saw that Mr.
+Sweden, as she called him, the German gentleman, would not cease coming to
+the house till he had carried off Marion with him. Her opinion on the
+subject was delivered to no one but Hugh.
+
+That winter introduced them to a better acquaintance. One evening Dr.
+Gregory, an uncle of Mrs. Rossitur's, had been dining with her and was in
+the drawing-room. Mr. Schweden had been there too, and he and Marion and
+one or two other young people had gone out to some popular entertainment.
+The children knew little of Dr. Gregory but that he was a very
+respectable-looking elderly gentleman, a little rough in his manners; the
+doctor had not long been returned from a stay of some years in Europe
+where he had been collecting rare books for a fine public library, the
+charge of which was now entrusted to him. After talking some time with
+Mr. and Mrs. Rossitur the doctor pushed round his chair to take a look at
+the children.
+
+"So that's Amy's child," said he. "Come here, Amy."
+
+"That is not my name," said the little girl coming forward.
+
+"Isn't it? It ought to be. What is then?"
+
+"Elfleda."
+
+"Elfleda!--Where in the name of all that is auricular did you get such an
+outlandish name?"
+
+"My father gave it to me, sir," said Fleda, with a dignified sobriety
+which amused the old gentleman.
+
+"Your father!--Hum--I understand. And couldn't your father find a cap that
+fitted you without going back to the old-fashioned days of King Alfred?"
+
+"Yes sir; it was my grandmother's cap."
+
+"I am afraid your grandmother's cap isn't all of her that's come down to
+you," said he, tapping his snuff-box and looking at her with a curious
+twinkle in his eyes. "What do you call yourself? Haven't you some
+variations of this tongue-twisting appellative to serve for every day and
+save trouble?"
+
+"They call me Fleda," said the little girl, who could not help laughing.
+
+"Nothing better than that?"
+
+Fleda remembered two prettier nick-names which had been hers; but one had
+been given by dear lips long ago, and she was not going to have it
+profaned by common use; and "Elfie" belonged to Mr. Carleton. She would
+own to nothing but Fleda.
+
+"Well, Miss Fleda," said the doctor, "are you going to school?"
+
+"No sir."
+
+"You intend to live without such a vulgar thing as learning?"
+
+"No sir--Hugh and I have our lessons at home."
+
+"Teaching each other, I suppose?"
+
+"O no, sir," said Fleda laughing;--"Mme. Lascelles and Mr.
+Schweppenhesser and Signor Barytone come to teach us, besides our
+music masters."
+
+"Do you ever talk German with this Mr. What's-his-name who has just gone
+out with your cousin Marion?"
+
+"I never talk to him at all, sir."
+
+"Don't you? why not? Don't you like him?"
+
+Fleda said "not particularly," and seemed to wish to let the subject pass,
+but the doctor was amused and pressed it.
+
+"Why, why don't you like him?" said he; "I am sure he's a fine looking
+dashing gentleman,--dresses as well as anybody, and talks as much as most
+people,--why don't you like him? Isn't he a handsome fellow, eh?"
+
+"I dare say he is, to many people," said Fleda.
+
+"She said she didn't think there was any moral expression in his face,"
+said Hugh, by way of settling the matter.
+
+"Moral expression!" cried the doctor,--"moral expression!--and what if
+there isn't, you Elf!--what if there isn't?"
+
+"I shouldn't care what other kind of expression it had," said Fleda,
+colouring a little.
+
+Mr. Rossitur 'pished' rather impatiently. The doctor glanced at his niece,
+and changed the subject.
+
+"Well who teaches you English, Miss Fleda? you haven't told me that yet."
+
+"O that we teach ourselves," said Fleda, smiling as if it was a very
+innocent question.
+
+"Hum! you do! Pray how do you teach yourselves?"
+
+"By reading, sir."
+
+"Reading! And what do you read? what have you read in the last twelve
+months, now?"
+
+"I don't think I could remember all exactly," said Fleda.
+
+"But you have got a list of them all," said Hugh, who chanced to have been
+looking over said list of a day or two before and felt quite proud of it.
+
+"Let's have it--let's have it," said the doctor. And Mrs. Rossitur
+laughing said "Let's have it;" and even her husband commanded Hugh to go
+and fetch it; so poor Fleda, though not a little unwilling, was obliged to
+let the list be forthcoming. Hugh brought it, in a neat little book
+covered with pink blotting paper.
+
+"Now for it," said the doctor;--"let us see what this English amounts to.
+Can you stand fire, Elfleda?"
+
+'Jan. 1. Robinson Crusoe.' [Footnote: A true list made by a child of
+that age.]
+
+"Hum--that sounds reasonable, at all events."
+
+"I had it for a New Year present," remarked Fleda, who stood by with
+down-cast eyes, like a person undergoing an examination.
+
+'Jan. 2. Histoire de France.'
+
+"What history of France is this?"
+
+Fleda hesitated and then said it was by Lacretelle.
+
+"Lacretelle?--what, of the Revolution?"
+
+"No sir, it is before that; it is in five or six large volumes."
+
+"What, Louis XV's time!" said the doctor muttering to himself.
+
+'Jan. 27. 2. ditto, ditto.'
+
+"'Two' means the second volume I suppose?"
+
+"Yes sir."
+
+"Hum--if you were a mouse you would gnaw through the wall in time at that
+rate. This is in the original?"
+
+"Yes sir."
+
+'Feb. 3. Paris. L. E. K.'
+
+"What do these hieroglyphics mean?"
+
+"That stands for the 'Library of Entertaining Knowledge,'" said Fleda.
+
+"But how is this?--do you go hop, skip, and jump through these books, or
+read a little and then throw them away? Here it is only seven days since
+you began the second volume of Lacretelle--not time enough to get
+through it."
+
+"O no, sir," said Fleda smiling,--"I like to have several books that I am
+reading in at once,--I mean--at the same time, you know; and then if I am
+not in the mood of one I take up another."
+
+"She reads them all through," said Hugh,--"always, though she reads them
+very quick."
+
+"Hum--I understand," said the old doctor with a humorous expression, going
+on with the list.
+
+'March 3. 3 Hist. de France.'
+
+"But you finish one of these volumes, I suppose, before you begin another;
+or do you dip into different parts of the same work at once?"
+
+"O no, sir;--of course not!"
+
+'Mar. 5. Modern Egyptians. L. E. K. Ap. 13.'
+
+"What are these dates on the right as well as on the left?"
+
+"Those on the right shew when I finished the volume."
+
+"Well I wonder what you were cut out for?" said the doctor. "A
+Quaker!--you aren't a Quaker, are you?"
+
+"No sir," said Fleda laughing.
+
+"You look like it," said he.
+
+'Feb. 24. Five Penny Magazines, finished Mar. 4,'
+
+"They are in paper numbers, you know, sir."
+
+'April 4. 4 Hist. de F.'
+
+"Let us see--the third volume was finished March 29--I declare you keep
+it up pretty well."
+
+'Ap. 19. Incidents of Travel'
+
+"Whose is that?"
+
+"It is by Mr. Stephens."
+
+"How did you like it?"
+
+"O very much indeed."
+
+"Ay, I see you did; you finished it by the first of May. 'Tour to the
+Hebrides'--what? Johnson's?"
+
+"Yes sir."
+
+"Read it all fairly through?"
+
+"Yes sir, certainly."
+
+He smiled and went on.
+
+'May 12. Peter Simple!'
+
+There was quite a shout at the heterogeneous character of Fleda's reading,
+which she, not knowing exactly what to make of it, heard rather abashed.
+
+"' Peter Simple'!" said the doctor, settling himself to go on with his
+list;--"well, let us see.--' World without Souls.' Why you Elf! read in
+two days."
+
+"It is very short, you know, sir."
+
+"What did you think of it?"
+
+"I liked parts of it very much."
+
+He went on, still smiling.
+
+'June 15. Goldsmith's Animated Nature.'
+
+'June 18. 1 Life of Washington.'
+
+"What Life of Washington?"
+
+"Marshall's."
+
+"Hum.--'July 9. 2 Goldsmith's An. Na.' As I live, begun the very day the
+first volume was finished, did you read the whole of that?"
+
+"O yes, sir. I liked that book very much."
+
+'4 July 12. 5 Hist, de France.'
+
+"Two histories on hand at once! Out of all rule, Miss Fleda! We must look
+after you."
+
+"Yes sir; sometimes I wanted to read one, and sometimes I wanted to read
+the other."
+
+"And you always do what you want to do, I suppose?"
+
+"I think the reading does me more good in that way."
+
+'July 15. Paley's Natural Theology!'
+
+There was another shout. Poor Fleda's eyes filled with tears.
+
+"What in the world put that book into your head, or before your eyes?"
+said the doctor.
+
+"I don't know, sir,--I thought I should like to read it," said Fleda,
+drooping her eyelids that the bright drops under them might not be seen.
+
+"And finished in eleven days, as I live!" said the doctor wagging his
+head. 'July 19. 3 Goldsmith's A. N.' 'Aug. 6. 4 Do. Do.'"
+
+"That is one of Fleda's favourite books," put in Hugh.
+
+"So it seems. '6 Hist. de France.'--What does this little cross mean?"
+
+"That shews when the book is finished," said Fleda, looking on the
+page,--"the last volume, I mean."
+
+"'Retrospect of Western Travel'--'Goldsmith's A. N., last vol.'--'Memoirs
+de Sully'--in the French?"
+
+"Yes sir."
+
+"'Life of Newton'--What's this?--'Sep. 8. 1 Fairy Queen!'--not
+Spenser's?"
+
+"Yes sir, I believe so--the Fairy Queen, in five volumes."
+
+The doctor looked up comically at his niece and her husband, who were both
+sitting or standing close by.
+
+"'Sep. 10. Paolo e Virginia.'--In what language?"
+
+"Italian, sir; I was just beginning, and I haven't finished it yet."
+
+"'Sep. 16. Milner's Church History'!--What the deuce!--'Vol. 2. Fairy
+Queen.'--Why this must have been a favourite book too."
+
+"That's one of the books Fleda loves best," said Hugh;--"she went through
+that very fast."
+
+"_Over_ it, you mean, I reckon; how much did you skip, Fleda?"
+
+"I didn't skip at all," said Fleda; "I read every word of it."
+
+"'Sep. 20. 2 Mem. de Sully.'--Well, you're an industrious mouse, I'll say
+that for you.--What's this--'Don Quixotte!'--'Life of Howard.'--'Nov. 17.
+3 Fairy Queen.'--'Nov. 29. 4 Fairy Queen.'--'Dec. 8. 1 Goldsmith's
+England.'--Well if this list of books is a fair exhibit of your taste and
+capacity, you have a most happily proportioned set of intellectuals. Let
+us see--History, fun, facts, nature, theology, poetry and divinity!--upon
+my soul!--and poetry and history the leading features!--a little fun,--as
+much as you could lay your hand on I'll warrant, by that pinch in the
+corner of your eye. And here, the eleventh of December, you finished the
+Fairy Queen;--and ever since, I suppose, you have been imagining yourself
+the 'faire Una,' with Hugh standing for Prince Arthur or the Red-cross
+knight,--haven't you?"
+
+"No sir. I didn't imagine anything about it."
+
+"Don't tell me! What did you read it for?"
+
+"Only because I liked it, sir. I liked it better than any other book I
+read last year."
+
+"You did! Well, the year ends, I see, with another volume of Sully. I
+won't enter upon this year's list. Pray how much of all these volumes do
+you suppose you remember? I'll try and find out, next time I come to see
+you. I can give a guess, if you study with that little pug in your lap."
+
+"He is not a pug!" said Fleda, in whose arms King was lying
+luxuriously,--"and he never gets into my lap besides."
+
+[Illustration: "He is not a pug."]
+
+"Don't he! Why not?"
+
+"Because I don't like it, sir. I don't like to see dogs in laps."
+
+"But all the ladies in the land do it, you little Saxon! it is universally
+considered a mark of distinction."
+
+"I can't help what all the ladies in the land do," said Fleda. "That won't
+alter my liking, and I don't think a lady's lap is a place for a dog."
+
+"I wish you were _my_ daughter!" said the old doctor, shaking his head
+at her with a comic fierce expression of countenance, which Fleda
+perfectly understood and laughed at accordingly. Then as the two
+children with the dog went off into the other room, he said, turning to
+his niece and Mr. Rossitur,
+
+"If that girl ever takes a wrong turn with the bit in her teeth, you'll be
+puzzled to hold her. What stuff will you make the reins of?"
+
+"I don't think she ever will take a wrong turn," said Mr. Rossitur.
+
+"A look is enough to manage her, if she did," said his wife. "Hugh is not
+more gentle."
+
+"I should be inclined rather to fear her not having stability of character
+enough," said Mr. Rossitur. "She is so very meek and yielding, I almost
+doubt whether anything would give her courage to take ground of her own
+and keep it."
+
+"Hum------well, well!" said the old doctor, walking off after the
+children. "Prince Arthur, will you bring this damsel up to my den some of
+these days?--the 'faire Una' is safe from the wild beasts, you know;--and
+I'll shew her books enough to build herself a house with, if she likes."
+
+The acceptance of this invitation led to some of the pleasantest hours of
+Fleda's city life. The visits to the great library became very frequent.
+Dr. Gregory and the children were little while in growing fond of each
+other; he loved to see them and taught them to come at such times as the
+library was free of visitors and his hands of engagements. Then he
+delighted himself with giving them pleasure, especially Fleda, whose quick
+curiosity and intelligence were a constant amusement to him. He would
+establish the children in some corner of the large apartments, out of the
+way behind a screen of books and tables; and there shut out from the world
+they would enjoy a kind of fairyland pleasure over some volume or set of
+engravings that they could not see at home. Hours and hours were spent so.
+Fleda would stand clasping her hands before Audubon, or rapt over a finely
+illustrated book of travels, or going through and through with Hugh the
+works of the best masters of the pencil and the graver. The doctor found
+he could trust them, and then all the treasures of the library were at
+their disposal. Very often he put chosen pieces of reading into their
+hands; and it was pleasantest of all when he was not busy and came and sat
+down with them; for with all his odd manner he was extremely kind and
+could and did put them in the way to profit greatly by their
+opportunities. The doctor and the children had nice times there together.
+
+They lasted for many months, and grew more and more worth. Mr. Schweden
+carried off Marion, as Fleda had foreseen he would, before the end of
+spring; and after she was gone something like the old pleasant Paris life
+was taken up again. They had no more company now than was agreeable, and
+it was picked not to suit Marion's taste but her father's,--a very
+different matter. Fleda and Hugh were not forbidden the dinner-table, and
+so had the good of hearing much useful conversation from which the former,
+according to custom, made her steady precious gleanings. The pleasant
+evenings in the family were still better enjoyed than they used to he;
+Fleda was older; and the snug handsome American house had a home-feeling
+to her that the wide Parisian saloons never knew. She had become bound to
+her uncle and aunt by all but the ties of blood; nobody in the house ever
+remembered that she was not born their daughter; except indeed Fleda
+herself, who remembered everything, and with whom the forming of any new
+affections or relations somehow never blotted out or even faded the
+register of the old. It lived in all its brightness; the writing of past
+loves and friendships was as plain as ever in her heart; and often, often,
+the eye and the kiss of memory fell upon it. In the secret of her heart's
+core; for still, as at the first, no one had a suspicion of the movings of
+thought that were beneath that childish brow. No one guessed how clear a
+judgment weighed and decided upon many things. No one dreamed, amid their
+busy, hustling, thoughtless life, how often, in the street, in her bed, in
+company and alone, her mother's last prayer was in Fleda's heart; well
+cherished; never forgotten.
+
+Her education and Hugh's meanwhile went on after the old fashion. If Mr.
+Rossitur had more time he seemed to have no more thought for the matter;
+and Mrs. Rossitur, fine-natured as she was, had never been trained to
+self-exertion, and of course was entirely out of the way of training
+others. Her children were pieces of perfection, and needed no oversight;
+her house was a piece of perfection too. If either had not been, Mrs.
+Rossitur would have been utterly at a loss how to mend matters,--except in
+the latter instance by getting a new housekeeper; and as Mrs. Renney, the
+good woman who held that station, was in everybody's opinion another
+treasure, Mrs. Rossitur's mind was uncrossed by the shadow of such a
+dilemma. With Mrs. Renney as with every one else Fleda was held in highest
+regard; always welcome to her premises and to those mysteries of her trade
+which were sacred from other intrusion.
+
+Fleda's natural inquisitiveness carried her often to the housekeeper's
+room, and made her there the same curious and careful observer that she
+had been in the library or at the Louvre.
+
+"Come," said Hugh one day when he had sought and found her in Mrs.
+Renney's precincts,--"come away, Fleda! What do you want to stand here and
+see Mrs. Renney roll butter and sugar for?"
+
+"My dear Mr. Rossitur!" said Fleda,--"you don't understand quelquechoses.
+How do you know but I may have to get my living by making them, some day."
+
+"By making what?" said Hugh.
+
+"Quelquechoses,--anglicé, kickshaws,--alias, sweet trifles denominated
+merrings."
+
+"Pshaw, Fleda!"
+
+"Miss Fleda is more likely to get her living by eating them, Mr. Hugh,
+isn't she?" said the housekeeper.
+
+"I hope to decline both lines of life," said Fleda laughingly as she
+followed Hugh out of the room. But her chance remark had grazed the truth
+sufficiently near.
+
+Those years in New York were a happy time for little Fleda, a time when
+mind and body flourished under the sun of prosperity. Luxury did not spoil
+her; and any one that saw her in the soft furs of her winter wrappings
+would have said that delicate cheek and frame were never made to know the
+unkindliness of harsher things.
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI.
+
+
+
+  Whereunto is money good?
+  Who has it not wants hardihood,
+  Who has it has much trouble and care,
+  Who once has had it has despair.
+
+  Longfellow. _From the German_.
+
+
+It was the middle of winter. One day Hugh and Fleda had come home from
+their walk. They dashed into the parlour, complaining that it was bitterly
+cold, and began unrobing before the glowing grate, which was a mass of
+living fire from end to end. Mrs. Rossitur was there in an easy chair,
+alone and doing nothing. That was not a thing absolutely unheard of, but
+Fleda had not pulled off her second glove before she bent down towards her
+and in a changed tone tenderly asked if she did not feel well?
+
+Mrs. Rossitur looked up in her face a minute, and then drawing her down
+kissed the blooming cheeks one and the other several times. But as she
+looked off to the fire again Fleda saw that it was through watering eyes.
+She dropped on her knees by the side of the easy chair that she might have
+a better sight of that face, and tried to read it as she asked again what
+was the matter; and Hugh coming to the other side repeated her question.
+His mother passed an arm round each, looking wistfully from one to the
+other and kissing them earnestly, but she said only, with a very
+heart-felt emphasis, "Poor children!"
+
+Fleda was now afraid to speak, but Hugh pressed his inquiry.
+
+"Why 'poor' mamma? what makes you say so?"
+
+"Because you are poor really, dear Hugh. We have lost everything we have
+in the world."
+
+"Mamma! What do you mean?"
+
+"Your father has failed."
+
+"Failed!--But, mamma, I thought he wasn't in business?"
+
+"So I thought," said Mrs. Rossitur;--"I didn't know people could fail
+that were not in business; but it seems they can. He was a partner in
+some concern or other, and it's all broken to pieces, and your father
+with it, he says."
+
+Mrs. Rossitur's face was distressful. They were all silent for a little;
+Hugh kissing his mother's wet cheeks. Fleda had softly nestled her head in
+her bosom. But Mrs. Rossitur soon recovered herself.
+
+"How bad is it, mother?" said Hugh.
+
+"As bad as can possibly be."
+
+"Is _everything_ gone?"
+
+"Everything."
+
+"You don't mean the house, mamma?"
+
+"The house, and all that is in it."
+
+The children's hearts were struck, and they were silent again, only
+a trembling touch of Fleda's lips spoke sympathy and patience if
+ever a kiss did.
+
+"But mamma," said Hugh, after he had gathered breath for it,--"do you
+mean to say that _everything_, literally _everything_, is gone? is there
+nothing left?"
+
+"Nothing in the world--not a sou."
+
+"Then what are we going to do?"
+
+Mrs. Rossitur shook her head, and had no words.
+
+Fleda _looked_ across to Hugh to ask no more, and putting her arms
+round her aunt's neck and laying cheek to cheek, she spoke what comfort
+she could.
+
+"Don't, dear aunt Lucy!--there will be some way--things always turn out
+better than at first--I dare say we shall find out it isn't so bad by and
+by. Don't you mind it, and then we won't. We can be happy anywhere
+together."
+
+If there was not much in the reasoning there was something in the tone of
+the words to bid Mrs. Rossitur bear herself well. Its tremulous sweetness,
+its anxious love, was without a taint of self-recollection; its sorrow was
+for _her_. Mrs. Rossitur felt that she must not shew herself overcome. She
+again kissed and blessed and pressed closer in her arms her little
+comforter, while her other hand was given to Hugh.
+
+"I have only heard about it this morning. Your uncle was here telling me
+just now,--a little while before you came. Don't say anything about it
+before him."
+
+Why not? The words struck Fleda disagreeably.
+
+"What will be done with the house, mamma?" said Hugh.
+
+"Sold--sold, and everything in it."
+
+"Papa's books, mamma! and all the things in the library!" exclaimed Hugh,
+looking terrified.
+
+Mrs. Rossitur's face gave the answer; do it in words she could not.
+
+The children were a long time silent, trying hard to swallow this bitter
+pill; and still Hugh's hand was in his mother's and Fleda's head lay on
+her bosom. Thought was busy, going up and down, and breaking the
+companionship they had so long held with the pleasant drawing-room and the
+tasteful arrangements among which Fleda was so much at home;--the easy
+chairs in whose comfortable arms she had had so many an hour of nice
+reading; the soft rug where in the very wantonness of frolic she had
+stretched herself to play with King; that very luxurious, bright grateful
+of fire, which had given her so often the same warm welcome home, an apt
+introduction to the other stores of comfort which awaited her above and
+below stairs; the rich-coloured curtains and carpet, the beauty of which
+had been such a constant gratification to Fleda's eye; and the exquisite
+French table and lamps they had brought out with them, in which her uncle
+and aunt had so much pride and which could nowhere be matched for
+elegance;--they must all be said 'good-bye' to; and as yet fancy had
+nothing to furnish the future with; it looked very bare.
+
+King had come in and wagged himself up close to his mistress, but even he
+could obtain nothing but the touch of most abstracted finger ends. Yet,
+though keenly recognized, these thoughts were only passing compared with
+the anxious and sorrowful ones that went to her aunt and uncle; for Hugh
+and her, she judged, it was less matter. And Mrs. Rossitur's care was most
+for her husband; and Hugh's was for them all. His associations were less
+quick and his tastes less keen than Fleda's and less a part of himself.
+Hugh lived in his affections; with a salvo to them, he could bear to lose
+anything and go anywhere.
+
+"Mamma," said he after a long time,--"will anything be done with
+Fleda's books?"
+
+A question that had been in Fleda's mind before, but which she had
+patiently forborne just then to ask.
+
+"No indeed!" said Mrs. Rossitur, pressing Fleda more closely and kissing
+in a kind of rapture the sweet thoughtful face;--"not yours, my darling;
+they can't touch anything that belongs to you--I wish it was more--and I
+don't suppose they will take anything of mine either."
+
+"Ah, well!" said Fleda raising her head, "you have got quite a parcel of
+books, aunt Lucy, and I have a good many--how well it is I have had so
+many given me since I have been here!--That will make quite a nice little
+library, both together, and Hugh has some; I thought perhaps we shouldn't
+have one at all left, and that would have been rather bad."
+
+'Rather bad'! Mrs. Rossitur looked at her, and was dumb.
+
+"Only don't you wear a sad face for anything!" Fleda went on
+earnestly;--"we shall be perfectly happy if you and uncle Rolf only will
+be."
+
+"My dear children!" said Mrs. Rossitur wiping her eyes,--"it is for you I
+am unhappy--you and your uncle;--I do not think of myself."
+
+"And we do not think of ourselves, mamma," said Hugh.
+
+"I know it--but having good children don't make one care less about them,"
+said Mrs. Rossitur, the tears fairly raining over her fingers.
+
+Hugh pulled the fingers down and again tried the efficacy of his lips.
+
+"And you know papa thinks most of you, mamma."
+
+"Ah, your father!"--said Mrs. Rossitur shaking her head,--"I am afraid it
+will go hard with him!--But I will be happy as long as I have you two, or
+else I should be a very wicked woman. It only grieves me to think of your
+education and prospects--"
+
+"Fleda's piano, mamma!" said Hugh with sudden dismay.
+
+Mrs. Rossitur shook her head again and covered her eyes, while Fleda
+stretching across to Hugh gave him by look and touch an earnest admonition
+to let that subject alone. And then with a sweetness and gentleness like
+nothing but the breath of the south wind, she wooed her aunt to hope and
+resignation. Hugh held back, feeling, or thinking, that Fleda could do it
+better than he, and watching her progress, as Mrs. Rossitur took her hand
+from her face, and smiled, at first mournfully and then really mirthfully
+in Fleda's face, at some sally that nobody but a nice observer would have
+seen was got up for the occasion. And it was hardly that, so completely
+had the child forgotten her own sorrow in ministering to that of another.
+"Blessed are the peacemakers"! It is always so.
+
+"You are a witch or a fairy," said Mrs. Rossitur, catching her again in
+her arms,--"nothing else! You must try your powers of charming upon
+your uncle."
+
+Fleda laughed, without any effort; but as to trying her slight wand upon
+Mr. Rossitur she had serious doubts. And the doubts became certainty when
+they met at dinner; he looked so grave that she dared not attack him. It
+was a gloomy meal, for the face that should have lighted the whole table
+cast a shadow there.
+
+Without at all comprehending the whole of her husband's character the sure
+magnetism of affection had enabled Mrs. Rossitur to divine his thoughts.
+Pride was his ruling passion; not such pride as Mr. Carleton's, which was
+rather like exaggerated self-respect, but wider and more indiscriminate in
+its choice of objects. It was pride in his family name; pride in his own
+talents, which were considerable; pride in his family, wife and children
+and all of which he thought did him honour,--if they had not his love for
+them assuredly would have known some diminishing; pride in his wealth and
+in the attractions with which it surrounded him; and lastly, pride in the
+skill, taste and connoisseurship which enabled him to bring those
+attractions together. Furthermore, his love for both literature and art
+was true and strong; and for many years he had accustomed himself to lead
+a life of great luxuriousness; catering for body and mind in every taste
+that could be elegantly enjoyed; and again proud of the elegance of every
+enjoyment. The change of circumstances which touched his pride wounded him
+at every point where he was vulnerable at all.
+
+Fleda had never felt so afraid of him. She was glad to see Dr. Gregory
+come in to tea. Mr. Rossitur was not there. The doctor did not touch upon
+affairs, if he had heard of their misfortune; he went on as usual in a
+rambling cheerful way all tea-time, talking mostly to Fleda and Hugh. But
+after tea he talked no more but sat still and waited till the master of
+the house came in.
+
+Fleda thought Mr. Rossitur did not look glad to see him. But how could he
+look glad about anything? He did not sit down, and for a few minutes there
+was a kind of meaning silence. Fleda sat in the corner with the heartache,
+to see her uncle's gloomy tramp up and down the rich apartment, and her
+aunt Lucy gaze at him.
+
+"Humph!--well--So!" said the doctor at last,--"You've all gone overboard
+with a smash, I understand?"
+
+The walker gave him no regard.
+
+"True, is it?" said the doctor.
+
+Mr. Rossitur made no answer, unless a smothered grunt might be
+taken for one.
+
+"How came it about?"
+
+"Folly and Devilry."
+
+"Humph!--bad capital to work upon. I hope the principal is gone with the
+interest. What's the amount of your loss?"
+
+"Ruin."
+
+"Humph.--French ruin, or American ruin? because there's a difference. What
+do you mean?"
+
+"I am not so happy as to understand you sir, but we shall not pay seventy
+cents on the dollar."
+
+The old gentleman got up and stood before the fire with his back to Mr.
+Rossitur, saying "that was rather bad."
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+Mr. Rossitur hesitated a few moments for an answer and then said,
+
+"Pay the seventy cents and begin the world anew with nothing."
+
+"Of course!" said the doctor. "I understand that; but where and how? What
+end of the world will you take up first?"
+
+Mr. Rossitur writhed in impatience or disgust, and after again hesitating
+answered dryly that he had not determined.
+
+"Have you thought of anything in particular?"
+
+"Zounds! no sir, except my misfortune. That's enough for one day."
+
+"And too much," said the old doctor, "unless you can mix some other
+thought with it. That's what I came for. Will you go into business?"
+
+Fleda was startled by the vehemence with which her uncle said, "No,
+never!"--and he presently added, "I'll do nothing here."
+
+"Well,--well," said the doctor to himself;--"Will you go into the
+country?"
+
+"Yes!--anywhere!--the further the better."
+
+Mrs. Rossitur startled, but her husband's face did not encourage her to
+open her lips.
+
+"Ay but on a farm, I mean?"
+
+"On anything, that will give me a standing."
+
+"I thought that too," said Dr. Gregory, now whirling about. "I have a fine
+piece of land that wants a tenant. You may take it at an easy rate, and
+pay me when the crops come in. I shouldn't expect so young a farmer, you
+know, to keep any closer terms."
+
+"How far is it?"
+
+"Far enough--up in Wyandot County."
+
+"How large?"
+
+"A matter of two or three hundred acres or so. It is very fine, they say.
+It came into a fellow's hands that owed me what I thought was a bad debt,
+so for fear he would never pay me I thought best to take it and pay him;
+whether the place will ever fill my pockets again remains to be seen;
+doubtful, I think."
+
+"I'll take it, Dr. Gregory, and see if I cannot bring that about."
+
+"Pooh, pooh! fill your own. I am not careful about it; the less money one
+has the more it jingles, unless it gets _too_ low indeed."
+
+"I will take it, Dr. Gregory, and feel myself under obligation to you."
+
+"No, I told you, not till the crops come in. No obligation is binding till
+the term is up. Well, I'll see you further about it."
+
+"But Rolf!" said Mrs. Rossitur,--"stop a minute, uncle, don't go
+yet,--Rolf don't know anything in the world about the management of a
+farm, neither do I."
+
+"The 'faire Una' can enlighten you," said the doctor, waving his hand
+towards his little favourite in the corner,--"but I forgot!--Well, if you
+don't know, the crops won't come in--that's all the difference."
+
+But Mrs. Rossitur looked anxiously at her husband. "Do you know exactly
+what you are undertaking, Rolf?" she said.
+
+"If I do not, I presume I shall discover in time."
+
+"But it may be too late," said Mrs Rossitur, in the tone of sad
+remonstrance that had gone all the length it dared.
+
+"It _can not_ be too late!" said her husband impatiently. "If I do not
+know what I am taking up, I know very well what I am laying down; and it
+does not signify a straw what comes after--if it was a snail-shell, that
+would cover my head!"
+
+"Hum--" said the old doctor,--"the snail is very well in his way, but I
+have no idea that he was ever cut out for a farmer."
+
+"Do you think you will find it a business you would like, Mr. Rossitur?"
+said his wife timidly.
+
+"I tell you," said he facing about, "it is not a question of liking. I
+will like anything that will bury me out of the world!"
+
+Poor Mrs. Rossitur. She had not yet come to wishing herself buried alive,
+and she had small faith in the permanence of her husband's taste for it.
+She looked desponding.
+
+"You don't suppose," said Mr. Rossitur stopping again in the middle of the
+floor after another turn and a half,--"you do not suppose that I am going
+to take the labouring of the farm upon myself? I shall employ some one of
+course, who understands the matter, to take all that off my hands."
+
+The doctor thought of the old proverb and the alternative the plough
+presents to those who would thrive by it; Fleda thought of Mr. Didenhover;
+Mrs. Rossitur would fain have suggested that such an important person must
+be well paid; but neither of them spoke.
+
+"Of course," said Mr. Rossitur haughtily as he went on with his walk, "I
+do not expect any more than you to live in the back-woods the life we have
+been leading here. That is at an end."
+
+"Is it a very wild country?" asked Mrs. Rossitur of the doctor.
+
+"No wild beasts, my dear, if that is your meaning,--and I do not suppose
+there are even many snakes left by this time."
+
+"No, but dear uncle, I mean, is it in an unsettled state?"
+
+"No my dear, not at all,--perfectly quiet."
+
+"Ah but do not play with me," exclaimed poor Mrs. Rossitur between
+laughing and crying;--"I mean is it far from any town and not among
+neighbours?"
+
+"Far enough to be out of the way of morning calls," said the doctor;--"and
+when your neighbours come to see you they will expect tea by four o'clock.
+There are not a great many near by, but they don't mind coming from five
+or six miles off."
+
+Mrs. Rossitur looked chilled and horrified. To her he had described a very
+wild country indeed. Fleda would have laughed if it had not been for her
+aunt's face; but that settled down into a doubtful anxious look that
+pained her. It pained the old doctor too.
+
+"Come," said he touching her pretty chin with his forefinger,--"what are
+you thinking of? folks may be good folks and yet have tea at four o'clock,
+mayn't they?"
+
+"When do they have dinner!" said Mrs. Rossitur.
+
+"I really don't know. When you get settled up there I'll come and see."
+
+"Hardly," said Mrs. Rossitur. "I don't believe it would be possible for
+Emile to get dinner before the tea-time; and I am sure I shouldn't like to
+propose such a thing to Mrs. Renney."
+
+The doctor fidgeted about a little on the hearth-rug and looked comical,
+perfectly understood by one acute observer in the corner.
+
+"Are you wise enough to imagine, Lucy," said Mr. Rossitur sternly, "that
+you can carry your whole establishment with you? What do you suppose Emile
+and Mrs. Renney would do in a farmhouse?"
+
+"I can do without whatever you can," said Mrs. Rossitur meekly. "I did not
+know that you would be willing to part with Emile, and I do not think Mrs.
+Renney would like to leave us."
+
+"I told you before, it is no more a question of liking," answered he.
+
+"And if it were," said the doctor, "I have no idea that Monsieur Emile and
+Madame Renney would be satisfied with the style of a country kitchen, or
+think the interior of Yankee land a hopeful sphere for their energies."
+
+"What sort of a house is it?" said Mrs. Rossitur.
+
+"A wooden frame house, I believe."
+
+"No but, dear uncle, do tell me."
+
+"What sort of a house?--Humph--Large enough, I am told. It will
+accommodate you, in one way."
+
+"Comfortable?"
+
+"I don't know," said the doctor shaking his head;--"depends on who's in
+it. No house is that per se. But I reckon there isn't much plate glass. I
+suppose you'll find the doors all painted blue, and every fireplace with a
+crane in it."
+
+"A crane!" said Mrs. Rossitur, to whose imagination the word suggested
+nothing but a large water-bird with a long neck.
+
+"Ay!" said the doctor. "But it's just as well. You won't want hanging
+lamps there,--and candelabra would hardly be in place either, to hold
+tallow candles."
+
+"Tallow candles!" exclaimed Mrs. Rossitur. Her husband winced, but
+said nothing.
+
+"Ay," said the doctor again,--"and make them yourself if you are a good
+housewife. Come, Lucy," said he taking her hand, "do you know how the
+wild fowl do on the Chesapeake?--duck and swim under water till they
+can shew their heads with safety? O spoil your eyes to see by a
+tallow candle."
+
+Mrs. Rossitur half smiled, but looked anxiously towards her husband.
+
+"Pooh, pooh! Rolf won't care what the light burns that lights him to
+independence,--and when you get there you may illuminate with a whole
+whale if you like. By the way, Rolf, there is a fine water power up
+yonder, and a saw-mill in good order, they tell me, but a short way from
+the house. Hugh might learn to manage it, and it would be fine
+employment for him."
+
+"Hugh!" said his mother disconsolately. Mr. Rossitur neither spoke nor
+looked an answer. Fleda sprang forward.
+
+"A saw-mill!--Uncle Orrin!--where is it?"
+
+"Just a little way from the house, they say. _You_ can't manage it, fair
+Saxon!--though you look as if you would undertake all the mills in
+creation, for a trifle."
+
+"No but the place, uncle Orrin;--where is the place?"
+
+"The place? Hum--why it's up in Wyandot County--some five or six miles
+from the Montepoole Spring--what's this they call it?--Queechy!--By the
+way!" said he, reading Fleda's countenance, "it is the very place where
+your father was born!--it is! I didn't think of that before."
+
+Fleda's hands were clasped.
+
+"O I am very glad!" she said. "It's my old home. It is the most lovely
+place, aunt Lucy!--most lovely--and we shall have some good neighbours
+there too. O I am very glad!--The dear old saw-mill!--"
+
+"Dear old saw-mill!" said the doctor looking at her. "Rolf, I'll tell you
+what, you shall give me this girl. I want her. I can take better care of
+her, perhaps, now than you can. Let her come to me when you leave the
+city--it will be better for her than to help work the saw-mill; and I
+have as good a right to her as anybody, for Amy before her was like my
+own child."
+
+The doctor spoke not with his usual light jesting manner but very
+seriously. Hugh's lips parted,--Mrs. Rossitur looked with a sad thoughtful
+look at Fleda,--Mr. Rossitur walked up and down looking at nobody. Fleda
+watched him.
+
+"What does Fleda herself say?" said he stopping short suddenly. His face
+softened and his eye changed as it fell upon her, for the first time that
+day. Fleda saw her opening; she came to him, within his arms, and laid her
+head upon his breast.
+
+"What does Fleda say?" said he, softly kissing her.
+
+Fleda's tears said a good deal, that needed no interpreter. She felt her
+uncle's hand passed more and more tenderly over her head, so tenderly that
+it made it all the more difficult for her to govern herself and stop her
+tears. But she did stop them, and looked up at him then with such a
+face--so glowing through smiles and tears--it was like a very rainbow of
+hope upon the cloud of their prospects. Mr. Rossitur felt the power of the
+sunbeam wand, it reached his heart; it was even with a smile that he said
+as he looked at her,
+
+"Will you go to your uncle Orrin, Fleda?"
+
+"Not if uncle Rolf will keep me."
+
+"Keep you!" said Mr. Rossitur;--"I should like to see who wouldn't keep
+you!--There, Dr. Gregory, you have your answer."
+
+"Hum!--I might have known," said the doctor, "that the 'faire Una' would
+abjure cities.--Come here, you Elf!"--and he wrapped her in his arms so
+tight she could not stir,--"I have a spite against you for this. What
+amends will you make me for such an affront?"
+
+"Let me take breath," said Fleda laughing, "and I'll tell you. You don't
+want any amends, uncle Orrin."
+
+"Well," said he, gazing with more feeling than he cared to shew into that
+sweet face, so innocent of apology-making,--"you shall promise me that you
+will not forget uncle Orrin and the old house in Bleecker street."
+
+Fleda's eyes grew more wistful.
+
+"And will you promise me that if ever you want anything you will come or
+send straight there?"
+
+"If ever I want anything I can't get nor do without," said Fleda.
+
+"Pshaw!" said the doctor letting her go, but laughing at the same time.
+"Mind my words, Mr. and Mrs. Rossitur;--if ever that girl takes the wrong
+bit in her mouth--Well, well! I'll go home."
+
+Home he went. The rest drew together particularly near, round the fire;
+Hugh at his father's shoulder, and Fleda kneeling on the rug between her
+uncle and aunt with a hand on each; and there was not one of them whose
+gloom was not lightened by her bright face and cheerful words of hope that
+in the new scenes they were going to, "they would all be so happy."
+
+The days that followed were gloomy; but Fleda's ministry was unceasing.
+Hugh seconded her well, though more passively. Feeling less pain himself,
+he perhaps for that very reason was less acutely alive to it in others;
+not so quick to foresee and ward off, not so skilful to allay it. Fleda
+seemed to have intuition for the one and a charm for the other. To her
+there was pain in every parting; her sympathies clung to whatever wore
+the livery of habit. There was hardly any piece of furniture, there was
+no book or marble or picture, that she could take leave of without a
+pang. But it was kept to herself; her sorrowful good-byes were said in
+secret; before others, in all those weeks she was a very Euphrosyne;
+light, bright, cheerful, of eye and foot and hand; a shield between her
+aunt and every annoyance that _she_ could take instead; a good little
+fairy, that sent her sunbeam wand, quick as a flash, where any eye rested
+gloomily. People did not always find out where the light came from, but
+it was her witchery.
+
+The creditors would touch none of Mrs. Rossitur's things, her husband's
+honourable behaviour had been so thorough. They even presented him with
+one or two pictures which he sold for a considerable sum; and to Mrs.
+Rossitur they gave up all the plate in daily use; a matter of great
+rejoicing to Fleda who knew well how sorely it would have been missed. She
+and her aunt had quite a little library too, of their own private store; a
+little one it was indeed, but the worth of every volume was now trebled in
+her eyes. Their furniture was all left behind; and in its stead went some
+of neat light painted wood which looked to Fleda deliciously countryfied.
+A promising cook and housemaid were engaged to go with them to the wilds;
+and about the first of April they turned their backs upon the city.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII
+
+
+
+  The thresher's weary flingin-tree
+  The lee-lang day had tired me:
+  And whan the day bad closed his e'e,
+  Far i' the west,
+  Ben i' the spence, right pensivelie,
+  I 'gaed to rest.
+
+  Burns.
+
+
+Queechy was reached at night. Fleda had promised herself to be off almost
+with the dawn of light the next morning to see aunt Miriam, but a heavy
+rain kept her fast at home the whole day. It was very well; she was
+wanted there.
+
+Despite the rain and her disappointment it was impossible for Fleda to lie
+abed from the time the first grey light began to break in at her
+windows,--those old windows that had rattled their welcome to her all
+night. She was up and dressed and had had a long consultation with herself
+over matters and prospects, before anybody else had thought of leaving the
+indubitable comfort of a feather bed for the doubtful contingency of
+happiness that awaited them down stairs. Fleda took in the whole length
+and breadth of it, half wittingly and half through some finer sense than
+that of the understanding.
+
+The first view of things could not strike them pleasantly; it was not to
+be looked for. The doors did not happen to be painted blue; they were a
+deep chocolate colour; doors and wainscot. The fireplaces were not all
+furnished with cranes, but they were all uncouthly wide and deep. Nobody
+would have thought them so indeed in the winter, when piled up with
+blazing hickory logs, but in summer they yawned uncomfortably upon the
+eye. The ceilings were low; the walls rough papered or rougher
+white-washed; the sashes not hung; the rooms, otherwise well enough
+proportioned, stuck with little cupboards, in recesses and corners and out
+of the way places, in a style impertinently suggestive of housekeeping,
+and fitted to shock any symmetrical set of nerves. The old house had
+undergone a thorough putting in order, it is true; the chocolate paint was
+just dry, and the paper hangings freshly put up; and the bulk of the new
+furniture had been sent on before and unpacked, though not a single
+article of it was in its right place. The house was clean and tight, that
+is, as tight as it ever was. But the colour had been unfortunately
+chosen--perhaps there was no help for that;--the paper was _very_ coarse
+and countryfied; the big windows were startling, they looked so bare,
+without any manner of drapery; and the long reaches of wall were unbroken
+by mirror or picture-frame. And this to eyes trained to eschew
+ungracefulness and that abhorred a vacuum as much as nature is said to do!
+Even Fleda felt there was something disagreeable in the change, though it
+reached her more through the channel of other people's sensitiveness than
+her own. To her it was the dear old house still, though her eyes had seen
+better things since they loved it. No corner or recess had a pleasanter
+filling, to her fancy, than the old brown cupboard or shelves which had
+always been there. But what _would_ her uncle say to them! and to that
+dismal paper! and what would aunt Lucy think of those rattling window
+sashes! this cool raw day too, for the first!--
+
+Think as she might Fleda did not stand still to think. She had gone softly
+all over the house, taking a strange look at the old places and the images
+with which memory filled them, thinking of the last time, and many a time
+before that;--and she had at last come back to the sitting-room, long
+before anybody else was down stairs; the two tired servants were just
+rubbing their eyes open in the kitchen and speculating themselves awake.
+Leaving them, at their peril, to get ready a decent breakfast, (by the way
+she grudged them the old kitchen) Fleda set about trying what her wand
+could do towards brightening the face of affairs in the other part of the
+house. It was quite cold enough for a fire, luckily. She ordered one made,
+and meanwhile busied herself with the various stray packages and articles
+of wearing apparel that lay scattered about giving the whole place a look
+of discomfort. Fleda gathered them up and bestowed them in one or two of
+the impertinent cupboards, and then undertook the labour of carrying out
+all the wrong furniture that had got into the breakfast-room and bringing
+in that which really belonged there from the hall and the parlour beyond;
+moving like a mouse that she might not disturb the people up stairs. A
+quarter of an hour was spent in arranging to the best advantage these
+various pieces of furniture in the room; it was the very same in which Mr.
+Carleton and Charlton Rossitur had been received the memorable day of the
+roast pig dinner, but that was not the uppermost association in Fleda's
+mind. Satisfied at last that a happier effect could not be produced with
+the given materials, and well pleased too with her success, Fleda turned
+to the fire. It was made, but not by any means doing its part to encourage
+the other portions of the room to look their best. Fleda knew something of
+wood fires from old times; she laid hold of the tongs, and touched and
+loosened and coaxed a stick here and there, with a delicate hand, till,
+seeing the very opening it had wanted,--without which neither fire nor
+hope can keep its activity,--the blaze sprang up energetically, crackling
+through all the piled oak and hickory and driving the smoke clean out of
+sight. Fleda had done her work. It would have been a misanthropical person
+indeed that could have come into the room then and not felt his face
+brighten. One other thing remained,--setting the breakfast table; and
+Fleda would let no hands but hers do it this morning; she was curious
+about the setting of tables. How she remembered or divined where
+everything had been stowed; how quietly and efficiently her little fingers
+unfastened hampers and pried into baskets, without making any noise; till
+all the breakfast paraphernalia of silver, china, and table-linen was
+found, gathered from various receptacles, and laid in most exquisite order
+on the table. State street never saw better. Fleda stood and looked at it
+then, in immense satisfaction, seeing that her uncle's eye would miss
+nothing of its accustomed gratification. To her the old room, shining with
+firelight and new furniture, was perfectly charming. If those great
+windows were staringly bright, health and cheerfulness seemed to look in
+at them. And what other images of association, with "nods and becks and
+wreathed smiles," looked at her out of the curling flames in the old wide
+fireplace! And one other angel stood there unseen,--the one whose errand
+it is to see fulfilled the promise, "Give and it shall be given to you;
+full measure, and pressed down, and heaped up, and running over."
+
+A little while Fleda sat contentedly eying her work; then a new idea
+struck her and she sprang up. In the next meadow, only one fence between,
+a little spring of purest water ran through from the woodland; water
+cresses used to grow there. Uncle Rolf was very fond of them. It was
+pouring with rain, but no matter. Her heart beating between haste and
+delight, Fleda slipped her feet into galoches and put an old cloak of
+Hugh's over her head, and ran out through the kitchen, the old accustomed
+way. The servants exclaimed and entreated, but Fleda only flashed a bright
+look at them from under her cloak as she opened the door, and ran off,
+over the wet grass, under the fence, and over half the meadow, till she
+came to the stream. She was getting a delicious taste of old times, and
+though the spring water was very cold and with it and the rain one-half of
+each sleeve was soon thoroughly wetted, she gathered her cresses and
+scampered back with a pair of eyes and cheeks that might have struck any
+city belle chill with envy.
+
+"Then but that's a sweet girl!" said Mary the cook to Jane the housemaid.
+
+"A lovely countenance she has," answered Jane, who was refined in
+her speech.
+
+"Take her away and you've taken the best of the house, I'm a thinking."
+
+"Mrs. Rossitur is a lady," said Jane in a low voice.
+
+"Ay, and a very proper-behaved one she is, and him the same, that is, for
+a gentleman I maan; but Jane! I say, I'm thinking he'll have eat too much
+sour bread lately! I wish I knowed how they'd have their eggs boiled, till
+I'd have 'em ready."
+
+"Sure it's on the table itself they'll do 'em," said Jane. "They've an
+elegant little fixture in there for the purpose."
+
+"Is that it!"
+
+Nobody found out how busy Fleda's wand had been in the old breakfast room.
+But she was not disappointed; she had not worked for praise. Her cresses
+were appreciated; that was enough. She enjoyed her breakfast, the only one
+of the party that did. Mr. Rossitur looked moody; his wife looked anxious;
+and Hugh's face was the reflection of theirs. If Fleda's face reflected
+anything it was the sunlight of heaven.
+
+"How sweet the air is after New York!" said she.
+
+They looked at her. There was a fresh sweetness of another kind about that
+breakfast-table. They all felt it, and breathed more freely.
+
+"Delicious cresses!" said Mrs. Rossitur.
+
+"Yes, I wonder where they came from," said her husband. "Who got them?"
+
+"I guess Fleda knows," said Hugh.
+
+"They grow in a little stream of spring water over here in the meadow,"
+said Fleda demurely.
+
+"Yes, but you don't answer my question," said her uncle, putting his hand
+under her chin and smiling at the blushing face he brought round to
+view;--"Who got them?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"You have been out in the rain?"
+
+"O Queechy rain don't hurt me, uncle Rolf."
+
+"And don't it wet you either?"
+
+"Yes sir--a little."
+
+"How much?"
+
+"My sleeves,--O I dried them long ago."
+
+"Don't you repeat that experiment, Fleda," said he seriously, but with a
+look that was a good reward to her nevertheless.
+
+"It is a raw day!" said Mrs. Rossitur, drawing her shoulders together as
+an ill-disposed window sash gave one of its admonitory shakes.
+
+"What little panes of glass for such big windows!" said Hugh.
+
+"But what a pleasant prospect through them," said Fleda,--"look,
+Hugh!--worth all the Batteries and Parks in the world."
+
+"In the world!--in New York you mean," said her uncle. "Not better than
+the Champs Elysées?"
+
+"Better to me," said Fleda.
+
+"For to-day I must attend to the prospect in-doors," said Mrs. Rossitur.
+
+"Now aunt Lucy," said Fleda, "you are just going to put yourself down in
+the corner, in the rocking-chair there, with your book, and make yourself
+comfortable; and Hugh and I will see to all these things. Hugh and I and
+Mary and Jane,--that makes quite an army of us, and we can do everything
+without you, and you must just keep quiet. I'll build you up a fine fire,
+and then when I don't know what to do I will come to you for orders.
+Uncle Rolf, would you be so good as just to open that box of books in the
+hall? because I am afraid Hugh isn't strong enough. I'll take care of
+you, aunt Lucy."
+
+Fleda's plans were not entirely carried out, but she contrived pretty well
+to take the brunt of the business on her own shoulders. She was as busy as
+a bee the whole day. To her all the ins and outs of the house, its
+advantages and disadvantages, were much better known than to anybody else;
+nothing could be done but by her advice; and more than that, she contrived
+by some sweet management to baffle Mrs. Rossitur's desire to spare her,
+and to bear the larger half of every burden that should have come upon her
+aunt. What she had done in the breakfast room she did or helped to do in
+the other parts of the house; she unpacked boxes and put away clothes and
+linen, in which Hugh was her excellent helper; she arranged her uncle's
+dressing-table with a scrupulosity that left nothing uncared-for;--and the
+last thing before tea she and Hugh dived into the book-box to get out some
+favourite volumes to lay upon the table in the evening, that the room
+might not look to her uncle quite so dismally bare. He had been abroad
+notwithstanding the rain near the whole day.
+
+It was a weary party that gathered round the supper-table that night,
+weary it seemed as much in mind as in body; and the meal exerted its
+cheering influence over only two of them; Mr. and Mrs. Rossitur sipped
+their cups of tea abstractedly.
+
+"I don't believe that fellow Donohan knows much about his business,"
+remarked the former at length.
+
+"Why don't you get somebody else, then?" said his wife.
+
+"I happen to have engaged him, unfortunately."
+
+A pause.--
+
+"What doesn't he know?"
+
+Mr. Rossitur laughed, not a pleasant laugh.
+
+"It would take too long to enumerate. If you had asked me what part of
+his business he _does_ understand, I could have told you shortly that I
+don't know."
+
+"But you do not understand it very well yourself. Are you sure?"
+
+"Am I sure of what?"
+
+"That this man does not know his business?"
+
+"No further sure than I can have confidence in my own common sense."
+
+"What will you do?" said Mrs. Rossitur after a moment
+
+A question men are not fond of answering, especially when they have
+not made up their minds. Mr. Rossitur was silent, and his wife too,
+after that.
+
+"If I could get some long-headed Yankee to go along with him"--he remarked
+again, balancing his spoon on the edge of his cup in curious illustration
+of his own mental position at the moment; Donohan being the only fixed
+point and all the rest wavering in uncertainty. There were a few silent
+minutes before anybody answered.
+
+"If you want one and don't know of one, uncle Rolf," said Fleda, "I dare
+say cousin Seth might."
+
+That gentle modest speech brought his attention round upon her. His
+face softened.
+
+"Cousin Seth? who is cousin Seth?"
+
+"He is aunt Miriam's son," said Fleda. "Seth Plumfield. He's a very good
+farmer, I know; grandpa used to say he was; and he knows everybody."
+
+"Mrs. Plumfield," said Mrs. Rossitur, as her husband's eyes went
+inquiringly to her,--"Mrs. Plumfield was Mr. Ringgan's sister, you
+remember. This is her son."
+
+"Cousin Seth, eh?" said Mr. Rossitur dubiously. "Well--Why Fleda, your
+sweet air don't seem to agree with you, as far as I see; I have not known
+you look so--so _triste_--since we left Paris. What have you been doing,
+my child?"
+
+"She has been doing everything, father," said Hugh.
+
+"O! it's nothing," said Fleda, answering Mr. Rossitur's look and tone of
+affection with a bright smile. "I'm a little tired, that's all."
+
+'A little tired!' She went to sleep on the sofa directly after supper and
+slept like a baby all the evening; but her power did not sleep with her;
+for that quiet, sweet, tired face, tired in their service, seemed to bear
+witness against the indulgence of anything harsh or unlovely in the same
+atmosphere. A gentle witness-bearing, but strong in its gentleness. They
+sat close together round the fire, talked softly, and from time to time
+cast loving glances at the quiet little sleeper by their side. They did
+not know that she was a fairy, and that though her wand had fallen out of
+her hand it was still resting upon them.
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII.
+
+
+
+  _Gon_. Here is everything advantageous to lift.
+
+  _Ant_. True; save means to live.
+
+  Tempest.
+
+
+Fleda's fatigue did not prevent her being up before sunrise the next day.
+Fatigue was forgotten, for the light of a fair spring morning was shining
+in at her windows and she meant to see aunt Miriam before breakfast. She
+ran out to find Hugh, and her merry shout reached him before she did, and
+brought him to meet her.
+
+"Come, Hugh!--I'm going off up to aunt Miriam's, and I want you. Come!
+Isn't this delicious?"
+
+"Hush!--" said Hugh. "Father's just here in the barn. I can't go, Fleda."
+
+Fleda's countenance clouded.
+
+"Can't go! what's the matter?--can't you go, Hugh?"
+
+He shook his head and went off into the barn.
+
+A chill came upon Fleda. She turned away with a very sober step. What if
+her uncle was in the barn, why should she hush? He never had been a check
+upon her merriment, never; what was coming now? Hugh too looked disturbed.
+It was a spring morning no longer. Fleda forgot the glittering wet grass
+that had set her own eyes a sparkling but a minute ago; she walked along,
+cogitating, swinging her bonnet by the strings in thoughtful
+vibration,--till by the help of sunlight and sweet air, and the loved
+scenes, her spirits again made head and swept over the sudden hindrance
+they had met. There were the blessed old sugar maples, seven in number,
+that fringed the side of the road,--how well Fleda knew them. Only
+skeletons now, but she remembered how beautiful they looked after the
+October frosts; and presently they would be putting out their new green
+leaves and be beautiful in another way. How different in their free-born
+luxuriance from the dusty and city-prisoned elms and willows she had
+left. She came to the bridge then, and stopped with a thrill of pleasure
+and pain to look and listen, Unchanged!--all but herself. The mill was not
+going; the little brook went by quietly chattering to itself, just as it
+had done the last time she saw it, when she rode past on Mr. Carleton's
+horse. Four and a half years ago!--And now how strange that she had come
+to live there again.
+
+Drawing a long breath, and swinging her bonnet again, Fleda softly went on
+up the hill; past the saw-mill, the ponds, the factories, the houses of
+the settlement. The same, and not the same!--Bright with the morning sun,
+and yet somehow a little browner and homelier than of old they used to be.
+Fleda did not care for that; she would hardly acknowledge it to herself;
+her affection never made any discount for infirmity. Leaving the little
+settlement behind her thoughts as behind her back, she ran on now towards
+aunt Miriam's, breathlessly, till field after field was passed and her eye
+caught a bit of the smooth lake and the old farmhouse in its old place.
+Very brown it looked, but Fleda dashed on, through the garden and in at
+the front door.
+
+Nobody at all was in the entrance room, the common sitting-room of the
+family. With trembling delight Fleda opened the well-known door and stole
+noiselessly through the little passage-way to the kitchen. The door of
+that was only on the latch and a gentle movement of it gave to Fleda's eye
+the tall figure of aunt Miriam, just before her, stooping down to look in
+at the open mouth of the oven which she was at that moment engaged in
+supplying with more work to do. It was a huge one, and beyond her aunt's
+head Fleda could see in the far end the great loaves of bread, half baked,
+and more near a perfect squad of pies and pans of gingerbread just going
+in to take the benefit of the oven's milder mood. Fleda saw all this as it
+were without seeing it; she stood still as a mouse and breathless till her
+aunt turned; and then, a spring and a half shout of joy, and she had
+clasped her in her arms and was crying with her whole heart. Aunt Miriam
+was taken all aback; she could do nothing but sit down and cry too and
+forget her oven door.
+
+"Ain't breakfast ready yet, mother?" said a manly voice coming in. "I must
+be off to see after them ploughs. Hollo!--why mother!--"
+
+The first exclamation was uttered as the speaker put the door to the
+oven's mouth; the second as he turned in quest of the hand that should
+have done it. He stood wondering, while his mother and Fleda between
+laughing and crying tried to rouse themselves and look up.
+
+"What is all this?"
+
+"Don't you see, Seth?"
+
+"I see somebody that had like to have spoiled your whole baking--I don't
+know who it is, yet."
+
+"Don't you now, cousin Seth?" said Fleda shaking away her tears and
+getting up.
+
+"I ha'n't quite lost my recollection. Cousin, you must give me a
+kiss.--How do you do? You ha'n't forgot how to colour, I see, for all
+you've been so long among the pale city-folks."
+
+"I haven't forgotten any thing, cousin Seth," said Fleda, blushing indeed
+but laughing and shaking his hand with as hearty good-will.
+
+"I don't believe you have,--anything that is good," said he. "Where have
+you been all this while?"
+
+"O part of the time in New York, and part of the time in Paris, and some
+other places."
+
+"Well you ha'n't seen anything better than Queechy, or Queechy bread and
+butter, have you?"
+
+"No indeed!"
+
+"Come, you shall give me another kiss for that," said he, suiting the
+action to the word;--"and now sit down and eat as much bread and butter as
+you can. It's just as good as it used to be. Come mother!--I guess
+breakfast is ready by the looks of that coffee-pot."
+
+"Breakfast ready!" said Fleda.
+
+"Ay indeed; it's a good half hour since it ought to ha' been ready. If it
+ain't I can't stop for it. Them boys will be running their furrows like
+sarpents 'f I ain't there to start them."
+
+"Which like serpents," said Fleda,--"the furrows or the men?"
+
+"Well, I was thinking of the furrows," said he glancing at her;--"I guess
+there ain't cunning enough in the others to trouble them. Come sit down,
+and let me see whether you have forgotten a Queechy appetite."
+
+"I don't know," said Fleda doubtfully,--"they will expect me at home."
+
+"I don't care who expects you--sit down! you ain't going to eat any
+bread and butter this morning but my mother's--you haven't got any like
+it at your house. Mother, give her a cup of coffee, will you, and set
+her to work."
+
+Fleda was too willing to comply with the invitation, were it only for the
+charm of old times. She had not seen such a table for years, and little as
+the conventionalities of delicate taste were known there, it was not
+without a comeliness of its own in its air of wholesome abundance and the
+extreme purity of all its arrangements. If but a piece of cold pork were
+on aunt Miriam's table, it was served with a nicety that would not have
+offended the most fastidious; and amid irregularities that the fastidious
+would scorn, there was a sound excellence of material and preparation
+that they very often fail to know. Fleda made up her mind she would be
+wanted at home; all the rather perhaps for Hugh's mysterious "hush"; and
+there was something in the hearty kindness and truth of these friends that
+she felt particularly genial. And if there was a lack of silver at the
+board its place was more than filled with the pure gold of association.
+They sat down to table, but aunt Miriam's eyes devoured Fleda. Mr. Plum
+field set about his more material breakfast with all despatch.
+
+[Illustration: "They will expect me at home."]
+
+"So Mr. Rossitur has left the city for good," said aunt Miriam. "How does
+he like it?"
+
+"He hasn't been here but a day, you know, aunt Miriam," said Fleda
+evasively.
+
+"Is he anything of a farmer?" asked her cousin.
+
+"Not much," said Fleda.
+
+"Is he going to work the farm himself?"
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"I mean, is he going to work the farm himself, or hire it out, or let
+somebody else work it on shares?"
+
+"I don't know," said Fleda;--"I think he is going to have a farmer and
+oversee things himself."
+
+"He'll get sick o' that," said Seth; "unless he's the luck to get hold of
+just the right hand."
+
+"Has he hired anybody yet?" said aunt Miriam, after a little interval of
+supplying Fleda with 'bread and butter.'
+
+"Yes ma'am, I believe so."
+
+"What's his name?"
+
+"Donohan,--an Irishman, I believe; uncle Rolf hired him in New York."
+
+"For his head man?" said Seth, with a sufficiently intelligible look.
+
+"Yes," said Fleda. "Why?"
+
+But he did not immediately answer her.
+
+"The land's in poor heart now," said he, "a good deal of it; it has been
+wasted; it wants first-rate management to bring it in order and make much
+of it for two or three years to come. I never see an Irishman's head yet
+that was worth more than a joke. Their hands are all of 'em that's good
+for anything."
+
+"I believe uncle Rolf wants to have an American to go with this man,"
+said Fleda.
+
+Seth said nothing, but Fleda understood the shake of his head as he
+reached over after a pickle.
+
+"Are you going to keep a dairy, Fleda?" said her aunt.
+
+"I don't know, ma'am;--I haven't heard anything about it."
+
+"Does Mrs. Rossitur know anything about country affairs?"
+
+"No--nothing," Fleda said, her heart sinking perceptibly with every
+new question.
+
+"She hasn't any cows yet?"
+
+_She_!--any cows!--But Fleda only said they had not come; she believed
+they were coming.
+
+"What help has she got?"
+
+"Two women--Irishwomen," said Fleda.
+
+"Mother you'll have to take hold and learn her," said Mr. Plumfield.
+
+"Teach _her_?" cried Fleda, repelling the idea;--"aunt Lucy? she cannot do
+anything--she isn't strong enough;--not anything of that kind."
+
+"What did she come here for?" said Seth.
+
+"You know," said his mother, "that Mr. Rossitur's circumstances obliged
+him to quit New York."
+
+"Ay, but that ain't my question. A man had better keep his fingers off
+anything he can't live by. A farm's one thing or t'other, just as it's
+worked. The land won't grow specie--it must be fetched out of it. Is Mr.
+Rossitur a smart man?"
+
+"Very," Fleda said, "about everything but farming."
+
+"Well if he'll put himself to school maybe, he'll learn," Seth concluded
+as he finished his breakfast and went off. Fleda rose too, and was
+standing thoughtfully by the fire, when aunt Miriam came up and put her
+arms round her. Fleda's eyes sparkled again.
+
+"You're not changed--you're the same little Fleda," she said.
+
+"Not quite so little," said Fleda smiling.
+
+"Not quite so little, but my own darling. The world hasn't spoiled
+thee yet."
+
+"I hope not, aunt Miriam."
+
+"You have remembered your mother's prayer, Fleda?"
+
+"Always!"--
+
+How tenderly aunt Miriam's hand was passed over the bowed head,--how
+fondly she pressed her. And Fleda's answer was as fond.
+
+"I wanted to bring Hugh up to see you, aunt Miriam, with me, but he
+couldn't come. You will like Hugh. He is so good!"
+
+"I will come down and see him," said aunt Miriam; and then she went to
+look after her oven's doings. Fleda stood by, amused to see the quantities
+of nice things that were rummaged out of it. They did not look like Mrs.
+Renney's work, but she knew from old experience that they were good.
+
+"How early you must have been up, to put these things in," said Fleda.
+
+"Put them in! yes, and make them. These were all made this morning,
+Fleda."
+
+"This morning!--before breakfast! Why the sun was only just rising when I
+set out to come up the hill; and I wasn't long coming, aunt Miriam."
+
+"To be sure; that's the way to get things done. Before breakfast!--What
+time do you breakfast, Fleda?"
+
+"Not till eight or nine o'clock."
+
+"Eight or nine!--_Here?_"
+
+"There hasn't been any change made yet, and I don't suppose there will be.
+Uncle Rolf is always up early, but he can't bear to have breakfast early."
+
+Aunt Miriam's face showed what she thought; and Fleda went away with all
+its gravity and doubt settled like lead upon her heart. Though she had one
+of the identical apple pies in her hands, which aunt Miriam had quietly
+said was "for her and Hugh," and though a pleasant savour of old times was
+about it, Fleda could not get up again the bright feeling with which she
+had come up the hill. There was a miserable misgiving at heart. It would
+work off in time.
+
+It had begun to work off, when at the foot of the hill she met her uncle.
+He was coming after her to ask Mr. Plumfield about the desideratum of a
+Yankee. Fleda put her pie in safety behind a rock, and turned back with
+him, and aunt Miriam told them the way to Seth's ploughing ground.
+
+A pleasant word or two had get Fleda's spirits a bounding again, and the
+walk was delightful. Truly the leaves were not on the trees, but it was
+April, and they soon would be; there was promise in the light, and hope in
+the air, and everything smelt of the country and spring-time. The soft
+tread of the sod, that her foot had not felt for so long,--the fresh look
+of the newly-turned earth,--here and there the brilliance of a field of
+winter grain,--and that nameless beauty of the budding trees, that the
+full luxuriance of summer can never equal,--Fleda's heart was springing
+for sympathy. And to her, with whom association was everywhere so strong,
+there was in it all a shadowy presence of her grandfather, with whom she
+had so often seen the spring-time bless those same hills and fields long
+ago. She walked on in silence, as her manner commonly was when deeply
+pleased; there were hardly two persons to whom she would speak her mind
+freely then. Mr. Kossitur had his own thoughts.
+
+"Can anything equal the spring-time!" she burst forth at length.
+
+Her uncle looked at her and smiled. "Perhaps not; but it is one thing,"
+said he sighing, "for taste to enjoy and another thing for calculation
+to improve."
+
+"But one can do both, can't one?" said Fleda brightly.
+
+"I don't know," said he sighing again. "Hardly."
+
+Fleda knew he was mistaken and thought the sighs out of place. But they
+reached her; and she had hardly condemned them before they set her off
+upon a long train of excuses for him, and she had wrought herself into
+quite a fit of tenderness by the time they reached her cousin.
+
+They found him on a gentle side-hill, with two other men and teams, both
+of whom were stepping away in different parts of the field. Mr. Plumfield
+was just about setting off to work his way to the other side of the lot
+when they came up with him.
+
+Fleda was not ashamed of her aunt Miriam's son, even before such critical
+eyes as those of her uncle. Farmer-like as were his dress and air, they
+shewed him nevertheless a well-built, fine-looking man, with the
+independent bearing of one who has never recognised any but mental or
+moral superiority. His face might have been called handsome; there was at
+least manliness in every line of it; and his excellent dark eye shewed an
+equal mingling of kindness and acute common sense. Let Mr. Plumfield wear
+what clothes he would one felt obliged to follow Burns' notable example
+and pay respect to the _man_ that was in them.
+
+"A fine day, sir," he remarked to Mr. Rossitur after they had
+shaken hands.
+
+"Yes, and I will not interrupt you but a minute. Mr. Plumfield, I am in
+want of hands,--hands for this very business you are about,
+ploughing,--and Fleda says you know everybody; so I have come to ask if
+you can direct me."
+
+"Heads or hands, do you want?" said Seth, clearing his boot-sole from some
+superfluous soil upon the share of his plough.
+
+"Why both, to tell you the truth. I want hands, and teams, for that
+matter, for I have only two, and I suppose there is no time to be lost.
+And I want very much to get a person thoroughly acquainted with the
+business to go along with my man. He is an Irishman, and I am afraid not
+very well accustomed to the ways of doing things here."
+
+"Like enough," said Seth;--"and the worst of 'em is you can't learn 'em."
+
+"Well!--can you help me?"
+
+"Mr. Douglass!"--said Seth, raising his voice to speak to one of his
+assistants who was approaching them,--"Mr. Douglass!--you're holding that
+'ere plough a little too obleekly for my grounds."
+
+"Very good, Mr. Plumfield!" said the person called upon, with a quick
+accent that intimated, "If you don't know what is best it is not my
+affair!"--the voice very peculiar, seeming to come from no lower than the
+top of his throat, with a guttural roll of the words.
+
+"Is that Earl Douglass?" said Fleda.
+
+"You remember him?" said her cousin smiling. "He's just where he was, and
+his wife too.--Well Mr. Rossitur, 'tain't very easy to find what you want
+just at this season, when most folks have their hands full and help is all
+taken up. I'll see if I can't come down and give you a lift myself with
+the ploughing, for a day or two, as I'm pretty beforehand with the spring,
+but you'll want more than that. I ain't sure--I haven't more hands than
+I'll want myself, but I think it is possible Squire Springer may spare you
+one of his'n. He ain't taking in any new land this year, and he's got
+things pretty snug; I guess he don't care to do any more than
+common--anyhow you might try. You know where uncle Joshua lives, Fleda?
+Well Philetus--what now?"
+
+They had been slowly walking along the fence towards the furthest of Mr.
+Plumfield's coadjutors, upon whom his eye had been curiously fixed as he
+was speaking; a young man who was an excellent sample of what is called
+"the raw material." He had just come to a sudden stop in the midst of the
+furrow when his employer called to him; and he answered somewhat
+lack-a-daisically,
+
+"Why I've broke this here clevis--I ha'n't touched anything nor nothing,
+and it broke right in teu!"
+
+"What do you s'pose'll be done now?" said Mr. Plumfield gravely going up
+to examine the fracture.
+
+"Well 'twa'n't none of my doings," said the young man. "I ha'n't touched
+anything nor nothing--and the mean thing broke right in teu. 'Tain't so
+handy as the old kind o' plough, by a long jump."
+
+"You go 'long down to the house and ask my mother for a new clevis; and
+talk about ploughs when you know how to hold 'em," said Mr. Plumfield.
+
+"It don't look so difficult a matter," said Mr. Rossitur,--"but I am a
+novice myself. What is the principal thing to be attended to in ploughing,
+Mr. Plumfield?"
+
+There was a twinkle in Seth's eye, as he looked down upon a piece of straw
+he was breaking to bits, which Fleda, who could see, interpreted
+thoroughly.
+
+"Well," said he, looking up,--"the breadth of the stitches and the width
+and depth of the farrow must be regulated according to the nature of the
+soil and the lay of the ground, and what you're ploughing for;--there's
+stubble ploughing, and breaking up old lays, and ploughing for fallow
+crops, and ribbing, where the land has been some years in grass,--and so
+on; and the plough must be geared accordingly, and so as not to take too
+much land nor go out of the land; and after that the best part of the work
+is to guide the plough right and run the furrows straight and even."
+
+He spoke with the most impenetrable gravity, while Mr. Rossitur looked
+blank and puzzled. Fleda could hardly keep her countenance.
+
+"That row of poles," said Mr. Rossitur presently,--"are they to guide you
+in running the furrow straight?"
+
+"Yes sir--they are to mark out the crown of the stitch. I keep 'em right
+between the horses and plough 'em down one after another. It's a kind of
+way country folks play at ninepins," said Seth, with a glance half
+inquisitive, half sly, at his questioner.
+
+Mr. Rossitur asked no more. Fleda felt a little uneasy again. It was
+rather a longish walk to uncle Joshua's, and hardly a word spoken on
+either side.
+
+The old gentleman was "to hum;" and while Fleda went back into some remote
+part of the house to see "aunt Syra," Mr. Rossitur set forth his errand.
+
+"Well,--and so you're looking for help, eh?" said uncle Joshua when he had
+heard him through.
+
+"Yes sir,--I want help."
+
+"And a team too?"
+
+"So I have said, sir," Mr. Rossitur answered rather shortly. "Can you
+supply me?"
+
+"Well,--I don't know as I can," said the old man, rubbing his hands slowly
+over his knees.--"You ha'n't got much done yet, I s'pose?"
+
+"Nothing. I came the day before yesterday."
+
+"Land's in rather poor condition in some parts, ain't it?"
+
+"I really am not able to say, sir,--till I have seen it."
+
+"It ought to be," said the old gentleman shaking his head,--the fellow
+that was there last didn't do right by it--he worked the land too hard,
+and didn't put on it anywhere near what he had ought to--I guess you'll
+find it pretty poor in some places. He was trying to get all he could
+out of it, I s'pose. There's a good deal of fencing to be done too,
+ain't there?"
+
+"All that there was, sir,--I have done none since I came."
+
+"Seth Plumfield got through ploughing yet?"
+
+"We found him at it."
+
+"Ay, he's a smart man. What are you going to do, Mr. Rossitur, with that
+piece of marsh land that lies off to the south-east of the barn, beyond
+the meadow, between the hills? I had just sich another, and I"--
+
+"Before I do anything with the wet land, Mr. ---- I am so unhappy as to
+have forgotten your name?--"
+
+"Springer, sir," said the old gentleman,--"Springer--Joshua Springer. That
+is my name, sir."
+
+"Mr. Springer, before I do anything with the wet land I should like to
+have something growing on the dry; and as that is the present matter in
+hand will you be so good as to let me know whether I can have your
+assistance."
+
+"Well I don't know,--" said the old gentleman; "there ain't anybody to
+send but my boy Lucas, and I don't know whether he would make up his mind
+to go or not."
+
+"Well sir!"--said Mr. Rossitur rising,--"in that case I will bid you good
+morning. I am sorry to have given you the trouble."
+
+"Stop," said the old man,--"stop a bit. Just sit down--I'll go in and see
+about it."
+
+Mr. Rossitur sat down, and uncle Joshua left him to go into the kitchen
+and consult his wife, without whose counsel, of late years especially, he
+rarely did anything. They never varied in opinion, but aunt Syra's wits
+supplied the steel edge to his heavy metal.
+
+"I don't know but Lucas would as leave go as not," the old gentleman
+remarked on coming back from this sharpening process,--"and I can make out
+to spare him, I guess. You calculate to keep him, I s'pose?"
+
+"Until this press is over; and perhaps longer, if I find he can do
+what I want."
+
+"You'll find him pretty handy at a' most anything; but I mean,--I s'pose
+he'll get his victuals with you."
+
+"I have made no arrangements of the kind," said Mr. Rossitur controlling
+with some effort his rebelling muscles. "Donohan is boarded somewhere
+else, and for the present it will be best for all in my employ to follow
+the same plan."
+
+"Very good," said uncle Joshua, "it makes no difference,--only of
+course in that case it is worth more, when a man has to find himself
+and his team."
+
+"Whatever it is worth I am quite ready to pay, sir."
+
+"Very good! You and Lucas can agree about that. He'll be along in
+the morning."
+
+So they parted; and Fleda understood the impatient quick step with which
+her uncle got over the ground.
+
+"Is that man a brother of your grandfather?"
+
+"No sir--Oh no! only his brother-in-law. My grandmother was his sister,
+but they weren't in the least like each other."
+
+"I should think they could not," said Mr. Rossitur.
+
+"Oh they were not!" Fleda repeated. "I have always heard that."
+
+After paying her respects to aunt Syra in the kitchen she had come back
+time enough to hear the end of the discourse in the parlour, and had felt
+its full teaching. Doubts returned, and her spirits were sobered again.
+Not another word was spoken till they reached home; when Fleda seized upon
+Hugh and went off to the rock after her forsaken pie.
+
+"Have you succeeded!' asked Mrs. Rossitur while they were gone.
+
+"Yes--that is, a cousin has kindly consented to come and help me."
+
+"A cousin!" said Mrs. Rossitur.
+
+"Ay,--we're in a nest of cousins."
+
+"In a _what_, Mr. Rossitur?"
+
+"In a nest of cousins; and I had rather be in a nest of rooks. I wonder if
+I shall be expected to ask my ploughmen to dinner! Every second man is a
+cousin, and the rest are uncles."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX.
+
+
+
+  Whilst skies are blue and bright.
+    Whilst flowers are gay,
+  Whilst eyes that change ere night
+    Make glad the day;
+  Whilst yet the calm hours creep,
+  Dream thou--and from thy sleep
+    Then wake to weep.
+
+  Shelley.
+
+
+The days of summer flew by, for the most part lightly, over the heads of
+Hugh and Fleda. The farm was little to them but a place of pretty and
+picturesque doings and the scene of nameless delights by wood and stream,
+in all which, all that summer, Fleda rejoiced; pulling Hugh along with her
+even when sometimes he would rather have been poring over his books at
+home. She laughingly said it was good for him; and one half at least of
+every fine day their feet were abroad. They knew nothing practically of
+the dairy but that it was an inexhaustible source of the sweetest milk and
+butter, and indirectly of the richest custards and syllabubs. The flock of
+sheep that now and then came in sight running over the hill-side, were to
+them only an image of pastoral beauty and a soft link with the beauty of
+the past. The two children took the very cream of country life. The books
+they had left were read with greater eagerness than ever. When the weather
+was "too lovely to stay in the house," Shakspeare or Massillon or Sully or
+the "Curiosities of Literature" or "Corinne" or Milner's Church History,
+for Fleda's reading was as miscellaneous as ever, was enjoyed under the
+flutter of leaves and along with the rippling of the mountain spring;
+whilst King curled himself up on the skirt of his mistress's gown and
+slept for company; hardly more thoughtless and fearless of harm than his
+two companions. Now and then Fleda opened her eyes to see that her uncle
+was moody and not like himself, and that her aunt's gentle face was
+clouded in consequence; and she could not sometimes help the suspicion
+that he was not making a farmer of himself; but the next summer wind would
+blow these thoughts away, or the next look of her flowers would put them
+out of her head. The whole courtyard in front of the house had been given
+up to her peculiar use as a flower-garden, and there she and Hugh made
+themselves very busy.
+
+But the summer-time came to an end.
+
+It was a November morning, and Fleda had been doing some of the last jobs
+in her flower-beds. She was coming in with spirits as bright as her
+cheeks, when her aunt's attitude and look, more than usually spiritless,
+suddenly checked them. Fleda gave her a hopeful kiss and asked for the
+explanation.
+
+"How bright you look, darling!" said her aunt, stroking her cheek.
+
+"Yes, but you don't, aunt Lucy. What has happened?"
+
+"Mary and Jane are going away."
+
+"Going away!--What for?"
+
+"They are tired of the place--don't like it, I suppose."
+
+"Very foolish of them! Well, aunt Lucy, what matter? we can get plenty
+more in their room."
+
+"Not from the city--not possible; they would not come at this time of
+year."
+
+"Sure?--Well, then here we can at any rate."
+
+"Here! But what sort of persons shall we get here? And your
+uncle--just think!"--
+
+"O but I think we can manage," said Fleda. "When do Mary and Jane
+want to go?"
+
+"Immediately!--to-morrow--they are not willing to wait till we can get
+somebody. Think of it!"
+
+"Well let them go," said Fleda,--"the sooner the better."
+
+"Yes, and I am sure I don't want to keep them; but--" and Mrs. Rossitur
+wrung her hands--"I haven't money enough to pay them quite,--and they
+won't go without it."
+
+Fleda felt shocked--so much that she could not help looking it.
+
+"But can't uncle Rolf give it you?"
+
+Mrs. Rossitur shook her head. "I have asked him."
+
+"How much is wanting?"
+
+"Twenty-five. Think of his not being able to give me that!"--Mrs.
+Rossitur burst into tears.
+
+"Now don't, aunt Lucy!"--said Fleda, guarding well her own
+composure;--"you know he has had a great deal to spend upon the farm and
+paying men, and all, and it is no wonder that he should be a little short
+just now,--now cheer up!--we can get along with this anyhow."
+
+"I asked him," said Mrs. Rossitur through her tears, "when he would be
+able to give it to me; and he told me he didn't know!--"
+
+Fleda ventured no reply but some of the tenderest caresses that lips and
+arms could give; and then sprang away and in three minutes was at her
+aunt's side again.
+
+"Look here, aunt Lucy," said she gently,--"here is twenty dollars, if you
+can manage the five."
+
+"Where did you get this?" Mrs. Rossitur exclaimed.
+
+"I got it honestly. It is mine, aunt Lucy," said Fleda smiling. "Uncle
+Orrin gave me some money just before we came away, to do what I liked
+with; and I haven't wanted to do anything with it till now."
+
+But this seemed to hurt Mrs. Rossitur more than all the rest. Leaning her
+head forward upon Fleda's breast and clasping her arms about her she cried
+worse tears than Fleda had seen her shed. If it had not been for the
+emergency Fleda would have broken down utterly too.
+
+"That it should have come to this!--I can't take it, dear Fleda!"--
+
+"Yes you must, aunt Lucy," said Fleda soothingly. "I couldn't do anything
+else with it that would give me so much pleasure. I don't want it--it
+would lie in my drawer till I don't know when. We'll let these people be
+off as soon as they please. Don't take it so--uncle Rolf will have money
+again--only just now he is out, I suppose--and we'll get somebody else in
+the kitchen that will do nicely--you see if we don't."
+
+Mrs. Rossitur's embrace said what words were powerless to say.
+
+"But I don't know how we're to find any one here in the country--I don't
+know who'll go to look--I am sure your uncle won't want to,--and Hugh
+wouldn't know--"
+
+"I'll go," said Fleda cheerfully;--"Hugh and I. We can do famously--if
+you'll trust me. I won't promise to bring home a French cook."
+
+"No indeed--we must take what we can get. But you can get no one to-day,
+and they will be off by the morning's coach--what shall we do
+to-morrow,--for dinner? Your uncle--"
+
+"I'll get dinner," said Fleda caressing her;--"I'll take all that on
+myself. It sha'n't be a bad dinner either. Uncle Rolf will like what I do
+for him I dare say. Now cheer up, aunt Lucy!--do--that's all I ask of you.
+Won't you?--for me?"
+
+She longed to speak a word of that quiet hope with which in every trouble
+she secretly comforted herself--she wanted to whisper the words that were
+that moment in her own mind, "Truly I know that it shall be well with them
+that fear God;"--but her natural reserve and timidity kept her lips shut;
+to her grief.
+
+The women were paid off and dismissed and departed in the next day's coach
+from Montepoole. Fleda stood at the front door to see them go, with a
+curious sense that there was an empty house at her back, and indeed upon
+her back. And in spite of all the cheeriness of her tone to her aunt, she
+was not without some shadowy feeling that soberer times might be coming
+upon them.
+
+"What is to be done now?" said Hugh close beside her.
+
+"O we are going to get somebody else," said Fleda.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I don't know!--You and I are going to find out."
+
+"You and I!--"
+
+"Yes. We are going out after dinner, Hugh dear," said she turning her
+bright merry face towards him,--"to pick up somebody."
+
+Linking her arm within his she went back to the deserted kitchen premises
+to see how her promise about taking Mary's place was to be fulfilled.
+
+"Do you know where to look?" said Hugh.
+
+"I've a notion;--but the first thing is dinner, that uncle Rolf mayn't
+think the world is turning topsy turvy. There is nothing at all here,
+Hugh!--nothing in the world but bread--it's a blessing there is that.
+Uncle Rolf will have to be satisfied with a coffee dinner to-day, and I'll
+make him the most superb omelette--that my skill is equal to! Hugh dear,
+you shall set the table.--You don't know how?--then you shall make the
+toast, and I will set it the first thing of all. You perceive it is well
+to know how to do everything, Mr. Hugh Rossitur."
+
+"Where did you learn to make omelettes?" said Hugh with laughing
+admiration, as Fleda bared two pretty arms and ran about the very
+impersonation of good-humoured activity. The table was set; the coffee was
+making; and she had him established at the fire with two great plates, a
+pile of slices of bread, and a toasting-iron.
+
+"Where? Oh don't you remember the days of Mrs. Renney? I have seen Emile
+make them. And by dint of trying to teach Mary this summer I have taught
+myself. There is no knowing, you see, what a person may come to."
+
+"I wonder what father would say if he knew you had made all the coffee
+this summer!"
+
+"That is an unnecessary speculation, my dear Hugh, as I have no intention
+of telling him. But see!--that is the way with speculators! 'While they go
+on refining'--the toast burns!"
+
+The coffee and the omelette and the toast and Mr. Rossitur's favourite
+French salad, were served with beautiful accuracy; and he was quite
+satisfied. But aunt Lucy looked sadly at Fleda's flushed face and saw that
+her appetite seemed to have gone off in the steam of her preparations.
+Fleda had a kind of heart-feast however which answered as well.
+
+Hugh harnessed the little wagon, for no one was at hand to do it, and he
+and Fleda set off as early as possible after dinner. Fleda's thoughts had
+turned to her old acquaintance Cynthia Gall, who she knew was out of
+employment and staying at home somewhere near Montepoole. They got the
+exact direction from aunt Miriam who approved of her plan.
+
+It was a pleasant peaceful drive they had. They never were alone together,
+they two, but vexations seemed to lose their power or be forgotten; and an
+atmosphere of quietness gather about them, the natural element of both
+hearts. It might refuse its presence to one, but the attraction of both
+together was too strong to be resisted.
+
+Miss Cynthia's present abode was in an out of the way place, and a good
+distance off; they were some time in reaching it. The barest-looking and
+dingiest of houses, set plump in a green field, without one softening or
+home-like touch from any home-feeling within; not a flower, not a shrub,
+not an out-house, not a tree near. One would have thought it a deserted
+house, but that a thin wreath of smoke lazily stole up from one of the
+brown chimneys; and graceful as that was it took nothing from the hard
+stern barrenness below which told of a worse poverty than that of paint
+and glazing.
+
+"Can this be the place?" said Hugh.
+
+"It must be. You stay here with the horse, and I'll go in and seek my
+fortune.--Don't promise much," said Fleda shaking her head.
+
+The house stood back from the road. Fleda picked her way to it along a
+little footpath which seemed to be the equal property of the geese. Her
+knock brought an invitation to "come in."
+
+An elderly woman was sitting there whose appearance did not mend the
+general impression. She had the same dull and unhopeful look that her
+house had.
+
+"Does Mrs. Gall live here?"
+
+"I do," said this person.
+
+"Is Cynthia at home?"
+
+The woman upon this raised her voice and directed it at an inner door.
+
+"Lucindy!" said she in a diversity of tones,--"Lucindy!--tell Cynthy
+here's somebody wants to see her."--But no one answered, and throwing the
+work from her lap the woman muttered she would go and see, and left Fleda
+with a cold invitation to sit down.
+
+Dismal work! Fleda wished herself out of it. The house did not look
+poverty-stricken within, but poverty must have struck to the very heart,
+Fleda thought, where there was no apparent cherishing of anything. There
+was no absolute distress visible, neither was there a sign of real comfort
+or of a happy home. She could not fancy it was one.
+
+She waited so long that she was sure Cynthia did not hold herself in
+readiness to see company. And when the lady at last came in it was with
+very evident marks of "smarting up" about her.
+
+"Why it's Flidda Ringgan!" said Miss Gall after a dubious look or two at
+her visitor. "How _do_ you do? I didn't 'spect to see _you_. How much you
+have growed!"
+
+She looked really pleased and gave Fleda's hand a very strong grasp as
+she shook it.
+
+"There ain't no fire here to-day," pursued Cynthy, paying her attentions
+to the fireplace,--"we let it go down on account of our being all busy out
+at the back of the house. I guess you're cold, ain't you?"
+
+Fleda said no, and remembered that the woman she had first seen was
+certainly not busy at the back of the house nor anywhere else but in that
+very room, where she had found her deep in a pile of patchwork.
+
+"I heerd you had come to the old place. Were you glad to be back again?"
+Cynthy asked with a smile that might be taken to express some doubt upon
+the subject.
+
+"I was very glad to see it again."
+
+"I hain't seen it in a great while. I've been staying to hum this year
+or two. I got tired o' going out," Cynthy remarked, with again a smile
+very peculiar and Fleda thought a little sardonical. She did not know
+how to answer.
+
+"Well, how do you come along down yonder?" Cynthy went on, making a great
+fuss with the shovel and tongs to very little purpose. "Ha' you come all
+the way from Queechy?"
+
+"Yes. I came on purpose to see you, Cynthy."
+
+Without staying to ask what for, Miss Gall now went out to "the back of
+the house" and came running in again with a live brand pinched in the
+tongs, and a long tail of smoke running after it. Fleda would have
+compounded for no fire and no choking. The choking was only useful to give
+her time to think. She was uncertain how to bring in her errand.
+
+"And how is Mis' Plumfield?" said Cynthy, in an interval of blowing
+the brand.
+
+"She is quite well; but Cynthy, you need not have taken all that trouble
+for me. I cannot stay but a few minutes."
+
+"There is wood enough!" Cynthia remarked with one of her grim smiles; an
+assertion Fleda could not help doubting. Indeed she thought Miss Gall
+had grown altogether more disagreeable than she used to be in old times.
+Why, she could not divine, unless the souring effect had gone on with
+the years.
+
+"And what's become of Earl Douglass and Mis' Douglass? I hain't heerd
+nothin' of 'em this great while. I always told your grandpa he'd ha' saved
+himself a great deal o' trouble if he'd ha' let Earl Douglass take hold of
+things. You ha'n't got Mr. Didenhover into the works again I guess, have
+you? He was there a good spell after your grandpa died."
+
+"I haven't seen Mrs. Douglass," said Fleda. "But Cynthy, what do you think
+I have come here for?"
+
+"I don't know," said Cynthy, with another of her peculiar looks directed
+at the fire. "I s'pose you want someh'n nother of me."
+
+"I have come to see if you wouldn't come and live with my aunt, Mrs.
+Rossitur. We are left alone and want somebody very much; and I thought I
+would find you out and see if we couldn't have you, first of all,--before
+I looked for anybody else."
+
+Cynthy was absolutely silent. She sat before the fire, her feet stretched
+out towards it as far as they would go and her arms crossed, and not
+moving her steady gaze at the smoking wood, or the chimney-back, whichever
+it might be; but there was in the corners of her mouth the threatening of
+a smile that Fleda did not at all like.
+
+"What do you say to it, Cynthy?"
+
+"I reckon you'd best get somebody else," said Miss Gall with a kind of
+condescending dryness, and the smile shewing a little more.
+
+"Why?" said Fleda, "I would a great deal rather have an old friend than a
+stranger."
+
+"Be you the housekeeper?" said Cynthy a little abruptly.
+
+"O I am a little of everything," said Fleda;--"cook and housekeeper and
+whatever comes first. I want you to come and be housekeeper, Cynthy."
+
+"I reckon Mis' Rossitur don't have much to do with her help, does she?"
+said Cynthy after a pause, during which the corners of her mouth never
+changed. The tone of piqued independence let some light into Fleda's mind.
+
+"She is not strong enough to do much herself, and she wants some one
+that will take all the trouble from her. You'd have the field all to
+yourself, Cynthy."
+
+"Your aunt sets two tables I calculate, don't she?"
+
+"Yes--my uncle doesn't like to have any but his own family around him."
+
+"I guess I shouldn't suit!" said Miss Gall, after another little pause,
+and stooping very diligently to pick up some scattered shreds from the
+floor. But Fleda could see the flushed face and the smile which pride and
+a touch of spiteful pleasure in the revenge she was taking made
+particularly hateful. She needed no more convincing that Miss Gall
+"wouldn't suit;" but she was sorry at the same time for the perverseness
+that had so needlessly disappointed her; and went rather pensively back
+again down the little foot-path to the waiting wagon.
+
+"This is hardly the romance of life, dear Hugh," she said as she
+seated herself.
+
+"Haven't you succeeded?"
+
+Fleda shook her head.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"O--pride,--injured pride of station! The wrong of not coming to our table
+and putting her knife into our butter."
+
+"And living in such a place!" said Hugh.
+
+"You don't know what a place. They are miserably poor, I am sure; and
+yet--I suppose that the less people have to be proud of the more they make
+of what is left. Poor people!--"
+
+"Poor Fleda!" said Hugh looking at her. "What will you do now?"
+
+"O we'll do somehow," said she cheerfully. "Perhaps it is just as well
+after all, for Cynthy isn't the smartest woman in the world. I remember
+grandpa used to say he didn't believe she could get a bean into the middle
+of her bread."
+
+"A bean into the middle of her bread!" said Hugh.
+
+But Fleda's sobriety was quite banished by his mystified look, and her
+laugh rang along over the fields before she answered him.
+
+That laugh had blown away all the vapours, for the present at least, and
+they jogged on again very sociably.
+
+"Do you know," said Fleda, after a while of silent enjoyment in the
+changes of scene and the mild autumn weather,--"I am not sure that it
+wasn't very well for me that we came away from New York."
+
+"I dare say it was," said Hugh,--"since we came; but what makes you say
+so?"
+
+"I don't mean that it was for anybody else, but for me. I think I was a
+little proud of our nice things there."
+
+"_You,_ Fleda!" said Hugh with a look of appreciating affection.
+
+"Yes I was, a little. It didn't make the greatest part of my love for
+them, I am sure; but I think I had a little, undefined, sort of pleasure
+in the feeling that they were better and prettier than other people had."
+
+"You are sure you are not proud of your little King Charles now?"
+said Hugh.
+
+"I don't know but I am," said Fleda laughing. "But how much pleasanter it
+is here on almost every account. Look at the beautiful sweep of the ground
+off among those hills--isn't it? What an exquisite horizon line, Hugh!"
+
+"And what a sky over it!"
+
+"Yes--I love these fall skies. Oh I would a great deal rather be here than
+in any city that ever was built!"
+
+"So would I," said Hugh. "But the thing is--"
+
+Fleda knew quite well what the thing was, and did not answer.
+
+"But my dear Hugh," she said presently,--"I don't remember that sweep of
+hills when we were coming?"
+
+"You were going the other way," said Hugh.
+
+"Yes but, Hugh,--I am sure we did not pass these grain fields. We must
+have got into the wrong road."
+
+Hugh drew the reins, and looked, and doubted.
+
+"There is a house yonder," said Fleda,--"we had better drive on and ask."
+
+"There is no house--"
+
+"Yes there is--behind that piece of wood. Look over it--don't you see a
+light curl of blue smoke against the sky?--We never passed that house and
+wood, I am certain. We ought to make haste, for the afternoons are short
+now, and you will please to recollect there is nobody at home to get tea."
+
+"I hope Lucas will get upon one of his everlasting talks with father,"
+said Hugh.
+
+"And that it will hold till we get home," said Fleda. "It will be the
+happiest use Lucas has made of his tongue in a good while."
+
+Just as they stopped before a substantial-looking farm-house a man came
+from the other way and stopped there too, with his hand upon the gate.
+
+"How far are we from Queechy, sir?" said Hugh.
+
+"You're not from it at all, sir," said the man politely. "You're in
+Queechy, sir, at present."
+
+"Is this the right road from Montepoole to Queechy village?"
+
+"It is not, sir. It is a very tortuous direction indeed. Have I not the
+pleasure of speaking to Mr. Rossitur's young gentleman?"
+
+Mr. Rossitur's young gentleman acknowledged his relationship and begged
+the favour of being set in the right way home.
+
+"With much pleasure! You have been shewing Miss Rossitur the picturesque
+country about Montepoole?"
+
+"My cousin and I have been there on business, and lost our way
+coming back."
+
+"Ah I dare say. Very easy. First time you have been there?"
+
+"Yes sir, and we are in a hurry to get home."
+
+"Well sir,--you know the road by Deacon Patterson's?--comes out just above
+the lake?"
+
+Hugh did not remember.
+
+"Well--you keep this road straight on,--I'm sorry you are in a hurry,--you
+keep on till--do you know when you strike Mr. Harris's ground?"
+
+No, Hugh knew nothing about it, nor Fleda.
+
+"Well I'll tell you now how it is," said the stranger, "if you'll permit
+me. You and your--a--cousin--come in and do us the pleasure of taking some
+refreshment--I know my sister'll have her table set out by this time--and
+I'll do myself the honour of introducing you to--a--these strange roads
+afterwards."
+
+"Thank you, sir, but that trouble is unnecessary--cannot you direct us?"
+
+"No trouble--indeed sir, I assure you, I should esteem it a favour--very
+highly. I--I am Dr. Quackenboss, sir; you may have heard--"
+
+"Thank you, Dr. Quackenboss, but we have no time this afternoon--we are
+very anxious to reach home as soon as possible; if you would be be so good
+as to put us in the way."
+
+[Illustration: "Well, sir, you know the road by Deacon Patterson's?"]
+
+"I--really sir, I am afraid--to a person ignorant of the various
+localities--You will lose no time--I will just hitch your horse here, and
+I'll have mine ready by the time this young lady has rested.
+Miss--a--won't you join with me? I assure you I will not put you to the
+expense of a minute--Thank you!--Mr. Harden!--Just clap the saddle on to
+Lollypop and have him up here in three seconds.--Thank you!--My dear
+Miss--a--won't you take my arm? I am gratified, I assure you."
+
+Yielding to the apparent impossibility of getting anything out of Dr.
+Quackenboss, except civility, and to the real difficulty of disappointing
+such very earnest good will, Fleda and Hugh did what older persons would
+not have done,--alighted and walked up to the house.
+
+"This is quite a fortuitous occurrence," the doctor went on:--"I have
+often had the pleasure of seeing Mr Rossitur's family in church--in the
+little church at Queechy Run--and that enabled me to recognise your cousin
+as soon as I saw him in the wagon. Perhaps Miss--a--you may have possibly
+heard of my name?--Quackenboss--I don't know that you understood--"
+
+"I have heard it, sir."
+
+"My Irishmen, Miss--a--my Irish labourers, can't get hold of but one end
+of it; they call me Boss--ha, ha, ha!"
+
+Fleda hoped his patients did not get hold of the other end of it, and
+trembled, visibly.
+
+"Hard to pull a man's name to pieces before his face,--ha, ha! but I
+am--a--not one thing myself,--a kind of heterogynous--I am a piece of a
+physician and a little in the agricultural line also; so it's all fair."
+
+"The Irish treat my name as hardly, Dr. Quackenboss--they call me nothing
+but Miss Ring-again."
+
+And then Fleda could laugh, and laugh she did, so heartily that the doctor
+was delighted.
+
+"Ring-again! ha, ha!--Very good!--Well, Miss--a--I shouldn't think that
+anybody in your service would ever--a--ever let you put your name in
+practice."
+
+But Fleda's delight at the excessive gallantry and awkwardness of this
+speech was almost too much; or, as the doctor pleasantly remarked, her
+nerves were too many for her; and every one of them was dancing by the
+time they reached the hall-door. The doctor's flourishes lost not a bit of
+their angularity from his tall ungainly figure and a lantern-jawed face,
+the lower member of which had now and then a somewhat lateral play when he
+was speaking, which curiously aided the quaint effect of his words. He
+ushered his guests into the house, seeming in a flow of self-gratulation.
+
+The supper-table was spread, sure enough, and hovering about it was the
+doctor's sister; a lady in whom Fleda only saw a Dutch face, with eyes
+that made no impression, disagreeable fair hair, and a string of gilt
+beads round her neck. A painted yellow floor under foot, a room that
+looked excessively _wooden_ and smelt of cheese, bare walls and a
+well-filled table, was all that she took in besides.
+
+"I have the honour of presenting you to my sister," said the doctor with
+suavity. "Flora, the Irish domestics of this young lady call her name Miss
+Ring-again--if she will let us know how it ought to be called we shall be
+happy to be informed."
+
+Dr. Quackenboss was made happy.
+
+"Miss _Ringgan_--and this young gentleman is young Mr. Rossitur--the
+gentleman that has taken Squire Ringgan's old place. We were so
+fortunate as to have them lose their way this afternoon, coming from
+the Pool, and they have just stepped in to see if you can't find 'em a
+mouthful of something they can eat, while Lollypop is a getting ready to
+see them home."
+
+Poor Miss Flora immediately disappeared into the kitchen, to order a bit
+of superior cheese and to have some slices of ham put on the gridiron,
+and then coming back to the common room went rummaging about from
+cupboard to cupboard, in search of cake and sweetmeats. Fleda protested
+and begged in vain.
+
+"She was so sorry she hadn't knowed," Miss Flora said,--"she'd ha' had
+some cakes made that maybe they could have eaten, but the bread was dry;
+and the cheese wa'n't as good somehow as the last one they cut, maybe Miss
+Ringgan would prefer a piece of newer-made, if she liked it; and she
+hadn't had good luck with her preserves last summer--the most of 'em had
+fomented--she thought it was the damp weather, but there was some stewed
+pears that maybe she would be so good as to approve--and there was some
+ham! whatever else it was it was hot!--"
+
+It was impossible, it was impossible, to do dishonour to all this
+hospitality and kindness and pride that was brought out for them. Early or
+late, they must eat, in mere gratitude. The difficulty was to avoid eating
+everything. Hugh and Fleda managed to compound the matter with each other,
+one taking the cake and pears, and the other the ham and cheese. In the
+midst of all this over flow of good will Fleda bethought her to ask if
+Miss Flora knew of any girl or woman that would go out to service. Miss
+Flora took the matter into grave consideration as soon as her anxiety on
+the subject of their cups of tea had subsided. She did not commit herself,
+but thought it possible that one of the Finns might be willing to go out.
+
+"Where do they live?"
+
+"It's--a--not far from Queechy Run," said the doctor, whose now and then
+hesitation in the midst of his speech was never for want of a thought but
+simply and merely for the best words to clothe it in.
+
+"Is it in our way to-night?"
+
+He could make it so, the doctor said, with pleasure, for it would give him
+permission to gallant them a little further.
+
+They had several miles yet to go, and the sun went down as they were
+passing through Queechy Run. Under that still cool clear autumn sky Fleda
+would have enjoyed the ride very much, but that her unfulfilled errand was
+weighing upon her, and she feared her aunt and uncle might want her
+services before she could be at home. Still, late as it was, she
+determined to stop for a minute at Mrs. Finn's and go home with a clear
+conscience. At her door, and not till there, the doctor was prevailed upon
+to part company, the rest of the way being perfectly plain.
+
+"Not I!--at least I think not. But, Hugh, don't say anything about all
+this to aunt Lucy. She would be troubled."
+
+Fleda had certainly when she came away no notion of improving her
+acquaintance with Miss Anastasia; but the supper, and the breakfast and
+the dinner of the next day, with all the nameless and almost numberless
+duties of housework that filled up the time between, wrought her to a
+very strong sense of the necessity of having some kind of "help" soon.
+Mrs. Rossitur wearied herself excessively with doing very little, and
+then looked so sad to see Fleda working on, that it was more
+disheartening and harder to bear than the fatigue. Hugh was a most
+faithful and invaluable coadjutor, and his lack of strength was like her
+own made up by energy of will; but neither of them could bear the strain
+long; and when the final clearing away of the dinner-dishes gave her a
+breathing-time she resolved to dress herself and put her thimble in her
+pocket and go over to Miss Finn's quilting. Miss Lucy might not be like
+Miss Anastasia; and if she were, anything that had hands and feet to move
+instead of her own would be welcome.
+
+Hugh went with her to the door and was to come for her at sunset.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX.
+
+
+
+  With superfluity of breeding
+  First makes you sick, and then with feeding.
+
+  Jenyns.
+
+
+Miss Anastasia was a little surprised and a good deal gratified, Fleda
+saw, by her coming, and played the hostess with great benignity. The
+quilting-frame was stretched in an upper room, not in the long kitchen,
+to Fleda's joy; most of the company were already seated at it, and she
+had to go through a long string of introductions before she was permitted
+to take her place. First of all Earl Douglass's wife, who rose up and
+taking both Fleda's hands squeezed and shook them heartily, giving her
+with eye and lip a most genial welcome. This lady had every look of being
+a very _clever_ woman; "a manager" she was said to be; and indeed her
+very nose had a little pinch which prepared one for nothing superfluous
+about her. Even her dress could not have wanted another breadth from the
+skirt and had no fulness to spare about the body. Neat as a pin though;
+and a well-to-do look through it all. Miss Quackenboss Fleda recognised
+as an old friend, gilt beads and all. Catherine Douglass had grown up to
+a pretty girl during the five years since Fleda had left Queechy, and
+gave her a greeting half smiling, half shy. There was a little more
+affluence about the flow of her drapery, and the pink ribbon round her
+neck was confined by a little dainty Jew's harp of a brooch; she had her
+mother's pinch of the nose too. Then there were two other young
+ladies;--Miss Letitia Ann Thornton, a tall grown girl in pantalettes,
+evidently a would-be aristocrat from the air of her head and lip, with a
+well-looking face and looking well knowing of the same, and sporting neat
+little white cuffs at her wrists, the only one who bore such a
+distinction. The third of these damsels, Jessie Healy, impressed Fleda
+with having been brought up upon coarse meat and having grown heavy in
+consequence; the other two were extremely fair and delicate, both in
+complexion and feature. Her aunt Syra Fleda recognised without particular
+pleasure and managed to seat herself at the quilt with the sewing-woman
+and Miss Hannah between them. Miss Lucy Finn she found seated at her
+right hand, but after all the civilities she had just gone through Fleda
+had not courage just then to dash into business with her, and Miss Lucy
+herself stitched away and was dumb.
+
+So were the rest of the party--rather. The presence of the new-comer
+seemed to have the effect of a spell. Fleda could not think they had been
+as silent before her joining them as they were for some time afterwards.
+The young ladies were absolutely mute, and conversation seemed to flag
+even among the elder ones; and if Fleda ever raised her eyes from the
+quilt to look at somebody she was sure to see somebody's eyes looking at
+her, with a curiosity well enough defined and mixed with a more _or less_
+amount of benevolence and pleasure. Fleda was growing very industrious and
+feeling her cheeks grow warm, when the checked stream of conversation
+began to take revenge by turning its tide upon her.
+
+"Are you glad to be back to Queechy, Fleda?" said Mrs. Douglass from the
+opposite far end of the quilt.
+
+"Yes ma'am," said Fleda, smiling back her answer,--"on some accounts."
+
+"Ain't she growed like her father, Mis' Douglass?" said the sewing woman.
+"Do you recollect Walter Ringgan--what a handsome feller he was?"
+
+The two opposite girls immediately found something to say to each other.
+
+"She ain't a bit more like him than she is like her mother," said Mrs.
+Douglass, biting off the end of her thread energetically. "Amy Ringgan was
+a sweet good woman as ever was in this town."
+
+Again her daughter's glance and smile went over to the speaker.
+
+"You stay in Queechy and live like Queechy folks do," Mrs. Douglass added,
+nodding encouragingly, "and you'll beat both on 'em."
+
+But this speech jarred, and Fleda wished it had not been spoken.
+
+"How does your uncle like farming?" said aunt Syra.
+
+A home-thrust, which Fleda parried by saying he had hardly got accustomed
+to it yet.
+
+"What's been his business? what has he been doing all his life till now?"
+said the sewing-woman.
+
+Fleda replied that he had had no business; and after the minds of the
+company had had time to entertain this statement she was startled by Miss
+Lucy's voice at her elbow.
+
+"It seems kind o' curious, don't it, that a man should live to be
+forty or fifty years old and not know anything of the earth he gets
+his bread from?"
+
+"What makes you think he don't?" said Miss Thornton rather tartly.
+
+"She wa'n't speaking o' nobody," said aunt Syra.
+
+"I was--I was speaking of _man_--I was speaking abstractly," said Fleda's
+right hand neighbour.
+
+"What's abstractly?" said Miss Anastasia scornfully.
+
+"Where do you get hold of such hard words, Lucy?" said Mrs. Douglass.
+
+"I don't know, Mis' Douglass;--they come to me;--it's practice, I suppose.
+I had no intention of being obscure."
+
+"One kind o' word's as easy as another I suppose, when you're used to it,
+ain't it?" said the sewing-woman.
+
+"What's abstractly?" said the mistress of the house again.
+
+"Look in the dictionary, if you want to know," said her sister.
+
+"I don't want to know--I only want you to tell."
+
+"When do you get time for it, Lucy? ha'n't you nothing else to practise?"
+pursued Mrs. Douglass.
+
+"Yes, Mis' Douglass; but then there are times for exertion, and other
+times less disposable; and when I feel thoughtful, or low, I commonly
+retire to my room and contemplate the stars or write a composition."
+
+The sewing-woman greeted this speech with an unqualified ha! ha! and Fleda
+involuntarily raised her head to look at the last speaker; but there was
+nothing to be noticed about her, except that she was in rather nicer order
+than the rest of the Finn family.
+
+"Did you get home safe last night?" inquired Miss Quackenboss, bending
+forward over the quilt to look down to Fleda.
+
+Fleda thanked her, and replied that they had been overturned and had
+several ribs broken.
+
+"And where have you been, Fleda, all this while?" said Mrs. Douglass.
+
+Fleda told, upon which all the quilting-party raised their heads
+simultaneously to take another review of her.
+
+"Your uncle's wife ain't a Frenchwoman, be she?" asked the sewing-woman.
+
+Fleda said "oh no"--and Miss Quackenboss remarked that "she thought she
+wa'n't;" whereby Fleda perceived it had been a subject of discussion.
+
+"She lives like one, don't she?" said aunt Syra.
+
+Which imputation Fleda also refuted to the best of her power.
+
+"Well, don't she have dinner in the middle of the afternoon?" pursued
+aunt Syra.
+
+Fleda was obliged to admit that.
+
+"And she can't eat without she has a fresh piece of roast meat on table
+every day, can she?"
+
+"It is not always roast," said Fleda, half vexed and half laughing.
+
+"I'd rather have a good dish o' bread and 'lasses than the hull on't;"
+observed old Mrs. Finn; from the corner where she sat manifestly turning
+up her nose at the far-off joints on Mrs. Rossitur's dinner-table.
+
+The girls on the other side of the quilt again held counsel together,
+deep and low.
+
+"Well didn't she pick up all them notions in that place yonder?--where you
+say she has been?" aunt Syra went on.
+
+"No," said Fleda; "everybody does so in New York."
+
+"I want to know what kind of a place New York is, now," said old Mrs. Finn
+drawlingly. "I s'pose it's pretty big, ain't it?"
+
+Fleda replied that it was.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if it was a'most as far as from here to Queechy Run,
+now, ain't it?"
+
+The distance mentioned being somewhere about one-eighth of New York's
+longest diameter, Fleda answered that it was quite as far.
+
+"I s'pose there's plenty o' mighty rich folks there, ain't there?"
+
+"Plenty, I believe," said Fleda.
+
+"I should hate to live in it awfully!" was the old woman's conclusion.
+
+"I should admire to travel in many countries," said Miss Lucy, for the
+first time seeming to intend her words particularly for Fleda's ear. "I
+think nothing makes people more genteel. I have observed it frequently."
+
+Fleda said it was very pleasant; but though encouraged by this opening
+could not muster enough courage to ask if Miss Lucy had a "notion" to come
+and prove their gentility. Her next question was startling,--if Fleda had
+ever studied mathematics?
+
+"No," said Fleda. "Have you?"
+
+"O my, yes! There was a lot of us concluded we would learn it; and we
+commenced to study it a long time ago. I think it's a most elevating--"
+
+The discussion was suddenly broken off, for the sewing-woman exclaimed,
+as the other sister came in and took her seat,
+
+"Why Hannah! you ha'n't been makin' bread with that crock on your hands!"
+
+"Well Mis' Barnes!" said the girl,--"I've washed 'em, and I've made bread
+with 'em, and even _that_ didn't take it off!"
+
+"Do you look at the stars, too, Hannah?" said Mrs. Douglass.
+
+Amidst a small hubbub of laugh and talk which now became general, poor
+Fleda fell back upon one single thought--one wish; that Hugh would come to
+fetch her home before tea-time. But it was a vain hope. Hugh was not to be
+there till sundown, and supper was announced long before that. They all
+filed down, and Fleda with them, to the great kitchen below stairs; and
+she found herself placed in the seat of honour indeed, but an honour she
+would gladly have escaped, at Miss Anastasia's right hand.
+
+A temporary locked-jaw would have been felt a blessing. Fleda dared hardly
+even look about her; but under the eye of her hostess the instinct of
+good-breeding was found sufficient to swallow everything; literally and
+figuratively. There was a good deal to swallow. The usual variety of
+cakes, sweetmeats, beef, cheese, biscuits, and pies, was set out with some
+peculiarity of arrangement which Fleda had never seen before, and which
+left that of Miss Quackenboss elegant by comparison. Down each side of the
+table ran an advanced guard of little sauces, in Indian file, but in
+companies of three, the file leader of each being a saucer of custard, its
+follower a ditto of preserves, and the third keeping a sharp look-out in
+the shape of pickles; and to Fleda's unspeakable horror she discovered
+that the guests were expected to help themselves at will from these
+several stores with their own spoons, transferring what they took either
+to their own plates or at once to its final destination, which last mode
+several of the company preferred. The advantage of this plan was the
+necessary great display of the new silver tea-spoons which Mrs. Douglass
+slyly hinted to aunt Syra were the moving cause of the tea-party. But aunt
+Syra swallowed sweetmeats and would not give heed.
+
+There was no relief for poor Fleda. Aunt Syra was her next neighbour, and
+opposite to her, at Miss Anastasia's left hand, was the disagreeable
+countenance and peering eyes of the old crone her mother. Fleda kept her
+own eyes fixed upon her plate and endeavoured to see nothing but that.
+
+"Why here's Fleda ain't eating anything," said Mrs. Douglass. "Won't you
+have some preserves? take some custard, do!--Anastasy, she ha'n't a
+spoon--no wonder!"
+
+Fleda had secretly conveyed hers under cover.
+
+"There _was_ one," said Miss Anastasia, looking about where one should
+have been,--"I'll get another as soon as I give Mis' Springer her tea."
+
+"Ha'n't you got enough to go round?" said the old woman plucking at her
+daughter's sleeve,--"Anastasy!--ha'n't you got enough to go round?"
+
+This speech which was spoken with a most spiteful simplicity Miss
+Anastasia answered with superb silence, and presently produced spoons
+enough to satisfy herself and the company. But Fleda! No earthly
+persuasion could prevail upon her to touch pickles, sweetmeats, or
+custard, that evening; and even in the bread and cakes she had a vision of
+hands before her that took away her appetite. She endeavoured to make a
+shew with hung beef and cups of tea, which indeed was not Pouchong; but
+her supper came suddenly to an end upon a remark of her hostess, addressed
+to the whole table, that they needn't be surprised if they found any bite
+of pudding in the gingerbread, for it was made from the molasses the
+children left the other day. Who "the children" were Fleda did not know,
+neither was it material.
+
+It was sundown, but Hugh had not come when they went to the upper rooms
+again. Two were open now, for they were small and the company promised not
+to be such. Fathers and brothers and husbands began to come, and loud
+talking and laughing and joking took place of the quilting chit-chat.
+Fleda would fain have absorbed herself in the work again, but though the
+frame still stood there the minds of the company were plainly turned aside
+from their duty, or perhaps they thought that Miss Anastasia had had
+admiration enough to dispense with service. Nobody shewed a thimble but
+one or two old ladies; and as numbers and spirits gathered strength, a
+kind of romping game was set on foot in which a vast deal of kissing
+seemed to be the grand wit of the matter. Fleda shrank away out of sight
+behind the open door of communication between the two rooms, pleading with
+great truth that she was tired and would like to keep perfectly quiet; and
+she had soon the satisfaction of being apparently forgotten.
+
+In the other room some of the older people were enjoying themselves more
+soberly. Fleda's ear was too near the crack of the door not to have the
+benefit of more of their conversation than she cared for. It soon put
+quiet of mind out of the question.
+
+"He'll twist himself up pretty short; that's my sense of it; and he won't
+take long to do it, nother," said Earl Douglass's voice.
+
+Fleda would have known it anywhere from its extreme peculiarity. It never
+either rose or fell much from a certain pitch; and at that level the words
+gurgled forth, seemingly from an ever-brimming fountain; he never wanted
+one; and the stream had neither let nor stay till his modicum of sense had
+fairly run out. People thought he had not a greater stock of that than
+some of his neighbours; but he issued an amount of word-currency
+sufficient for the use of the county.
+
+"He'll run himself agin a post pretty quick," said uncle Joshua in a
+confirmatory tone of voice.
+
+Fleda had a confused idea that somebody was going to hang himself.
+
+"He ain't a workin' things right," said Douglass,--"he ain't a workin'
+things right; he's takin' hold o' everything by the tail end. He ain't
+studied the business; he doesn't know when things is right, and he doesn't
+know when things is wrong;--and if they're wrong he don't know how to set
+'em right. He's got a feller there that ain't no more fit to be there than
+I am to be Vice President of the United States; and I ain't a going to say
+what I think I _am_ fit for, but I ha'n't studied for _that_ place and I
+shouldn't like to stand an examination for't; and a man hadn't ought to be
+a farmer no more if he ha'n't qualified himself. That's my idee. I like to
+see a thing done well if it's to be done at all; and there ain't a stitch
+o' land been laid right on the hull farm, nor a furrow driv' as it had
+ought to be, since he come on to it; and I say, Squire Springer, a man
+ain't going to get along in that way, and he hadn't ought to. I work hard
+myself, and I calculate to work hard; and I make a livin by't; and I'm
+content to work hard. When I see a man with his hands in his pockets, I
+think he'll have nothin' else in 'em soon. I don't believe he's done a
+hand's turn himself on the land the hull season!"
+
+And upon this Mr. Douglass brought up.
+
+"My son Lucas has been workin' with him, off and on, pretty much the hull
+time since he come; and _he_ says he ha'n't begun to know how to spell
+farmer yet."
+
+"Ay, ay! My wife--she's a little harder on folks than I be--I think it
+ain't worth while to say nothin' of a man without I can say some good of
+him--that's my idee--and it don't do no harm, nother,--but my wife, she
+says he's got to let down his notions a peg or two afore they'll hitch
+just in the right place; and I won't say but what I think she ain't maybe
+fur from right. If a man's above his business he stands a pretty fair
+chance to be below it some day. I won't say myself, for I haven't any
+acquaintance with him, and a man oughtn't to speak but of what he is
+knowing to,--but I have heerd say, that he wa'n't as conversationable as
+it would ha' been handsome in him to be, all things considerin'. There
+seems to be a good many things said of him, somehow, and I always think
+men don't talk of a man if he don't give 'em occasion; but anyhow I've
+been past the farm pretty often myself this summer, workin' with Seth
+Plumfield; and I've took notice of things myself; and I know he's been
+makin' beds o' sparrowgrass when he had ought to ha' been makin' fences,
+and he's been helpin' that little girl o' his'n set her flowers, when he
+would ha' been better sot to work lookin' after his Irishman; but I don't
+know as it made much matter nother, for if he went wrong Mr. Rossitur
+wouldn't know how to set him right, and if he was a going right Mr.
+Rossitur would ha' been just as likely to ha' set him wrong. Well I'm
+sorry for him!"
+
+"Mr. Rossitur is a most gentlemanlike man," said the voice of Dr.
+Quackenboss.
+
+"Ay,--I dare say he is," Earl responded in precisely the same tone. "I
+was down to his house one day last summer to see him.--He wa'n't to
+hum, though."
+
+"It would be strange if harm come to a man with such a guardian angel in
+the house as that man has in his'n," said Dr. Quackenboss.
+
+"Well she's a pretty creetur'!" said Douglass, looking up with some
+animation. "I wouldn't blame any man that sot a good deal by her. I will
+say I think she's as handsome as my own darter; and a man can't go no
+furder than that I suppose."
+
+"She won't help his farming much, I guess," said uncle Joshua,--"nor his
+wife, nother."
+
+Fleda heard Dr. Quackenboss coming through the doorway and started
+from her corner for fear he might find her out there and know what she
+had heard.
+
+He very soon found her out in the new place she had chosen and came up to
+pay his compliments. Fleda was in a mood for anything but laughing, yet
+the mixture of the ludicrous which the doctor administered set her nerves
+a twitching. Bringing his chair down sideways at one angle and his person
+at another, so as to meet at the moment of the chair's touching the floor,
+and with a look and smile slanting to match, the doctor said,
+
+"Well, Miss Ringgan, has--a--Mrs. Rossitur,--does she feel herself
+reconciled yet?"
+
+"Reconciled, sir?" said Fleda.
+
+"Yes--a--to Queechy?"
+
+"She never quarrelled with it, sir," said Fleda, quite unable to keep
+from laughing.
+
+"Yes,--I mean--a--she feels that she can sustain her spirits in different
+situations?"
+
+"She is very well, sir, thank you."
+
+"It must have been a great change to her--and to you all--coming to
+this place."
+
+"Yes, sir; the country is very different from the city."
+
+"In what part of New York was Mr. Rossitur's former residence?"
+
+"In State street, sir."
+
+"State street,--that is somewhere in the direction of the Park?"
+
+"No, sir, not exactly."
+
+"Was Mrs. Rossitur a native of the city?"
+
+"Not of New York. O Hugh, my dear Hugh," exclaimed Fleda in another
+tone,--"what have you been thinking of?"
+
+"Father wanted me," said Hugh. "I could not help it, Fleda."
+
+"You are not going to have the cruelty to take your--a--cousin away, Mr.
+Rossitur?" said the doctor.
+
+But Fleda was for once happy to be cruel; she would hear no remonstrances.
+Though her desire for Miss Lucy's "help" had considerably lessened she
+thought she could not in politeness avoid speaking on the subject, after
+being invited there on purpose. But Miss Lucy said she "calculated to stay
+at home this winter," unless she went to live with somebody at Kenton for
+the purpose of attending a course of philosophy lectures that she heard
+were to be given there. So that matter was settled; and clasping Hugh's
+arm Fleda turned away from the house with a step and heart both lightened
+by the joy of being out of it.
+
+"I couldn't come sooner, Fleda," said Hugh.
+
+"No matter--O I'm so glad to be away! Walk a little faster, dear
+Hugh.--Have you missed me at home?"
+
+"Do you want me to say no or yes?" said Hugh smiling. "We did very
+well--mother and I--and I have left everything ready to have tea the
+minute you get home. What sort of a time have you had?"
+
+In answer to which Fleda gave him a long history; and then they walked on
+awhile in silence. The evening was still and would have been dark but for
+the extreme brilliancy of the stars through the keen clear atmosphere.
+Fleda looked up at them and drew large draughts of bodily and mental
+refreshment with the bracing air.
+
+"Do you know to-morrow will be Thanksgiving day?"
+
+"Ye--what made you think of it?"
+
+"They were talking about it--they make a great fuss here
+Thanksgiving day."
+
+"I don't think we shall make much of a fuss," said Hugh.
+
+"I don't think we shall. I wonder what I shall do--I am afraid uncle Rolf
+will get tired of coffee and omelettes in the course of time; and my list
+of receipts is very limited."
+
+"It is a pity you didn't beg one of Mrs. Renney's books," said Hugh
+laughing. "If you had only known--"
+
+"'Tisn't too late!" said Fleda quickly,--"I'll send to New York for one. I
+will! I'll ask uncle Orrin to get it for me. That's the best thought!--"
+
+"But, Fleda! you're not going to turn cook in that fashion?"
+
+"It would be no harm to have the book," said Fleda. "I can tell you we
+mustn't expect to get anybody here that can make an omelette, or even
+coffee, that uncle Rolf will drink. Oh Hugh!--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"I don't know where we are going to get anybody!--But don't say anything
+to aunt Lucy about it."
+
+"Well, we can keep Thanksgiving day, Fleda, without a dinner," said Hugh
+cheerfully.
+
+"Yes indeed; I am sure I can--after being among these people to-night. How
+much I have that they want! Look at the Great Bear over there!--isn't that
+better than New York?"
+
+"The Great Bear hangs over New York too," Hugh said with a smile.
+
+"Ah but it isn't the same thing. Heaven hasn't the same eyes for the city
+and the country."
+
+As Hugh and Fleda went quick up to the kitchen door they overtook a dark
+figure, at whom looking narrowly as she passed, Fleda recognised Seth
+Plumfield. He was joyfully let into the kitchen, and there proved to be
+the bearer of a huge dish carefully covered with a napkin.
+
+"Mother guessed you hadn't any Thanksgiving ready," he said,--"and she
+wanted to send this down to you; so I thought I would come and fetch
+it myself."
+
+"O thank her! and thank you, cousin Seth;--how good you are?"
+
+"Mother ha'n't lost her old trick at 'em," said he, "so I hope
+_that's_ good."
+
+"O I know it is," said Fleda. "I remember aunt Miriam's Thanksgiving
+chicken-pies. Now, cousin Seth, you must come in and see aunt Lucy."
+
+"No," said he quietly,--"I've got my farm-boots on--I guess I won't see
+anybody but you."
+
+But Fleda would not suffer that, and finding she could not move him she
+brought her aunt out into the kitchen. Mrs. Rossitur's manner of speaking
+and thanking him quite charmed Seth, and he went away with a kindly
+feeling towards those gentle bright eyes which he never forgot.
+
+"Now we've something for to-morrow, Hugh!" said Fleda;--"and such a
+chicken-pie I can tell you as _you_ never saw. Hugh, isn't it odd how
+different a thing is in different circumstances? You don't know how glad I
+was when I put my hands upon that warm pie-dish and knew what it was; and
+when did I ever care in New York about Emile's doings?"
+
+"Except the almond gauffres," said Hugh smiling.
+
+"I never thought to be so glad of a chicken-pie," said Fleda,
+shaking her head.
+
+Aunt Miriam's dish bore out Fleda's praise, in the opinion of all that
+tasted it; for such fowls, such butter, and such cream, as went to its
+composition could hardly be known but in an unsophisticated state of
+society. But one pie could not last for ever; and as soon as the signs of
+dinner were got rid of, Thanksgiving day though it was, poor Fleda was
+fain to go up the hill to consult aunt Miriam about the possibility of
+getting "help."
+
+"I don't know, dear Fleda," said she;--"if you cannot get Lucy Finn--I
+don't know who else there is you can get. Mrs. Toles wants both her
+daughters at home I know this winter, because she is sick; and Marietta
+Winchel is working at aunt Syra's;--I don't know--Do you remember Barby
+Elster, that used to live with me?"
+
+"O yes!"
+
+"She _might_ go--she has been staying at home these two years, to take
+care of her old mother, that's the reason she left me; but she has another
+sister come home now,--Hetty, that married and went to Montepoole,--she's
+lost her husband and come home to live; so perhaps Barby would go out
+again. But I don't know,--how do you think your aunt Lucy would get along
+with her?"
+
+"Dear aunt Miriam! you know we must do as we can. We _must_ have
+somebody."
+
+"Barby is a little quick," said Mrs. Plumfield, "but I think she is
+good-hearted, and she is thorough, and faithful as the day is long. If
+your aunt and uncle can put up with her ways."
+
+"I am sure we can, aunt Miriam. Aunt Lucy's the easiest person in the
+world to please, and I'll try and keep her away from uncle Rolf. I think
+we can get along. I know Barby used to like me."
+
+"But then Barby knows nothing about French cooking, my child; she can
+do nothing but the common country things. What will your uncle and aunt
+say to that?"
+
+"I don't know," said Fleda, "but anything is better than nothing. I
+must try and do what she can't do. I'll come up and get you to teach
+me, aunt Miriam."
+
+Aunt Miriam hugged and kissed her before speaking.
+
+"I'll teach you what I know, my darling;--and now we'll go right off and
+see Barby--we shall catch her just in a good time."
+
+It was a poor little unpainted house, standing back from the road, and
+with a double row of boards laid down to serve as a path to it. But this
+board-walk was scrubbed perfectly clean. They went in without knocking.
+There was nobody there but an old woman seated before the fire shaking
+all over with the St. Vitus's Dance. She gave them no salutation,
+calling instead on "Barby!"--who presently made her appearance from the
+inner door.
+
+"Barby!--who's this?"
+
+"That's Mis' Plumfield, mother," said the daughter, speaking loud as to a
+deaf person.
+
+The old lady immediately got up and dropped a very quick and what was
+meant to be a very respect-shewing curtsey, saying at the same time
+with much deference and with one of her involuntary twitches,--"I
+''maun' to know!"--The sense of the ludicrous and the feeling of pity
+together were painfully oppressive. Fleda turned away to the daughter
+who came forward and shook hands with a frank look of pleasure at the
+sight of her elder visitor.
+
+"Barby," said Mrs. Plumfield, "this is little Fleda Ringgan--do you
+remember her?"
+
+"I 'mind to know!" said Barby, transferring her hand to Fleda's and giving
+it a good squeeze.--"She's growed a fine gal, Mis' Plumfield. You ha'n't
+lost none of your good looks--ha' you kept all your old goodness along
+with 'em?"
+
+Fleda laughed at this abrupt question, and said she didn't know.
+
+"If you ha'n't, I wouldn't give much for your eyes," said Barby letting
+go her hand.
+
+Mrs. Plumfield laughed too at Barby's equivocal mode of complimenting.
+
+"Who's that young gal, Barby?" inquired Mrs. Elster.
+
+"That's Mis' Plumfield's niece, mother!"
+
+"She's a handsome little creetur, ain't she?"
+
+They all laughed at that, and Fleda's cheeks growing crimson, Mrs.
+Plumfield stepped forward to ask after the old lady's health; and while
+she talked and listened Fleda's eyes noted the spotless condition of the
+room--the white table, the nice rag-carpet, the bright many-coloured
+patch-work counterpane on the bed, the brilliant cleanliness of the floor
+where the small carpet left the boards bare, the tidy look of the two
+women; and she made up her mind that _she_ could get along with Miss
+Barbara very well. Barby was rather tall, and in face decidedly a
+fine-looking woman, though her figure had the usual scantling proportions
+which nature or fashion assigns to the hard-working dwellers in the
+country. A handsome quick grey eye and the mouth were sufficiently
+expressive of character, and perhaps of temper, but there were no lines of
+anything sinister or surly; you could imagine a flash, but not a cloud.
+
+"Barby, you are not tied at home any longer, are you?" said Mrs.
+Plumfield, coming back from the old lady and speaking rather low;--"now
+that Hetty is here, can't your mother spare you?"
+
+"Well I reckon she could, Mis' Plumfield,--if I could work it so that
+she'd be more comfortable by my being away."
+
+"Then you'd have no objection to go out again?"
+
+"Where to?"
+
+"Fleda's uncle, you know, has taken my brother's old place, and they have
+no help. They want somebody to take the whole management--just you, Barby.
+Mrs. Rossitur isn't strong."
+
+"Nor don't want to be, does she? I've heerd tell of her. Mis' Plumfield,
+I should despise to have as many legs and arms as other folks and not be
+able to help myself!"
+
+"But you wouldn't despise to help other folks, I hope," said Mrs.
+Plumfield smiling.
+
+"People that want you very much too," said Fleda; for she quite longed to
+have that strong hand and healthy eye to rely upon at home. Barby looked
+at her with a relaxed face, and after a little consideration said "she
+guessed she'd try."
+
+"Mis' Plumfield," cried the old lady as they were moving,--"Mis'
+Plumfield, you said you'd send me a piece of pork."
+
+"I haven't forgotten it, Mrs. Elster--you shall have it."
+
+"Well you get it out for me yourself," said the old woman speaking very
+energetically,--"don't you send no one else to the barrel for't; because I
+know you'll give me the biggest piece."
+
+Mrs. Plumfield laughed and promised.
+
+"I'll come up and work it out some odd day," said the daughter nodding
+intelligently as she followed them to the door.
+
+"We'll talk about that," said Mrs. Plumfield.
+
+"She was wonderful pleased with the pie," said Barby, "and so was Hetty;
+she ha'n't seen anything so good, she says, since she quit Queechy."
+
+"Well, Barby," said Mrs. Plumfield, as she turned and grasped her hand,
+"did you remember your Thanksgiving over it?"
+
+"Yes, Mis' Plumfield," and the fine grey eyes fell to the floor,--"but I
+minded it only because it had come from you. I seemed to hear you saying
+just that out of every bone I picked."
+
+"You minded _my_ message," said the other gently.
+
+"Well I don't mind the things I had ought to most," said Barby in a
+subdued voice,--"never!--'cept mother--I ain't very apt to forget her."
+
+Mrs. Plumfield saw a tell-tale glittering beneath the drooping eye-lid.
+She added no more but a sympathetic strong squeeze of the hand she held,
+and turned to follow Fleda who had gone on ahead.
+
+"Mis' Plumfield!" said Barby, before they had reached the stile that led
+into the road, where Fleda was standing,--"Will I be sure of having the
+money regular down yonder? You know I hadn't ought to go otherways, on
+account of mother."
+
+"Yes, it will be sure," said Mrs. Plumfield,--"and regular;" adding
+quietly, "I'll make it so."
+
+There was a bond for the whole amount in aunt Miriam's eyes; and quite
+satisfied, Barby went back to the house.
+
+"Will she expect to come to our table, aunt Miriam?" said Fleda when they
+had walked a little way.
+
+"No--she will not expect that--but Barby will want a different kind of
+managing from those Irish women of yours. She won't bear to be spoken
+to in a way that don't suit her notions of what she thinks she deserves;
+and perhaps your aunt and uncle will think her notions rather high--I
+don't know."
+
+"There is no difficulty with aunt Lucy," said Fleda;--"and I guess I can
+manage uncle Rolf--I'll try. _I_ like her very much."
+
+"Barby is very poor," said Mrs. Plumfield; "she has nothing but her own
+earnings to support herself and her old mother, and now I suppose her
+sister and her child; for Hetty is a poor thing--never did much, and now I
+suppose does nothing."
+
+"Are those Finns poor, aunt Miriam?"
+
+"O no--not at all--they are very well off."
+
+"So I thought--they seemed to have plenty of everything, and silver spoons
+and all. But why then do they go out to work?"
+
+"They are a little too fond of getting money I expect," said aunt Miriam.
+"And they are a queer sort of people rather--the mother is queer and the
+children are queer--they ain't like other folks exactly--never were."
+
+"I am very glad we are to have Barby instead of that Lucy Finn," said
+Fleda. "O aunt Miriam! you can't think how much easier my heart feels."
+
+"Poor child!" said aunt Miriam looking at her. "But it isn't best, Fleda,
+to have things work too smooth in this world."
+
+"No, I suppose not," said Fleda sighing. "Isn't it very strange, aunt
+Miriam, that it should make people worse instead of better to have
+everything go pleasantly with them?"
+
+"It is because they are apt then to be so full of the present that they
+forget the care of the future."
+
+"Yes, and forget there is anything better than the present, I suppose,"
+said Fleda.
+
+"So we mustn't fret at the ways our Father takes to keep us from hurting
+ourselves?" said aunt Miriam cheerfully.
+
+"O no!" said Fleda, looking up brightly in answer to the tender manner in
+which these words were spoken;--"and I didn't mean that _this_ is much of
+a trouble--only I am very glad to think that somebody is coming
+to-morrow."
+
+Aunt Miriam thought that gentle unfretful face could not stand in need of
+much discipline.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI.
+
+
+
+  Wise men alway
+  Affyrme and say,
+  That best is for a man
+  Diligently,
+  For to apply,
+  The business that he can.
+
+  More.
+
+
+Fleda waited for Barby's coming the next day with a little anxiety. The
+introduction and installation however were happily got over. Mrs.
+Rossitur, as Fleda knew, was most easily pleased; and Barby Elster's quick
+eye was satisfied with the unaffected and universal gentleness and
+politeness of her new employer. She made herself at home in half an hour;
+and Mrs. Rossitur and Fleda were comforted to perceive, by unmistakeable
+signs, that their presence was not needed in the kitchen and they might
+retire to their own premises and forget there was another part of the
+house. Fleda had forgotten it utterly, and deliciously enjoying the rest
+of mind and body she was stretched upon the sofa, luxuriating over some
+volume from her remnant of a library; when the inner door was suddenly
+pushed open far enough to admit the entrance of Miss Elster's head.
+
+"Where's the soft soap?"
+
+Fleda's book went down and her heart jumped to her mouth, for her uncle
+was sitting over by the window. Mrs. Rossitur looked up in a maze and
+waited for the question to be repeated.
+
+"I say, where's the soft soap?"
+
+"Soft soap!" said Mrs. Rossitur,--"I don't know whether there is
+any.--Fleda, do you know?"
+
+"I was trying to think, aunt Lucy. I don't believe there is any."
+
+"_Where_ is it?" said Barby.
+
+"There is none, I believe," said Mrs. Rossitur.
+
+"Where _was_ it, then?"
+
+"Nowhere--there has not been any in the house," said Fleda, raising
+herself up to see over the back of her sofa.
+
+"There ha'n't been none!" said Miss Elster, in a tone more significant
+than her words, and shutting the door as abruptly as she had opened it.
+
+"What upon earth does the woman mean?" exclaimed Mr. Rossitur, springing
+up and advancing towards the kitchen door. Fleda threw herself before him.
+
+"Nothing at all, uncle Rolf--she doesn't mean anything at all--she
+doesn't know any better."
+
+"I will improve her knowledge--get out the way, Fleda."
+
+"But uncle Rolf, just hear me one moment--please don't!--she didn't mean
+any harm--these people don't know any manners--just let me speak to her,
+please uncle Rolf!--" said Fleda laying both hands upon her uncle's
+arms,--"I'll manage her."
+
+Mr. Rossitur's wrath was high, and he would have run over or knocked down
+anything less gentle that had stood in his way; but even the harshness of
+strength shuns to set itself in array against the meekness that does not
+_oppose_; if the touch of those hands had been a whit less light, or the
+glance of her eye less submissively appealing, it would have availed
+nothing. As it was, he stopped and looked at her, at first scowling, but
+then with a smile.
+
+"_You_ manage her!" said he.
+
+"Yes," said Fleda laughing, and now exerting her force she gently pushed
+him back towards the seat he had quitted,--"yes, uncle Rolf--you've enough
+else to manage--don't undertake our 'help.' Deliver over all your
+displeasure upon me when anything goes wrong--I will be the conductor to
+carry it off safely into the kitchen and discharge it just at that point
+where I think it will do most execution. Now will you, uncle
+Rolf?--Because we have got a new-fashioned piece of firearms in the other
+room that I am afraid will go off unexpectedly if it is meddled with by an
+unskilful hand;--and that would leave us without arms, you see, or with
+only aunt Lucy's and mine, which are not reliable."
+
+"You saucy girl!"--said her uncle, who was laughing partly at and partly
+with her,--"I don't know what you deserve exactly.--Well--keep this
+precious new operative of yours out of my way and I'll take care to keep
+out of hers. But mind, you must manage not to have your piece snapping in
+my face in this fashion, for I won't stand it."
+
+And so, quieted, Mr. Rossitur sat down to his book again; and Fleda
+leaving hers open went to attend upon Barby.
+
+"There ain't much yallow soap neither," said this personage,--"if this is
+all. There's one thing--if we ha'n't got it we can make it. I must get
+Mis' Rossitur to have a leach-tub sot up right away. I'm a dreadful hand
+for havin' plenty o' soap."
+
+"What is a leach-tub?" said Fleda.
+
+"Why, a leach-tub, for to leach ashes in. That's easy enough. I'll fix it,
+afore we're any on us much older. If Mr. Rossitur'll keep me in good hard
+wood I sha'n't cost him hardly anything for potash."
+
+"I'll see about it," said Fleda, "and I will see about having the
+leach-tub, or whatever it is, put up for you. And Barby, whenever you want
+anything, will you just speak to me about it?--and if I am in the other
+room ask me to come out here. Because my aunt is not strong, and does not
+know where things are as well as I do; and when my uncle is in there he
+sometimes does not like to be disturbed with hearing any such talk. If
+you'll tell me I'll see and have everything done for you."
+
+"Well--you get me a leach sot up--that's all I'll ask of you just now,"
+said Barby good-humouredly; "and help me to find the soap-grease, if there
+is any. As to the rest, I don't want to see nothin' o' him in the kitchen
+so I'll relieve him if he don't want to see much o' me in the parlour.--I
+shouldn't wonder if there wa'n't a speck of it in the house."
+
+Not a speck was there to be found.
+
+"Your uncle's pockets must ha' had a good hole in 'em by this time,"
+remarked Barby as they came back from the cellar. "However, there never
+was a crock so empty it couldn't be filled. You get me a leach-tub sot up,
+and I'll find work for it."
+
+From that time Fleda had no more trouble with her uncle and Barby. Each
+seemed to have a wholesome appreciation of the other's combative qualities
+and to shun them. With Mrs. Rossitur Barby was soon all-powerful. It was
+enough that she wanted a thing, if Mrs Rossitur's own resources could
+compass it. For Fleda, to say that Barby had presently a perfect
+understanding with her and joined to that a most affectionate careful
+regard, is not perhaps saying much; for it was true of every one without
+exception with whom Fleda had much to do. Barby was to all of them a very
+great comfort and stand-by.
+
+It was well for them that they had her within doors to keep things, as she
+called it, "right and tight;" for abroad the only system in vogue was one
+of fluctuation and uncertainty. Mr. Rossitur's Irishman, Donohan, staid
+his year out, doing as little good and as much at least negative harm as
+he well could; and then went, leaving them a good deal poorer than he
+found them. Dr. Gregory's generosity had added to Mr. Rossitur's own small
+stock of ready money, giving him the means to make some needed outlays on
+the farm. But the outlay, ill-applied, had been greater than the income; a
+scarcity of money began to be more and more felt; and the comfort of the
+family accordingly drew within more and more narrow bounds. The temper of
+the head of the family suffered in at least equal degree.
+
+From the first of Barby's coming poor Fleda had done her utmost to prevent
+the want of Mons. Emile from being felt. Mr. Rossitur's table was always
+set by her careful hand, and all the delicacies that came upon it were,
+unknown to him, of her providing. Even the bread. One day at breakfast Mr.
+Rossitur had expressed his impatient displeasure at that of Miss Elster's
+manufacture. Fleda saw the distressed shade that came over her aunt's
+face, and took her resolution. It was the last time. She had followed her
+plan of sending for the receipts, and she studied them diligently, both at
+home and under aunt Miriam. Natural quickness of eye and hand came in aid
+of her affectionate zeal, and it was not long before she could trust
+herself to undertake any operation in the whole range of her cookery book.
+But meanwhile materials were growing scarce and hard to come by. The
+delicate French rolls which were now always ready for her uncle's plate in
+the morning had sometimes nothing to back them, unless the unfailing water
+cress from the good little spring in the meadow. Fleda could not spare her
+eggs, for perhaps they might have nothing else to depend upon for dinner.
+It was no burden to her to do these things; she had a sufficient reward in
+seeing that her aunt and Hugh eat the better and that her uncle's brow was
+clear; but it _was_ a burden when her hands were tied by the lack of
+means; for she knew the failure of the usual supply was bitterly felt, not
+for the actual want, but for that other want which it implied and
+prefigured.
+
+On the first dismissal of Donohan Fleda hoped for a good turn of affairs.
+But Mr. Rossitur, disgusted with his first experiment, resolved this
+season to be his own head man; and appointed Lucas Springer the second in
+command, with a posse of labourers to execute his decrees. It did not work
+well. Mr. Rossitur found he had a very tough prime minister, who would
+have every one of his plans to go through a kind of winnowing process by
+being tossed about in an argument. The arguments were interminable, until
+Mr. Rossitur not unfrequently quit the field with, "Well, do what you like
+about it!"--not conquered, but wearied. The labourers, either from want of
+ready money or of what they called "manners" in their employer, fell off
+at the wrong times, just when they were most wanted. Hugh threw himself
+then into the breach and wrought beyond his strength; and that tried Fleda
+worst of all. She was glad to see haying and harvest pass over; but the
+change of seasons seemed to bring only a change of disagreeableness, and
+she could not find that hope had any better breathing-time in the short
+days of winter than in the long days of summer. Her gentle face grew more
+gentle than ever, for under the shade of sorrowful patience which was
+always there now its meekness had no eclipse.
+
+Mrs. Rossitur was struck with it one morning. She was coming down from her
+room and saw Fleda standing on the landing-place gazing out of the window.
+It was before breakfast one cold morning in winter. Mrs. Rossitur put her
+arms round her softly and kissed her.
+
+"What are you thinking about, dear Fleda?--you ought not to be
+standing here."
+
+"I was looking at Hugh," said Fleda, and her eye went back to the window.
+Mrs. Rossitur's followed it. The window gave them a view of the ground
+behind the house; and there was Hugh, just coming in with a large armful
+of heavy wood which he had been sawing.
+
+"He isn't strong enough to do that, aunt Lucy," said Fleda softly.
+
+"I know it," said his mother in a subdued tone, and not moving her eye,
+though Hugh had disappeared.
+
+"It is too cold for him--he is too thinly clad to bear this exposure,"
+said Fleda anxiously.
+
+"I know it," said his mother again.
+
+"Can't you tell uncle Rolf?--can't you get him to do it? I am afraid Hugh
+will hurt himself, aunt Lucy."
+
+"I did tell him the other day--I did speak to him about it," said Mrs.
+Rossitur; "but he said there was no reason why Hugh should do it,--there
+were plenty of other people--"
+
+"But how can he say so when he knows we never can ask Lucas to do anything
+of the kind, and that other man always contrives to be out of the way when
+he is wanted?--Oh what is he thinking of?" said Fleda bitterly, as she saw
+Hugh again at his work.
+
+It was so rarely that Fleda was seen to shed tears that they always were a
+signal of dismay to any of the household. There was even agony in Mrs.
+Rossitur's voice as she implored her not to give way to them. But
+notwithstanding that, Fleda's tears came this time from too deep a spring
+to be stopped at once.
+
+"It makes me feel as if all was lost, Fleda, when I see you do so,"--
+
+Fleda put her arms about her neck and whispered that "she would not"--that
+"she should not"--
+
+Yet it was a little while before she could say any more.
+
+"But, aunt Lucy, he doesn't know what he is doing!"
+
+"No--and I can't make him know. I cannot say anything more, Fleda--it
+would do no good. I don't know what is the matter--he is entirely changed
+from what he used to be--"
+
+"I know what is the matter," said Fleda, now turning comforter in her turn
+as her aunt's tears fell more quietly, because more despairingly, than her
+own,--"I know what it is--he is not happy;--that is all. He has not
+succeeded well in these farm doings, and he wants money, and he is
+worried--it is no wonder if he don't seem exactly as he used to."
+
+"And oh, that troubles me most of all!" said Mrs. Rossitur. "The farm is
+bringing in nothing, I know,--he don't know how to get along with it,--I
+was afraid it would be so;--and we are paying nothing to uncle Orrin--and
+it is just a dead weight on his hands;--and I can't bear to think of
+it!--And what will it come to!--"
+
+Mrs. Rossitur was now in her turn surprised into shewing the strength of
+her sorrows and apprehensions. Fleda was fain to put her own out of sight
+and bend her utmost powers to soothe and compose her aunt, till they could
+both go down to the breakfast table. She had got ready a nice little dish
+that her uncle was very fond of; but her pleasure in it was all gone; and
+indeed it seemed to be thrown away upon the whole table. Half the meal was
+over before anybody said a word.
+
+"I am going to wash my hands of these miserable farm affairs," said
+Mr. Rossitur.
+
+"Are you?" said his wife.
+
+"Yes,--of all personal concern in them, that is. I am wearied to death
+with the perpetual annoyances and vexations, and petty calls upon my
+time--life is not worth having at such a rate! I'll have done with it."
+
+"You will give up the entire charge to Lucas?" said Mrs. Rossitur.
+
+[Illustration: "O uncle Rolf, don't have anything to do with him."]
+
+"Lucas!--No!--I wouldn't undergo that man's tongue for another year if
+he would take out his wages in talking. I could not have more of it in
+that case than I have had the last six months. After money, the thing
+that man loves best is certainly the sound of his own voice; and a most
+insufferable egotist! No,--I have been talking with a man who wants
+to take the whole farm for two years upon shares--that will clear me of
+all trouble."
+
+There was sober silence for a few minutes, and then Mrs. Rossitur asked
+who it was.
+
+"His name is Didenhover."
+
+"O uncle Rolf, don't have anything to do with him!" exclaimed Fleda.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because he lived with grandpa a great while ago, and behaved very ill.
+Grandpa had a great deal of trouble with him."
+
+"How old were you then?"
+
+"I was young, to be sure," said Fleda hanging her head, "but I remember
+very well how it was."
+
+"You may have occasion to remember it a second time," said Mr. Rossitur
+dryly, "for the thing is done. I have engaged him."
+
+Not another word was spoken.
+
+Mr. Rossitur went out after breakfast, and Mrs. Rossitur busied herself
+with the breakfast cups and a tub of hot water, a work she never would let
+Fleda share with her and which lasted in consequence long enough, Barby
+said, to cook and eat three breakfasts. Fleda and Hugh sat looking at the
+floor and the fire respectively.
+
+"I am going up the hill to get a sight of aunt Miriam," said Fleda,
+bringing her eyes from the fire upon her aunt.
+
+"Well, dear, do. You have been shut up long enough by the snow. Wrap
+yourself up well, and put on my snow-boots."
+
+"No indeed!" said Fleda. "I shall just draw on another pair of stockings
+over my shoes, within my India-rubbers--I will take a pair of Hugh's
+woollen ones."
+
+"What has become of your own?" said Hugh.
+
+"My own what? Stockings?"
+
+"Snow-boots."
+
+"Worn out, Mr. Rossitur! I have run them to death, poor things. Is that a
+slight intimation that you are afraid of the same fate for your socks?"
+
+"No," said Hugh, smiling in spite of himself at her manner,--"I will lend
+you anything I have got, Fleda."
+
+His tone put Fleda in mind of the very doubtful pretensions of the socks
+in question to be comprehended under the term; she was silent a minute.
+
+"Will you go with me, Hugh?"
+
+"No dear, I can't;--I must get a little ahead with the wood while I can;
+it looks as if it would snow again; and Barby isn't provided for more than
+a day or two."
+
+"And how for this fire?"
+
+Hugh shook his head, and rose up to go forth into the kitchen. Fleda went
+too, linking her arm in his and bearing affectionately upon it, a sort of
+tacit saying that they would sink or swim together. Hugh understood it
+perfectly.
+
+"I am very sorry you have to do it, dear Hugh--Oh that wood-shed!--If it
+had only been made!--"
+
+"Never mind--can't help it now--we shall get through the winter by and
+by."
+
+"Can't you get uncle Rolf to help you a little?" whispered Fleda;--"It
+would do him good."
+
+But Hugh only shook his head.
+
+"What are we going to do for dinner, Barby?" said Fleda, still holding
+Hugh there before the fire.
+
+"Ain't much choice," said Barby. "It would puzzle anybody to spell much
+more out of it than pork and ham. There's plenty o' them. _I_ shan't
+starve this some time."
+
+"But we had ham yesterday and pork the day before yesterday and ham
+Monday," said Fleda. "There is plenty of vegetables, thanks to you and me,
+Hugh," she said with a little reminding squeeze of his arm. "I could make
+soups nicely, if I had anything to make them of!"
+
+"There's enough to be had for the catching," said Barby. "If I hadn't a
+man-mountain of work upon me, I'd start out and shoot or steal something."
+
+"_You_ shoot, Barby!" said Fleda laughing.
+
+"I guess I can do most anything I set my hand to. If I couldn't I'd shoot
+myself. It won't do to kill no more o' them chickens."
+
+"O no,--now they are laying so finely. Well, I am going up the hill, and
+when I come home I'll try and make up something, Barby."
+
+"Earl Douglass'll go out in the woods now and then, of a day when he
+ha'n't no work particular to do, and fetch hum as many pigeons and
+woodchucks as you could shake a stick at."
+
+"Hugh, my dear," said Fleda laughing, "it's a pity you aren't a hunter--I
+would shake a stick at you with great pleasure. Well, Barby, we will see
+when I come home."
+
+"I was just a thinkin," said Barby;--"Mis' Douglass sent round to know if
+Mis' Rossitur would like a piece of fresh meat--Earl's been killing a
+sheep--there's a nice quarter, she says, if she'd like to have it."
+
+"A quarter of mutton?"--said Fleda,--"I don't know--no, I think not,
+Barby; I don't know when we should be able to pay it back again.--And
+yet--Hugh, do you think uncle Rolf will kill another sheep this winter?"
+
+"I am sure he will not," said Hugh;--"there have so many died."
+
+"If he only knowed it, that is a reason for killing more," said Barby,--"
+and have the good of them while he can."
+
+"Tell Mrs. Douglass we are obliged to her, but we do not want the
+mutton, Barby."
+
+Hugh went to his chopping and Fleda set out upon her walk; the lines of
+her face settling into a most fixed gravity so soon as she turned away
+from the house. It was what might be called a fine winter's day; cold and
+still, and the sky covered with one uniform grey cloud. The snow lay in
+uncompromising whiteness thick over all the world; a kindly shelter for
+the young grain and covering for the soil; but Fleda's spirits just then
+in another mood saw in it only the cold refusal to hope and the barren
+check to exertion. The wind had cleared the snow from the trees and
+fences, and they stood in all their unsoftened blackness and nakedness,
+bleak and stern. The high grey sky threatened a fresh fall of snow in a
+few hours; it was just now a lull between two storms; and Fleda's spirits,
+that sometimes would have laughed in the face of nature's soberness,
+to-day sank to its own quiet. Her pace neither slackened nor quickened
+till she reached aunt Miriam's house and entered the kitchen.
+
+Aunt Miriam was in high tide of business over a pot of boiling lard, and
+the enormous bread-tray by the side of the fire was half full of very
+tempting light-brown cruller, which however were little more than a kind
+of sweet bread for the workmen. In the bustle of putting in and taking out
+aunt Miriam could give her visitor but a word and a look. Fleda pulled off
+her hood and sitting down watched in unusual silence the old lady's
+operations.
+
+"And how are they all at your house to-day?" aunt Miriam asked as she was
+carefully draining her cruller out of the kettle.
+
+Fleda answered that they were as well as usual, but a slight hesitation
+and the tell-tale tone of her voice made the old lady look at her more
+narrowly. She came near and kissed that gentle brow and looking in her
+eyes asked her what the matter was?
+
+"I don't know,--" said Fleda, eyes and voice wavering alike,--"I am
+foolish, I believe,--"
+
+Aunt Miriam tenderly put aside the hair from her forehead and kissed it
+again, but the cruller was burning and she went back to the kettle.
+
+"I got down-hearted somehow this morning," Fleda went on, trying to steady
+her voice and school herself.
+
+"_You_ down-hearted, dear? About what?"
+
+There was a world of sympathy in these words, in the warmth of which
+Fleda's shut-up heart unfolded itself at once.
+
+"It's nothing new, aunt Miriam,--only somehow I felt it particularly this
+morning,--I have been kept in the house so long by this snow I have got
+dumpish I suppose.--"
+
+Aunt Miriam looked anxiously at the tears which seemed to come
+involuntarily, but she said nothing.
+
+"We are not getting along well at home."
+
+"I supposed that," said Mrs. Plumfield quietly. "But anything new?"
+
+"Yes--uncle Rolf has let the farm--only think of it!--he has let the farm
+to that Didenhover."
+
+"Didenhover!"
+
+"For two years."
+
+"Did you tell him what you knew about him?"
+
+"Yes, but it was too late--the mischief was done."
+
+Aunt Miriam went on skimming out her cruller with a very grave face.
+
+"How came your uncle to do so without learning about him first?"
+
+"O I don't know!--he was in a hurry to do anything that would take the
+trouble of the farm off his hands,--he don't like it."
+
+"On what terms has he let him have it?"
+
+"On shares--and I know, I know, under that Didenhover it will bring us in
+nothing, and it has brought us in nothing all the time we have been here;
+and I don't know what we are going to live upon."--
+
+"Has your uncle nor your aunt no property at all left?"
+
+"Not a bit--except some waste lands in Michigan I believe, that were left
+to aunt Lucy a year or two ago; but they are as good as nothing."
+
+"Has he let Didenhover have the saw-mill too?"
+
+"I don't know--he didn't say--if he has there will be nothing at all left
+for us to live upon. I expect nothing from Didenhover,--his face is
+enough. I should have thought it might have been for uncle Rolf. O if it
+wasn't for aunt Lucy and Hugh I shouldn't care!--"
+
+"What has your uncle been doing all this year past?"
+
+"I don't know, aunt Miriam,--he can't bear the business and he has left
+the most of it to Lucas; and I think Lucas is more of a talker than a
+doer. Almost nothing has gone right. The crops have been ill managed--I do
+not know a great deal about it, but I know enough for that; and uncle Rolf
+did not know anything about it but what he got from books. And the sheep
+are dying off--Barby says it is because they were in such poor condition
+at the beginning of winter, and I dare say she is right."
+
+"He ought to have had a thorough good man at the beginning, to get
+along well."
+
+"O yes!--but he hadn't, you see; and so we have just been growing poorer
+every month. And now, aunt Miriam, I really don't know from day to day
+what to do to get dinner. You know for a good while after we came we used
+to have our marketing brought every few days from Albany; but we have run
+up such a bill there already at the butcher's as I don't know when in the
+world will get paid; and aunt Lucy and I will do anything before we will
+send for any more; and if it wasn't for her and Hugh I wouldn't care, but
+they haven't much appetite, and I know that all this takes what little
+they have away--this, and seeing the effect it has upon uncle Rolf----"
+
+"Does he think so much more of eating than of anything else?" said
+aunt Miriam.
+
+"Oh no, it is not that!" said Fleda earnestly,--"it is not that at all--he
+is not a great eater--but he can't bear to have things different from what
+they used to be and from what they ought to be--O no, don't think that! I
+don't know whether I ought to have said what I have said, but I couldn't
+help it--"
+
+Fleda's voice was lost for a little while.
+
+"He is changed from what he used to be--a little thing vexes him now, and
+I know it is because he is not happy;--he used to be so kind and pleasant,
+and he is still, sometimes; but aunt Lucy's face--Oh aunt Miriam!--"
+
+"Why, dear?" said aunt Miriam, tenderly.
+
+"It is so changed from what it used to be!"
+
+Poor Fleda covered her own, and aunt Miriam came to her side to give
+softer and gentler expression to sympathy than words could do; till the
+bowed face was raised again and hid in her neck.
+
+"I can't see thee do so my child--my dear child!--Hope for brighter days,
+dear Fleda."
+
+"I could bear it," said Fleda after a little interval, "if it wasn't for
+aunt Lucy and Hugh--oh that is the worst!--"
+
+"What about Hugh?" said aunt Miriam, soothingly.
+
+"Oh he does what he ought not to do, aunt Miriam, and there is no help for
+it,--and he did last summer--when we wanted men; and in the hot
+haying-time, he used to work, I know, beyond his strength,--and aunt Lucy
+and I did not know what to do with ourselves!--"
+
+Fleda's head which had been raised sunk again and more heavily.
+
+"Where was his father?" said Mrs. Plumfield.
+
+"Oh he was in the house--he didn't know it--he didn't think about it."
+
+"Didn't think about it!"
+
+"No--O he didn't think Hugh was hurting himself, but he was--he shewed it
+for weeks afterward.--I have said what I ought not now," said Fleda
+looking up and seeming to check her tears and the spring of them at once.
+
+"So much security any woman has in a man without religion!" said aunt
+Miriam, going back to her work. Fleda would have said something if she
+could; she was silent; she stood looking into the fire while the tears
+seemed to come as it were by stealth and ran down her face unregarded.
+
+"Is Hugh not well?"
+
+"I don't know,--" said Fleda faintly,--"he is not ill--but he never was
+very strong, and he exposes himself now I know in a way he ought not.--I
+am sorry I have just come and troubled you with all this now, aunt
+Miriam," she said after a little pause,--"I shall feel better by and by--I
+don't very often get such a fit."
+
+"My dear little Fleda!"--and there was unspeakable tenderness in the old
+lady's voice, as she came up and drew Fleda's head again to rest upon
+her;--"I would not let a rough wind touch thee if I had the holding of
+it.--But we may be glad the arranging of things is not in my hand--I
+should be a poor friend after all, for I do not know what is best. Canst
+thou trust him who does know, my child?"
+
+"I do, aunt Miriam,--O I do," said Fleda, burying her face in her
+bosom;--"I don't often feel so as I did to-day."
+
+"There comes not a cloud that its shadow is not wanted," said aunt
+Miriam. "I cannot see why,--but it is that thou mayest bloom the
+brighter, my dear one."
+
+"I know it,--" Fleda's words were hardly audible,--"I will try--"
+
+"Remember his own message to every one under a cloud--'cast all thy care
+upon him, for he careth for thee;'--thou mayest keep none of it;--and then
+the peace that passeth understanding shall keep thee. 'So he giveth his
+beloved sleep.'"
+
+Fleda wept for a minute on the old lady's neck, and then she looked up,
+dried her tears, and sat down with a face greatly quieted and lightened of
+its burden; while aunt Miriam once more went back to her work. The one
+wrought and the other looked on in silence.
+
+The cruller were all done at last; the great bread-trough was filled and
+set away; the remnant of the fat was carefully disposed of, and aunt
+Miriam's handmaid was called in to "take the watch." She herself and her
+visitor adjourned to the sitting-room.
+
+"Well," said Fleda, in a tone again steady and clear,--"I must go home to
+see about getting up a dinner. I am the greatest hand at making something
+out of nothing, aunt Miriam, that ever you saw. There is nothing like
+practice. I only wish the man uncle Orrin talks about would come along
+once in a while."
+
+"Who was that?" said aunt Miriam.
+
+"A man that used to go about from house to house," said Fleda laughing,
+"when the cottages were making soup, with a ham-bone to give it a relish,
+and he used to charge them so much for a dip, and so much for a wallop."
+
+"Come, come, I can do as much for you as that," said aunt Miriam,
+proceeding to her store-pantry,--"see here--wouldn't this be as good as a
+ham-bone?" said she, bringing out of it a fat fowl;--"how would a wallop
+of this do?"
+
+"Admirably!--only--the ham-bone used to come out again,--and I am
+confident this never would."
+
+"Well I guess I'll stand that," said aunt Miriam smiling,--"you wouldn't
+mind carrying this under your cloak, would you?"
+
+"I have no doubt I shall go home lighter with it than without it,
+ma'am,--thank you, dear aunty!--dear aunt Miriam!"
+
+There was a change of tone, and of eye, as Fleda sealed each thank
+with a kiss.
+
+"But how is it?--does all the charge of the house come upon you, dear?"
+
+"O, this kind of thing, because aunt Lucy doesn't understand it and can't
+get along with it so well. She likes better to sew, and I had quite as
+lief do this."
+
+"And don't you sew too?"
+
+"O--a little. She does as much as she can," said Fleda gravely.
+
+"Where is your other cousin?" said Mrs. Plumfield abruptly.
+
+"Marion?--she is in England I believe;--we don't hear from her very
+often."
+
+"No, no, I mean the one who is in the army?"
+
+"Charlton!--O he is just ordered off to Mexico," said Fleda sadly, "and
+that is another great trouble to aunt Lucy. This miserable war!--"
+
+"Does he never come home?"
+
+"Only once since we came from Paris--while we were in New York. He has
+been stationed away off at the West."
+
+"He has a captain's pay now, hasn't he?"
+
+"Yes, but he doesn't know at all how things are at home--he hasn't an idea
+of it,--and he will not have. Well good-bye, dear aunt Miriam--I must run
+home to take care of my chicken."
+
+She ran away; and if her eyes many a time on the way down the hill filled
+and overflowed, they were not bitter nor dark tears; they were the
+gushings of high and pure and generous affections, weeping for fulness,
+not for want.
+
+That chicken was not wasted in soup; it was converted into the nicest
+possible little fricassee, because the toast would make so much more of
+it; and to Fleda's own dinner little went beside the toast, that a greater
+portion of the rest might be for her aunt and Hugh.
+
+That same evening Seth Plumfield came into the kitchen while Fleda
+was there.
+
+"Here is something belongs to you, I believe," said he with a covert
+smile, bringing out from under his cloak the mate to Fleda's
+fowl;--"mother said somethin' had run away with t'other one and she
+didn't know what to do with this one alone. Your uncle at home?"
+
+The next news that Fleda heard was that Seth had taken a lease of the
+saw-mill for two years.
+
+Mr. Didenhover did not disappoint Fleda's expectations. Very little could
+be got from him or the farm under him beyond the immediate supply wanted
+for the use of the family; and that in kind, not in cash. Mrs. Rossitur
+was comforted by knowing that some portion of rent had also gone to Dr.
+Gregory--how large or how small a portion she could not find out. But
+this left the family in increasing straits, which narrowed and narrowed
+during the whole first summer and winter of Didenhover's administration.
+Very straitened they would have been but for the means of relief adopted
+by the two _children_, as they were always called. Hugh, as soon as the
+spring opened, had a quiet hint, through Fleda, that if he had a mind to
+take the working of the saw-mill he might, for a consideration merely
+nominal. This offer was immediately and gratefully closed with; and
+Hugh's earnings were thenceforward very important at home. Fleda had her
+own ways and means. Mr. Rossitur, more low-spirited and gloomy than ever,
+seemed to have no heart to anything. He would have worked perhaps if he
+could have done it alone; but to join Didenhover and his men, or any
+other gang of workmen, was too much for his magnanimity. He helped nobody
+but Fleda. For her he would do anything, at any time; and in the garden
+and among her flowers in the flowery courtyard he might often be seen at
+work with her. But nowhere else.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXII.
+
+
+
+  Some bring a capon, some a rurall cake,
+  Some nuts, some apples; some that thinke they make
+  The better cheeses, bring 'hem; or else send
+  By their ripe daughters, whom they would commend
+  This way to husbands; and whose baskets beare
+  An embleme of themselves, in plum or peare.
+
+  Ben Jonson.
+
+
+So the time walked away, for this family was not now of those "whom time
+runneth withal,"--to the second summer of Mr. Didenhover's term.
+
+One morning Mrs. Rossitur was seated in the breakfast-room at her usual
+employment, mending and patching; no sinecure now. Fleda opened the
+kitchen door and came in folding up a calico apron she had just taken off.
+
+"You are tired, dear," said Mrs. Rossitur sorrowfully;--"you look pale."
+
+"Do I?"--said Fleda, sitting down. "I am a little tired!"
+
+"Why do you do so?"
+
+"O it's nothing" said Fleda cheerfully;--"I haven't hurt myself. I shall
+be rested again in a few minutes."
+
+"What have you been doing?"
+
+"O I tired myself a little before breakfast in the garden, I suppose. Aunt
+Lucy, don't you think I had almost a bushel of peas?--and there was a
+little over a half bushel last time, so I shall call it a bushel. Isn't
+that fine?"
+
+"You didn't pick them all yourself?"
+
+"Hugh helped me a little while; but he had the horse to get ready, and I
+was out before him this morning--poor fellow, he was tired from yesterday,
+I dare say."
+
+Mrs. Rossitur looked at her, a look between remonstrance and reproach, and
+cast her eyes down without saying a word, swallowing a whole heartful of
+thoughts and feelings. Fleda stooped forward till her own forehead softly
+touched Mrs. Rossitur's, as gentle a chiding of despondency as a very
+sunbeam could have given.
+
+"Now aunt Lucy!--what do you mean? Don't you know it's good for me?--And
+do you know, Mr. Sweet will give me four shillings a bushel; and aunt
+Lucy, I sent three dozen heads of lettuce this morning besides. Isn't that
+doing well? and I sent two dozen day before yesterday. It is time they
+were gone, for they are running up to seed, this set; I have got another
+fine set almost ready."
+
+Mrs. Rossitur looked at her again, as if she had been a sort of
+terrestrial angel.
+
+"And how much will you get for them?"
+
+"I don't know exactly--threepence, or sixpence perhaps,--I guess not so
+much--they are so easily raised; though I don't believe there are so fine
+as mine to be seen in this region.--If I only had somebody to water the
+strawberries!--we should have a great many. Aunt Lucy, I am going to send
+as many as I can without robbing uncle Rolf--he sha'n't miss them; but the
+rest of us don't mind eating rather fewer than usual? I shall make a good
+deal by them. And I think these morning rides do Hugh good; don't you
+think so?"
+
+"And what have you been busy about ever since breakfast, Fleda?"
+
+"O--two or three things," said Fleda lightly.
+
+"What?"
+
+"I had bread to make--and then I thought while my hands were in I would
+make a custard for uncle Rolf."
+
+"You needn't have done that, dear! it was not necessary."
+
+"Yes it was, because you know we have only fried pork for dinner to-day,
+and while we have the milk and eggs it doesn't cost much--the sugar is
+almost nothing. He will like it better, and so will Hugh. As for you,"
+said Fleda, gently touching her forehead again, "you know it is of no
+consequence!"
+
+"I wish you would think yourself of some consequence," said Mrs. Rossitur.
+
+"Don't I think myself of consequence!" naid Fleda affectionately. "I don't
+know how you'd all get on without me. What do you think I have a mind to
+do now, by way of resting myself?"
+
+"Well?" said Mrs Rossitur, thinking of something else.
+
+"It is the day for making presents to the minister, you know?"
+
+"The minister?"--
+
+"Yes, the new minister--they expect him to-day;--you have heard of
+it;--the things are all to be carried to his house to-day. I have a great
+notion to go and see the fun--if I only had anything in the world I could
+possibly take with me--"
+
+"Aren't you too tired, dear?"
+
+"No--it would rest me--it is early yet--if I only had something to
+take!--I couldn't go without taking something----"
+
+"A basket of eggs?" said Mrs. Rossitur.
+
+"Can't, aunt Lucy--I can't spare them; so many of the hens are setting
+now.--A basket of strawberries!--that's the thing! I've got enough picked
+for that and to-night too. That will do!"
+
+Fleda's preparations were soon made, and with her basket on her arm she
+was ready to set forth.
+
+"If pride had not been a little put down in me," she said smiling, "I
+suppose I should rather stay at home than go with such a petty offering.
+And no doubt every one that sees it or hears of it will lay it to anything
+but the right reason. So much the world knows about the people it
+judges!--It is too bad to leave you all alone, aunt Lucy."
+
+Mrs. Rossitur pulled her down for a kiss, a kiss in which how much was
+said on both sides!--and Fleda set forth, choosing as she very commonly
+did the old-time way through the kitchen.
+
+"Off again?" said Barby, who was on her knees scrubbing the great
+flag-stones of the hearth.
+
+"Yes, I am going up to see the donation party."
+
+"Has the minister come?"
+
+"No, but he is coming to-day, I understand."
+
+"He ha'n't preached for 'em yet, has he?"
+
+"Not yet; I suppose he will next Sunday."
+
+"They are in a mighty hurry to give him a donation party!" said Barby.
+"I'd ha' waited till he was here first. I don't believe they'd be quite so
+spry with their donations if they had paid the last man up as they ought.
+I'd rather give a man what belongs to him, and make him presents
+afterwards."
+
+"Why, so I hope they will, Barby," said Fleda laughing. But Barby
+said no more.
+
+The parsonage-house was about a quarter of a mile, a little more, from the
+saw-mill, in a line at right angles with the main road. Fleda took Hugh
+from his work to see her safe there. The road ran north, keeping near the
+level of the mid-hill where it branched off a little below the saw-mill;
+and as the ground continued rising towards the east and was well clothed
+with woods, the way at this hour was still pleasantly shady. To the left
+the same slope of ground carried down to the foot of the hill gave them an
+uninterrupted view over a wide plain or bottom, edged in the distance with
+a circle of gently swelling hills. Close against the hills, in the far
+corner of the plain, lay the little village of Queechy Run, hid from sight
+by a slight intervening rise of ground; not a chimney shewed itself in the
+whole spread of country. A sunny landscape just now; but rich in
+picturesque associations of hay-cocks and winnows, spotting it near and
+far; and close by below them was a field of mowers at work; they could
+distinctly hear the measured rush of the scythes through the grass, and
+then the soft clink of the rifles would seem to play some old delicious
+tune of childish days. Fleda made Hugh stand still to listen. It was a
+warm day, but "the sweet south that breathes upon a bank of violets,"
+could hardly be more sweet than the air which coming to them over the
+whole breadth of the valley had been charged by the new-made hay.
+
+"How good it is, Hugh," said Fleda, "that one can get out of doors
+and forget everything that ever happened or ever will happen within
+four walls!"
+
+"Do you?" said Hugh, rather soberly.
+
+"Yes I do,--even in my flower-patch, right before the house-door; but
+_here_--" said Fleda, turning away and swinging her basket of strawberries
+as she went, "I have no idea I ever did such a thing as make bread!--and
+how clothes get mended I do not comprehend in the least!"
+
+"And have you forgotten the peas and the asparagus too?"
+
+"I am afraid you haven't, dear Hugh," said Fleda, linking her arm within
+his. "Hugh,--I must find some way to make money."
+
+"More money?" said Hugh smiling.
+
+"Yes--this garden business is all very well, but it doesn't come to any
+very great things after all, if you are aware of it; and, Hugh, I want to
+get aunt Lucy a new dress. I can't bear to see her in that old merino, and
+it isn't good for her. Why, Hugh, she couldn't possibly see anybody, if
+anybody should come to the house."
+
+"Who is there to come?" said Hugh.
+
+"Why nobody; but still, she ought not to be so."
+
+"What more can you do, dear Fleda? You work a great deal too hard
+already," said Hugh sighing. "You should have seen the way father and
+mother looked at you last night when you were asleep on the sofa."
+
+Fleda stifled her sigh, and went on.
+
+"I am sure there are things that might be done--things for the
+booksellers--translating, or copying, or something,--I don't know
+exactly--I have heard of people's doing such things. I mean to write to
+uncle Orrin and ask him. I am sure he can manage it for me."
+
+"What were you writing the other night?" said Hugh suddenly.
+
+"When?"
+
+"The other night--when you were writing by the firelight? I saw your
+pencil scribbling away at a furious rate over the paper, and you kept your
+hand up carefully between me and your face, but I could see it was
+something very interesting. Ha?--" said Hugh, laughingly trying to get
+another view of Fleda's face which was again kept from him. "Send _that_
+to uncle Orrin, Fleda;--or shew it to me first and then I will tell you."
+
+Fleda made no answer; and at the parsonage door Hugh left her.
+
+Two or three wagons were standing there, but nobody to be seen. Fleda went
+up the steps and crossed the broad piazza, brown and unpainted, but
+picturesque still, and guided by the sound of tongues turned to the right
+where she found a large low room, the very centre of the stir. But the
+stir had not by any means reached the height yet. Not more than a dozen
+people were gathered. Here were aunt Syra and Mrs. Douglass, appointed a
+committee to receive and dispose the offerings as they were brought in.
+
+"Why there is not much to be seen yet," said Fleda. "I did not know I was
+so early."
+
+"Time enough," said Mrs. Douglass. "They'll come the thicker when
+they do come. Good-morning, Dr. Quackenboss!--I hope you're a going
+to give us something else besides a bow? and I won't take none of
+your physic, neither."
+
+"I humbly submit," said the doctor graciously, "that nothing ought to be
+expected of gentlemen that--a--are so unhappy as to be alone; for they
+really--a--have nothing to give,--but themselves."
+
+There was a shout of merriment.
+
+"And suppos'n that's a gift that nobody wants?" said Mrs, Douglass's sharp
+eye and voice at once.
+
+"In that case," said the doctor, "I really--Miss Ringgan, may I--a--may I
+relieve your hand of this fair burden?"
+
+"It is not a very fair burden, sir," said Fleda, laughing and
+relinquishing her strawberries.
+
+"Ah but, fair, you know, I mean,--we speak--in that sense----Mrs
+Douglass, here is by far the most elegant offering that your hands will
+have the honour of receiving this day."
+
+"I hope so," said Mrs. Douglass, "or there won't be much to eat for the
+minister. Did you never take notice how elegant things somehow made folks
+grow poor?"
+
+"I guess he'd as leave see something a little substantial," said
+aunt Syra.
+
+"Well now," said the doctor, "here is Miss Ringgan, who is
+unquestionably--a--elegant!--and I am sure nobody will say that
+she--looks poor!"
+
+In one sense, surely not! There could not be two opinions. But with all
+the fairness of health, and the flush which two or three feelings had
+brought to her cheeks, there was a look as if the workings of the mind had
+refined away a little of the strength of the physical frame, and as if
+growing poor in Mrs. Douglass's sense, that is, thin, might easily be the
+next step.
+
+"What's your uncle going to give us, Fleda?" said aunt Syra.
+
+But Fleda was saved replying; for Mrs. Douglass, who if she was sharp
+could be good-natured too, and had watched to see how Fleda took the
+double fire upon elegance and poverty, could beat no more trial of that
+sweet gentle face. Without giving her time to answer she carried her off
+to see the things already stored in the closet, bidding the doctor over
+her shoulder "be off after his goods, whether he had got 'em or no."
+
+There was certainly a promising beginning made for the future minister's
+comfort. One shelf was already completely stocked with pies, and another
+shewed a quantity of cake, and biscuits enough to last a good-sized family
+for several meals.
+
+"That is always the way," said Mrs. Douglass;--"it's the strangest thing
+that folks has no sense! Now one-half o' them pies'll be dried up afore
+they can eat the rest;--'tain't much loss, for Mis' Prin sent 'em down,
+and if they are worth anything it's the first time anything ever come out
+of her house that was. Now look at them biscuit!"--
+
+"How many are coming to eat them?" said Fleda.
+
+"How?"
+
+"How large a family has the minister?"
+
+"He ha'n't a bit of a family! He ain't married."
+
+"Not!"
+
+At the grave way in which Mrs. Douglass faced around upon her and
+answered, and at the idea of a single mouth devoted to all that closetful,
+Fleda's gravity gave place to most uncontrollable merriment.
+
+"No," said Mrs. Douglass, with a curious twist of her mouth but
+commanding herself,--"he ain't to be sure--not yet. He ha'n't any family
+but himself and some sort of a housekeeper, I suppose; they'll divide the
+house between 'em."
+
+"And the biscuits, I hope," said Fleda. "But what will he do with all the
+other things, Mrs. Douglass?"
+
+"Sell 'em if he don't want 'em," said Mrs. Douglass quizzically. "Shut up,
+Fleda, I forget who sent them biscuit--somebody that calculated to make a
+shew for a little, I reckon.--My sakes! I believe it was Mis' Springer
+herself!--she didn't hear me though," said Mrs. Douglass peeping out of
+the half-open door. "It's a good thing the world ain't all alike;--there's
+Mis' Plumfield--stop now, and I'll tell you all she sent;--that big jar of
+lard, there's as good as eighteen or twenty pound,--and that basket of
+eggs, I don't know how many there is,--and that cheese, a real fine one
+I'll be bound, she wouldn't pick out the worst in her dairy,--and Seth
+fetched down a hundred weight of corn meal and another of rye flour; now
+that's what I call doing things something like; if everybody else would
+keep up their end as well as they keep up their'n the world wouldn't be
+quite so one-sided as it is. I never see the time yet when I couldn't tell
+where to find Mis' Plumfield."
+
+"No, nor anybody else," said Fleda looking happy.
+
+"There's Mis' Silbert couldn't find nothing better to send than a kag of
+soap," Mrs. Douglass went on, seeming very much amused;--"I _was_ beat
+when I saw that walk in! I should think she'd feel streaked to come here
+by and by and see it a standing between Mis' Plumfield's lard and Mis'
+Clavering's pork--that's a handsome kag of pork, ain't it? What's that man
+done with your strawberries?--I'll put 'em up here afore somebody takes a
+notion to 'em.--I'll let the minister know who he's got to thank for 'em,"
+said she, winking at Fleda. "Where's Dr. Quackenboss?"
+
+"Coming, ma'am!" sounded from the hall, and forthwith at the open door
+entered the doctor's head, simultaneously with a large cheese which he was
+rolling before him, the rest of the doctor's person being thrown into the
+background in consequence. A curious natural representation of a
+wheelbarrow, the wheel being the only artificial part.
+
+"Oh!--that's you, doctor, is it?" said Mrs. Douglass.
+
+"This is me, ma'am," said the doctor, rolling up to the closet
+door,--"this has the honour to be--a--myself,--bringing my service to the
+feet of Miss Ringgan."
+
+"'Tain't very elegant," said the sharp lady.
+
+Fleda thought if his service was at her feet, her feet should be somewhere
+else, and accordingly stepped quietly out of the way and went to one of
+the windows, from whence she could have a view both of the comers and the
+come; and by this time thoroughly in the spirit of the thing she used her
+eyes upon both with great amusement. People were constantly arriving now,
+in wagons and on foot; and stores of all kinds were most literally pouring
+in. Bags and even barrels of meal, flour, pork, and potatoes; strings of
+dried apples, _salt_, hams and beef; hops, pickles, vinegar, maple sugar
+and molasses; rolls of fresh butter, cheese, and eggs; cake, bread, and
+pies, without end. Mr. Penny, the storekeeper, sent a box of tea. Mr.
+Winegar, the carpenter, a new ox-sled. Earl Douglass brought a handsome
+axe-helve of his own fashioning; his wife a quantity of rolls of wool. Zan
+Finn carted a load of wood into the wood-shed, and Squire Thornton
+another. Home-made candles, custards, preserves, and smoked liver, came in
+a batch from two or three miles off up on the mountain. Half a dozen
+chairs from the factory man. Half a dozen brooms from the other
+store-keeper at the Deepwater settlement. A carpet for the best room from
+the ladies of the township, who had clubbed forces to furnish it; and a
+home-made concern it was, from the shears to the loom.
+
+The room was full now, for every one after depositing his gift turned
+aside to see what others had brought and were bringing; and men and women,
+the young and old, had their several circles of gossip in various parts of
+the crowd. Apart from them all Fleda sat in her window, probably voted
+"elegant" by others than the doctor, for they vouchsafed her no more than
+a transitory attention and sheered off to find something more congenial.
+She sat watching the people; smiling very often as some odd figure, or
+look, or some peculiar turn of expression or tone of voice, caught her ear
+or her eye.
+
+Both ear and eye were fastened by a young countryman with a particularly
+fresh face whom she saw approaching the house. He came up on foot,
+carrying a single fowl slung at his back by a stick thrown across his
+shoulder, and without stirring hat or stick he came into the room and made
+his way through the crowd of people, looking to the one hand and the other
+evidently in a maze of doubt to whom he should deliver himself and his
+chicken, till brought up by Mrs. Douglass's sharp voice.
+
+"Well, Philetus! what are you looking for?"
+
+"Do, Mis' Douglass!"--it is impossible to express the abortive attempt at
+a bow which accompanied this salutation,--"I want to know if the minister
+'ll be in town to-day?"
+
+"What do you want of him?"
+
+"I don't want nothin' of him. I want to know if he'll be in town to-day?"
+
+"Yes--I expect he'll be along directly--why, what then?"
+
+"Cause I've got ten chickens for him here, and mother said they hadn't
+ought to be kept no longer, and if he wa'n't to hum I were to fetch 'em
+back, straight."
+
+"Well he'll be here, so let's have 'em," said Mrs. Douglass biting her
+lips.
+
+"What's become o' t'other one?" said Earl, as the young man's stick was
+brought round to the table;--"I guess you've lost it, ha'n't you?"
+
+"My gracious!" was all Philetus's powers were equal to. Mrs. Douglass went
+off into fits which rendered her incapable of speaking and left the
+unlucky chicken-bearer to tell his story his own way, but all he brought
+forth was "Du tell!--I _am_ beat!--"
+
+"Where's t'other one?" said Mrs. Douglass between paroxysms.
+
+"Why I ha'n't done nothin' to it," said Philetus dismally,--there was
+teu on 'em afore I started, and I took and tied 'em together and hitched
+'em onto the stick, and that one must ha' loosened itself off some way.--I
+believe the darned thing did it o' purpose."
+
+"I guess your mother knowed that one wouldn't keep till it got here," said
+Mrs. Douglass.
+
+The room was now all one shout, in the midst of which poor Philetus took
+himself off as speedily as possible. Before Fleda had dried her eyes her
+attention was taken by a lady and gentleman who had just got out of a
+vehicle of more than the ordinary pretension and were coming up to the
+door. The gentleman was young, the lady was not, both had a particularly
+amiable and pleasant appearance; but about the lady there was something
+that moved Fleda singularly and somehow touched the spring of old
+memories, which she felt stirring at the sight of her. As they neared the
+house she lost them--then they entered the room and came through it
+slowly, looking about them with an air of good-humoured amusement. Fleda's
+eye was fixed but her mind puzzled itself in vain to recover what in her
+experience had been connected with that fair and lady-like physiognomy and
+the bland smile that was overlooked by those acute eyes. The eyes met
+hers, and then seemed to reflect her doubt, for they remained as fixed as
+her own while the lady quickening her steps came up to her.
+
+"I am sure," she said, holding out her hand, and with a gentle
+graciousness that was very agreeable,--"I am sure you are somebody I know.
+What is your name?"
+
+"Fleda Ringgan."
+
+"I thought so!" said the lady, now shaking her hand warmly and kissing
+her,--"I knew nobody could have been your mother but Amy Charlton! How
+like her you look!--Don't you know me? don't you remember Mrs. Evelyn?"
+
+"Mrs. Evelyn!" said Fleda, the whole coming back to her at once.
+
+"You remember me now?--How well I recollect you! and all that old time at
+Montepoole. Poor little creature that you were! and dear little creature,
+as I am sure you have been ever since. And how is your dear aunt Lucy?"
+
+Fleda answered that she was well.
+
+"I used to love her very much--that was before I knew you--before she
+went abroad. _We_ have just got home--this spring; and now we are staying
+at Montepoole for a few days. I shall come and see her to-morrow--I knew
+you were somewhere in this region, but I did not know exactly where to
+find you; that was one reason why I came here to-day--I thought I might
+hear something of you. And where are your aunt Lucy's children? and how
+are they?"
+
+"Hugh is at home," said Fleda, "and rather delicate--Charlton is in
+the army.'
+
+"In the army. In Mexico!"--
+
+"In Mexico he has been"--
+
+"Your poor aunt Lucy!"
+
+--"In Mexico he has been, but he is just coming home now--he has been
+wounded, and he is coming home to spend a long furlough."
+
+"Coming home. That will make you all very happy. And Hugh is delicate--and
+how are you, love? you hardly look like a country-girl. Mr. Olmney!--"
+said Mrs. Evelyn looking round for her companion, who was standing quietly
+a few steps off surveying the scene,--"Mr. Olmney!--I am going to do you a
+favour, sir, in introducing you to Miss Ringgan--a very old friend of
+mine. Mr. Olmney,--these are not exactly the apple-cheeks and _robustious_
+demonstrations we are taught to look for in country-land?"
+
+This was said with a kind of sly funny enjoyment which took away
+everything disagreeable from the appeal; but Fleda conceived a favourable
+opinion of the person to whom it was made from the fact that he paid her
+no compliment and made no answer beyond a very pleasant smile.
+
+"What is Mrs. Evelyn's definition of a _very old_ friend?" said he with
+with another smile, as that lady moved off to take a more particular view
+of what she had come to see. "To judge by the specimen before me I should
+consider it very equivocal."
+
+"Perhaps Mrs. Evelyn counts friendships by inheritance," said Fleda. "I
+think they ought to be counted so."
+
+"'Thine own friend and thy father's friend forsake not'?" said the
+young man.
+
+Fleda looked up and smiled a pleased answer.
+
+"There is something very lovely in the faithfulness of tried
+friendship--and very uncommon."
+
+"I know that it is uncommon only by hearsay," said Fleda, "I have so many
+good friends."
+
+He was silent for an instant, possibly thinking there might be a reason
+for that unknown only to Fleda herself.
+
+"Perhaps one must be in peculiar circumstances to realize it," he said
+sighing;--"circumstances that leave one of no importance to any one in the
+world.--But it is a kind lesson I--one learns to depend more on the one
+friendship that can never disappoint."
+
+Fleda's eyes again gave an answer of sympathy, for she thought from the
+shade that had come upon his face that these circumstances had probably
+been known to himself.
+
+"This is rather an amusing scene," he remarked presently in a low tone.
+
+"Very," said Fleda. "I have never seen such a one before."
+
+"Nor I," said he. "It is a pleasant scene too, it is pleasant to see
+so many evidences of kindness and good feeling on the part of all
+these people."
+
+"There is all the more shew of it, I suppose, to-day," said Fleda,
+"because we have a new minister coming;--they want to make a favourable
+impression."
+
+"Does the old proverb of the 'new broom' hold good here too?" said he,
+smiling. "What's the name of your new minister?"
+
+"I am not certain," said Fleda,--"there were two talked of--the last I
+heard was that it was an old Mr. Carey; but from what I hear this
+morning I suppose it must be the other--a Mr. Ollum, or some such queer
+name, I believe."
+
+Fleda thought her hearer looked very much amused, and followed his eye
+into the room, where Mrs. Evelyn was going about in all quarters looking
+at everything, and finding occasion to enter into conversation with at
+least a quarter of the people who were present. Whatever she was saying it
+seemed at that moment to have something to do with them, for sundry eyes
+turned in their direction; and presently Dr. Quackenboss came up, with
+even more than common suavity of manner.
+
+"I trust Miss Ringgan will do me the favour of making me acquainted
+with--a--with our future pastor!" said the doctor, looking however not at
+all at Miss Ringgan but straight at the pastor in question. "I have great
+pleasure in giving you the first welcome, sir,--or, I should say, rather
+the second; since no doubt Miss Ringgan has been in advance of me. It is
+not un--a--appropriate, sir, for I may say we--a--divide the town between
+us. You are, I am sure, a worthy representative of Peter and Paul; and I
+am--a--a pupil of Esculapus, sir! You are the intellectual physician, and
+I am the external."
+
+"I hope we shall both prove ourselves good workmen, sir," said the young
+minister, shaking the doctor's hand heartily.
+
+"This is Dr. Quackenboss, Mr. Olmney," said Fleda, making a tremendous
+effort. But though she could see corresponding indications about her
+companion's eyes and mouth, she admired the kindness and self-command
+with which he listened to the doctor's civilities and answered them;
+expressing his grateful sense of the favours received not only from him
+but from others.
+
+"O--a little to begin with," said the doctor, looking round upon the room,
+which would certainly have furnished _that_ for fifty people;--"I hope we
+ain't done yet by considerable--But here is Miss Ringgan, Mr.--a--Ummin,
+that has brought you some of the fruits of her own garden, with her own
+fair hands--a basket of fine strawberries--which I am sure--a--will make
+you forget everything else!"
+
+Mr. Olmney had the good-breeding not to look at Fleda, as he answered, "I
+am sure the spirit of kindness was the same in all, Dr. Quackenboss, and I
+trust not to forget that readily."
+
+Others now came up; and Mr. Olmney was walked off to be "made acquainted"
+with all or with all the chief of his parishioners then and there
+assembled. Fleda watched him going about, shaking hands, talking and
+smiling, in all directions, with about as much freedom of locomotion as a
+fly in a spider's web; till at Mrs. Evelyn's approach the others fell off
+a little, and taking him by the arm she rescued him.
+
+"My dear Mr. Olmney!" she whispered, with an intensely amused face,--"I
+shall have a vision of you every day for a month to come, sitting down to
+dinner with a rueful face to a whortleberry pie; for there are so many of
+them your conscience will not let you have anything else cooked--you
+cannot manage more than one a day."
+
+"Pies!" said the young gentleman, as Mrs. Evelyn left talking to indulge
+her feelings in ecstatic quiet laughing,--"I have a horror of pies!"
+
+"Yes, yes," said Mrs. Evelyn nodding her head delightedly as she drew him
+towards the pantry,--"I know!--Come and see what is in store for you. You
+are to do penance for a month to come with tin pans of blackberry jam
+fringed with pie-crust--no, they can't be blackberries, they must be
+raspberries--the blackberries are not ripe yet. And you may sup upon cake
+and custards--unless you give the custards for the little pig out
+there--he will want something."
+
+"A pig!--" said Mr. Olmney in a maze; Mrs. Evelyn again giving out in
+distress. "A pig?" said Mr. Olmney.
+
+"Yes--a pig--a very little one," said Mrs. Evelyn convulsively. "I am sure
+he is hungry now!--"
+
+They had reached the pantry, and Mr. Olmney's face was all that was
+wanting to Mrs. Evelyn's delight. How she smothered it, so that it should
+go no further than to distress his self-command, is a mystery known only
+to the initiated. Mrs. Douglass was forthwith called into council.
+
+"Mrs. Douglass," said Mr. Olmney, "I feel very much inclined to play the
+host, and beg my friends to share with me some of these good things they
+have been so bountifully providing."
+
+"He would enjoy them much more than he would alone, Mrs. Douglass," said
+Mrs. Evelyn, who still had hold of Mr. Olmney's arm, looking round to the
+lady with a most benign face.
+
+"I reckon some of 'em would be past enjoying by the time he got to 'em,
+wouldn't they?" said the lady. "Well, they'll have to take 'em in their
+fingers, for our crockery ha'n't come yet--I shall have to jog Mr. Flatt's
+elbow--but hungry folks ain't curious."
+
+"In their fingers, or any way, provided you have only a knife to cut them
+with," said Mr. Olmney, while Mrs. Evelyn squeezed his arm in secret
+mischief;--"and pray if we can muster two knives let us cut one of these
+cheeses, Mrs. Douglass."
+
+And presently Fleda saw pieces of pie walking about in all directions
+supported by pieces of cheese. And then Mrs. Evelyn and Mr. Olmney came
+out from the pantry and came towards her, the latter bringing her with his
+own hands a portion in a tin pan. The two ladies sat down in the window
+together to eat and be amused.
+
+"My dear Fleda, I hope you are hungry!" said Mrs. Evelyn, biting her pie
+Fleda could not help thinking with an air of good-humoured condescension.
+
+"I am, ma'am," she said laughing.
+
+"You look just as you used to do," Mrs. Evelyn went on earnestly.
+
+"Do I?" said Fleda, privately thinking that the lady must have good eyes
+for features of resemblance.
+
+"Except that you have more colour in your cheeks and more sparkles in your
+eyes. Dear little creature that you were! I want to make you know my
+children. Do you remember that Mr. and Mrs. Carleton that took such care
+of you at Montepoole?"
+
+"Certainly I do!--very well."
+
+"We saw them last winter--we were down at their country-place in----
+shire. They have a magnificent place there--everything you can think of to
+make life pleasant. We spent a week with them. My dear Fleda!--I wish I
+could shew you that place! you never saw anything like it."
+
+Fleda eat her pie.
+
+"We have nothing like it in this country--of course--cannot have. One of
+those superb English country-seats is beyond even the imagination of an
+American."
+
+"Nature has been as kind to us, hasn't she?" said Fleda.
+
+"O yes, but such fortunes you know. Mr. Olmney, what do you think of
+those overgrown fortunes? I was speaking to Miss Ringgan just now of a
+gentleman who has forty thousand pounds a year income--sterling,
+sir;--forty thousand pounds a year sterling. Somebody says, you know, that
+'he who has more than enough is a thief of the rights of his
+brother,'--what do you think?"
+
+But Mr. Olmney's attention was at the moment forcibly called off by the
+"income" of a parishioner.
+
+"I suppose," said Fleda, "his thievish character must depend entirely on
+the use he makes of what he has."
+
+"I don't know," said Mrs. Evelyn shaking her head,--"I think the
+possession of great wealth is very hardening."
+
+"To a fine nature?" said Fleda.
+
+Mrs. Evelyn shook her head again, but did not seem to think it worth while
+to reply; and Fleda was trying the question in her own mind whether wealth
+or poverty might be the most hardening in its effects; when Mr. Olmney
+having succeeded in getting free again came and took his station beside
+them; and they had a particularly pleasant talk, which Fleda who had seen
+nobody in a great while enjoyed very much. They had several such talks in
+the course of the day; for though the distractions caused by Mr. Olmney's
+other friends were many and engrossing, he generally contrived in time to
+find his way back to their window. Meanwhile Mrs. Evelyn had a great deal
+to say to Fleda and to hear from her; and left her at last under an
+engagement to spend the next day at the Pool.
+
+Upon Mr. Olmney's departure with Mrs. Evelyn the attraction which had held
+the company together was broken, and they scattered fast. Fleda presently
+finding herself in the minority was glad to set out with Miss Anastasia
+Finn and her sister Lucy, who would leave her but very little way from her
+own door. But she had more company than she bargained for. Dr. Quackenboss
+was pleased to attach himself to their party, though his own shortest road
+certainly lay in another direction; and Fleda wondered what he had done
+with his wagon, which beyond a question must have brought the cheese in
+the morning. She edged herself out of the conversation as much as
+possible, and hoped it would prove so agreeable that he would not think of
+attending her home. In vain. When they made a stand at the cross-roads the
+doctor stood on her side.
+
+"I hope, now you've made a commencement, you will come to see us again,
+Fleda," said Miss Lucy.
+
+"What's the use of asking?" said her sister abruptly. "If she has a mind
+to she will, and if she ha'n't I am sure we don't want her."
+
+They turned off.
+
+"Those are excellent people," said the doctor when they were beyond
+hearing;--"really respectable!"
+
+"Are they?" said Fleda.
+
+"But your goodness does not look, I am sure, to find--a--Parisian graces
+in so remote a circle?"
+
+"Certainly not!" said Fleda.
+
+"We have had a genial day!" said the doctor, quitting the Finns.
+
+"I don't know," said Fleda, permitting a little of her inward merriment to
+work off,--"I think it has been rather too hot."
+
+"Yes," said the doctor, "the sun has been ardent; but I referred rather to
+the--a--to the warming of affections, and the pleasant exchange of
+intercourse on all sides which has taken place. How do you like
+our--a--the stranger?"
+
+"Who, sir?"
+
+"The new-comer,--this young Mr. Ummin?"
+
+Fleda answered, but she hardly knew what, for she was musing whether the
+doctor would go away or come in. They reached the door, and Fleda invited
+him, with terrible effort after her voice; the doctor having just blandly
+offered an opinion upon the decided polish of Mr. Olmney's manners!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIII.
+
+
+
+  Labour is light, where lore (quoth I) doth pay;
+  (Saith he) light burthens heavy, if far borne.
+
+  Drayton.
+
+
+Fleda pushed open the parlour door and preceded her convoy, in a kind of
+tip-toe state of spirits. The first thing that met her eyes was her aunt
+in one of the few handsome silks which were almost her sole relic of past
+wardrobe prosperity, and with a face uncommonly happy and pretty; and the
+next instant she saw the explanation of this appearance in her cousin
+Charlton, a little palish, but looking better than she had ever seen him,
+and another gentleman of whom her eye took in only the general outlines of
+fashion and comfortable circumstances; now too strange to it to go
+unnoted. In Fleda's usual mood her next movement would have been made with
+a demureness that would have looked like bashfulness. But the amusement
+and pleasure of the day just passed had for the moment set her spirits
+free from the burden that generally bound them down; and they were as
+elastic as her step as she came forward and presented to her aunt "Dr.
+Quackenboss,--and then turned to shake her cousin's hand."
+
+"Charlton!--Where did you come from? We didn't expect you so soon."
+
+"You are not sorry to see me, I hope?"
+
+"Not at all--very glad;"--and then as her eye glanced towards the other
+new-comer Charlton presented to her "Mr. Thorn;" and Fleda's fancy made a
+sudden quick leap on the instant to the old hall at Montepoole and the
+shot dog. And then Dr. Quackenboss was presented, an introduction which
+Capt. Rossitur received coldly, and Mr. Thorn with something more than
+frigidity.
+
+The doctor's elasticity however defied depression, especially in the
+presence of a silk dress and a military coat. Fleda presently saw that he
+was agonizing her uncle. Mrs. Rossitur had drawn close to her son. Fleda
+was left to take care of the other visitor. The young men had both seemed
+more struck at the vision presented to them than she had been on her part.
+She thought neither of them was very ready to speak to her.
+
+"I did not know," said Mr. Thorn softly, "what reason I had to thank
+Rossitur for bringing me home with him to-night--he promised me a supper
+and a welcome,--but I find he did not tell me the half of my
+entertainment."
+
+"That was wise in him," said Fleda;--"the half that is not expected is
+always worth a great deal more than the other."
+
+"In this case, most assuredly," said Thorn bowing, and Fleda was sure not
+knowing what to make of her.
+
+"Have you been in Mexico too, Mr. Thorn?"
+
+"Not I!--that's an entertainment I beg to decline. I never felt inclined
+to barter an arm for a shoulder-knot, or to abridge my usual means of
+locomotion for the privilege of riding on parade--or selling oneself for a
+name--Peter Schlemil's selling his shadow I can understand; but this is
+really lessening oneself that one's shadow may grow the larger."
+
+"But you were in the army?" said Fleda.
+
+"Yes--It wasn't my doing. There is a time, you know, when one must please
+the old folks--I grew old enough and wise enough to cut loose from the
+army before I had gained or lost much by it."
+
+He did not understand the displeased gravity of Fleda's face, and went on
+insinuatingly;--
+
+"Unless I have lost what Charlton has gained--something I did not know
+hung upon the decision--Perhaps you think a man is taller for having iron
+heels to his boots?"
+
+"I do not measure a man by his inches," said Fleda.
+
+"Then you have no particular predilection for shooting men?"
+
+"I have no predilection for shooting anything, sir."
+
+"Then I am safe!" said he, with an arrogant little air of satisfaction. "I
+was born under an indolent star, but I confess to you, privately, of the
+two I would rather gather my harvests with the sickle than the sword. How
+does your uncle find it?"
+
+"Find what, sir?"
+
+"The worship of Ceres?--I remember he used to be devoted to Apollo and
+the Muses."
+
+"Are they rival deities?"
+
+"Why--I have been rather of the opinion that they were too many for one
+house to hold," said Thorn glancing at Mr. Rossitur. "But perhays the
+Graces manage to reconcile them!"
+
+"Did you ever hear of the Graces getting supper?" said Fleda. "Because
+Ceres sometimes sets them at that work. Uncle Rolf," she added as she
+passed him,--"Mr. Thorn is inquiring after Apollo--will you set him right,
+while I do the same for the tablecloth?"
+
+Her uncle looked from her sparkling eyes to the rather puzzled expression
+of his guest's face.
+
+"I was only asking your lovely niece," said Mr. Thorn coming down from his
+stilts,--"how you liked this country life?"
+
+Dr. Quackenboss bowed, probably in approbation of the epithet.
+
+"Well sir--what information did she give you on the subject?"
+
+"Left me in the dark, sir, with a vague hope that you would enlighten me."
+
+"I trust Mr. Rossitur can give a favourable report?" said the
+doctor benignly.
+
+But Mr. Rossitur's frowning brow looked very little like it.
+
+"What do you say to our country life, sir?"
+
+"It's a confounded life, sir," said Mr. Rossitur, taking a pamphlet from
+the table to fold and twist as he spoke,--"it is a confounded life; for
+the head and the hands must either live separate, or the head must do no
+other work but wait upon the hands. It is an alternative of loss and
+waste, sir."
+
+"The alternative seems to be of--a--limited application," said the doctor,
+as Fleda, having found that Hugh and Barby had been beforehand with her,
+now came back to the company. "I am sure this lady would not give such a
+testimony."
+
+"About what?" said Fleda, colouring under the fire of so many eyes.
+
+"The blighting influence of Ceres' sceptre," said Mr. Thorn.
+
+"This country life," said her uncle;--"do you like it, Fleda?"
+
+"You know, uncle," said she cheerfully, "I was always of the old
+Douglasses' mind--I like better to hear the lark sing than the
+mouse squeak."
+
+"Is that one of Earl Douglass's sayings?" said the doctor.
+
+"Yes sir," said Fleda with quivering lips,--"but not the one you know--an
+older man."
+
+"Ah!" said the doctor intelligently. "Mr. Rossitur,--speaking of
+hands,--I have employed the Irish very much of late years--they are as
+good as one can have, if you do not want a head."
+
+"That is to say,--if you have a head," said Thorn.
+
+"Exactly" said the doctor, all abroad,--"and when there are not too many
+of them together. I had enough of that, sir, some years ago when a
+multitude of them were employed on the public works. The Irish were in a
+state of mutilation, sir, all through the country."
+
+"Ah!" said Thorn,--"had the military been at work upon them?"
+
+"No sir, but I wish they had, I am sure; it would have been for the peace
+of the town. There were hundreds of them. We were in want of an army."
+
+"Of surgeons,--I should think," said Thorn.
+
+Fleda saw the doctor's dubious air and her uncle's compressed lips; and
+commanding herself, with even a look of something like displeasure she
+quitted her seat by Mr. Thorn and called the doctor to the window to look
+at a cluster of rose acacias just then in their glory. He admired, and she
+expatiated, till she hoped everybody but herself had forgotten what they
+had been talking about. But they had no sooner returned to their seats
+than Thorn began again.
+
+"The Irish in your town are not in the same mutilated state now, I
+suppose, sir?"
+
+"No sir, no," said the doctor;--"there are much fewer of them to break
+each other's bones. It was all among themselves, sir."
+
+"The country is full of foreigners," said Mr. Rossitur with
+praiseworthy gravity.
+
+"Yes sir," said Dr. Quackenboss thoughtfully;--"we shall have none of our
+ancestors left in a short time, if they go on as they are doing."
+
+Fleda was beaten from the field, and rushing into the breakfast-room
+astonished Hugh by seizing hold of him and indulging in a most prolonged
+and unbounded laugh. She did not shew herself again till the company came
+in to supper; but then she was found as grave as Minerva. She devoted
+herself particularly to the care and entertainment of Dr. Quackenboss till
+he took leave; nor could Thorn get another chance to talk to her through
+all the evening.
+
+When he and Rossitur were at last in their rooms Fleda told her story.
+
+"You don't know how pleasant it was, aunt Lucy--how much I enjoyed
+it--seeing and talking to somebody again. Mrs. Evelyn was so very kind."
+
+"I am very glad, my darling," said Mrs. Rossitur, stroking away the hair
+from the forehead that was bent down towards her;--"I am glad you had it
+to-day and I am glad you will have it again to-morrow."
+
+"You will have it too, aunt Lucy. Mrs. Evelyn will be here in the
+morning--she said so."
+
+"I shall not see her."
+
+"Why? Now aunt Lucy!--you will."
+
+"I have nothing in the world to see her in--I cannot."
+
+"You have this?"
+
+"For the morning? A rich French silk?--It would be absurd. No, no,--it
+would be better to wear my old merino than that."
+
+"But you will have to dress in the morning for Mr. Thorn?--he will be here
+to breakfast."
+
+"I shall not come down to breakfast.--Don't look so, love!--I can't help
+it."
+
+"Why was that calico got for me and not for you?" said Fleda, bitterly.
+
+"A sixpenny calico," said Mrs. Rossitur smiling,--"it would be hard if you
+could not have so much as that, love."
+
+"And you will not see Mrs. Evelyn and her daughters at all!--and I was
+thinking that it would do you so much good!--"
+
+Mrs. Rossitur drew her face a little nearer and kissed it, over and over.
+
+"It will do you good, my darling--that is what I care for much more."
+
+"It will not do me half as much," said Fleda sighing.
+
+Her spirits were in their old place again; no more a tip-toe to-night. The
+short light of pleasure was overcast. She went to bed feeling very quiet
+indeed; and received Mrs. Evelyn and excused her aunt the next day, almost
+wishing the lady had not been as good as her word. But though in the same
+mood she set off with her to drive to Montepoole, it could not stand the
+bright influences with which she found herself surrounded. She came home
+again at night with dancing spirits.
+
+It was some days before Capt. Rossitur began at all to comprehend the
+change which had come upon his family. One morning Fleda and Hugh having
+finished their morning's work were in the breakfast-room waiting for the
+rest of the family, when Charlton made his appearance, with the cloud on
+his brow which had been lately gathering.
+
+"Where is the paper?" said he. "I haven't seen a paper since I have
+been here."
+
+"You mustn't expect to find Mexican luxuries in Queechy, Capt.
+Rossitur," said Fleda pleasantly.--"Look at these roses, and don't ask
+me for papers!"
+
+He did look a minute at the dish of flowers she was arranging for the
+breakfast table, and at the rival freshness and sweetness of the face that
+hung over them.
+
+"You don't mean to say you live without a paper?"
+
+[Illustration: "Look at these roses, and don't ask me for papers!"]
+
+"Well, it's astonishing how many things people can live without," said
+Fleda rather dreamily, intent upon settling an uneasy rose that would
+topple over.
+
+"I wish you'd answer me really," said Charlton. "Don't you take a
+paper here?"
+
+"We would take one thankfully if it would be so good as to come; but
+seriously, Charlton, we haven't any," she said changing her tone.
+
+"And have you done without one all through the war?"
+
+"No--we used to borrow one from a kind neighbour once in a while, to make
+sure, as Mr. Thorn says, that you had not bartered an arm for a
+shoulder-knot."
+
+"You never looked to see whether I was killed in the meanwhile, I
+suppose?"
+
+"No--never," said Fleda gravely, as she took her place on a low seat in
+the corner,--"I always knew you were safe before I touched the paper."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I am not an enemy, Charlton," said Fleda laughing. "I mean that I used to
+make aunt Miriam look over the accounts before I did."
+
+Charlton walked up and down the room for a little while in sullen silence;
+and then brought up before Fleda.
+
+"What are you doing?"
+
+Fleda looked up,--a glance that as sweetly and brightly as possible half
+asked half bade him be silent and ask no questions.
+
+"What _are_ you doing?" he repeated.
+
+"I am putting a patch on my shoe."
+
+His look expressed more indignation than anything else.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Just what I say," said Fleda, going on with her work.
+
+"What in the name of all the cobblers in the land do you do it for?"
+
+"Because I prefer it to having a hole in my shoe; which would give me the
+additional trouble of mending my stockings."
+
+Charlton muttered an impatient sentence, of which Fleda only understood
+that "the devil" was in it, and then desired to know if whole shoes would
+not answer the purpose as well as either holes or patches?
+
+"Quite--if I had them," said Fleda, giving him another glance which, with
+all its gravity and sweetness, carried also a little gentle reproach.
+
+"But do you know," said he after standing still a minute looking at her,
+"that any cobbler in the country would do what you are doing much better
+for sixpence?"
+
+"I am quite aware of that," said Fleda, stitching away.
+
+"Your hands are not strong enough for that work!"
+
+Fleda again smiled at him, in the very dint of giving a hard push to her
+needle; a smile that would have witched him into good humour if he had not
+been determinately in a cloud and proof against everything. It only
+admonished him that he could not safely remain in the region of sunbeams;
+and he walked up and down the room furiously again. The sudden ceasing of
+his footsteps presently made her look up.
+
+"What have you got there?--Oh, Charlton, don't!--please put that down!--I
+didn't know I had left them there.--They were a little wet and I laid them
+on the chair to dry."
+
+"What do you call this?" said he, not minding her request.
+
+"They are only my gardening gloves--I thought I had put them away."
+
+"Gloves!" said he, pulling at them disdainfully,--"why here are two--one
+within the other--what's that for?"
+
+"It's an old-fashioned way of mending matters,--two friends covering each
+other's deficiencies. The inner pair are too thin alone, and the outer
+ones have holes that are past cobbling."
+
+"Are we going to have any breakfast to-day?" said he flinging the gloves
+down. "You are very late!"
+
+"No," said Fleda quietly,--"it is not time for aunt Lucy to be down yet."
+
+"Don't you have breakfast before nine o'clock?"
+
+"Yes--by half-past eight generally."
+
+"Strange way of getting along on a farm!--Well I can't wait--I promised
+Thorn I would meet him this morning--Barby!--I wish you would bring me
+my boots!--"
+
+Fleda made two springs,--one to touch Charlton's mouth, the other to close
+the door of communication with the kitchen.
+
+"Well!--what is the matter?--can't I have them?"
+
+"Yes, yes, but ask me for what you want. You mustn't call upon Barby in
+that fashion."
+
+"Why not? is she too good to be spoken to? What is she in the
+kitchen for?"
+
+"She wouldn't be in the kitchen long if we were to speak to her in that
+way," said Fleda. "I suppose she would as soon put your boots on for you
+as fetch and carry them. I'll see about it."
+
+"It seems to me Fleda rules the house," remarked Capt. Rossitur when she
+had left the room.
+
+"Well who should rule it?" said Hugh.
+
+"Not she!"
+
+"I don't think she does," said Hugh; "but if she did, I am sure it could
+not be in better hands."
+
+"It shouldn't be in her hands at all. But I have noticed since I have been
+here that she takes the arrangement of almost everything. My mother seems
+to have nothing to do in her own family."
+
+"I wonder what the family or anybody in it would do without Fleda!" said
+Hugh, his gentle eyes quite firing with indignation. "You had better know
+more before you speak, Charlton."
+
+"What is there for me to know?"
+
+"Fleda does everything."
+
+"So I say; and that is what I don't like."
+
+"How little you know what you are talking about!" said Hugh. "I can tell
+you she is the life of the house, almost literally; we should have had
+little enough to live upon this summer if it had not been for her."
+
+"What do you mean?"--impatiently enough.
+
+"Fleda--if it had not been for her gardening and management. She has taken
+care of the garden these two years and sold I can't tell you how much from
+it. Mr. Sweet, the hotel-man at the Pool, takes all we can give him."
+
+"How much does her 'taking care of the garden' amount to?"
+
+"It amounts to all the planting and nearly all the other work, after the
+first digging,--by far the greater part of it."
+
+Charlton walked up and down a few turns in most unsatisfied silence.
+
+"How does she get the things to Montepoole?"
+
+"I take them."
+
+"You!--When?"
+
+"I ride with them there before breakfast. Fleda is up very early to
+gather them."
+
+"You have not been there this morning?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"With what?"
+
+"Peas and strawberries."
+
+"And Fleda picked them?"
+
+"Yes--with some help from Barby and me."
+
+"That glove of hers was wringing wet."
+
+"Yes, with the pea-vines, and strawberries too; you know they get so
+loaded with dew. O Fleda gets more than her gloves wet. But she does not
+mind anything she does for father and mother."
+
+"Humph!--And does she get enough when all is done to pay for the trouble?"
+
+"I don't know," said Hugh rather sadly. "_She_ thinks so. It is no
+trifle."
+
+"Which?--the pay or the trouble?"
+
+"Both. But I meant the pay. Why she made ten dollars last year from the
+asparagus beds alone, and I don't know how much more this year."
+
+"Ten dollars!--The devil!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Have you come to counting your dollars by the tens?"
+
+"We have counted our sixpences so a good while," said Hugh quietly.
+
+Charlton strode about the room again in much perturbation. Then came in
+Fleda, looking as bright as if dollars had been counted by the thousand,
+and bearing his boots.
+
+"What on earth did you do that for?" said he angrily. "I could have gone
+for them myself."
+
+"No harm done," said Fleda lightly,--"only I have got something else
+instead of the thanks I expected."
+
+"I can't conceive," said he, sitting down and sulkily drawing on his
+foot-gear, "why this piece of punctiliousness should have made any more
+difficulty about bringing me my boots than about blacking them."
+
+A sly glance of intelligence, which Charlton was quick enough to detect,
+passed between Fleda and Hugh. His eye carried its question from one to
+the other. Fleda's gravity gave way.
+
+"Don't look at me so, Charlton," said she laughing;--"I can't help it,
+you are so excessively comical!--I recommend that you go out upon the
+grass-plat before the door and turn round two or three times."
+
+"Will you have the goodness to explain yourself? Who _did_ black
+these boots?"
+
+"Never pry into the secrets of families," said Fleda. "Hugh and I have a
+couple of convenient little fairies in our service that do things
+_unknownst_."
+
+"I blacked them, Charlton," said Hugh.
+
+Capt. Rossitur gave his slippers a fling that carried them clean into the
+corner of the room.
+
+"I will see," he said rising, "whether some other service cannot be had
+more satisfactory than that of fairies!"
+
+"Now Charlton," said Fleda with a sudden change of manner, coming to him
+and laying her hand most gently on his arm,--"please don't speak about
+these things before uncle Rolf or your mother--Please do
+not!--Charlton!--It would only do a great deal of harm and do no good."
+
+She looked up in his face, but he would not meet her pleading eye, and
+shook off her hand.
+
+"I don't need to be instructed how to speak to my father and mother; and I
+am not one of the household that has submitted itself to your direction."
+
+Fleda sat down on her bench and was quiet, but with a lip that trembled a
+little and eyes that let fall one or two witnesses against him. Charlton
+did not see them, and he knew better than to meet Hugh's look of reproach.
+But for all that there was a certain consciousness that hung about the
+neck of his purpose and kept it down in spite of him; and it was not till
+breakfast was half over that his ill-humour could make head against this
+gentle thwarting and cast it off. For so long the meal was excessively
+dull. Hugh and Fleda had their own thoughts; Charlton was biting his
+resolution into every slice of bread and butter that occupied him; and Mr.
+Rossitur's face looked like anything but encouraging an inquiry into his
+affairs. Since his son's arrival he had been most uncommonly gloomy; and
+Mrs. Rossitur's face was never in sunshine when his was in shade.
+
+"You'll have a warm day of it at the mill, Hugh," said Fleda, by way of
+saying something to break the dismal monotony of knives and forks.
+
+"Does that mill make much?" suddenly inquired Charlton.
+
+"It has made a new bridge to the brook, literally," said Fleda gayly; "for
+it has sawn out the boards; and you know you mustn't speak evil of what
+carries you over the water."
+
+"Does that mill pay for the working?" said Charlton, turning with the
+dryest disregard from her interference and addressing himself
+determinately to his father.
+
+"What do you mean? It does not work gratuitously," answered Mr. Rossitur,
+with at least equal dryness.
+
+"But, I mean, are the profits of it enough to pay for the loss of
+Hugh's time?"
+
+"If Hugh judges they are not, he is at liberty to let it alone."
+
+"My time is not lost," said Hugh; "I don't know what I should do with it."
+
+"I don't know what we should do without the mill," said Mrs. Rossitur.
+
+That gave Charlton an unlucky opening.
+
+"Has the prospect of farming disappointed you, father?"
+
+"What is the prospect of your company?" said Mr. Rossitur, swallowing half
+an egg before he replied.
+
+"A very limited prospect!" said Charlton,--"if you mean the one that went
+with me. Not a fifth part of them left."
+
+"What have you done with them?"
+
+"Shewed them where the balls were flying, sir, and did my best to shew
+them the thickest of it."
+
+"Is it necessary to shew it to us too?" said Fleda.
+
+"I believe there are not twenty living that followed me into Mexico," he
+went on, as if he had not heard her.
+
+"Was all that havoc made in one engagement?" said Mrs. Rossitur, whose
+cheek had turned pale.
+
+"Yes, mother--in the course of a few minutes."
+
+"I wonder what would pay for _that_ loss!" said Fleda indignantly.
+
+"Why, the point was gained! and it did not signify what the cost was so we
+did that. My poor boys were a small part of it."
+
+"What point do you mean?"
+
+"I mean the point we had in view, which was taking the place."
+
+"And what was the advantage of gaining the place."
+
+"Pshaw!--The advantage of doing one's duty."
+
+"But what made it duty?" said Hugh.
+
+"Orders."
+
+"I grant you," said Fleda,--"I understand that--but bear with me,
+Charlton,--what was the advantage to the army or the country?"
+
+"The advantage of great honour if we succeeded, and avoiding the shame
+of failure."
+
+"Is that all?" said Hugh.
+
+"All!" said Charlton.
+
+"Glory must be a precious thing when other men's lives are so cheap to
+buy it," said Fleda.
+
+"We did not risk theirs without our own," said Charlton colouring.
+
+"No,--but still theirs were risked for you."
+
+"Not at all;--why this is absurd! you are saying that the whole war was
+for nothing."
+
+"What better than nothing was the end of it? We paid Mexico for the
+territory she yielded to us, didn't we, uncle Rolf?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How much?"
+
+"Twenty millions, I believe."
+
+"And what do you suppose the war has cost?"
+
+"Hum--I don't know,--a hundred."
+
+"A hundred million! besides--how much besides!--And don't you suppose,
+uncle Rolf, that for half of that sum Mexico would have sold us peaceably
+what she did in the end?"
+
+"It is possible--I think it is very likely."
+
+"What was the fruit of the war, Capt. Rossitur?"
+
+"Why, a great deal of honour to the army and the nation at large."
+
+"Honour again! But granting that the army gained it, which they certainly
+did, for one I do not feel very proud of the nation's share."
+
+"Why they are one" said Charlton impatiently.
+
+"In an unjust war"
+
+"It was _not_ an unjust war!"
+
+"That's what you call a knock-downer," said Fleda laughing. "But I confess
+myself so simple as to have agreed with Seth Plumfield, when I heard him
+and Lucas disputing about it last winter, that it was a shame to a great
+and strong nation like ours to display its might in crushing a weak one."
+
+"But they drew it upon themselves. _They_ began hostilities."
+
+"There is a diversity of opinion about that."
+
+"Not in heads that have two grains of information."
+
+"I beg your pardon. Mrs. Evelyn and Judge Sensible were talking over that
+very question the other day at Montepoole; and he made it quite clear to
+my mind that we were the aggressors."
+
+"Judge Sensible is a fool!" said Mr. Rossitur.
+
+"Very well!" said Fleda laughing;--"but as I do not wish to be
+comprehended in the same class, will you shew me how he was wrong, uncle?"
+
+This drew on a discussion of some length, to which Fleda listened with
+profound attention, long after her aunt had ceased to listen at all, and
+Hugh was thoughtful, and Charlton disgusted. At the end of it Mr. Rossitur
+left the table and the room, and Fleda subsiding turned to her cold
+coffee-cup.
+
+"I didn't know you ever cared anything about politics before," said Hugh.
+
+"Didn't you?" said Fleda smiling, "You do me injustice."
+
+Their eyes met for a second, with a most appreciating smile on his part;
+and then he too went off to his work. There was a few minutes' silent
+pause after that.
+
+"Mother," said Charlton looking up and bursting forth, "what is all this
+about the mill and the farm?--Is not the farm doing well?"
+
+"I am afraid not very well," said Mrs. Rossitur, gently.
+
+"What is the difficulty?"
+
+"Why, your father has let it to a man by the name of Didenhover, and I am
+afraid he is not faithful; it does not seem to bring us in what it ought."
+
+"What did he do that for?"
+
+"He was wearied with the annoyances he had to endure before, and thought
+it would be better and more profitable to have somebody else take the
+whole charge and management. He did not know Didenhover's character at
+the time."
+
+"Engaged him without knowing him!"
+
+Fleda was the only third party present, and Charlton unwittingly allowing
+himself to meet her eye received a look of keen displeasure that he was
+not prepared for.
+
+"That is not like him," he said in a much moderated tone. "But you must be
+changed too, mother, or you would not endure such anomalous service in
+your kitchen."
+
+"There are a great many changes, dear Charlton," said his mother, looking
+at him with such a face of sorrowful sweetness and patience that his mouth
+was stopped. Fleda left the room.
+
+"And have you really nothing to depend upon but that child's strawberries
+and Hugh's wood-saw?" he said in the tone he ought to have used from the
+beginning.
+
+"Little else."
+
+Charlton stifled two or three sentences that rose to his lips, and began
+to walk up and down the room again. His mother sat musing by the tea-board
+still, softly clinking her spoon against the edge of her tea-cup.
+
+"She has grown up very pretty," he remarked after a pause.
+
+"Pretty!" said Mrs. Rossitur.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"No one that has seen much of Fleda would ever describe her by that name."
+
+Charlton had the candour to think he had seen something of her that
+morning.
+
+"Poor child!" said Mrs. Rossitur sadly,--"I can't bear to think of her
+spending her life as she is doing--wearing herself out, I know,
+sometimes--and buried alive."
+
+"Buried!" said Charlton in his turn.
+
+"Yes--without any of the advantages and opportunities she ought to have. I
+can't bear to think of it. And yet how should I ever live without
+her!"--said Mrs. Rossitur, leaning her face upon her hands. "And if she
+were known she would not be mine long. But it grieves me to have her go
+without her music that she is so fond of, and the books she wants--she and
+Hugh have gone from end to end of every volume there is in the house, I
+believe, in every language, except Greek."
+
+"Well, she looks pretty happy and contented, mother."
+
+"I don't know!" said Mrs. Rossitur shaking her head.
+
+"Isn't she happy?"
+
+"I don't know," said Mrs. Rossitur again;--"she has a spirit that is happy
+in doing her duty, or anything for those she loves; but I see her
+sometimes wearing a look that pains me exceedingly. I am afraid the way
+she lives and the changes in our affairs have worn upon her more than we
+know of--she feels doubly everything that touches me, or Hugh, or your
+father. She is a gentle spirit!--"
+
+"She seems to me not to want character," said Charlton.
+
+"Character! I don't know who has so much. She has at least fifty times as
+much character as I have. And energy. She is admirable at managing
+people--she knows how to influence them somehow so that everybody does
+what she wants."
+
+"And who influences her?" said Charlton.
+
+"Who influences her? Everybody that she loves. Who has the most influence
+over her, do you mean?--I am sure I don't know--Hugh, if anybody,--but
+_she_ is rather the moving spirit of the household."
+
+Capt. Rossitur resolved that he would be an exception to her rule.
+
+He forgot, however, for some reason or other, to sound his father any
+more on the subject of mismanagement. His thoughts indeed were more
+pleasantly taken up.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIV.
+
+
+
+                       My lord Sebastian,
+  The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness
+  And time to speak it in: you rub the sore.
+  When you should bring the plaster.
+
+  Tempest.
+
+
+The Evelyns spent several weeks at the Pool; and both mother and daughters
+conceiving a great affection for Fleda kept her in their company as much
+as possible For those weeks Fleda had enough of gayety. She was constantly
+spending the day with them at the Pool, or going on some party of
+pleasure, or taking quiet sensible walks and rides with them along or with
+only one or two more of the most rational and agreeable people that the
+place could command. And even Mrs. Rossitur was persuaded, more times than
+one, to put herself in her plainest remaining French silk and entertain
+the whole party, with the addition of one or two of Charlton's friends, at
+her Queechy farm-house.
+
+Fleda enjoyed it all with the quick spring of a mind habitually bent to
+the patient fulfilment of duty and habitually under the pressure of rather
+sobering thoughts. It was a needed and very useful refreshment. Charlton's
+being at home gave her the full good of the opportunity more than would
+else have been possible. He was her constant attendant, driving her to and
+from the Pool, and finding as much to call him there as she had; for
+besides the Evelyns his friend Thorn abode there all this time. The only
+drawback to Fleda's pleasure as she drove off from Queechy would be the
+leaving Hugh plodding away at his saw-mill. She used to nod and wave to
+him as they went by, and almost feel that she ought not to go on and enjoy
+herself while he was tending that wearisome machinery all day long. Still
+she went on and enjoyed herself; but the mere thought of his patient smile
+as she passed would have kept her from too much elation of spirits, if
+there had been any danger. There never was any.
+
+"That's a lovely little cousin of yours," said Thorn one evening, when he
+and Rossitur, on horseback, were leisurely making their way along the up
+and down road between Montepoole and Queechy.
+
+"She is not particularly little," said Rossitur with a dryness that
+somehow lacked any savour of gratification.
+
+"She is of a most fair stature," said Thorn;--"I did not mean anything
+against that,--but there are characters to which one gives instinctively a
+softening appellative."
+
+"Are there?" said Charlton.
+
+"Yes. She is a lovely little creature."
+
+"She is not to compare to one of those girls we have left behind us at
+Montepoole," said Charlton.
+
+"Hum--well perhaps you are right; but which girl do you mean?--for I
+profess I don't know."
+
+"The second of Mrs. Evelyn's daughters--the auburn-haired one."
+
+"Miss Constance, eh?" said Thorn. "In what isn't the other one to be
+compared to her?"
+
+"In anything! Nobody would ever think of looking at her in the same room?"
+
+"Why not?" said Thorn coolly.
+
+"I don't know why not," said Charlton, "except that she has not a tithe of
+her beauty. That's a superb girl!"
+
+For a matter of twenty yards Mr. Thorn went softly humming a tune to
+himself and leisurely switching the flies off his horse.
+
+"Well,"--said he,--"there's no accounting for tastes--
+
+             'I ask no red and white
+        To make up my delight,
+        No odd becoming graces,
+  Black eyes, or little know-not-what in faces.'"
+
+"What _do_ you want then?" said Charlton, half laughing at him, though his
+friend was perfectly grave.
+
+"A cool eye, and a mind in it."
+
+"A cool eye!" said Rossitur.
+
+"Yes. Those we have left behind us are arrant will-o'the-wisps--dancing
+fires--no more."
+
+"I can tell you there is fire sometimes in the other eyes," said Charlton.
+
+"Very likely," said his friend composedly,--"I could have guessed as much;
+but that is a fire you may warm yourself at; no eternal
+phosphorescence;--it is the leaping up of an internal fire, that only
+shews itself upon occasion."
+
+"I suppose you know what you are talking about," said Charlton, "but I
+can't follow you into the region of volcanos. Constance Evelyn has superb
+eyes. It is uncommon to see a light blue so brilliant."
+
+"I would rather trust a sick head to the handling of the lovely lady than
+the superb one, at a venture."
+
+"I thought you never had a sick head," said Charlton.
+
+"That is lucky for me, as the hands do not happen to be at my service. But
+no imagination could put Miss Constance in Desdemona's place, when Othello
+complained of his headache,--you remember, Charlton,--
+
+  ''Faith, that's with watching--'twill away again--
+  Let me but bind this handkerchief about it hard.'"
+
+Thorn gave the intonation truly and admirably.
+
+"Fleda never said anything so soft as that," said Charlton.
+
+"No?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You speak--well, but _soft_!--do you know what you are talking
+about there?"
+
+"Not very well," said Charlton. "I only remember there was nothing soft
+about Othello,--what you quoted of his wife just now seemed to me to smack
+of that quality."
+
+"I forgive your memory," said Thorn, "or else I certainly would not
+forgive you. If there is a fair creation in all Shakespeare it is
+Desdemona, and if there is a pretty combination on earth that nearly
+matches it, I believe it is that one."
+
+"What one?"
+
+"Your pretty cousin."
+
+Charlton was silent.
+
+"It is generous in me to undertake her defence," Thorn went on, "for she
+bestows as little of her fair countenance upon me as she can well help.
+But try as she will, she cannot be so repellant as she is attractive."
+
+Charlton pushed his horse into a brisker pace not favourable to
+conversation; and they rode forward in silence, till in descending the
+hill below Deepwater they came within view of Hugh's workplace, the saw
+mill. Charlton suddenly drew bridle.
+
+"There she is."
+
+"And who is with her?" said Thorn. "As I live!--our friend--what's his
+name?--who has lost all his ancestors.--And who is the other?"
+
+"My brother," said Charlton.
+
+"I don't mean your brother, Capt. Rossitur," said Thorn throwing himself
+off his horse.
+
+He joined the party, who were just leaving the mill to go down towards the
+house. Very much at his leisure Charlton dismounted and came after him.
+
+"I have brought Charlton safe home, Miss Ringgan," said Thorn, who leading
+his horse had quietly secured a position at her side.
+
+"What's the matter?" said Fleda laughing. "Couldn't he bring
+himself home?"
+
+"I don't know what's the matter, but he's been uncommonly dumpish--we've
+been as near as possible to quarrelling for half a dozen miles back."
+
+"We have been--a--more agreeably employed," said Dr. Quackenboss looking
+round at him with a face that was a concentration of affability.
+
+"I make no doubt of it, sir; I trust we shall bring no unharmonious
+interruption.--If I may change somebody else's words," he added more low
+to Fleda,--"disdain itself must convert to courtesy in your presence."
+
+"I am sorry disdain should live to pay me a compliment," said Fleda. "Mr.
+Thorn, may I introduce to you Mr. Olmney?"
+
+Mr. Thorn honoured the introduction with perfect civility, but then fell
+back to his former position and slightly lowered tone.
+
+"Are you then a sworn foe to compliments?"
+
+"I was never so fiercely attacked by them as to give me any occasion."
+
+"I should be very sorry to furnish the occasion,--but what's the harm in
+them, Miss Ringgan?"
+
+"Chiefly a want of agreeableness."
+
+"Of agreeableness!--Pardon me--I hope you will be so good as to give me
+the rationale of that?"
+
+"I am of Miss Edgeworth's opinion, sir," said Fleda blushing, "that a lady
+may always judge of the estimation in which she is held by the
+conversation which is addressed to her."
+
+"And you judge compliments to be a doubtful indication of esteem?"
+
+"I am sure you do not need information on that point, sir."
+
+"As to your opinion, or the matter of fact?" said he somewhat keenly.
+
+"As to the matter of fact," said Fleda, with a glance both simple and
+acute in its expression.
+
+"I will not venture to say a word," said Thorn smiling. "Protestations
+would certainly fall flat at the gates where _les douces paroles_ cannot
+enter. But do you know this is picking a man's pocket of all his silver
+pennies and obliging him to produce his gold."
+
+"That _would_ be a hard measure upon a good many people," said Fleda
+laughing. "But they're not driven to that. There's plenty of small
+change left."
+
+"You certainly do not deal in the coin you condemn," said Thorn bowing.
+"But you will remember that none call for gold but those who can exchange
+it, and the number of them is few. In a world where cowrie passes current
+a man may be excused for not throwing about his guineas."
+
+"I wish you'd throw about a few for our entertainment," said Charlton, who
+was close behind. "I haven't seen a yellow-boy in a good while."
+
+"A proof that your eyes are not jaundiced," said his friend without
+turning his head, "whatever may be the case with you otherwise. Is he out
+of humour with the country life you like so well, Miss Ringgan, or has he
+left his domestic tastes in Mexico? How do you think he likes Queechy?"
+
+"You might as well ask myself," said Charlton.
+
+"How do you think he likes Queechy, Miss Ringgan?"
+
+"I am afraid something after the fashion of Touchstone," said Fleda
+laughing;--"he thinks that 'in respect of itself it is a good life; but in
+respect that it is a shepherd's life it is naught. In respect that it is
+solitary, he likes it very well; but in respect that it is private, it is
+a very vile life. Now in respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth him
+well; but in respect it is not in the court, it is tedious.'"
+
+"There's a guinea for you, Capt. Rossitur," said his friend. "Do you know
+out of what mint?"
+
+"It doesn't bear the head of Socrates," said Charlton.
+
+"'Hast no philosophy in thee,' Charlton?" said Fleda laughing back at him.
+
+"Has not Queechy--a--the honour of your approbation, Capt. Rossitur?" said
+the doctor.
+
+"Certainly sir--I have no doubt of its being a very fine country."
+
+"Only he has imbibed some doubts whether happiness be an indigenous crop,"
+said Thorn.
+
+"Undoubtedly," said the doctor blandly,--"to one who has roamed over the
+plains of Mexico, Queechy must seem rather--a--rather flat place."
+
+"If he could lose sight of the hills," said Thorn.
+
+"Undoubtedly, sir, undoubtedly," said the doctor; "they are a marked
+feature in the landscape, and do much to relieve--a--the charge of
+sameness."
+
+"Luckily," said Mr. Olmney smiling, "happiness is not a thing of
+circumstance; it depends on a man's self."
+
+"I used to think so," said Thorn;--"that is what I have always subscribed
+to; but I am afraid I could not live in this region and find it so long."
+
+"What an evening!" said Fleda. "Queechy is doing its best to deserve our
+regards under this light. Mr. Olmney, did you ever notice the beautiful
+curve of the hills in that hollow where the sun sets?"
+
+"I do notice it now" he said.
+
+"It is exquisite!" said the doctor. "Capt. Rossitur, do you observe,
+sir?--in that hollow where the sun sets?--"
+
+Capt. Rossitur's eye made a very speedy transition from the hills to
+Fleda, who had fallen back a little to take Hugh's arm and placing herself
+between him and Mr. Olmney was giving her attention undividedly to the
+latter. And to him she talked perseveringly, of the mountains, the
+country, and the people, till they reached the courtyard gate. Mr. Olmney
+then passed on. So did the doctor, though invited to tarry, averring that
+the sun had gone down behind the firmament and he had something to attend
+to at home.
+
+"You will come in, Thorn," said Charlton.
+
+"Why--I had intended returning,--but the sun has gone down indeed, and as
+our friend says there is no chance of our seeing him again I may as well
+go in and take what comfort is to be had in the circumstances. Gentle
+Euphrosyne, doth it not become the Graces to laugh?"
+
+"They always ask leave, sir," said Fleda hesitating.
+
+"A most Grace-ful answer, though it does not smile upon me," said Thorn.
+
+"I am sorry, sir," said Fleda, smiling now, "that you have so many silver
+pennies to dispose of we shall never get at the gold."
+
+"I will do my very best," said he.
+
+So he did, and made himself agreeable that evening to every one of the
+circle; though Fleda's sole reason for liking to see him come in had been
+that she was glad of everything that served to keep Charlton's attention
+from home subjects. She saw sometimes the threatening of a cloud that
+troubled her.
+
+But the Evelyns and Thorn and everybody else whom they knew left the Pool
+at last, before Charlton, who was sufficiently well again, had near run
+out his furlough; and then the cloud which had only shewed itself by turns
+during all those weeks gathered and settled determinately upon his brow.
+
+He had long ago supplied the want of a newspaper. One evening in September
+the family were sitting in the room where they had had tea, for the
+benefit of the fire, when Barby pushed open the kitchen door and came in.
+
+"Fleda will you let me have one of the last papers? I've a notion to
+look at it."
+
+Fleda rose and went to rummaging in the cupboards.
+
+"You can have it again in a little while," said Barby considerately.
+
+The paper was found and Miss Elster went out with it.
+
+"What an unendurable piece of ill-manners that woman is!" said Charlton.
+
+"She has no idea of being ill-mannered, I assure you," said Fleda.
+
+His voice was like a brewing storm--hers was so clear and soft that it
+made a lull in spite of him. But he began again.
+
+"There is no necessity for submitting to impertinence. I never
+would do it."
+
+"I have no doubt you never will," said his father. "Unless you can't help
+yourself."
+
+"Is there any good reason, sir, why you should not have proper servants in
+the house?"
+
+"A very good reason," said Mr. Rossitur. "Fleda would be in despair."
+
+"Is there none beside that?" said Charlton dryly.
+
+"None--except a trifling one," Mr. Rossitur answered in the same tone.
+
+"We cannot afford it, dear Charlton," said his mother softly.
+
+There was a silence, during which Fleda moralized on the ways people take
+to make themselves uncomfortable.
+
+"Does that man--to whom you let the farm--does he do his duty?"
+
+"I am not the keeper of his conscience."
+
+"I am afraid it would be a small charge to any one," said Fleda.
+
+"But are you the keeper of the gains you ought to have from him? does he
+deal fairly by you?"
+
+"May I ask first what interest it is of yours?"
+
+"It is my interest, sir, because I come home and find the family living
+upon the exertions of Hugh and Fleda and find them growing thin and pale
+under it."
+
+"You, at least, are free from all pains of the kind, Capt. Rossitur."
+
+"Don't listen to him, uncle Rolf!" said Fleda going round to her uncle,
+and making as she passed a most warning impression upon Charlton's
+arm,--"don't mind what he says--that young gentleman has been among the
+Mexican ladies till he has lost an eye for a really proper complexion.
+Look at me!--do I look pale and thin?--I was paid a most brilliant
+compliment the other day upon my roses--Uncle, don't listen to him!--he
+hasn't been in a decent humour since the Evelyns went away."
+
+She knelt down before him and laid her hands upon his and looked up in his
+face to bring all her plea; the plea of most winning sweetness of entreaty
+in features yet flushed and trembling. His own did not unbend as he gazed
+at her, but he gave her a silent answer in a pressure of the hands that
+went straight from his heart to hers. Fleda's eye turned to Charlton
+appealingly.
+
+"Is it necessary," he repeated, "that that child and this boy should spend
+their days in labour to keep the family alive?"
+
+"If it were," replied Mr. Rossitur, "I am very willing that their
+exertions should cease. For my own part I would quite as lief be out of
+the world as in it."
+
+"Charlton!--how can you!--" said Fleda, half beside herself,--you should
+know of what you speak or be silent!--Uncle, don't mind him! he is talking
+wildly--my work does me good."
+
+"You do not understand yourself," said Charlton obstinately;--"it is
+more than you ought to do, and I know my mother thinks so too."
+
+[Illustration: She knelt down before him.]
+
+"Well!" said Mr. Rossitur,--"it seems there is an agreement in my own
+family to bring me to the bar--get up, Fleda,--let us hear all the charges
+to be brought against me, at once, and then pass sentence. What have your
+mother and you agreed upon, Charlton?--go on!"
+
+Mrs. Rossitur, now beyond speech, left the room, weeping even aloud. Hugh
+followed her. Fleda wrestled with her agitation for a minute or two, and
+then got up and put both arms round her uncle's neck.
+
+"Don't talk so, dear uncle Rolf!--you make us very unhappy--aunt Lucy did
+not mean any such thing--it is only Charlton's nonsense. Do go and tell
+her you don't think so,--you have broken her heart by what you said;--do
+go, uncle Rolf!--do go and make her happy again! Forget it all!--Charlton
+did not know what he was saying--won't you go, dear uncle Rolf?--"
+
+The words were spoken between bursts of tears that utterly overcame her,
+though they did not hinder the utmost caressingness of manner. It seemed
+at first spent upon a rock. Mr. Rossitur stood like a man that did not
+care what happened or what became of him; dumb and unrelenting; suffering
+her sweet words and imploring tears, with no attempt to answer the one or
+stay the other. But he could not hold out against her beseeching. He was
+no match for it. He returned at last heartily the pressure of her arms,
+and unable to give her any other answer kissed her two or three times,
+such kisses as are charged with the heart's whole message; and disengaging
+himself left the room.
+
+For a minute after he was gone Fleda cried excessively; and Charlton, now
+alone with her, felt as if he had not a particle of self-respect left to
+stand upon. One such agony would do her more harm than whole weeks of
+labour and weariness. He was too vexed and ashamed of himself to be able
+to utter a word, but when she recovered a little and was leaving the room
+he stood still by the door in an attitude that seemed to ask her to speak
+a word to him.
+
+"I am sure, Charlton," she said gently, "you will be sorry to-morrow for
+what you have done."
+
+"I am sorry now," he said. But she passed out without saying
+anything more.
+
+Capt. Rossitur passed the night in unmitigated vexation with himself. But
+his repentance could not have been very genuine, since his most painful
+thought was, what Fleda must think of him.
+
+He was somewhat reassured at breakfast to find no traces of the evening's
+storm; indeed the moral atmosphere seemed rather clearer and purer than
+common. His own face was the only one which had an unusual shade upon it.
+There was no difference in anybody's manner towards himself; and there was
+even a particularly gentle and kind pleasantness about Fleda, intended, he
+knew, to soothe and put to rest any movings of self-reproach he might
+feel. It somehow missed of its aim and made him feel worse; and after on
+his part a very silent meal he quitted the house and took himself and his
+discontent to the woods.
+
+Whatever effect they had upon him, it was the middle of the morning before
+he came back again. He found Fleda alone in the breakfast-room, sewing;
+and for the first time noticed the look his mother had spoken of; a look
+not of sadness, but rather of settled patient gravity; the more painful to
+see because it could only have been wrought by long-acting causes, and
+might be as slow to do away as it must have been to bring. Charlton's
+displeasure with the existing state of things had revived as his remorse
+died away, and that quiet face did not have a quieting effect upon him.
+
+"What on earth is going on!" he began rather abruptly as soon as he
+entered the room. "What horrible cookery is on foot?"
+
+"I venture to recommend that you do not inquire," said Fleda. "It was set
+on foot in the kitchen and it has walked in here. If you open the window
+it will walk out."
+
+"But you will be cold?"
+
+"Never mind--in that case I will walk out too, into the kitchen."
+
+"Into the thick of it!--No--I will try some other way of relief. This is
+unendurable!"
+
+Fleda looked, but made no other remonstrance, and not heeding the look Mr.
+Charlton walked out into the kitchen, shutting the door behind him.
+
+"Barby," said he, "you have got something cooking here that is very
+disagreeable in the other room."
+
+"Is it?" said Barby. "I reckoned it would all fly up chimney I guess the
+draught ain't so strong as I thought it was."
+
+"But I tell you it fills the house!"
+
+"Well, it'll have to a spell yet," said Barby, "'cause if it didn't, you
+see, Capt. Rossitur, there'd be nothing to fill Fleda's chickens with."
+
+"Chickens!--where's all the corn in the land?"
+
+"It's some place besides in our barn," said Barby. "All last year's is
+out, and Mr. Didenhover ha'n't fetched any of this year's home; so I
+made a bargain with 'em they shouldn't starve as long as they'd eat
+boiled pursley."
+
+"What do you give them?"
+
+"'Most everything--they ain't particler now-a days--chunks o' cabbage, and
+scarcity, and pun'kin and that--all the sass that ain't wanted."
+
+"And do they eat that?"
+
+"Eat it!" said Barby. "They don't know how to thank me for't!"
+
+"But it ought to be done out of doors," said Charlton, coming back from a
+kind of maze in which he had been listening to her. "It is unendurable!"
+
+"Then I guess you'll have to go some place where you won't know it," said
+Barby;--"that's the most likely plan I can hit upon; for it'll have to
+stay on till it's ready."
+
+Charlton went back into the other room really down-hearted, and stood
+watching the play of Fleda's fingers.
+
+"Is it come to this!" he said at length. "Is it possible that you are
+obliged to go without such a trifle as the miserable supply of food your
+fowls want!"
+
+"That's a small matter!" said Fleda, speaking lightly though she smothered
+a sigh. "We have been obliged to do without more than that."
+
+"What is the reason?"
+
+"Why this man Didenhover is a rogue I suspect, and he manages to spirit
+away all the profits that should come to uncle Rolf's hands--I don't know
+how. We have lived almost entirely upon the mill for some time."
+
+"And has my father been doing nothing all this while?"
+
+"Nothing on the farm."
+
+"And what of anything else?"
+
+"I don't know," said Fleda, speaking with evident unwillingness. "But
+surely, Charlton, he knows his own business best. It is not our affair."
+
+"He is mad!" said Charlton, violently striding up and down the floor.
+
+"No," said Fleda with equal gentleness and sadness--"he is only
+unhappy;--I understand it all--he has had no spirit to take hold of
+anything ever since we came here."
+
+"Spirit!" said Charlton;--"he ought to have worked off his fingers to
+their joints before he let you do as you have been doing!"
+
+"Don't say so!" said Fleda, looking even pale in her eagerness--"don't
+think so, Charlton! it isn't right. We cannot tell what he may have had to
+trouble him--I know he has suffered and does suffer a great deal.--Do not
+speak again about anything as you did last night!--Oh," said Fleda, now
+shedding bitter tears,--"this is the worst of growing poor! the difficulty
+of keeping up the old kindness and sympathy and care for each other!--"
+
+"I am sure it does not work so upon you," said Charlton in an
+altered voice.
+
+"Promise me, dear Charlton," said Fleda looking up after a moment and
+drying her eyes again, "promise me you will not say any more about these
+things! I am sure it pains uncle Rolf more than you think. Say you will
+not,--for your mother's sake!"
+
+"I will not, Fleda--for your sake. I would not give _you_ any more trouble
+to bear. Promise me; that you will be more careful of yourself in future."
+
+"O there is no danger about me," said Fleda with a faint smile and taking
+up her work again.
+
+"Who are you making shirts for?" said Charlton after a pause.
+
+"Hugh."
+
+"You do everything for Hugh, don't you?"
+
+"Little enough. Not half so much as he does for me."
+
+"Is he up at the mill to-day?"
+
+"He is always there," said Fleda sighing.
+
+There was another silence.
+
+"Charlton," said Fleda looking up with a face of the loveliest
+insinuation.--"isn't there something _you_ might do to help us a little?"
+
+"I will help you garden, Fleda, with pleasure."
+
+"I would rather you should help somebody else," said she, still
+looking at him.
+
+"What, Hugh?--You would have me go and work at the mill for him, I
+suppose!"
+
+"Don't be angry with me, Charlton, for suggesting it," said Fleda looking
+down again.
+
+"Angry!"--said he. "But is that what you would have me do?"
+
+"Not unless you like,--I didn't know but you might take his place once in
+a while for a little, to give him a rest,--"
+
+"And suppose some of the people from Montepoole that know me should come
+by? What are you thinking of?" said he in a tone that certainly justified
+Fleda's deprecation.
+
+"Well!"--said Fleda in a kind of choked voice,--"there is a strange rule
+of honour in vogue in the world!"
+
+"Why should I help Hugh rather than anybody else?"
+
+"He is killing himself!--" said Fleda, letting her work fall and hardly
+speaking the words through thick tears. Her head was down and they came
+fast. Charlton stood abashed for a minute.
+
+"You sha'n't do so, Fleda," said he gently, endeavouring to raise
+her,--"you have tired yourself with this miserable work!--Come to the
+window--you have got low-spirited, but I am sure without reason about
+Hugh,--but you shall set me about what you will--You are right, I dare
+say, and I am wrong; but don't make me think myself a brute, and I will do
+anything you please."
+
+He had raised her up and made her lean upon him. Fleda wiped her eyes and
+tried to smile.
+
+"I will do anything that will please you, Fleda."
+
+"It is not to please _me_,--" she answered meekly.
+
+"I would not have spoken a word last night if I had known it would have
+grieved you so."
+
+"I am sorry you should have none but so poor a reason for doing right,"
+said Fleda gently.
+
+"Upon my word, I think you are about as good reason as anybody need have,"
+said Charlton.
+
+She put her hand upon his arm and looked up,--such a look of pure rebuke
+as carried to his mind the full force of the words she did not
+speak,--'Who art thou that carest for a worm which shall die, and
+forgettest the Lord thy Maker!'--Charlton's eyes fell. Fleda turned gently
+away and began to mend the fire. He stood watching her for a little.
+
+"What do you think of me, Fleda?" he said at length.
+
+"A little wrong-headed," answered Fleda, giving him a glance and a smile.
+"I don't think you are very bad."
+
+"If you will go with me, Fleda, you shall make what you please of me!"
+
+He spoke half in jest, half in earnest, and did not himself know at the
+moment which way he wished Fleda to take it. But she had no notion of any
+depth in his words.
+
+"A hopeless task!" she answered lightly, shaking her head, as she got down
+on her knees to blow the fire;--"I am afraid it is too much for me. I
+have been trying to mend you ever since you came, and I cannot see the
+slightest change for the better!"
+
+"Where is the bellows?" said Charlton in another tone.
+
+"It has expired--its last breath," said Fleda. "In other words, it has
+lost its nose."
+
+"Well, look here," said he laughing and pulling her away,--"you will stand
+a fair chance of losing your face if you put it in the fire. You sha'n't
+do it. Come and shew me where to find the scattered parts of that old wind
+instrument and I will see if it cannot be persuaded to play again."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXV.
+
+
+
+  I dinna ken what I should want
+    If I could get but a man.
+
+  Scotch Ballad.
+
+
+Capt. Rossitur did no work at the saw-mill. But Fleda's words had not
+fallen to the ground. He began to shew care for his fellow-creatures in
+getting the bellows mended; his next step was to look to his gun; and
+from that time so long as he staid the table was plentifully supplied
+with all kinds of game the season and the country could furnish. Wild
+ducks and partridges banished pork and bacon even from memory; and Fleda
+joyfully declared she would not see another omelette again till she was
+in distress.
+
+While Charlton was still at home came a very urgent invitation from Mrs.
+Evelyn that Fleda should pay them a long visit in New York, bidding her
+care for no want of preparation but come and make it there. Fleda
+demurred, however, on that very score. But before her answer was written,
+another missive came from Dr. Gregory, not asking so much as demanding her
+presence, and enclosing a fifty-dollar bill, for which he said he would
+hold her responsible till she had paid him with,--not her own hands,--but
+her own lips. There was no withstanding the manner of this entreaty. Fleda
+packed up some of Mrs. Rossitur's laid-by silks, to be refreshed with an
+air of fashion, and set off with Charlton at the end of his furlough.
+
+To her simple spirit of enjoyment the weeks ran fast; and all manner of
+novelties and kindnesses helped them on. It was a time of cloudless
+pleasure. But those she had left thought it long. She wrote them how
+delightfully she kept house for the old doctor, whose wife had long been
+dead, and how joyously she and the Evelyns made time fly. And every
+pleasure she felt awoke almost as strong a throb in the hearts at home.
+But they missed her, as Barby said, "dreadfully;" and she was most dearly
+welcomed when she came back. It was just before New Year.
+
+For half an hour there was most gladsome use of eyes and tongues. Fleda
+had a great deal to tell them.
+
+"How well--how well you are looking, dear Fleda!" said her aunt for the
+third or fourth time.
+
+"That's more than lean say for you and Hugh, aunt Lucy. What have you been
+doing to yourself?"
+
+"Nothing new," they said, as her eye went from one to the other.
+
+"I guess you have wanted me!" said Fleda, shaking her head as she kissed
+them both again.
+
+"I guess we have," said Hugh, "but don't fancy we have grown thin upon
+the want."
+
+"But where's uncle Rolf? you didn't tell me."
+
+"He is gone to look after those lands in Michigan."
+
+"In Michigan!--When did he go?"
+
+"Very soon after you."
+
+"And you didn't let me know!--O why didn't you? How lonely you must
+have been."
+
+"Let you know indeed!" said Mrs. Rossitur, wrapping her in her arms
+again;--"Hugh and I counted every week that you staid with more and
+pleasure each one."
+
+"I understand!" said Fleda laughing under her aunt's kisses. "Well I am
+glad I am at home again to take care of you. I see you can't get along
+without me!"
+
+"People have been very kind, Fleda," said Hugh.
+
+"Have they?"
+
+"Yes--thinking we were desolate I suppose. There has been no end to aunt
+Miriam's goodness and pleasantness."
+
+"O aunt Miriam, always!" said Fleda. "And Seth."
+
+"Catherine Douglass has been up twice to ask if her mother could do
+anything for us; and Mrs. Douglass sent us once a rabbit and once a
+quantity of wild pigeons that Earl had shot. Mother and I lived upon
+pigeons for I don't know how long. Barby wouldn't eat 'em--she said she
+liked pork better; but I believe she did it on purpose."
+
+"Like enough," said Fleda, smiling, from her aunt's arms where she
+still lay.
+
+"And Seth has sent you plenty of your favourite hickory nuts, very fine
+ones; and I gathered butternuts enough for you near home."
+
+"Everything is for me," said Fleda. "Well, the first thing I do shall be
+to make some butternut candy for you. You won't despise that, Mr. Hugh?"--
+
+Hugh smiled at her, and went on.
+
+"And your friend Mr. Olmney has sent us a corn-basket full of the
+superbest apples you ever saw. He has one tree of the finest in
+Queechy, he says."
+
+"_My_ friend!" said Fleda, colouring a little.
+
+"Well I don't know whose he is if he isn't yours," said Hugh. "And even
+the Finns sent us some fish that their brother had caught, because, they
+said, they had more than they wanted. And Dr. Quackenboss sent us a goose
+and a turkey. We didn't like to keep them, but we were afraid if we sent
+them back it would not be understood."
+
+"Send them back!" said Fleda. "That would never do! All Queechy would have
+rung with it."
+
+"Well, we didn't," said Hugh. "But so we sent one of them to Barby's old
+mother for Christmas."
+
+"Poor Dr. Quackenboss!" said Fleda. "That man has as near as possible
+killed me two or three times. As for the others, they are certainly the
+oddest of all the finny tribes. I must go out and see Barby for a minute."
+
+It was a good many minutes, however, before she could get free to do any
+such thing.
+
+"You ha'n't lost no flesh," said Barby shaking hands with her anew. "What
+did they think of Queechy keep, down in York?"
+
+"I don't know--I didn't ask them," said Fleda. "How goes the world with
+you, Barby?"
+
+"I'm mighty glad you are come home, Fleda," said Barby lowering her voice.
+
+"Why?" said Fleda in a like tone.
+
+"I guess I ain't all that's glad of it," Miss Elster went on, with a
+glance of her bright eye.
+
+"I guess not," said Fleda reddening a little;--"but what is the matter?"
+
+"There's two of our friends ha'n't made us but one visit a piece
+since--oh, ever since some time in October!"
+
+"Well never mind the people," said Fleda. "Tell me what you were
+going to say."
+
+"And Mr. Olmney," said Barby not minding her, "he's took and sent us a
+great basket chock full of apples. Now wa'n't that smart of him, when he
+knowed there wa'n't no one here that cared about 'em?"
+
+"They are a particularly fine kind," said Fleda.
+
+"Did you hear about the goose and turkey?"
+
+"Yes," said Fleda laughing.
+
+"The doctor thinks he has done the thing just about right this time, I
+s'pect. He had ought to take out a patent right for his invention. He'd
+feel spry if he knowed who eat one on 'em."
+
+"Never mind the doctor, Barby. Was this what you wanted to see me for?"
+
+"No," said Barby changing her tone. "I'd give something it was. I've been
+all but at my wit's end; for you know Mis' Rossitur ain't no hand about
+anything--I couldn't say a word to her--and ever since he went away we
+have been just winding ourselves up. I thought I should clear out, when
+Mis' Rossitur said maybe you wa'n't a coming till next week."
+
+"But what is it Barby? what is wrong?"
+
+"There ha'n't been anything right, to my notions, for a long spell," said
+Barby, wringing out her dishcloth hard and flinging it down to give
+herself uninterruptedly to talk;--"but now you see, Didenhover nor none of
+the men never comes near the house to do a chore; and there ain't wood to
+last three days; and Hugh ain't fit to cut it if it was piled up in the
+yard; and there ain't the first stick of it out of the woods yet."
+
+Fleda sat down and looked very thoughtfully into the fire.
+
+"He had ought to ha' seen to it afore he went away, but he ha'n't done it,
+and there it is."
+
+"Why who takes care of the cows?" said Fleda.
+
+"O never mind the cows," said Barby;--"they ain't suffering; I wish we was
+as well off as they be;--but I guess when he went away he made a hole in
+our pockets for to mend his'n. I don't say he hadn't ought to ha' done it,
+but we've been pretty short ever sen, Fleda--we're in the last bushel of
+flour, and there ain't but a handful of corn meal, and mighty little
+sugar, white or brown.--I did say something to Mis' Rossitur, but all the
+good it did was to spile her appetite, I s'pose; and if there's grain in
+the floor there ain't nobody to carry it to mill,--nor to thresh it,--nor
+a team to draw it, fur's I know."
+
+"Hugh cannot cut wood!" said Fleda;--"nor drive to mill either, in
+this weather."
+
+"I could go to mill," said Barby, "now you're to hum, but that's only the
+beginning; and it's no use to try to do everything--flesh and blood must
+stop somewhere.--"
+
+"No indeed!" said Fleda. "We must have somebody immediately."
+
+"That's what I had fixed upon," said Barby. "If you could get hold o' some
+young feller that wa'n't sot up with an idee that he was a grown man and
+too big to be told, I'd just clap to and fix that little room up stairs
+for him and give him his victuals here, and we'd have some good of him;
+instead o' having him streakin' off just at the minute when he'd ought to
+be along."
+
+"Who is there we could get, Barby?"
+
+"I don't know," said Barby; "but they say there is never a nick that there
+ain't a jog some place; so I guess it can be made out. I asked Mis'
+Plumfield, but she didn't know anybody that was out of work; nor Seth
+Plumfield. I'll tell you who does,--that is, if there _is_ anybody,--Mis'
+Douglass. She keeps hold of one end of 'most everybody's affairs, I tell
+her. Anyhow she's a good hand to go to."
+
+"I'll go there at once," said Fleda. "Do you know anything about making
+maple sugar, Barby?"
+
+"That's the very thing!" exclaimed Barby ecstatically. "There's lots o'
+sugar maples on the farm and it's murder to let them go to loss; and they
+ha'n't done us a speck o' good ever since I come here. And in your
+grandfather's time they used to make barrels and barrels. You and me and
+Hugh, and somebody else we'll have, we could clap to and make as much
+sugar and molasses in a week as would last us till spring come round
+again. There's no sense into it! All we'd want would be to borrow a team
+some place. I had all that in my head long ago. If we could see the last
+of that man Didenhover oncet, I'd take hold of the plough myself and see
+if I couldn't make a living out of it! I don't believe the world would go
+now, Fleda, if it wa'n't for women. I never see three men yet that didn't
+try me more than they were worth."
+
+"Patience, Barby!" said Fleda smiling. "Let us take things quietly."
+
+"Well I declare I'm beat, to see how you take 'em," said Barby, looking at
+her lovingly.
+
+"Don't you know why, Barby?"
+
+"I s'pose I do," said Barby her face softening still more,--"or I
+can guess."
+
+"Because I know that all these troublesome things will be managed in the
+best way and by my best friend, and I know that he will let none of them
+hurt me. I am sure of it--isn't that enough to keep me quiet?"
+
+Fleda's eyes were filling and Barby looked away from them.
+
+"Well it beats me," she said taking up her dishcloth again, "why _you_
+should have anything to trouble you. I can understand wicked folks being
+plagued, but I can't see the sense of the good ones."
+
+"Troubles are to make good people better, Barby."
+
+"Well," said Barby with a very odd mixture of real feeling and seeming
+want of it,--"it's a wonder I never got religion, for I will say that all
+the decent people I ever see were of that kind!--Mis' Rossitur ain't
+though, is she?"
+
+"No," said Fleda, a pang crossing her at the thought that all her aunt's
+loveliness must tell directly and heavily in this case to lighten
+religion's testimony. It was that thought and no other which saddened her
+brow as she went back into the other room.
+
+"Troubles already!" said Mrs. Rossitur. "You will be sorry you have come
+back to them, dear."
+
+"No indeed!" said Fleda brightly; "I am very glad I have come home. We
+will try and manage the troubles, aunt Lucy."
+
+There was no doing anything that day, but the very next afternoon Fleda
+and Hugh walked down through the snow to Mrs. Douglass's. It was a long
+walk and a cold one and the snow was heavy; but the pleasure of being
+together made up for it all. It was a bright walk, too, in spite of
+everything.
+
+In a most thrifty-looking well-painted farm-house lived Mrs. Douglass.
+
+"Why 'tain't you, is it?" she said when she opened the door,--"Catharine
+said it was, and I said I guessed it wa'n't, for I reckoned you had made
+up your mind not to come and see me at all.--How do you do?"
+
+The last sentence in the tone of hearty and earnest hospitality. Fleda
+made her excuses.
+
+"Ay, ay,--I can understand all that just as well as if you said it. I know
+how much it means too. Take off your hat."
+
+Fleda said she could not stay, and explained her business.
+
+"So you ha'n't come to see me after all. Well now take off your hat,
+'cause I won't have anything to say to you till you do. I'll give you
+supper right away."
+
+"But I have left my aunt alone, Mrs. Douglass;--and the afternoons are so
+short now it would be dark before we could get home."
+
+"Serve her right for not coming along! and you sha'n't walk home in the
+dark, for Earl will harness the team and carry you home like a streak--the
+horses have nothing to do--Come, you sha'n't go."
+
+And as Mrs. Douglass laid violent hands on her bonnet Fleda thought best
+to submit. She was presently rewarded with the promise of the very person
+she wanted--a boy, or young man, then in Earl Douglass's employ; but his
+wife said "she guessed he'd give him up to her;" and what his wife said,
+Fleda knew, Earl Douglass was in the habit of making good.
+
+"There ain't enough to do to keep him busy," said Mrs. Douglass. "I told
+Earl he made me more work than he saved; but he's hung on till now."
+
+"What sort of a boy is he, Mrs. Douglass?"
+
+"He ain't a steel trap. I tell you beforehand," said the lady, with one of
+her sharp intelligent glances,--"he don't know which way to go till you
+shew him; but he's a clever enough kind of a chap--he don't mean no harm.
+I guess he'll do for what you want."
+
+"Is he to be trusted?"
+
+"Trust him with anything but a knife and fork," said she, with another
+look and shake of the head. "He has no idea but what everything on the
+supper-table is meant to be eaten straight off. I would keep two such men
+as my husband as soon as I would Philetus."
+
+"Philetus!" said Fleda,--"the person that brought the chicken and thought
+he had brought two?"
+
+"You've hit it," said Mrs. Douglass. "Now you know him. How do you like
+our new minister?"
+
+"We are all very much pleased with him."
+
+"He's very good-looking, don't you think so?"
+
+"A very pleasant face."
+
+"I ha'n't seen him much yet except in church; but those that know say he
+is very agreeable in the house."
+
+"Truly, I dare say," answered Fleda, for Mrs. Douglass's face looked for
+her testimony.
+
+"But I think he looks as if he was beating his brains out there among
+his books--I tell him he is getting the blues, living in that big house
+by himself."
+
+"Do you manage to do all your work without help, Mrs. Douglass?" said
+Fleda, knowing that the question was "in order" and that the affirmative
+answer was not counted a thing to be ashamed of.
+
+"Well I guess I'll know good reason," said Mrs. Douglass complacently,
+"before I'll have any help to spoil _my_ work. Come along, and I'll let
+you see whether I want one."
+
+Fleda went, very willingly, to be shewn all Mrs. Douglass's household
+arrangements and clever contrivances, of her own or her husband's
+devising, for lessening or facilitating labour. The lady was proud, and
+had some reason to be, of the very superb order and neatness of each part
+and detail. No corner or closet that might not be laid open fearlessly to
+a visitor's inspection. Miss Catharine was then directed to open her piano
+and amuse Fleda with it while her mother performed her promise of getting
+an early supper; a command grateful to one or two of the party, for
+Catharine had been carrying on all this while a most stately tête-à-tête
+with Hugh which neither had any wish to prolong. So Fleda filled up the
+time good-naturedly with thrumming over the two or three bits of her
+childish music that she could recall, till Mr. Douglass came in and they
+were summoned to sit down to supper; which Mrs. Douglass introduced by
+telling her guests "they must take what they could get, for she had made
+fresh bread and cake and pies for them two or three times, and she wa'n't
+a going to do it again."
+
+Her table was abundantly spread however, and with most exquisite neatness,
+and everything was of excellent quality, saving only certain matters which
+call for a free hand in the use of material. Fleda thought the pumpkin
+pies must have been made from that vaunted stock which is said to want no
+eggs nor sugar, and the cakes she told Mrs. Rossitur afterwards would have
+been good if half the flour had been left out and the other ingredients
+doubled. The deficiency in one kind however was made up by superabundance
+in another; the table was stocked with such wealth of crockery that one
+could not imagine any poverty in what was to go upon it. Fleda hardly knew
+how to marshal the confusion of plates which grouped themselves around her
+cup and saucer, and none of them might be dispensed with. There was one
+set of little glass dishes for one kind of sweetmeat, another set of ditto
+for another kind; an army of tiny plates to receive and shield the
+tablecloth from the dislodged cups of tea, saucers being the conventional
+drinking vessels; and there were the standard bread and butter plates,
+which besides their proper charge of bread and butter and beef and cheese,
+were expected, Fleda knew, to receive a portion of every kind of cake that
+might happen to be on the table. It was a very different thing however
+from Miss Anastasia's tea-table or that of Miss Flora Quackenboss. Fleda
+enjoyed the whole time without difficulty.
+
+Mr. Douglass readily agreed to the transfer of Philetus's services.
+
+"He's a good boy!" said Earl,--"he's a good boy; he's as good a kind of a
+boy as you need to have. He wants tellin'; most boys want tellin'; but
+he'll do when he _is_ told, and he means to do right."
+
+"How long do you expect your uncle will be gone?" said Mrs. Douglass.
+
+"I do not know," said Fleda.
+
+"Have you heard from him since he left?"
+
+"Not since I came home," said Fleda. "Mr. Douglass, what is the first
+thing to be done about the maple trees in the sugar season?"
+
+"Why, you calculate to try makin' sugar in the spring?"
+
+"Perhaps--at any rate I should like to know about it."
+
+"Well I should think you would," said Earl, "and it's easy done--there
+ain't nothin' easier, when you know the right way to set to work about it;
+and there's a fine lot of sugar trees on the old farm--I recollect of them
+sugar trees as long ago as when I was a boy--I've helped to work them
+afore now, but there's a good many years since--has made me a leetle
+older--but the first thing you want is a man and a team, to go about and
+empty the buckets--the buckets must be emptied every day, and then carry
+it down to the house."
+
+"Yes, I know," said Fleda, "but what is the first thing to be done to
+the trees?"
+
+"Why la! 'tain't much to do to the trees--all you've got to do is to
+take an axe and chip a bit out and stick a chip a leetle way into the
+cut for to dreen the sap, and set a trough under, and then go on to the
+next one, and so on;--you may make one or two cuts in the south side of
+the tree, and one or two cuts in the north side, if the tree's big
+enough, and if it ain't, only make one or two cuts in the south side of
+the tree; and for the sap to run good it had ought to be that kind o'
+weather when it freezes in the day and thaws by night;--I would
+say!--when it friz in the night and thaws in the day; the sap runs more
+bountifully in that kind o' weather."
+
+It needed little from Fleda to keep Mr. Douglass at the maple trees till
+supper was ended; and then as it was already sundown he went to harness
+the sleigh.
+
+It was a comfortable one, and the horses if not very handsome nor
+bright-curried were well fed and had good heart to their work. A two mile
+drive was before them, and with no troublesome tongues or eyes to claim
+her attention Fleda enjoyed it fully. In the soft clear winter twilight
+when heaven and earth mingle so gently, and the stars look forth brighter
+and cheerfuller than ever at another time, they slid along over the fine
+roads, too swiftly, towards home; and Fleda's thoughts as easily and
+swiftly slipped away from Mr. Douglass and maple sugar and Philetus and an
+unfilled wood-yard and an empty flour-barrel, and revelled in the pure
+ether. A dark rising ground covered with wood sometimes rose between her
+and the western horizon; and then a long stretch of snow, only less pure,
+would leave free view of its unearthly white light, dimmed by no
+exhalation, a gentle, mute, but not the less eloquent, witness to Earth of
+what Heaven must be.
+
+But the sleigh stopped at the gate, and Fleda's musings came home.
+
+"Good night!" said Earl, in reply to their thanks and adieus;--"'tain't
+anything to thank a body for--let me know when you're a goin' into the
+sugar making and I'll come and help you."
+
+"How sweet a pleasant message may make an unmusical tongue," said Fleda,
+as she and Hugh made their way up to the house.
+
+"We had a stupid enough afternoon," said Hugh.
+
+"But the ride home was worth it all!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVI.
+
+
+
+ 'Tis merry, 'tis merry, in good green wood,
+    So blithe Lady Alice is singing;
+  On the beech's pride, and the oak's brown side,
+   Lord Richard's axe is ringing.
+
+  Lady of the Lake.
+
+
+Philetus came, and was inducted into office and the little room
+immediately; and Fleda felt herself eased of a burden. Barby reported him
+stout and willing, and he proved it by what seemed a perverted inclination
+for bearing the most enormous logs of wood he could find into the kitchen.
+
+"He will hurt himself!" said Fleda.
+
+"I'll protect him!--against anything but buckwheat batter," said Barby
+with a grave shake of her head. "Lazy folks takes the most pains, I tell
+him. But it would be good to have some more ground, Fleda, for Philetus
+says he don't care for no dinner when he has griddles to breakfast, and
+there ain't anything much cheaper than that."
+
+"Aunt Lucy, have you any change in the house?" said Fleda that same day.
+
+"There isn't but three and sixpence," said Mrs. Rossitur with a pained
+conscious look. "What is wanting, dear?"
+
+"Only candles--Barby has suddenly found we are out, and she won't have any
+more made before to-morrow. Never mind!"
+
+"There is only that," repeated Mrs. Rossitur. "Hugh has a little money due
+to him from last summer, but he hasn't been able to get it yet. You may
+take that, dear."
+
+"No," said Fleda,--"we mustn't. We might want it more."
+
+"We can sit in the dark for once," said Hugh, "and try to make an uncommon
+display of what Dr. Quackenboss calls 'sociality.'"
+
+"No," said Fleda, who had stood busily thinking,--"I am going to send
+Philetus down to the post-office for the paper, and when it comes I am not
+to be balked of reading it--I've made up my mind! We'll go right off into
+the woods and get some pine knots, Hugh--come! They make a lovely light.
+You get us a couple of baskets and the hatchet--I wish we had two--and
+I'll be ready in no time. That'll do!"
+
+It is to be noticed that Charlton had provided against any future
+deficiency of news in his family. Fleda skipped away and in five minutes
+returned arrayed for the expedition, in her usual out-of-door working
+trim, namely,--an old dark merino cloak, almost black, the effect of which
+was continued by the edge of an old dark mousseline below, and rendered
+decidedly striking by the contrast of a large whitish yarn shawl worn over
+it; the whole crowned with a little close-fitting hood made of some old
+silver-grey silk, shaped tight to the head, without any bow or furbelow to
+break the outline. But such a face within side of it! She came almost
+dancing into the room.
+
+"This is Miss Ringgan!--as she appeared when she was going to see the pine
+trees. Hugh, don't you wish you had a picture of me?"
+
+"I have got a tolerable picture of you, somewhere," said Hugh.
+
+"This is somebody very different from the Miss Ringgan that went to see
+Mrs. Evelyn, I can tell you," Fleda went on gayly.
+
+"Do you know, aunt Lucy, I have made up my mind that my visit to New York
+was a dream, and the dream is nicely folded away with my silk dresses. Now
+I must go tell that precious Philetus about the post-office--I am _so_
+comforted, aunt Lucy, whenever I see that fellow staggering into the house
+under a great log of wood! I have not heard anything in a long time so
+pleasant as the ringing strokes of his axe in the yard. Isn't life made up
+of little things!"
+
+"Why don't you put a better pair of shoes on?"
+
+"Can't afford it, Mrs. Rossitur! You are extravagant!"
+
+"Go and put on my India-rubbers."
+
+"No ma'am!--the rocks would cut them to pieces. I have brought my mind
+down to--my shoes."
+
+"It isn't safe, Fleda; you might see somebody."
+
+"Well ma'am!--But I tell you I am not going to see anybody but the
+chick-a-dees and the snow-birds, and there is great simplicity of manners
+prevailing among them."
+
+The shoes were changed, and Hugh and Fleda set forth, lingering awhile
+however to give a new edge to their hatchet, Fleda turning the grindstone.
+They mounted then the apple-orchard hill and went a little distance along
+the edge of the table-land before striking off into the woods. They had
+stood still a minute to look over the little white valley to the
+snow-dressed woodland beyond.
+
+"This is better than New York, Hugh," said Fleda.
+
+"I am very glad to hear you say that," said another voice. Fleda turned
+and started a little to see Mr. Olmney at her side, and congratulated
+herself instantly on her shoes.
+
+"Mrs. Rossitur told me where you had gone and gave me permission to follow
+you, but I hardly hoped to overtake you so soon."
+
+"We stopped to sharpen our tools," said Fleda. "We are out on a foraging
+expedition."
+
+"Will you let me help you?"
+
+"Certainly!--if you understand the business. Do you know a pine knot when
+you see it?"
+
+He laughed and shook his head, but avowed a wish to learn.
+
+"Well, it would be a charity to teach you anything wholesome," said Fleda,
+"for I heard one of Mr. Olmney's friends lately saying that he looked like
+a person who was in danger of committing suicide."
+
+"Suicide!--One of my friends!"--he exclaimed in the utmost astonishment.
+
+"Yes," said Fleda laughing;--"and there is nothing like the open air for
+clearing away vapours."
+
+"You cannot have known that by experience," said he looking at her.
+
+Fleda shook her head and advising him to take nothing for granted, set off
+into the woods.
+
+They were in a beautiful state. A light snow but an inch or two deep had
+fallen the night before; the air had been perfectly still during the day;
+and though the sun was out, bright and mild, it had done little but
+glitter on the earth's white capping. The light dry flakes of snow had not
+stirred from their first resting-place. The long branches of the large
+pines were just tipped with snow at the ends; on the smaller evergreens
+every leaf and tuft had its separate crest. Stones and rocks were smoothly
+rounded over, little shrubs and sprays that lay along the ground were all
+doubled in white; and the hemlock branches, bending with their feathery
+burthen, stooped to the foreheads of the party and gave them the freshest
+of salutations as they brushed by. The whole wood-scene was particularly
+fair and graceful. A light veil of purity, no more, thrown over the
+wilderness of stones and stumps and bare ground,--like the blessing of
+charity, covering all roughnesses and unsightlinesses--like the innocent
+unsullied nature that places its light shield between the eye and whatever
+is unequal, unkindly, and unlovely in the world.
+
+"What do you think of this for a misanthropical man, Mr. Olmney? there's a
+better tonic to be found in the woods than in any remedies of man's
+devising."
+
+"Better than books?" said he.
+
+"Certainly!--No comparison."
+
+"I have to learn that yet."
+
+"So I suppose," said Fleda. "The very danger to be apprehended, as I hear,
+sir, is from your running a tilt into some of those thick folios of yours,
+head foremost.--There's no pitch there, Hugh--you may leave it alone. We
+must go on--there are more yellow pines higher up."
+
+"But who could give such a strange character of me to you?" said
+Mr. Olmney.
+
+"I am sure your wisdom would not advise me to tell you that, sir. You will
+find nothing there, Mr. Olmney."
+
+They went gayly on, careering about in all directions and bearing down
+upon every promising stump or dead pine tree they saw in the distance.
+Hugh and Mr. Olmney took turns in the labour of hewing out the fat pine
+knots and splitting down the old stumps to get at the pitchy heart of the
+wood; and the baskets began to grow heavy. The whole party were in
+excellent spirits, and as happy as the birds that filled the woods and
+whose cheery "chick-a-dee-dee-dee," was heard whenever they paused to rest
+and let the hatchet be still.
+
+"How one sees everything in the colour of one's own spectacles,"
+said Fleda.
+
+"May I ask what colour yours are to-day?" said Mr. Olmney.
+
+"Rose, I think," said Hugh.
+
+"No," said Fleda, "they are better than that--they are no worse colour
+than the snow's own--they shew me everything just as it is. It could not
+be lovelier."
+
+"Then we may conclude, may we not," said Mr. Olmney, "that you are not
+sorry to find yourself in Queechy again?"
+
+"I am not sorry to find myself in the woods again. That is not pitch,
+Mr. Olmney."
+
+"It has the same colour,--and weight."
+
+"No, it is only wet--see this and smell of it--do you see the difference?
+Isn't it pleasant?"
+
+"Everything is pleasant to-day," said he smiling.
+
+"I shall report you a cure. Come, I want to go a little higher and shew
+you a view. Leave that, Hugh, we have got enough--"
+
+But Hugh chose to finish an obstinate stump, and his companions went on
+without him. It was not very far up the mountain and they came to a fine
+look-out point; the same where Fleda and Mr. Carleton had paused long
+before on their quest after nuts. The wide spread of country was a white
+waste now; the delicate beauties of the snow were lost in the far view;
+and the distant Catskill shewed wintrily against the fair blue sky. The
+air was gentle enough to invite them to stand still, after the exercise
+they had taken, and as they both looked in silence Mr. Olmney observed
+that his companion's face settled into a gravity rather at variance with
+the expression it had worn.
+
+"I should hardly think," said he softly, "that you were looking through
+white spectacles, if you had not told us so."
+
+"O--a shade may come over what one is looking at you know," said Fleda.
+But seeing that he still watched her inquiringly she added,
+
+"I do not think a very wide landscape is ever gay in its effect upon the
+mind--do you?"
+
+"Perhaps--I do not know," said he, his eyes turning to it again as if to
+try what the effect was.
+
+"My thoughts had gone back," said Fleda, "to a time a good while ago,
+when I was a child and stood here in summer weather--and I was thinking
+that the change in the landscape is something like that which years make
+in the mind."
+
+"But you have not, for a long time at least, known any very acute sorrow?"
+
+"No--" said Fleda, "but that is not necessary. There is a gentle kind of
+discipline which does its work I think more surely."
+
+"Thank God for _gentle_ discipline!" said Mr. Olmney; "if you do not know
+what those griefs are that break down mind and body together."
+
+"I am not unthankful, I hope, for anything," said Fleda gently; "but I
+have been apt to think that after a crushing sorrow the mind may rise up
+again, but that a long-continued though much lesser pressure in time
+breaks the spring."
+
+He looked at her again with a mixture of incredulous and tender interest,
+but her face did not belie her words, strange as they sounded from so
+young and in general so bright-seeming a creature.
+
+"'There shall no evil happen to the just,'" he said presently and with
+great sympathy.
+
+Fleda flashed a look of gratitude at him--it was no more, for she felt her
+eyes watering and turned them away.
+
+"You have not, I trust, heard any bad news?"
+
+"No sir--not at all!"
+
+"I beg pardon for asking, but Mrs. Rossitur seemed to be in less good
+spirits than usual."
+
+He had some reason to say so, having found her in a violent fit of
+weeping.
+
+"You do not need to be told," he went on, "of the need there is that a
+cloud should now and then come over this lower scene--the danger that if
+it did not our eyes would look nowhere else?"
+
+There is something very touching in hearing a kind voice say what one has
+often struggled to say to oneself.
+
+"I know it, sir," said Fleda, her words a little choked,--"and one may not
+wish the cloud away,--but it does not the less cast a shade upon the face.
+I guess Hugh has worked his way into the middle of that stump by this
+time, Mr. Olmney."
+
+They rejoined him; and the baskets being now sufficiently heavy and arms
+pretty well tired they left the further riches of the pine woods
+unexplored and walked sagely homewards. At the brow of the table-land Mr.
+Olmney left them to take a shorter cut to the high-road, having a visit to
+make which the shortening day warned him not to defer.
+
+"Put down your basket and rest a minute, Hugh," said Fleda. "I had a world
+of things to talk to you about, and this blessed man has driven them all
+out of my head."
+
+"But you are not sorry he came along with us?"
+
+"O no. We had a very good time. How lovely it is, Hugh! Look at the snow
+down there--without a track; and the woods have been dressed by the
+fairies. O look how the sun is glinting on the west side of that hillock!"
+
+[Illustration: "How lovely it is, Hugh!"]
+
+"It is twice as bright since you have come home," said Hugh.
+
+"The snow is too beautiful to-day. O I was right! one may grow morbid over
+books--but I defy anybody in the company of those chick-a-dees. I should
+think it would be hard to keep quite sound in the city."
+
+"You are glad to be here again, aren't you?" said Hugh.
+
+"Very! O Hugh!--it is better to be poor and have one's feet on these
+hills, than to be rich and shut up to brick walls!"
+
+"It is best as it is," said Hugh quietly.
+
+"Once," Fleda went on,--"one fair day when I was out driving in New York,
+it did come over me with a kind of pang how pleasant it would be to have
+plenty of money again and be at ease; and then, as I was looking off over
+that pretty North river to the other shore, I bethought me, 'A little that
+a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked.'"
+
+Hugh did not answer, for the face she turned to him in its half tearful,
+half bright submission took away his speech.
+
+"Why you cannot have enjoyed yourself as much as we thought, Fleda, if you
+dislike the city so much?"
+
+"Yes I did. O I enjoyed a great many things. I enjoyed being with the
+Evelyns. You don't know how much they made of me,--every one of
+them,--father and mother and all the three daughters--and uncle Orrin. I
+have been well petted, I can tell you, since I have been gone."
+
+"I am glad they shewed so much discrimination," said Hugh; "they would be
+puzzled to make too much of you."
+
+"I must have been in a remarkably discriminating society," said Fleda,
+"for everybody was very kind!"
+
+"How do you like the Evelyns on a nearer view?"
+
+"Very much indeed; and I believe they really love me. Nothing could
+possibly be kinder, in all ways of shewing kindness. I shall never
+forget it."
+
+"Who were you driving with that day?" said Hugh.
+
+"Mr. Thorn."
+
+"Did you see much of him?"
+
+"Quite as much as I wished. Hugh--I took your advice."
+
+"About what?" said Hugh.
+
+"I carried down some of my scribblings and sent them to a Magazine."
+
+"Did you!" said Hugh looking delighted. "And will they publish them?"
+
+"I don't know," said Fleda, "that's another matter. I sent them, or uncle
+Orrin did, when I first went down; and I have heard nothing of them yet."
+
+"You shewed them to uncle Orrin?"
+
+"Couldn't help it, you know. I had to."
+
+"And what did he say to them?"
+
+"Come!--I'm not going to be cross-questioned," said Fleda laughing. "He
+did not prevent my sending them."
+
+"And if they take them, do you expect they will give anything for
+them?--the Magazine people?"
+
+"I am sure if they don't they shall have no more--that is my only
+possible inducement to let them be printed. For my own pleasure, I would
+far rather not."
+
+"Did you sign with your own name?"
+
+"My own name!--Yes, and desired it to be printed in large capitals. What
+are you thinking of? No--I hope you'll forgive me, but I signed myself
+what our friend the doctor calls 'Yugh.'"
+
+"I'll forgive you if you'll do one thing for me."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Shew me all you have in your portfolio--Do, Fleda--to-night, by the light
+of the pitch-pine knots. Why shouldn't you give me that pleasure? And
+besides, you know Molière had an old woman?"
+
+"Well," said Fleda with a face that to Hugh was extremely
+satisfactory,--"we'll see--I suppose you might as well read my productions
+in manuscript as in print. But they are in a terribly scratchy
+condition--they go sometimes for weeks in my head before I find time to
+put them down--you may guess polishing is pretty well out of the question.
+Suppose we try to get home with these baskets."
+
+Which they did.
+
+"Has Philetus got home?" was Fleda's first question.
+
+"No," said Mrs. Rossitur, "but Dr. Quackenboss has been here and brought
+the paper--he was at the post-office this morning, he says. Did you see
+Mr. Olmney?"
+
+"Yes ma'am, and I feel he has saved me from a lame arm--those pine knots
+are so heavy."
+
+"He is a lovely young man!" said Mrs. Rossitur with uncommon emphasis.
+
+"I should have been blind to the fact, aunt Lucy, if you had not made me
+change my shoes. At present, no disparagement to him, I feel as if a cup
+of tea would be rather more lovely than anything else."
+
+"He sat with me some time," said Mrs. Rossitur; "I was afraid he would not
+overtake you."
+
+Tea was ready, and only waiting for Mrs. Rossitur to come down stairs,
+when Fleda, whose eye was carelessly running along the columns of the
+paper, uttered a sudden shout and covered her face with it. Hugh looked up
+in astonishment, but Fleda was beyond anything but exclamations, laughing
+and flushing to the very roots of her hair.
+
+"What _is_ the matter, Fleda?"
+
+"Why," said Fleda,--"how comical!--I was just looking over the list of
+articles in the January number of the 'Excelsior'"--
+
+"The 'Excelsior'?" said Hugh.
+
+"Yes--the Magazine I sent my things to--I was running over their
+advertisement here, where they give a special puff of the publication in
+general and of several things in particular, and I saw--here they speak
+of 'A tale of thrilling interest by Mrs. Eliza Lothbury, unsurpassed,' and
+so forth and so forth; 'another valuable communication from Mr.
+Charleston, whose first acute and discriminating paper all our readers
+will remember; the beginning of a new tale from the infallibly graceful
+pen of Miss Delia Lawriston, we are sure it will be so and so; '"_The
+wind's voices," by our new correspondent "Hugh," has a delicate sweetness
+that would do no discredit to some of our most honoured names!_'--What do
+you think of that?"
+
+What Hugh thought he did not say, but he looked delighted; and came to
+read the grateful words for himself.
+
+"I did not know but they had declined it utterly," said Fleda,--"it was
+so long since I had sent it and they had taken no notice of it; but it
+seems they kept it for the beginning of a new volume."
+
+"'Would do no discredit to some of our most honoured names'!" said Hugh.
+"Dear Fleda, I am very glad! But it is no more than I expected."
+
+"Expected!" said Fleda. "When you had not seen a line! Hush--My dear
+Hugh, aren't you hungry?"
+
+The tea, with this spice to their appetites, was wonderfully relished; and
+Hugh and Fleda kept making despatches of secret pleasure and sympathy to
+each other's eyes; though Fleda's face after the first flush had faded was
+perhaps rather quieter than usual. Hugh's was illuminated.
+
+"Mr. Skillcorn is a smart man!" said Barby coming in with a package,--"he
+has made out to go two miles in two hours and get back again safe!"
+
+"More from the post-office!" exclaimed Fleda pouncing upon it,--"oh yes,
+there has been another mail. A letter for you, aunt Lucy! from uncle
+Rolf!--We'll forgive him, Barby--And here's a letter for me, from uncle
+Orrin, and--yes--the 'Excelsior.' Hugh, uncle Orrin said he would send it.
+Now for those blessed pine knots! Aunt Lucy, you shall be honoured with
+the one whole candle the house contains."
+
+The table soon cleared away, the basket of fat fuel was brought in; and
+one or two splinters being delicately insinuated between the sticks on the
+fire a very brilliant illumination sprang out. Fleda sent a congratulatory
+look over to Hugh on the other side of the fireplace as she cosily
+established herself on her little bench at one corner with her letter; he
+had the Magazine. Mrs. Rossitur between them at the table with her one
+candle was already insensible to all outward things.
+
+And soon the other two were as delightfully absorbed. The bright light of
+the fire shone upon three motionless and rapt figures, and getting no
+greeting from them went off and danced on the old cupboard doors and paper
+hangings, in a kindly hearty joviality that would have put any number of
+stately wax candles out of countenance. There was no poverty in the room
+that night. But the people were too busy to know how cosy they were; till
+Fleda was ready to look up from her note and Hugh had gone twice carefully
+over the new poem,--when there was a sudden giving out of the pine
+splinters. New ones were supplied in eager haste and silence, and Hugh was
+beginning "The wind's voices" for the third time when a soft-whispered
+"Hugh!" across the fire made him look over to Fleda's corner. She was
+holding up with both hands a five-dollar bank note and just shewing him
+her eyes over it.
+
+"What's that?" said Hugh in an energetic whisper.
+
+"I don't know!" said Fleda, shaking her head comically;--"I am told 'The
+wind's voices' have blown it here, but privately I am afraid it is a
+windfall of another kind."
+
+"What?" said Hugh laughing.
+
+"Uncle Orrin says it is the first fruits of what I sent to the
+'Excelsior,' and that more will come; but I do not feel at all sure that
+it is entirely the growth of that soil."
+
+"I dare say it is," said Hugh; "I am sure it is worth more than that. Dear
+Fleda, I like it so much!"
+
+Fleda gave him such a smile of grateful affection!--not at all as if she
+deserved his praise but as if it was very pleasant to have.
+
+"What put it into your head? anything in particular?"
+
+"No--nothing--I was looking out of the window one day and seeing the
+willow tree blow; and that looked over my shoulder; as you know Hans
+Andersen says his stories did."
+
+"It is just like you!--exactly as it can be."
+
+"Things put themselves in my head," said Fleda, tucking another splinter
+into the fire. "Isn't this better than a chandelier?"
+
+"Ten times!"
+
+"And so much pleasanter for having got it ourselves. What a nice time we
+had, Hugh?"
+
+"Very. Now for the portfolio, Fleda--come!--mother is fast; she won't see
+or hear anything. What does father say, mother?"
+
+In answer to this they had the letter read, which indeed contained nothing
+remarkable beyond its strong expressions of affection to each one of the
+little family; a cordial which Mrs. Rossitur drank and grew strong upon in
+the very act of reading. It is pity the medicine of kind words is not more
+used in the world--it has so much power. Then, having folded up her
+treasure and talked a little while about it, Mrs. Rossitur caught up the
+Magazine like a person who had been famished in that kind; and soon she
+and it and her tallow candle formed a trio apart from all the world again.
+Fleda and Hugh were safe to pass most mysterious-looking little papers
+from hand to hand right before her, though they had the care to read them
+behind newspapers, and exchanges of thought and feeling went on more
+swiftly still, and softly, across the fire.
+
+Looks, and smiles, and whispers, and tears too, under cover of a Tribune
+and an Express. And the blaze would die down just when Hugh had got to
+the last verse of something, and then while impatiently waiting for the
+new pine splinters to catch he would tell Fleda how much he liked it, or
+how beautiful he thought it, and whisper enquiries and critical
+questions; till the fire reached the fat vein and leaped up in defiant
+emulation of gas-lights unknown, and then he would fall to again with
+renewed gusto. And Fleda hunted out in her portfolio what bits to give
+him first, and bade him as she gave them remember this and understand
+that, which was necessary to be borne in mind in the reading. And through
+all the brightening and fading blaze, and all the whispering,
+congratulating, explaining, and rejoicing going on at her side, Mrs.
+Rossitur and her tallow candle were devoted to each other, happily and
+engrossingly. At last, however, she flung the Magazine from her and
+turning from the table sat looking into the fire with a rather uncommonly
+careful and unsatisfied brow.
+
+"What did you think of the second piece of poetry there, mother?" said
+Hugh;--"that ballad?--'The wind's voices' it is called."
+
+"'The wind's voices'?--I don't know--I didn't read it, I believe."
+
+"Why mother! I liked it very much. Do read it--read it aloud."
+
+Mrs. Rossitur took up the Magazine again abstractedly, and read--
+
+  "'Mamma, what makes your face so sad?
+  The sound of the wind makes me feel glad;
+  But whenever it blows, as grave you look,
+  As if you were reading a sorrowful book.'
+
+  "'A sorrowful book I am reading, dear,--
+  A book of weeping and pain and fear,--
+  A book deep printed on my heart,
+  Which I cannot read but the tears will start.
+
+  "'That breeze to my ear was soft and mild,
+  Just so, when I was a little child;
+  But now I hear in its freshening breath
+  The voices of those that sleep in death.'
+
+  "'Mamma,' said the child with shaded brow,
+  'What is this book you are reading now?
+  And why do you read what makes you cry?'
+  'My child, it comes up before my eye.
+
+  "'Tis the memory, love, of a far-off day
+  When my life's best friend was taken away;--
+  Of the weeks and months that my eyes were dim
+  Watching for tidings--watching for him.
+
+  "'Many a year has come and past
+  Since a ship sailed over the ocean fast,
+  Bound for a port on England's shore,--
+  She sailed--but was never heard of more.'
+
+  "'Mamma'--and she closer pressed her side,--
+  'Was that the time when my father died?--
+  Is it his ship you think you see?--
+  Dearest mamma--won't you speak to me?'
+
+  "The lady paused, but then calmly said,
+  'Yes, Lucy--the sea was his dying bed,
+  And now whenever I hear the blast
+  I think again of that storm long past.
+
+  "'The winds' fierce bowlings hurt not me,
+  But I think how they beat on the pathless sea,--
+  Of the breaking mast--of the parting rope,--
+  Of the anxious strife and the failing hope.'
+
+  "'Mamma,' said the child with streaming eyes,
+  'My father has gone above the skies;
+  And you tell me this world is mean and base
+  Compared with heaven--that blessed place.'
+
+  "'My daughter, I know--I believe it all,--
+  I would not his spirit to earth recall.
+  The blest one he--his storm was brief,--
+  Mine, a long tempest of tears and grief.
+
+  "'I have you, my darling--I should not sigh.
+  I have one star more in my cloudy sky,--
+  The hope that we both shall join him there,
+  In that perfect rest from weeping and care.'"
+
+"Well, mother,--how do you like it?" said Hugh whose eyes gave tender
+witness to _his_ liking for it.
+
+"It is pretty--" said Mrs. Rossitur.
+
+Hugh exclaimed, and Fleda laughing took it out of her hand.
+
+"Why mother!" said Hugh,--"it is Fleda's."
+
+"Fleda's!" exclaimed Mrs. Rossitur, snatching the Magazine again. "My dear
+child, I was not thinking in the least of what I was reading. Fleda's!--"
+
+She read it over anew, with swimming eyes this time, and then clasped
+Fleda in her arms and gave her, not words, but the better reward of kisses
+and tears. They remained so a long time, even till Hugh left them; and
+then Fleda released from her aunt's embrace still crouched by her side
+with one arm in her lap.
+
+They both sat thoughtfully looking into the fire till it had burnt itself
+out and nothing but a glowing bed of coals remained.
+
+"That is an excellent young man!" said Mrs. Rossitur.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Mr. Olmney. He sat with me some time after you had gone."
+
+"So you said before," said Fleda, wondering at the troubled expression of
+her aunt's face.
+
+"He made me wish," said Mrs. Rossitur hesitating,--"that I could be
+something different from what I am--I believe I should be a great deal
+happier"--
+
+The last word was hardly spoken. Fleda rose to her knees and putting both
+arms about her aunt pressed face to face, with a clinging sympathy that
+told how very near her spirit was; while tears from the eyes of both fell
+without measure.
+
+"Dear aunt Lucy--_dear_ aunt Lucy--I wish you would!--I am sure you would
+be a great deal happier--"
+
+But the mixture of feelings was too much for Fleda; her head sank lower on
+her aunt's bosom and she wept aloud.
+
+"But I don't know anything about it!" said Mrs. Rossitur, as well as she
+could speak,--"I am as ignorant as a child!--"
+
+"Dear aunty! that is nothing--God will teach you if you ask him; he has
+promised. Oh ask him, aunt Lucy! I know you would be happier!--I know it
+is better--a million times!--to be a child of God than to have everything
+in the world--If they only brought us that, I would be very glad of all
+our troubles!--indeed I would!"
+
+"But I don't think I ever did anything right in my life!" said poor
+Mrs. Rossitur.
+
+"Dear aunt Lucy!" said Fleda, straining her closer and with her very heart
+gushing out at these words,--"_dear_ aunty--Christ came for just such
+sinners!--for just such as you and I."
+
+"_You,_"--said Mrs. Rossitur, but speech failed utterly, and with a
+muttered prayer that Fleda would help her, she sunk her head upon her
+shoulder and sobbed herself into quietness, or into exhaustion. The
+glow of the firelight faded away till only a faint sparkle was left in
+the chimney.
+
+There was not another word spoken, but when they rose up, with such kisses
+as gave and took unuttered affection, counsel and sympathy, they bade each
+other good-night.
+
+Fleda went to her window, for the moon rode high and her childish habit
+had never been forgotten. But surely the face that looked out that night
+was as the face of an angel. In all the pouring moonbeams that filled the
+air, she could see nothing but the flood of God's goodness on a dark
+world. And her heart that night had nothing but an unbounded and
+unqualified thanksgiving for all the "gentle discipline" they had felt;
+for every sorrow and weariness and disappointment;--except besides the
+prayer, almost too deep to be put into words, that its due and hoped-for
+fruit might be brought forth unto perfection.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVII.
+
+
+
+  I become not a cart as well as another man, a plague on my bringing up.
+
+  Shakspeare.
+
+
+Every day could not be as bright as the last, even by the help of pitch
+pine knots. They blazed indeed, many a time, but the blaze shone upon
+faces that it could not sometimes light up. Matters drew gradually within
+a smaller and smaller compass. Another five dollars came from uncle Orrin,
+and the hope of more; but these were carefully laid by to pay Philetus;
+and for all other wants of the household excepting those the farm supplied
+the family were dependent on mere driblets of sums. None came from Mr.
+Rossitur. Hugh managed to collect a very little. That kept them from
+absolute distress; that, and Fleda's delicate instrumentality. Regular
+dinners were given up, fresh meat being now unheard-of, unless when a kind
+neighbour made them a present; and appetite would have lagged sadly but
+for Fleda's untiring care. She thought no time nor pains ill bestowed
+which could prevent her aunt and Hugh from feeling the want of old
+comforts; and her nicest skill was displayed in varying the combinations
+of their very few and simple stores. The diversity and deliciousness of
+her bread stuffs, Barby said, was "beyond everything!" and a cup of rich
+coffee was found to cover all deficiencies of removes and entremêts; and
+this was always served, Barby said further, as if the President of the
+United States was expected. Fleda never permitted the least slackness in
+the manner of doing this or anything else that she could control.
+
+Mr. Plumfield had sent down an opportune present of a fine porker. One
+cold day in the beginning of February Fleda was busy in the kitchen making
+something for dinner, and Hugh at another table was vigorously chopping
+sausage meat.
+
+"I should like to have some cake again," said Fleda.
+
+"Well, why don't you?" said Hugh, chopping away.
+
+"No eggs, Mr. Rossitur,--and can't afford 'em at two shillings a dozen. I
+believe I am getting discontented--I have a great desire to do something
+to distinguish myself--I would make a plum pudding if I had raisins, but
+there is not one in the house."
+
+"You can get 'em up to Mr. Hemps's for sixpence a pound," said Barby.
+
+But Fleda shook her head at the sixpence and went on moulding out her
+biscuits diligently.
+
+"I wish Philetus would make his appearance with the cows--it is a
+very odd thing they should be gone since yesterday morning and no
+news of them."
+
+"I only hope the snow ain't so bright it'll blind his eyes," said Barby.
+
+"There he is this minute," said Hugh. "It is impossible to tell from his
+countenance whether successful or not."
+
+"Well where are the cows, Mr. Skillcorn?" said Barby as he came in.
+
+"I have went all over town," said the person addressed, "and they ain't
+no place."
+
+"Have you asked news of them, Philetus?"
+
+"I have asked the hull town, and I have went all over, 'till I was a'most
+beat out with the cold,--and I ha'n't seen the first sight of 'em yet!"
+
+Fleda and Hugh exchanged looks, while Barby and Mr. Skillcorn entered into
+an animated discussion of probabilities and impossibilities.
+
+"If we should be driven from our coffee dinners to tea with no milk in
+it!"--said Hugh softly in mock dismay.
+
+"Wouldn't!" said Fleda. "We'd beat up an egg and put it in the coffee."
+
+"We couldn't afford it," said Hugh smiling.
+
+"Could!--cheaper than to keep the cows. I'll have some sugar at any rate,
+I'm determined. Philetus!"
+
+"Marm."
+
+"I wish, when you have got a good pile of wood chopped, you would make
+some troughs to put under the maple trees--you know how to make them,
+don't you?"
+
+"I do!"
+
+"I wish you would make some--you have pine logs out there large enough,
+haven't you?"
+
+"They hadn't ought to want much of it--there's some gregious big ones!"
+
+"I don't know how many we shall want, but a hundred or two at any rate;
+and the sooner the better. Do you know how much sugar they make from
+one tree?"
+
+"Wall I don't," said Mr. Skillcorn, with the air of a person who was at
+fault on no other point;--"the big trees give more than the little ones--"
+
+Fleda's eyes flashed at Hugh, who took to chopping in sheer desperation;
+and the muscles of both gave them full occupation for five minutes.
+Philetus stood comfortably warming himself at the fire, looking first at
+one and then at the other, as if they were a show and he had paid for it.
+Barby grew impatient.
+
+"I guess this cold weather makes lazy people of me!" she said bustling
+about her fire with an amount of energy that was significant. It seemed
+to signify nothing to Philetus. He only moved a little out of the way.
+
+"Didenhover's cleared out," he burst forth at length abruptly.
+
+"What!" said Fleda and Barby at once, the broom and the biscuits
+standing still.
+
+"Mr. Didenhover."
+
+"What of him?"
+
+"He has tuk himself off out o" town."
+
+"Where to?"
+
+"I can't tell you where teu--he ain't coming back, 'tain't likely."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"'Cause he's tuk all his traps and went, and he said farming didn't pay
+and he wa'n't a going to have nothin' more to deu with it;--he telled Mis'
+Simpson so--he lived to Mis' Simpson's; and she telled Mr. Ten Eyck."
+
+"Are you sure, Philetus?"
+
+"Sure as 'lection!--he telled Mis' Simpson so, and she telled Mr. Ten
+Eyck; and he's cleared out."
+
+Fleda and Hugh again looked at each other. Mr. Skillcorn having now
+delivered himself of his news went out to the woodyard.
+
+"I hope he ha'n't carried off our cows along with him," said Barby, as she
+too went out to some other part of her premises.
+
+"He was to have made us quite a payment on the first of March,"
+said Fleda.
+
+"Yes, and that was to have gone to uncle Orrin," said Hugh.
+
+"We shall not see a cent of it. And we wanted a little of it for
+ourselves.--I have that money from the Excelsior, but I can't touch a
+penny of it for it must go to Philetus's wages. What Barby does without
+hers I do not know--she has had but one five dollars in six months. Why
+she stays I cannot imagine; unless it is for pure love."
+
+"As soon as the spring opens I can go to the mill again," said Hugh after
+a little pause. Fleda looked at him sorrowfully and shook her head as she
+withdrew her eyes.
+
+"I wish father would give up the farm," Hugh went on under his breath. "I
+cannot bear to live upon uncle Orrin so."
+
+Fleda's answer was to clasp her hands. Her only words were, "Don't say
+anything to aunt Lucy."
+
+"It is of no use to say anything to anybody," said Hugh. "But it weighs me
+to the ground, Fleda!"
+
+"If uncle Rolf doesn't come home by spring--I hope, I hope he will!--but
+if he does not, I will take desperate measures. I will try farming myself,
+Hugh. I have thought of it, and I certainly will. I will get Earl Douglass
+or somebody else to play second fiddle, but I will have but one head on
+the farm and I will try what mine is worth."
+
+"You could not do it, Fleda."
+
+"One can do anything!--with a strong enough motive."
+
+"I'm afraid you'd soon be tired, Fleda."
+
+"Not if I succeeded--not so tired as I am now."
+
+"Poor Fleda! I dare say you are tired."
+
+"It wasn't _that_ I meant," said Fleda, slightly drawing her breath;--"I
+meant this feeling of everything going wrong, and uncle Orrin, and all--"
+
+"But you _are_ weary," said Hugh affectionately. "I see it in your face."
+
+"Not so much body as mind, after all. Oh Hugh! this is the worst part of
+being poor!--the constant occupation of one's mind on a miserable
+succession of trifles. I am so weary sometimes!--If I only had a nice
+book to rest myself for a while and forget all these things--I would give
+so much for it!--"
+
+"Dear Fleda! I wish you had!"
+
+"That was one delight of being in New York--I forgot all about money from
+one end of it to the other--I put all that away;--and not having to think
+of meals till I came to eat them. You can't think how tired I get of
+ringing the changes on pork and flour and Indian meal and eggs and
+vegetables!--"
+
+Fleda looked tired and pale; and Hugh looked sadly conscious of it.
+
+"Don't tell aunt Lucy I have said all this!" she exclaimed after a moment
+rousing herself,--"I don't always feel so--only once in a while I get such
+a fit--And now I have just troubled you by speaking of it!"
+
+"You don't trouble any one in that way very often, dear Fleda," said Hugh
+kissing her.
+
+"I ought not at all--you have enough else to think of--but it is a kind of
+relief sometimes. I like to do these things in general,--only now and then
+I get tired, as I was just now, I suppose, and then one sees everything
+through a different medium."
+
+"I am afraid it would tire you more to have the charge of Earl Douglass
+and the farm upon your mind;--and mother could be no help to you,--nor I,
+if I am at the mill."
+
+"But there's Seth Plumfield. O I've thought of it all. You don't know what
+I am up to, Mr. Rossitur. You shall see how I will manage--unless uncle
+Rolf comes home, in which case I will very gladly forego all my honours
+and responsibilities together."
+
+"I hope he will come!" said Hugh.
+
+But this hope was to be disappointed. Mr. Rossitur wrote again about the
+first of March, saying that he hoped to make something of his lands in
+Michigan, and that he had the prospect of being engaged in some land
+agencies which would make it worth his while to spend the summer there. He
+bade his wife let anybody take the farm that could manage it and would
+pay; and to remit to Dr. Gregory whatever she should receive and could
+spare. He hoped to do something where he was.
+
+It was just then the beginning of the sugar season; and Mrs. Douglass
+having renewed and urged Earl's offer of help, Fleda sent Philetus down to
+ask him to come the next day with his team. Seth Plumfield's, which had
+drawn the wood in the winter, was now busy in his own sugar business. On
+Earl Douglass's ground there happpened to be no maple trees. His lands
+were of moderate extent and almost entirely cultivated as a sheep farm;
+and Mr. Douglass himself though in very comfortable circumstances was in
+the habit of assisting, on advantageous terms, all the farmers in the
+neighbourhood.
+
+Philetus came back again in a remarkably short time; and announced that he
+had met Dr. Quackenboss in the way, who had offered to come with _his_
+team for the desired service.
+
+"Then you have not been to Mr. Douglass's?"
+
+"I have not," said Philetus;--"I thought likely you wouldn't calculate to
+want him teu."
+
+"How came the doctor to know what you were going for?"
+
+"I told him."
+
+"But how came you to tell him?"
+
+"Wall I guess he had a mind to know," said Philetus, "so I didn't keep it
+no closer than I had teu."
+
+"Well," said Fleda biting her lips, "you will have to go down to Mr.
+Douglass's nevertheless, Philetus, and tell him the doctor is coming
+to-morrow, but I should be very much obliged to him if he will be here
+next day. Will you?"
+
+"Yes marm!"
+
+"Now dear Hugh, will you make me those little spouts for the trees!--of
+some dry wood--you can get plenty out here. You want to split them up with
+a hollow chisel about a quarter of an inch thick, and a little more than
+half an inch broad. Have you got a hollow chisel?"
+
+"No, but I can get one up the hill. Why must it be hollow?"
+
+"To make little spouts, you know,--for the sap to run in. And then, my
+dear Hugh! they must be sharpened at one end so as to fit where the chisel
+goes in--I am afraid I have given you a day's work of it. How sorry I am
+you must go to-morrow to the mill!--and yet I am glad too."
+
+"Why need you go round yourself with these people?" said Hugh. "I don't
+see the sense of it."
+
+"They don't know where the trees are," said Fleda.
+
+"I am sure I do not. Do you?"
+
+"Perfectly well. And besides," said Fleda laughing, "I should have great
+doubts of the discreetness of Philetus's auger if it were left to his
+simple direction. I have no notion the trees would yield their sap as
+kindly to him as to me. But I didn't bargain for Dr. Quackenboss."
+
+Dr. Quackenboss arrived punctually the next morning with his oxen and
+sled; and by the time it was loaded with the sap-troughs, Fleda in her
+black cloak, yarn shawl, and grey little hood came out of the house to the
+wood-yard. Earl Douglass was there too, not with his team, but merely to
+see how matters stood and give advice.
+
+"Good day, Mr. Douglass!" said the doctor. "You see I'm so fortunate as to
+have got the start of you."
+
+"Very good," said Earl contentedly,--"you may have it;--the start's one
+thing and the pull's another. I'm willin' anybody should have the start,
+but it takes a pull to know whether a man's got stuff in him or no."
+
+"What do you mean?" said the doctor.
+
+"I don't mean nothin' at all. You make a start to-day and I'll come ahint
+and take the pull to-morrow. Ha' you got anythin' to boil down in,
+Fleda?--there's a potash kittle somewheres, ain't there? I guess there is.
+There is in most houses."
+
+"There is a large kettle--I suppose large enough," said Fleda.
+
+"That'll do, I guess. Well what do you calculate to put the syrup in--ha'
+you got a good big cask, or plenty o' tubs and that? or will you sugar
+off the hull lot every night and fix it that way? You must do one thing
+or t'other, and it's good to know what you're a going to do afore you
+come to do it."
+
+"I don't know, Mr. Douglass," said Fleda;--"whichever is the best way--we
+have no cask large enough, I am afraid."
+
+"Well I tell you what I'll do--I know where there's a tub, and where
+they ain't usin' it nother, and I reckon I can get 'em to let me have
+it--I reckon I can--and I'll go round for't and fetch it here to-morrow
+mornin' when I come with the team. 'Twon't be much out of my way. It's
+more handier to leave the sugarin' off till the next day; and it had
+ought to have a settlin' besides. Where'll you have your fire built?--in
+doors or out?"
+
+"Out--I would rather, if we can. But can we?"
+
+"La, 'tain't nothin' easier--it's as easy out as in--all you've got to do
+is to take and roll a couple of pretty sized billets for your fireplace
+and stick a couple o' crotched sticks for to hang the kittle over--I'd as
+lieve have it out as in, and if anythin' a leetle liever. If you'll lend
+me Philetus, me and him'll fix it all ready agin you come back--'tain't no
+trouble at all--and if the sticks ain't here we'll go into the woods after
+'em, and have it all sot up."
+
+But Fleda represented that the services of Philetus were just then in
+requisition, and that there would be no sap brought home till to-morrow.
+
+"Very good!" said Earl amicably,--"_very_ good! it's just as easy done one
+day as another--it don't make no difference to me, and if it makes any
+difference to you, of course we'll leave it to-day, and there'll be time
+enough to do it to-morrow; me and him'll knock it up in a whistle.--What's
+them little shingles for?"
+
+Fleda explained the use and application of Hugh's mimic spouts. He turned
+one about, whistling, while he listened to her.
+
+"That's some o' Seth Plumfield's new jigs, ain't it. I wonder if he thinks
+now the sap's a goin to run any sweeter out o' that 'ere than it would off
+the end of a chip that wa'n't quite so handsome?"
+
+"No, Mr. Douglass," said Fleda smiling,--"he only thinks that this will
+catch a little more."
+
+"His sugar won't never tell where it come from," remarked Earl, throwing
+the spout down. "Well,--you shall see more o' me to-morrow. Good-bye, Dr.
+Quackenboss!"
+
+"Do you contemplate the refining process?" said the doctor, as they
+moved off.
+
+"I have often contemplated the want of it," said Fleda; "but it is best
+not to try to do too much. I should like to make sure of something worth
+refining in the first place."
+
+"Mr. Douglass and I," said the doctor,--"I hope--a--he's a very
+good-hearted man, Miss Fleda, but, ha! ha!--he wouldn't suffer loss from a
+little refining himself.--Haw! you rascal--where are you going! Haw! I
+tell ye--"
+
+"I am very sorry, Dr. Quackenboss," said Fleda when she had the power and
+the chance to speak again,--"I am very sorry you should have to take this
+trouble; but unfortunately the art of driving oxen is not among Mr.
+Skillcorn's accomplishments."
+
+"My dear Miss Ringgan!" said the doctor, "I--I--nothing I assure you could
+give me greater pleasure than to drive my oxen to any place where you
+would like to have them go."
+
+Poor Fleda wished she could have despatched them and him in one direction
+while she took another; the art of driving oxen _quietly_ was certainly
+not among the doctor's accomplishments. She was almost deafened. She tried
+to escape from the immediate din by running before to shew Philetus about
+tapping the trees and fixing the little spouts, but it was a longer
+operation than she had counted upon, and by the time they were ready to
+leave the tree the doctor was gee-hawing alongside of it; and then if the
+next maple was not within sight she could not in decent kindness leave him
+alone. The oxen went slowly, and though Fleda managed to have no delay
+longer than to throw down a trough as the sled came up with each tree
+which she and Philetus had tapped, the business promised to make a long
+day of it. It might have been a pleasant day in pleasant company; but
+Fleda's spirits were down to set out with, and Dr. Quackenboss was not the
+person to give them the needed spring; his long-winded complimentary
+speeches had not interest enough even to divert her. She felt that she was
+entering upon an untried and most weighty undertaking; charging her time
+and thoughts with a burthen they could well spare. Her energies did not
+flag, but the spirit that should have sustained them was not strong enough
+for the task.
+
+It was a blustering day of early March; with that uncompromising
+brightness of sky and land which has no shadow of sympathy with a heart
+overcast. The snow still lay a foot thick over the ground, thawing a
+little in sunny spots; the trees quite bare and brown, the buds even of
+the early maples hardly shewing colour; the blessed evergreens alone doing
+their utmost to redeem the waste, and speaking of patience and fortitude
+that can brave the blast and outstand the long waiting and cheerfully bide
+the time when "the winter shall be over and gone." Poor Fleda thought they
+were like her in their circumstances, but she feared she was not like them
+in their strong endurance. She looked at the pines and hemlocks as she
+passed, as if they were curious preachers to her; and when she had a
+chance she prayed quietly that she might stand faithfully like them to
+cheer a desolation far worse and she feared far more abiding than snows
+could make or melt away. She thought of Hugh, alone in his mill-work that
+rough chilly day, when the wind stalked through the woods and over the
+country as if it had been the personification of March just come of ape
+and taking possession of his domains. She thought of her uncle, doing
+what?--in Michigan,--leaving them to fight with difficulties as they
+might,--why?--why? and her gentle aunt at home sad and alone, pining for
+the want of them all, but most of him, and fading with their fortunes. And
+Fleda's thoughts travelled about from one to the other and dwelt with them
+all by turns till she was heart-sick; and tears, tears, fell hot on the
+snow many a time when her eyes had a moment's shield from the doctor and
+his somewhat more obtuse coadjutor. She felt half superstitiously as if
+with her taking the farm were beginning the last stage of their falling
+prospects, which would leave them with none of hope's colouring. Not that
+in the least she doubted her own ability and success; but her uncle did
+not deserve to have his affairs prosper under such a system and she had no
+faith that they would.
+
+"It is most grateful," said the doctor with that sideway twist of his jaw
+and his head at once, in harmony,--"it is a most grateful thing to see
+such a young lady--Haw I there now I--what are you about? haw,--haw
+then!--It is a most grateful thing to see--"
+
+But Fleda was not at his side; she had bounded away and was standing
+under a great maple tree a little ahead, making sure that Philetus screwed
+his auger _up_ into the tree instead of _down_, which he had several times
+shewed an unreasonable desire to do. The doctor had steered his oxen by
+her little grey hood and black cloak all the day. He made for it now.
+
+"Have we arrived at the termination of our--a--adventure?" said he as he
+came up and threw down the last trough.
+
+"Why no, sir," said Fleda, "for we have yet to get home again."
+
+"'Tain't so fur going that way as it were this'n," said Philetus. "My!
+ain't I glad."
+
+"Glad of what?" said the doctor. "Here's Miss Ringgan's walked the whole
+way, and she a lady--ain't you ashamed to speak of being tired?"
+
+"I ha'n't said the first word o' being tired!" said Philetus in an
+injured tone of voice,--"but a man ha'n't no right to kill hisself, if he
+ain't a gal!"
+
+"I'll qualify to your being safe enough," said the doctor. "But
+Miss Ringgan, my dear, you are--a--you have lost something since
+you came out--"
+
+"What?" said Fleda laughing. "Not my patience?"
+
+"No," said the doctor, "no,--you're--a--you're an angel! but your cheeks,
+my dear Miss Ringgan, shew that you have exceeded your--a--"
+
+"Not my intentions, doctor," said Fleda lightly. "I am very well satisfied
+with our day's work, and with my share of it, and a cup of coffee will
+make me quite up again. Don't look at my cheeks till then."
+
+"I shall disobey you constantly," said the doctor;--"but, my dear Miss
+Fleda, we must give you some felicities for reaching home, or Mrs.
+Rossitur will be--a--distressed when she sees them. Might I propose--that
+you should just bear your weight on this wood-sled and let my oxen and me
+have the honour--The cup of coffee, I am confident, would be at your lips
+considerably earlier--"
+
+"The sun won't be a great haighth by the time we get there," said Philetus
+in a cynical manner; "and I ha'n't took the first thing to-day!"
+
+"Well who has?" said the doctor; "you ain't the only one. Follow your nose
+down hill, Mr. Skillcorn, and it'll smell supper directly. Now, my dear
+Miss Ringgan!--will you?"
+
+Fleda hesitated, but her relaxed energies warned her not to despise a
+homely mode of relief. The wood-sled was pretty clean, and the road
+decently good over the snow. So Fleda gathered her cloak about her and sat
+down flat on the bottom of her rustic vehicle; too grateful for the rest
+to care if there had been a dozen people to laugh at her; but the doctor
+was only delighted, and Philetus regarded every social phenomenon as
+coolly and in the same business light as he would the butter to his bread,
+or any other infallible every-day matter.
+
+Fleda was very glad presently that she had taken this plan, for besides
+the rest of body she was happily relieved from all necessity of speaking.
+The doctor though but a few paces off was perfectly given up to the care
+of his team, in the intense anxiety to shew his skill and gallantry in
+saving her harmless from every ugly place in the road that threatened a
+jar or a plunge. Why his oxen didn't go distracted was a question; but the
+very vehemence and iteration of his cries at last drowned itself in
+Fleda's ear and she could hear it like the wind's roaring, without
+thinking of it. She presently subsided to that. With a weary frame, and
+with that peculiar quietness of spirits that comes upon the ending of a
+days work in which mind and body have both been busily engaged, and the
+sudden ceasing of any call upon either, fancy asked no leave and dreamily
+roved hither and thither between the material and the spirit world; the
+will too subdued to stir. Days gone by came marshalling their scenes and
+their actors before her; again she saw herself a little child under those
+same trees that stretched their great black arms over her head and swaying
+their tops in the wind seemed to beckon her back to the past. They talked
+of their old owner, whose steps had so often passed beneath them with her
+own light tread,--light now, but how dancing then!--by his side; and of
+her father whose hand perhaps had long ago tapped those very trees where
+she had noticed the old closed-up soars of the axe. At any rate his
+boyhood had rejoiced there, and she could look back to one time at least
+in his manhood when she had taken a pleasant walk with him in summer
+weather among those same woods, in that very ox-track she believed.
+Gone--two generations that she had known there; hopes and fears and
+disappointments, akin to her own, at rest,--as hers would be; and how
+sedately the old trees stood telling her of it, and waving their arms in
+grave and gentle commenting on the folly of anxieties that came and went
+with the wind. Fleda agreed to it all; she heard all they said; and her
+own spirit was as sober and quiet as their quaint moralizing. She felt as
+if it would never dance again.
+
+The wind had greatly abated of its violence; as if satisfied with the shew
+of strength it had given in the morning it seemed willing to make no more
+commotion that day. The sun was far on his way to the horizon, and many a
+broad hill-side slope was in shadow; the snow had blown or melted from off
+the stones and rocks leaving all their roughness and bareness unveiled;
+and the white crust of snow that lay between them looked a cheerless waste
+in the shade of the wood and the hill. But there were other spots where
+the sunbeams struck and bright streams of light ran between the trees,
+smiling and making them smile. And as Fleda's eye rested there another
+voice seemed to say, "At evening-time it shall be light,"--and "Sorrow may
+endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." She could have cried,
+but spirits were too absolutely at an ebb. She knew this was partly
+physical, because she was tired and faint, but it could not the better be
+overcome. Yet those streaks of sunlight were pleasant company, and Fleda
+watched them, thinking how bright they used to be once; till the oxen and
+sled came out from the woods, and she could see the evening colours on the
+hill-tops beyond the village, lighting up the whole landscape with promise
+of the morrow. She thought her day had seen its brightest; but she thought
+too that if she must know sorrows it was a very great blessing to know
+them at Queechy.
+
+The smoke of the chimney-tops came in sight, and fancy went home,--a few
+minutes before her.
+
+"I wonder what you'll take and do to yourself next!" said Barby in extreme
+vexation when she saw her come in. "You're as white as the wall,--and as
+cold, ain't you? I'd ha' let Philetus cut all the trees and drink all the
+sap afterwards. I wonder which you think is the worst, the want o' you or
+the want o' sugar."
+
+A day's headache was pretty sure to visit Fleda after any over-exertion or
+exhaustion, and the next day justified Barby's fears. She was the quiet
+prisoner of pain. But Earl Douglass and Mr. Skillcorn could now do without
+her in the woods; and her own part of the trouble Fleda always took with
+speechless patience. She had the mixed comfort that love could bestow;
+Hugh's sorrowful kiss and look before setting off for the mill, Mrs.
+Rossitur's caressing care, and Barby's softened voice, and sympathizing
+hand on her brow, and hearty heart-speaking kiss, and poor little King lay
+all day with his head in her lap, casting grave wistful glances up at his
+mistress's face and licking her hand with intense affection when even in
+her distress it stole to his head to reward and comfort him. He never
+would budge from her side, or her feet, till she could move herself and he
+knew that she was well. As sure as King came trotting into the kitchen
+Barby used to look into the other room and say, "So you're better, ain't
+you, Fleda? I knowed it!"
+
+After hours of suffering the fit was at last over; and in the evening,
+though looking and feeling racked, Fleda would go out to see the
+sap-boilers. Earl Douglass and Philetus had had a very good day of it,
+and now were in full blast with the evening part of the work. The weather
+was mild, and having the stay of Hugh's arm Fleda grew too amused to
+leave them.
+
+It was a very pretty scene. The sap-boilers had planted themselves near
+the cellar door on the other side of the house from the kitchen door and
+the wood-yard; the casks and tubs for syrup being under cover there; and
+there they had made a most picturesque work-place. Two strong crotched
+sticks were stuck in the ground some six or eight feet apart and a pole
+laid upon them, to which by the help of some very rustic hooks two
+enormous iron kettles were slung. Under them a fine fire of smallish split
+sticks was doing duty, kept in order by a couple of huge logs which walled
+it in on the one side and on the other. It was a dark night, and the fire
+painted all this in strong lights and shadows; threw a faint fading Aurora
+like light over the snow, beyond the shade of its log barriers; glimmered
+by turns upon the paling of the garden fence, whenever the dark figures
+that were passing and repassing between gave it a chance; and invested the
+cellar-opening and the outstanding corner of the house with striking and
+unwonted dignity, in a light that revealed nothing except to the
+imagination. Nothing was more fancifully dignified or more quaintly
+travestied by that light than the figures around it, busy and flitting
+about and shewing themselves in every novel variety of grouping and
+colouring. There was Earl Douglass, not a hair different from what he was
+every day in reality, but with his dark skin and eyes, and a hat that like
+its master had concluded to abjure all fashions and perhaps for the same
+reason, he looked now like any bandit and now in a more pacific view could
+pass for nothing less than a Spanish shepherd at least, with an iron ladle
+in lieu of crook. There was Dr. Quackenboss, who had come too, determined
+as Earl said, "to keep his eend up," excessively bland and busy and
+important, the fire would throw his one-sidedness of feature into such
+aspects of gravity or sternness that Fleda could make nothing of him but a
+poor clergyman or a poor schoolmaster alternately. Philetus, who was kept
+handing about a bucket of sap or trudging off for wood, defied all
+comparison; he was Philetus still; but when Barby came once or twice and
+peered into the kettle her strong features with the handkerchief she
+always wore about her head were lit up into a very handsome gypsy. Fleda
+stood some time unseen in the shadow of the house to enjoy the sight, and
+then went forward on the same principle that a sovereign princess shews
+herself to her army, to grace and reward the labours of her servants. The
+doctor was profuse in enquiries after her health and Earl informed her of
+the success of the day.
+
+"We've had first rate weather," he said;--"I don't want to see no better
+weather for sugar-makin'; it's as good kind o' weather as you need to
+have. It friz everythin' up tight in the night, and it thew in the sun
+this mornin' as soon as the sun was anywhere; the trees couldn't do no
+better than they have done. I guess we ha'n't got much this side o' two
+hundred gallon--I ain't sure about it, but that's what I think; and
+there's nigh two hundred gallon we've fetched down; I'll qualify to better
+than a hundred and fifty, or a hundred and sixty either. We should ha' had
+more yet if Mr. Skillcorn hadn't managed to spill over one cask of it--I
+reckon he wanted it for sass for his chicken."
+
+"Now, Mr. Douglass!"--said Philetus, in a comical tone of deprecation.
+
+"It is an uncommonly fine lot of sugar trees," said the doctor, "and they
+stand so on the ground as to give great felicities to the oxen."
+
+"Now, Fleda," Earl went on, busy all the while with his iron ladle in
+dipping the boiling sap from one kettle into the other,--"you know how
+this is fixed when we've done all we've got to do with it?--it must be
+strained out o' this biler into a cask or a tub or somethin'
+'nother,--anythin' that'll hold it,--and stand a day or so;--you may
+strain it through a cotton cloth, or through a woollen cloth, or through
+any kind of a cloth!--and let it stand to settle; and then when it's biled
+down--Barby knows about bilin' down--you can tell when it's comin' to the
+sugar when the yellow blobbers rises thick to the top and puffs off, and
+then it's time to try it in cold water,--it's best to be a leetle the
+right side o' the sugar and stop afore it's done too much, for the
+molasses will dreen off afterwards--"
+
+"It must be clarified in the commencement," put in the doctor.
+
+"O' course it must be clarified," said Earl,--"Barby knows about
+clarifyin'--that's when you first put it on--you had ought to throw in a
+teeny drop o' milk fur to clear it,--milk's as good as a'most
+anything,--or if you can get it calf's blood's better "--
+
+"Eggs would be a more preferable ingredient on the present occasion, I
+presume," said the doctor. "Miss Ringgan's delicacy would be--a--would
+shrink from--a--and the albumen of eggs will answer all the same purpose."
+
+"Well anyhow you like to fix it," said Earl,--"eggs or calf's blood--I
+won't quarrel with you about the eggs, though I never heerd o' blue ones
+afore, 'cept the robin's and bluebird's--and I've heerd say the swamp
+black bird lays a handsome blue egg, but I never happened to see the nest
+myself;--and there's the chippin' sparrow,--but you'd want to rob all the
+birds' nests in creation to get enough of 'em, and they ain't here in
+sugar time, nother; but anyhow any eggs'll do I s'pose if you can get
+'em--or milk'll do if you ha'n't nothin' else--and after it is turned out
+into the barrel you just let it stand still a spell till it begins to
+grain and look clean on top"--
+
+"May I suggest an improvement?" said the doctor. "Many persons are of the
+opinion that if you take and stir it up well from the bottom for a length
+of time it will help the coagulation of the particles. I believe that is
+the practice of Mr. Plumfield and others."
+
+"'Tain't the practice of as good men as him and as good sugar-bilers,
+besides," said Earl; "though I don't mean to say nothin' agin Seth
+Plumfield nor agin his sugar, for the both is as good as you'd need to
+have; he's a good man and he's a good farmer--there ain't no better man in
+town than Seth Plumfield, nor no better farmer, nor no better sugar
+nother; but I hope there's as good; and I've seen as handsome sugar that
+wa'n't stirred as I'd want to see or eat either."
+
+"It would lame a man's arms the worst kind!" said Philetus.
+
+Fleda stood listening to the discussion and smiling, when Hugh suddenly
+wheeling about brought her face to face with Mr. Olmney.
+
+"I have been sitting some time with Mrs. Rossitur," he said, "and she
+rewarded me with permission to come and look at you. I mean!--not that I
+wanted a reward, for I certainly did not--"
+
+"Ah Mr. Olmney!" said Fleda laughing, "you are served right. You see
+how dangerous it is to meddle with such equivocal things as
+compliments. But we are worth looking at, aren't we? I have been
+standing here this half hour."
+
+He did not say this time what he thought.
+
+"Pretty, isn't it?" said Fleda. "Stand a little further back, Mr.
+Olmney--isn't it quite a wild-looking scene, in that peculiar light and
+with the snowy background? Look at Philetus now with that bundle of
+sticks--Hugh! isn't he exactly like some of the figures in the old
+pictures of the martyrdoms, bringing billets to feed the fire?--that old
+martyrdom of St. Lawrence--whose was it--Spagnoletto!--at Mrs.
+Decatur's--don't you recollect? It is fine, isn't it, Mr. Olmney?"
+
+"I am afraid," said he shaking his head a little, "my eye wants training.
+I have not been once in your company I believe without your shewing me
+something I could not see."
+
+"That young lady, sir," said Dr. Quackenboss from the far side of the
+fire, where he was busy giving it more wood,--"that young lady, sir, is a
+pattron to her--a--to all young ladies."
+
+"A patron!" said Mr. Olmney.
+
+"Passively, not actively, the doctor means," said Fleda softly.
+
+"Well I won't say but she's a good girl," said Mr. Douglass in an
+abstracted manner, busy with his iron ladle,--"she means to be a good
+girl--she's as clever a girl as you need to have!"
+
+Nobody's gravity stood this, excepting Philetus, in whom the principle of
+fun seemed not to be developed.
+
+"Miss Ringgan, sir," Dr. Quackenboss went on with a most benign expression
+of countenance,--"Miss Ringgan, sir, Mr. Olmney, sets an example to all
+ladies who--a--have had elegant advantages. She gives her patronage to the
+agricultural interest in society."
+
+"Not exclusively, I hope?" said Mr. Olmney smiling, and making the
+question with his eye of Fleda. But she did not meet it.
+
+"You know," she said rather quickly, and drawing back from the fire, "I am
+of an agricultural turn perforce--in uncle Rolf's absence I am going to be
+a farmer myself."
+
+"So I have heard--so Mrs. Rossitur told me,--but I fear--pardon me--you do
+not look fit to grapple with such a burden of care."
+
+Hugh sighed, and Fleda's eyes gave Mr. Olmney a hint to be silent.
+
+"I am not going to grapple with any thing, sir; I intend to take
+things easily."
+
+"I wish I could take an agricultural turn too," said he smiling, "and be
+of some service to you."
+
+"O I shall have no lack of service," said Fleda gayly;--"I am not going
+unprovided into the business. There is my cousin Seth Plumfield, who has
+engaged himself to be my counsellor and instructor in general; I could not
+have a better; and Mr. Douglass is to be my right hand; I occupying only
+the quiet and unassuming post of the will, to convey the orders of the
+head to the hand. And for the rest, sir, there is Philetus!"
+
+Mr. Olmney looked, half laughing, at Mr. Skillcorn, who was at that moment
+standing with his hands on his sides, eying with concentrated gravity the
+movements of Earl Douglass and the doctor.
+
+"Don't shake your head at him!" said Fleda. "I wish you had come an hour
+earlier, Mr. Olmney."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I was just thinking of coming out here," said Fleda, her eyes flashing
+with hidden fun,--"and Hugh and I were both standing in the kitchen, when
+we heard a tremendous shout from the woodyard. Don't laugh, or I can't go
+on. We all ran out, towards the lantern which we saw standing there, and
+so soon as we got near we heard Philetus singing out, 'Ho, Miss
+Elster!--I'm dreadfully on't!'--Why he called upon Barby I don't know,
+unless from some notion of her general efficiency, though to be sure he
+was nearer her than the sap-boilers and perhaps thought her aid would come
+quickest. And he was in a hurry, for the cries came thick--'Miss
+Elster!--here!--I'm dreadfully on't'--"
+
+"I don't understand--"
+
+"No," said Fleda, whose amusement seemed to be increased by the
+gentleman's want of understanding,--"and neither did we till we came up to
+him. The silly fellow had been sent up for more wood, and splitting a log
+he had put his hand in to keep the cleft, instead of a wedge, and when he
+took out the axe the wood pinched him; and he had the fate of Milo before
+his eyes, I suppose, and could do nothing but roar. You should have seen
+the supreme indignation with which Barby took the axe and released him
+with 'You're a smart man, Mr. Skillcorn!'"
+
+"What was the fate of Milo?" said Mr. Olmney presently.
+
+"Don't you remember,--the famous wrestler that in his old age trying to
+break open a tree found himself not strong enough; and the wood closing
+upon his hands held him fast till the wild beasts came and made an end
+of him. The figure of our unfortunate wood-cutter though, was hardly so
+dignified as that of the old athlete in the statue.--Dr. Quackenboss,
+and Mr. Douglass,--you will come in and see us when this troublesome
+business is done?"
+
+"It'll be a pretty spell yet," said Earl;--"but the doctor, he can go
+in,--he ha'n't nothin' to do. It don't take more'n half a dozen men to
+keep one pot a bilin'."
+
+"Ain't there ten on 'em, Mr. Douglass?" said Philetus.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVIII.
+
+
+
+  He that has light within his own clear breast,
+  May sit i' the centre and enjoy bright day.
+
+  Milton.
+
+
+The farming plan succeeded beyond Fleda's hopes; thanks not more to her
+wisdom than to the nice tact with which the wisdom was brought into play.
+The one was eked out with Seth Plumfield's; the other was all her own.
+Seth was indefatigably kind and faithful. After his own day's work was
+done he used to walk down to see Fleda, go with her often to view the
+particular field or work just then in question, and give her the best
+counsel dictated by great sagacity and great experience. It was given too
+with equal frankness and intelligence, so that Fleda knew the steps she
+took and could maintain them against the prejudice or the ignorance of her
+subordinates. But Fleda's delicate handling stood her yet more in stead
+than her strength. Earl Douglass was sometimes unmanageable, and held out
+in favour of an old custom or a prevailing opinion in spite of all the
+weight of testimony and light of discovery that could be brought to bear
+upon him. Fleda would let the thing go. But seizing her opportunity
+another time she would ask him to try the experiment, on a piece of the
+ground; so pleasantly and skilfully that Earl could do nothing but shut
+his mouth and obey, like an animal fairly stroked into good humour. And as
+Fleda always forgot to remind him that she had been right and he wrong, he
+forgot it too, and presently took to the new way kindly. In other matters
+he could be depended on, and the seed-time and harvest prospered well.
+There was hope of making a good payment to Dr. Gregory in the course of a
+few months.
+
+As the spring came forward Fleda took care that her garden should,--both
+gardens indeed. There she and Philetus had the game in their own hands,
+and beautifully it was managed. Hugh had full occupation at the mill. Many
+a dollar this summer was earned by the loads of fine fruit and vegetables
+which Philetus carried to Montepoole; and accident opened a new source of
+revenue. When the courtyard was in the full blaze of its beauty, one day
+an admiring passer-by modestly inquired if a few of those exquisite
+flowers might be had for money. They were given him most cheerfully that
+time; but the demand returned, accompanied by the offer, and Fleda obliged
+herself not to decline it. A trial it was to cut her roses and jessamines
+for anything but her own or her friends' pleasure, but according to custom
+she bore it without hesitation. The place became a resort for all the
+flower-lovers who happened to be staying at the Pool; and rose-leaves were
+changed into silver pennies as fast as in a fairy-tale.
+
+But the delicate mainspring that kept all this machinery in order suffered
+from too severe a strain. There was too much running, too much
+considering, too much watchfulness. In the garden pulling peas and seeing
+that Philetus weeded the carrots right,--in the field or the woodyard
+consulting and arranging or maybe debating with Earl Douglass, who
+acquired by degrees an unwonted and concentrated respect for womankind in
+her proper person; breakfast waiting for her often before she came in; in
+the house her old housewifery concerns, her share in Barby's cares or
+difficulties, her sweet countenancing and cheering of her aunt, her
+dinner, her work;--then when evening came, budding her roses or tying her
+carnations or weeding or raking the ground between them, (where Philetus
+could do nothing,) or training her multiflora and sweet-briar
+branches;--and then often after all, walking up to the mill to give Hugh a
+little earlier a home smile and make his way down pleasant. No wonder if
+the energies which owed much of their strength to love's nerving, should
+at last give out, and Fleda's evening be passed in wearied slumbers. No
+wonder if many a day was given up to the forced quietude of a headache,
+the more grievous to Fleda because she knew that her aunt and Hugh always
+found the day dark that was not lightened by her sunbeam. How brightly it
+shone out the moment the cloud of pain was removed, winning the shadow
+from their faces and a smile to their lips, though solitude always saw her
+own settle into a gravity as fixed as it was soft.
+
+"You have been doing too much, Fleda," said Mrs. Rossitur one morning when
+she came in from the garden.
+
+"I didn't know it would take me so long," said Fleda drawing a long
+breath;--"but I couldn't help it. I had those celery plants to prick
+out,--and then I was helping Philetus to plant another patch of corn."
+
+"He might have done that without help I should think."
+
+"But it must be put in to-day, and he had other things to do."
+
+"And then you were at your flowers?--"
+
+"O well!--budding a few roses--that's only play. It was time they were
+done. But I _am_ tired; and I am going up to see Hugh--it will rest me
+and him too."
+
+The gardening frock and gloves were exchanged for those of ordinary wear,
+and Fleda set off slowly to go up to the saw-mill.
+
+She stopped a moment when she came upon the bridge, to look off to the
+right where the waters of the little run came hurrying along through a
+narrow wooded chasm in the hill, murmuring to her of the time when a
+little child's feet had paused there and a child's heart danced to its
+music. The freshness of its song was unchanged, the glad rush of its
+waters was as joyous as ever, but the spirits were quieted that used to
+answer it with sweeter freshness and lighter joyousness. Its faint echo of
+the old-time laugh was blended now in Fleda's ear with a gentle wail for
+the rushing days and swifter fleeing delights of human life;--gentle,
+faint, but clear,--she could hear it very well. Taking up her walk again
+with a step yet slower and a brow yet more quiet, she went on till she
+came in sight of the little mill; and presently above the noise of the
+brook could hear the saw going. To her childish ears what a signal of
+pleasure that had always been; and now,--she sighed, and stopping at a
+little distance looked for Hugh. He was there; she saw him in a moment
+going forward to stop the machinery, the piece of timber in hand having
+walked its utmost length up to the saw; she saw him throwing aside the
+new-cut board, and adjusting what was left till it was ready for another
+march up to headquarters. When it stopped the second time Fleda went
+forward. Hugh must have been busy in his own thoughts, for he did not see
+her until he had again adjusted the log and set the noisy works in motion.
+She stood still. Several huge timbers lay close by, ready for the saw; and
+on one of them where he had been sitting Fleda saw his Bible lying open.
+As her eye went from it to him it struck her heart with a pang that he
+looked tired and that there was a something of delicacy, even of
+fragility, in the air of face and figure both.
+
+He came to meet her and welcomed her with a smile that coming upon this
+feeling set Fleda's heart a quivering. Hugh's smile was always one of very
+great sweetness, though never unshadowed; there was often something
+ethereal in its pure gentleness. This time it seemed even sweeter than
+usual, but though not sadder, perhaps less sad, Fleda could hardly
+command herself to reply to it. She could not at the moment speak; her eye
+glanced at his open book.
+
+"Yes, it rests me," he said, answering her.
+
+"Rests you, dear Hugh!--"
+
+He smiled again. "Here is somebody else that wants resting, I am afraid,"
+said he, placing her gently on the log; and before she had found anything
+to say he went off again to his machinery. Fleda sat looking at him and
+trying to clear her bosom of its thick breathing.
+
+"What has brought you up here through the hot sun?" said he, coming back
+after he had stopped the saw, and sitting down beside her.
+
+Fleda's lip moved nervously and her eye shunned meeting his. Softly
+pushing back the wet hair from his temples, she said,
+
+"I had one of my fits of doing nothing at home--I didn't feel very bright
+and thought perhaps you didn't,--so on the principle that two negatives
+make an affirmative--"
+
+"I feel bright," said Hugh gently.
+
+Fleda's eye came down to his, which was steady and clear as the reflection
+of the sky in Deepwater lake,--and then hers fell lower.
+
+"Why don't you, dear Fleda?"
+
+"I believe I am a little tired," Fleda said, trying but in vain to command
+herself and look up,--"and there are states of body when anything almost
+is enough to depress one--"
+
+"And what depresses you now?" said he, very steadily and quietly.
+
+"O--I was feeling a little down about things in general," said Fleda in a
+choked voice, trying to throw off her load with a long breath;--"it's
+because I am tired, I suppose--"
+
+"I felt so too, a little while ago," said Hugh. "But I have concluded to
+give all that up, Fleda."
+
+Fleda looked at him. Her eyes were swimming full, but his were clear and
+gentle as ever, only glistening a little in sympathy with hers.
+
+"I thought all was going wrong with us," he went on. "But I found it was
+only I that was wrong; and since that I have been quite happy, Fleda."
+
+Fleda could not speak to him; his words made her pain worse.
+
+"I told you this rested me," said he reaching across her for his book;
+"and now I am never weary long. Shall I rest you with it? What have you
+been troubling yourself about to-day?"
+
+She did not answer while he was turning over the leaves, and he then said,
+
+"Do you remember this, Fleda?--'_Truly God is good to Israel, even to them
+that are of a clean heart_.'"
+
+Fleda bent her head down upon her hands.
+
+"I was moody and restless the other day," said Hugh,--"desponding of
+everything;--and I came upon this psalm; and it made me ashamed of myself.
+I had been disbelieving it, and because I could not see how things were
+going to work good I thought they were going to work evil. I thought we
+were wearing out our lives alone here in a wearisome way, and I forgot
+that it must be the very straightest way that we could get home. I am sure
+we shall not want anything that will do us good; and the rest I am willing
+to want--and so are you, Fleda?"
+
+Fleda squeezed his hand,--that was all. For a minute he was silent, and
+then went on, without any change of tone.
+
+"I had a notion awhile ago that I should like it if it were possible for
+me to go to college; but I am quite satisfied now. I have good time and
+opportunity to furnish myself with a better kind of knowledge, that I
+shall want where college learning wouldn't be of much use to me; and I can
+do it, I dare say, better here in this mill than if we had stayed in New
+York and I had lived in our favourite library."
+
+"But dear Hugh," said Fleda, who did not like this speech in any sense of
+it,--"the two things do not clash. The better man the better Christian
+always, other things being equal. The more precious kind of knowledge
+should not make one undervalue the less?"
+
+"No,"--he said; but the extreme quietness and simplicity of his reply
+smote Fleda's fears; it answered her words and waived her thought; she
+dared not press him further. She sat looking over the road with an
+aching heart.
+
+"You haven't taken enough of my medicine," said Hugh smiling. "Listen,
+Fleda--'_All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep
+his covenant and his testimonies_.'"
+
+But that made Fleda cry again.
+
+"'All his paths,' Fleda--then, whatever may happen to you, and whatever
+may happen to me, or to any of us.--I can trust him. I am willing any
+one should have the world, if I may have what Abraham had--'_Fear not;
+I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward;_'--and I believe I
+shall, Fleda; for it is not the hungry that he has threatened to send
+empty away."
+
+Fleda could say nothing, and Hugh just then said no more. For a little
+while, near and busy as thoughts might be, tongues were silent. Fleda was
+crying quietly, the utmost she could do being to keep it quiet; Hugh, more
+quietly, was considering again the strong pillars on which he had laid his
+hope, and trying their strength and beauty; till all other things were to
+him as the mist rolling off from the valley is to the man planted on a
+watch tower.
+
+His meditations were interrupted by the tramp of horse, and a party of
+riders male and female came past them up the hill. Hugh looked on as they
+went by; Fleda's head was not raised.
+
+"There are some people enjoying themselves," said Hugh. "After all, dear
+Fleda, we should be very sorry to change places with those gay riders. I
+would not for a thousand worlds give my hope and treasure for all other
+they can possibly have, in possession or prospect."
+
+"No, indeed!" said Fleda energetically, and trying to rouse herself;--"and
+besides that, Hugh, we have as it is a great deal more to enjoy than most
+other people. We are so happy--"
+
+In each other, she was going to say, but the words choked her.
+
+"Those people looked very hard at us, or at one of us," said Hugh. "It
+must have been you, I think, Fleda"
+
+"They are welcome," said Fleda; "they couldn't have made much out of the
+back of my sun bonnet."
+
+"Well, dear Fleda, I must content myself with little more than looking at
+you now, for Mr. Winegar is in a hurry for his timber to be sawn, and I
+must set this noisy concern a going again."
+
+Fleda sat and watched him, with rising and falling hopes and fears,
+forcing her lips to a smile when he came near her, and hiding her tears at
+other times; till the shadows stretching well to the east of the meridian,
+admonished her she had been there long enough; and she left him still
+going backward and forward tending the saw.
+
+As she went down the hill she pressed involuntarily her hands upon her
+heart, for the dull heavy pain there. But that was no plaster for it;
+and when she got to the bridge the soft singing of the little brook was
+just enough to shake her spirits from the doubtful poise they had kept.
+Giving one hasty glance along the road and up the hill to make sure that
+no one was near she sat down on a stone in the edge of the woods, and
+indulged in such weeping as her gentle eyes rarely knew; for the habit
+of patience so cultivated for others' sake constantly rewarded her own
+life with its sweet fruits. But deep and bitter in proportion was the
+flow of the fountain once broken up. She struggled to remind herself
+that "Providence runneth not on broken wheels," she struggled to repeat
+to herself, what she did not doubt that "_all_ the ways of the Lord are
+mercy and truth" to his people;--in vain. The slight check for a moment
+to the torrent of grief but gave it greater head to sweep over the
+barrier; and the self-reproach that blamed its violence and needlessness
+only made the flood more bitter. Nature fought against patience for
+awhile; but when the loaded heart had partly relieved itself patience
+came in again and she rose up to go home. It startled her exceedingly to
+find Mr. Olmney standing before her, and looking so sorrowful that
+Fleda's eyes could not bear it.
+
+"My dear Miss Ringgan!--forgive me--I hope you will forgive me,--but I
+could not leave you in such distress. I knew that in _you_ it could only
+be from some very serious cause of grief."
+
+"I cannot say it is from anything new, Mr. Olmney--except to my
+apprehensions."
+
+"You are all _well_?" he said inquiringly, after they had walked a few
+steps in silence.
+
+"Well?--yes, sir,--" said Fleda hesitatingly,--"but I do not think that
+Hugh looks very well."
+
+The trembling of her voice told him her thought. But he remained silent.
+
+"You have noticed it?" she said hastily, looking up.
+
+"I think you have told me he always was delicate?"
+
+"And you have noticed him looking so lately, Mr. Olmney?"
+
+"I have thought so,--but you say he always was that. If you will permit me
+to say so, I have thought the same of you, Miss Fleda."
+
+Fleda was silent; her heart ached again.
+
+"We would gladly save each other from every threatening trouble," said Mr.
+Olmney again after a pause;--"but it ought to content us that we do not
+know how. Hugh is in good hands, my dear Miss Ringgan."
+
+"I know it, sir," said Fleda unable quite to keep back her tears,--"and I
+know very well this thread of our life will not bear the strain
+always,--and I know that the strands must in all probability part
+unevenly,--and I know it is in the power of no blind fate,--but that--"
+
+"Does not lessen our clinging to each other. Oh no!--it grows but the
+tenderer and the stronger for the knowledge."
+
+Fleda could but cry.
+
+"And yet," said he very kindly,--"we who are Christians may and ought to
+learn to take troubles hopefully; for 'tribulation worketh patience; and
+patience,' that is, quiet waiting on God, 'works experience' of his
+goodness and faithfulness; 'and experience worketh hope; and that hope, we
+know, 'maketh not ashamed.'"
+
+"I know it," said Fleda;--"but, Mr. Olmney, how easily the brunt of a new
+affliction breaks down all that chain of reasoning!"
+
+"Yes!--" he said sadly and thoughtfully;--"but my dear Miss Fleda, you
+know the way to build it up again. I would be very glad to bear all need
+for it away from you!"
+
+They had reached the gate. Fleda could not look up to thank him; the hand
+she held out was grasped, more than kindly, and he turned away.
+
+Fleda's tears came hot again as she went up the walk; she held her head
+down to hide them and went round the back way.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIX.
+
+
+
+  Now, the melancholy god protect thee; and the tailor make thy doublet of
+  changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal!--Twelfth Night.
+
+
+"Well what did you come home for?" was Barby's salutation;--"here's
+company been waiting for you till they're tired, and I am sure I be."
+
+"Company!!--" said Fleda.
+
+"Yes, and it's ungrateful in you to say so," said Barby, "for she's been
+in a wonderful hurry to see you,--or to get somethin' to eat; I don't know
+which; a little o' both, I hope in charity."
+
+"Why didn't you give her something to eat? Who is it?"
+
+"I don't know who it is! It's one of your highfliers, that's all I can
+make out. She 'a'n't a hat a bit better than a man's beaver,--one 'ud
+think she had stole her little brother's for a spree, if the rest of her
+was like common folks; but she's got a tail to her dress as long as from
+here to Queechy Run; and she's been tiddling in and out here with it
+puckered up under her arm sixty times. I guess she belongs to some company
+of female militie, for the body of it is all thick with braid and buttons.
+I believe she ha'n't sot still five minutes since she come into the house,
+till I don't know whether I am on my head or my heels."
+
+"But why didn't you give her something to eat?" said Fleda, who was
+hastily throwing off her gloves and smoothing her disordered hair with her
+hands into something of composure.
+
+"Did!" said Barby;--"I give her some o' them cold biscuit and butter and
+cheese and a pitcher of milk--sot a good enough meal for anybody--but she
+didn't take but a crumb, and she turned up her nose at that. Come,
+go!--you've slicked up enough--you're handsome enough to shew yourself to
+her any time o' day, for all her jig-em-bobs."
+
+"Where is aunt Lucy?"
+
+"She's up stairs;--there's been nobody to see to her but me. She's had the
+hull lower part of the house to herself, kitchen and all, and she's done
+nothing but go out of one room into another ever since she come. She'll be
+in here again directly if you ain't spry."
+
+Fleda went in, round to the west room, and there found herself in the arms
+of the second Miss Evelyn, who jumped to meet her and half stifled her
+with caresses.
+
+"You wicked little creature! what have you been doing? Here have I been
+growing melancholy over the tokens of your absence, and watching the
+decline of the sun with distracted feelings these six hours."
+
+"Six hours!" said Fleda smiling.
+
+"My dear little Fleda!--it's so delicious to see you again!" said Miss
+Evelyn with another prolonged hug and kiss.
+
+"My dear Constance!--I am very glad--But where are the rest?"
+
+"It's unkind of you to ask after anybody but me, when I came here this
+morning on purpose to talk the whole day to you. Now dear little Fleda,"
+said Miss Constance, executing an impatient little persuasive caper
+round her,--"won't you go out and order dinner? for I'm raging. Your
+woman did give me something, but I found the want of you had taken away
+all my appetite; and now the delight of seeing you has exhausted me, and
+I feel that nature is sinking. The stimulus of gratified affection is
+too much for me."
+
+"You absurd child!" said Fleda,--"you haven't mended a bit. But I told
+Barby to put on the tea-kettle and I will administer a composing draught
+as soon as it can be got ready; we don't indulge in dinners here in the
+wilderness. Meanwhile suppose that exhausted nature try the support of
+this easy-chair?"
+
+She put her visitor gently into it, and seating herself upon the arm held
+her hand and looked at her, with a smiling face and yet with eyes that
+were almost too gentle in their welcoming.
+
+"My dear little Fleda!--you're as lovely as you can be! Are you glad
+to see me?"
+
+"Very."
+
+"Why don't you ask after somebody else?"
+
+"I was afraid of overtasking your exhausted energies."
+
+"Come and sit down here upon my lap!--you shall, or I won't say another
+word to you. Fleda! you've grown thin! what have you been doing to
+yourself?"
+
+"Nothing, with that particular purpose."
+
+"I don't care, you've done something. You have been insanely imagining
+that it is necessary for you to be in three or four places at the same
+time, and in the distracted effort after ubiquity you are in imminent
+danger of being nowhere--there's nothing left of you."
+
+"I don't wonder you were overcome at the sight of me," said Fleda.
+
+"But you are looking charmingly for all that," Constance went on;--"so
+charmingly that I feel a morbid sensation creeping all over me while I sit
+regarding you. Really, when you come to us next winter if you persist in
+being,--by way of shewing your superiority to ordinary human nature,--a
+rose without a thorn, the rest of the flowers may all shut up at once. And
+the rose reddens in my very face, to spite me!"
+
+"Is 'ordinary human nature' typified by a thorn? You give it rather a
+poor character."
+
+"I never heard of a Thorn that didn't bear an excellent character!" said
+Constance gravely.
+
+"Hush!" said Fleda laughing;--"I don't want to hear about Mr. Thorn.--Tell
+me of somebody else."
+
+"I haven't said a word about Mr. Thorn!" said Constance ecstatically, "but
+since you ask about him I will tell you. He has not acted like himself
+since you disappeared from our horizon--that is, he has ceased to be at
+all pointed in his attentions to me; his conversation has lost all the
+acuteness for which I remember you admired it; he has walked Broadway in a
+moody state of mind all winter, and grown as dull as is consistent with
+the essential sharpness of his nature. I ought to except our last
+interview, though, for his entreaties to mamma that she would bring you
+home with her were piercing."
+
+Fleda was unable in spite of herself to keep from laughing, but entreated
+that Constance would tell her of somebody else.
+
+"My respected parents are at Montepoole, with all their offspring,--that
+is, Florence and Edith,--I am at present anxiously enquired after, being
+nobody knows where, and to be fetched by mamma this evening. Wasn't I
+good, little Fleda, to run away from Mr. Carleton to come and spend a
+whole day in social converse with you?"
+
+"Carleton!" said Fleda.
+
+"Yes--O you don't know who _he_ is! he's a new attraction--there's been
+nothing like him this great while, and all New York is topsy-turvy about
+him; the mothers are dying with anxiety and the daughters with admiration;
+and it's too delightful to see the cool superiority with which he takes it
+all;--like a new star that all the people are pointing their telescopes
+at,--as Thorn said spitefully the other day. O he has turned _my_ head; I
+have looked till I cannot look at anything else. I can just manage to see
+a rose, but my dazzled powers of vision are equal to nothing more."
+
+"My dear Constance!--"
+
+"It's perfectly true! Why as soon as we knew he was coming to Montepoole I
+wouldn't let mamma rest till we all made a rush after him--and when we got
+here first and I was afraid he wasn't coming, nothing can express the
+state of my feelings!--But he appeared the next morning, and then I was
+quite happy," said Constance, rising and falling in her chair on what must
+have been ecstatic springs, for wire ones it had none.
+
+"Constance!--" said Fleda with a miserable attempt at rebuke,--"how can
+you talk so!"
+
+"And so we were all riding round here this morning and I had the
+self-denial to stop to see you and leave Florence and the Marlboroughs to
+monopolize him all the way home. You ought to love me for ever for it. My
+dear Fleda!--" said Constance, clasping her hands and elevating her eyes
+in mock ecstasy,--"if you had ever seen Mr. Carleton I--"
+
+"I dare say I have seen somebody as good," said Fleda quietly.
+
+"My dear Fleda!" said Constance, a little scornfully this time,--"you
+haven't the least idea what you are talking about! I tell you he is an
+Englishman--he's of one of the best families in England,--not such as you
+ever see here but once in an age,--he's rich enough to count Mr. Thorn
+over I don't know how many times."
+
+"I don't like anybody the better for being an Englishman," said Fleda;
+"and it must be a small man whose purse will hold his measure."
+
+Constance made an impatient gesture.
+
+"But I tell you it isn't! We knew him when we were abroad, and we know
+what he is, and we know his mother very well. When we were in England we
+were a week with them down at their beautiful place in ----shire,--the
+loveliest time! You see she was over here with Mr. Carleton once before, a
+good while ago; and mamma and papa were polite to them, and so they shewed
+us a great deal of attention when we were in England. We had the loveliest
+time down there you can possibly conceive. And my dear Fleda he wears such
+a fur cloak!--lined with the most exquisite black fox."
+
+"But, Constance!" said Fleda, a little vexed though laughing,--"any man
+may wear a fur cloak--the thing is, what is inside of it?"
+
+"It is perfectly indifferent to me what is inside of it!" said Constance
+ecstatically. "I can see nothing but the edges of the black fox,
+especially when it is worn so very gracefully."
+
+"But in some cases there might be a white fox within?"
+
+"There is nothing of the fox about Mr. Carleton!" said Constance
+impatiently. "If it had been anybody else I should have said he was a bear
+two or three times; but he wears everything as he does his cloak, and
+makes you take what he pleases from him; what I wouldn't take from anybody
+else I know."
+
+"With a fox lining?" said Fleda laughing.
+
+"Then foxes haven't got their true character, that's all. Now I'll just
+tell you an instance--it was at a party somewhere--it was at that tiresome
+Mrs. Swinburne's, where the evenings are always so stupid, and there was
+nothing worth going or staying for but the supper,--except Mr. Carleton!
+and he never stays five minutes, except at two or three places; and it
+drives me crazy, because they are places I don't go to very often--"
+
+"Suppose you keep your wits and tell me your story?"
+
+"Well--don't interrupt me!--he was there, and he had taken me into the
+supper-room, when mamma came along and took it into her head to tell me
+not to take something--I forget what--punch, I believe,--because I had not
+been well in the morning. Now you know, it was absurd! I was perfectly
+well then, and I told her I shouldn't mind her; but do you believe Mr.
+Carleton wouldn't give it to me?--absolutely told me he wouldn't, and told
+me why, as coolly as possible, and gave me a glass of water and made me
+drink it; and if it had been anybody else I do assure you I would have
+flung it in his face and never spoken to him again; and I have been in
+love with him ever since. Now _is_ that tea going to be ready?"
+
+"Presently. How long have you been here?"
+
+"O a day or two--and it has poured with rain every single day since we
+came, till this one;--and just think!"--said Constance with a ludicrously
+scared face,--"I must make haste and be back again. You see, I came away
+on principle, that I may strike with the effect of novelty when I appear
+again; but if I stay _too_ long, you know,--there is a point--"
+
+"On the principle of the ice-boats," said Fleda, "that back a little to
+give a better blow to the ice, where they find it tough?"
+
+"Tough!" said Constance.
+
+"Does Florence like this paragon of yours as well as you do?"
+
+"I don't know--she don't talk so much about him, but that proves nothing;
+she's too happy to talk _to_ him.--I expect our family concord will be
+shattered by and by!" said Constance shaking her head.
+
+"You seem to take the prospect philosophically," said Fleda, looking
+amused. "How long are you going to stay at the Pool?"
+
+Constance gave an expressive shrug, intimating that the deciding of that
+question did not rest with her.
+
+"That is to say, you are here to watch the transit of this star over the
+meridian of Queechy?"
+
+"Of Queechy!--of Montepoole."
+
+"Very well--of Montepoole. I don't wonder that nature is exhausted. I will
+go and see after this refection."
+
+The prettiest little meal in the world was presently set forth for the
+two,--Fleda knew her aunt would not come down, and Hugh was yet at the
+mill; so she led her visitor into the breakfast-room alone, Constance by
+the way again fondly embracing her and repeating, "My dear little
+Fleda!--how glad I am to see you!"
+
+The lady was apparently hungry, for there was a minute of silence while
+the refection begun, and then Constance exclaimed, perhaps with a sudden
+appreciation of the delicious bread and butter and cream and strawberries,
+
+"What a lovely old room this is!--and what lovely times you have here,
+don't you, Fleda?"
+
+"Yes--sometimes," Fleda said with a sigh.
+
+"But I shall tell mamma you are growing thin, and the first minute we get
+home I shall send for you to come to us. Mrs. Thorn will be amazingly glad
+to see you."
+
+"Has she got back from Europe?" said Fleda.
+
+"Ages!--and she's been entertaining the world as hard as she could ever
+since. I have no doubt Lewis has confided to the maternal bosom all his
+distresses; and there never was anything like the rush that I expect will
+be made to our greenhouse next winter. O Fleda, you should see Mr.
+Carleton's greenhouses!"
+
+"Should I?" said Fleda.
+
+"Dear me! I hope mamma will come!" said Constance with a comical fidgety
+shake of herself;--"when I think of those greenhouses I lose my
+self-command. And the park!--Fleda, it's the loveliest thing you ever saw
+in your life; and it's all that delightful man's doing; only he won't have
+a geometric flower-garden, as I did everything I could think of to
+persuade him. I pity the woman that will be his wife,--she won't have her
+own way in a single thing; but then he will fascinate her into thinking
+that his way is the best, so it will do just as well I suppose. Do you
+know I can't conceive what he has come over here for? He has been here
+before, you know, and he don't seem to me to know exactly what he means to
+do; at least I can't find out, and I have tried."
+
+"How long has he been here?"
+
+"O a month or two--since the beginning of April, I believe. He came over
+with some friends of his--a Sir George Egerton and his family;--he is
+going to Canada, to be established in some post there, I forget what; and
+they are spending part of the summer here before they fix themselves at
+the North. It is easy to see what _they_ are here for,--they are strangers
+and amusing themselves; but Mr. Carleton is at home, and _not_ amusing
+himself, at least he don't seem to be. He goes about with the Egertons,
+but that is just for his friendship for them; and he puzzles me. He don't
+snow whether he is going to Niagara,--he has been once already--and
+'perhaps' he may go to Canada,--and 'possibly' he will make a journey to
+the West,--and I can't find out that he wants anything in particular."
+
+"Perhaps he don't mean that you shall," said Fleda.
+
+"Perhaps he don't; but you see that aggravates my state of mind to a
+distressing degree. And then I'm afraid he will go somewhere where I can't
+keep watch of him!--"
+
+Fleda could not help laughing.
+
+"Perhaps he was tired of home and came for mere weariness."
+
+"Weariness! it's my opinion he has no idea there is such a word in the
+language,--I am certain if he heard it he would call for a dictionary the
+next minute. Why at Carleton it seems to me he was half the time on
+horseback, flying about from one end of the country to the other; and
+when he is in the house he is always at work at something; it's a piece of
+condescension to get him to attend to you at all; only when he does, my
+dear Fleda!--he is so enchanting that you live in a state of delight till
+next time. And yet I never could get him to pay me a compliment to this
+minute,--I tried two or three times, and he rewarded me with some very
+rude speeches."
+
+"Rude!" said Fleda.
+
+"Yes,--that is, they were the most graceful and fascinating things
+possible, but they would have been rudeness in anybody else. Where _is_
+mamma!" said Constance with another comic counterfeit of distress "My dear
+Fleda, it's the most captivating thing to breakfast at Carleton!--"
+
+"I have no idea the bread and butter is sweeter there than in some other
+parts of the world," said Fleda.
+
+"I don't know about the bread and butter," said Constance, "but those
+exquisite little sugar dishes! My dear Fleda, every one has his own
+sugar-dish and cream-ewer--the loveliest little things!--"
+
+"I have heard of such things before," said Fleda.
+
+"I don't care about the bread and butter," said Constance; "eating is
+immaterial, with those perfect little things right opposite to me. They
+weren't like any you ever saw, Fleda--the sugar-bowl was just a little
+plain oval box, with the lid on a hinge, and not a bit of chasing, only
+the arms on the cover; like nothing I ever saw but an old-fashioned silver
+tea-caddy; and the cream-jug a little straight up and down thing to match.
+Mamma said they were clumsy, but they bewitched me!--"
+
+"I think everything bewitched you," said Fleda smiling. "Can't your head
+stand a sugar-dish and milk-cup?"
+
+"My dear Fleda, I never had your superiority to the ordinary weaknesses of
+human nature--I can stand _one_ sugar-bowl, but I confess myself overcome
+by a dozen. How we have all wanted to see you, Fleda! and papa; you have
+captivated papa; and he says--"
+
+"Never mind--don't tell me what he says," said Fleda.
+
+"There--that's your modesty, that everybody raves about--I wish I could
+catch it. Fleda, where did you get that little Bible?--while I was waiting
+for you I tried to soothe my restless anticipations with examining all the
+things in all the rooms;--where did you get it?"
+
+"It was given me a long while ago," said Fleda.
+
+"But it is real gold on the outside!--the clasps and all--do you know it?
+it is not washed."
+
+"I know it," said Fleda smiling; "and it is better than gold inside."
+
+"Wasn't that mamma's favourite Mr. Olmney that parted from you at the
+gate?" said Constance after a minute's silence.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is he a favourite of yours too?"
+
+"You must define what you mean by a favourite?" said Fleda gravely.
+
+"Well, how do you like him?"
+
+"I believe everybody likes him," said Fleda, colouring and vexed at
+herself that she could not help it. The bright eyes opposite her took note
+of the fact with a sufficiently wide-awake glance.
+
+"He's very good!" said Constance hugging herself, and taking a fresh
+supply of butter,--"but don't let him know I have been to see you or he'll
+tell you all sorts of evil things about me for fear you should innocently
+be contaminated. Don't you like to be taken care of?"
+
+"Very much," said Fleda smiling,--"by people that know how."
+
+"I can't bear it!" said Constance, apparently with great sincerity;--"I
+think it is the most impertinent thing in the world people can do. I can't
+endure it--except from--! Oh my dear Fleda! it is perfect luxury to have
+him put a shawl round your shoulders!--"
+
+"Fleda," said Earl Douglass putting his head in from the kitchen, and
+before he said any more bobbing it frankly at Miss Evelyn, half in
+acknowledgment of her presence and half as it seemed in apology for his
+own,--"Fleda, will you let Barby pack up somethin' 'nother for the men's
+lunch?--my wife would ha' done it, as she had ought to, if she wa'n't down
+with the teeth-ache, and Catherine's away on a jig to Kenton, and the men
+won't do so much work on nothin', and I can't say nothin' to 'em if they
+don't; and I'd like to get that 'ere clover field down afore night--it's
+goin' to be a fine spell o' weather. I was a goin' to try to get along
+without it; but I believe we can't."
+
+"Very well," said Fleda. "But, Mr. Douglass, you'll try the experiment of
+curing it in cocks?"
+
+"Well I don't know," said Earl in a tone of very discontented
+acquiescence,--"I don't see how anythin' should be as sweet as the sun
+for dryin' hay--I know folks says it is, and I've heerd 'em say it is!
+and they'll stand to it and you can't beat 'em off the notion it is;
+but somehow or 'nother I can't seem to come into it. I know the sun
+makes sweet hay, and I think the sun was meant to make hay, and I don't
+want to see no sweeter hay than the sun makes; it's as good hay as you
+need to have."
+
+"But you wouldn't mind trying it for once, Mr. Douglass, just for me?"
+
+"I'll do just what you please," said he with a little exculpatory shake
+of his head;--"'tain't my concern--it's no concern of mine--the gain or
+the loss'll be your'n, and it's fair you should have the gain or the loss,
+which ever on 'em you choose to have. I'll put it in cocks--how much heft
+should be in 'em?"
+
+"About a hundred pounds--and you don't want to cut any more than you can
+put up to-night, Mr. Douglass. We'll try it."
+
+"Very good! And you'll send along somethin' for the men--Barby knows,"
+said Earl bobbing his head again intelligently at Fleda,--"there's four on
+'em and it takes somethin' to feed 'em--workin' men'll put away a good
+deal o' meat."
+
+He withdrew his head and closed the door, happily for Constance, who went
+off into a succession of ecstatic convulsions.
+
+"What time of day do your eccentric hay-makers prefer for the rest of
+their meals, if they lunch at three o'clock? I never heard anything so
+original in my life."
+
+"This is lunch number two," said Fleda smiling; "lunch number one is about
+ten in the morning; and dinner at twelve."
+
+"And do they gladden their families with their presence at the other
+ordinary convivial occasions?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"And what do they have for lunch?"
+
+"Varieties. Bread and cheese, and pies, and Quirlcakes; at every other
+meal they have meat."
+
+"Horrid creatures!"
+
+"It is only during haying and harvesting."
+
+"And you have to see to all this! poor little Fleda! I declare, if I was
+you--I'd do something!--"
+
+"No," said Fleda quietly, "Mrs. Douglass and Barby manage the lunch
+between them. I am not at all desperate."
+
+"But to have to talk to these people!"
+
+"Earl Douglass is not a very polished specimen," said Fleda smiling, "but
+I assure you in some of 'these people' there is an amount of goodness and
+wit, and shrewd practical sense and judgment, that would utterly distance
+many of those that would call them bears."
+
+Constance looked a good deal more than she said.
+
+"My dear little Fleda! you're too sensible for anything; but as I don't
+like sense from anybody but Mr. Carleton I would rather look at you in the
+capacity of a rose, smiling a gentle rebuke upon me while I talk
+nonsense."
+
+And she did talk, and Fleda did smile and laugh, in spite of herself, till
+Mrs. Evelyn and her other daughters made their appearance.
+
+Then Barby said she thought they'd have talked the house down; and she
+expected there'd be nothing left of Fleda after all the kissing she got.
+But it was not too much for Fleda's pleasure. Mrs. Evelyn was so tenderly
+kind, and Miss Evelyn as caressing as her sister had been, and Edith, who
+was but a child, so joyously delighted, that Fleda's eyes were swimming in
+happiness as she looked from one to the other, and she could hardly answer
+kisses and questions fast enough.
+
+"Them is good-looking enough girls," said Barby as Fleda came back to the
+house after seeing them to their carriage,--"if they knowed how to dress
+themselves. I never see this fly away one 'afore--I knowed the old one as
+soon as I clapped my eyes onto her. Be they stopping at the Pool again?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well when are you going up there to see 'em?"
+
+"I don't know," said Fleda quietly. And then sighing as the thought of her
+aunt came into her head she went off to find her and bring her down.
+
+Fleda's brow was sobered, and her spirits were in a flutter that was not
+all of happiness and that threatened not to settle down quietly. But as
+she went slowly up the stairs faith's hand was laid, even as her own
+grasped the balusters, on the promise,
+
+"All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his
+covenant and his testimonies."
+
+She set faith's foot down on those sure stepping-stones; and she
+opened her aunt's door and looked in with a face that was neither
+troubled nor afraid.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXX.
+
+
+
+  _Ant_. He misses not much.
+
+  _Seb_. No; he doth but mistake the truth totally.
+
+  Tempest.
+
+
+It was the very next morning that several ladies and gentlemen were
+gathered on the piazza of the hotel at Montepoole, to brace minds or
+appetites with the sweet mountain air while waiting for breakfast. As they
+stood there a young countryman came by bearing on his hip a large basket
+of fruit and vegetables.
+
+"O look at those lovely strawberries!" exclaimed Constance Evelyn running
+down the steps.--"Stop if you please--where are you going with these?"
+
+"Marm!" responded the somewhat startled carrier.
+
+"What are you going to do with them?"
+
+"I ain't going to do nothin' with 'em."
+
+"Whose are they? Are they for sale?"
+
+"Well, 'twon't deu no harm, as I know," said the young man making a virtue
+of necessity, for the fingers of Constance were already hovering over the
+dainty little leaf-strewn baskets and her eyes complacently searching for
+the most promising;--"I ha'n't got nothin' to deu with 'em."
+
+"Constance!" said Mrs. Evelyn from the piazza,--"don't take that! I dare
+say they are for Mr. Sweet."
+
+"Well, mamma!--" said Constance with great equanimity,--"Mr. Sweet gets
+them for me, and I only save him the trouble of spoiling them. My taste
+leads me to prefer the simplicity of primitive arrangements this morning."
+
+"Young man!" called out the landlady's reproving voice, "won't you never
+recollect to bring that basket round the back way?"
+
+"'Tain't no handier than this way," said Philetus, with so much
+belligerent demonstration that the landlady thought best in presence of
+her guests to give over the question.
+
+"Where do you get them?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"How?--" said Philetus.
+
+"Where do they come from? Are they fresh picked?"
+
+"Just afore I started."
+
+"Started from where?" said a gentleman standing by Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"From Mr. Rossitur's down to Queechy."
+
+"Mr. Rossitur's!" said Mrs. Evelyn;--"does he send them here?"
+
+"He doos not," said Philetus;--"he doosn't keep to hum for a long spell."
+
+"Who does send them then?" said Constance.
+
+"Who doos? It's Miss Fliddy Ringgan."
+
+"Mamma!" exclaimed Constance looking up.
+
+"What does she have to do with it?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"There don't nobody else have nothin' to deu with it--I guess she's
+pretty much the hull," said her coadjutor. "Her and me was a picking 'em
+afore sunrise."
+
+"All that basketful!"
+
+"'Tain't all strawberries--there's garden sass up to the top."
+
+"And does she send that too?"
+
+"She sends that teu," said Philetus succinctly.
+
+"But hasn't she any help in taking care of the garden?" said Constance.
+
+"Yes marm--I calculate to help considerable in the back garden--she won't
+let no one into the front where she grows her posies."
+
+"But where is Mr. Hugh?"
+
+"He's to hum."
+
+"But has he nothing to do with all this? does he leave it all to
+his cousin?"
+
+"He's to the mill."
+
+"And Miss Ringgan manages farm and garden and all?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"She doos," said Philetus.
+
+And receiving a gratuity which he accepted without demonstration of any
+kind whatever, the basket-bearer at length released moved off.
+
+"Poor Fleda!" said Miss Evelyn as he disappeared with his load.
+
+"She's a very clever girl," said Mrs. Evelyn dismissing the subject.
+
+"She's too lovely for anything!" said Constance. "Mr. Carleton,--if you
+will just imagine we are in China, and introduct a pair of familiar
+chop-sticks into this basket, I shall be repaid for the loss of a
+strawberry by the expression of ecstasy which will immediately spread
+itself over your features. I intend to patronize the natural mode of
+eating in future. I find the ends of my fingers decidedly odoriferous."
+
+He smiled a little as he complied with the young lady's invitation, but
+the expression of ecstasy did not come.
+
+"Are Mr. Rossitur's circumstances so much reduced?" he said, drawing
+nearer to Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"Do you know them!" exclaimed both the daughters at once.
+
+"I knew Mrs. Rossitur very well some years ago, when she was in Paris."
+
+"They are all broken to pieces," said Mrs. Evelyn, as Mr. Carleton's eye
+went back to her for his answer;--"Mr. Rossitur failed and lost
+everything--bankrupt--a year or two after they came home."
+
+"And what has he been doing since?'
+
+"I don't know!--trying to farm it here; but I am afraid he has not
+succeeded well--I am afraid not. They don't look like it. Mrs. Rossitur
+will not see anybody, and I don't believe they have done any more than
+struggle for a living since they came here."
+
+"Where is Mr. Rossitur now?"
+
+"He is at the West somewhere--Fleda tells me he is engaged in some
+agencies there; but I doubt," said Mrs. Evelyn shaking her head
+compassionately,--"there is more in the name of it than anything else. He
+has gone down hill sadly since his misfortunes. I am very sorry for them."
+
+"And his niece takes care of his farm in the meantime?"
+
+"Do you know her?" asked both the Miss Evelyns again.
+
+"I can hardly say that," he replied. "I had such a pleasure formerly. Do
+I understand that _she_ is the person to fill Mr. Rossitur's place when
+he is away?"
+
+"So she says."
+
+"And so she acts," said Constance. "I wish you had heard her yesterday. It
+was beyond everything. We were conversing very amicably, regarding each
+other through a friendly vista formed by the sugar-bowl and tea-pot, when
+a horrid man, that looked as if he had slept all his life in a hay-cock
+and only waked up to turn it over, stuck his head in and immediately
+introduced a clover-field; and Fleda and he went to tumbling about the
+cocks till I do assure you I was deluded into a momentary belief that
+hay-making was the principal end of human nature, and looked upon myself
+as a burden to society; and after I had recovered my locality and ventured
+upon a sentence of gentle commiseration for her sufferings, Fleda went off
+into a eulogium upon the intelligence of hay-makers in general and the
+strength of mind barbarians are universally known to possess."
+
+The manner still more than the matter of this speech was beyond the
+withstanding of any good-natured muscles, though the gentleman's smile was
+a grave one and quickly lost in gravity. Mrs. Evelyn laughed and reproved
+in a breath; but the laugh was admiring and the reproof was stimulative.
+The bright eye of Constance danced in return with the mischievous delight
+of a horse that has slipped his bridle and knows you can't catch him.
+
+"And this has been her life ever since Mr. Rossitur lost his property?"
+
+"Entirely,--sacrificed!--" said Mrs. Evelyn, with a compassionately
+resigned air;--"education, advantages and everything given up; and set
+down here where she has seen nobody from year's end to year's end but the
+country people about--very good people--but not the kind of people she
+ought to have been brought up among."
+
+"Oh mamma!" said the eldest Miss Evelyn in a deprecatory tone,--"you
+shouldn't talk so--it isn't right--I am sure she is very nice--nicer now
+than anybody else I know; and clever too."
+
+"Nice!" said Edith. "I wish _I_ had such a sister!"
+
+"She is a good girl--a very good girl," said Mrs. Evelyn, in a tone which
+would have deterred any one from wishing to make her acquaintance.
+
+"And happy, mamma--Fleda don't look miserable--she seems perfectly happy
+and contented!"
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"she has got accustomed to this state of
+things--it's her life--she makes delicious bread and puddings for her
+aunt, and raises vegetables for market, and oversees her uncle's farmers,
+and it isn't a hardship to her; she finds her happiness in it. She is a
+very good girl! but she might have been made something much better than a
+farmer's wife."
+
+"You may set your mind at rest on that subject, mamma," said Constance,
+still using her chop-sticks with great complacency;--"it's my opinion
+that the farmer is not in existence who is blessed with such a conjugal
+futurity. I think Fleda's strong pastoral tastes are likely to develope
+themselves in a new direction."
+
+Mrs. Evelyn looked with a partial smile at the pretty features which the
+business of eating the strawberries displayed in sundry novel and
+picturesque points of view; and asked what she meant?
+
+"I don't know,--" said Constance, intent upon her basket,--"I feel a
+friend's distress for Mr. Thorn--it's all your doing, mamma,--you won't be
+able to look him in the face when we have Fleda next fall--I am sure I
+shall not want to look at his! He'll be too savage for anything."
+
+"Mr. Thorn!" said Mr. Carleton.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Evelyn in an indulgent tone,--"he was very attentive to
+her last winter when she was with us, but she went away before anything
+was decided. I don't think he has forgotten her."
+
+"I shouldn't think anybody could forget her," said Edith.
+
+"I am confident he would be here at this moment," said Constance, "if he
+wasn't in London."
+
+"But what is 'all mamma's doing,' Constance?" inquired her sister.
+
+"The destruction of the peace of the whole family of Thorns--shouldn't
+sleep sound in my bed if I were she with such a reflection. I look forward
+to heart-rending scenes,--with a very disturbed state of mind."
+
+"But what have I done, my child?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"Didn't you introduce your favourite Mr. Olmney to Miss Ringgan last
+summer? I don't know!--her native delicacy shrunk from making any
+disclosures, and of course the tongue of friendship is silent,--but they
+were out ages yesterday while I was waiting for her, and their parting at
+the gate was--I feel myself unequal to the task of describing it!" said
+Constance ecstatically;--"and she was in the most elevated tone of mind
+during our whole interview afterwards, and took all my brilliant remarks
+with as much coolness as if they had been drops of rain--more, I presume,
+considering that it was hay-time."
+
+"Did you see him?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"Only at that impracticable distance, mamma; but I introduced his name
+afterwards in my usual happy manner and I found that Miss Ringgan's cheeks
+were by no means indifferent to it. I didn't dare go any further."
+
+"I am very glad of it! I hope it is so!" said Mrs. Evelyn energetically.
+"It would be a most excellent match. He is a charming young man and would
+make her very happy."
+
+"You are exciting gloomy feelings in Mr. Carleton's mind, mamma, by your
+felicitous suggestions. Mr. Carleton, did your ears receive a faint
+announcement of ham and eggs which went quite through and through mine
+just now?"
+
+He bowed and handed the young lady in; but Constance declared that though
+he sat beside her and took care of her at breakfast he had on one of his
+intangible fits which drove her to the last extreme of impatience, and
+captivation.
+
+The sun was not much more than two hours high the next morning when a
+rider was slowly approaching Mr. Rossitur's house from the bridge, walking
+his horse like a man who wished to look well at all he was passing. He
+paused behind a clump of locusts and rose-acacias in the corner of the
+courtyard as a figure bonneted and gloved came out of the house and began
+to be busy among the rose-bushes. Another figure presently appeared at the
+hall-door and called out,
+
+"Fleda!--"
+
+"Well, Barby--"
+
+This second voice was hardly raised, but it came from so much nearer that
+the words could be distinctly heard.
+
+"Mr. Skillcorn wants to know if you're going to fix the flowers for him
+to carry?"
+
+"They're not ready, and it won't do for him to vait--Mr. Sweet must send
+for them if he wants them. Philetus must make haste back, for you know Mr.
+Douglass wants him to help in the barn meadow. Lucas won't be here and now
+the weather is so fine I want to make haste with the hay."
+
+"Well, will you have the samp for breakfast?"
+
+"No--we'll keep that for dinner. I'll come in and poach some eggs,
+Barby,--if you'll make me some thin pieces of toast--and call me when it's
+time. Thin, Barby."
+
+The gentleman turned his horse and galloped back to Montepoole.
+
+Some disappointment was created among a portion of Mr. Sweet's guests that
+afternoon by the intelligence that Mr. Carleton purposed setting off the
+next morning to join his English friends at Saratoga on their way to the
+falls and Canada. Which purpose was duly carried into effect.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXI.
+
+
+
+  With your leave, sir, an' there were no more men living upon the face of
+  the earth, I should not fancy him, by St. George.--Every Man Out of
+  His Humour.
+
+
+October had come; and a fair season and a fine harvest had enabled Fleda
+to ease her mind by sending a good remittance to Dr. Gregory. The family
+were still living upon her and Hugh's energies. Mr. Rossitur talked of
+coming home, that was all.
+
+It sometimes happened that a pause in the urgency of business permitted
+Hugh to take a day's holiday. One of these falling soon after the frosts
+had opened the burrs of the chestnut trees and the shells of the
+hickories, Fleda seized upon it for a nutting frolic. They took Philetus
+and went up to the fine group of trees on the mountain, the most difficult
+to reach and the best worth reaching of all their nut wood. The sport was
+very fine; and after spoiling the trees Philetus was left to "shuck" and
+bring home a load of the fruit; while Fleda and Hugh took their way slowly
+down the mountain. She stopped him, as usual, on the old lookout place.
+The leaves were just then in their richest colouring; and the October sky
+in its strong vitality seemed to fill all inanimate nature with the breath
+of lile. If ever, then on that day, to the fancy, "the little hills
+rejoiced on every side." The woods stood thick with honours, and earth lay
+smiling under the tokens of the summer's harvest and the promise for the
+coming year; and the wind came in gusts over the lower country and up the
+hill-side with a hearty good-will that blew away all vapours, physical
+and mental, from its path, bidding everything follow its example and be up
+and doing. Fleda drew a long breath or two that seemed to recognize its
+freshening power.
+
+[Illustration: Philetus was left to "shuck" and bring home a load of
+the fruit.]
+
+"How long it seems," she said,--"how very long--since I was here with Mr.
+Carleton;--just nine years ago. How changed everything is! I was a little
+child then. It seems such an age ago!--"
+
+"It is very odd he didn't come to see us," said Hugh.
+
+"He did--don't you know?--the very next day after we heard he was
+here--when most unluckily I was up at aunt Miriam's."
+
+"I should think he might have come again, considering what friends you
+used to be."
+
+"I dare say he would if he had not left Montepoole so soon. But dear Hugh!
+I was a mere child--how could he remember me much."
+
+"You remember him," said Hugh.
+
+"Ah but I have good reason. Besides I never forget anything. I would have
+given a great deal to see him--if I had it."
+
+"I wish the Evelyns had staid longer," said Hugh. "I think you have
+wanted something to brighten you up. They did you a great deal of good
+last year. I am afraid all this taking care of Philetus and Earl Douglass
+is too much for you."
+
+Fleda gave him a very bright smile, half affection, half fun.
+
+"Don't you admire my management?" said she. "Because I do. Philetus is
+firmly persuaded that he is an invaluable assistant to me in the mystery
+of gardening; and the origin of Earl Douglass's new ideas is so enveloped
+in mist that he does not himself know where they come from. It was rich to
+hear him the other day descanting to Lucas upon the evil effects of
+earthing up corn and the advantages of curing hay in cocks, as to both
+which matters Lucas is a thorough unbeliever, and Earl was a year ago."
+
+"But that doesn't hinder your looking pale and thin, and a great deal
+soberer than I like to see you," said Hugh. "You want a change, I know. I
+don't know how you are to get it. I wish they would send for you to New
+York again."
+
+"I don't know that I should want to go if they did," said Fleda. "They
+don't raise my spirits, Hugh. I am amused sometimes,--I can't help
+that,--but such excessive gayety rather makes me shrink within myself; I
+am too out of tone with it. I never feel more absolutely quiet than
+sometimes when I am laughing at Constance Evelyn's mad sallies--and
+sometimes I cannot laugh at them. I do not know what they must think of
+me; it is what they can have no means of understanding."
+
+"I wish you didn't understand it either, Fleda."
+
+"But you shouldn't say that. I am happier than they are, now, Hugh,--now
+that you are better,--with all their means of happiness. They know nothing
+of our quiet enjoyments, they must live in a whirl or they would think
+they are not living at all, and I do not believe that all New York can
+give them the real pleasure that I have in such a day as this. They would
+see almost nothing in all this beauty that my eyes 'drink in,' as Cowper
+says; and they would be certain to quarrel with the wind, that to me is
+like the shake of an old friend's hand. Delicious!--" said Fleda, at the
+wind rewarded this eulogium with a very hearty shake indeed.
+
+"I believe you would make friends with everything, Fleda," said
+Hugh laughing.
+
+"The wind is always that to me," said Fleda,--"not always in such a
+cheerful mood as to-day, though. It talks to me often of a thousand
+old-time things and sighs over them with me--a most sympathizing
+friend!--but to day he invites me to a waltz--Come!----"
+
+And pulling Hugh after her away she went down the rocky path, with a step
+too light to care for the stones; the little feet capering down the
+mountain with a disdain of the ground that made Hugh smile to see her; and
+eyes dancing for company; till they reached the lower woodland.
+
+"A most, spirited waltz!" said Hugh.
+
+"And a most slack partner. Why didn't you keep me company?"
+
+"I never was made for waltzing," said Hugh shaking his head.
+
+"Not to the tune of the North wind? That has done me good, Hugh."
+
+"So I should judge, by your cheeks."
+
+"Poverty need not always make people poor," said Fleda taking breath and
+his arm together. "You and I are rich, Hugh."
+
+"And our riches cannot take to themselves wings and flyaway," said Hugh.
+
+"No, but besides those riches--there are the pleasures of the eye and the
+mind that one may enjoy everywhere--everywhere in the country at
+least--unless poverty bear one down very hard; and they are some of the
+purest and most satisfying of any. O the blessing of a good education! how
+it makes one independent of circumstances."
+
+"And circumstances are education too," said Hugh smiling. "I dare say we
+should not appreciate our mountains and woods so well if we had had our
+old plenty of everything else."
+
+"I always loved them," said Fleda. "But what good company they have
+been to us for years past, Hugh;--to me especially; I have more reason
+to love them."
+
+They walked on quietly and soberly to the brow of the tableland, where
+they parted; Hugh being obliged to go home, and Fleda wishing to pay a
+visit to her aunt Miriam.
+
+She turned off alone to take the way to the high road and went softly
+on, no longer certainly in the momentary spirits with which she had
+shaken hands with the wind and skipped down the mountain; but feeling,
+and thankful that she felt, a cheerful patience to tread the dusty
+highway of life.
+
+The old lady had been rather ailing, and from one or two expressions she
+had let fall Fleda could not help thinking that she looked upon her
+ailments with a much more serious eye than anybody else thought was called
+for. It did not, however, appear to-day. She was not worse, and Fleda's
+slight anxious feeling could find nothing to justify it, if it were not
+the very calm and quietly happy face and manner of the old lady; and that
+if it had something to alarm, did much more to sooth. Fleda had sat with
+her a long time, patience and cheerfulness all the while unconsciously
+growing in her company; when catching up her bonnet with a sudden haste
+very unlike her usual collectedness of manner Fleda kissed her aunt and
+was rushing away.
+
+"But stop!--where are you going, Fleda?"
+
+"Home, aunt Miriam--I must--don't keep me!"
+
+"But what are you going that way for? you can't go home that way?"
+
+"Yes I can."
+
+"How?"
+
+"I can cross the blackberry hill behind the barn and then over the east
+hill, and then there's nothing but the water-cress meadow."
+
+"I sha'n't let you go that way alone--sit down and tell me what you
+mean,--what is this desperate hurry?"
+
+But with equal precipitation Fleda had cast her bonnet out of sight
+behind the table, and the next moment turned with the utmost possible
+quietness to shake hands with Mr. Olmney. Aunt Miriam had presence of
+mind enough to make no remark and receive the young gentleman with her
+usual dignity and kindness.
+
+He staid some time, but Fleda's hurry seemed to have forsaken her. She had
+seized upon an interminable long grey stocking her aunt was knitting, and
+sat in the corner working at it most diligently, without raising her eyes
+unless spoken to.
+
+"Do you give yourself no rest at home or abroad, Miss Fleda?" said the
+gentleman.
+
+"Put that stocking down, Fleda," said her aunt, "it is in no hurry."
+
+"I like to do it, aunt Miriam."
+
+But she felt with warming cheeks that she did not like to do it with two
+people sitting still and looking at her. The gentleman presently rose.
+
+"Don't go till we have had tea, Mr. Olmney," said Mrs. Plumfield.
+
+"Thank you, ma'am,--I cannot stay, I believe,--unless Miss Fleda will let
+me take care of her down the hill by and by."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Olmney," said Fleda, "but I am not going home before
+night, unless they send for me."
+
+"I am afraid," said he looking at her, "that the agricultural turn has
+proved an over-match for your energies."
+
+"The farm don't complain of me, does it?" said Fleda, looking up at him
+with a comic grave expression of countenance.
+
+"No," said he laughing,--"certainly not; but--if you will forgive me for
+saying so--I think you complain of it,--tacitly,--and that will raise a
+good many complaints in other quarters--if you do not take care of
+yourself."
+
+He shook hands and left them; and Mrs. Plumfield sat silently looking at
+Fleda, who on her part looked at nothing but the grey stocking.
+
+"What is all this, Fleda?"
+
+"What is what, aunt Miriam?" said Fleda, picking up a stitch with
+desperate diligence.
+
+"Why did you want to run away from Mr. Olmney?"
+
+"I didn't wish to be delayed--I wanted to get home."
+
+"Then why wouldn't you let him go home with you?"
+
+"I liked better to go alone, aunt Miriam."
+
+"Don't you like him, Fleda?"
+
+"Certainly, aunt Miriam--very much.'
+
+"I think he likes you, Fleda," said her aunt smiling.
+
+"I am very sorry for it," said Fleda with great gravity.
+
+Mrs. Plumfield looked at her for a few minutes in silence and then said,
+
+"Fleda, love, come over here and sit by me and tell me what you mean. Why
+are you sorry? It has given me a great deal of pleasure to think of it."
+
+But Fleda did not budge from her seat or her stocking and seemed
+tongue-tied. Mrs. Plumfield pressed for an answer.
+
+"Because, aunt Miriam," said Fleda, with the prettiest red cheeks in the
+world but speaking very clearly and steadily,--"my liking only goes to a
+point which I am afraid will not satisfy either him or you."
+
+"But why?--it will go further."
+
+"No ma'am."
+
+"Why not? why do you say so?"
+
+"Because I must if you ask me."
+
+"But what can be more excellent and estimable, Fleda?--who could be more
+worth liking? I should have thought he would just please you. He is one of
+the most lovely young men I have ever seen."
+
+"Dear aunt Miriam!" said Fleda looking up beseechingly,--"why should we
+talk about it?"
+
+"Because I want to understand you, Fleda, and to be sure that you
+understand yourself."
+
+"I do," said Fleda, quietly and with a quivering lip.
+
+"What is there that you dislike about Mr. Olmney?"
+
+"Nothing in the world, aunt Miriam."
+
+"Then what is the reason you cannot like him enough?"
+
+"Because, aunt Miriam," said Fleda speaking in desperation,--"there isn't
+enough of him. He is _very_ good and excellent in every way--nobody feels
+that more than I do--I don't want to say a word against him--but I do not
+think he has a very strong mind; and he isn't cultivated enough."
+
+"But you cannot have everything, Fleda."
+
+"No ma'am--I don't expect it."
+
+"I am afraid you have set up too high a standard for yourself," said Mrs.
+Plumfield, looking rather troubled.
+
+"I don't think that is possible, aunt Miriam."
+
+"But I am afraid it will prevent your ever liking anybody?"
+
+"It will not prevent my liking the friends I have already--it may prevent
+my leaving them for somebody else," said Fleda, with a gravity that was
+touching in its expression.
+
+"But Mr. Olmney is sensible,--and well educated."
+
+"Yes, but his tastes are not. He could not at all enter into a great many
+things that give me the most pleasure. I do not think he quite understands
+above half of what I say to him."
+
+"Are you sure? I know he admires you, Fleda."
+
+"Ah, but that is only half enough, you see, aunt Miriam, unless I could
+admire him too."
+
+Mrs. Plumfield looked at her in some difficulty;--Mr. Olmney was not
+the only one, clearly, whose powers of comprehension were not equal to
+the subject.
+
+"Fleda," said her aunt inquiringly,--"is there anybody else that has put
+Mr. Olmney out of your head?"
+
+"Nobody in the world!" exclaimed Fleda with a frank look and tone of
+astonishment at the question, and cheeks colouring as promptly. "How could
+you ask?--But he never was in my head, aunt Miriam."
+
+"Mr. Thorn?" said Mrs. Plumfield.
+
+"Mr. Thorn!" said Fleda indignantly. "Don't you know me better than that,
+aunt Miriam? But you do not know him."
+
+"I believe I know you, dear Fleda, but I heard he had paid you a great
+deal of attention last year; and you would not have been the first
+unsuspecting nature that has been mistaken."
+
+Fleda was silent, flushed and disturbed; and Mrs. Plumfield was silent and
+meditating; when Hugh came in. He came to fetch Fleda home. Dr. Gregory
+had arrived. In haste again Fleda sought her bonnet, and exchanging a more
+than usually wistful and affectionate kiss and embrace with her aunt, set
+off with Hugh down the hill.
+
+Hugh had a great deal to say to her all the way home, of which Fleda's
+ears alone took the benefit, for her understanding received none of
+it; and when she at last came into the breakfast room where the doctor
+was sitting, the fact of his being there was the only one which had
+entered her mind.
+
+"Here she is!--I declare!" said the doctor, holding her back to look at
+her after the first greetings had passed,--"I'll be hanged if you ain't
+handsome!--Now what's the use of pinking your cheeks any more at that, as
+if you didn't know it before?--eh?"
+
+"I will always do my best to deserve your good opinion, sir," said
+Fleda laughing.
+
+"Well sit down now," said he shaking his head, "and pour me out a cup of
+tea--your mother can't make it right."
+
+And sipping his tea, for some time the old doctor sat listening to Mrs.
+Rossitur and eating bread and butter; saying little, but casting a very
+frequent glance at the figure opposite him behind the tea-board.
+
+"I am afraid," said he after a while, "that your care for my good opinion
+won't outlast an occasion. Is _that_ the way you look for every day?"
+
+The colour came with the smile; but the old doctor looked at her in a way
+that made the tears come too. He turned his eyes to Mrs. Rossitur for an
+explanation.
+
+"She is well," said Mrs. Rossitur fondly,--"she has been very
+well--except her old headaches now and then;--I think she has grown
+rather thin lately."
+
+"Thin!" said the old doctor,--"etherealized to a mere abstract of herself;
+only that is a very bad figure, for an abstract should have all the bone
+and muscle of the subject; and I should say you had little left but pure
+spirit. You are the best proof I ever saw of the principle of the
+homoeopaths--I see now that though a little corn may fatten a man, a great
+deal may be the death of him."
+
+"But I have tried it both ways, uncle Orrin," said Fleda laughing. "I
+ought to be a happy medium between plethora and starvation. I am pretty
+substantial, what there is of me."
+
+"Substantial!" said the doctor; "you look as substantial a personage as
+your old friend the 'faire Una,' just about. Well prepare yourself, gentle
+Saxon, to ride home with me the day after to-morrow. I'll try a little
+humanizing regimen with you."
+
+"I don't think that is possible, uncle Orrin," said Fleda gently.
+
+"We'll talk about the possibility afterwards--at present all you have to
+do is to get ready. If you raise difficulties you will find me a very
+Hercules to clear them away--I'm substantial enough I can tell you--so
+it's just as well to spare yourself and me the trouble."
+
+"There are no difficulties," Mrs. Rossitur and Hugh said both at once.
+
+"I knew there weren't. Put a pair or two of clean stockings in your
+trunk--that's all you want--Mrs. Pritchard and I will find the rest.
+There's the people in Fourteenth street wants you the first of November
+and I want you all the time till then, and longer too.--Stop--I've got a
+missive of some sort here for you--"
+
+He foisted out of his breast-pocket a little package of notes; one from
+Mrs. Evelyn and one from Florence begging Fleda to come to them at the
+time the doctor had named; the third from Constance.
+
+"My darling little Fleda,
+
+"I am dying to see you--so pack up and come down with Dr. Gregory if the
+least spark of regard for me is slumbering in your breast--Mamma and
+Florence are writing to beg you,--but though an insignificant member of
+the family, considering that instead of being 'next to head' only little
+Edith prevents my being at the less dignified end of this branch of the
+social system,--I could not prevail upon myself to let the representations
+of my respected elders go unsupported by mine--especially as I felt
+persuaded of the superior efficacy of the motives I had it in my power to
+present to your truly philanthropical mind.
+
+"I am in a state of mind that baffles description--Mr. Carleton is going
+home!!----
+
+"I have not worn earrings in my ears for a fortnight--my personal
+appearance is become a matter of indifference to me--any description
+of mental exertion is excruciating--I sit constantly listening for the
+ringing of the door-bell, and when it sounds I rush frantically to the
+head of the staircase and look over to see who it is--the mere sight
+of pen and ink excites delirious ideas--judge what I suffer in
+writing to you--
+
+"To make the matter worse (if it could be) I have been informed privately
+that he is going home to crown at the altar of Hymen an old attachment to
+one of the loveliest of all England's daughters. Conceive the complication
+of my feelings!----
+
+"Nothing is left me but the resources of friendship--so come darling
+Fleda, before a barrier of ice interposes itself between my chilled heart
+and your sympathy.
+
+"Mr. Thorn's state would move my pity if I were capable of being moved by
+anything--by this you will comprehend he is returned. He has been informed
+by somebody that there is a wolf in sheep's clothing prowling about
+Queechy, and his head is filled with the idea that you have fallen a
+victim, of which in my calmer moments I have in vain endeavoured to
+dispossess him--Every morning we are wakened up at an unseasonable hour by
+a furious ringing at the door-bell--Joe Manton pulls off his nightcap and
+slowly descending the stairs opens the door and finds Mr. Thorn, who
+enquires distractedly whether Miss Ringgan has arrived; and being answered
+in the negative gloomily walks off towards the East river--The state of
+anxiety in which his mother is thereby kept is rapidly depriving her of
+all her flesh--but we have directed Joe lately to reply 'no sir, but she
+is expected,'--upon which Mr. Thorn regularly smiles faintly and rewards
+the 'fowling piece' with a quarter dollar--
+
+"So make haste, dear Fleda, or I shall feel that we are acting the part of
+innocent swindlers.
+
+"C.E."
+
+There was but one voice at home on the point whether Fleda should go.
+So she went.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXII.
+
+
+
+  _Host._ Now, my young guest! methinks you're allycholy; I pray you,
+  why is it?
+
+  _Jul_. Marry, mine host, because I cannot be merry.
+
+  Two Gentlemen of Verona.
+
+
+Some nights after their arrival the doctor and Fleda were seated at tea in
+the little snug old-fashioned back parlour, where the doctor's nicest of
+housekeepers, Mrs. Pritchard, had made it ready for them. In general Mrs.
+Pritchard herself poured it out for the doctor, but she descended most
+cheerfully from her post of elevation whenever Fleda was there to fill it.
+
+The doctor and Fleda sat cosily looking at each other across the toast and
+chipped beef, their glances grazing the tea-urn which was just on one side
+of their range of vision. A comfortable Liverpool-coal fire in a state of
+repletion burned away indolently and gave everything else in the room
+somewhat of its own look of sousy independence. Except perhaps the
+delicate creature at whom the doctor between sips of his tea took rather
+wistful observations.
+
+"When are you going to Mrs. Evelyn?" he said breaking the silence.
+
+"They say next week, sir."
+
+"I shall be glad of it!" said the doctor.
+
+"Glad of it?" said Fleda smiling. "Do you want to get rid of me,
+uncle Orrin?"
+
+"Yes!" said he. "This isn't the right place for you. You are too
+much alone."
+
+"No indeed, sir. I have been reading voraciously, and enjoying myself as
+much as possible. I would quite as lieve be here as there, putting you out
+of the question."
+
+"I wouldn't as lieve have you," said he shaking his head. "What were you
+musing about before tea? your face gave me the heart-ache."
+
+"My face!" said Fleda, smiling, while an instant flush of the eyes
+answered him,--"what was the matter with my face?"
+
+"That is the very thing I want to know."
+
+"Before tea?--I was only thinking,--" said Fleda, her look going back to
+the fire from association,--"thinking of different things--not
+disagreeably--taking a kind of bird's-eye view of things, as one does
+sometimes."
+
+"I don't believe you ever take other than a bird's-eye view of anything,"
+said her uncle. "But what were you viewing just then, my little Saxon?"
+
+"I was thinking of them at home," said Fleda smiling thoughtfully,--"and I
+somehow had perched myself on a point of observation and was taking one of
+those wider views which are always rather sobering."
+
+"Views of what?"
+
+"Of life, sir."
+
+"As how?" said the doctor.
+
+"How near the end is to the beginning, and how short the space between,
+and how little the ups and downs of it will matter if we take the right
+road and get home."
+
+"Pshaw!" said the doctor.
+
+But Fleda knew him too well to take his interjection otherwise than most
+kindly. And indeed though he whirled round and eat his toast at the fire
+discontentedly, his look came back to her after a little with even more
+than its usual gentle appreciation.
+
+"What do you suppose you have come to New York for?" said he.
+
+"To see you, sir, in the first place, and the Evelyns in the second."
+
+"And who in the third?"
+
+"I am afraid the third place is vacant," said Fleda smiling.
+
+"You are, eh? Well--I don't know--but I know that I have been inquired of
+by two several and distinct people as to your coming. Ah, you needn't open
+your bright eyes at me, because I shall not tell you. Only let me
+ask,--you have no notion of fencing off my Queechy rose with a hedge of
+blackthorn,--or anything of that kind, have you?"
+
+"I have no notion of any fences at all, except invisible ones, sir," said
+Fleda, laughing and colouring very prettily.
+
+"Well those are not American fences," said the doctor, "so I suppose I am
+safe enough. Whom did I see you out riding with yesterday?"
+
+"I was with Mrs. Evelyn," said Fleda,--"I didn't want to go, but I
+couldn't very well help myself."
+
+"Mrs. Evelyn.--Mrs. Evelyn wasn't driving, was she?"
+
+"No sir; Mr. Thorn was driving."
+
+"I thought so. Have you seen your old friend Mr. Carleton yet?"
+
+"Do you know him uncle Orrin?"
+
+"Why shouldn't I? What's the difficulty of knowing people? Have you
+seen him?"
+
+"But how did you know that he was an old friend of mine?"
+
+"Question?--" said the doctor. "Hum--well, I won't tell you--so there's
+the answer. Now will you answer me?"
+
+"I have not seen him, sir."
+
+"Haven't met him in all the times you have been to Mrs. Evelyn's?"
+
+"No sir. I have been there but once in the evening, uncle Orrin. He is
+just about sailing for England."
+
+"Well, you're going there to-night, aren't you? Run and bundle yourself up
+and I'll take you there before I begin my work."
+
+There was a small party that evening at Mrs. Evelyn's. Fleda was very
+early. She ran up to the first floor,--rooms lighted and open, but
+nobody there.
+
+"Fleda Ringgan," called out the voice of Constance from over the
+stairs,--"is that you?"
+
+"Yes," said Fleda.
+
+"Well just wait till I come down to you.--My darling little Fleda, it's
+delicious of you to come so early. Now just tell me,--am I captivating?"
+
+"Well,--I retain self-possession," said Fleda. "I cannot tell about the
+strength of head of other people."
+
+"You wretched little creature!--Fleda, don't you admire my hair?--it's new
+style, my dear,--just come out,--the Delancys brought it out with
+them--Eloise Delancy taught it us--isn't it graceful? Nobody in New York
+has it yet, except the Delancys and we."
+
+"How do you know but they have taught somebody else?" said Fleda.
+
+"I won't talk to you!--Don't you like it?"
+
+"I am not sure that I do not like you in your ordinary way better."
+
+Constance made a gesture of impatience, and then pulled Fleda after her
+into the drawing-rooms.
+
+"Come in here--I won't waste the elegancies of my toilet upon your dull
+perceptions--come here and let me shew you some flowers--aren't those
+lovely? This bunch came to-day, 'for Miss Evelyn,' so Florence will have
+it it is hers, and it's very mean of her, for I am perfectly certain it is
+mine--it's come from somebody who wasn't enlightened on the subject of my
+family circle and has innocently imagined that _two_ Miss Evelyns could
+not belong to the same one! I know the floral representatives of all
+Florence's dear friends and admirers, and this isn't from any of them--I
+have been distractedly endeavouring all day to find who it came from, for
+if I don't I can't take the least comfort in it."
+
+"But you might enjoy the flowers for their own sake, I should think," said
+Fleda, breathing the sweetness of myrtle and heliotrope.
+
+"No I can't, for I have all the time the association of some horrid
+creature they might have come from, you know; but it will do just as well
+to humbug people--I shall make Cornelia Schenck believe that this came
+from my dear Mr. Carleton!"
+
+"No you won't, Constance," said Fleda gently.
+
+"My dear little Fleda, I shock you, don't I? but I sha'n't tell any
+lies--I shall merely expressively indicate a particular specimen and say,
+'My dear Cornelia, do you perceive that this is an English rose?'--and
+then it's none of my business, you know, what she believes--and she will
+be dying with curiosity and despair all the rest of the evening."
+
+"I shouldn't think there would be much pleasure in that, I confess," said
+Fleda gravely. "How very ungracefully and stiffly those are made up!"
+
+"My dear little Queechy rose?" said Constance impatiently, "you are,
+pardon me, as fresh as possible. They can't cut the flowers with long
+stems, you know,--the gardeners would be ruined. That is perfectly
+elegant--it must have cost at least ten dollars. My dear little Fleda!"
+said Constance capering off before the long pier-glass,--"I am afraid I am
+not captivating!--Do you think it would be an improvement if I put drops
+in my ears?--or one curl behind them? I don't know which Mr. Carleton
+likes best!--"
+
+And with her head first on one side and then on the other she stood
+before the glass looking at herself and Fleda by turns with such a
+comic expression of mock doubt and anxiety that no gravity but her own
+could stand it.
+
+"She is a silly girl, Fleda, isn't she?" said Mrs. Evelyn coming up
+behind them.
+
+"Mamma!--am I captivating?" cried Constance wheeling round.
+
+The mother's smile said "Very!"
+
+"Fleda is wishing she were out of the sphere of my influence,
+mamma.--Wasn't Mr. Olmney afraid of my corrupting you?" she said with a
+sudden pull-up in front of Fleda.--"My blessed stars!--there's somebody's
+voice I know.--Well I believe it is true that a rose without thorns is a
+desideratum.--Mamma, is Mrs. Thorn's turban to be an invariable _pendant_
+to your coiffure all the while Miss Ringgan is here?"
+
+"Hush!--"
+
+With the entrance of company came Constance's return from extravaganzas to
+a sufficiently graceful every-day manner, only enough touched with high
+spirits and lawlessness to free it from the charge of commonplace. But the
+contrast of these high spirits with her own rather made Fleda's mood more
+quiet, and it needed no quieting. Of the sundry people that she knew among
+those presently assembled there were none that she wanted to talk to; the
+rooms were hot and she felt nervous and fluttered, partly from encounters
+already sustained and partly from a little anxious expecting of Mr.
+Carleton's appearance. The Evelyns had not said he was to be there but she
+had rather gathered it; and the remembrance of old times was strong enough
+to make her very earnestly wish to see him and dread to be disappointed.
+She swung clear of Mr. Thorn, with some difficulty, and ensconced herself
+under the shadow of a large cabinet, between that and a young lady who was
+very good society for she wanted no help in carrying on the business of
+it. All Fleda had to do was to sit still and listen, or not listen, which
+she generally preferred. Miss Tomlinson discoursed upon varieties, with
+great sociableness and satisfaction; while poor Fleda's mind, letting all
+her sense and nonsense go, was again taking a somewhat bird's-eye view of
+things, and from the little centre of her post in Mrs. Evelyn's
+drawing-room casting curious glances over the panorama of her
+life--England, France, New York, and Queechy!--half coming to the
+conclusion that her place henceforth was only at the last and that the
+world and she had nothing to do with each other. The tide of life and
+gayety seemed to have thrown her on one side, as something that could not
+swim with it; and to be rushing past too strongly and swiftly for her
+slight bark ever to launch upon it again. Perhaps the shore might be the
+safest and happiest place; but it was sober in the comparison; and as a
+stranded bark might look upon the white sails flying by, Fleda saw the gay
+faces and heard the light tones with which her own could so little keep
+company. But as little they with her. Their enjoyment was not more foreign
+to her than the causes which moved it were strange. Merry?--she might like
+to be merry; but she could sooner laugh with the North wind than with one
+of those vapid faces, or with any face that she could not trust.
+Conversation might be pleasant,--but it must be something different from
+the noisy cross-fire of nonsense that was going on in one quarter, or the
+profitless barter of nothings that was kept up on the other side of her.
+Rather Queechy and silence, by far, than New York and _this!_
+
+And through it all Miss Tomlinson talked on and was happy.
+
+"My dear Fleda!--what are you back here for?" said Florence coming
+up to her.
+
+"I was glad to be at a safe distance from the fire."
+
+"Take a screen--here! Miss Tomlinson, your conversation is too exciting
+for Miss Ringgan--look at her cheeks--I must carry you off--I want to
+shew you a delightful contrivance for transparencies, that I learned the
+other day--"
+
+The seat beside her was vacated, and not casting so much as a look towards
+any quarter whence a possible successor to Miss Tomlinson might be
+arriving, Fleda sprang up and took a place in the far corner of the room
+by Mrs. Thorn, happily not another vacant chair in the neighbourhood. Mrs.
+Thorn had shewn a very great fancy for her and was almost as good company
+as Miss Tomlinson; not quite, for it was necessary sometimes to answer and
+therefore necessary always to hear. But Fleda liked her; she was
+thoroughly amiable, sensible, and good-hearted. And Mrs. Thorn, very much
+gratified at Fleda's choice of a seat, talked to her with a benignity
+which Fleda could not help answering with grateful pleasure.
+
+"Little Queechy, what has driven you into the corner?" said Constance
+pausing a moment before her.
+
+"It must have been a retiring spirit," said Fleda.
+
+"Mrs. Thorn, isn't she lovely?"
+
+Mrs. Thorn's smile at Fleda might almost have been called that, it was so
+full of benevolent pleasure. But she spoiled it by her answer.
+
+"I don't believe I am the first one to find it out."
+
+"But what are you looking so sober for?" Constance went on, taking Fleda's
+screen from her hand and fanning her diligently with it,--"you don't talk!
+The gravity of Miss Ringgan's face casts a gloom over the brightness of
+the evening. I couldn't conceive what made me feel chilly in the other
+room, till I looked about and found that the shade came from this corner;
+and Mr. Thorn's teeth, I saw, were chattering."
+
+"Constance!" said Fleda laughing and vexed, and making the reproof more
+strongly with her eyes,--"how can you talk so!"
+
+"Mrs. Thorn, isn't it true?"
+
+Mrs. Thorn's look at Fleda was the essence of good-humour.
+
+"Will you let Lewis come and take you a good long ride to-morrow?"
+
+"No, Mrs. Thorn, I believe not--I intend to stay perseveringly at home
+to-morrow and see if it is possible to be quiet a day in New York."
+
+"But you will go with me to the concert to-morrow night?--both of
+you--and hear Truffi;--come to my house and take tea and go from there?
+will you, Constance?"
+
+"My dear Mrs. Thorn!" said Constance,--"I shall be in ecstacies, and Miss
+Ringgan was privately imploring me last night to find some way of getting
+her to it. We regard such material pleasures as tea and muffins with great
+indifference, but when you look up after swallowing your last cup you will
+see Miss Ringgan and Miss Evelyn, cloaked and hooded, anxiously awaiting
+your next movement. My dear Fleda!--there is a ring!--"
+
+And giving her the benefit of a most comic and expressive arching of
+her eyebrows, Constance flung back the screen into Fleda's lap and
+skimmed away.
+
+Fleda was too vexed for a few minutes to understand more of Mrs. Thorn's
+talk than that she was first enlarging upon the concert, and afterwards
+detailing to her a long shopping expedition in search of something which
+had been a morning's annoyance. She almost thought Constance was unkind,
+because she wanted to go to the concert herself to lug her in so
+unceremoniously; and wished herself back in her uncle's snug little quiet
+parlour,--unless Mr. Carleton would come.
+
+And there he is!--said a quick beat of her heart, as his entrance
+explained Constance's "ring."
+
+Such a rush of associations came over Fleda that she was in imminent
+danger of losing Mrs. Thorn altogether. She managed however by some sort
+of instinct to disprove the assertion that the mind cannot attend to two
+things at once, and carried on a double conversation, with herself and
+with Mrs. Thorn, for some time very vigorously.
+
+"Just the same!--he has not altered a jot," she said to herself as he came
+forward to Mrs. Evelyn;--"it is himself!--his very self--he doesn't look a
+day older--I'm very glad!--(Yes, ma'am--it's extremely tiresome--) How
+exactly as when he left me in Paris,--and how much pleasanter than anybody
+else!--more pleasant than ever, it seems to me, but that is because I have
+not seen him in so long; he only wanted one thing. That same grave eye--
+but quieter, isn't it,--than it used to be?--I think so--(It's the best
+store in town, I think, Mrs. Thorn, by far,--yes, ma'am--) Those eyes are
+certainly the finest I ever saw--How I have seen him stand and look just
+so when he was talking to his workmen--without that air of consciousness
+that all these people have, comparatively--what a difference! (I know
+very little about it, ma'am;--I am not learned in laces--I never bought
+any--) I wish he would look this way--I wonder if Mrs. Evelyn does not
+mean to bring him to see me--she must remember;--now there is that curious
+old smile and looking down! how much better I know what it means than Mrs.
+Evelyn does--(Yes, ma'am, I understand--I mean!--it is very convenient--I
+never go anywhere else to get anything,--at least I should not if I lived
+here--) She does not know whom she is talking to.--She is going to walk
+him off into the other room! How very much more gracefully he does
+everything than anybody else--it comes from that entire high-mindedness
+and frankness, I think,--not altogether, a fine person must aid the
+effect, and that complete independence of other people.----I wonder if
+Mrs. Evelyn has forgotten my existence!--he has not, I am sure--I think
+she is a little odd--(Yes, ma'am, my face is flushed--the room is very
+warm--)"
+
+"But the fire has gone down--it will be cooler now," said Mrs. Thorn.
+
+Which were the first words that fairly entered Fleda's understanding. She
+was glad to use the screen to hide her face now, not the fire.
+
+Apparently the gentleman and lady found nothing to detain them in the
+other room, for after sauntering off to it they sauntered back again and
+placed themselves to talk just opposite her. Fleda had an additional
+screen now in the person of Miss Tomlinson, who had sought her corner and
+was earnestly talking across her to Mrs. Thorn; so that she was sure even
+if Mr. Carleton's eyes should chance to wander that way they would see
+nothing but the unremarkable skirt of her green silk dress, most unlikely
+to detain them. The trade in nothings going on over the said green silk
+was very brisk indeed; but disregarding the buzz of tongues near at hand
+Fleda's quick ears were able to free the barrier and catch every one of
+the quiet tones beyond.
+
+"And you leave us the day after to-morrow?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"No, Mrs. Evelyn,--I shall wait another steamer."
+
+The lady's brow instantly revealed to Fleda a trap setting beneath to
+catch his reason.
+
+"I'm very glad!" exclaimed little Edith who in defiance of
+conventionalities and proprieties made good her claim to be in the drawing
+room on all occasions;--"then you will take me another ride, won't you,
+Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"You do not flatter us with a very long stay," pursued Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"Quite as long as I expected--longer than I meant it to be," he answered
+rather thoughtfully.
+
+"Mr. Carleton," said Constance sidling up in front of him,--"I have been
+in distress to ask you a question, and I am afraid----"
+
+"Of what are you afraid, Miss Constance?"
+
+"That you would reward me with one of your severe looks,--which would
+petrify me,--and then I am afraid I should feel uncomfortable--"
+
+"I hope he will!" said Mrs. Evelyn, settling herself back in the corner of
+the sofa, and with a look at her daughter which was complacency
+itself,--"I hope Mr. Carleton will, if you are guilty of any
+impertinence."
+
+"What is the question, Miss Constance?"
+
+"I want to know what brought you out here?"
+
+"Fie, Constance!" said her mother. "I am ashamed of you. Do not answer
+her, Mr. Carleton."
+
+"Mr. Carleton will answer me, mamma,--he looks benevolently upon my
+faults, which are entirely those of education! What was it, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"I suppose," said he smiling, "it might be traced more or less remotely to
+the restlessness incident to human nature."
+
+"But _you_ are not restless, Mr. Carleton," said Florence, with a glance
+which might be taken as complimentary.
+
+"And knowing that I am," said Constance in comic impatience,--"you are
+maliciously prolonging my agonies. It is not what I expected of you, Mr.
+Carleton."
+
+"My dear," said her father, "Mr. Carleton, I am sure, will fulfil all
+reasonable expectations. What is the matter?"
+
+"I asked him where a certain tribe of Indians was to be found, papa, and
+he told me they were supposed originally to have come across Behring's
+Straits one cold winter!"
+
+Mr. Evelyn looked a little doubtfully and Constance with so unhesitating
+gravity that the gravity of nobody else was worth talking about.
+
+"But it is so uncommon," said Mrs. Evelyn when they had done laughing,
+"to see an Englishman of your class here at all, that when he comes a
+second time we may be forgiven for wondering what has procured us such
+an honour."
+
+"Women may always be forgiven for wondering, my dear," said Mr.
+Evelyn,--"or the rest of mankind must live at odds with them."
+
+"Your principal object was to visit our western prairies, wasn't it, Mr.
+Carleton?" said Florence.
+
+"No," he replied quietly,--"I cannot say that. I should choose to give a
+less romantic explanation of my movements. From some knowledge growing out
+of my former visit to this country I thought there were certain
+negotiations I might enter into here with advantage; and it was for the
+purpose of attending to these, Miss Constance, that I came."
+
+"And have you succeeded?" said Mrs. Evelyn with an expression of
+benevolent interest.
+
+"No, ma'am--my information had not been sufficient."
+
+"Very likely!" said Mr. Evelyn. "There isn't one man in a hundred whose
+representations on such a matter are to be trusted at a distance."
+
+"'On such a matter'!" repeated his wife funnily,--"you don't know what the
+matter was, Mr. Evelyn--you don't know what you are talking about."
+
+"Business, my dear,--business--I take only what Mr. Carleton said;--it
+doesn't signify a straw what business. A man must always see with his
+own eyes."
+
+Whether Mr. Carleton had seen or had not seen, or whether even he had his
+faculty of hearing in present exercise, a glance at his face was
+incompetent to discover.
+
+"I never should have imagined," said Constance eying him keenly, "that Mr.
+Carleton's errand to this country was one of business and not of romance,
+_I_ believe it's a humbug!"
+
+For an instant this was answered by one of those looks of absolute
+composure in every muscle and feature which put an effectual bar to all
+further attempts from without or revelations from within; a look Fleda
+remembered well, and felt even in her corner. But it presently relaxed,
+and he said with his usual manner,
+
+"You cannot understand then, Miss Constance, that there should be any
+romance about business?"
+
+"I cannot understand," said Mrs. Evelyn, "why romance should not come
+after business. Mr. Carleton, sir, you have seen American scenery this
+summer--isn't American beauty worth staying a little while longer for?"
+
+"My dear," said Mr. Evelyn, "Mr. Carleton is too much of a philosopher to
+care about beauty--every man of sense is."
+
+"I am sure he is not," said Mrs. Evelyn smoothly. "Mr. Carleton,--you are
+an admirer of beauty, are you not, sir?"
+
+"I hope so, Mrs. Evelyn," he said smiling,--"but perhaps I shall shock you
+by adding,--not of _beauties_."
+
+"That sounds very odd," said Florence.
+
+"But let us understand," said Mrs. Evelyn with the air of a person solving
+a problem,--"I suppose we are to infer that your taste in beauty is of a
+peculiar kind?"
+
+"That may be a fair inference," he said.
+
+"What is it then?" said Constance eagerly.
+
+"Yes--what is it you look for in a face?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"Let us hear whether America has any chance," said Mr. Thorn, who
+had joined the group and placed himself precisely so as to hinder
+Fleda's view.
+
+"My fancy has no stamp of nationality, in this, at least," he said
+pleasantly.
+
+"Now for instance, the Miss Delancys--don't you call them handsome, Mr.
+Carleton?" said Florence.
+
+"Yes," he said, half smiling.
+
+"But not beautiful?--Now what is it they want?"
+
+"I do not wish, if I could, to make the want visible to other eyes
+than my own."
+
+"Well, Cornelia Schenck,--how do you like her face?"
+
+"It is very pretty-featured."
+
+"Pretty-featured!--Why she is called beautiful. She has a beautiful smile,
+Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"She has only one."
+
+"Only one! and how many smiles ought the same person to have?" cried
+Florence impatiently. But that which instantly answered her said forcibly
+that a plurality of them was possible.
+
+"I have seen one face," he said gravely, and his eye seeking the
+floor,--"that had I think a thousand."
+
+"Different smiles?" said Mrs. Evelyn in a constrained voice.
+
+"If they were not all absolutely that, they had so much of freshness and
+variety that they all seemed new."
+
+"Was the mouth so beautiful?" said Florence.
+
+"Perhaps it would not have been remarked for beauty when it was perfectly
+at rest; but it could not move with the least play of feeling, grave or
+gay, that it did not become so in a very high degree. I think there was no
+touch or shade of sentiment in the mind that the lips did not give with
+singular nicety; and the mind was one of the most finely wrought I have
+ever known."
+
+"And what other features went with this mouth?" said Florence.
+
+"The usual complement, I suppose," said Thorn. "'Item, two lips
+indifferent red; item, two grey eyes with lids to them; item, one neck,
+one chin, and so forth.'"
+
+"Mr. Carleton, sir," said Mrs. Evelyn blandly--"as Mr. Evelyn says women
+may be forgiven for wondering, won't you answer Florence's question?"
+
+"Mr. Thorn has done it, Mrs. Evelyn, for me."
+
+"But I have great doubts of the correctness of Mr. Thorn's description,
+sir--won't you indulge us with yours?"
+
+"Word-painting is a difficult matter, Mrs. Evelyn, in some
+instances;--if I must do it I will borrow my colours. In general, 'that
+which made her fairness much the fairer was that it was but an
+ambassador of a most fair mind.'"
+
+"A most exquisite picture!" said Thorn, "and the original don't stand so
+thick that one is in any danger of mistaking them. Is the painter
+Shakspeare?--I don't recollect--"
+
+"I think Sidney, sir--I am not sure."
+
+"But still, Mr. Carleton," said Mrs Evelyn, "this is only in general--I
+want very much to know the particulars;--what style of features belonged
+to this face?"
+
+"The fairest, I think, I have ever known," said Mr. Carleton. "You
+asked me, Miss Evelyn, what was my notion of beauty;--this face was a
+good illustration of it. Not perfection of outline, though it had that
+too in very uncommon degree;--but the loveliness of mind and character
+to which these features were only an index; the thoughts were
+invariably telegraphed through eye and mouth more faithfully than words
+could give them."
+
+"What kind of eyes?" said Florence.
+
+His own grew dark as he answered,--
+
+"Clear and pure as one might imagine an angel's--through which I am sure
+my good angel many a time looked at me."
+
+Good angels were at a premium among the eyes that were exchanging glances
+just then.
+
+"And Mr. Carleton," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"is it fair to ask--this
+paragon--is she living still?"
+
+"I hope so," he answered, with his old light smile, dismissing the
+subject.
+
+"You spoke so much in the past tense," said Mrs. Evelyn apologetically.
+
+"Yes, I have not seen it since it was a child's."
+
+"A child's face!--Oh," said Florence, "I think you see a great many
+children's faces with that kind of look."
+
+"I never saw but the one," said Mr. Carleton dryly.
+
+So far Fleda listened, with cheeks that would certainly have excited Mrs.
+Thorn's alarm if she had not been happily engrossed with Miss Tomlinson's
+affairs; though up to the last two minutes the idea of herself had not
+entered Fleda's head in connection with the subject of conversation. But
+then feeling it impossible to make her appearance in public that evening,
+she quietly slipped out of the open window close by, which led into a
+little greenhouse on the piazza, and by another door gained the hall and
+the dressing-room.
+
+When Dr. Gregory came to Mrs. Evelyn's an hour or two after, a figure all
+cloaked and hooded ran down the stairs and met him in the hall.
+
+"Ready!" said the doctor in surprise.
+
+"I have been ready some time, sir," said Fleda.
+
+"Well," said he, "then we'll go straight home, for I've not done my
+work yet."
+
+"Dear uncle Orrin!" said Fleda, "if I had known you had work to do I
+wouldn't have come."
+
+"Yes you would!" said he decidedly.
+
+She clasped her uncle's arm and walked with him briskly home through the
+frosty air, looking at the silent lights and shadows on the walls of the
+street and feeling a great desire to cry.
+
+"Did you have a pleasant evening?" said the doctor when they were
+about half way.
+
+"Not particularly, sir," said Fleda hesitating.
+
+He said not another word till they got home and Fleda went up to her
+room. But the habit of patience overcame the wish to cry; and though the
+outside of her little gold-clasped Bible awoke it again, a few words of
+the inside were enough to lay it quietly to sleep.
+
+"Well," said the doctor as they sat at breakfast the next morning,--"where
+are you going next?"
+
+"To the concert, I must, to-night," said Fleda. "I couldn't help myself."
+
+"Why should you want to help yourself?" said the doctor. "And to Mrs.
+Thorn's to-morrow night?"
+
+"No sir, I believe not."
+
+"I believe you will," said he looking at her.
+
+"I am sure I should enjoy myself more at home, uncle Orrin. There is very
+little rational pleasure to be had in these assemblages."
+
+"Rational pleasure!" said he. "Didn't you have any rational pleasure
+last night?"
+
+"I didn't hear a single word spoken, sir, that was worth listening to,--at
+least that was spoken to me; and the hollow kind of rattle that one hears
+from every tongue makes me more tired than anything else, I believe;--I am
+out of tune with it, somehow."
+
+"Out of tune!" said the old doctor, giving her a look made up of humourous
+vexation and real sadness,--"I wish I knew the right tuning-key to take
+hold of you!"
+
+"I become harmonious rapidly, uncle Orrin, when I am in this pleasant
+little room alone with you."
+
+"That won't do!" said he, shaking his head at the smile with which this
+was said,--"there is too much tension upon the strings. So that was the
+reason you were all ready waiting for me last night?--Well, you must tune
+up, my little piece of discordance, and go with me to Mrs. Thorn's
+to-morrow night--I won't let you off."
+
+"With you, sir!" said Fleda.
+
+"Yes," he said. "I'll go along and take care of you lest you get drawn
+into something else you don't like."
+
+"But, dear uncle Orrin, there is another difficulty--it is to be a large
+party and I have not a dress exactly fit."
+
+"What have you got?" said he with a comic kind of fierceness.
+
+"I have silks, but they are none of them proper for this occasion--they
+are ever so little old-fashioned."
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"Nothing, sir," said Fleda; "for I don't want to go."
+
+"You mend a pair of stockings to put on," said he nodding at her, "and
+I'll see to the rest."
+
+"Apparently you place great importance in stockings," said Fleda laughing,
+"for you always mention them first. But please don't get anything for me,
+uncle Orrin--please don't! I have plenty for common occasions, and I don't
+care to go to Mrs. Thorn's."
+
+"I don't care either," said the doctor, working himself into his great
+coat. "By the by, do you want to invoke the aid of St. Crispin?"
+
+He went off, and Fleda did not know whether to cry or to laugh at the
+vigorous way in which he trod through the hall and slammed the front door
+after him. Her spirits just kept the medium and did neither. But they were
+in the same doubtful mood still an hour after when he came back with a
+paper parcel he had brought home under his arm, and unrolled a fine
+embroidered muslin; her eyes were very unsteady in carrying their brief
+messages of thankfulness, as if they feared saying too much. The doctor,
+however, was in the mood for doing, not talking, by looks or otherwise.
+Mrs. Pritchard was called into consultation, and with great pride and
+delight engaged to have the dress and all things else in due order by the
+following night; _her_ eyes saying all manner of gratulatory things as
+they went from the muslin to Fleda and from Fleda to Dr. Gregory.
+
+The rest of the day was, not books, but needlefuls of thread; and from the
+confusion of laces and draperies Fleda was almost glad to escape and go to
+the concert,--but for one item; that spoiled it.
+
+They were in their seats early. Fleda managed successfully to place the
+two Evelyns between her and Mr. Thorn, and then prepared herself to wear
+out the evening with patience.
+
+"My dear Fleda!" whispered Constance, after some time spent in restless
+reconnoitring of everybody and everything,--"I don't see my English rose
+anywhere!"
+
+"Hush!" said Fleda smiling. "That happened not to be an English rose,
+Constance."
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"American, unfortunately; it was a Noisette; the variety I think that they
+call 'Conque de Venus.'"
+
+"My dear little Fleda, you're too wise for anything!" said Constance with
+a rather significant arching of her eyebrows. "You mustn't expect other
+people to be as rural in their acquirements as yourself. I don't pretend
+to know any rose by sight but the Queechy," she said, with a change of
+expression meant to cover the former one.
+
+Fleda's face, however, did not call for any apology. It was
+perfectly quiet.
+
+"But what has become of him?" said Constance with her comic
+impatience.--"My dear Fleda! if my eyes cannot rest upon that development
+of elegance the parterre is become a wilderness to me!"
+
+"Hush, Constance!" Fleda whispered earnestly,--"you are not safe--he may
+be near you."
+
+"Safe!--" ejaculated Constance; but a half backward hasty glance of her
+eye brought home so strong an impression that the person in question was
+seated a little behind her that she dared not venture another look, and
+became straightway extremely well-behaved.
+
+He was there; and being presently convinced that he was in the
+neighbourhood of his little friend of former days he resolved with his own
+excellent eyes to test the truth of the opinion he had formed as to the
+natural and inevitable effect of circumstances upon her character; whether
+it could by possibility have retained its great delicacy and refinement
+under the rough handling and unkindly bearing of things seemingly foreign
+to both. He had thought not.
+
+Truffi did not sing, and the entertainment was of a very secondary
+quality. This seemed to give no uneasiness to the Miss Evelyns, for if
+they pouted they laughed and talked in the same breath, and that
+incessantly. It was nothing to Mr. Carleton, for his mind was bent on
+something else. And with a little surprise he saw that it was nothing to
+the subject of his thoughts,--either because her own were elsewhere too,
+or because they were in league with a nice taste that permitted them to
+take no interest in what was going on. Even her eyes, trained as they had
+been to recluse habits, were far less busy than those of her companions;
+indeed they were not busy at all; for the greater part of the time one
+hand was upon the brow, shielding them from the glare of the gas-lights.
+Ostensibly,--but the very quiet air of the face led him to guess that the
+mind was glad of a shield too. It relaxed sometimes. Constance and
+Florence and Mr. Thorn and Mr. Thorn's mother were every now and then
+making demands upon her, and they were met always with an intelligent
+well-bred eye, and often with a smile of equal gentleness and character;
+but her observer noticed that though the smile came readily, it went as
+readily, and the lines of the face quickly settled again into what seemed
+to be an habitual composure. There were the same outlines, the same
+characters, he remembered very well; yet there was a difference; not grief
+had changed them, but life had. The brow had all its fine chiselling and
+high purity of expression; but now there sat there a hopelessness, or
+rather a want of hopefulness, that a child's face never knows. The mouth
+was sweet and pliable as ever, but now often patience and endurance did
+not quit their seat upon the lip even when it smiled. The eye with all its
+old clearness and truthfulness had a shade upon it that nine years ago
+only fell at the bidding of sorrow; and in every line of the face there
+was a quiet gravity that went to the heart of the person who was studying
+it. Whatever causes had been at work he was very sure had done no harm to
+the character; its old simplicity had suffered no change, as every look
+and movement proved; the very unstudied careless position of the fingers
+over the eyes shewed that the thoughts had nothing to do there.
+
+On one half of his doubt Mr. Carleton's mind was entirely made up;--but
+education? the training and storing of the mind?--how had that fared? He
+would know!--
+
+Perhaps he would have made some attempt that very evening towards
+satisfying himself; but noticing that in coming out Thorn permitted the
+Evelyns to pass him and attached himself determinately to Fleda, he drew
+back, and resolved to make his observations indirectly and on more than
+one point before he should seem to make them at all.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIII
+
+
+
+  Hark! I hear the sound of coaches,
+  The hour of attack approaches.
+
+  Gay.
+
+
+Mrs. Pritchard had arrayed Fleda in the white muslin, with an amount of
+satisfaction and admiration that all the lines of her face were
+insufficient to express.
+
+"Now," she said, "you must just run down and let the doctor see you--afore
+you take the shine off--or he won't be able to look at anything else when
+you get to the place."
+
+"That would be unfortunate!" said Fleda, and she ran down laughing into
+the room where the doctor was waiting for her; but her astonished eyes
+encountering the figure of Dr. Quackenboss she stopped short, with an air
+that no woman of the world could have bettered. The physician of Queechy
+on his part was at least equally taken aback.
+
+"Dr. Quackenboss!" said Fleda.
+
+"I--I was going to say, Miss Ringgan!" said the doctor with a most
+unaffected obeisance,--"but--a--I am afraid, sir, it is a deceptive
+influence!"
+
+"I hope not," said Dr. Gregory smiling, one corner of his mouth for his
+guest and the other for his niece. "Real enough to do real execution, or I
+am mistaken, sir."
+
+"Upon my word, sir," said Dr. Quackenboss bowing again,--"I hope--a--Miss
+Ringgan!--will remember the acts of her executive power at home, and
+return in time to prevent an unfortunate termination!"
+
+Dr. Gregory laughed heartily now, while Fleda's cheeks relieved her dress
+to admiration.
+
+"Who will complain of her if she don't?" said the doctor. "Who will
+complain of her if she don't?"
+
+But Fleda put in her question.
+
+"How are you all at home, Dr. Quackenboss?"
+
+"All Queechy, sir," answered the doctor politely, on the principle of
+'first come, first served,'--"and individuals,--I shouldn't like to
+specify--"
+
+"How are you all in Queechy, Dr. Quackenboss!" said Fleda.
+
+"I--have the pleasure to say--we are coming along as usual," replied the
+doctor, who seemed to have lost his power of standing up straight;--"My
+sister Flora enjoys but poor health lately,--they are all holding their
+heads up at your house. Mr. Rossitur has come home."
+
+"Uncle Rolf! Has he!" exclaimed Fleda, the colour of joy quite supplanting
+the other. "O I'm very glad!"
+
+"Yes," said the doctor,--"he's been home now,--I guess, going on
+four days."
+
+"I am very glad!" repeated Fleda. "But won't you come and see me another
+time, Dr. Quackenboss?--I am obliged to go out."
+
+The doctor professed his great willingness, adding that he had only come
+down to the city to do two or three chores and thought she might perhaps
+like to take the opportunity--which would afford him such very great
+gratification.
+
+"No indeed, faire Una," said Dr. Gregory, when they were on their way to
+Mrs. Thorn's,--"they've got your uncle at home now and we've got you; and
+I mean to keep you till I'm satisfied. So you may bring home that eye that
+has been squinting at Queechy ever since you have been here and make up
+your mind to enjoy yourself; I sha'n't let you go till you do."
+
+"I ought to enjoy myself, uncle Orrin," said Fleda, squeezing his arm
+gratefully.
+
+"See you do," said he.
+
+The pleasant news from home had given Fleda's spirits the needed spur
+which the quick walk to Mrs. Thorn's did not take off.
+
+"Did you ever see Fleda look so well, mamma?" said Florence, as the former
+entered the drawing-room.
+
+"That is the loveliest and best face in the room," said Mr. Evelyn; "and
+she looks like herself to-night."
+
+"There is a matchless simplicity about her," said a gentleman standing by.
+
+"Her dress is becoming," said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"Why where did you ever see her, Mr. Stackpole, except at our house?" said
+Constance.
+
+"At Mrs. Decatur's--I have had that pleasure--and once at her uncle's."
+
+"I didn't know you ever noticed ladies' faces, Mr. Stackpole," said
+Florence.
+
+"How Mrs. Thorn does look at her!" said Constance, under her breath. "It
+is too much!"
+
+It was almost too much for Fleda's equanimity, for the colour began to
+come.
+
+"And there goes Mr. Carleton!" said Constance. "I expect momentarily to
+hear the company strike up 'Sparkling and Bright.'"
+
+[Illustration: "And there goes Mr. Carleton!" said Constance.]
+
+"They should have done that some time ago, Miss Constance," said the
+gentleman.
+
+Which compliment, however, Constance received with hardly disguised scorn,
+and turned her attention again to Mr. Carleton.
+
+"I trust I do not need presentation," said his voice and his smile at
+once, as he presented himself to Fleda.
+
+How little he needed it the flash of feeling which met his eyes said
+sufficiently well. But apparently the feeling was a little too deep, for
+the colour mounted and the eyes fell, and the smile suddenly died on the
+lips. Mr. Thorn came up to them, and releasing her hand Mr. Carleton
+stepped back and permitted him to lead her away.
+
+"What do think of _that_ face?" said Constance finding herself a few
+minutes after at his side.
+
+"'That' must define itself," said he, "or I can hardly give a safe
+answer."
+
+"What face? Why I mean of course the one Mr. Thorn carried off just now."
+
+"You are her friend, Miss Constance," he said coolly. "May I ask for your
+judgment upon it before I give mine?"
+
+"Mine? why I expected every minute that Mr. Thorn would make the musicians
+play 'Sparkling and Bright,' and tell Miss Ringgan that to save trouble he
+had directed them to express what he was sure were the sentiments of the
+whole company in one burst."
+
+He smiled a little, but in a way that Constance could not understand and
+did not like.
+
+"Those are common epithets," he said.
+
+"Must I use uncommon?" said Constance significantly.
+
+"No--but these may say one thing or another."
+
+"I have said one thing," said Constance; "and now you may say the other."
+
+"Pardon me--you have said nothing. These epithets are deserved by a great
+many faces, but on very different grounds; and the praise is a different
+thing accordingly."
+
+"Well what is the difference?" said Constance.
+
+"On what do you think this lady's title to it rests?"
+
+"On what?--why on that bewitching little air of the eyes and mouth,
+I suppose."
+
+"Bewitching is a very vague term," said he smiling again more quietly.
+"But you have had an opportunity of knowing it much better of late than
+I--to which class of bright faces would you refer this one? Where does the
+light come from?"
+
+"I never studied faces in a class," said Constance a little scornfully.
+"Come from?--a region of mist and clouds I should say, for it is sometimes
+pretty well covered up."
+
+"There are some eyes whose sparkling is nothing more than the play of
+light upon a bright bead of glass."
+
+"It is not that," said Constance, answering in spite of herself after
+delaying as long as she dared.
+
+"There is the brightness that is only the reflection of outward
+circumstances, and passes away with them."
+
+"It isn't that in Fleda Ringgan," said Constance, "for her outward
+circumstances have no brightness, I should think, that reflection would
+not utterly absorb."
+
+She would fain have turned the conversation, but the questions were put
+so lightly and quietly that it could not be gracefully done. She longed to
+cut it short, but her hand was upon Mr. Carleton's arm and they were
+slowly sauntering down the rooms,--too pleasant a state of things to be
+relinquished for a trifle.
+
+"There is the broad day-light of mere animal spirits," he went on, seeming
+rather to be suggesting these things for her consideration than eager to
+set forth any opinions of his own;--"there is the sparkling of mischief,
+and the fire of hidden passions,--there is the passing brilliance of wit,
+as satisfactory and resting as these gas-lights,--and there is now and
+then the light of refined affections out of a heart unspotted from the
+world, as pure and abiding as the stars, and like them throwing its soft
+ray especially upon the shadows of life."
+
+"I have always understood," said Constance, "that cats' eyes are brightest
+in the dark."
+
+"They do not love the light, I believe," said Mr. Carleton calmly.
+
+"Well," said Constance, not relishing the expression of her companion's
+eye, which from glowing had suddenly become cool and bright,--"where
+would you put me, Mr. Carleton, among all these illuminators of the
+social system?"
+
+"You may put yourself--where you please, Miss Constance," he said, again
+turning upon her an eye so deep and full in its meaning that her own and
+her humour fell before it; for a moment she looked most unlike the gay
+scene around her.
+
+"Is not that the best brightness," he said speaking low, "that will last
+forever?--and is not that lightness of heart best worth having which does
+not depend on circumstances, and will find its perfection just when all
+other kinds of happiness fail utterly?"
+
+"I can't conceive," said Constance presently, rallying or trying to rally
+herself,--"what you and I have to do in a place where people are enjoying
+themselves at this moment, Mr. Carleton!"
+
+He smiled at that and led her out of it into the conservatory, close to
+which they found themselves. It was a large and fine one, terminating the
+suite of rooms in this direction. Few people were there; but at the far
+end stood a group among whom Fleda and Mr. Thorn were conspicuous. He was
+busying himself in putting together a quantity of flowers for her; and
+Mrs. Evelyn and old Mr. Thorn stood looking on; with Mr. Stackpole. Mr.
+Stackpole was an Englishman, of certainly not very prepossessing exterior
+but somewhat noted as an author and a good deal sought after in
+consequence. At present he was engaged by Mrs. Evelyn. Mr. Carleton and
+Constance sauntered up towards them and paused at a little distance to
+look at some curious plants.
+
+"Don't try for that, Mr. Thorn," said Fleda, as the gentleman was making
+rather ticklish efforts to reach a superb Fuchsia that hung high,--"You
+are endangering sundry things besides yourself."
+
+"I have learned, Miss Fleda," said Thorn as with much ado he grasped the
+beautiful cluster,--"that what we take the most pains for is apt to be
+reckoned the best prize,--a truth I should never think of putting into a
+lady's head if I believed it possible that a single one of them was
+ignorant of its practical value."
+
+"I have this same rose in my garden at home," said Fleda.
+
+"You are a great gardener, Miss Fleda, I hear," said the old gentleman.
+"My son says you are an adept in it."
+
+"I am very fond of it, sir," said Fleda, answering _him_ with an entirely
+different face.
+
+"I thought the delicacy of American ladies was beyond such a
+masculine employment as gardening," said Mr. Stackpole, edging away
+from Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"I guess this young lady is an exception to the rule," said old Mr. Thorn.
+
+"I guess she is an exception to most rules that you have got in your
+note-book, Mr. Stackpole," said the younger man. "But there is no guessing
+about the garden, for I have with my own eyes seen these gentle hands at
+one end of a spade and her foot at the other;--a sight that--I declare I
+don't know whether I was most filled with astonishment or admiration!"
+
+"Yes," said Fleda half laughing and colouring,--"and he ingenuously
+confessed in his surprise that he didn't know whether politeness ought to
+oblige him to stop and shake hands or to pass by without seeing me;
+evidently shewing that he thought I was about something equivocal."
+
+The laugh was now turned against Mr. Thorn, but he went on cutting his
+geraniums with a grave face.
+
+"Well," said he at length, "I think it _is_ something of very equivocal
+utility. Why should such gentle hands and feet spend their strength in
+clod-breaking, when rough ones are at command?"
+
+There was nothing equivocal about Fleda's merriment this time.
+
+"I have learned, Mr. Thorn, by sad experience, that the rough hands break
+more than the clods. One day I set Philetus to work among my flowers; and
+the first thing I knew he had pulled up a fine passion-flower which didn't
+make much shew above ground and was displaying it to me with the grave
+commentary, 'Well! that root did grow to a great haigth!'"
+
+"Some mental clod-breaking to be done up there, isn't there?" said Thorn
+in a kind of aside. "I cannot express my admiration at the idea of your
+dealing with those boors, as it has been described to me."
+
+"They do not deserve the name, Mr. Thorn," said Fleda. "They are many
+of them most sensible and excellent people, and friends that I value
+very highly."
+
+"Ah, your goodness would made friends of everything."
+
+"Not of boors, I hope," said Fleda coolly. "Besides, what do you mean by
+the name?"
+
+"Anybody incapable of appreciating that of which you alone should be
+unconscious," he said softly.
+
+Fleda stood impatiently tapping her flowers against her left hand.
+
+"I doubt their power of appreciation reaches a point that would surprise
+you, sir."
+
+"It does indeed--if I am mistaken in my supposition," he said with a
+glance which Fleda refused to acknowledge.
+
+"What proportion do you suppose," she went on, "of all these roomfuls of
+people behind us,--without saying anything uncharitable,--what
+proportion of them, if compelled to amuse themselves for two hours at a
+bookcase, would pitch upon Macaulay's Essays, or anything like them, to
+spend the time?"
+
+"Hum--really, Miss Fleda," said Thorn, "I should want to brush up my
+Algebra considerably before I could hope to find x, y, and z in such a
+confusion of the alphabet."
+
+"Or extract the small sensible root of such a quantity of light matter,"
+said Mr. Stackpole.
+
+"Will you bear with my vindication of my country friends?--Hugh and I sent
+for a carpenter to make some new arrangement of shelves in a cupboard
+where we kept our books; he was one of these boors, Mr. Thorn, in no
+respect above the rest. The right stuff for his work was wanting, and
+while it was sent for he took up one of the volumes that were lying about
+and read perseveringly until the messenger returned. It was a volume of
+Macaulay's Miscellanies; and afterwards he borrowed the book of me."
+
+"And you lent it to him?" said Constance.
+
+"Most assuredly! and with a great deal of pleasure."
+
+"And is this no more than a common instance, Miss Ringgan?" said
+Mr. Carleton.
+
+"No, I think not," said Fleda; the quick blood in her cheeks again
+answering the familiar voice and old associations;--"I know several of the
+farmers' daughters around us that have studied Latin and Greek; and
+philosophy is a common thing; and I am sure there is more sense"--
+
+She suddenly checked herself, and her eye which had been sparkling
+grew quiet.
+
+"It is very absurd!" said Mr. Stackpole
+
+"Why, sir?"
+
+"O--these people have nothing to do with such things--do them nothing
+but harm!"
+
+"May I ask again, what harm?" said Fleda gently.
+
+"Unfit them for the duties of their station and make them
+discontented with it."
+
+"By making it pleasanter?"
+
+"No, no--not by making it pleasanter."
+
+"By what then, Mr. Stackpole?" said Thorn, to draw him on and to draw her
+out, Fleda was sure.
+
+"By lifting them out of it."
+
+"And what objection to lifting them out of it?" said Thorn.
+
+"You can't lift everybody out of it," said the gentleman with a little
+irritation in his manner,--"that station must be filled--there must always
+be poor people."
+
+"And what degree of poverty ought to debar a man from the pleasures of
+education and a cultivated taste? such as he can attain?
+
+"No, no, not that," said Mr. Stackpole;--"but it all goes to fill them
+with absurd notions about their place in society, inconsistent with proper
+subordination."
+
+Fleda looked at him, but shook her head slightly and was silent.
+
+"Things are in very different order on our side the water," said Mr.
+Stackpole hugging himself.
+
+"Are they?" said Fleda.
+
+"Yes--we understand how to keep things in their places a little better."
+
+"I did not know," said Fleda quietly, "that it was by _design_ of the
+rulers of England that so many of her lower class are in the intellectual
+condition of our slaves."
+
+"Mr. Carleton," said Mrs. Evelyn laughing,--"what do you say to
+that, sir?"
+
+Fleda's face turned suddenly to him with a quick look of apology, which
+she immediately knew was not needed.
+
+"But this kind of thing don't make the people any happier," pursued Mr.
+Stackpole;--"only serves to give them uppish and dissatisfied longings
+that cannot be gratified."
+
+"Somebody says," observed Thorn, "that 'under a despotism all are
+contented because none can get on, and in a republic none are contented
+because all can get on.'"
+
+"Precisely," said Mr. Stackpole.
+
+"That might do very well if the world were in a state of perfection," said
+Fleda. "As it is, commend me to discontent and getting on. And the
+uppishness I am afraid is a national fault, sir; you know our state motto
+is 'Excelsior.'"
+
+"We are at liberty to suppose," said Thorn, "that Miss Ringgan has
+followed the example of her friends the farmers' daughters?--or led
+them in it?--"
+
+"It is dangerous to make surmises," said Fleda colouring.
+
+"It is a pleasant way of running into danger," said Mr. Thorn, who was
+leisurely pruning the prickles from the stem of a rose.
+
+"I was talking to a gentleman once," said Fleda, "about the birds and
+flowers we find in our wilds; and he told me afterwards gravely that he
+was afraid I was studying too many things at once!--when I was innocent
+of all ornithology but what my eyes and ears had picked up in the woods;
+except some childish reminiscences of Audubon."
+
+"That is just the right sort of learning for a lady," said Mr. Stackpole,
+smiling at her, however;--"women have nothing to do with books."
+
+"What do you say to that, Miss Fleda?" said Thorn.
+
+"Nothing, sir; it is one of those positions that are unanswerable."
+
+"But Mr. Stackpole," said Mrs. Evelyn, "I don't like that doctrine, sir. I
+do not believe in it at all."
+
+"That is unfortunate--for my doctrine," said the gentleman.
+
+"But I do not believe it is yours. Why must women have nothing to do with
+books? what harm do they do, Mr. Stackpole?"
+
+"Not needed, ma'am,--a woman, as somebody says, knows intuitively all that
+is really worth knowing."
+
+"Of what use is a mine that is never worked?" said Mr. Carleton.
+
+"It _is_ worked," said Mr. Stackpole. "Domestic life is the true training
+for the female mind. One woman will learn more wisdom from the child on
+her breast than another will learn from ten thousand volumes."
+
+"It is very doubtful how much wisdom the child will ever learn from her,"
+said Mr. Carleton smiling.
+
+"A woman who never saw a book," pursued Mr. Stackpole, unconsciously
+quoting his author, "may be infinitely superior, even in all those matters
+of which books treat, to the woman who has read, and read intelligently, a
+whole library."
+
+"Unquestionably--and it is likewise beyond question that a silver sixpence
+may be worth more than a washed guinea."
+
+"But a woman's true sphere is in her family--in her home duties, which
+furnish the best and most appropriate training for her faculties--pointed
+out by nature itself."
+
+"Yes!" said Mr. Carleton,--"and for those duties, some of the very
+highest and noblest that are entrusted to human agency, the fine
+machinery that is to perform them should be wrought to its last point of
+perfectness. The wealth of a woman's mind, instead of lying in the rough,
+should be richly brought out and fashioned for its various ends, while
+yet those ends are in the future, or it will never meet the demand. And
+for her own happiness, all the more because her sphere is at home, her
+home stores should be exhaustless--the stores she cannot go abroad to
+seek. I would add to strength beauty, and to beauty grace, in the
+intellectual proportions, so far as possible. It were ungenerous, in man
+to condemn the _best_ half of human intellect to insignificance merely
+because it is not his own."
+
+Mrs. Evelyn wore a smile of admiration that nobody saw, but Fleda's face
+was a study while Mr. Carleton was saying this. Her look was fixed upon
+him with such intent satisfaction and eagerness that it was not till he
+had finished that she became aware that those dark eyes were going very
+deep into hers, and suddenly put a stop to the inquisition.
+
+"Very pleasant doctrine to the ears that have an interest in it!" said Mr.
+Stackpole rather discontentedly.
+
+"The man knows little of his own interest," said Mr. Carleton, "who would
+leave that ground waste, or would cultivate it only in the narrow spirit
+of a utilitarian. He needs an influence in his family not more refreshing
+than rectifying; and no man will seek that in one greatly his inferior. He
+is to be pitied who cannot fall back upon his home with the assurance that
+he has there something better than himself."
+
+"Why, Mr. Carleton, sir--" said Mrs. Evelyn, with every line of her mouth
+saying funny things,--"I am afraid you have sadly neglected your own
+interest--have you anything at Carleton better than yourself?"
+
+Suddenly cool again, he laughed and said, "You were there, Mrs. Evelyn."
+
+"But Mr. Carleton,--" pursued the lady with a mixture of insinuation and
+fun,--"why were you never married?"
+
+"Circumstances have always forbade it," he answered with a smile
+which Constance declared was the most fascinating thing she ever saw
+in her life.
+
+Fleda was arranging her flowers, with the help of some very unnecessary
+suggestions from the donor.
+
+"Mr. Lewis," said Constance with a kind of insinuation very different from
+her mother's, made up of fun and daring,--"Mr. Carleton has been giving me
+a long lecture on botany; while my attention was distracted by listening
+to your _spirituel_ conversation."
+
+"Well, Miss Constance?"
+
+"And I am morally certain I sha'n't recollect a word of it if I don't
+carry away some specimens to refresh my memory--and in that case he would
+never give me another!"
+
+It was impossible to help laughing at the distressful position of the
+young lady's eyebrows, and with at least some measure of outward grace Mr.
+Thorn set about complying with her request. Fleda again stood tapping her
+left hand with her flowers, wondering a little that somebody else did not
+come and speak to her; but he was talking to Mrs. Evelyn and Mr.
+Stackpole. Fleda did not wish to join them, and nothing better occurred to
+her than to arrange her flowers over again; so throwing them all down
+before her on a marble slab, she began to pick them up one by one and put
+them together, with it must be confessed a very indistinct realization of
+the difference between myrtle and lemon blossoms, and as she seemed to be
+laying acacia to rose, and disposing some sprigs of beautiful heath behind
+them, in reality she was laying kindness alongside of kindness and looking
+at the years beyond years where their place had been. It was with a little
+start that she suddenly found the person of her thoughts standing at her
+elbow and talking to her in bodily presence. But while he spoke with all
+the ease and simplicity of old times, almost making Fleda think it was but
+last week they had been strolling through the Place de la Concorde
+together, there was a constraint upon her that she could not get rid of
+and that bound eye and tongue. It might have worn off, but his attention
+was presently claimed again by Mrs. Evelyn; and Fleda thought best while
+yet Constance's bouquet was unfinished, to join another party and make her
+escape into the drawing-rooms.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIV.
+
+
+
+  Have you observed a sitting hare,
+  List'ning, and fearful of the storm
+  Of horns and hounds, clap back her ear,
+  Afraid to keep or leave her form?
+
+  Prior.
+
+
+By the Evelyns' own desire Fleda's going to them was delayed for a week,
+because, they said, a furnace was to be brought into the house and they
+would be all topsy-turvy till that fuss was over. Fleda kept herself very
+quiet in the mean time, seeing almost nobody but the person whom it was
+her especial object to shun. Do her best she could not quite escape him,
+and was even drawn into two or three walks and rides; in spite of denying
+herself utterly to gentlemen at home, and losing in consequence a visit
+from her old friend. She was glad at last to go to the Evelyns and see
+company again, hoping that Mr. Thorn would be merged in a crowd.
+
+But she could not merge him; and sometimes was almost inclined to suspect
+that his constant prominence in the picture must be owing to some
+mysterious and wilful conjuration going on in the background. She was at a
+loss to conceive how else it happened that despite her utmost endeavours
+to the contrary she was so often thrown upon his care and obliged to take
+up with his company. It was very disagreeable. Mr. Carleton she saw almost
+as constantly, but though frequently near she had never much to do with
+him. There seemed to be a dividing atmosphere always in the way; and
+whenever he did speak to her she felt miserably constrained and unable to
+appear like herself. Why was it?--she asked herself in a very vexed state
+of mind. No doubt partly from the remembrance of that overheard
+conversation which she could not help applying, but much more from an
+indefinable sense that at these times there were always eyes upon her. She
+tried to charge the feeling upon her consciousness of their having heard
+that same talk, but it would not the more go off. And it had no chance to
+wear off, for somehow the occasions never lasted long; something was sure
+to break them up; while an unfortunate combination of circumstances, or of
+connivers, seemed to give Mr. Thorn unlimited facilities in the same kind.
+Fleda was quick witted and skilful enough to work herself out of them once
+in a while; more often the combination was too much for her simplicity and
+straight-forwardness.
+
+She was a little disappointed and a little surprised at Mr. Carleton's
+coolness. He was quite equal to withstand or out-general the schemes of
+any set of manoeuvrers; therefore it was plain he did not care for the
+society of his little friend and companion of old time. Fleda felt it,
+especially as she now and then heard him in delightful talk with somebody
+else; making himself so interesting that when Fleda could get a chance to
+listen she was quite ready to forgive his not talking to her for the
+pleasure of hearing him talk at all. But at other times she said
+sorrowfully to herself, "He will be going home presently, and I shall not
+have seen him!"
+
+One day she had successfully defended herself against taking a drive which
+Mr. Thorn came to propose, though the proposition had been laughingly
+backed by Mrs. Evelyn. Raillery was much harder to withstand than
+persuasion; but Fleda's quiet resolution had proved a match for both. The
+better to cover her ground, she declined to go out at all, and remained at
+home the only one of the family that fine day.
+
+In the afternoon Mr. Carleton was there. Fleda sat a little apart from the
+rest, industriously bending over a complicated piece of embroidery
+belonging to Constance and in which that young lady had made a great
+blunder which she declared her patience unequal to the task of rectifying.
+The conversation went gayly forward among the others; Fleda taking no part
+in it beyond an involuntary one. Mr. Carleton's part was rather reserved
+and grave; according to his manner in ordinary society.
+
+"What do you keep bothering yourself with that for?" said Edith coming to
+Fleda's side.
+
+"One must be doing something, you know," said Fleda lightly.
+
+"No you mustn't--not when you're tired--and I know you are. I'd let
+Constance pick out her own work."
+
+"I promised her I would do it," said Fleda.
+
+"Well, you didn't promise her when. Come!--everybody's been out but you,
+and you have sat here over this the whole day. Why don't you come over
+there and talk with the rest?--I know you want to, for I've watched your
+mouth going."
+
+"Going!--how?"
+
+"Going--off at the corners. I've seen it! Come."
+
+But Fleda said she could listen and work at once, and would not budge.
+Edith stood looking at her a little while in a kind of admiring sympathy,
+and then went back to the group.
+
+"Mr. Carleton," said the young lady, who was treading with laudable
+success in the steps of her sister Constance,--"what has become of that
+ride you promised to give me?"
+
+"I do not know, Miss Edith," said Mr. Carleton smiling, "for my conscience
+never had the keeping of it."
+
+"Hush, Edith!" said her mother; "do you think Mr. Carleton has nothing to
+do but to take you riding?"
+
+"I don't believe he has much to do," said Edith securely. "But Mr.
+Carleton, you did promise, for I asked you and you said nothing; and
+I always have been told that silence gives consent; so what is to
+become of it?"
+
+"Will you go now, Miss Edith?"
+
+"Now?--O yes! And will you go out to Manhattanville, Mr. Carleton!--along
+by the river?"
+
+"If you like. But Miss Edith, the carriage will hold another--cannot you
+persuade one of these ladies to go with us?"
+
+"Fleda!" said Edith, springing off to her with extravagant capers of
+joy,--"Fleda, you shall go! you haven't been out to-day."
+
+"And I cannot go out to-day," said Fleda gently.
+
+"The air is very fine," said Mr. Carleton approaching her table, with no
+want of alacrity in step or tone, her ears knew;--"and this weather makes
+everything beautiful--has that piece of canvas any claims upon you that
+cannot be put aside for a little?"
+
+"No sir," said Fleda,--"but--I am sorry I have a stronger reason that must
+keep me at home."
+
+"She knows how the weather looks," said Edith,--"Mr. Thorn takes her out
+every other day. It's no use to talk to her, Mr. Carleton,--when she says
+she won't, she won't."
+
+"Every other day!" said Fleda.
+
+"No, no," said Mrs. Evelyn coming up, and with that smile which Fleda had
+never liked so little as at that minute,--"not _every other day_, Edith,
+what are you talking of? Go and don't keep Mr. Carleton waiting."
+
+Fleda worked on, feeling a little aggrieved. Mr. Carleton stood still by
+her table, watching her, while his companions were getting themselves
+ready; but he said no more, and Fleda did not raise her head till the
+party were off. Florence had taken her resigned place.
+
+"I dare say the weather will be quite as fine to-morrow, dear Fleda," said
+Mrs. Evelyn softly.
+
+"I hope it will," said Fleda in a tone of resolute simplicity.
+
+"I only hope it will not bring too great a throng of carriages to the
+door," Mrs. Evelyn went on in a tone of great internal amusement;--"I
+never used to mind it, but I have lately a nervous fear of collisions."
+
+"To-morrow is not your reception-day," said Fleda.
+
+"No, not mine," said Mrs. Evelyn softly,--"but that doesn't signify--it
+may be one of my neighbours'."
+
+Fleda pulled away at her threads of worsted and wouldn't know
+anything else.
+
+"I have read of the servants of Lot and the servants of Abraham
+quarrelling," Mrs. Evelyn went on in the same undertone of
+delight,--"because the land was too strait for them--I should be very
+sorry to have anything of the sort happen again, for I cannot imagine
+where Lot would go to find a plain that would suit him."
+
+"Lot and Abraham, mamma!" said Constance from the sofa,--"what on earth
+are you talking about?"
+
+"None of your business," said Mrs. Evelyn;--"I was talking of some country
+friends of mine that you don't know."
+
+Constance knew her mother's laugh very well; but Mrs. Evelyn was
+impenetrable.
+
+The next day Fleda ran away and spent a good part of the morning with her
+uncle in the library, looking over new books; among which she found
+herself quite a stranger, so many had made their appearance since the time
+when she had much to do with libraries or bookstores. Living friends, male
+and female, were happily forgotten in the delighted acquaintance-making
+with those quiet companions which, whatever their deficiencies in other
+respects, are at least never importunate nor unfaithful. Fleda had come
+home rather late and was dressing for dinner with Constance's company and
+help, when Mrs. Evelyn came into her room.
+
+"My dear Fleda," said the lady, her face and voice as full as possible of
+fun,--"Mr. Carleton wants to know if you will ride with him this
+afternoon.--I told him I believed you were in general shy of gentlemen
+that drove their own horses--that I thought I had noticed you were,--but I
+would come up and see."
+
+"Mrs. Evelyn!--you did not tell him that?"
+
+"He said he was sorry to see you looked pale yesterday when he was asking
+you; and he was afraid that embroidery is not good for you. He thinks you
+are a very charming girl!--"
+
+And Mrs. Evelyn went off into little fits of laughter which unstrung all
+Fleda's nerves. She stood absolutely trembling.
+
+"Mamma!--don't plague her!" said Constance. "He didn't say so."
+
+"He did!--upon my word!--" said Mrs. Evelyn, speaking with great
+difficulty;--"he said she was very charming, and it might be dangerous to
+see too much of her."
+
+"You made him say that, Mrs. Evelyn!" said Fleda, reproachfully.
+
+"Well I did ask him if you were not very charming, but he
+answered--without hesitation--" said the lady,--"I am only so afraid that
+Lot will make his appearance!--"
+
+Fleda turned round to the glass, and went on arranging her hair, with a
+quivering lip.
+
+"Lot, mamma!" said Constance somewhat indignantly.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Evelyn in ecstacies,--"because the land will not bear
+both of them.--But Mr. Carleton is very much in earnest for his answer,
+Fleda my dear--what shall I tell him?--You need be under no
+apprehensions about going--he will perhaps tell you that you are
+charming, but I don't think he will say anything more. You know he is a
+kind of patriarch!--And when I asked him if he didn't think it might be
+dangerous to see too much of you, he said he thought it might to some
+people--so you see you are safe."
+
+"Mrs. Evelyn, how could you use my name so!" said Fleda with a voice that
+carried a good deal of reproach.
+
+"My dear Fleda, shall I tell him you will go?--You need not be afraid to
+go riding, only you must not let yourself be seen walking with him."
+
+"I shall not go, ma'am," said Fleda quietly.
+
+"I wanted to send Edith with you, thinking it would be pleasanter; but I
+knew Mr. Carleton's carriage would hold but two to-day. So what shall I
+tell him?"
+
+"I am not going, ma'am," repeated Fleda.
+
+"But what shall I tell him? I must give him some reason. Shall I say that
+you think a sea-breeze is blowing, and you don't like it?--or shall I say
+that prospects are a matter of indifference to you?"
+
+Fleda was quite silent, and went on dressing herself with trembling
+fingers.
+
+"My dear Fleda," said the lady bringing her face a little into
+order,--"won't you go?--I am very sorry--"
+
+"So am I sorry," said Fleda. "I can't go, Mrs. Evelyn."
+
+"I will tell Mr. Carleton you are very sorry," said Mrs. Evelyn, every
+line of her face drawing again,--"that will console him; and let him hope
+that you will not mind sea-breezes by and by, after you have been a little
+longer in the neighbourhood of them. I will tell him you are a good
+republican, and have an objection at present to an English equipage, but I
+have no doubt that it is a prejudice which will wear off."
+
+She stopped to laugh, while Fleda had the greatest difficulty not to cry.
+The lady did not seem to see her disturbed brow; but recovering herself
+after a little, though not readily, she bent forward and touched her lips
+to it in kind fashion. Fleda did not look up; and saying again, "I will
+tell him, dear Fleda!"--Mrs. Evelyn left the room.
+
+Constance after a little laughing and condoling, neither of which Fleda
+attempted to answer, ran off too, to dress herself; and Fleda after
+finishing her own toilette locked her door, sat down and cried heartily.
+She thought Mrs. Evelyn had been, perhaps unconsciously, very unkind; and
+to say that unkindness has not been meant is but to shift the charge from
+one to another vital point in the character of a friend, and one perhaps
+sometimes not less grave. A moment's passionate wrong may consist with the
+endurance of a friendship worth having, better than the thoughtlessness of
+obtuse wits that can never know how to be kind. Fleda's whole frame was
+still in a tremor from disagreeable excitement; and she had serious causes
+of sorrow to cry for. She was sorry she had lost what would have been a
+great pleasure in the ride,--and her great pleasures were not often,--but
+nothing would have been more impossible than for her to go after what Mrs.
+Evelyn had said;--she was sorry Mr. Carleton should have asked her twice
+in vain; what must he think?--she was exceeding sorry that a thought
+should have been put into her head that never before had visited the most
+distant dreams of her imagination,--so needlessly, so gratuitously;--she
+was very sorry, for she could not be free of it again, and she felt it
+would make her miserably hampered and constrained in mind and manner both,
+in any future intercourse with the person in question. And then again what
+would he think of that? Poor Fleda came to the conclusion that her best
+place was at home; and made up her mind to take the first good opportunity
+of getting there.
+
+She went down to dinner with no traces of either tears or unkindness on
+her sweet face, but her nerves were quivering all the afternoon; she could
+not tell whether Mrs. Evelyn and her daughters found it out. And it was
+impossible for her to get back even her old degree of freedom of manner
+before either Mr. Carleton or Mr Thorn. All the more because Mrs. Evelyn
+was every now and then bringing out some sly allusion which afforded
+herself intense delight and wrought Fleda to the last degree of quietness.
+Unkind.--Fleda thought now it was but half from ignorance of the mischief
+she was doing, and the other half from the mere desire of selfish
+gratification. The times and ways in which Lot and Abraham were walked
+into the conversation were incalculable,--and unintelligible except to
+the person who understood it only too well. On one occasion Mrs. Evelyn
+went on with a long rigmarole to Mr. Thorn about sea-breezes, with a face
+of most exquisite delight at his mystification and her own hidden fun;
+till Fleda was absolutely trembling. Fleda shunned both the gentlemen at
+length with a kind of nervous horror.
+
+One steamer had left New York, and another, and still Mr. Carleton did not
+leave it. Why he staid, Constance was as much in a puzzle as ever, for no
+mortal could guess. Clearly, she said, he did not delight in New York
+society, for he honoured it as slightly and partially as might be, and it
+was equally clear if he had a particular reason for staying he didn't mean
+anybody should know it.
+
+"If he don't mean it, you won't find it out, Constance," said Fleda.
+
+"But it is that very consideration, you see, which inflames my impatience
+to a most dreadful degree. I think our house is distinguished with his
+regards, though I am sure I can't imagine why, for he never condescends to
+anything beyond general benevolence when he is here, and not always to
+that. He has no taste for embroidery, or Miss Ringgan's crewels would
+receive more of his notice--he listens to my spirited conversation with a
+self-possession which invariably deprives me of mine!--and his ear is
+evidently dull to musical sensibilities, or Florence's harp would have
+greater charms. I hope there is a web weaving somewhere that will catch
+him--at present he stands in an attitude of provoking independence of all
+the rest of the world. It is curious!" said Constance with an
+indescribable face,--"I feel that the independence of another is rapidly
+making a slave of me!--"
+
+"What do you mean, Constance?" said Edith indignantly. But the others
+could do nothing but laugh.
+
+Fleda did not wonder that Mr. Carleton made no more efforts to get her to
+ride, for the very next day after his last failure he had met her driving
+with Mr. Thorn. Fleda had been asked by Mr. Thorn's mother in such a way
+as made it impossible to get off; but it caused her to set a fresh seal of
+unkindness to Mrs. Evelyn's behaviour.
+
+One evening when there was no other company at Mrs. Evelyn's, Mr.
+Stackpole was entertaining himself with a long dissertation upon the
+affairs of America, past, present, and future. It was a favourite subject;
+Mr. Stackpole always seemed to have more complacent enjoyment of his easy
+chair when he could succeed in making every American in the room sit
+uncomfortably. And this time, without any one to thwart him, he went on to
+his heart's content, disposing of the subject as one would strip a rose of
+its petals, with as much seeming nonchalance and ease, and with precisely
+the same design, to make a rose no rose. Leaf after leaf fell under Mr.
+Stackpole's touch, as if it had been a black frost. The American
+government was a rickety experiment; go to pieces presently,--American
+institutions an alternative between fallacy and absurdity, the fruit of
+raw minds and precocious theories;--American liberty a contradiction;--
+American character a compound of quackery and pretension;--American
+society (except at Mrs. Evelyn's) an anomaly;--American destiny the same
+with that of a Cactus or a volcano; a period of rest followed by a period
+of excitement; not however like the former making successive shoots
+towards perfection, but like the latter grounding every new face of things
+upon the demolition of that which went before. Smoothly and pleasantly Mr.
+Stackpole went on compounding this cup of entertainment for himself and
+his hearers, smacking his lips over it, and all the more, Fleda thought,
+when they made wry faces; throwing in a little truth, a good deal of
+fallacy, a great deal of perversion and misrepresentation; while Mrs.
+Evelyn listened and smiled, and half parried and half assented to his
+positions; and Fleda sat impatiently drumming upon her elbow with the
+fingers of her other hand, in the sheer necessity of giving some
+expression to her feelings. Mr. Stackpole at last got his finger upon the
+sore spot of American slavery, and pressed it hard.
+
+"This is the land of the stars and the stripes!" said the gentleman in a
+little fit of virtuous indignation;--"This is the land where all are
+brothers!--where 'All men are born free and equal.'"
+
+"Mr. Stackpole," said Fleda in a tone that called his attention,--"are you
+well acquainted with the popular proverbs of your country?"
+
+"Not particularly," he said,--"he had never made it a branch of study."
+
+"I am a great admirer of them."
+
+He bowed, and begged to be excused for remarking that he didn't see the
+point yet.
+
+"Do you remember this one, sir," said Fleda colouring a little,--"'Those
+that live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones?'"
+
+"I have heard it; but pardon me,--though your remark seems to imply the
+contrary I am in the dark yet. What unfortunate points of vitrification
+have I laid open to your fire?"
+
+"I thought they were probably forgotten by you, sir."
+
+"I shall be exceedingly obliged to you if you will put me in condition to
+defend myself."
+
+"I think nothing could do that, Mr. Stackpole. Under whose auspices and
+fostering care was this curse of slavery laid upon America?"
+
+"Why--of course,--but you will observe, Miss Ringgan, that at that day the
+world was unenlightened on a great many points;--since then _we_ have cast
+off the wrong which we then shared with the rest of mankind."
+
+"Ay sir, but not until we had first repudiated it and Englishmen had
+desired to force it back upon us at the point of the sword. Four times"--
+
+"But my dear Fleda," interrupted Mrs. Evelyn, "the English nation have no
+slaves nor slave-trade--they have put an end to slavery entirely
+everywhere under their flag."
+
+"They were very slow about it," said Fleda. "Four times the government of
+Massachusetts abolished the slave-trade under their control, and four
+times the English government thrust it back upon them. Do you remember
+what Burke says about that?--in his speech on Conciliation with America?"
+
+"It don't signify what Burke says about it," said Mr. Stackpole rubbing
+his chin,--"Burke is not the first authority--but Miss Ringgan, it is
+undeniable that slavery and the slave-trade, too, does at this moment
+exist in the interior of your own country."
+
+"I will never excuse what is wrong, sir; but I think it becomes an
+Englishman to be very moderate in putting forth that charge."
+
+"Why?" said he hastily;--"we have done away with it entirely in our own
+dominions;--wiped that stain clean off. Not a slave can touch British
+ground but he breathes free air from that minute."
+
+"Yes, sir, but candour will allow that we are not in a condition in this
+country to decide the question by a _tour de force_."
+
+"What is to decide it then?" said he a little arrogantly.
+
+"The progress of truth in public opinion."
+
+"And why not the government--as well as our government?"
+
+"It has not the power, you know, sir."
+
+"Not the power! well, that speaks for itself."
+
+"Nothing against us, on a fair construction," said Fleda patiently. "It is
+well known to those who understand the subject"--
+
+"Where did you learn so much about it, Fleda?" said Mrs. Evelyn
+humourously.
+
+"As the birds pick up their supplies, ma'am--here and there.--It is well
+known, Mr. Stackpole, that our constitution never could have been agreed
+upon if that question of slavery had not been by common consent left where
+it was--with the separate state governments."
+
+"The separate state governments--well, why do not _they_ put an end to it?
+The disgrace is only shifted."
+
+"Of course they must first have the consent of the public mind of
+those states."
+
+"Ah!--their consent!--and why is their consent wanting?"
+
+"We cannot defend ourselves there," said Mrs. Evelyn;--"I wish we could."
+
+"The disgrace at least is shifted from the whole to a part. But will you
+permit me," said Fleda, "to give another quotation from my despised
+authority, and remind you of an Englishman's testimony, that beyond a
+doubt that point of emancipation would never have been carried in
+parliament had the interests of even a part of the electors been
+concerned in it."
+
+"It was done, however,--and done at the expense of twenty millions
+of money."
+
+"And I am sure that was very noble," said Florence.
+
+"It was what no nation but the English would ever have done," said
+Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"I do not wish to dispute it," said Fleda; "but still it was doing what
+did not touch the sensitive point of their own well-being."
+
+"_We_ think there is a little national honour concerned in it," said Mr.
+Stackpole dryly, stroking his chin again.
+
+"So does every right-minded person," said Mrs. Evelyn; "I am sure I do."
+
+"And I am sure so do I," said Fleda; "but I think the honour of a piece of
+generosity is considerably lessened by the fact that it is done at the
+expense of another."
+
+"Generosity!" said Mr. Stackpole,--"it was not generosity, it was
+justice;--there was no generosity about it."
+
+"Then it deserves no honour at all," said Fleda, "if it was merely
+that--the tardy execution of justice is but the removal of a reproach."
+
+"We Englishmen are of opinion, however," said Mr. Stackpole contentedly,
+"that the removers of a reproach are entitled to some honour which those
+who persist in retaining it cannot claim."
+
+"Yes," said Fleda, drawing rather a long breath,--"I acknowledge that;
+but I think that while some of these same Englishmen have shewn themselves
+so unwilling to have the condition of their own factory slaves
+ameliorated, they should be very gentle in speaking of wrongs which we
+have far less ability to rectify."
+
+"Ah!--I like consistency," said Mr. Stackpole. "America shouldn't dress
+up poles with liberty caps till all who walk under are free to wear
+them. She cannot boast that the breath of her air and the breath of
+freedom are one."
+
+"Can England?" said Fleda gently,--"when her own citizens are not free
+from the horrors of impressment?"
+
+"Pshaw!" said Mr. Stackpole, half in a pet and half laughing,--"why, where
+did you get such a fury against England?--you are the first _fair_
+antagonist I have met on this side of the water."
+
+"I wish I was a better one, sir," said Fleda laughing.
+
+"Miss Ringgan has been prejudiced by an acquaintance with one or two
+unfortunate specimens," said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"Ay!" said Mr. Stackpole a little bitterly,--"America is the natural
+birthplace of prejudice,--always was."
+
+"Displayed, first, in maintaining the rights against the swords of
+Englishmen;--latterly, how, Mr. Stackpole?"
+
+"It isn't necessary to enlighten _you_ on any part of the subject," said
+he a little pointedly.
+
+"Fleda, my dear, you are answered!" said Mrs. Evelyn, apparently with
+great internal amusement.
+
+"Yet you will indulge me so far as to indicate what part of the subject
+you are upon?" said Fleda quietly.
+
+"You must grant so much as that to so gentle a requisition, Mr.
+Stackpole," said the older lady.
+
+"I venture to assume that you do not say that on your own account,
+Mrs. Evelyn?"
+
+"Not at all--I agree with you, that Americans are prejudiced; but I think
+it will pass off, Mr. Stackpole, as they learn to know themselves and
+other countries better."
+
+"But how do they deserve such a charge and such a defence? or how have
+they deserved it?" said Fleda.
+
+"Tell her, Mr. Stackpole," said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"Why," said Mr. Stackpole,--"in their absurd opposition to all the old and
+tried forms of things, and rancorous dislike of those who uphold them; and
+in their pertinacity on every point where they might be set right, and
+impatience of hearing the truth."
+
+"Are they singular in that last item?" said Fleda.
+
+"Now," said Mr. Stackpole, not heeding her,--"there's your treatment
+of the aborigines of this country--what do you call that, for a
+_free_ people?"
+
+"A powder magazine, communicating with a great one of your own somewhere
+else; so if you are a good subject, sir, you will not carry a lighted
+candle into it."
+
+"One of our own--where?" said he.
+
+"In India," said Fleda with a glance,--"and there are I don't know how
+many trains leading to it,--so better hands off, sir."
+
+"Where did you pick up such a spite against us?" said Mr. Stackpole,
+drawing a little back and eying her as one would a belligerent mouse or
+cricket. "Will you tell me now that Americans are not prejudiced?"
+
+"What do you call prejudice?" said Fleda smiling.
+
+"O there is a great deal of it, no doubt, here, Mr. Stackpole," said Mrs.
+Evelyn blandly;--"but we shall grow out of it in time;--it is only the
+premature wisdom of a young people."
+
+"And young people never like to hear their wisdom rebuked," said Mr
+Stackpole bowing.
+
+"Fleda, my dear, what for is that little significant shake of your head?"
+said Mrs. Evelyn in her amused voice.
+
+"A trifle, ma'am."
+
+"Covers a hidden rebuke, Mrs. Evelyn, I have no doubt, for both our last
+remarks. What is it, Miss Fleda?--I dare say we can bear it."
+
+"I was thinking, sir, that none would trouble themselves much about our
+foolscap if we had not once made them wear it."
+
+"Mr. Stackpole, you are worsted!--I only wish Mr. Carleton had been here!"
+said Mrs. Evelyn, with a face of excessive delight.
+
+"I wish he had," said Fleda, "for then I need not have spoken a word."
+
+"Why," said Mr. Stackpole a little irritated, "you suppose he would have
+fought for you against me?"
+
+"I suppose he would have fought for truth against anybody, sir,"
+said Fleda.
+
+"Even against his own interests?"
+
+"If I am not mistaken in him," said Fleda, "he reckons his own and those
+of truth identical."
+
+The shout that was raised at this by all the ladies of the family, made
+her look up in wonderment.
+
+"Mr. Carleton,"--said Mrs. Evelyn,--"what do you say to that, sir."
+
+The direction of the lady's eye made Fleda spring up and face about. The
+gentleman in question was standing quietly at the back of her chair, too
+quietly, she saw, to leave any doubt of his having been there some time.
+Mr. Stackpole uttered an ejaculation, but Fleda stood absolutely
+motionless, and nothing could be prettier than her colour.
+
+"What do you say to what you have heard, Mr. Carleton?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+Fleda's eyes were on the floor, but she thoroughly appreciated the tone of
+the question.
+
+"I hardly know whether I have listened with most pleasure or pain,
+Mrs. Evelyn."
+
+"Pleasure!" said Constance.
+
+"Pain!" said Mr. Stackpole.
+
+"I am certain Miss Ringgan was pure from any intention of giving pain,"
+said Mrs. Evelyn with her voice of contained fun. "She has no national
+antipathies, I am sure,--unless in the case of the Jews,--she is too
+charming a girl for that."
+
+"Miss Ringgan cannot regret less than I a word that she has spoken," said
+Mr. Carleton looking keenly at her as she drew back and took a seat a
+little off from the rest.
+
+"Then why was the pain?" said Mr. Stackpole.
+
+"That there should have been any occasion for them, sir."
+
+"Well I wasn't sensible of the occasion, so I didn't feel the pain," said
+Mr. Stackpole dryly, for the other gentleman's tone was almost haughtily
+significant. "But if I had, the pleasure of such sparkling eyes would
+have made me forget it. Good-evening, Mrs. Evelyn--good-evening, my
+gentle antagonist,--it seems to me you have learned, if it is permissible
+to alter one of your favorite proverbs, that it is possible to _break two
+windows_ with one stone. However, I don't feel that I go away with any of
+mine shattered."--
+
+"Fleda, my dear," said Mrs. Evelyn laughing,--"what do you say to that?"
+
+"As he is not here I will say nothing to it, Mrs. Evelyn," said Fleda,
+quietly drawing off to the table with her work, and again in a tremor from
+head to foot.
+
+"Why, didn't you see Mr. Carleton come in?" said Edith following her;--"I
+did--he came in long before you had done talking, and mamma held up her
+finger and made him stop; and he stood at the back of your chair the whole
+time listening. Mr. Stackpole didn't know he was there, either. But what's
+the matter with you?"
+
+"Nothing--" said Fleda,--but she made her escape out of the room the
+next instant.
+
+"Mamma," said Edith, "what ails Fleda?"
+
+"I don't know, my love," said Mrs. Evelyn. "Nothing, I hope."
+
+"There does, though," said Edith decidedly.
+
+"Come here, Edith," said Constance, "and don't meddle with matters above
+your comprehension. Miss Ringgan has probably hurt her hand with
+throwing stones."
+
+"Hurt her hand!" said Edith. But she was taken possession of by her
+eldest sister.
+
+"That is a lovely girl, Mr. Carleton," said Mrs. Evelyn with an
+indescribable look--outwardly benign, but beneath that most keen in
+its scrutiny.
+
+He bowed rather abstractedly.
+
+"She will make a charming little farmer's wife, don't you think so?"
+
+"Is that her lot, Mrs. Evelyn?" he said with a somewhat incredulous smile.
+
+"Why no--not precisely,--" said the lady,--"you know in the country, or
+you do not know, the ministers are half farmers, but I suppose not more
+than half; just such a mixture as will suit Fleda, I should think. She has
+not told me in so many words, but it is easy to read so ingenuous a nature
+as hers, and I have discovered that there is a most deserving young friend
+of mine settled at Queechy that she is by no means indifferent to. I take
+it for granted that will be the end of it," said Mrs. Evelyn, pinching her
+sofa cushion in a great many successive places with a most composed and
+satisfied air.
+
+But Mr. Carleton did not seem at all interested in the subject, and
+presently introduced another.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXV.
+
+
+
+  It is a hard matter for friends to meet; but mountains may be removed
+  with earthquakes, and so encounter.--As You Like It.
+
+
+"What have we to do to-night?" said Florence at breakfast the next
+morning.
+
+"You have no engagement, have you?" said her mother.
+
+"No mamma," said Constance arching her eyebrows,--"we are to taste the
+sweets of domestic life--you as head of the family will go to sleep in the
+dormeuse, and Florence and I shall take turns in yawning by your side."
+
+"And what will Fleda do?" said Mrs. Evelyn laughing.
+
+"Fleda, mamma, will be wrapped in remorseful recollections of having
+enacted a mob last evening and have enough occupation in considering how
+she shall repair damages."
+
+"Fleda, my dear, she is very saucy," said Mrs. Evelyn, sipping her tea
+with great comfort.
+
+"Why should we yawn to-night any more than last night?" said Fleda; a
+question which Edith would certainly have asked if she had not been away
+at school. The breakfast was too late for both her and her father.
+
+"Last night, my dear, your fractious disposition kept us upon half breath;
+there wasn't time to yawn. I meant to have eased my breast by laughing
+afterwards, but that expectation was stifled."
+
+"What stifled it?"
+
+"I was afraid!--" said Constance with a little flutter of her person up
+and down in her chair.
+
+"Afraid of what?"
+
+"And besides you know we can't have our drawing-rooms filled with
+distinguished foreigners _every_ evening we are not at home. I shall
+direct the fowling-piece to be severe in his execution of orders to-night
+and let nobody in. I forgot!"--exclaimed Constance with another
+flutter,--"it is Mr. Thorn's night!--My dearest mamma, will you consent to
+have the dormeuse wheeled round with its back to the fire?--and Florence
+and I will take the opportunity to hear little Edith's lessons in the next
+room--unless Mr Decatur comes. I must endeavour to make the Manton
+comprehend what he has to do."
+
+"But what is to become of Mr. Evelyn?" said Fleda; "you make Mrs. Evelyn
+the head of the family very unceremoniously."
+
+"Mr. Evelyn, my dear," said Constance gravely,--"makes a futile attempt
+semi-weekly to beat his brains out with a club; and every successive
+failure encourages him to try again; the only effect being a temporary
+decapitation of his family; and I believe this is the night on which he
+periodically turns a frigid eye upon their destitution."
+
+"You are too absurd!" said Florence, reaching over for a sausage.
+
+"Dear Constance!" said Fleda, half laughing, "why do you talk so?"
+
+"Constance, behave yourself," said her mother.
+
+"Mamma!" said the young lady,--"I am actuated by a benevolent desire to
+effect a diversion of Miss Ringgan's mind from its gloomy meditations, by
+presenting to her some more real subjects of distress."
+
+"I wonder if you ever looked at such a thing," said Fleda.
+
+"What 'such a thing'?"
+
+"As a real subject of distress."
+
+"Yes--I have one incessantly before me in your serious countenance. Why in
+the world, Fleda, don't you look like other people?"
+
+"I suppose, because I don't feel like them."
+
+"And why don't you? I am sure you ought to be as happy as most people."
+
+"I think I am a great deal happier," said Fleda.
+
+"Than I am?" said the young lady, with arched eyebrows. But they went down
+and her look softened in spite of herself at the eye and smile which
+answered her.
+
+"I should be very glad, dear Constance, to know you were as happy as I."
+
+"Why do you think I am not?" said the young lady a little tartly.
+
+"Because no happiness would satisfy me that cannot last"
+
+"And why can't it last?"
+
+"It is not built upon lasting things."
+
+"Pshaw!" said Constance, "I wouldn't have such a dismal kind of happiness
+as yours, Fleda, for anything."
+
+"Dismal!" said Fleda smiling,--"because it can never disappoint me?--or
+because it isn't noisy?"
+
+"My dear little Fleda!" said Constance in her usual manner,--"you have
+lived up there among the solitudes till you have got morbid ideas of
+life--which it makes me melancholy to observe. I am very much afraid they
+verge towards stagnation."
+
+"No indeed!" said Fleda laughing; "but, if you please, with me the stream
+of life has flowed so quietly that I have looked quite to the bottom, and
+know how shallow it is, and growing shallower;--I could not venture my
+bark of happiness there; but with you it is like a spring torrent,--the
+foam and the roar hinder your looking deep into it."
+
+Constance gave her a significant glance, a strong contrast to the
+earnest simplicity of Fleda's face, and presently inquired if she ever
+wrote poetry.
+
+"Shall I have the pleasure some day of discovering your uncommon signature
+in the secular corner of some religious newspaper?"
+
+"I hope not," said Fleda quietly.
+
+Joe Manton just then brought in a bouquet for Miss Evelyn, a very common
+enlivener of the breakfast-table, all the more when, as in the present
+case, the sisters could not divine where it came from. It moved Fleda's
+wonder to see how very little the flowers were valued for their own sake;
+the probable cost, the probable giver, the probable éclat, were points
+enthusiastically discussed and thoroughly appreciated; but the sweet
+messengers themselves were carelessly set by for other eyes and seemed to
+have no attraction for those they were destined to. Fleda enjoyed them at
+a distance and could not help thinking that "Heaven sends almonds to those
+that have no teeth."
+
+"This Camellia will just do for my hair to-morrow night!" said
+Florence;--"just what I want with my white muslin."
+
+"I think I will go with you to-morrow, Florence," said Fleda;--"Mrs.
+Decatur has asked me so often."
+
+"Well, my dear, I shall be made happy by your company," said Florence
+abstractedly, examining her bouquet,--"I am afraid it hasn't stem enough,
+Constance!--never mind--I'll fix it--where _is _ the end of this
+myrtle?--I shall be very glad, of course, Fleda my dear, but--" picking
+her bouquet to pieces,--"I think it right to tell you, privately, I am
+afraid you will find it very stupid--"
+
+"O I dare say she will not," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"she can go and try at any
+rate--she would find it very stupid with me here alone and Constance at
+the concert--I dare say she will find some there whom she knows."
+
+"But the thing is, mamma, you see, at these conversaziones they never talk
+anything but French and German--I don't know--of _course_ I should be
+delighted to have Fleda with me, and I have no doubt Mrs. Decatur would be
+very glad to have her--but I am afraid she won't enjoy herself."
+
+"I do not want to go where I shall not enjoy myself," said Fleda
+quietly;--"that is certain."
+
+"Of course, you know, dear, I would a great deal rather have you than
+not--I only speak for what I think would be for your pleasure."
+
+"I would do just as I felt inclined, Fleda," said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"I shall let her encounter the dullness alone, ma'am," said Fleda lightly.
+
+But it was not in a light mood that she put on her bonnet after dinner
+and set out to pay a visit to her uncle at the library; she had resolved
+that she would not be near the dormeuse in whatsoever relative position
+that evening. Very, very quiet she was; her grave little face walked
+through the crowd of busy, bustling, anxious people, as if she had nothing
+in common with them; and Fleda felt that she had very little. Half
+unconsciously as she passed along the streets her eye scanned the
+countenances of that moving panorama; and the report it brought back made
+her draw closer within herself.
+
+She wondered that her feet had ever tripped lightly up those
+library stairs.
+
+"Ha! my fair Saxon," said the doctor;--"what has brought you down
+here to-day?"
+
+"I felt in want of something fresh, uncle Orrin, so I thought I would come
+and see you."
+
+"Fresh!" said he. "Ah you are pining for green fields, I know. But you
+little piece of simplicity, there are no green fields now at Queechy--they
+are two feet deep with snow by this time."
+
+"Well I am sure _that_ is fresh," said Fleda smiling.
+
+The doctor was turning over great volumes one after another in a
+delightful confusion of business.
+
+"When do you think you shall go north, uncle Orrin?"
+
+"North?" said he--"what do you want to know about the north?"
+
+"You said, you know, sir, that you would go a little out of your way to
+leave me at home."
+
+"I won't go out of my way for anybody. If I leave you there, it will be in
+my way. Why you are not getting homesick?"
+
+"No sir, not exactly,--but I think I will go with you when you go."
+
+"That won't be yet awhile--I thought those people wanted you to stay
+till January."
+
+"Ay, but suppose I want to do something else?"
+
+He looked at her with a comical kind of indecision, and said,
+
+"You don't know what you want!--I thought when you came in you needn't go
+further than the glass to see something fresh; but I believe the
+sea-breezes haven't had enough of you yet. Which part of you wants
+freshening?" he said in his mock-fierce way.
+
+Fleda laughed and said she didn't know.
+
+"Out of humour, I guess," said the doctor. "I'll talk to you!--Take this
+and amuse yourself awhile, with something that _isn't_ fresh, till I get
+through, and then you shall go home with me."
+
+Fleda carried the large volume into one of the reading rooms, where there
+was nobody, and sat down at the baize-covered table. But the book was not
+of the right kind--or her mood was notfor it failed to interest her. She
+sat nonchalantly turning over the leaves; but mentally she was busy
+turning over other leaves which had by far the most of her attention. The
+pages that memory read--the record of the old times passed in that very
+room, and the old childish light-hearted feelings that were, she thought,
+as much beyond recall. Those pleasant times, when the world was all bright
+and friends all fair, and the light heart had never been borne down by the
+pressure of care, nor sobered by disappointment, nor chilled by
+experience. The spirit will not spring elastic again from under that
+weight; and the flower that has closed upon its own sweetness will not
+open a second time to the world's breath. Thoughtfully, softly, she was
+touching and feeling of the bands that years had fastened about her
+heart--they would not be undone,--though so quietly and almost stealthily
+they had been bound there. She was remembering the shadows that one after
+another had been cast upon her life, till now one soft veil of a cloud
+covered the whole; no storm cloud certainly, but also there was nothing
+left of the glad sunlight that her young eyes rejoiced in. At Queechy the
+first shadow had fallen;--it was a good while before the next one, but
+then they came thick. There was the loss of some old comforts and
+advantages,--that could have been borne;--then consequent upon that, the
+annoyances and difficulties that had wrought such a change in her uncle,
+till Fleda could hardly look back and believe that he was the same person.
+Once manly, frank, busy, happy and making his family so;--now reserved,
+gloomy, irritable, unfaithful to his duty and selfishly throwing down the
+burden they must take up, but were far less able to bear. And so Hugh was
+changed too; not in loveliness of character and demeanour, nor even much
+in the always gentle and tender expression of countenance; but the animal
+spirits and frame, that should have had all the strong cherishing and
+bracing that affection and wisdom together could have applied, had been
+left to wear themselves out under trials his father had shrunk from and
+other trials his father had made. And Mrs. Rossitur,--it was hard for
+Fleda to remember the face she wore at Paris,--the bright eye and joyous
+corners of the mouth, that now were so utterly changed. All by his
+fault--that made it so hard to bear. Fleda had thought all this a hundred
+times; she went over it now as one looks at a thing one is well accustomed
+to; not with new sorrow, only in a subdued mood of mind just fit to make
+the most of it. The familiar place took her back to the time when it
+became familiar; she compared herself sitting there and feeling the whole
+world a blank, except for the two or three at home, with the child who had
+sat there years before in that happy time "when the feelings were young
+and the world was new."
+
+Then the Evelyns--why should they trouble one so inoffensive and so
+easily troubled as her poor little self? They did not know all they were
+doing,--but if they had eyes they _must_ see a little of it. Why could she
+not have been allowed to keep her old free simple feeling with everybody,
+instead of being hampered and constrained and miserable from this
+pertinacious putting of thoughts in her head that ought not to be there?
+It had made her unlike herself, she knew, in the company of several
+people. And perhaps _they_ might be sharp-sighted enough to read it!--but
+even if not, how it had hindered her enjoyment. She had taken so much
+pleasure in the Evelyns last year, and in her visit,--well, she would go
+home and forget it, and maybe they would come to their right minds by the
+next time she saw them.
+
+[Illustration: Fleda saw with a start that it was Mr. Carleton.]
+
+"What pleasant times we used to have here once, uncle Orrin!" she said
+with half a sigh, the other half quite made up by the tone in which she
+spoke. But it was not, as she thought, uncle Orrin that was standing by
+her side, and looking up as she finished speaking Fleda saw with a start
+that it was Mr. Carleton. There was such a degree of life and pleasantness
+in his eyes that, in spite of the start, her own quite brightened.
+
+"That is a pleasure one may always command," he said, answering part of
+her speech.
+
+"Ay, provided one has one's mind always under command," said Fleda. "It is
+possible to sit down to a feast with a want of appetite."
+
+"In such a case, what is the best tonic?"
+
+His manner, even in those two minutes, had put Fleda perfectly at her
+ease, ill-bred eyes and ears being absent. She looked up and answered,
+with such entire trust in him as made her forget that she had ever had any
+cause to distrust herself.
+
+"For me," she said,--"as a general rule, nothing is better than to go out
+of doors--into the woods or the garden--they are the best fresheners I
+know of. I can do myself good there at times when books are a nuisance."
+
+"You are not changed from your old self," he said.
+
+The wish was strong upon Fleda to know whether _he_ was, but it was not
+till she saw the answer in his face that she knew how plainly hers had
+asked the question. And then she was so confused that she did not know
+what the answer had been.
+
+"I find it so too," he said. "The influences of pure nature are the best
+thing I know for some moods--after the company of a good horse."
+
+"And you on his back, I suppose?"
+
+"That was my meaning. What is the doubt thereupon?" said he laughing.
+
+"Did I express any doubt?"
+
+"Or my eyes were mistaken."
+
+"I remember they never used to be that," said Fleda.
+
+"What was it?"
+
+"Why," said Fleda, thinking that Mr. Carleton had probably retained more
+than one of his old habits, for she was answering with her old
+obedience,--"I was doubting what the influence is in that case--worth
+analyzing, I think. I am afraid the good horse's company has little to
+do with it."
+
+"What then do you suppose?" said he smiling.
+
+"Why," said Fleda,--"it might be--but I beg your pardon, Mr. Carleton! I
+am astonished at my own presumption."
+
+"Go on, and let me know why?" he said, with that happiness of manner which
+was never resisted. Fleda went on, reassuring her courage now and then
+with a glance.
+
+"The relief _might_ spring, sir, from the gratification of a proud feeling
+of independence,--or from a dignified sense of isolation,--or an imaginary
+riding down of opposition--or the consciousness of being master of what
+you have in hand."
+
+She would have added to the general category, "the running away from
+oneself;" but the eye and bearing of the person before her forbade even
+such a thought as connected with him. He laughed, but shook his head.
+
+"Perhaps then," said Fleda, "it may be nothing worse than the working off
+of a surplus of energy or impatience, that leaves behind no more than can
+be managed."
+
+"You have learned something of human nature since I had the pleasure of
+knowing you," he said with a look at once amused and penetrating.
+
+"I wish I hadn't," said Fleda.
+
+Her countenance absolutely fell.
+
+"I sometimes think," said he turning over the leaves of her book, "that
+these are the best companionship one can have--the world at large is very
+unsatisfactory."
+
+"O how much!" said Fleda with a long breath. "The only pleasant thing that
+my eyes rested upon as I came through the streets this afternoon, was a
+huge bunch of violets that somebody was carrying. I walked behind them as
+long as I could."
+
+"Is your old love for Queechy in full force?" said Mr. Carleton, still
+turning over the leaves, and smiling.
+
+"I believe so--I should be very sorry to live here long--at home I can
+always go out and find society that refreshes me."
+
+"You have set yourself a high standard," he said, with no displeased
+expression of the lips.
+
+"I have been charged with that," said Fleda;--"but is it possible to set
+too high a standard, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"One may leave oneself almost alone in the world."
+
+"Well, even then," said Fleda, "I would rather have only the image of
+excellence than be contented with inferiority."
+
+"Isn't it possible to do both?" said he, smiling again.
+
+"I don't know," said Fleda,--"perhaps I am too easily dissatisfied--I
+believe I have grown fastidious living alone--I have sometimes almost a
+disgust at the world and everything in it."
+
+"I have often felt so," he said;--"but I am not sure that it is a mood to
+be indulged in--likely to further our own good or that of others."
+
+"I am sure it is not," said Fleda;--"I often feel vexed with myself for
+it; but what can one do, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"Don't your friends the flowers help you in this?"
+
+"Not a bit," said Fleda,--"they draw the other way; their society is so
+very pure and satisfying that one is all the less inclined to take up with
+the other."
+
+She could not quite tell what to make of the smile with which he began to
+speak; it half abashed her.
+
+"When I spoke a little while ago," said he, "of the best cure for an ill
+mood, I was speaking of secondary means simply--the only really
+humanizing, rectifying, peace-giving thing I ever tried was looking at
+time in the light of eternity, and shaming or melting my coldness away in
+the rays of the Sun of righteousness."
+
+Fleda's eyes, which had fallen on her book, were raised again with such a
+flash of feeling that it quite prevented her seeing what was in his. But
+the feeling was a little too strong--the eyes went down, lower than ever,
+and the features shewed that the utmost efforts of self-command were
+needed to control them.
+
+"There is no other cure," he went on in the same tone;--"but disgust and
+weariness and selfishness shrink away and hide themselves before a word or
+a look of the Redeemer of men. When we hear him say, 'I have bought
+thee--thou art mine,' it is like one of those old words of healing, 'Thou
+art loosed from thine infirmity,'--'Be thou clean,'--and the mind takes
+sweetly the grace and the command together, 'That he who loveth God love
+his brother also.'--Only the preparation of the gospel of peace can make
+our feet go softly over the roughness of the way."
+
+Fleda did not move, unless her twinkling eyelashes might seem to
+contradict that.
+
+"_I_ need not tell you," Mr. Carleton went on a little lower, "where this
+medicine is to be sought."
+
+"It is strange," said Fleda presently, "how well one may know and how well
+one may forget.--But I think the body has a great deal to do with it
+sometimes--these states of feeling, I mean."
+
+"No doubt it has; and in these cases the cure is a more complicated
+matter. I should think the roses would be useful there?"
+
+Fleda's mind was crossed by an indistinct vision of peas, asparagus, and
+sweet corn; she said nothing.
+
+"An indirect remedy is sometimes the very best that can be employed.
+However it is always true that the more our eyes are fixed upon the source
+of light the less we notice the shadows that things we are passing fling
+across our way."
+
+Fleda did not know how to talk for a little while; she was too happy.
+Whatever kept Mr. Carleton from talking, he was silent also. Perhaps it
+was the understanding of her mood.
+
+"Mr. Carleton," said Fleda after a little time, "did you ever carry out
+that plan of a rose-garden that you were talking of a long while ago?"
+
+"You remember it?" said he with a pleased look.--"Yes--that was one of
+the first things I set about after I went home--but I did not follow the
+regular fashion of arrangement that one of your friends is so fond of."
+
+"I should not like that for anything," said Fleda,--"and least of all
+for roses."
+
+"Do you remember the little shrubbery path that opened just in front of
+the library windows?--leading at the distance of half a mile to a long
+narrow winding glen?"
+
+"Perfectly well!" said Fleda,--"through the wood of evergreens--I
+remember the glen very well."
+
+"About half way from the house," said he smiling at her eyes, "a glade
+opens which merges at last in the head of the glen--I planted my roses
+there--the circumstances of the ground were very happy for disposing them
+according to my wish."
+
+"And how far?"
+
+"The roses?--O all the way, and some distance down the glen. Not a
+continuous thicket of them," he added smiling again,--"I wished each kind
+to stand so that its peculiar beauty should be fully relieved and
+appreciated; and that would have been lost in a crowd."
+
+"Yes, I know it," said Fleda;--"one's eye rests upon the chief objects of
+attraction and the others are hardly seen,--they do not even serve as
+foils. And they must shew beautifully against that dark background of firs
+and larches!"
+
+"Yes--and the windings of the ground gave me every sort of situation
+and exposure. I wanted room too for the different effects of masses of
+the same kind growing together and of fine individuals or groups
+standing alone where they could shew the full graceful development of
+their nature."
+
+"What a pleasure!--What a beauty it must be!"
+
+"The ground is very happy--many varieties of soil and exposure were needed
+for the plants of different habits, and I found or made them all. The
+rocky beginnings of the glen even furnished me with south walls for the
+little tea-roses, and the Macartneys and Musk roses,--the Banksias I kept
+nearer home."
+
+"Do you know them all, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"Not quite," said he smiling at her.
+
+"I have seen one Banksia--the Macartney is a name that tells me nothing."
+
+"They are evergreens--with large white flowers--very abundant and late in
+the season, but they need the shelter of a wall with us."
+
+"I should think you would say 'with _me_'," said Fleda. "I cannot conceive
+that the head-quarters of the Rose tribe should be anywhere else."
+
+"One of the queens of the tribe is there, in the neighbourhood of the
+Macartneys--the difficult Rosa sulphurea--it finds itself so well
+accommodated that it condescends to play its part to perfection. Do you
+know that?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"It is one of the most beautiful of all, though not my favourite--it has
+large double yellow flowers shaped like the Provence--very superb, but as
+wilful as any queen of them all."
+
+"Which is your favourite, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"Not that which shews itself most splendid to the eye, but which offers
+fairest indications to the fancy."
+
+Fleda looked a little wistfully, for there was a smile rather of the eye
+than of the lips which said there was a hidden thought beneath.
+
+"Don't you assign characters to your flowers?" said he gravely.
+
+"Always!"
+
+"That Rosa sulphurea is a haughty high-bred beauty that disdains even to
+shew herself beautiful unless she is pleased;--I love better what comes
+nearer home to the charities and wants of everyday life."
+
+He had not answered her, Fleda knew; she thought of what he had said to
+Mrs. Evelyn about liking beauty but not _beauties_.
+
+"Then," said he smiling again in that hidden way, "the head of the glen
+gave me the soil I needed for the Bourbons and French roses."--
+
+"Bourbons?"--said Fleda.
+
+"Those are exceeding fine--a hybrid between the Chinese and the
+Rose-à-quatre-saisons--I have not confined them all to the head of the
+glen; many of them are in richer soil, grafted on standards."
+
+"I like standard roses," said Fleda, "better than any."
+
+"Not better than climbers?"
+
+"Better than any climbers I ever saw--except the Banksia."
+
+"There is hardly a more elegant variety than that, though it is not
+strictly a climber; and indeed when I spoke I was thinking as much of the
+training roses. Many of the Noisettes are very fine. But I have the
+climbers all over--in some parts nothing else, where the wood closes in
+upon the path--there the evergreen roses or the Ayrshire cover the ground
+under the trees, or are trained up the trunks and allowed to find their
+own way through the branches down again--the Multiflora in the same
+manner. I have made the Boursault cover some unsightly rocks that were in
+my way.--Then in wider parts of the glade nearer home are your favourite
+standards--the Damask, and Provence, and Moss, which you know are
+varieties of the Centifolia, and the Noisette standards, some of them are
+very fine, and the Chinese roses, and countless hybrids and varieties of
+all these, with many Bourbons;--and your beautiful American yellow rose,
+and the Austrian briar and Eglantine, and the Scotch and white and Dog
+roses in their innumerable varieties change admirably well with the
+others, and relieve the eye very happily."
+
+"Relieve the eye!" said Fleda,--"my imagination wants relieving! Isn't
+there--I have a fancy that there is--a view of the sea from some parts of
+that walk, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"Yes,--you have a good memory," said he smiling. "On one side the wood is
+rather dense, and in some parts of the other side; but elsewhere the trees
+are thinned off towards the south-west, and in one or two points the
+descent of the ground and some cutting have given free access to the air
+and free range to the eye, bounded only by the sea line in the
+distance--if indeed that can be said to bound anything."
+
+"I haven't seen it since I was a child," said Fleda. "And for how long a
+time in the year is this literally a garden of roses, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"The perpetual roses are in bloom for eight months,--the Damask and the
+Chinese, and some of their varieties--the Provence roses are in blossom
+all the summer."
+
+"Ah we can do nothing like that in this country," said Fleda shaking her
+head;--"our winters are unmanageable."
+
+She was silent a minute, turning over the leaves of her book in an
+abstracted manner.
+
+"You have struck out upon a grave path of reflection," said Mr. Carleton
+gently,--"and left me bewildered among the roses."
+
+"I was thinking," said Fleda, looking up and laughing--"I was moralizing
+to myself upon the curious equalization of happiness in the world--I just
+sheered off from a feeling of envy, and comfortably reflected that one
+measures happiness by what one knows--not by what one does not know; and
+so that in all probability I have had near as much enjoyment in the little
+number of plants that I have brought up and cherished and know intimately,
+as you, sir, in your superb walk through fairyland."
+
+"Do you suppose," said he laughing, "that I leave the whole care of
+fairyland to my gardener? No, you are mistaken--when the roses are to act
+as my correctors I find I must become theirs. I seldom go among them
+without a pruning knife and never without wishing for one. And you are
+certainly right so far,--that the plants on which I bestow most pains give
+me the most pleasure. There are some that no hand but mine ever touches,
+and those are by far the best loved of my eye."
+
+A discussion followed, partly natural, partly moral,--on the manner of
+pruning various roses, and on the curious connection between care and
+complacency, and the philosophy of the same.
+
+"The rules of the library are to shut up at sundown, sir," said one of the
+bookmen who had come into the room.
+
+"Sundown!" exclaimed Fleda jumping up;--"is my uncle not here, Mr. Frost?"
+
+"He has been gone half an hour, ma'am."
+
+"And I was to have gone home with him--I have forgotten myself."
+
+"If that is at all the fault of my roses,", said Mr. Carleton smiling, "I
+will do my best to repair it."
+
+"I am not disposed to call it a fault," said Fleda tying her
+bonnet-strings,--"it is rather an agreeable thing once in a while. I
+shall dream of those roses, Mr. Carleton!"
+
+"That would be doing them too much honour."
+
+Very happily she had forgotten herself; and during all the walk home her
+mind was too full of one great piece of joy and indeed too much engaged
+with conversation to take up her own subject again. Her only wish was that
+they might not meet any of the Evelyns;--Mr. Thorn, whom they did meet,
+was a matter of entire indifference.
+
+The door was opened by Dr. Gregory himself. To Fleda's utter astonishment
+Mr. Carleton accepted his invitation to come in. She went up stairs to
+take off her things in a kind of maze.
+
+"I thought he would go away without my seeing him, and now what a nice
+time I have had!--in spite of Mrs. Evelyn--"
+
+That thought slipped in without Fleda's knowledge, but she could not get
+it out again.
+
+"I don't know how much it has been her fault either, but one thing is
+certain--I never could have had it at her house.--How very glad I am!--How
+_very_ glad I am!--that I have seen him and heard all this from his own
+lips.--But how very funny that he will be here to tea--"
+
+"Well!" said the doctor when she came down,--"you _do_ look freshened up,
+I declare. Here is this girl, sir, was coming to me a little while ago,
+complaining that she wanted something _fresh_, and begging me to take her
+back to Queechy, forsooth, to find it, with two feet of snow on the
+ground. Who wants to see you at Queechy?" he said, facing round upon her
+with a look half fierce, half quizzical.
+
+Fleda laughed, but was vexed to feel that she could not help colouring
+and colouring exceedingly; partly from the consciousness of his meaning,
+and partly from a vague notion that somebody else was conscious of it
+too. Dr. Gregory, however, dashed right off into the thick of
+conversation with his guest, and kept him busily engaged till tea-time.
+Fleda sat still on the sofa, looking and listening with simple pleasure;
+memory served her up a rich entertainment enough. Yet she thought her
+uncle was the most heartily interested of the two in the conversation;
+there was a shade more upon Mr. Carleton, not than he often wore, but
+than he had worn a little while ago. Dr. Gregory was a great bibliopole,
+and in the course of the hour hauled out and made his guest overhaul no
+less than several musty old folios; and Fleda could not help fancying
+that he did it with an access of gravity greater even than the occasion
+called for. The grace of his manner, however, was unaltered; and at tea
+she did not know whether she had been right or not. Demurely as she sat
+there behind the tea-urn, for Dr. Gregory still engrossed all the
+attention of his guest as far as talking was concerned, Fleda was again
+inwardly smiling to herself at the oddity and the pleasantness of the
+chance that had brought those three together in such a quiet way, after
+all the weeks she had been seeing Mr. Carleton at a distance. And she
+enjoyed the conversation too; for though Dr. Gregory was a little fond of
+his hobby it was still conversation worthy the name.
+
+"I have been so unfortunate in the matter of the drives," Mr. Carleton
+said, when he was about to take leave and standing before Fleda,--"that I
+am half afraid to mention it again."
+
+"I could not help it, both those time, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda
+earnestly.
+
+"Both the last?--or both the first?" said he smiling.
+
+"The last?--" said Fleda.
+
+"I have had the honour of making such an attempt twice within the last ten
+days----to my disappointment."
+
+"It was not by my fault then either, sir," Fleda said quietly.
+
+But he knew very well from the expression of her face a moment before
+where to put the emphasis her tongue would not make.
+
+"Dare I ask you to go with me to-morrow?"
+
+"I don't know," said Fleda with the old childish sparkle of her eye,--"but
+if you ask me, sir, I will go."
+
+He sat down beside her immediately, and Fleda knew by his change of eye
+that her former thought had been right.
+
+"Shall I see you at Mrs. Decatur's to-morrow?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"I thought I understood," said he in an explanatory tone, "from your
+friends the Miss Evelyns, that they were going."
+
+"I believe they are, and I did think of it; but I have changed my mind,
+and shall stay at home with Mrs. Evelyn."
+
+After some further conversation the hour for the drive was appointed, and
+Mr. Carleton took leave.
+
+"Come for me twice and Mrs. Evelyn refused without consulting me!" thought
+Fleda. "What could make her do so?--How very rude he must have thought me!
+And how glad I am I have had an opportunity of setting that right."
+
+So quitting Mrs. Evelyn her thoughts went off upon a long train of
+wandering over the afternoon's talk.
+
+"Wake up!" said the doctor, laying his hand kindly upon her
+shoulder,--"you'll want something fresh again presently. What mine of
+profundity are you digging into now?"
+
+Fleda looked up and came back from her profundity with a glance and smile
+as simple as a child's.
+
+"Dear uncle Orrin, how came you to leave me alone in the library?"
+
+"Was that what you were trying to discover?"
+
+"Oh no, sir! But why did you, uncle Orrin? I might have been left
+utterly alone."
+
+"Why," said the doctor, "I was going out, and a friend that I thought I
+could confide in promised to take care of you."
+
+"A friend!--Nobody came near me," said Fleda.
+
+"Then I'll never trust anybody again," said the doctor. "But what were you
+hammering at, mentally, just now?--come, you shall tell me."
+
+"O nothing, uncle Orrin," said Fleda, looking grave again however;--"I
+was thinking that I had been talking too much to-day."
+
+"Talking too much?--why whom have you been talking to?"
+
+"O, nobody but Mr. Carleton."
+
+"Mr. Carleton! why you didn't say six and a quarter words while he
+was here."
+
+"No, but I mean in the library, and walking home."
+
+"Talking too much! I guess you did," said the doctor;--"your
+tongue is like
+
+  'the music of the spheres, So loud it deafens human ears.'
+
+How came you to talk too much? I thought you were too shy to talk at all
+in company."
+
+"No sir, I am not;--I am not at all shy unless people frighten me. It
+takes almost nothing to do that; but I am very bold if I am not
+frightened."
+
+"Were you frightened this afternoon?"
+
+"No sir."
+
+"Well, if you weren't frightened, I guess nobody else was," said
+the doctor.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVI.
+
+
+
+  Whence came this?
+  This is some token from a newer friend.
+
+  Shakspeare.
+
+
+The snow-flakes were falling softly and thick when Fleda got up the
+next morning.
+
+"No ride for me to-day--but how very glad I am that I had a chance of
+setting that matter right. What could Mrs. Evelyn have been thinking
+of?--Very false kindness!--if I had disliked to go ever so much she ought
+to have made me, for my own sake, rather than let me seem so rude--it is
+true she didn't know _how_ rude. O snow-flakes--how much purer and
+prettier you are than most things in this place!"
+
+No one was in the breakfast parlour when Fleda came down, so she took her
+book and the dormeuse and had an hour of luxurious quiet before anybody
+appeared. Not a foot-fall in the house; nor even one outside to be heard,
+for the soft carpeting of snow which was laid over the streets. The gentle
+breathing of the fire the only sound in the room; while the very light
+came subdued through the falling snow and the thin muslin curtains, and
+gave an air of softer luxury to the apartment. "Money is pleasant,"
+thought Fleda, as she took a little complacent review of all this before
+opening her book.--"And yet how unspeakably happier one may be without it
+than another with it. Happiness never was locked up in a purse yet. I am
+sure Hugh and I,--They must want me at home!--"
+
+There was a little sober consideration of the lumps of coal and the
+contented looking blaze in the grate, a most essentially home-like
+thing,--and then Fleda went to her book and for the space of an hour
+turned over her pages without interruption. At the end of the hour "the
+fowling piece," certainly the noiseliest of his kind, put his head in, but
+seeing none of his ladies took it and himself away again and left Fleda in
+peace for another half hour. Then appeared Mrs. Evelyn in her morning
+wrapper, and only stopping at the bell-handle, came up to the dormeuse and
+stooping down kissed Fleda's forehead, with so much tenderness that it won
+a look of most affectionate gratitude in reply.
+
+"Fleda my dear, we set you a sad example. But you won't copy it. Joe,
+breakfast. Has Mr. Evelyn gone down town?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am, two hours ago."
+
+"Did it ever occur to you, Fleda my dear," said Mrs. Evelyn, breaking the
+lumps of coal with the poker in a very leisurely satisfied kind of a
+way,--"Did it ever occur to you to rejoice that you were not born a
+business man? What a life!--"
+
+"I wonder how it compares with that of a business woman," said Fleda
+laughing. "There is an uncompromising old proverb which says
+
+  'Man's work is from sun to sun--
+  But a woman's work is never done.'"
+
+A saying which she instantly reflected was entirely beyond the
+comprehension of the person to whose consideration she had offered it.
+
+And then came in Florence, rubbing her hands and knitting her eyebrows.
+
+"Why don't you look as bright as the rest of the world, this morning,"
+said Fleda.
+
+"What a wretched storm!"
+
+"Wretched! This beautiful snow! Here have I been enjoying it for
+this hour."
+
+But Florence rubbed her hands and looked as if Fleda were no rule for
+other people.
+
+"How horrid it will make the going out to-night, if it snows all day!"
+
+"Then you can stay at home," said her mother composedly.
+
+"Indeed I shall not, mamma!"
+
+"Mamma!" said Constance now coming in with Edith,--"isn't breakfast ready?
+It strikes me that the fowling-piece wants polishing up. I have an
+indistinct impression that the sun would be upon the meridian if he was
+anywhere."
+
+"Not quite so bad as that," said Fleda smiling;--"it is only an hour and a
+half since I came down stairs."
+
+"You horrid little creature!--Mamma, I consider it an act of inhospitality
+to permit studious habits on the part of your guests. And I am surprised
+your ordinary sagacity has not discovered that it is the greatest impolicy
+towards the objects of your maternal care. We are labouring under growing
+disadvantages; for when we have brought the enemy to at long shot there is
+a mean little craft that comes in and unmans him in a close fight before
+we can get our speaking-trumpets up."
+
+"Constance!--Do hush!" said her sister. "You are too absurd."
+
+"Fact," said Constance gravely. "Capt. Lewiston was telling me the other
+night how the thing is managed; and I recognized it immediately and told
+him I had often seen it done!"
+
+"Hold your tongue, Constance," said her mother smiling,--"and come to
+breakfast."
+
+Half and but half of the mandate the young lady had any idea of obeying.
+
+"I can't imagine what you are talking about, Constance!" said Edith.
+
+"And then being a friend, you see," pursued Constance, "we can do nothing
+but fire a salute, instead of demolishing her."
+
+"Can't you?" said Fleda. "I am sure many a time I have felt as if you had
+left me nothing but my colours."
+
+"Except your prizes, my dear. I am sure I don't know about your being
+a friend either, for I have observed that you engage English and
+American alike."
+
+"She is getting up her colours now," said Mrs. Evelyn in mock
+gravity,--"you can tell what she is."
+
+"Blood-red!" said Constance. "A pirate!--I thought so,"--she exclaimed,
+with an ecstatic gesture. "I shall make it my business to warn everybody!"
+
+"Oh Constance!" said Fleda, burying her face in her hands. But they
+all laughed.
+
+"Fleda my dear, I would box her ears," said Mrs. Evelyn commanding
+herself. "It is a mere envious insinuation,--I have always understood
+those were the most successful colours carried."
+
+"Dear Mrs. Evelyn!--"
+
+"My dear Fleda, that is not a hot roll--you sha'n't eat it--Take this.
+Florence give her a piece of the bacon--Fleda my dear, it is good for the
+digestion--you must try it. Constance was quite mistaken in supposing
+yours were those obnoxious colours--there is too much white with the
+red--it is more like a very different flag."
+
+"Like what then, mamma?" said Constance;--"a good American would have
+blue in it."
+
+"You may keep the American yourself," said her mother.
+
+"Only," said Fleda trying to recover herself, "there is a slight
+irregularity--with you the stars are blue and the ground white."
+
+"My dear little Fleda!" exclaimed Constance jumping up and capering round
+the table to kiss her, "you are too delicious for anything; and in future
+I will be blind to your colours; which is a piece of self-denial I am sure
+nobody else will practise."
+
+"Mamma," said Edith, "what _are_ you all talking about? Can't Constance
+sit down and let Fleda eat her breakfast?"
+
+"Sit down, Constance, and eat your breakfast!"
+
+"I will do it, mamma, out of consideration for the bacon.--Nothing else
+would move me."
+
+"Are you going to Mrs. Decatur's to-night, Fleda?"
+
+"No, Edith, I believe not"
+
+"I'm very glad; then there'll be somebody at home. But why don't you?"
+
+"I think on the whole I had rather not."
+
+"Mamma," said Constance, "you have done very wrong in permitting such a
+thing. I know just how it will be. Mr. Thorn and Mr. Stackpole will make
+indefinite voyages of discovery round Mrs. Decatur's rooms, and then
+having a glimmering perception that the light of Miss Ringgan's eyes is in
+another direction they will sheer off; and you will presently see them
+come sailing blandly in, one after the other, and cast anchor for the
+evening; when to your extreme delight Mr. Stackpole and Miss Ringgan will
+immediately commence fighting. I shall stay at home to see!" exclaimed
+Constance, with little bounds of delight up and down upon her chair which
+this time afforded her the additional elasticity of springs,--"I will not
+go. I am persuaded how it will be, and I would not miss it for anything."
+
+"Dear Constance!" said Fleda, unable to help laughing through all her
+vexation,--"please do not talk so! You know very well Mr. Stackpole only
+comes to see your mother."
+
+"He was here last night," said Constance in an extreme state of
+delight,--"with all the rest of your admirers--ranged in the hall, with
+their hats in a pile at the foot of the staircase as a token of their
+determination not to go till you came home; and as they could not be
+induced to come up to the drawing-room Mr. Evelyn was obliged to go down,
+and with some difficulty persuaded them to disperse."
+
+Fleda was by this time in a state of indecision betwixt crying and
+laughing, assiduously attentive to her breakfast.
+
+"Mr. Carleton asked me if you would go to ride with him again the other
+day, Fleda," said Mrs. Evelyn, with her face of delighted mischief,--"and
+I excused you; for I thought you would thank me for it."
+
+"Mamma," said Constance, "the mention of that name rouses all the bitter
+feelings I am capable of! My dear Fleda--we have been friends--but if I
+see you abstracting my English rose"--
+
+"Look at those roses behind you!" said Fleda.
+
+The young lady turned and sprang at the word, followed by both her
+sisters; and for some moments nothing but a hubbub of exclamations
+filled the air,
+
+"Joe, you are enchanting!--But did you ever _see_ such flowers?--Oh those
+rose-buds!--"
+
+"And these Camellias," said Edith,--"look, Florence, how they are
+cut--with such splendid long stems."
+
+"And the roses too--all of them--see mamma, just cut from the bushes with
+the buds all left on, and immensely long stems--Mamma, these must have
+cost an immensity!--"
+
+"That is what I call a bouquet," said Fleda, fain to leave the table too
+and draw near the tempting shew in Florence's hand.
+
+"This is the handsomest you have had all winter, Florence," said Edith.
+
+"Handsomest!--I never saw anything like it. I shall wear some of these
+to-night, mamma."
+
+"You are in a great hurry to appropriate it," said Constance,--"how do you
+know but it is mine?"
+
+"Which of us is it for, Joe?"
+
+"Say it is mine, Joe, and I will vote you--the best article of your kind!"
+said Constance, with an inexpressible glance at Fleda.
+
+"Who brought it, Joe?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"Yes, Joe, who brought it? where did it come from, Joe?"
+
+Joe had hardly a chance to answer.
+
+"I really couldn't say, Miss Florence,--the man wasn't known to me."
+
+"But did he say it was for Florence or for me?"
+
+"No ma'am--he"--
+
+"_Which_ did he say it was for?"
+
+"He didn't say it was either for Miss Florence or for you, Miss
+Constance; he--"
+
+"But didn't he say who sent it?"
+
+"No ma'am. It's"--
+
+"Mamma here is a white moss that is beyond everything! with two of the
+most lovely buds--Oh!" said Constance clasping her hands and whirling
+about the room in comic ecstasy--"I sha'n't survive if I cannot find out
+where it is from!--"
+
+"How delicious the scent of these tea-roses is!" said Fleda. "You ought
+not to mind the snow storm to-day after this, Florence. I should think you
+would be perfectly happy."
+
+"I shall be, if I can contrive to keep them fresh to wear to-night. Mamma
+how sweetly they would dress me."
+
+"They're a great deal too good to be wasted so," said Mrs. Evelyn; "I
+sha'n't let you do it."
+
+"Mamma!--it wouldn't take any of them at all for my hair and the bouquet
+de corsage too--there'd be thousands left--Well Joe,--what are you
+waiting for?"
+
+"I didn't say," said Joe, looking a good deal blank and a little
+afraid,--"I should have said--that the bouquet--is--"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"It is--I believe, ma'am,--the man said it was for Miss Ringgan."
+
+"For me!" exclaimed Fleda, her cheeks forming instantly the most exquisite
+commentary on the gift that the giver could have desired. She took in her
+hand the superb bunch of flowers from which the fingers of Florence
+unclosed as if it had been an icicle.
+
+"Why didn't you say so before?" she inquired sharply; but the
+"fowling-piece" had wisely disappeared.
+
+"I am very glad!" exclaimed Edith. "They have had plenty all winter, and
+you haven't had one--I am very glad it is yours, Fleda."
+
+But such a shadow had come upon every other face that Fleda's pleasure
+was completely overclouded. She smelled at her roses, just ready to burst
+into tears, and wishing sincerely that they had never come.
+
+"I am afraid, my dear Fleda," said Mrs. Evelyn quietly going on with her
+breakfast,--"that there is a thorn somewhere among those flowers."
+
+Fleda was too sure of it. But not by any means the one Mrs. Evelyn
+intended.
+
+"He never could have got half those from his own greenhouse, mamma," said
+Florence,--"if he had cut every rose that was in it; and he isn't very
+free with his knife either."
+
+"I said nothing about anybody's greenhouse," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"though
+I don't suppose there is more than one Lot in the city they could have
+come from."
+
+"Well," said Constance settling herself back in her chair and closing
+her eyes,--"I feel extinguished!----Mamma, do you suppose it possible
+that a hot cup of tea might revive me? I am suffering from a universal
+sense of unappreciated merit!--and nobody can tell what the pain is that
+hasn't felt it."
+
+"I think you are extremely foolish, Constance," said Edith. "Fleda hasn't
+had a single flower sent her since she has been here and you have had them
+every other day. I think Florence is the only one that has a right to be
+disappointed."
+
+"Dear Florence," said Fleda earnestly,--"you shall have as many of them as
+you please to dress yourself,--and welcome!"
+
+"Oh no--of course not!--" Florence said,--"it's of no sort of
+consequence--I don't want them in the least, my dear. I wonder what
+somebody would think to see his flowers in my head!"
+
+Fleda secretly had mooted the same question and was very well pleased not
+to have it put to the proof. She took the flowers up stairs after
+breakfast, resolving that they should not be an eye-sore to her friends;
+placed them in water and sat down to enjoy and muse over them in a very
+sorrowful mood. She again thought she would take the first opportunity of
+going home. How strange--out of their abundance of tributary flowers to
+grudge her this one bunch! To be sure it was a magnificent one. The
+flowers were mostly roses, of the rarer kinds, with a very few fine
+Camellias; all of them cut with a freedom that evidently had known no
+constraint but that of taste, and put together with an exquisite skill
+that Fleda felt sure was never possessed by any gardener. She knew that
+only one hand had had anything to do with them, and that the hand that had
+bought, not the one that had sold; and "How very kind!"--presently quite
+supplanted "How very strange!"--"How exactly like him,--and how singular
+that Mrs. Evelyn and her daughters should have supposed they could have
+come from Mr. Thorn." It was a moral impossibility that _he_ should have
+put such a bunch of flowers together; while to Fleda's eye they so bore
+the impress of another person's character that she had absolutely been
+glad to get them out of sight for fear they might betray him. She hung
+over their varied loveliness, tasted and studied it, till the soft breath
+of the roses had wafted away every cloud of disagreeable feeling and she
+was drinking in pure and strong pleasure from each leaf and bud. What a
+very apt emblem of kindness and friendship she thought them; when their
+gentle preaching and silent sympathy could alone so nearly do friendship's
+work; for to Fleda there was both counsel and consolation in flowers. So
+she found it this morning. An hour's talk with them had done her a great
+deal of good, and when she dressed herself and went down to the
+drawing-room her grave little face was not less placid than the roses she
+had left; she would not wear even one of them down to be a disagreeable
+reminder. And she thought that still snowy day was one of the very
+pleasantest she had had in New York.
+
+Florence went to Mrs. Decatur's; but Constance according to her avowed
+determination remained at home to see the fun. Fleda hoped most sincerely
+there would be none for her to see.
+
+But a good deal to her astonishment, early in the evening Mr. Carleton
+walked in, followed very soon by Mr. Thorn. Constance and Mrs. Evelyn
+were forthwith in a perfect effervescence of delight, which as they could
+not very well give it full play promised to last the evening; and Fleda,
+all her nervous trembling awakened again, took her work to the table and
+endeavoured to bury herself in it. But ears could not be fastened as well
+as eyes; and the mere sound of Mrs. Evelyn's voice sometimes sent a
+thrill over her.
+
+"Mr. Thorn," said the lady in her smoothest manner,--"are you a lover of
+floriculture, sir?"
+
+"Can't say that I am, Mrs. Evelyn,--except as practised by others."
+
+"Then you are not a connoisseur in roses?--Miss Ringgan's happy lot--sent
+her a most exquisite collection this morning, and she has been wanting to
+apply to somebody who could tell her what they are--I thought you might
+know.--O they are not here," said Mrs. Evelyn as she noticed the
+gentleman's look round the room;--"Miss Ringgan judges them too precious
+for any eyes but her own. Fleda, my dear, won't you bring down your roses
+to let Mr. Thorn tell us their names?"
+
+"I am sure Mr. Thorn will excuse me, Mrs. Evelyn--I believe he would find
+it a puzzling task."
+
+"The surest way, Mrs. Evelyn, would be to apply at the fountain head for
+information," said Thorn dryly.
+
+"If I could get at it," said Mrs. Evelyn, (Fleda knew with quivering
+lips,)--"but it seems to me I might as well try to find the Dead Sea!"
+
+"Perhaps Mr. Carleton might serve your purpose," said Thorn.
+
+That gentleman was at the moment talking to Constance.
+
+"Mr. Carleton--" said Mrs. Evelyn,--"are you a judge, sir?"
+
+"Of what, Mrs. Evelyn?--I beg your pardon."
+
+The lady's tone somewhat lowered.
+
+"Are you a judge of roses, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"So far as to know a rose when I see it," he answered smiling, and with an
+imperturbable coolness that it quieted Fleda to hear.
+
+[Illustration: "I am sure Mr. Thorn will excuse me."]
+
+"Ay, but the thing is," said Constance, "do you know twenty roses when you
+see them?"
+
+"Miss Ringgan, Mr. Carleton," said Mrs. Evelyn, "has received a most
+beautiful supply this morning; but like a true woman she is not satisfied
+to enjoy unless she can enjoy intelligently--they are strangers to us all,
+and she would like to know what name to give them--Mr. Thorn suggested
+that perhaps you might help us out of our difficulty."
+
+"With great pleasure, so far as I am able,--if my judgment may be
+exercised by daylight. I cannot answer for shades of green in the
+night time."
+
+But he spoke with an ease and simplicity that left no mortal able to
+guess whether he had ever heard of a particular bunch of roses in his
+life before.
+
+"You give me more of Eve in my character, Mrs. Evelyn, than I think
+belongs to me," said Fleda from her work at the far centre-table, which
+certainly did not get its name from its place in the room. "My enjoyment
+to-day has not been in the least troubled by curiosity."
+
+Which none of the rest of the family could have affirmed.
+
+"Do you mean to say, Mr. Carleton," said Constance, "that it is necessary
+to distinguish between shades of green in judging of roses?"
+
+"It is necessary to make shades of distinction in judging of almost
+anything, Miss Constance. The difference between varieties of the same
+flower is often extremely nice."
+
+"I have read of magicians," said Thorn softly, bending down towards
+Fleda's work,--"who did not need to see things to answer questions
+respecting them."
+
+Fleda thought that was a kind of magic remarkably common in the world;
+but even her displeasure could not give her courage to speak. It gave her
+courage to be silent, however; and Mr. Thorn's best efforts in a
+conversation of some length could gain nothing but very uninterested
+rejoinders. A sudden pinch from Constance then made her look up and
+almost destroyed her self-possession as she saw Mr. Stackpole make his
+way into the room.
+
+"I hope I find my fair enemy in a mollified humour," he said
+approaching them.
+
+"I suppose you have repaired damages, Mr. Stackpole," said
+Constance,--"since you venture into the region of broken windows again."
+
+"Mr. Stackpole declared there were none to repair," said Mrs. Evelyn
+from the sofa.
+
+"More than I knew of," said the gentleman laughing--"there were more than
+I knew of; but you see I court the danger, having rashly concluded that I
+might as well know all my weak points at once."
+
+"Miss Ringgan will break nothing to-night, Mr. Stackpole--she promised me
+she would not."
+
+"Not even her silence?" said the gentleman.
+
+"Is she always so desperately industrious?" said Mr. Thorn.
+
+"Miss Ringgan, Mr. Stackpole," said Constance, "is subject to occasional
+fits of misanthropy, in which cases her retreating with her work to the
+solitude of the centre-table is significant of her desire to avoid
+conversation,--as Mr. Thorn has been experiencing."
+
+"I am happy to see that the malady is not catching, Miss Constance."
+
+"Mr. Stackpole!" said Constance,--"I am in a morose state of mind!--Miss
+Ringgan this morning received a magnificent bouquet of roses which in the
+first place I rashly appropriated to myself; and ever since I discovered
+my mistake I have been meditating the renouncing of society--it has
+excited more bad feelings than I thought had existence in my nature."
+
+"Mr. Stackpole," said Mrs. Evelyn, "would you ever have supposed that
+roses could be a cause of discord?"
+
+Mr. Stackpole looked as if he did not exactly know what the ladies were
+driving at.
+
+"There have five thousand emigrants arrived at this port within a week!"
+said he, as if that were something worth talking about.
+
+"Poor creatures! where will they all go?" said Mrs. Evelyn comfortably.
+
+"Country's large enough," said Thorn.
+
+"Yes, but such a stream of immigration will reach the Pacific and come
+back again before long: and then there will be a meeting of the waters!
+This tide of German and Irish will sweep over everything."
+
+"I suppose if the land will not bear both, one party will have to seek
+other quarters," said Mrs. Evelyn with an exquisite satisfaction which
+Fleda could hear in her voice. "You remember the story of Lot and Abraham,
+Mr. Stackpole,--when a quarrel arose between them?--not about roses."
+
+Mr. Stackpole looked as if women were--to say the least--incomprehensible.
+
+"Five thousand a week!" he repeated.
+
+"I wish there was a Dead Sea for them all to sheer off into!" said Thorn.
+
+"If you had seen the look of grave rebuke that speech called forth, Mr.
+Thorn," said Constance, "your feelings would have been penetrated--if you
+have any."
+
+"I had forgotten," he said, looking round with a bland change of
+manner,--"what gentle charities were so near me."
+
+"Mamma!" said Constance with a most comic shew of indignation,--"Mr.
+Thorn thought that with Miss Ringgan he had forgotten all the gentle
+charities in the room!--I am of no further use to society!--I will trouble
+you to ring that bell, Mr. Thorn, if you please. I shall request candles
+and retire to the privacy of my own apartment!"
+
+"Not till you have permitted me to expiate my fault!" said Mr.
+Thorn laughing.
+
+"It cannot be expiated!--My worth will be known at some future day.--Mr.
+Carleton, _will_ you have the goodness to summon our domestic attendant?"
+
+"If you will permit me to give the order," he said smiling, with his hand
+on the bell. "I am afraid you are hardly fit to be trusted alone."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"May I delay obeying you long enough to give my reasons?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Because," said he coming up to her, "when people turn away from the world
+in disgust they generally find worse company in themselves."
+
+"Mr. Carleton!--I would not sit still another minute, if curiosity didn't
+keep me. I thought solitude was said to be such a corrector?"
+
+"Like a clear atmosphere--an excellent medium if your object is to take an
+observation of your position--worse than lost if you mean to shut up the
+windows and burn sickly lights of your own."
+
+"Then according to that one shouldn't seek solitude unless one
+doesn't want it."
+
+"No," said Mr. Carleton, with that eye of deep meaning to which Constance
+always rendered involuntary homage,--"every one wants it;--if we do not
+daily take an observation to find where we are, we are sailing about
+wildly and do not know whither we are going."
+
+"An observation?" said Constance, understanding part and impatient of not
+catching the whole of his meaning.
+
+"Yes," he said with a smile of singular fascination,--"I mean, consulting
+the unerring guides of the way to know where we are and if we are sailing
+safely and happily in the right direction--otherwise we are in danger of
+striking upon some rock or of never making the harbour; and in either
+case, all is lost."
+
+The power of eye and smile was too much for Constance, as it had happened
+more than once before; her own eyes fell and for a moment she wore a look
+of unwonted sadness and sweetness, at what from any other person would
+have roused her mockery.
+
+"Mr. Carleton," said she, trying to rally herself but still not daring to
+look up, knowing that would put it out of her power,--"I can't understand
+how you ever came to be such a grave person."
+
+"What is your idea of gravity?" said he smiling. "To have a mind so at
+rest about the future as to be able to enjoy thoroughly all that is worth
+enjoying in the present?"
+
+"But I can't imagine how _you_ ever came to take up such notions."
+
+"May I ask again, why not I?"
+
+"O you know--you have so much to make you otherwise."
+
+"What degree of present contentment ought to make one satisfied to leave
+that of the limitless future an uncertain thing?"
+
+"Do you think it can be made certain?"
+
+"Undoubtedly!--why not? the tickets are free--the only thing is to make
+sure that ours has the true signature. Do you think the possession of that
+ticket makes life a sadder thing? The very handwriting of it is more
+precious to me, by far, Miss Constance, than everything else I have."
+
+"But you are a very uncommon instance," said Constance, still unable to
+look up, and speaking without any of her usual attempt at jocularity.
+
+"No, I hope not," he said quietly.
+
+"I mean," said Constance, "that it is very uncommon language to hear from
+a person like you."
+
+"I suppose I know your meaning," he said after a minute's pause;--"but,
+Miss Constance, there is hardly a graver thought to me than that power and
+responsibility go hand in hand."
+
+"It don't generally work so," said Constance rather uneasily.
+
+"What are you talking about, Constance?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"Mr. Carleton, mamma,--has been making me melancholy."
+
+"Mr. Carleton," said Mrs. Evelyn, "I am going to petition that you will
+turn your efforts in another direction--I have felt oppressed all the
+afternoon from the effects of that funeral service I was attending--I am
+only just getting over it. The preacher seemed to delight in putting
+together all the gloomy thoughts he could think of."
+
+"Yes!" said Mr. Stackpole, putting his hands in his pockets,--"it is the
+particular enjoyment of some of them, I believe, to do their best to make
+other people miserable."
+
+Mr. Thorn said nothing, being warned by the impatient little hammering of
+Fleda's worsted needle upon the marble, while her eye was no longer
+considering her work, and her face rested anxiously upon her hand.
+
+"There wasn't a thing," the lady went on,--"in anything he said, in his
+prayer or his speech,--there wasn't a single cheering or elevating
+consideration,--all he talked and prayed for was that the people there
+might be filled with a sense of their wickedness--"
+
+"It's their trade, ma'am," said Mr. Stackpole,--"it's their trade! I
+wonder if it ever occurs to them to include themselves in that petition."
+
+"There wasn't the slightest effort made in anything he said or prayed
+for,--and one would have thought that would have been so natural!--there
+was not the least endeavour to do away with that superstitious fear of
+death which is so common--and one would think it was the very occasion to
+do it;--he never once asked that we might be led to look upon it
+rationally and calmly.--It's so unreasonable, Mr. Stackpole--it is so
+dissonant with our views of a benevolent Supreme Being--as if it could be
+according to _his_ will that his creatures should live lives of
+tormenting themselves--it so shews a want of trust in his goodness!"
+
+"It's a relic of barbarism, ma'am," said Mr. Stackpole;--"it's a popular
+delusion--and it is like to be, till you can get men to embrace wider and
+more liberal views of things."
+
+"What do you suppose it proceeds from?" said Mr. Carleton, as if the
+question had just occurred to him.
+
+"I suppose, from false notions received from education, sir."
+
+"Hardly," said Mr. Carleton;--"it is too universal. You find it
+everywhere; and to ascribe it everywhere to education would be but
+shifting the question back one generation."
+
+"It is a root of barbarous ages," said Mr. Stackpole,--"a piece of
+superstition handed down from father to son--a set of false ideas
+which men are bred up and almost born with, and that they can hardly
+get rid of."
+
+"How can that be a root of barbarism, which the utmost degree of
+intelligence and cultivation has no power to do away, nor even to lessen,
+however it may afford motive to control? Men may often put a brave face
+upon it and shew none of their thoughts to the world; but I think no one
+capable of reflection has not at times felt the influence of that dread."
+
+"Men have often sought death, of purpose and choice," said Mr. Stackpole
+dryly and rubbing his chin.
+
+"Not from the absence of this feeling, but from the greater momentary
+pressure of some other."
+
+"Of course," said Mr. Stackpole, rubbing his chin still,--there is a
+natural love of life--the world could not get on if there was not."
+
+"If the love of life is natural, the fear of death must be so, by the
+same reason."
+
+"Undoubtedly," said Mrs. Evelyn, "it is natural--it is part of the
+constitution of our nature."
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Stackpole, settling himself again in his chair with his
+hands in his pockets--"it is not unnatural, I suppose,--but then that is
+the first view of the subject--it is the business of reason to correct
+many impressions and prejudices that are, as we say, natural."
+
+"And there was where my clergyman of to-day failed utterly," said Mrs.
+Evelyn;--"he aimed at strengthening that feeling and driving it down as
+hard as he could into everybody's mind--not a single lisp of anything to
+do it away or lessen the gloom with which we are, naturally as you say,
+disposed to invest the subject."
+
+"I dare say he has held it up as a bugbear till it has become one to
+himself," said Mr. Stackpole.
+
+"It is nothing more than the mere natural dread of dissolution," said
+Mr. Carleton.
+
+"I think it is that," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"I think that is the
+principal thing."
+
+"Is there not besides an undefined fear of what lies beyond--an
+uneasy misgiving that there may be issues which the spirit is not
+prepared to meet?"
+
+"I suppose there is," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"but sir--"
+
+"Why that is the very thing," said Mr. Stackpole,--"that is the mischief
+of education I was speaking of--men are brought up to it."
+
+"You cannot dispose of it so, sir, for this feeling is quite as universal
+as the other; and so strong that men have not only been willing to render
+life miserable but even to endure death itself, with all the aggravation
+of torture, to smooth their way in that unknown region beyond."
+
+"It is one of the maladies of human nature," said Mr. Stackpole,--"that
+it remains for the progress of enlightened reason to dispel."
+
+"What is the cure for the malady?" said Mr. Carleton quietly.
+
+"Why sir!--the looking upon death as a necessary step in the course of our
+existence which simply introduces us from a lower to a higher
+sphere,--from a comparatively narrow to a wider and nobler range of
+feeling and intellect."
+
+"Ay--but how shall we be sure that it is so?"
+
+"Why Mr. Carleton, sir," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"do you doubt that? Do you
+suppose it possible for a moment that a benevolent being would make
+creatures to be anything but happy?"
+
+"You believe the Bible, Mrs. Evelyn?" he said smiling slightly.
+
+"Certainly, sir; but Mr. Carleton, the Bible I am sure holds out the same
+views of the goodness and glory of the Creator; you cannot open it but you
+find them on every page. If I could take such views of things as some
+people have," said Mrs. Evelyn, getting up to punch the fire in her
+extremity,--"I don't know what I should do!--Mr. Carleton, I think I would
+rather never have been born, sir!"
+
+"Every one runs to the Bible!" said Mr. Stackpole. "It is the general
+armoury, and all parties draw from it to fight each other."
+
+"True," said Mr. Carleton,--"but only while they draw partially. No man
+can fight the battle of truth but in the whole panoply; and no man so
+armed can fight any other."
+
+"What do you mean, sir?"
+
+"I mean that the Bible is not a riddle, neither inconsistent with
+itself; but if you take off one leg of a pair of compasses the measuring
+power is gone."
+
+"But Mr. Carleton, sir," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"do you think that reading
+the Bible is calculated to give one gloomy ideas of the future?"
+
+"By no means," he said with one of those meaning-fraught smiles,--"but
+is it safe, Mrs. Evelyn, in such a matter, to venture a single grasp of
+hope without the direct warrant of God's word?"
+
+"Well, sir?"
+
+"Well, ma'am,--that says, 'the soul that sinneth, it shall die.'"
+
+"That disposes of the whole matter comfortably at once," said Mr.
+Stackpole.
+
+"But, sir," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"that doesn't stand alone--the Bible
+everywhere speaks of the fulness and freeness of Christ's salvation?"
+
+"Full and free as it can possibly be," he answered with something of a sad
+expression of countenance;--"but, Mrs. Evelyn, _never offered but with
+conditions_."
+
+"What conditions?" said Mr. Stackpole hastily.
+
+"I recommend you to look for them, sir," answered Mr. Carleton,
+gravely;--"they should not be unknown to a wise man."
+
+"Then you would leave mankind ridden by this nightmare of fear?--or what
+is your remedy?"
+
+"There is a remedy, sir," said Mr. Carleton, with that dilating and
+darkening eye which shewed him deeply engaged in what he was thinking
+about;--"it is not mine. When men feel themselves lost and are willing to
+be saved in God's way, then the breach is made up--then hope can look
+across the gap and see its best home and its best friend on the other
+side--then faith lays hold on forgiveness and trembling is done--then, sin
+being pardoned, the sting of death is taken away and the fear of death is
+no more, for it is swallowed up in victory. But men will not apply to a
+physician while they think themselves well; and people will not seek the
+sweet way of safety by Christ till they know there is no other; and so, do
+you see, Mrs. Evelyn, that when the gentleman you were speaking of sought
+to-day to persuade his hearers that they were poorer than they thought
+they were, he was but taking the surest way to bring them to be made
+richer than they ever dreamed."
+
+There was a power of gentle earnestness in his eye that Mrs Evelyn could
+not answer; her look fell as that of Constance had done, and there was a
+moment's silence.
+
+Thorn had kept quiet, for two reasons--that he might not displease Fleda,
+and that he might watch her. She had left her work, and turning half round
+from the table had listened intently to the conversation, towards the last
+very forgetful that there might be anybody to observe her,--with eyes
+fixed, and cheeks flushing, and the corners of the mouth just indicating
+delight,--till the silence fell; and then she turned round to the table
+and took up her worsted-work. But the lips were quite grave now, and
+Thorn's keen eyes discerned that upon one or two of the artificial roses
+there lay two or three very natural drops.
+
+"Mr. Carleton," said Edith, "what makes you talk such sober things?--you
+have set Miss Ringgan to crying."
+
+"Mr. Carleton could not be better pleased than at such a tribute to his
+eloquence," said Mr. Thorn with a saturnine expression.
+
+"Smiles are common things," said Mr. Stackpole a little maliciously; "but
+any man may be flattered to find his words drop diamonds."
+
+"Fleda my dear," said Mrs. Evelyn, with that trembling tone of concealed
+ecstasy which always set every one of Fleda's nerves a jarring,--"you may
+tell the gentlemen that they do not always know when they are making an
+unfelicitous compliment--I never read what poets say about 'briny drops'
+and 'salt tears' without imagining the heroine immediately to be something
+like Lot's wife."
+
+"Nobody said anything about briny drops, mamma," said Edith. "Why there's
+Florence!--"
+
+Her entrance made a little bustle, which Fleda was very glad of.
+Unkind!--She was trembling again in every finger. She bent down over her
+canvas and worked away as hard as she could. That did not hinder her
+becoming aware presently that Mr. Carleton was standing close beside her.
+
+"Are you not trying your eyes?" said he.
+
+The words were nothing, but the tone was a great deal, there was a kind of
+quiet intelligence in it. Fleda looked up, and something in the clear
+steady self-reliant eye she met wrought an instant change in her feeling.
+She met it a moment and then looked at her work again with nerves quieted.
+
+"Cannot I persuade them to be of my mind?" said Mr. Carleton, bending down
+a little nearer to their sphere of action.
+
+"Mr. Carleton is unreasonable, to require more testimony of that this
+evening," said Mr. Thorn;--"his own must have been ill employed."
+
+Fleda did not look up, but the absolute quietness of Mr. Carleton's manner
+could be felt; she felt it, almost with sympathetic pain. Thorn
+immediately left them and took leave.
+
+"What are you searching for in the papers, Mr. Carleton?" said Mrs. Evelyn
+presently coming up to them.
+
+"I was looking for the steamers, Mrs. Evelyn."
+
+"How soon do you think of bidding us good-bye?"
+
+"I do not know, ma'am," he answered coolly--"I expect my mother."
+
+Mrs. Evelyn walked back to her sofa.
+
+But in the space of two minutes she came over to the centre-table again,
+with an open magazine in her hand.
+
+"Mr. Carleton," said the lady, "you must read this for me and tell me
+what you think of it, will you sir? I have been shewing it to Mr.
+Stackpole and he can't see any beauty in it, and I tell him it is his
+fault and there is some serious want in his composition. Now I want to
+know what you will say to it."
+
+"An arbiter, Mrs. Evelyn, should be chosen by both parties."
+
+"Read it and tell me what you think!" repeated the lady, walking away to
+leave him opportunity. Mr. Carleton looked it over.
+
+"That is something pretty," he said putting it before Fleda. Mrs. Evelyn
+was still at a distance.
+
+"What do you think of that print for trying the eyes?" said Fleda laughing
+as she took it. But he noticed that her colour rose a little.
+
+"How do you like it?"
+
+"I like it,--pretty well," said Fleda rather hesitatingly.
+
+"You have seen it before?"
+
+"Why?" Fleda said, with a look up at him at once a little startled and a
+little curious;--"what makes you say so?"
+
+"Because--pardon me--you did not read it."
+
+"Oh," said Fleda laughing, but colouring at the same time very frankly, "I
+can tell how I like some things without reading them very carefully."
+
+Mr. Carleton looked at her, and then took the magazine again.
+
+"What have you there, Mr. Carleton?" said Florence.
+
+"A piece of English on which I was asking this lady's opinion, Miss
+Evelyn."
+
+"Now, Mr. Carleton!" exclaimed Constance jumping up,--"I am going to ask
+you to decide a quarrel between Fleda and me about a point of English"--
+
+"Hush, Constance!" said her mother,--"I want to speak to Mr. Carleton--Mr.
+Carleton, how do you like it?"
+
+"Like what, mamma?" said Florence.
+
+"A piece I gave Mr. Carleton to read. Mr. Carleton, tell how you
+like it, sir."
+
+"But what is it, mamma?"
+
+"A piece of poetry in an old Excelsior--'The Spirit of the Fireside.' Mr.
+Carleton, won't you read it aloud, and let us all hear--but tell me first
+what you think of it."
+
+"It has pleased me particularly, Mrs. Evelyn."
+
+"Mr. Stackpole says he does not understand it, sir."
+
+"Fanciful," said Mr. Stackpole,--"it's a little fanciful--and I can't
+quite make out what the fancy is."
+
+"It has been the misfortune of many good things before not to be prized,
+Mr. Stackpole," said the lady funnily.
+
+"True, ma'am," said that gentleman rubbing his chin--"and the converse is
+also true unfortunately,--and with a much wider application."
+
+"There is a peculiarity of mental development or training," said Mr.
+Carleton, "which must fail of pleasing many minds because of their wanting
+the corresponding key of nature or experience. Some literature has a
+hidden freemasonry of its own."
+
+"Very hidden indeed!" said Mr. Stackpole;--"the cloud is so thick that I
+can't see the electricity!"
+
+"Mr. Carleton," said Mrs. Evelyn laughing, "I take that remark as a
+compliment, sir. I have always appreciated that writer's pieces--I enjoy
+them very much."
+
+"Well, won't you please read it, Mr. Carleton?" said Florence, "and let us
+know what we are talking about."
+
+Mr. Carleton obeyed, standing where he was by the centre-table.
+
+  "By the old hearthstone a Spirit dwells,
+  The child of bygone years,--
+  He lieth hid the stones amid,
+  And liveth on smiles and tears.
+
+  "But when the night is drawing on,
+  And the fire burns clear and bright,
+  He Cometh out and walketh about,
+  In the pleasant grave twilight.
+
+  "He goeth round on tiptoe soft,
+  And scanneth close each face;
+  If one in the room be sunk in gloom,
+  By him he taketh his place.
+
+  "And then with fingers cool and soft,
+  (Their touch who does not know)
+  With water brought from the well of Thought,
+  That was dug long years ago,
+
+  "He layeth his hand on the weary eyes--
+  They are closed and quiet now;--
+  And he wipeth away the dust of the day
+  Which had settled on the brow.
+
+  "And gently then he walketh away
+  And sits in the corner chair;
+  And the closed eyes swim--it seemeth to _him_
+  The form that once sat there.
+
+  "And whispered words of comfort and love
+  Fall sweet on the ear of sorrow;--
+  'Why weepest thou?--thou art troubled now,
+  But there cometh a bright to-morrow.
+
+  "'We too have passed over life's wild stream
+  In a frail and shattered boat,
+  But the pilot was sure--and we sailed secure
+  When we seemed but scarce afloat.
+
+  "'Though tossed by the rage of waves and wind,
+  The bark held together still,--
+  One arm was strong--it bore us along,
+  And has saved from every ill.'
+
+  "The Spirit returns to his hiding-place,
+  But his words have been like balm.
+  The big tears start--but the fluttering heart
+  Is soothed and softened and calm."
+
+"I remember that," said Florence;--"it is beautiful."
+
+"Who's the writer?" said Mr. Stackpole.
+
+"I don't know," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"it is signed 'Hugh'--there have been
+a good many of his pieces in the Excelsior for a year past--and all of
+them pretty."
+
+"Hugh!" exclaimed Edith springing forward,--"that's the one that wrote the
+Chestnuts!--Fleda, won't you read Mr. Carleton the Chestnuts?"
+
+"Why no, Edith, I think not."
+
+"Ah do! I like it so much, and I want him to hear it,--and you know mamma
+says they're all pretty. Won't you?"
+
+"My dear Edith, you have heard it once already to day."
+
+"But I want you to read it for me again."
+
+"Let me have it, Miss Edith," said Mr. Carleton smiling,--"I will read
+it for you."
+
+"Ah but it would be twice as good if you could hear her read it," said
+Edith, fluttering over the leaves of the magazine,--"she reads it so well.
+It's so funny--about the coffee and buckwheat cakes."
+
+"What is that, Edith?" said her mother.
+
+"Something Mr. Carleton is going to read for me, mamma."
+
+"Don't you trouble Mr. Carleton."
+
+"It won't trouble him, mamma--he promised of his own accord."
+
+"Let us all have the benefit of it, Mr. Carleton," said the lady.
+
+It is worthy of remark that Fleda's politeness utterly deserted her during
+the reading of both this piece and the last. She as near as possible
+turned her back upon the reader.
+
+  "Merrily sang the crickets forth
+  One fair October night;--
+  And the stars looked down, and the northern crown
+  Gave its strange fantastic light.
+
+  "A nipping frost was in the air,
+  On flowers and grass it fell;
+  And the leaves were still on the eastern hill
+  As if touched by a fairy spell.
+
+  "To the very top of the tall nut-trees
+  The frost-king seemed to ride;
+  With his wand he stirs the chestnut burs,
+  And straight they are opened wide.
+
+  "And squirrels and children together dream
+  Of the coming winter's hoard;
+  And many, I ween, are the chestnuts seen
+  In hole or in garret stored.
+
+  "The children are sleeping in feather-beds--
+  Poor Bun in his mossy nest,--
+  _He_ courts repose with his tail on his nose.
+  On the others warm blankets rest.
+
+  "Late in the morning the sun gets up
+  From behind the village spire;
+  And the children dream, that the first red gleam
+  Is the chestnut trees on fire!
+
+  "The squirrel had on when he first awoke
+  All the clothing he could command;
+  And his breakfast was light--he just took a bite
+  Of an acorn that lay at hand;
+
+  "And then he was off to the trees to work;--
+  While the children some time it takes
+  To dress and to eat what _they_ think meet
+  Of coffee and buckwheat cakes.
+
+  "The sparkling frost when they first go out,
+  Lies thick upon all around;
+  And earth and grass, as they onward pass,
+  Give a pleasant crackling sound.
+
+  "O there is a heap of chestnuts, see!'
+  Cried the youngest of the train;
+  For they came to a stone where the squirrel had thrown
+  What he meant to pick up again.
+
+  "And two bright eyes from the tree o'erhead,
+  Looked down at the open bag
+  Where the nuts went in--and so to begin,
+  Almost made his courage flag.
+
+  "Away on the hill, outside the wood,
+  Three giant trees there stand;
+  And the chestnuts bright that hang in sight,
+  Are eyed by the youthful band.
+
+  "And one of their number climbs the tree,
+  And passes from bough to bough,--
+  And the children run--for with pelting fun
+  The nuts fall thickly now.
+
+  "Some of the burs are still shut tight,--
+  Some open with chestnuts three,--
+  And some nuts fall with no burs at all--
+  Smooth, shiny, as nuts should be.
+
+  "O who can tell what fun it was
+  To see the prickly shower!
+  To feel what a whack on head or back.
+  Was within a chestnut's power!--
+
+  "To run beneath the shaking tree,
+  And then to scamper away;
+  And with laughing shout to dance about
+  The grass where the chestnuts lay.
+
+  "With flowing dresses, and blowing hair,
+  And eyes that no shadow knew,--
+  Like the growing light of a morning bright---
+  The dawn of the summer blue!
+
+  "The work was ended--the trees were stripped--
+  The children were 'tired of play.'
+  And they forgot (but the squirrel did not)
+  The wrong they had done that day."
+
+Whether it was from the reader's enjoyment or good giving of these lines,
+or from Edith's delight in them, he was frequently interrupted with bursts
+of laughter.
+
+"I can understand _that_" said Mr. Stackpole, "without any difficulty."
+
+"You are not lost in the mysteries of chestnuting in open daylight," said
+Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"Mr. Carleton," said Edith, "wouldn't you have taken the squirrel's
+chestnuts?"
+
+"I believe I should, Miss Edith,--if I had not been hindered."
+
+"But what would have hindered you? don't you think it was right?"
+
+"Ask your friend Miss Ringgan what she thinks of it," said he smiling.
+
+"Now Mr. Carleton," said Constance as he threw down the magazine, "will
+you decide that point of English between Miss Ringgan and me?"
+
+"I should like to hear the pleadings on both sides, Miss Constance."
+
+"Well, Fleda, will you agree to submit it to Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"I must know by what standards Mr. Carleton will be guided before I agree
+to any such thing," said Fleda.
+
+"Standards! but aren't you going to trust anybody in anything without
+knowing what standards they go by?"
+
+"Would that be a safe rule to follow in general?" said Fleda smiling.
+
+"You won't be a true woman if you don't follow it, sooner or later, my
+dear Fleda," said Mrs. Evelyn. "Every woman must."
+
+"The later the better, ma'am, I cannot help thinking."
+
+"You will change your mind," said Mrs. Evelyn complacently.
+
+"Mamma's notions, Mr. Stackpole, would satisfy any man's pride, when she
+is expatiating upon the subject of woman's dependence," said Florence.
+
+"The dependence of affection," said Mrs. Evelyn. "Of course! It's their
+lot. Affection always leads a true woman to merge her separate judgment,
+on anything, in the judgment of the beloved object."
+
+"Ay," said Fleda laughing,--"suppose her affection is wasted on an
+object that has none?"
+
+"My dear Fleda!" said Mrs. Evelyn with a funny expression,--"that
+can never be, you know--don't you remember what your favourite
+Longfellow says--'affection never is wasted'?--Florence, my love,
+just hand me 'Evangeline' there--I want you to listen to it, Mr.
+Stackpole--here it is--
+
+  'Talk not of wasted affection; affection never was wasted;
+  If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters returning
+  Back to their springs shall fill them full of refreshment.
+  That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.'"
+
+"How very plain it is that was written by a man!" said Fleda.
+
+"Why?" said Mr. Carleton laughing.
+
+"I always thought it was so exquisite!" said Florence.
+
+"_I_ was so struck with it," said Constance, "that I have been looking
+ever since for an object to waste _my_ affections upon."
+
+"Hush, Constance!" said her mother. "Don't you like it, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"I should like to hear Miss Ringgan's commentary," said Mr. Stackpole;--"
+I can't anticipate it. I should have said the sentiment was quite soft and
+tender enough for a woman."
+
+"Don't you agree with it, Mr. Carleton," repeated Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"I beg leave to second Mr. Stackpole's motion," he said smiling.
+
+"Fleda my dear, you must explain yourself,--the gentlemen are at a stand."
+
+"I believe, Mrs. Evelyn," said Fleda smiling and blushing,--I am of the
+mind of the old woman who couldn't bear to see anything wasted."
+
+"But the assertion is that it _isn't_ wasted," said Mr. Stackpole.
+
+"'That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain,'"
+said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"Yes, to flood and lay waste the fair growth of nature," said Fleda with a
+little energy, though her colour rose and rose higher.
+
+"Did it never occur to you, Mrs. Evelyn, that the streams which fertilize
+as they flow do but desolate if their course be checked?"
+
+"But your objection lies only against the author's figure," said Mr.
+Stackpole;--"come to the fact."
+
+"I was speaking as he did, sir, of the fact under the figure--I did not
+mean to separate them."
+
+Both the gentlemen were smiling, though with very different expression.
+
+"Perhaps," said Mr. Carleton, "the writer was thinking of a gentler and
+more diffusive flow of kind feeling, which however it may meet with barren
+ground and raise no fruit there, is sure in due time to come back,
+heaven-refined, to refresh and replenish its source."
+
+"Perhaps so," said Fleda with a very pleased answering look,--"I do not
+recollect how it is brought in--I may have answered rather Mrs. Evelyn
+than Mr. Longfellow."
+
+"But granting that it is an error," said Mr. Stackpole, "as you understood
+it,--what shews it to have been made by a man?"
+
+"Its utter ignorance of the subject, sir."
+
+"You think _they_ never waste their affections?" said he.
+
+"By no means! but I think they rarely waste so much in any one direction
+as to leave them quite impoverished."
+
+"Mr. Carleton, how do you bear that, sir?" said Mrs. Evelyn. "Will you let
+such an assertion pass unchecked?"
+
+"I would not if I could help it, Mrs. Evelyn."
+
+"That isn't saying much for yourself," said Constance;--"but Fleda my
+dear, where did you get such an experience of waste and desolation?"
+
+"Oh, 'man is a microcosm,' you know," said Fleda lightly.
+
+"But you make it out that only one-half of mankind can appropriate that
+axiom," said Mr. Stackpole. "How can a woman know _men's_ hearts so well?"
+
+"On the principle that the whole is greater than a part?" said Mr.
+Carleton smiling.
+
+"I'll sleep upon that before I give my opinion," said Mr. Stackpole. "Mrs.
+Evelyn, good-evening!--"
+
+"Well Mr. Carleton!" said Constance, "you have said a great deal for
+women's minds."
+
+"Some women's minds," he said with a smile.
+
+"And some men's minds," said Fleda. "I was speaking only in the general."
+
+Her eye half unconsciously reiterated her meaning as she shook hands with
+Mr. Carleton. And without speaking a word for other people to hear, his
+look and smile in return were more than an answer. Fleda sat for some
+time after he was gone trying to think what it was in eye and lip which
+had given her so much pleasure. She could not make out anything but
+approbation,--the look of loving approbation that one gives to a good
+child; but she thought it had also something of that quiet
+intelligence--a silent communication of sympathy which the others in
+company could not share.
+
+She was roused from her reverie by Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"Fleda my dear, I am writing to your aunt Lucy--have you any
+message to send?"
+
+"No Mrs. Evelyn--I wrote myself to-day."
+
+And she went back to her musings.
+
+"I am writing about you, Fleda," said Mrs. Evelyn, again in a few minutes.
+
+"Giving a good account, I hope, ma'am," said Fleda smiling.
+
+"I shall tell her I think sea-breezes have an unfavourable effect upon
+you," said Mrs. Evelyn;--"that I am afraid you are growing pale; and that
+you have clearly expressed yourself in favour of a garden at Queechy
+rather than any lot in the city--or anywhere else;--so she had better send
+for you home immediately."
+
+Fleda tried to find out what the lady really meant; but Mrs. Evelyn's
+delighted amusement did not consist with making the matter very
+plain. Fleda's questions did nothing but aggravate the cause of them,
+to her own annoyance; so she was fain at last to take her light and
+go to her own room.
+
+She looked at her flowers again with a renewal of the first pleasure and
+of the quieting influence the giver of them had exercised over her that
+evening; thought again how very kind it was of him to send them, and to
+choose them so; how strikingly he differed from other people; how glad she
+was to have seen him again, and how more than glad that he was so happily
+changed from his old self. And then from that change and the cause of it,
+to those higher, more tranquilizing, and sweetening influences that own no
+kindred with earth's dust and descend like the dew of heaven to lay and
+fertilize it. And when she laid herself down to sleep it was with a spirit
+grave but simply happy; every annoyance and unkindness as unfelt now as
+ever the parching heat of a few hours before when the stars are abroad.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVII.
+
+
+
+  A snake bedded himself under the threshold of a country house.
+
+  L'Estrange.
+
+
+To Fleda's very great satisfaction Mr. Thorn was not seen again for
+several days. It would have been to her very great comfort too if he could
+have been permitted to die out of mind as well as out of sight; but he was
+brought up before her "lots of times," till poor Fleda almost felt as if
+she was really in the moral neighbourhood of the Dead Sea, every natural
+growth of pleasure was so withered under the barren spirit of raillery.
+Sea-breezes were never so disagreeable since winds blew; and nervous and
+fidgety again whenever Mr. Carleton was present, Fleda retreated to her
+work and the table and withdrew herself as much as she could from notice
+and conversation; feeling humbled,--feeling sorry and vexed and ashamed,
+that such ideas should have been put into her head, the absurdity of
+which, she thought, was only equalled by their needlessness. "As much as
+she could" she withdrew; but that was not entirely; now and then interest
+made her forget herself, and quitting her needle she would give eyes and
+attention to the principal speaker as frankly as he could have desired.
+Bad weather and bad roads for those days put riding out of the question.
+
+One morning she was called down to see a gentleman, and came eschewing in
+advance the expected image of Mr. Thorn. It was a very different person.
+
+"Charlton Rossitur! My dear Charlton, how do you do? Where did you
+come from?"
+
+"You had better ask me what I have come for," he said laughing as he shook
+hands with her.
+
+"What have you come for?"
+
+"To carry you home."
+
+"Home!" said Fleda.
+
+"I am going up there for a day or two, and mamma wrote me I had better act
+as your escort, which of course I am most willing to do. See what mamma
+says to you."
+
+"When are you going, Charlton?" said Fleda as she broke the seal of the
+note he gave her.
+
+"To-morrow morning."
+
+"That is too sudden a notice, Capt. Rossitur," said Mrs. Evelyn. "Fleda
+will hurry herself out of her colour, and then your mother will say there
+is something in sea-breezes that isn't good for her; and then she will
+never trust her within reach of them again,--which I am sure Miss Ringgan
+would be sorry for."
+
+Fleda took her note to the window, half angry with herself that a kind of
+banter in which certainly there was very little wit should have power
+enough to disturb her. But though the shaft might be a slight one it was
+winged with a will; the intensity of Mrs. Evelyn's enjoyment in her own
+mischief gave it all the force that was wanting. Fleda's head was in
+confusion; she read her aunt's note three times over before she had made
+up her mind on any point respecting it.
+
+"My Dearest Fleda,
+
+Charlton is coming home for a day or two--hadn't you better take the
+opportunity to return with him? I feel as if you had been long away, my
+dear child--don't you feel so too? Your uncle is very desirous of seeing
+you; and as for Hugh and me we are but half ourselves. I would not still
+say a word about your coming home if it were for your good to stay; but I
+fancy from something in Mrs. Evelyn's letter that Queechy air will by this
+time do you good again; and opportunities of making the journey are very
+uncertain. My heart has grown lighter since I gave it leave to expect you.
+Yours, my darling,
+
+L. R.
+
+"P.S. I will write to Mrs. E. soon."
+
+"What string has pulled these wires that are twitching me home?" thought
+Fleda, as her eyes went over and over the words which the feeling of the
+lines of her face would alone have told her were unwelcome. And why
+unwelcome?--"One likes to be moved by fair means and not by foul," was the
+immediate answer. "And besides, it is very disagreeable to be taken by
+surprise. Whenever, in any matter of my staying or going, did aunt Lucy
+have any wish but my pleasure?" Fleda mused a little while; and then with
+a perfect understanding of the machinery that had been at work, though an
+extremely vague and repulsed notion of the spring that had moved it, she
+came quietly out from her window and told Charlton she would go with him.
+
+"But not to-morrow?" said Mrs. Evelyn composedly. "You will not hurry her
+off so soon as that, Capt. Rossitur?"
+
+"Furloughs are the stubbornest things in the world, Mrs. Evelyn; there is
+no spirit of accommodation about them. Mine lies between to-morrow morning
+and one other morning some two days thereafter; and you might as soon
+persuade Atlas to change his place. Will you be ready, coz?"
+
+"I will be ready," said Fleda; and her cousin departed.
+
+"Now my dear Fleda" said Mrs. Evelyn, but it was with that funny face, as
+she saw Fleda standing thoughtfully before the fire,--you must be very
+careful in getting your things together--"
+
+"Why, Mrs. Evelyn?"
+
+"I am afraid you will leave something behind you, my love."
+
+"I will take care of that, ma'am, and that I may I will go and see about
+it at once."
+
+Very busy till dinner-time; she would not let herself stop to think about
+anything. At dinner Mr. Evelyn openly expressed his regrets for her going
+and his earnest wishes that she would at least stay till the holidays
+were over.
+
+"Don't you know Fleda better, papa," said Florence, "than to try to make
+her alter her mind? When she says a thing is determined upon, I know there
+is nothing to do but to submit, with as good a grace as you can."
+
+"I tried to make Capt. Rossitur leave her a little longer," said Mrs.
+Evelyn; "but he says furloughs are immovable, and his begins to-morrow
+morning--so he was immovable too. I should keep her notwithstanding,
+though, if her aunt Lucy hadn't sent for her."
+
+"Well see what she wants, and come back again," said Mr. Evelyn.
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Fleda smiling gratefully,--"I think not
+this winter."
+
+"There are two or three of my friends that will be confoundedly taken
+aback," said Mr. Evelyn, carefully helping himself to gravy.
+
+"I expect that an immediate depopulation of New York will commence," said
+Constance,--"and go on till the heights about Queechy are all thickly
+settled with elegant country-seats,--which is the conventional term for a
+species of mouse trap!"
+
+"Hush, you baggage!" said her father. "Fleda, I wish you could spare her a
+little of your common-sense, to go through the world with."
+
+"Papa thinks, you see, my dear, that you have _more than enough_--which is
+not perhaps precisely the compliment he intended."
+
+"I take the full benefit of his and yours," said Fleda smiling.
+
+After dinner she had just time to run down to the library to bid Dr.
+Gregory good-bye; her last walk in the city. It wasn't a walk she
+enjoyed much.
+
+"Going to-morrow," said he. "Why I am going to Boston in a week--you had
+better stay and go with me."
+
+"I can't now, uncle Orrin--I am dislodged--and you know there is nothing
+to do then but to go."
+
+"Come and stay with me till next week."
+
+But Fleda said it was best not, and went home to finish her preparations.
+
+She had no chance till late, for several gentlemen spent the evening with
+them. Mr. Carleton was there part of the time, but he was one of the first
+to go; and Fleda could not find an opportunity to say that she should not
+see him again. Her timidity would not allow her to make one. But it
+grieved her.
+
+At last she escaped to her own room, where most of her packing was still
+to do. By the time half the floor and all the bed was strewn with
+neat-looking piles of things, the varieties of her modest wardrobe,
+Florence and Constance came in to see and talk with her, and sat down on
+the floor too; partly perhaps because the chairs were all bespoken in the
+service of boxes and baskets, and partly to follow what seemed to be the
+prevailing style of things.
+
+"What do you suppose has become of Mr. Thorn?" said Constance. "I have a
+presentiment that you will find him cracking nuts sociably with Mr.
+Rossitur or drinking one of aunt Lucy's excellent cups of coffee--in
+comfortable expectation of your return."
+
+"If I thought that I should stay here," said Fleda. "My dear, those were
+_my_ cups of coffee!"
+
+"I wish I could make you think it then," said Constance.
+
+"But you are glad to go home, aren't you, Fleda?" said Florence.
+
+"She isn't!" said her sister. "She knows mamma contemplates making a
+grand entertainment of all the Jews as soon as she is gone. What _does_
+mamma mean by that, Fleda?--I observe you comprehend her with most
+invariable quickness."
+
+"I should be puzzled to explain all that your mother means," said Fleda
+gently, as she went on bestowing her things in the trunk. "No--I am not
+particularly glad to go home--but I fancy it is time. I am afraid I have
+grown too accustomed to your luxury of life, and want knocking about to
+harden me a little."
+
+"Harden you!" said Constance. "My dear Fleda, you are under a delusion.
+Why should any one go through an indurating process?--will you inform me?"
+
+"I don't say that every one should," said Fleda,--"but isn't it well for
+those whose lot does not lie among soft things?"
+
+There was extreme sweetness and a touching insinuation in her manner, and
+both the young ladies were silent for sometime thereafter watching
+somewhat wistfully the gentle hands and face that were so quietly busy;
+till the room was cleared again and looked remarkably empty with Fleda's
+trunk standing in the middle of it. And then reminding them that she
+wanted some sleep to fit her for the hardening process and must therefore
+send them away, she was left alone.
+
+One thing Fleda had put off till then--the care of her bunch of flowers.
+They were beautiful still. They had given her a very great deal of
+pleasure; and she was determined they should be left to no servant's hands
+to be flung into the street. If it had been summer she was sure she could
+have got buds from them; as it was, perhaps she might strike some
+cuttings; at all events they should go home with her. So carefully taking
+them out of the water and wrapping the ends in some fresh earth she had
+got that very afternoon from her uncle's garden, Fleda bestowed them in
+the corner of her trunk that she had left for them, and went to bed,
+feeling weary in body, and in mind to the last degree quiet.
+
+In the same mind and mood she reached Queechy the next afternoon. It was a
+little before January--just the same time that she had come home last
+year. As then, it was a bright day, and the country was again covered
+thick with the unspotted snow; but Fleda forgot to think how bright and
+fresh it was. Somehow she did not feel this time quite so glad to find
+herself there. It had never occurred to her so strongly before that
+Queechy could want anything.
+
+This feeling flew away before the first glimpse of her aunt's smile, and
+for half an hour after Fleda would have certified that Queechy wanted
+nothing. At the end of that time came in Mr. Rossitur. His greeting of
+Charlton was sufficiently unmarked; but eye and lip wakened when he
+turned to Fleda.
+
+"My dear child," he said, holding her face in both his hands,--how lovely
+you have grown!"
+
+"That's only because you have forgotten her, father," said Hugh laughing.
+
+[Illustration: "My dear child," he said, holding her face in both his
+hands.]
+
+It was a very lovely face just then. Mr. Rossitur gazed into it a moment
+and again kissed first one cheek and then the other, and then suddenly
+withdrew his hands and turned away, with an air--Fleda could not tell
+what to make of it--an air that struck her with an immediate feeling of
+pain; somewhat as if for some cause or other he had nothing to do with
+her or her loveliness. And she needed not to see him walk the room for
+three minutes to know that Michigan agencies had done nothing to lighten
+his brow or uncloud his character. If this had wanted confirmation Fleda
+would have found it in her aunt's face. She soon discovered, even in the
+course of the pleasant talkative hours before supper, that it was not
+brightened as she had expected to find it by her uncle's coming home; and
+her ears now caught painfully the occasional long breath, but half
+smothered, which told of a burden upon the heart but half concealed.
+Fleda supposed that Mr. Rossitur's business affairs at the West must have
+disappointed him; and resolved not to remember that Michigan was in the
+map of North America.
+
+Still they talked on, through the afternoon and evening, all of them
+except him; he was moody and silent. Fleda felt the cloud overshadow sadly
+her own gayety; but Mrs. Rossitur and Hugh were accustomed to it, and
+Charlton was much too tall a light to come under any external obscuration
+whatever. He was descanting brilliantly upon the doings and prospects at
+Fort Hamilton where he was stationed, much to the entertainment of his
+mother and brother. Fleda could not listen to him while his father was
+sitting lost in something not half so pleasant as sleep in the corner of
+the sofa. Her eyes watched him stealthily till she could not bear it any
+longer. She resolved to bring the power of her sunbeam to bear, and going
+round seated herself on the sofa close by him and laid her hand on his
+arm. He felt it immediately. The arm was instantly drawn away to be put
+around her and Fleda was pressed nearer to his side, while the other hand
+took hers; and his lips were again on her forehead.
+
+"And how do you like me for a farmer, uncle Rolf?" she said looking up at
+him laughingly, and then fearing immediately that she had chosen her
+subject ill. Not from any change in his countenance however,--that
+decidedly brightened up. He did not answer at once.
+
+"My child--you make me ashamed of mankind!"
+
+"Of the dominant half of them, sir, do you mean?" said Charlton,--"or is
+your observation a sweeping one?"
+
+"It would sweep the greatest part of the world into the background, sir,"
+answered his father dryly, "if its sense were the general rule."
+
+"And what has Fleda done to be such a besom of desolation?"
+
+Fleda's laugh set everybody else a going, and there was immediately more
+life and common feeling in the society than had been all day. They all
+seemed willing to shake off a weight, and even Fleda, in the endeavour to
+chase the gloom that hung over others, as it had often happened, lost half
+of her own.
+
+"But still I am not answered," said Charlton when they were grave again.
+"What has Fleda done to put such a libel upon mankind?"
+
+"You should call it a _label_, as Dr. Quackenboss does," said Fleda in a
+fresh burst,--"he says he never would stand being labelled!"--
+
+"But come back to the point," said Charlton,--"I want to know what is the
+_label_ in this case, that Fleda's doings put upon those of other people?"
+
+"Insignificance," said his father dryly.
+
+"I should like to know how bestowed," said Charlton.
+
+"Don't enlighten him, uncle Rolf," said Fleda laughing,--"let my doings
+remain in safe obscurity,--please!"
+
+"I stand as a representative of mankind," said Charlton, "and I demand an
+explanation."
+
+"Look at what this slight frame and delicate nerves have been found
+equal to, and then tell me if the broad shoulders of all your mess would
+have borne half the burden or their united heads accomplished a quarter
+the results."
+
+He spoke with sufficient depth of meaning, though now with no unpleasant
+expression. But Charlton notwithstanding rather gathered himself up.
+
+"O uncle Rolf," said Fleda gently,--"nerves and muscles haven't much to do
+with it--after all you know I have just served the place of a mouth-piece.
+Seth was the head, and good Earl Douglass the hand."
+
+"I am ashamed of myself and of mankind," Mr. Rossitur repeated, "when I
+see what mere weakness can do, and how proudly valueless strength is
+contended to be. You are looking, Capt. Rossitur,--but after all a cap and
+plume really makes a man taller only to the eye."
+
+"When I have flung my plume in anybody's face, sir," said Charlton rather
+hotly, "it will be time enough to throw it back again."
+
+Mrs. Rossitur put her hand on his arm and looked her remonstrance.
+
+"Are you glad to be home again, dear Fleda?" she said turning to her.
+
+But Fleda was making some smiling communications to her uncle and did not
+seem to hear.
+
+"Fleda does it seem pleasant to be here again?"
+
+"Very pleasant, dear aunt Lucy--though I have had a very pleasant
+visit too."
+
+"On the whole you do not wish you were at this moment driving out of town
+in Mr. Thorn's cabriolet?" said her cousin.
+
+"Not in the least," said Fleda coolly. "How did you know I ever did
+such a thing?"
+
+"I wonder what should bring Mr. Thorn to Queechy at this time of year,"
+said Hugh.
+
+Fleda started at this confirmation of Constance's words; and what was very
+odd, she could not get rid of the impression that Mr. Rossitur had started
+too. Perhaps it was only her own nerves, but he had certainly taken away
+the arm that was round her.
+
+"I suppose he has followed Miss Ringgan," said Charlton gravely.
+
+"No," said Hugh, "he has been here some little time."
+
+"Then he preceded her, I suppose, to see and get the sleighs in order."
+
+"He did not know I was coming," said Fleda.
+
+"Didn't!"
+
+"No--I have not seen him for several days."
+
+"My dear little cousin," said Charlton laughing,--"you are not a witch in
+your own affairs, whatever you may be in those of other people."
+
+"Why, Charlton?"
+
+"You are no adept in the art of concealment."
+
+"I have nothing to conceal," said Fleda. "How do you know he is
+here, Hugh?"
+
+"I was anxiously asked the other day," said Hugh with a slight smile,
+"whether you had come home; and then told that Mr. Thorn was in Queechy.
+There is no mistake about it, for my imformant had actually seen him, and
+given him the direction to Mr. Plumfield's, for which he was inquiring."
+
+"The direction to Mr. Plumfield's!" said Fleda.
+
+"What's your old friend Mr. Carleton doing in New York?" said Charlton.
+
+"Is he there still?" said Mrs. Rossitur.
+
+"As large as life," answered her son.
+
+"Which, though you might not suppose it, aunt Lucy, is about the height of
+Capt. Rossitur, with--I should judge--a trifle less weight."
+
+"Your eyes are observant!" said Charlton.
+
+"Of a good many things," said Fleda lightly.
+
+"He is _not_ my height by half an inch," said Charlton;--"I am just six
+feet without my boots."
+
+"An excellent height!" said Fleda,--"'your six feet was ever the
+only height.'"
+
+"Who said that?" said Charlton.
+
+"Isn't it enough that I say it?"
+
+"What's he staying here for?"
+
+"I don't know really," said Fleda. "It's very difficult to tell what
+people do things for."
+
+"Have you seen much of him?" said Mrs. Rossitur.
+
+"Yes ma'am--a good deal--he was often at Mrs. Evelyn's."
+
+"Is he going to marry one of her daughters?"
+
+"Oh no!" said Fleda smiling,--"he isn't thinking of such a thing;--not in
+America--I don't know what he may do in England."
+
+"No!" said Charlton.--"I suppose he would think himself contaminated by
+matching with any blood in this hemisphere."
+
+"You do him injustice," said Fleda, colouring;--"you do not know him,
+Charlton."
+
+"You do?"
+
+"Much better than that."
+
+"And he is not one of the most touch-me-not pieces of English birth and
+wealth that ever stood upon their own dignity?"
+
+"Not at all!" said Fleda;--"how people may be misunderstood!--he is one
+of the most gentle and kind persons I ever saw."
+
+"To you!"
+
+"To everybody that deserves it."
+
+"Humph!--And not proud?"
+
+"No, not as you understand it,"--and she felt it was very difficult to
+make him understand it, as the discovery involved a very offensive
+implication;--"he is too fine a character to be proud."
+
+"That _is_ arguing in a circle with a vengeance!" said Charlton.
+
+"I know what you are thinking of," said Fleda, "and I suppose it passes
+for pride with a great many people who cannot comprehend it--he has a
+singular power of quietly rebuking wrong, and keeping impertinence at a
+distance--where Capt. Rossitur, for instance, I suppose, would throw his
+cap in a man's face, Mr. Carleton's mere silence would make the offender
+doff his and ask pardon."
+
+The manner in which this was said precluded all taking offence.
+
+"Well," said Charlton shrugging his shoulders,--"then I don't know what
+pride is--that's all!"
+
+"Take care, Capt. Rossitur," said Fleda laughing,--"I have heard of such a
+thing as American pride before now."
+
+"Certainly!" said Charlton, "and I'm quite willing--but it never reaches
+quite such a towering height on our side the water."
+
+"I am sure I don't know how that may be," said Fleda, "but I know I have
+heard a lady, an enlightened, gentle-tempered American lady, so called,--I
+have heard her talk to a poor Irish woman with whom she had nothing in the
+world to do, in a style that moved my indignation--it stirred my
+blood!--and there was nothing whatever to call it out. 'All the blood of
+all the Howards,' I hope would not have disgraced itself so."
+
+"What business have you to 'hope' anything about it?"
+
+"None--except from the natural desire to find what one has a right to look
+for. But indeed I wouldn't take the blood of all the Howards for any
+security--pride as well as high-breeding is a thing of natural not
+adventitious growth--it belongs to character, not circumstance."
+
+"Do you know that your favourite Mr. Carleton is nearly connected with
+those same Howards, and quarters their arms with his own?"
+
+"I have a very vague idea of the dignity implied in that expression of
+'quartering arms,' which comes so roundly out of your mouth, Charlton,"
+said Fleda laughing. "No, I didn't know it. But in general I am apt to
+think that pride is a thing which reverses the usual rules of
+architecture, and builds highest on the narrowest foundations."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Never mind," said Fleda,--"if a meaning isn't plain it isn't worth
+looking after. But it will not do to measure pride by its supposed
+materials. It does not depend on them but on the individual. You
+everywhere see people assert that most of which they feel least sure, and
+then it is easy for them to conclude that where there is so much more of
+the reality there must be proportionably more of the assertion. I wish
+some of our gentlemen, and ladies, who talk of pride where they see and
+can see nothing but the habit of wealth--I wish they could see the
+universal politeness with which Mr. Carleton returns the salutes of his
+inferiors. Not more respectfully they lift their hats to him than he lifts
+his to them--unless when he speaks."
+
+"You have seen it?"
+
+"Often."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In England--at his own place--among his own servants and dependents. I
+remember very well--it struck even my childish eyes."
+
+"Well, after all, that is nothing still but a refined kind of
+haughtiness."
+
+"It is a kind that I wish some of our Americans would copy," said Fleda.
+
+"But dear Fleda," said Mrs. Rossitur, "all Americans are not like that
+lady you were talking of--it would be very unfair to make her a sample. I
+don't think I ever heard any one speak so in my life--you never heard me
+speak so."
+
+"Dear aunt Lucy!--no,--I was only giving instance for instance. I have no
+idea that Mr. Carleton is a type of Englishmen in general--I wish he were.
+But I think it is the very people that cry out against superiority, who
+are the most happy to assert their own where they can; the same jealous
+feeling that repines on the one hand, revenges itself on the other."
+
+"Superiority of what kind?" said Charlton stiffly.
+
+"Of any kind--superiority of wealth, or refinement, or name, or standing.
+Now it does not follow that an Englishman is proud because he keeps
+liveried servants, and it by no means follows that an American lacks the
+essence of haughtiness because he finds fault with him for doing so."
+
+"I dare say some of our neighbours think we are proud," said Hugh,
+"Because we use silver forks instead of steel."
+
+"Because we're _too good for steel forks_, you ought to say," said Fleda.
+"I am sure they think so. I have been given to understand as much. Barby,
+I believe, has a good opinion of us and charitably concludes that we mean
+right; but some other of our country friends would think I was far gone in
+uppishness if they knew that I never touch fish with a steel knife; and it
+wouldn't mend the matter much to tell them that the combination of
+flavours is disagreeable to me--it hardly suits the doctrine of liberty
+and equality that my palate should be so much nicer than theirs."
+
+"Absurd!" said Charlton.
+
+"Very," said Fleda; "but on which side, in all probability, is the pride?"
+
+"It wasn't for liveried servants that I charged Mr. Carleton," said her
+cousin. "How do the Evelyns like this paragon of yours?"
+
+"O everybody likes him," said Fleda smiling,--"except you and your friend
+Mr. Thorn."
+
+"Thorn don't like him, eh?"
+
+"I think not."
+
+"What do you suppose is the reason?" said Charlton gravely.
+
+"I don't think Mr. Thorn is particularly apt to like anybody," said Fleda,
+who knew very well the original cause of both exceptions but did not like
+to advert to it.
+
+"Apparently you don't like Mr. Thorn?" said Mr. Rossitur, speaking for the
+first time.
+
+"I don't know who does, sir, much,--except his mother."
+
+"What is he?"
+
+"A man not wanting in parts, sir, and with considerable force of
+character,--but I am afraid more for ill than for good. I should be very
+sorry to trust him with anything dear to me."
+
+"How long were you in forming that opinion?" said Charlton looking at her
+curiously.
+
+"It was formed, substantially, the first evening I saw him, and I hare
+never seen cause to alter it since."
+
+The several members of the family therewith fell into a general muse, with
+the single exception of Hugh, whose eyes and thoughts seemed to be
+occupied with Fleda's living presence. Mr. Rossitur then requested that
+breakfast might be ready very early--at six o'clock.
+
+"Six o'clock!" exclaimed Mrs. Rossitur.
+
+"I have to take a long ride, on business, which must be done early
+in the day."
+
+"When will you be back?"
+
+"Not before night-fall."
+
+"But going on _another_ business journey!" said Mrs. Rossitur. "You have
+but just these few hours come home from one."
+
+"Cannot breakfast be ready?"
+
+"Yes, uncle Rolf," said Fleda bringing her bright face before him,--"ready
+at half-past five if you like--now that _I_ am to the fore, you know."
+
+He clasped her to his breast and kissed her again; but with a face so very
+grave that Fleda was glad nobody else saw it.
+
+Then Charlton went, averring that he wanted at least a night and a half
+of sleep between two such journeys as the one of that day and the one
+before him on the next,--especially as he must resign himself to going
+without anything to eat. Him also Fleda laughingly promised that precisely
+half an hour before the stage time a cup of coffee and a roll should be
+smoking on the table, with whatever substantial appendages might be within
+the bounds of possibility, or the house.
+
+"I will pay you for that beforehand with a kiss," said he.
+
+"You will do nothing of the kind," said Fleda stepping back;--"a kiss is
+a favour taken, not given; and I am entirely ignorant what you have done
+to deserve it."
+
+"You make a curious difference between me and Hugh," said Charlton, half
+in jest, half in earnest.
+
+"Hugh is my brother, Capt. Rossitur," said Fleda smiling,--and that is an
+honour you never made any pretensions to."
+
+"Come, you shall not say that any more," said he, taking the kiss that
+Fleda had no mind to give him.
+
+Half laughing, but with eyes that were all too ready for something else,
+she turned again to Hugh when his brother had left the room and looked
+wistfully in his face, stroking back the hair from his temples with a
+caressing hand.
+
+"You are just as you were when I left you!--" she said, with lips that
+seemed too unsteady to say more, and remained parted.
+
+"I am afraid so are you," he replied;--"not a bit fatter. I hoped you
+would be."
+
+"What have you been smiling at so this evening?"
+
+"I was thinking how well you talked."
+
+"Why Hugh!--You should have helped me--I talked too much."
+
+"I would much rather listen," said Hugh. "Dear Fleda, what a different
+thing the house is with you in it!"
+
+Fleda said nothing, except an inexplicable little shake of her head which
+said a great many things; and then she and her aunt were left alone. Mrs.
+Rossitur drew her to her bosom with a look so exceeding fond that its
+sadness was hardly discernible. It was mingled however with an expression
+of some doubt.
+
+"What has made you keep so thin?"
+
+"I have been very well, aunt Lucy,--thinness agrees with me."
+
+"Are you glad to be home again, dear Fleda?"
+
+"I am very glad to be with you, dear aunt Lucy!"
+
+"But not glad to be home?"
+
+"Yes I am," said Fleda,--"but somehow--I don't know--I believe I have got
+a little spoiled--it is time I was at home I am sure.--I shall be quite
+glad after a day or two, when I have got into the works again. I am glad
+now, aunt Lucy."
+
+Mrs. Rossitur seemed unsatisfied, and stroked the hair from Fleda's
+forehead with an absent look.
+
+"What was there in New York that you were so sorry to leave?"
+
+"Nothing ma'am, in particular,"--said Fleda brightly,--"and I am not
+sorry, aunt Lucy--I tell you I am a little spoiled with company and easy
+living--I am glad to be with you again."
+
+Mrs. Rossitur was silent.
+
+"Don't you get up to uncle Rolf's breakfast to-morrow, aunt Lucy."
+
+"Nor you."
+
+"I sha'n't unless I want to--but there'll be nothing for you to do, and
+you must just lie still. We will all have our breakfast together when
+Charlton has his."
+
+"You are the veriest sunbeam that ever came into a house," said her aunt
+kissing her.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXVIII.
+
+
+
+  My flagging soul flies under her own pitch.
+
+  Dryden.
+
+
+Fleda mused as she went up stairs whether the sun were a luminous body to
+himself or no, feeling herself at that moment dull enough. Bright, was
+she, to others? nothing seemed bright to her. Every old shadow was darker
+than ever. Her uncle's unchanged gloom,--her aunt's unrested face,--Hugh's
+unaltered delicate sweet look, which always to her fancy seemed to write
+upon his face, "Passing away!"--and the thickening prospects whence sprang
+the miasm that infected the whole moral atmosphere--alas, yes!--"Money is
+a good thing," thought Fleda;--"and poverty need not be a bad thing, if
+people can take it right;--but if they take it wrong!--"
+
+With a very drooping heart indeed she went to the window. Her old childish
+habit had never been forgotten; whenever the moon or the stars were abroad
+Fleda rarely failed to have a talk with them from her window. She stood
+there now, looking out into the cold still night, with eyes just dimmed
+with tears--not that she lacked sadness enough, but she did lack spirit
+enough to cry. It was very still;--after the rattle and confusion of the
+city streets, that extent of snow-covered country where the very shadows
+were motionless--the entire absence of soil and of disturbance--the rest
+of nature--the breathlessness of the very wind--all preached a quaint kind
+of sermon to Fleda. By the force of contrast they told her what should
+be;--and there was more yet,--she thought that by the force of example
+they shewed what might be. Her eyes had not long travelled over the
+familiar old fields and fences before she came to the conclusion that she
+was home in good time,--she thought she had been growing selfish, or in
+danger of it; and she made up her mind she was glad to be back again among
+the rough things of life, where she could do so much to smooth them for
+others and her own spirit might grow to a polish it would never gain in
+the regions of ease and pleasure. "To do life's work!"--thought Fleda
+clasping her hands,--"no matter where--and mine is here. I am glad I am
+in my place again--I was forgetting I had one."
+
+It was a face of strange purity and gravity that the moon shone upon, with
+no power to brighten as in past days; the shadows of life were upon the
+child's brow. But nothing to brighten it from within? One sweet strong ray
+of other light suddenly found its way through the shadows and entered her
+heart. "The Lord reigneth! let the earth be glad!"--and then the moonbeams
+pouring down with equal ray upon all the unevennesses of this little world
+seemed to say the same thing over and over. Even so! Not less equally his
+providence touches all,--not less impartially his faithfulness guides.
+"The Lord reigneth! let the earth be glad!" There was brightness in the
+moonbeams now that Fleda could read this in them; she went to sleep, a
+very child again, with these words for her pillow.
+
+It was not six, and darkness yet filled the world, when Mr. Rossitur came
+down stairs and softly opened the sitting-room door. But the home fairy
+had been at work; he was greeted with such a blaze of cheerfulness as
+seemed to say what a dark place the world was everywhere but at home; his
+breakfast-table was standing ready, well set and well supplied; and even
+as he entered by one door Fleda pushed open the other and came in from the
+kitchen, looking as if she had some strange spirit-like kindred with the
+cheery hearty glow which filled both rooms.
+
+"Fleda!--you up at this hour!"
+
+"Yes, uncle Rolf," she said coming forward to put her hands upon
+his,--"you are not sorry to see me, I hope."
+
+But he did not say he was glad; and he did not speak at all; he busied
+himself gravely with some little matters of preparation for his journey.
+Evidently the gloom of last night was upon him yet. But Fleda had not
+wrought for praise, and could work without encouragement; neither step nor
+hand slackened, till all she and Barby had made ready was in nice order on
+the table and she was pouring out a cup of smoking coffee.
+
+"You are not fit to be up," said Mr. Rossitur, looking at her,---"you are
+pale now, Put yourself in that arm chair, Fleda, and go to sleep--I will
+do this for myself."
+
+"No indeed, uncle Rolf," she answered brightly,--"I have enjoyed getting
+breakfast very much at this out-of-the-way hour, and now I am going to
+have the pleasure of seeing you eat it. Suppose you were to take a cup of
+coffee instead of my shoulder."
+
+He took it and sat down, but Fleda found that the pleasure of seeing him
+was to be a very qualified thing. He ate like a business man, in unbroken
+silence and gravity; and her cheerful words and looks got no return. It
+became an effort at length to keep either bright. Mr. Rossitur's sole
+remarks during breakfast were to ask if Charlton was going back that day,
+and if Philetus was getting the horse ready.
+
+Mr. Skillcorn had been called in good time by Barby at Fleda's suggestion,
+and coming down stairs had opined discontentedly that "a man hadn't no
+right to be took out of bed in the morning afore he could see himself."
+But this, and Barby's spirited reply, that "there was no chance of his
+doing _that_ at any time of day, so it was no use to wait,"--Fleda did not
+repeat. Her uncle was in no humour to be amused.
+
+She expected almost that he would go off without speaking to her. But he
+came up kindly to where she stood watching him.
+
+"You must bid me good-bye for all the family, uncle Rolf, as I am the only
+one here," she said laughing.
+
+But she was sure that the embrace and kiss which followed were very
+exclusively for her. They made her face almost as sober as his own.
+
+"There will be a blessing for you," said he,--"if there is a blessing
+anywhere!"
+
+"If, uncle Rolf?" said Fleda, her heart swelling to her eyes.
+
+He turned away without answering her.
+
+Fleda sat down in the easy chair then and cried. But that lasted very few
+minutes; she soon left crying for herself to pray for him, that he might
+have the blessing he did not know. That did not stop tears. She remembered
+the poor man sick of the palsy who was brought in by friends to be healed,
+and that "Jesus seeing _their_ faith, said unto the sick of the palsy,
+'Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.'" It was a handle that faith took hold of
+and held fast while love made its petition. It was all she could do, she
+thought; _she_ never could venture to speak to her uncle on the subject.
+
+Weary and tired, tears and longing at length lost themselves in sleep.
+When she awaked she found the daylight broadly come, little King in her
+lap, the fire, instead of being burnt out, in perfect preservation, and
+Barby standing before it and looking at her.
+
+"You ha'n't got one speck o' good by _this_ journey to New York," was Miss
+Elster's vexed salutation.
+
+"Do you think so?" said Fleda rousing herself. "_I_ wouldn't venture to
+say as much as that, Barby."
+
+"If you have, 'tain't in your cheeks," said Barby decidedly. "You look
+just as if you was made of anything that wouldn't stand wear, and that
+isn't the way you used to look."
+
+"I have been up a good while without breakfast--my cheeks will be a better
+colour when I have had that, Barby--they feel pale."
+
+The second breakfast was a cheerfuller thing. But when the second
+traveller was despatched, and the rest fell back upon their old numbers,
+Fleda was very quiet again. It vexed her to be so, but she could not
+change her mood. She felt as if she had been whirled along in a dream and
+was now just opening her eyes to daylight and reality. And reality--she
+could not help it--looked rather dull after dreamland. She thought it was
+very well she was waked up; but it cost her some effort to appear so. And
+then she charged herself with ingratitude, her aunt and Hugh were so
+exceedingly happy in her company.
+
+"Earl Douglass is quite delighted with the clover hay, Fleda," said Hugh,
+as the three sat at an early dinner.
+
+"Is he?" said Fleda.
+
+"Yes,--you know he was very unwilling to cure it in your way--and he
+thinks there never was anything like it now."
+
+"Did you ever see finer ham, Fleda?" inquired her aunt. "Mr. Plumfield
+says it could not be better."
+
+"Very good!" said Fleda, whose thoughts had somehow got upon Mr.
+Carleton's notions about female education and were very busy with them.
+
+"I expected you would have remarked upon our potatoes, before now,"
+said Hugh. "These are the Elephants--have you seen anything like them
+in New York?"
+
+"There cannot be more beautiful potatoes," said Mrs. Rossitur.
+
+"We had not tried any of them before you went away, Fleda, had we?"
+
+"I don't know, aunt Lucy!--no, I think not."
+
+"You needn't talk to Fleda, mother," said Hugh laughing,--"she is quite
+beyond attending to all such ordinary matters--her thoughts have learned
+to take a higher flight since she has been in New York."
+
+"It is time they were brought down then," said Fleda smiling; "but they
+have not learned to fly out of sight of home, Hugh."
+
+"Where were they, dear Fleda?" said her aunt.
+
+"I was thinking a minute ago of something I heard talked about in New
+York, aunt Lucy; and afterwards I was trying to find out by what possible
+or imaginable road I had got round to it."
+
+"Could you tell?"
+
+Fleda said no, and tried to bear her part in the conversation. But she did
+not know whether to blame the subjects which had been brought forward, or
+herself, for her utter want of interest in them. She went into the kitchen
+feeling dissatisfied with both.
+
+"Did you ever see potatoes that would beat them Elephants?" said Barby.
+
+"Never, certainly," said Fleda with a most involuntary smile.
+
+"I never did," said Barby. "They beat all, for bigness and goodness
+both. I can't keep 'em together. There's thousands of 'em, and I mean to
+make Philetus eat 'em for supper--such potatoes and milk is good enough
+for him, or anybody. The cow has gained on her milk wonderful, Fleda,
+since she begun to have them roots fed out to her."
+
+"Which cow?" said Fleda.
+
+"Which cow?--why--the blue cow--there ain't none of the others that's
+giving any, to speak of," said Barby looking at her. "Don't you know,--the
+cow you said them carrots should be kept for?"
+
+Fleda half laughed, as there began to rise up before her the various
+magazines of vegetables, grain, hay, and fodder, that for many weeks had
+been deliciously distant from her imagination.
+
+"I made butter for four weeks, I guess, after you went away," Barby went
+on;--"just come in here and see--and the carrots makes it as yellow and
+sweet as June--I churned as long as I had anything to churn, and longer;
+and now we live on cream--you can make some cheesecakes just as soon as
+you're a mind to,--see! ain't that doing pretty well?--and fine it
+is,--put your nose down to it--"
+
+"Bravely, Barby--and it is very sweet."
+
+"You ha'n't left nothing behind you in New York, have you?" said Barby
+when they returned to the kitchen.
+
+"Left anything! no,--what do you think I have left?"
+
+"I didn't know but you might have forgotten to pack up your memory," said
+Barby dryly.
+
+Fleda laughed; and then in walked Mr. Douglass.
+
+"How d'ye do?" said he. "Got back again. I heerd you was hum, and so I
+thought I'd just step up and see. Been getting along pretty well?"
+
+Fleda answered, smiling internally at the wide distance between her
+"getting along" and his idea of it.
+
+"Well the hay's first-rate!" said Earl, taking off his hat and sitting
+down in the nearest chair;--"I've been feedin' it out, now, for a good
+spell, and I know what to think about it. We've been feedin' it out ever
+since some time this side o' the middle o' November;--I never see
+nothin' sweeter, and I don't want to see nothin' sweeter than it is! and
+the cattle eats it like May roses--they don't know how to thank you
+enough for it."
+
+"To thank _you_, Mr. Douglass," said Fleda smiling.
+
+"No," said he in a decided manner,--"I don't want no thanks for it, and I
+don't deserve none! 'Twa'n't thanks to none of _my_ fore-sightedness that
+the clover wa'n't served the old way. I didn't like new notions--and I
+never did like new notions! and I never see much good of 'em;--but I
+suppose there's some on 'em that ain't moon-shine--my woman says there is,
+and I suppose there is, and after this clover hay I'm willin' to allow
+that there is! It's as sweet as a posie if you smell to it,--and all of
+it's cured alike; and I think, Fleda, there's a quarter more weight of it.
+I ha'n't proved it nor weighed it, but I've an eye and a hand as good as
+most folks', and I'll qualify to there being a fourth part more weight of
+it;--and it's a beautiful colour. The critters is as fond of it as you and
+I be of strawberries."
+
+"Well that is satisfactory, Mr. Douglass," said Fleda. "How is Mrs.
+Douglass? and Catherine?"
+
+"I ha'n't heerd 'em sayin' nothin' about it," he said,--"and if there was
+anythin' the matter I suppose they'd let me know. There don't much go
+wrong in a man's house without his hearin' tell of it. So I think. Maybe
+'tain't the same in other men's houses. That's the way it is in mine."
+
+"Mrs. Douglass would not thank you," said Fleda, wholly unable to keep
+from laughing. Earl's mouth gave way a very little, and then he went on.
+
+"How be you?" he said. "You ha'n't gained much, as I see. I don't see but
+you're as poor as when you went away."
+
+"I am very well, Mr. Douglass."
+
+"I guess New York ain't the place to grow fat. Well, Fleda, there ha'n't
+been seen in the whole country, or by any man in it, the like of the crop
+of corn we took off that 'ere twenty-acre lot--they're all beat to hear
+tell of it--they won't believe me--Seth Plumfield ha'n't shewed as much
+himself--he says you're the best farmer in the state."
+
+"I hope he gives you part of the credit, Mr. Douglass;--how much
+was there?
+
+"I'll take my share of credit whenever I can get it," said Earl, "and I
+think it's right to take it, as long as you ha'n't nothing to be ashamed
+of; but I won't take no more than my share; and I will say I thought we
+was a goin' to choke the corn to death when we seeded the field in that
+way.--Well, there's better than two thousand bushel--more or less--and as
+handsome corn as I want to see;--there never was handsomer corn. Would
+you let it go for five shillings?--there's a man I've heerd of wants the
+hull of it."
+
+"Is that a good price, Mr. Douglass? Why don't you ask Mr. Rossitur?"
+
+"Do you s'pose Mr. Rossitur knows much about it?" inquired Earl with a
+curious turn of feature, between sly and contemptuous. "The less he has to
+do with that heap of corn the bigger it'll be--that's my idee, _I_ ain't
+agoin' to ask him nothin'--you may ask him what you like to ask him--but I
+don't think he'll tell you much that'll make you and me wiser in the
+matter o' farmin'."
+
+"But now that he is at home, Mr. Douglass, I certainly cannot decide
+without speaking to him."
+
+"Very good!" said Earl uneasily,--"'tain't no affair of mine--as you
+like to have it so you'll have it--just as you please!--But now, Fleda,
+there's another thing I want to speak to you about--I want you to let me
+take hold of that 'ere piece of swamp land and bring it in. I knew a man
+that fixed a piece of land like that and cleared nigh a thousand dollars
+off it the first year."
+
+"Which piece?" said Fleda.
+
+"Why you know which 'tis--just the other side of the trees over
+there--between them two little hills. There's six or seven acres of
+it--nothin' in the world but mud and briars--will you let me take hold of
+it? I'll do the hull job if you'll give me half the profits for one
+year.--Come over and look at it, and I'll tell you--come! the walk won't
+hurt you, and it ain't fur."
+
+All Fleda's inclinations said no, but she thought it was not best to
+indulge them. She put on her hood and went off with him; and was treated
+to a long and most implicated detail of ways and means, from which she at
+length disentangled the rationale of the matter and gave Mr. Douglass the
+consent he asked for, promising to gain that of her uncle.
+
+The day was fair and mild, and in spite of weariness of body a certain
+weariness of mind prompted Fleda when she had got rid of Earl Douglass, to
+go and see her aunt Miriam. She went questioning with herself all the way
+for her want of good-will to these matters. True, they were not pleasant
+mind-work; but she tried to school herself into taking them patiently as
+good life-work. She had had too much pleasant company and enjoyed too much
+conversation, she said. It had unfitted her for home duties.
+
+Mrs. Plumfield, she knew, was no better. But her eye found no change for
+the worse. The old lady was very glad to see her, and very cheerful and
+kind as usual.
+
+"Well are you glad to be home again?" said aunt Miriam after a pause in
+the conversation.
+
+"Everybody asks me that question," said Fleda smiling.
+
+"Perhaps for the same reason I did--because they thought you didn't look
+very glad."
+
+"I am glad--" said Fleda,--"but I believe not so glad as I was last year."
+
+"Why not
+
+"I suppose I had a pleasanter time, I have got a little spoiled, I
+believe, aunt Miriam," Fleda said with glistening eyes and an altering
+voice,--"I don't take up my old cares and duties kindly at first--I shall
+be myself again in a few days."
+
+Aunt Miriam looked at her with that fond, wistful, benevolent look which
+made Fleda turn away.
+
+"What has spoiled you, love?"
+
+"Oh!--easy living and pleasure, I suppose--" Fleda said, but said with
+difficulty.
+
+"Pleasure?"--said aunt Miriam, putting one arm gently round her. Fleda
+struggled with herself.
+
+"It is so pleasant, aunt Miriam, to forget these money cares!--to lift
+one's eyes from the ground and feel free to stretch out one's hand--not to
+be obliged to think about spending sixpences, and to have one's mind at
+liberty for a great many things that I haven't time for here. And
+Hugh--and aunt Lucy--somehow things seem sad to me--"
+
+Nothing could be more sympathizingly kind than the way in which aunt
+Miriam brought Fleda closer to her side and wrapped her in her arms.
+
+"I am very foolish--" Fleda whispered,--"I am very wrong--I shall get
+over it--"
+
+"I am afraid, dear Fleda," Mrs. Plumfield said after a pause,--"it isn't
+best for us always to be without sad things--though I cannot bear to see
+your dear little face look sad--but it wouldn't fit us for the work we
+have to do--it wouldn't fit us to stand where I stand now and look
+forward happily."
+
+"Where you stand?" said Fleda raising her head.
+
+"Yes, and I would not be without a sorrow I have ever known. They are
+bitter now, when they are present,--but the sweet fruit comes after."
+
+"But what do you mean by 'where you stand'?"
+
+"On the edge of life."
+
+"You do not think so, aunt Miriam!" Fleda said with a terrified look. "You
+are not worse?"
+
+"I don't expect ever to be better," said Mrs. Plumfield with a smile.
+"Nay, my love," she said, as Fleda's head went down on her bosom
+again,--"not so! I do not wish it either, Fleda. I do not expect to leave
+you soon, but I would not prolong the time by a day. I would not have
+spoken of it now if I had recollected myself,--but I am so accustomed to
+think and speak of it that it came out before I knew it.--My darling
+child, it is nothing to cry for."
+
+"I know it, aunt Miriam."
+
+"Then don't cry," whispered aunt Miriam, when she had stroked Fleda's head
+for five minutes.
+
+"I am crying for myself, aunt Miriam," said Fleda. "I shall be left
+alone."
+
+"Alone, my dear child?"
+
+"Yes--there is nobody but you that I feel I can talk to." She would have
+added that she dared not say a word to Hugh for fear of troubling him. But
+that pain at her heart stopped her, and pressing her hands together she
+burst into bitter weeping.
+
+"Nobody to talk to but me?" said Mrs. Plumfield after again soothing her
+for some time,--"what do you mean, dear?"
+
+"O--I can't say anything to them at home," said Fleda with a forced
+effort after voice;--"and you are the only one I can look to for
+help--Hugh never says anything--almost never--anything of that kind;--he
+would rather others should counsel him--"
+
+"There is one friend to whom you may always tell everything, with no fear
+of wearying him,--of whom you may at all times ask counsel without any
+danger of being denied,--more dear, more precious, more rejoiced in, the
+more he is sought unto. Thou mayest lose friend after friend, and gain
+more than thou losest,--in that one."
+
+"I know it," said Fleda;--"but dear aunt Miriam, don't you think human
+nature longs for some human sympathy and help too?"
+
+"My sweet blossom!--yes--" said Mrs. Plumfield caressingly stroking her
+bowed head,--"but let him do what he will;--he hath said, 'I will never
+leave thee nor forsake thee.'"
+
+"I know that too," said Fleda weeping. "How do people bear life that do
+not know it!"
+
+"Or that cannot take the comfort of it. Thou art not poor nor alone while
+thou hast him to go to, little Fleda.--And you are not losing me yet, my
+child; you will have time, I think, to grow as well satisfied as I with
+the prospect."
+
+"Is that possible,--for _others_?" said Fleda.
+
+The mother sighed, as her son entered the room.
+
+He looked uncommonly grave, Fleda thought. That did not surprise her, but
+it seemed that it did his mother, for she asked an explanation. Which
+however he did not give.
+
+"So you've got back from New York," said he.
+
+"Just got back, yesterday," said Fleda.
+
+"Why didn't you stay longer?"
+
+"I thought my friends at home would be glad to see me," said Fleda. "Was I
+mistaken?"
+
+He made no answer for a minute, and then said,
+
+"Is your uncle at home?"
+
+"No," said Fleda, "he went away this morning on business, and we do not
+expect him home before night-fall. Do you want to see him?"
+
+"No," said Seth very decidedly. "I wish he had staid in Michigan, or gone
+further west,--anywhere that Queechy'd never have heard of him."
+
+"Why what has he done?" said Fleda, looking up half laughing and half
+amazed at her cousin. But his face was disagreeably dark, though she could
+not make out that the expression was one of displeasure. It did not
+encourage her to talk.
+
+"Do you know a man in New York of the name of Thorn?" he said after
+standing still a minute or two.
+
+"I know two men of that name," said Fleda, colouring and wondering.
+
+"Is either on 'em a friend of your'n?"
+
+"No."
+
+"He ain't?" said Mr. Plumfield, giving the forestick on the fire an
+energetic kick which Fleda could not help thinking was mentally aimed at
+the said New Yorker.
+
+"No certainly. What makes you ask?"
+
+"O," said Seth dryly, "folks' tongues will find work to do;--I heerd say
+something like that--I thought you must take to him more than I do."
+
+"Why what do you know of him?"
+
+"He's been here a spell lately," said Seth,--"poking round; more for ill
+than for good, I reckon."
+
+He turned and quitted the room abruptly; and Fleda bethought her that she
+must go home while she had light enough.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXIX.
+
+
+
+  Nothing could be more obliging and respectful than the lion's letter was,
+  in appearance; but there was death in the true intent.--L'Estrange.
+
+
+The landscape had grown more dark since Fleda came up the hill,--or else
+the eyes that looked at it. Both probably. It was just after sundown, and
+that is a very sober time of day in winter, especially in some states of
+the weather. The sun had left no largesses behind him; the scenery was
+deserted to all the coming poverty of night and looked grim and threadbare
+already. Not one of the colours of prosperity left. The land was in
+mourning dress; all the ground and even the ice on the little mill-ponds a
+uniform spread of white, while the hills were draperied with black stems,
+here just veiling the snow, and there on a side view making a thick fold
+of black. Every little unpainted workshop or mill shewed uncompromisingly
+all its forbidding sharpness of angle and outline darkening against the
+twilight. In better days perhaps some friendly tree had hung over it,
+shielding part of its faults and redeeming the rest. Now nothing but the
+gaunt skeleton of a friend stood there,--doubtless to bud forth again as
+fairly as ever should the season smile. Still and quiet all was, as
+Fleda's spirit, and in too good harmony with it; she resolved to choose
+the morning to go out in future. There was as little of the light of
+spring or summer in her own mind as on the hills, and it was desirable to
+catch at least a cheering reflection. She could rouse herself to no bright
+thoughts, try as she would; the happy voices of nature that used to speak
+to her were all hushed,--or her ear was deaf; and her eye met nothing that
+did not immediately fall in with the train of sad images that were passing
+through her mind and swell the procession. She was fain to fall back and
+stay herself upon these words, the only stand-by she could lay hold of;--
+
+"To them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory, and
+honour, and immortality, eternal life!"--
+
+They toned with the scene and with her spirit exactly; they suited the
+darkening sky and the coming night; for "glory, honour, and immortality"
+are not now. They filled Fleda's mind, after they had once entered, and
+then nature's sympathy was again as readily given; each barren
+stern-looking hill in its guise of present desolation and calm expectancy
+seemed to echo softly, "patient continuance in well-doing." And the tears
+trembled then in Fleda's eyes; she had set her face, as the old Scotchman
+says, "in the right airth. [Footnote: quarter, direction]" "How sweet is
+the wind that bloweth out of the airth where Christ is!"
+
+"Well," said Hugh, who entered the kitchen with her, "you have been late
+enough. Did you have a pleasant walk? You are pale, Fleda!"
+
+"Yes, it was pleasant," said Fleda with one of her winning smiles,--"a
+kind of pleasant. But have you looked at the hills? They are exactly as if
+they had put on mourning--nothing but white and black--a crape-like
+dressing of black tree-stems upon the snowy face of the ground, and on
+every slope and edge of the hills the crape lies in folds. Do look at it
+when you go out! It has a most curious effect."
+
+"Not pleasant, I should think," said Hugh.
+
+"You'll see it is just as I have described it. No--not pleasant
+exactly--the landscape wants the sun to light it up just now--it is cold
+and wilderness looking. I think I'll take the morning in future. Whither
+are you bound?"
+
+"I must go over to Queechy Run for a minute, on business--I'll be home
+before supper--I should have been back by this time but Philetus has gone
+to bed with a headache and I had to take care of the cows."
+
+"Three times and out," said Barby. "I won't try again. I didn't know as
+anything would be too powerful for his head; but I find as sure as he has
+apple dumplin' for dinner he goes to bed for his supper and leaves the
+cows without none. And then Hugh has to take it. It has saved so many
+Elephants--that's one thing."
+
+Hugh went out by one door and Fleda by another entered the breakfast-room;
+the one generally used in winter for all purposes. Mrs. Rossitur sat there
+alone in an easy-chair; and Fleda no sooner caught the outline of her
+figure than her heart sank at once to an unknown depth,--unknown before
+and unfathomable now. She was _cowering_ over the fire,--her head sunk in
+her hands, so crouching, that the line of neck and shoulders instantly
+conveyed to Fleda the idea of fancied or felt degradation--there was no
+escaping it--how, whence, what, was all wild confusion. But the language
+of mere attitude was so unmistakable,--the expression of crushing pain was
+so strong, that after Fleda had fearfully made her way up beside her she
+could do no more. She stood there tongue-tied, spell-bound, present to
+nothing but a nameless chill of fear and heart-sinking. She was afraid to
+speak--afraid to touch her aunt, and abode motionless in the grasp of that
+dread for minutes. But Mrs. Rossitur did not stir a hair, and the terror
+of that stillness grew to be less endurable than any other.
+
+[Illustration: Mrs. Rossitur sat there alone.]
+
+Fleda spoke to her,--it did not win the shadow of a reply,--again and
+again. She laid her hand then upon Mrs. Rossitur's shoulder, but the very
+significant answer to that was a shrinking gesture of the shoulder and
+neck, away from the hand. Fleda growing desperate then implored an answer
+in words--prayed for an explanation--with an intensity of distress in
+voice and manner, that no one whose ears were not stopped with a stronger
+feeling could have been deaf to; but Mrs. Rossitur would not raise her
+head, nor slacken in the least the clasp of the fingers that supported it,
+that of themselves in their relentless tension spoke what no words could.
+Fleda's trembling prayers were in vain, in vain. Poor nature at last
+sought a woman's relief in tears--but they were heart-breaking, not
+heart-relieving tears--racking both mind and body more than they ought to
+bear, but bringing no cure. Mrs. Rossitur seemed as unconscious of her
+niece's mute agony as she had been of her agony of words; and it was from
+Fleda's own self-recollection alone that she fought off pain and roused
+herself above weakness to do what the time called for.
+
+"Aunt Lucy," she said laying her hand upon her shoulder, and this time the
+voice was steady and the hand would not be shaken off,--"Aunt Lucy,--Hugh
+will be in presently--hadn't you better rouse yourself and go up
+stairs--for awhile?--till you are better?--and not let him see you so?--"
+
+How the voice was broken and quivering before it got through!
+
+The answer this time was a low long-drawn moan, so exceeding plaintive and
+full of pain that it made Fleda shake like an aspen. But after a moment
+she spoke again, bearing more heavily with her hand to mark her words.
+
+"I am afraid he will be in presently--he ought not to see you now--Aunt
+Lucy, I am afraid it might do him an injury he might not get over--"
+
+She spoke with the strength of desperation; her nerves were unstrung by
+fear, and every joint weakened so that she could hardly support herself.
+She had not however spoken in vain; one or two convulsive shudders passed
+over her aunt, and then Mrs. Rossitur suddenly rose turning her face from
+Fleda; neither would she permit her to follow her. But Fleda thought she
+had seen that one or two unfolded letters or papers of some kind, they
+looked like letters, were in her lap when she raised her head.
+
+Left alone, Fleda sat down on the floor by the easy-chair and rested her
+head there; waiting,--she could do nothing else,--till her extreme
+excitement of body and mind should have quieted itself. She had a kind of
+vague hope that time would do something for her before Hugh came in.
+Perhaps it did; for though she lay in a kind of stupor, and was conscious
+of no change whatever, she was able when she heard him coming to get up
+and sit in the chair in an ordinary attitude. But she looked like the
+wraith of herself an hour ago.
+
+"Fleda!" Hugh exclaimed as soon as he looked from the fire to her
+face,--"what is the matter?--what is the matter with you?"
+
+"I am not very well--I don't feel very well," said Fleda speaking almost
+mechanically,--"I shall have a headache to-morrow--"
+
+"Headache! But you look shockingly! what has happened to you? what is the
+matter, Fleda?"
+
+"I am not ill--I shall be better by and by. There is nothing the matter
+with me that need trouble you, dear Hugh."
+
+"Nothing the matter with you!" said he,--and Fleda might see how she
+looked in the reflection of his face,--"where's mother?"
+
+"She is up-stairs--you mustn't go to her, Hugh!" said Fleda laying a
+detaining hand upon him with more strength than she thought she had,--"I
+don't want anything."
+
+"Why mustn't I go to her?"
+
+"I don't think she wants to be disturbed--"
+
+"I must disturb her--"
+
+"You musn't!--I know she don't--she isn't well--something has happened to
+trouble her--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"And is that what has troubled you too?" said Hugh, his countenance
+changing as he gained more light on the subject;--"what is it, dear
+Fleda?"
+
+"I don't know," repeated Fleda, bursting into tears. Hugh was quiet enough
+now, and sat down beside her, subdued and still, without even desiring to
+ask a question. Fleda's tears flowed violently, for a minute,--then she
+checked them, for his sake; and they sat motionless, without speaking to
+one another, looking into the fire and letting it die out before them into
+embers and ashes, neither stirring to put a hand to it. As the fire died
+the moonlight streamed in,--how very dismal the room looked!
+
+"What do you think about having tea?" said Barby opening the door of
+the kitchen.
+
+Neither felt it possible to answer her.
+
+"Mr. Rossitur ain't come home, is he?"
+
+"No," said Fleda shuddering.
+
+"So I thought, and so I told Seth Plumfield just now--he was asking for
+him--My stars! ha'n't you no fire here? what did you let it go out for?"
+
+Barby came in and began to build it up.
+
+"It's growing cold I can tell you, so you may as well have something in
+the chimney to look at. You'll want it shortly if you don't now."
+
+"Was Mr. Plumfield here, did you say, Barby?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why didn't he come in?"
+
+"I s'pose he hadn't a mind to," said Barby. "Twa'n't for want of being
+asked. I did the civil thing by him if he didn't by me;--but he said he
+didn't want to see anybody but Mr. Rossitur."
+
+Did not wank to see anybody but Mr. Rossitur, when he had distinctly said
+he did not wish to see him? Fleda felt sick, merely from the mysterious
+dread which could fasten upon nothing and therefore took in everything.
+
+"Well what about tea?" concluded Barby, when the fire was going according
+to her wishes. "Will you have it, or will you wait longer?"
+
+"No--we won't wait--we will have it now, Barby," said Fleda, forcing
+herself to make the exertion; and she went to the window to put down
+the hangings.
+
+The moonlight was very bright, and Fleda's eye was caught in the very act
+of letting down the curtain, by a figure in the road slowly passing before
+the courtyard fence. It paused a moment by the horse-gate, and turning
+paced slowly back till it was hid behind the rose acacias. There was a
+clump of shrubbery in that corner thick enough even in winter to serve for
+a screen. Fleda stood with the curtain in her hand, half let down, unable
+to move, and feeling almost as if the very currents of life within her
+were standing still too. She thought, she was almost sure, she knew the
+figure; it was on her tongue to ask Hugh to come and look, but she checked
+that. The form appeared again from behind the acacias, moving with the
+same leisurely pace the other way towards the horse-gate. Fleda let down
+the curtain, then the other two quietly, and then left the room and stole
+noiselessly out at the front door, leaving it open that the sound of it
+might not warn Hugh what she was about, and stepping like a cat down the
+steps ran breathlessly over the snow to the courtyard gate. There waited,
+shivering in the cold but not feeling it for the cold within,--while the
+person she was watching stood still a lew moments by the horse-gate and
+came again with leisurely steps towards her.
+
+"Seth Plumfield!"--said Fleda, almost as much frightened at the sound of
+her own voice as he was. He stopped immediately, with a start, and came up
+to the little gate behind which she was standing. But said nothing.
+
+"What are you doing here?"
+
+"You oughtn't to be out without anything on," said he,--"you're fixing to
+take your death."
+
+He had good reason to say so. But she gave him no more heed than the wind.
+
+"What are you waiting here for? What do you want?"
+
+"I have nothing better to do with my time," said he;--"I thought I'd walk
+up and down here a little. You go in!"
+
+"Are you waiting to see uncle Rolf?" she said, with teeth chattering.
+
+"You mustn't stay out here," said he earnestly--"you're like nothing
+but a spook this minute--I'd rather see one, or a hull army of 'em. Go
+in, go in!"
+
+"Tell me if you want to see him, Seth."
+
+"No I don't--I told you I didn't."
+
+"Then why are you waiting for him?"
+
+"I thought I'd see if he was coming home to-night--I had a word to say if
+I could catch him before he got into the house."
+
+"_Is_ he coming home to-night?" said Fleda.
+
+"I don't know!" said he looking at her. "Do you?"
+
+Fleda burst open the gate between them and putting her hands on his
+implored him to tell her what was the matter. He looked singularly
+disturbed; his fine eye twinkled with compassion; but his face, never a
+weak one, shewed no signs of yielding now.
+
+"The matter is," said he pressing hard both her hands, "that you are
+fixing to be down sick in your bed by to-morrow. You mustn't stay
+another second."
+
+"Come in then."
+
+"No--not to-night."
+
+"You won't tell me!--"
+
+"There is nothing I can tell you--Maybe there'll be nothing to tell--Run
+in, run in, and keep quiet."
+
+Fleda hurried back to the house, feeling that she had gone to the limit of
+risk already. Not daring to show herself to Hugh in her chilled state of
+body and mind she went into the kitchen.
+
+"Why what on earth's come over you?" was Barby's terrified ejaculation
+when she saw her.
+
+"I have been out and got myself cold--"
+
+"Cold!" said Barby,--"you're looking dreadful! What on earth ails
+you, Fleda?"
+
+"Don't ask me, Barby," said Fleda hiding her face in her hands and
+shivering,--"I made myself very cold just now--Aunt Lucy doesn't feel very
+well and I got frightened," she added presently.
+
+"What's the matter with her?"
+
+"I don't know--if you'll make me a cup of tea I'll take it up to
+her, Barby."
+
+"You put yourself down there," said Barby placing her with gentle force in
+a chair,--"you'll do no such a thing till I see you look as if there was
+some blood in you. I'll take it up myself."
+
+But Fleda held her, though with a hand much too feeble indeed for any but
+moral suasion. It was enough. Barby stood silently and very anxiously
+watching her, till the fire had removed the outward chill at least. But
+even that took long to do, and before it was well done Fleda again asked
+for the cup of tea. Barby made it without a word, and Fleda went to her
+aunt with it, taking her strength from the sheer emergency. Her knees
+trembled under her as she mounted the stairs, and once a glimpse of those
+words flitted across her mind,--"patient continuance in well-doing." It
+was like a lightning flash in a dark night shewing the way one must go.
+She could lay hold of no other stay. Her mind was full of one intense
+purpose--to end the suspense.
+
+She gently tried the door of her aunt's room; it was unfastened, and she
+went in. Mrs. Rossitur was lying on the bed; but her first mood had
+changed, for at Fleda's soft word and touch she half rose up and putting
+both arms round her waist laid her face against her. There were no tears
+still, only a succession of low moans, so inexpressibly weak and plaintive
+that Fleda's nature could hardly bear them without giving way. A more
+fragile support was never clung to. Yet her trembling fingers, in their
+agony moved caressingly among her aunt's hair and over her brow as she
+begged her--when she could, she was not able at first--to let her know the
+cause that was grieving her. The straightened clasp of Mrs. Rossitur's
+arms and her increased moaning gave only an answer of pain. But Fleda
+repeated the question. Mrs. Rossitur still neglecting it, then made her
+sit down upon the bed, so that she could lay her head higher, on Fleda's
+bosom; where she hid it, with a mingling of fondness given and asked, a
+poor seeking for comfort and rest, that wrung her niece's heart.
+
+They sat so for a little time; Fleda hoping that her aunt would by degrees
+come to the point herself. The tea stood cooling on the table, not even
+offered; not wanted there.
+
+"Wouldn't you feel better if you told me, dear aunt Lucy?" said Fleda,
+when they had been for a little while perfectly still. Even the moaning
+had ceased.
+
+"Is your uncle come home?" whispered Mrs. Rossitur, but so low that Fleda
+could but half catch the words.
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"What o'clock is it?"
+
+"I don't know--not early--it must be near eight.--Why?"
+
+"You have not heard anything of him?"
+
+"No--nothing."
+
+There was silence again for a little, and then Mrs. Rossitur said in a low
+fearful whisper,
+
+"Have you seen anybody round the house?"
+
+Fleda's thoughts flew to Seth, with that nameless fear to which she
+could give neither shape nor direction, and after a moment's
+hesitation she said,
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Have you?" said Mrs. Rossitur with more energy.
+
+"Seth Plumfield was here a little while ago."
+
+Her aunt had the clew that she had not, for with a half scream, half
+exclamation, she quitted Fleda's arms and fell back upon the pillows,
+turning from her and hiding her face there. Fleda prayed again for her
+confidence, as well as the weakness and the strength of fear could do;
+and Mrs. Rossitur presently grasping a paper that lay on the bed held
+it out to her, saying only as Fleda was about quitting the room, "Bring
+me a light."
+
+Fleda left the letter there and went down to fetch one. She commanded
+herself under the excitement and necessity of the moment,--all but her
+face; that terrified Barby exceedingly. But she spoke with a strange
+degree of calmness; told her Mrs. Rossitur was not alarmingly ill; that
+she did not need Barby's services and wished to see nobody but herself
+and didn't want a fire. As she was passing through the hall again Hugh
+came out of the sitting-room to ask after his mother. Fleda kept the
+light from her face.
+
+"She does not want to be disturbed--I hope she will be better to-morrow."
+
+"What is the matter, Fleda?"
+
+"I don't know yet."
+
+"And you are ill yourself, Fleda!--you are ill!--"
+
+"No--I shall do very well--never mind me. Hugh, take some tea--I will be
+down by and by."
+
+He went back, and Fieda went up stairs. Mrs. Rossitur had not moved. Fleda
+set down the light and herself beside it, with the paper her aunt had
+given her. It was a letter.
+
+"Queechy, _Thursday_--
+
+"It gives me great concern, my dear madam, to be the means of bringing to
+you a piece of painful information--but it cannot be long kept from your
+knowledge and you may perhaps learn it better from me than by any other
+channel. May I entreat you not to be too much alarmed, since I am
+confident the cause will be of short duration.
+
+"Pardon me for what I am about to say.
+
+"There are proceedings entered into against Mr. Rossitur--there are writs
+out against him--on the charge of having, some years ago, endorsed my
+father's name upon a note of his own giving.--Why it has lain so long I
+cannot explain. There is unhappily no doubt of the fact.
+
+"I was in Queechy some days ago, on business of my own, when I became
+aware that this was going on--my father had made no mention of it to me. I
+immediately took strict measures--I am happy to say I believe with
+complete success,--to have the matter kept a profound secret. I then made
+my way as fast as possible to New York to confer on the subject with the
+original mover of it--unfortunately I was disappointed. My father had left
+for a neighbouring city, to be absent several days. Finding myself too
+late to prevent, as I had hoped to do, any open steps from being taken at
+Queechy, I returned hither immediately to enforce secrecy of proceedings
+and to assure you, madam, that my utmost exertions shall not be wanting
+to bring the whole matter to a speedy and satisfactory termination. I
+entertain no doubt of being able to succeed entirely--even to the point of
+having the whole transaction remain unknown and unsuspected by the world.
+It is so entirely as yet, with the exception of one or two law-officers
+whose silence I have means of procuring.
+
+"May I confess that I am not entirely disinterested? May the selfishness
+of human nature ask its reward, and own its moving spring? May I own that
+my zeal in this cause is quickened by the unspeakable excellencies of Mr.
+Rossitur's lovely niece--which I have learned to appreciate with my whole
+_heart_--and be forgiven?--And may I hope for the kind offices and
+intercession of the lady I have the honour of addressing, with her niece
+Miss Ringgan, that my reward,--the single word of encouragement I ask
+for,--may be given me?--Having that, I will promise anything--I will
+guaranty the success of any enterprise, however difficult, to which she
+may impel me,--and I will undertake that the matter which furnishes the
+painful theme of this letter shall never more be spoken or thought of, by
+the world, or my father, or by Mrs. Rossitur's
+
+obliged, grateful, and
+faithful servant,
+Lewis Thorn."
+
+Fleda felt as she read as if icicles were gathering about her heart. The
+whirlwind of fear and distress of a little while ago which could take no
+definite direction, seemed to have died away and given place to a dead
+frost--the steady bearing down of disgrace and misery, inevitable,
+unmitigable, unchangeable; no lessening, no softening of that blasting
+power, no, nor ever any rising up from under it; the landscape could never
+be made to smile again. It was the fall of a bright star from their home
+constellation; but alas! the star was fallen long ago, and the failure of
+light which they had deplored was all too easily accounted for; yet now
+they knew that no restoration was to be hoped. And the mother and
+son--what would become of them? And the father--what would become of him?
+what further distress was in store?--_Public_ disgrace?--and Fleda bowed
+her head forward on her clasped hands with the mechanical, vain endeavour
+to seek rest or shelter from thought. She made nothing of Mr. Thorn's
+professions; she took only the facts of his letter; the rest her eye had
+glanced over as if she had no concern with it, and it hardly occurred to
+her that she had any. But the sense of his words she had taken in, and
+knew, better perhaps than her aunt, that there was nothing to look for
+from his kind offices. The weight on her heart was too great just then for
+her to suspect as she did afterwards that he was the sole mover of the
+whole affair.
+
+As the first confusion of thought cleared away, two images of distress
+loomed up and filled the view,--her aunt, broken under the news, and Hugh
+still unknowing to them; her own separate existence Fleda was hardly
+conscious of. Hugh especially,--how was he to be told, and how could he
+bear to hear? with his most sensitive conformation of both physical and
+moral nature. And if an arrest should take place there that night!--Fleda
+shuddered, and unable to go on thinking rose up and went to her aunt's
+bedside. It had not entered her mind till the moment she read Mr. Thorn's
+letter that Seth Plumfield was sheriff for the county. She was shaking
+again from head to foot with fear. She could not say anything--the touch
+of her lips to the throbbing temples, soft and tender as sympathy itself,
+was all she ventured.
+
+"Have you heard anything of him?" Mrs. Rossitur whispered.
+
+"No--I doubt if we do at all to-night."
+
+There was a half breathed "Oh!--" of indescribable pain and longing; and
+with a restless change of position Mrs. Rossitur gathered herself up on
+the bed and sat with her head leaning on her knees. Fleda brought a large
+cloak and put it round her.
+
+"I am in no danger," she said,--"I wish I were!"
+
+Again Fleda's lips softly, tremblingly, touched her cheek.
+
+Mrs. Rossitur put her arm round her and drew her down to her side, upon
+the bed; and wrapped half of the big cloak about her; and they sat there
+still in each other's arms, without speaking or weeping, while quarter
+after quarter of an hour passed away,--nobody knew how many. And the cold
+bright moonlight streamed in on the floor, mocking them.
+
+"Go!" whispered Mrs. Rossitur at last,--"go down stairs and take care of
+yourself--and Hugh."
+
+"Won't you come?"
+
+Mrs. Rossitur shook her head.
+
+"Mayn't I bring you something?--do let me!"
+
+But Mrs. Rossitur's shake of the head was decisive. Fleda crawled off the
+bed, feeling as if a month's illness had been making its ravages upon her
+frame and strength. She stood a moment to collect her thoughts; but alas,
+thinking was impossible; there was a palsy upon her mind. She went into
+her own room and for a minute kneeled down,--not to form a petition in
+words, she was as much beyond that; it was only the mute attitude of
+appeal, the pitiful outward token of the mind's bearing, that could not be
+forborne, a silent uttering of the plea she had made her own in happy
+days. There was something of comfort in the mere feeling of doing it; and
+there was more in one or two words that even in that blank came to her
+mind;--"_Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them
+that fear him_;" and she again recollected that "Providence runneth not
+upon broken wheels." Nothing could be darker than the prospect before her,
+and these things did not bring light; but they gave her a sure stay to
+hold on by and keep her feet; a bit of strength to preserve from utterly
+fainting. Ah! the storehouse must be filled and the mind well familiarized
+with what is stored in it while yet the days are bright, or it will never
+be able to find what it wants in the dark.
+
+Fleda first went into the kitchen to tell Barby to fasten the doors and
+not sit up.
+
+"I don't believe uncle Rolf will be home to-night; but if he comes I will
+let him in."
+
+Barby looked at her with absolutely a face of distress; but not daring to
+ask and not knowing how to propose anything, she looked in silence.
+
+"It must be nine o'clock now," Fleda went on.
+
+"And how long be you going to sit up?" said Barby.
+
+"I don't know--a while yet."
+
+"You look proper for it!" said Barby half sorrowfully and half
+indignantly;--"you look as if a straw would knock you down this minute.
+There's sense into everything. You catch me a going to bed and leaving you
+up! It won't do me no hurt to sit here the hull night; and I'm the only
+one in the house that's fit for it, with the exception of Philetus, and
+the little wit he has by day seems to forsake him at night. All the light
+that ever gets into his head, _I_ believe, comes from the outside; as soon
+as ever that's gone he shuts up his shutters. He's been snoozing a'ready
+now this hour and a half. Go yourself off to bed, Fleda," she added with a
+mixture of reproach and kindness, "and leave me alone to take care of
+myself and the house too."
+
+Fleda did not remonstrate, for Barby was as determined in her way as it
+was possible for anything to be. She went into the other room without a
+particle of notion what she should say or do.
+
+Hugh was walking up and down the floor--a most unusual sign of
+perturbation with him. He met and stopped her as she came in.
+
+"Fleda, I cannot bear it. What is the matter?--Do you know?'" he said as
+her eyes fell.
+
+"Yes.----"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+She was silent and tried to pass on to the fire. But he stayed her.
+
+"What is it?" he repeated.
+
+"Oh I wish I could keep it from you!" said Fleda bursting into tears.
+
+He was still a moment, and then bringing her to the arm-chair made her sit
+down, and stood himself before her, silently waiting, perhaps because he
+could not speak, perhaps from the accustomed gentle endurance of his
+nature. But Fleda was speechless too.
+
+"You are keeping me in distress," he said at length.
+
+"I cannot end the distress, dear Hugh," said Fleda.
+
+She saw him change colour and he stood motionless still.
+
+"Do you remember," said Fleda, trembling even to her voice,--"what
+Rutherford says about Providence 'not running on broken wheels'?"
+
+He gave her no answer but the intent look of expectation. Its intentness
+paralyzed Fleda. She did not know how to go on. She rose from her chair
+and hung upon his shoulder.
+
+"Believe it now, if you can--for oh, dear Hugh!--we have something
+to try it."
+
+"It is strange my father don't come home," said he, supporting her with
+tenderness which had very little strength to help it,--"we want him
+very much."
+
+Whether or not any unacknowledged feeling prompted this remark, some
+slight involuntary movement of Fleda's made him ask suddenly,
+
+"Is it about him?"
+
+He had grown deadly pale and Fleda answered eagerly,
+
+"Nothing that has happened to-day--it is not anything that has happened
+to-day--he is perfectly well, I trust and believe."
+
+"But it is about him?"
+
+Fleda's head sank, and she burst into such an agony of tears that Hugh's
+distress was for a time divided.
+
+"When did it happen, Fleda?"
+
+"Years ago."
+
+"And what?"
+
+Fleda hesitated still, and then said,
+
+"It was something he did, Hugh."
+
+"What?"
+
+"He put another person's name on the back of a note he gave."
+
+She did not look up, and Hugh was silent for a moment.
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Mr. Thorn wrote it to aunt Lucy--it was Mr. Thorn's father."
+
+Hugh sat down and leaned his head on the table. A long, long, time
+passed,--unmeasured by the wild coursing of thought to and fro. Then
+Fleda came and knelt down at the table beside him, and put her arm
+round his neck.
+
+"Dear Hugh," she said--and if ever love and tenderness and sympathy could
+be distilled in tones, such drops were those that fell upon the mind's
+ear,--"can't you look up at me?"
+
+He did then, but he did not give her a chance to look at him. He locked
+his arms about her, bringing her close to his breast; and for a few
+minutes, in utter silence, they knew what strange sweetness pure affection
+can mingle even in the communion of sorrow. There were tears shed in those
+minutes that, bitter as they seemed at the time, Memory knew had been
+largely qualified with another admixture.
+
+"Dear Hugh," said Fleda,--"let us keep what we can--won't you go to bed
+and rest?"
+
+He looked dreadfully as if he needed it. But the usual calmness and
+sweetness of his face was not altered;--it was only deepened to very great
+sadness. Mentally, Fleda thought, he had borne the shock better than his
+mother; for the bodily frame she trembled. He had not answered and she
+spoke again.
+
+"You need it worse than I, poor Fleda"
+
+"I will go too presently--I do not think anybody will be here tonight."
+
+"Is--Are there--Is this what has taken him away?" said Hugh.
+
+Her silence and her look told him, and then laying her cheek again
+alongside of his she whispered, how unsteadily, "We have only one help,
+dear Hugh."
+
+They were still and quiet again for minutes, counting the pulses of pain;
+till Fleda came back to her poor wish "to keep what they could." She mixed
+a restorative of wine and water, which however little desired, she felt
+was necessary for both of them, and Hugh went up stairs. She staid a few
+minutes to prepare another glass with particular care for her aunt. It was
+just finished, and taking her candle she had bid Barby good-night, when
+there came a loud rap at the front door. Fleda set down candle and glass,
+from the quick inability to hold them as well as for other reasons; and
+she and Barby stood and looked at each other, in such a confusion of doubt
+and dread that some little time had passed before either stirred even her
+eyes. Barby then threw down the tongs with which she had begun to make
+preparations for covering up the fire and set off to the front.
+
+"You mustn't open the door, Barby," cried Fleda, following her. "Come in
+here and let us look out of one of the windows."
+
+Before this could be reached however, there was another prolonged
+repetition of the first thundering burst. It went through Fleda's heart,
+because of the two up stairs who must hear it.
+
+Barby threw up the sash.
+
+"Who's there?"
+
+"Is this Mr. Rossitur's place?" enquired a gruff voice.
+
+"Yes, it is."
+
+"Well will you come round and open the door?"
+
+"Who wants it open?"
+
+"A lady wants it open?"
+
+"A lady!--what lady?"
+
+"Down yonder in the carriage."
+
+"What lady? who is she?"
+
+"I don't know who she is--she wanted to come to Mr. Rossitur's place--will
+you open the door for her?"
+
+Barby and Fleda both now saw a carriage standing in the road.
+
+"We must see who it is first," whispered Fleda.
+
+"When the lady comes I'll open the door," was Barby's ultimatum.
+
+The man withdrew to the carriage; and after a few moments of intense
+watching Fleda and Barby certainly saw something in female apparel enter
+the little gate of the court-yard and come up over the bright moonlit snow
+towards the house, accompanied by a child; while the man with whom they
+had had the interview came behind transformed into an unmistakeable
+baggage-carrier.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XL.
+
+
+
+  Zeal was the spring whence flowed her hardiment.
+
+  Fairfax.
+
+
+Barby undid bolt and lock and Fleda met the traveller in the hall. She was
+a lady; her air and dress shewed that, though the latter was very plain.
+
+"Does Mr. Rossitur live here?" was her first word.
+
+Fleda answered it, and brought her visitor into the sitting room. But the
+light falling upon a form and face that had seen more wear and tear than
+time, gave her no clue as to the who or what of the person before her. The
+stranger's hurried look round the room seemed to expect something.
+
+"Are they all gone to bed?"
+
+"All but me," said Fleda.
+
+"We have been delayed--we took a wrong road--we've been riding for hours
+to find the place--hadn't the right direction."--Then looking keenly at
+Fleda, from whose vision an electric spark of intelligence had scattered
+the clouds, she said;
+
+"I am Marion Rossitur."
+
+"I knew it!" said Fleda, with lips and eyes that gave her already a
+sister's welcome; and they were folded in each other's arms almost as
+tenderly and affectionately, on the part of one at least, as if there had
+really been the relationship between them. But more than surprise and
+affection struck Fleda's heart.
+
+"And where are they all, Fleda? Can't I see them?"
+
+"You must wait till I have prepared them--Hugh and aunt Lucy are not
+very well. I don't know that it will do for you to see them at all
+to-night, Marion."
+
+"Not to-night! They are not ill?"
+
+"No--only enough to be taken care of--not ill. But it would be
+better to wait"
+
+"And my father?"
+
+"He is not at home."
+
+Marion exclaimed in sorrow, and Fleda to hide the look that she felt was
+on her face stooped down to kiss the child. He was a remarkably
+fine-looking manly boy.
+
+"That is your cousin Fleda," said his mother.
+
+"No--_aunt_ Fleda," said the person thus introduced--"don't put me off
+into cousindom, Marion. I am uncle Hugh's sister--and so I am your aunt
+Fleda. Who are you?"
+
+"Rolf Rossitur Schwiden."
+
+Alas how wide are the ramifications of evil! How was what might have been
+very pure pleasure utterly poisoned and turned into bitterness. It went
+through Fleda's heart with a keen pang when she heard that name and looked
+on the very fair brow that owned it, and thought of the ineffaceable stain
+that had come upon both. She dared look at nobody but the child. He
+already understood the melting eyes that were making acquaintance with
+his, and half felt the pain that gave so much tenderness to her kiss, and
+looked at her with a grave face of awakening wonder and sympathy. Fleda
+was glad to have business to call her into the kitchen.
+
+"Who is it?" was Barby's immediate question.
+
+"Aunt Lucy's daughter."
+
+"She don't look much like her!" said Barby intelligently.
+
+"They will want something to eat, Barby."
+
+"I'll put the kettle on. It'll boil directly. I'll go in there and fix up
+the fire."
+
+A word or two more, and then Fleda ran up to speak to her aunt and Hugh.
+
+Her aunt she found in a state of agitation that was frightful. Even
+Fleda's assurances, with all the soothing arts she could bring to bear
+were some minutes before they could in any measure tranquillize her.
+Fleda's own nerves were in no condition to stand another shock when she
+left her and went to Hugh's door. But she could get no answer from him
+though she spoke repeatedly.
+
+She did not return to her aunt's room. She went down stairs and brought up
+Barby and a light from thence.
+
+Hugh was lying senseless and white; not whiter than his adopted sister as
+she stood by his side. Her eye went to her companion.
+
+"Not a bit of it!" said Barby--"he's in nothing but a faint--just run down
+stairs and get the vinegar bottle, Fleda--the pepper vinegar.--Is there
+any water here?--"
+
+Fleda obeyed; and watched, she could do little more, the efforts of Barby,
+who indeed needed no help, with the cold water, the vinegar, and rubbing
+of the limbs. They were for sometime unsuccessful; the fit was a severe
+one; and Fleda was exceedingly terrified before any signs of returning
+life came to reassure her.
+
+"Now you go down stairs and keep quiet!" said Barby, when Hugh was fairly
+restored and had smiled a faint answer to Fleda's kiss and
+explanations,--"Go, Fleda! you ain't fit to stand. Go and sit down some
+place, and I'll be along directly and see how the fire burns. Don't you
+s'pose Mis' Rossitur could come in and sit in this easy-chair a spell
+without hurting herself?"
+
+It occurred to Fleda immediately that it might do more good than harm to
+her aunt if her attention were diverted even by another cause of anxiety.
+She gently summoned her, telling her no more than was necessary to fit her
+for being Hugh's nurse; and in a very few minutes she and Barby were at
+liberty to attend to other claims upon them. But it sank into her heart,
+"Hugh will not get over this!"--and when she entered the sitting-room,
+what Mr. Carleton years before had said of the wood-flower was come true
+in its fullest extent--"a storm-wind had beaten it to the ground."
+
+She was able literally to do no more than Barby had said, sit down and
+keep herself quiet. Miss Elster was in her briskest mood; flew in and out;
+made up the fire in the sitting-room and put on the kettle in the kitchen,
+which she had been just about doing when called to see Hugh. The
+much-needed supper of the travellers must be still waited for; but the
+fire was burning now, the room was cosily warm and bright, and Marion drew
+up her chair with a look of thoughtful contentment. Fleda felt as if some
+conjuror had been at work here for the last few hours--the room looked so
+like and felt so unlike itself.
+
+"Are you going to be ill too, Fleda?" said Marion suddenly. "You are
+looking--very far from well!"
+
+"I shall have a headache to-morrow," said Fleda quietly. "I generally know
+the day beforehand."
+
+"Does it always make you look so?"
+
+"Not always--I am somewhat tired."
+
+"Where is my father gone?"
+
+"I don't know.--Rolf, dear," said Fleda bending forward to the little
+fellow who was giving expression to some very fidgety impatience,--"what
+is the matter? what do you want?"
+
+The child's voice fell a little from its querulousness towards the sweet
+key in which the questions had been put, but he gave utterance to a very
+decided wish for "bread and butter."
+
+"Come here," said Fleda, reaching out a hand and drawing him, certainly
+with no force but that of attraction, towards her easy-chair,--"come here
+and rest yourself in this nice place by me--see, there is plenty of room
+for you;--and you shall have bread and butter and tea, and something else
+too, I guess, just as soon as Barby can get it ready."
+
+"Who is Barby?" was the next question, in a most uncompromising
+tone of voice.
+
+"You saw the woman that came in to put wood on the fire--that was
+Barby--she is very good and kind and will do anything for you if you
+behave yourself."
+
+The child muttered, but so low as to shew some unwillingness that his
+words should reach the ears that were nearest him, that "he wasn't going
+to behave himself."
+
+Fleda did not choose to hear; and went on with composing observations till
+the fair little face she had drawn to her side was as bright as the sun
+and returned her smile with interest.
+
+"You have an admirable talent at moral suasion, Fleda," said the mother
+half smiling;--"I wish I had it."
+
+"You don't need it so much here."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It may do very well for me, but I think not so well for you."
+
+"Why?--what do you mean? I think it is the only way in the world to bring
+up children--the only way fit for rational beings to be guided."
+
+Fleda smiled, though the faintest indication that lips could give, and
+shook her head,--ever so little.
+
+"Why do you do that?--tell me."
+
+"Because in my limited experience," said Fleda as she passed her fingers
+through the boy's dark locks of hair,--"in every household where 'moral
+suasion' has been the law, the children have been the administrators of
+it. Where is your husband?"
+
+"I have lost him--years ago--" said Marion with a quick expressive glance
+towards the child. "I never lost what I at first thought I had, for I
+never had it. Do you understand?"
+
+Fleda's eyes gave a sufficient answer.
+
+"I am a widow--these five years--in all but what the law would require,"
+Marion went on. "I have been alone since then--except my child. He was two
+years old then; and since then I have lived such a life, Fleda!--"
+
+"Why didn't you come home?"
+
+"Couldn't--the most absolute reason in the world. Think of it!--Come home!
+It was as much as I could do to stay there!"
+
+Those sympathizing eyes were enough to make her go on.
+
+"I have wanted everything--except trouble. I have done everything--except
+ask alms. I have learned, Fleda, that death is not the worst form in which
+distress can come."
+
+Fleda felt stung, and bent down her head to touch her lips to the brow of
+little Rolf.
+
+"Death would have been a trifle!" said Marion. "I mean,--not that _I_
+should have wished to leave Rolf alone in the world; but if I had been
+left--I mean I would rather wear outside than inside mourning."
+
+Fleda looked up again, and at her.
+
+"O I was so mistaken, Fleda!" she said clasping her hands,--"so
+mistaken!--in everything;--so disappointed,--in all my hopes. And the loss
+of my fortune was the cause of it all."
+
+Nay verily! thought Fleda; but she said nothing; she hung her head again;
+and Marion after a pause went on to question her about an endless string
+of matters concerning themselves and other people, past doings and present
+prospects, till little Rolf soothed by the uninteresting soft murmur of
+voices fairly forgot bread and butter and himself in a sound sleep, his
+head resting upon Fleda.
+
+"Here is one comfort for you, Marion," she said looking down at the dark
+eyelashes which lay on a cheek rosy and healthy as ever seven years old
+knew;--"he is a beautiful child, and I am sure, a fine one."
+
+"It is thanks to his beauty that I have ever seen home again," said
+his mother.
+
+Fleda had no heart this evening to speak words that were not necessary;
+her eyes asked Marion to explain herself.
+
+"He was in Hyde Park one day--I had a miserable lodging not far from it,
+and I used to let him go in there, because he must go somewhere, you
+know,--I couldn't go with him--"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Couldn't!--Oh Fleda!--I have seen changes!--He was there one afternoon,
+alone, and had got into difficulty with some bigger boys--a little fellow,
+you know,--he stood his ground man-fully, but his strength wasn't equal to
+his spirit, and they were tyrannizing over him after the fashion of boys,
+who are I do think the ugliest creatures in creation!" said Mme. Schwiden,
+not apparently reckoning her own to be of the same gender,--"and a
+gentleman who was riding by stopped and interfered and took him out of
+their hands, and then asked him his name,--struck I suppose with his
+appearance. Very kind, wasn't it? men so seldom bother themselves about
+what becomes of children, I suppose there were thousands of others riding
+by at the same time."
+
+"Very kind," Fleda said.
+
+"When he heard what his name was he gave his horse to his servant and
+walked home with Rolf; and the next day he sent me a note, speaking of
+having known my father and mother and asking permission to call upon
+me.--I never was so mortified, I think, in my life," said Marion after a
+moment's hesitation.
+
+"Why?" said Fleda, not a little at a loss to follow out the chain of her
+cousin's reasoning.
+
+"Why I was in such a sort of a place--you don't know, Fleda; I was working
+then for a fancy store-keeper, to support myself--living in a miserable
+little two rooms.--If it had been a stranger I wouldn't have cared so
+much, but somebody that had known us in different times--I hadn't a thing
+in the world to answer the note upon but a half sheet of letter paper."
+
+Fleda's lips sought Rolf's forehead again, with a curious rush of tears
+and smiles at once. Perhaps Marion had caught the expression of her
+countenance, for she added with a little energy,
+
+"It is nothing to be surprised at--you would have felt just the same;
+for I knew by his note, the whole style of it, what sort of a person
+it must be."
+
+"My pride has been a good deal chastened," Fleda said gently.
+
+"I never want _mine_ to be, beyond minding everything," said Marion; "and
+I don't believe yours is. I don't know why in the world I did not refuse
+to see him--I had fifty minds to--but he had won Rolf's heart, and I was a
+little curious, and it was something strange to see the face of a friend,
+any better one than my old landlady, so I let him come."
+
+"Was _she_ a friend?" said Fleda.
+
+"If she hadn't been I should not have lived to be here--the best soul that
+ever was; but still, you know, she could do nothing for me but be as kind
+as she could live;--this was something different. So I let him come, and
+he came the next day."
+
+Fleda was silent, a little wondering that Marion should be so frank with
+her, beyond what she had ever been in former years; but as she guessed,
+Mme. Schwiden's heart was a little opened by the joy of finding herself at
+home and the absolute necessity of talking to somebody; and there was a
+further reason which Fleda could not judge of, in her own face and manner.
+Marion needed no questions and went on again after stopping a moment.
+
+"I was so glad in five minutes,--I can't tell you, Fleda,--that I had let
+him come. I forget entirely about how I looked and the wretched place I
+was in. He was all that I had supposed, and a great deal more, but somehow
+he hadn't been in the room three minutes before I didn't care at all for
+all the things I had thought would trouble me. Isn't it strange what a
+witchery some people have to make you forget everything but themselves!"
+
+"The reason is, I think, because that is the only thing they forget,"
+said Fleda, whose imagination however was entirely busy with the
+_singular_ number.
+
+"I shall never forget him," said Marion. "He was very kind to me--I cannot
+tell how kind--though I never realized it till afterwards; at the time it
+always seemed only a sort of elegant politeness which he could not help. I
+never saw so elegant a person. He came two or three times to see me and he
+took Rolf out with him I don't know how often, to drive; and he sent me
+fruit--such fruit!--and game, and flowers; and I had not had anything of
+the kind, not even seen it, for so long--I can't tell you what it was to
+me. He said he had known my father and mother well when they were abroad."
+
+"What, was his name?" said Fleda quickly.
+
+"I don't know--he never told me--and I never could ask him. Don't you know
+there are some people you can't do anything with but just what they
+please? There wasn't the least thing like stiffness--you never saw anybody
+less stiff,--but I never dreamed of asking him questions except when he
+was out of sight. Why, do you know him?" she said suddenly.
+
+"When you tell me who he was I'll tell you," said Fleda smiling.
+
+"Have you ever heard this story before?"
+
+"Certainly not!"
+
+"He is somebody that knows us very well," said Marion, "for he asked after
+every one of the family in particular."
+
+"But what had all this to do with your getting home?"
+
+"I don't wonder you ask. The day after his last visit came a note saying
+that he owed a debt in my family which it had never been in his power to
+repay; that he could not give the enclosure to my father, who would not
+recognize the obligation; and that if I would permit him to place it in my
+hands I should confer a singular favour upon him."
+
+"And what was the enclosure?"
+
+"Five hundred pounds."
+
+Fleda's head went down again and tears dropped fast upon little
+Rolf's shoulder.
+
+"I suppose my pride has been a little broken too," Marion went on, "or I
+shouldn't have kept it. But then if you saw the person, and the whole
+manner of it--I don't know how I could ever have sent it back. Literally I
+couldn't, though, for I hadn't the least clue. I never saw or heard from
+him afterwards."
+
+"When was this, Marion?"
+
+"Last spring."
+
+"Last spring!--then what kept you so long?"
+
+"Because of the arrival of eyes that I was afraid of. I dared not make the
+least move that would show I could move. I came off the very first packet
+after I was free."
+
+"How glad you must be!" said Fleda.
+
+"Glad!--"
+
+"Glad of what, mamma?" said Rolf, whose dreams the entrance of Barby had
+probably disturbed.
+
+"Glad of bread and butter," said his mother; "wake up--here it is."
+
+The young gentleman declared, rubbing his eyes, that he did not want it
+now; but however Fleda contrived to dispel that illusion, and bread and
+butter was found to have the same dulcifying properties at Queechy that it
+owns in all the rest of the world. Little Rolf was completely mollified
+after a hearty meal and was put with his mother to enjoy most unbroken
+slumbers in Fleda's room. Fleda herself, after a look at Hugh, crept to
+her aunt's bed; whither Barby very soon despatched Mrs. Rossitur, taking
+in her place the arm-chair and the watch with most invincible good-will
+and determination; and sleep at last took the joys and sorrows of that
+disturbed household into its kind custody.
+
+Fleda was the first one awake, and was thinking how she should break the
+last news to her aunt, when Mrs. Rossitur put her arms round her and after
+a most affectionate look and kiss, spoke to what she supposed had been her
+niece's purpose.
+
+"You want taking care of more than I do, poor Fleda!"
+
+"It was not for that I came," said Fleda;--"I had to give up my room to
+the travellers."
+
+"Travellers!--"
+
+A very few words more brought out the whole, and Mrs. Rossitur sprang out
+of bed and rushed to her daughter's room.
+
+Fleda hid her face in the bed to cry--for a moment's passionate indulgence
+in weeping while no one could see. But a moment was all. There was work to
+do and she must not disable herself. She slowly got up, feeling thankful
+that her headache did not announce itself with the dawn, and that she
+would be able to attend to the morning affairs and the breakfast, which
+was something more of a circumstance now with the new additions to the
+family. More than that she knew from sure signs she would not be able to
+accomplish.
+
+It was all done and done well, though with what secret flagging of mind
+and body nobody knew or suspected. The business of the day was arranged,
+Barby's course made clear, Hugh visited and smiled upon; and then Fleda
+set herself down in the breakfast-room to wear out the rest of the day in
+patient suffering. Her little spaniel, who seemed to understand her
+languid step and faint tones and know what was coming, crept into her lap
+and looked up at her with a face of equal truth and affection; and after a
+few gentle acknowledging touches from the loved hand, laid his head on her
+knees, and silently avowed his determination of abiding her fortunes for
+the remainder of the day.
+
+They had been there for some hours. Mrs. Rossitur and her daughter were
+gathered in Hugh's room; whither Rolf also after sundry expressions of
+sympathy for Fleda's headache, finding it a dull companion, had departed.
+Pain of body rising above pain of mind had obliged as far as possible
+even thought to be still; when a loud rap at the front door brought the
+blood in a sudden flush of pain to Fleda's face. She knew instinctively
+what it meant.
+
+She heard Barby's distinct accents saying that somebody was "not well."
+The other voice was more smothered. But in a moment the door of the
+breakfast-room opened and Mr. Thorn walked in.
+
+The intensity of the pain she was suffering effectually precluded Fleda
+from discovering emotion of any kind. She could not move. Only King
+lifted up his head and looked at the intruder, who seemed shocked, and
+well he might. Fleda was in her old headache position; bolt upright on the
+sofa, her feet on the rung of a chair while her hands supported her by
+their grasp upon the back of it. The flush had passed away leaving the
+deadly paleness of pain, which the dark rings under her eyes shewed to be
+well seated.
+
+"Miss Ringgan!" said the gentleman, coming up softly as to something that
+frightened him,--"my dear Miss Fleda!--I am distressed!--You are very
+ill--can nothing be done to relieve you?"
+
+Fleda's lips rather than her voice said, "Nothing."
+
+"I would not have come in on any account to disturb you if I had known--I
+did not understand you were more than a trifle ill--"
+
+Fleda wished he would mend his mistake, as his understanding certainly by
+this time was mended. But that did not seem to be his conclusion of the
+best thing to do.
+
+"Since I am here,--can you bear to hear me say three words? without too
+much pain?--I do not ask you to speak"--
+
+A faint whispered "yes" gave him leave to go on. She had never looked at
+him. She sat like a statue; to answer by a motion of her head was more
+than could be risked.
+
+He drew up a chair and sat down, while King looked at him with eyes of
+suspicious indignation.
+
+"I am not surprised," he said gently, "to find you suffering. I knew how
+your sensibilities must feel the shock of yesterday--I would fain have
+spared it you--I will spare you all further pain on the same score if
+possible--Dear Miss Ringgan, since I am here and time is precious may I
+say one word before I cease troubling you--take it for granted that you
+were made acquainted with the contents of my letter to Mrs.
+Rossitur?--with _all_ the contents?--were you?"
+
+Again Fleda's lips almost voicelessly gave the answer.
+
+"Will you give me what I ventured to ask for?" said he gently,--"the
+permission to work _for you?_ Do not trouble those precious lips to
+speak--the answer of these fingers will be as sure a warrant to me as all
+words that could be spoken that you do not deny my request."
+
+He had taken one of her hands in his own. But the fingers lay with
+unanswering coldness and lifelessness for a second in his clasp and then
+were drawn away and took determinate hold of the chair-back. Again the
+flush came to Fleda's cheeks, brought by a sharp pain,--oh, bodily and
+mental too!--and after a moment's pause, with a distinctness of utterance
+that let him know every word, she said,
+
+"A generous man would not ask it, sir."
+
+Thorn sprang up, and several times paced the length of the room, up and
+down, before he said anything more. He looked at Fleda, but the flush was
+gone again, and nothing could seem less conscious of his presence. Pain
+and patience were in every line of her face, but he could read nothing
+more, except a calmness as unmistakably written. Thorn gave that face
+repeated glances as he walked, then stood still and read it at leisure.
+Then he came to her side again and spoke in a different voice.
+
+"You are so unlike anybody else," he said, "that you shall make me unlike
+myself. I will do freely what I hoped to do with the light of your smile
+before me. You shall hear no more of this affair, neither you nor the
+world--I have the matter perfectly in my own hands--it shall never raise a
+whisper again. I will move heaven and earth rather than fail--but there is
+no danger of my failing. I will try to prove myself worthy of your esteem
+even where a man is most excusable for being selfish."
+
+[Illustration: Barby's energies and fainting remedies were again put
+in use.]
+
+He took one of her cold hands again,--Fleda could not help it without more
+force than she cared to use, and indeed pain would by this time almost
+have swallowed up other sensation if every word and touch had not sent it
+in a stronger throb to her very finger ends. Thorn bent his lips to her
+hand, twice kissed it fervently, and then left her; much to King's
+satisfaction, who thereupon resigned himself to quiet slumbers.
+
+His mistress knew no such relief. Excitement had dreadfully aggravated her
+disorder, at a time when it was needful to banish even thought as far as
+possible. Pain effectually banished it now, and Barby coming in a little
+after Mr. Thorn had gone found her quite unable to speak and scarce able
+to breathe, from agony. Barby's energies and fainting remedies were again
+put in use; but pain reigned triumphant for hours, and when its hard rule
+was at last abated Fleda was able to do nothing but sleep like a child for
+hours more.
+
+Towards a late tea-time she was at last awake, and carrying on a very
+one-sided conversation with Rolf, her own lips being called upon for
+little more than a smile now and then. King, not able to be in her lap,
+had curled himself up upon a piece of his mistress's dress and as close
+within the circle of her arms as possible, where Fleda's hand and his head
+were on terms of mutual satisfaction.
+
+"I thought you wouldn't permit a dog to lie in your lap," said Marion.
+
+"Do you remember that?" said Fleda with a smile. "Ah I have grown
+tender-hearted, Marion, since I have known what it was to want comfort
+myself. I have come to the conclusion that it is best to let everything
+have all the enjoyment it can in the circumstances. King crawled into my
+lap one day when I had not spirits enough to turn him out, and he has kept
+the place ever since.--Little King!"--In answer to which word of
+intelligence King looked in her face and wagged his tail, and then
+earnestly endeavoured to lick all her fingers. Which however was a piece
+of comfort she would not give him.
+
+"Fleda," said Barby putting her head in, "I wish you'd just step out here
+and tell me which cheese you'd like to have cut."
+
+"What a fool!" said Marion. "Let her cut them all if she likes."
+
+"She is no fool," said Fleda. She thought Barby's punctiliousness however
+a little ill-timed, as she rose from her sofa and went into the kitchen.
+
+"Well you _do_ look as if you wa'n't good for nothing but to be taken care
+of!" said Barby. "I wouldn't have riz you up if it hadn't been just
+tea-time, and I knowed you couldn't stay quiet much longer;"--and with a
+look which explained her tactics she put into Fleda's hand a letter
+directed to her aunt.
+
+"Philetus gave it to me," she said, without a glance at Fleda's face,--"he
+said it was give to him by a spry little shaver who wa'n't a mind to tell
+nothin' about himself."
+
+"Thank you, Barby!" was Fleda's most grateful return; and summoning her
+aunt up-stairs she took her into her own room and locked the door before
+she gave her the letter which Barby's shrewdness and delicacy had taken
+such care should not reach its owner in a wrong way. Fleda watched her as
+her eye ran over the paper and caught it as it fell from her fingers.
+
+"My Dear Wife,
+
+"That villain Thorn has got a handle of me which he will not fail to
+use--you know it all I suppose, by this time--It is true that in an evil
+hour, long ago, when greatly pressed, I did what I thought I should surely
+undo in a few days--The time never came--I don't know why he has let it
+lie so long, but he has taken it up now, and he will push it to the
+extreme--There is but one thing left for me--I shall not see you again.
+The rascal would never let me rest, I know, in any spot that calls itself
+American ground.
+
+"You will do better without me than with me.
+
+"R. R."
+
+Fleda mused over the letter for several minutes, and then touched her aunt
+who had fallen on a chair with her head sunk in her hands.
+
+"What does he mean?" said Mrs. Rossitur, looking up with a perfectly
+colourless face.
+
+"To leave the country."
+
+"Are you sure? is that it?" said Mrs. Rossitur, rising and looking over
+the words again;--"He would do anything, Fleda--"
+
+"That is what he means, aunt Lucy;--don't you see he says he could not be
+safe anywhere in America?"
+
+Mrs. Rossitur stood eying with intense eagerness for a minute or two the
+note in her niece's hand.
+
+"Then he is gone! now that it is all settled!--And we don't know
+where--and we can't get word to him--"
+
+Her cheek which had a little brightened became perfectly white again.
+
+"He isn't gone yet--he can't be--he cannot have left Queechy till
+to-day--he will be in New York for several days yet probably."
+
+"New York!--it may be Boston?"
+
+"No, he would be more likely to go to New York--I am sure he would--he is
+accustomed to it."
+
+"We might write to both places," said poor Mrs. Rossitur. "I will do it
+and send them off at once."
+
+"But he might not get the letters," said Fleda thoughtfully,--"he might not
+dare to ask at the post-office."
+
+His wife looked at that possibility, and then wrung her hands.
+
+"Oh why didn't he give us a clew!"
+
+Fleda put an arm round her affectionately and stood thinking; stood
+trembling might as well be said, for she was too weak to be
+standing at all.
+
+"What can we do, dear Fleda?" said Mrs. Rossitur in great distress. "Once
+out of New York and we can get nothing to him! If he only knew that there
+is no need, and that it is all over!--"
+
+"We must do everything, aunt Lucy," said Fleda thoughtfully, "and I hope
+we shall succeed yet. We will write, but I think the most hopeful other
+thing we could do would be to put advertisements in the newspapers--he
+would be very likely to see them."
+
+"Advertisements!--But you couldn't--what would you put in?"
+
+"Something that would catch his eye and nobody's else--_that_ is easy,
+aunt Lucy."
+
+"But there is nobody to put them in, Fleda,--you said uncle Orrin was
+going to Boston--"
+
+"He wasn't going there till next week, but he was to be in Philadelphia a
+few days before that--the letter might miss him."
+
+"Mr. Plumfield!--Couldn't he?"
+
+But Fleda shook her head.
+
+"Wouldn't do, aunt Lucy--he would do all he could, but he don't know New
+York nor the papers--he wouldn't know how to manage it--he don't know
+uncle Rolf--shouldn't like to trust it to him."
+
+"Who then?--there isn't a creature we could ask--"
+
+Fleda laid her cheek to her poor aunt's and said,
+
+"I'll do it."
+
+"But you must be in New York to do it, dear Fleda,--you can't do it here."
+
+"I will go to New York."
+
+"When?"
+
+"To-morrow morning."
+
+"But dear Fleda, you can't go alone! I can't let you, and you're not fit
+to go at all, my poor child!--" and between conflicting feelings Mrs.
+Rossitur sat down and wept without measure.
+
+"Listen, aunt Lucy," said Fleda, pressing a hand on her
+shoulder,--"listen, and don't cry so!--I'll go and make all right, if
+efforts can do it. I am not going alone--I'll get Seth to go with me; and
+I can sleep in the cars and rest nicely in the steamboat--I shall feel
+happy and well when I know that I am leaving you easier and doing all that
+can be done to bring uncle Rolf home. Leave me to manage, and don't say
+anything to Marion,--it is one blessed thing that she need not know
+anything about all this. I shall feel better than if I were at home and
+had trusted this business to any other hands."
+
+"_You_ are the blessing of my life," said Mrs. Rossitur.
+
+"Cheer up, and come down and let us have some tea," said Fleda, kissing
+her; "I feel as if that would make me up a little; and then I'll write
+the letters. I sha'n't want but very little baggage; there'll be nothing
+to pack up."
+
+Philetus was sent up the hill with a note to Seth Plumfield, and brought
+home a favorable answer. Fleda thought as she went to rest that it was
+well the mind's strength could sometimes act independently of its servant
+the body, hers felt so very shattered and unsubstantial.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLI.
+
+
+
+  I thank you for your company; but good faith, I had as lief have been
+  myself alone.--As You Like It.
+
+
+The first thing next morning Seth Plumfield came down to say that he had
+seen Dr. Quackenboss the night before and had chanced to find out that he
+was going to New York too, this very day; and knowing that the doctor
+would be just as safe an escort as himself, Seth had made over the charge
+of his cousin to him; "calculating," he said, "that it would make no
+difference to Fleda and that he had better stay at home with his mother."
+
+Fleda said nothing and looked as little as possible of her disappointment,
+and her cousin went away wholly unsuspecting of it.
+
+"Seth Plumfield ha'n't done a smarter thing than that in a good
+while," Barby remarked satirically as he was shutting the door. "I should
+think he'd ha' hurt himself."
+
+"I dare say the doctor will take good care of me," said Fleda;--"as good
+as he knows how."
+
+"Men beat all!" said Barby impatiently.--"The little sense there is
+into them!--"
+
+Fleda's sinking heart was almost ready to echo the sentiment; but
+nobody knew it.
+
+Coffee was swallowed, her little travelling bag and bonnet on the sofa;
+all ready. Then came the doctor.
+
+"My dear Miss Ringgan!--I am most happy of this delightful
+opportunity--I had supposed you were located at home for the winter.
+This is a sudden start."
+
+"Is it sudden to you, Dr. Quackenboss?" said Fleda.
+
+"Why--a--not disagreeably so," said the doctor smiling;--"nothing could be
+that in the present circumstances,--but I--a--I hadn't calculated upon it
+for much of a spell beforehand."
+
+Fleda was vexed, and looked,--only unconversable.
+
+"I suppose," said the doctor after a pause,--"that we have not much time
+to waste--a--in idle moments. Which route do you intend to travel?"
+
+"I was thinking to go by the North River, sir."
+
+"But the ice has collected,--I am afraid,--"
+
+"At Albany, I know; but when I came up there was a boat every other day,
+and we could get there in time by the stage--this is her day."
+
+"But we have had some pretty tight weather since, if you remember," said
+the doctor; "and the boats have ceased to connect with the stage. We shall
+have to go to Greenfield to take the Housatonic which will land us at
+Bridgeport on the Sound"
+
+"Have we time to reach Greenfield this morning?"
+
+"Oceans of time?" said the doctor delightedly; "I've got my team here and
+they're jumping out of their skins with having nothing to do and the
+weather--they'll carry us there as spry as grasshoppers--now, if you're
+ready, my dear Miss Ringgan!"
+
+There was nothing more but to give and receive those speechless
+lip-messages that are out of the reach of words, and Mrs. Rossitur's
+half-spoken last charge, to take care of _herself_; and with these seals
+upon her mission Fleda set forth and joined the doctor; thankful for one
+foil to curiosity in the shape of a veil and only wishing that there were
+any invented screen that she could place between her and hearing.
+
+"I hope your attire is of a very warm description," said the doctor as he
+helped her into the wagon;--"it friz pretty hard last night and I don't
+think it has got out of the notion yet. If I had been consulted in any
+other--a--form, than that of a friend, I should have disapprobated, if
+you'll excuse me, Miss Ringgan's travelling again before her 'Rose of
+Cassius' there was in blow. I hope you have heard no evil tidings?
+Dr.--a--Gregory, I hope, is not taken ill?"
+
+"I hope not, sir," said Fleda.
+
+"He didn't look like it. A very hearty old gentleman. Not very old either,
+I should judge. Was he the brother of your mother or your father?"
+
+"Neither, sir."
+
+"Ah!--I misunderstood--I thought, but of course I was mistaken,--I thought
+I heard you speak to him under the title of uncle. But that is a title we
+sometimes give to elderly people as a term of familiarity--there is an old
+fellow that works for me,--he has been a long time in our family, and we
+always call him 'uncle Jenk.'"
+
+Fleda was ready to laugh, cry, and be angry, in a breath. She looked
+straight before her and was mum.
+
+"That 'Rose of Cassius' is a most exquisite thing!" said the doctor,
+recurring to the cluster of bare bushy stems in the corner of the garden.
+"Did Mr. Rossitur bring it with him when he came to his present
+residence?"
+
+"Yes sir."
+
+"Where is Mr. Rossitur now?"
+
+Fleda replied, with a jump of her heart, that business affairs had obliged
+him to be away for a few days.
+
+"And when does he expect to return?" said the doctor.
+
+"I hope he will be home as soon as I am," said Fleda.
+
+"Then you do not expect to remain long in the city this time?"
+
+"I shall not have much of a winter at home if I do," said Fleda. "We are
+almost at January."
+
+"Because," said the doctor, "in that case I should have no higher
+gratification than in attending upon your motions. I--a--beg you to
+believe, my dear Miss Ringgan, that it would afford me the--a--most
+particular--it would be most particularly grateful to me to wait upon you
+to--a--the confines of the world."
+
+Fleda hastened to assure her officious friend that the time of her return
+was altogether uncertain; resolving rather to abide a guest with Mrs.
+Pritchard than to have Dr. Quackenboss hanging upon her motions every day
+of her being there. But in the mean time the doctor got upon Capt.
+Rossitur's subject; then came to Mr. Thorn; and then wanted to know the
+exact nature of Mr. Rossitur's business affairs in Michigan; through all
+which matters poor Fleda had to run the gauntlet of questions,
+interspersed with gracious speeches which she could bear even less well.
+She was extremely glad to reach the cars and take refuge in seeming sleep
+from the mongrel attentions, which if for the most part prompted by
+admiration owned so large a share of curiosity. Her weary head and heart
+would fain have courted the reality of sleep, as a refuge from more
+painful thoughts and a feeling of exhaustion that could scarcely support
+itself; but the restless roar and jumble of the rail-cars put it beyond
+her power. How long the hours were--how hard to wear out, with no
+possibility of a change of position that would give rest; Fleda would not
+even raise her head when they stopped, for fear of being talked to; how
+trying that endless noise to her racked nerves. It came to an end at
+last, though Fleda would not move for fear they might be only taking in
+wood and water.
+
+"Miss Ringgan!" said the doctor in her ear,--"my dear Miss Ringgan!--we
+are here!--"
+
+"Are we?" said Fleda, looking up;--"what other name has the place,
+doctor?"
+
+"Why Bridgeport," said the doctor,--"we're at Bridgeport--now we have
+leave to exchange conveyances. A man feels constrained after a prolonged
+length of time in a place. How have you enjoyed the ride?"
+
+"Not very well--it has seemed long. I am glad we are at the end of it!"
+
+But as she rose and threw back her veil the doctor looked startled.
+
+"My dear Miss Ringgan!--are you faint?"
+
+"No sir."
+
+"You are not well, indeed!--I am very sorry--the ride has been--Take my
+arm!--Ma'am," said the doctor touching a black satin cloak which filled
+the passage-way,--"will you have the goodness to give this lady a
+passport?"
+
+But the black satin cloak preferred a straightforward manner of doing
+this, so their egress was somewhat delayed. Happily faintness was not
+the matter.
+
+"My dear Miss Ringgan!" said the doctor as they reached the ground and the
+outer air,--"what was it?--the stove too powerful? You are looking--you
+are of a dreadfully delicate appearance!"
+
+"I had a headache yesterday," said Fleda; "it always leaves me with a
+disagreeable reminder the next day. I am not ill."
+
+But he looked frightened, and hurried her, as fast as he dared, to the
+steamboat; and there proposed half a dozen restoratives; the simplest of
+which Fleda took, and then sought delicious rest from him and from herself
+on the cushions of a settee. Delicious!--though she was alone, in the
+cabin of a steamboat, with strange forms and noisy tongues around her, the
+closed eyelids shut it out all; and she had time but for one resting
+thought of "patient continuance in well-doing," and one happy heart-look
+up to him who has said that he cares for his children, a look that laid
+her anxieties down there,--when past misery and future difficulty faded
+away before a sleep that lasted till the vessel reached her moorings and
+was made fast.
+
+She was too weary and faint even to think during the long drive up to
+Bleecker-st. She was fain to let it all go--the work she had to do and the
+way she must set about it, and rest in the assurance that nothing could be
+done that night. She did not so much as hear Dr. Quackenboss's
+observations, though she answered a few of them, till, at the door, she
+was conscious of his promising to see her to-morrow and of her instant
+conclusion to take measures to see nobody.
+
+How strange everything seemed. She walked through the familiar hall,
+feeling as if her acquaintance with every old thing was broken. There was
+no light in the back parlour, but a comfortable fire.
+
+"Is my--is Dr. Gregory at home?" she asked of the girl who had let her in.
+
+"No ma'am; he hasn't got back from Philadelphia."
+
+"Tell Mrs. Pritchard a lady wants to see her."
+
+Good Mrs. Pritchard was much more frightened than Dr. Quackenboss had been
+when she came into the back parlour to see "a lady" and found Fleda in the
+great arm-chair taking off her things. She poured out questions,
+wonderings and lamentings, not "in a breath" but in a great many; quite
+forgot to be glad to see her, she looked so dreadfully; and "what _had_
+been the matter?" Fleda answered her,--told of yesterday's illness and
+to-day's journey; and met all her shocked enquiries with so composed a
+face and such a calm smile and bearing, that Mrs. Pritchard was almost
+persuaded not to believe her eyes.
+
+"My uncle is not at home?"
+
+"O no, Miss Fleda! I suppose he's in Philadelphy--but his motions is so
+little to be depended on that I never know when I have him; maybe he'll
+stop going through to Boston, and maybe no, and I don't know when; so
+anyhow I had to have a fire made and this room all ready; and ain't it
+lucky it was ready for you to-night!--and now he ain't here you can have
+the great chair all to yourself and make yourself comfortable--we can keep
+warmer here, I guess, than you can in the country," said the good
+housekeeper, giving some skilful admonishing touches to the fire;--"and
+you must just sit there and read and rest, and see if you can't get back
+your old looks again. If I thought it was _that_ you came for I'd be
+happy. I never _did_ see such a change in any one in five days!--"
+
+She stood looking down at her guest with a face of very serious concern,
+evidently thinking much more than she chose to give utterance to.
+
+"I am tired, Mrs. Pritchard," said Fleda, smiling up at her.
+
+"I wish you had somebody to take care of you, Miss Fleda, that wouldn't
+let you tire yourself. It's a sin to throw your strength away so--and you
+don't care for looks nor nothing else when it's for other people. You're
+looking just as handsome, too, for all," she said, her mouth giving way a
+little, as she stooped down to take off Fleda's overshoes, "but that's
+only because you can't help it. Now what is there you'd like to have for
+supper!--just say and you shall have it--whatever would seem best--because
+I mightn't hit the right thing?"
+
+Fleda declared her indifference to everything but a cup of tea, and her
+hostess bustled away to get that and tax her own ingenuity and kindness
+for the rest. And leaning her weary head back in the lounge Fleda tried to
+think,--but it was not time yet; she could only feel; feel what a sad
+change had come over her since she had sat there last; shut her eyes and
+wish she could sleep again.
+
+But Mrs. Pritchard's hospitality must be gone through with first.
+
+The nicest of suppers was served in the bright little parlour and her
+hostess was a compound of care and good will; nothing was wanting to the
+feast but a merry heart. Fleda could not bring that, so her performance
+was unsatisfactory and Mrs. Pritchard was distressed. Fleda went to her
+own room promising better doings to-morrow.
+
+She awoke in the morning to the full burden of care and sorrow which
+sheer weakness and weariness the day before had in part laid down; to a
+quicker sense of the state of things than she had had yet. The blasting
+evil that had fallen upon them,--Fleda writhed on her bed when she
+thought of it. The sternest, cruellest, most inflexible, grasp of
+distress. Poverty may be borne, death may be sweetened, even to the
+survivors; but _disgrace_--Fleda hid her head, as if she would shut the
+idea out with the light. And the ruin it had wrought. Affection killed at
+the root,--her aunt's happiness withered, for this world,--Hugh's life
+threatened,--the fair name of his family gone,--the wear and weariness of
+her own spirit,--but that had hardly a thought. Himself?--oh no one could
+tell what a possible wreck, now that self-respect and the esteem of
+others, those two safe-guards of character, were lost to him. "So much
+security has any woman in a man without religion;" she remembered those
+words of her aunt Miriam now; and she thought if Mr. Thorn had sought an
+ill wind to blow upon his pretensions he could not have pitched them
+better. What fairer promise, without religion, could be than her uncle
+had given? Reproach had never breathed against his name, and no one less
+than those who knew him best could fancy that he had ever given it
+occasion. And who could have more at stake?--and the stake was lost--that
+was the summing up thought.
+
+No, it was not,--for Fleda's mind presently sprang beyond,--to the remedy;
+and after a little swift and earnest flitting about of thought over
+feasibilities and contingencies, she jumped up and dressed herself with a
+prompt energy which shewed a mind made up to its course. And yet when she
+came down to the parlour, though bending herself with nervous intentness
+to the work she had to do, her fingers and her heart were only stayed in
+their trembling by some of the happy assurances she had been fleeing to;--
+
+"Commit thy works unto the Lord, and all thy thoughts shall be
+established."--
+
+"In all thy ways acknowledge Him: He shall direct they paths."--
+
+--Assurances, not indeed that her plans should meet with success, but that
+they should have the issue best for them.
+
+She was early, but the room was warm and in order and the servant had left
+it. Fleda sought out paper and pencil and sat down to fashion the form of
+an advertisement,--the first thing to be done. She had no notion how
+difficult a thing till she came to do it.
+
+"_R. R. is entreated to communicate with his niece at the old place in
+Bleecker-street, on business of the greatest importance_."
+
+"It will not do," said Fleda to herself as she sat and looked at
+it,--"there is not enough to catch his eye; and there is _too much_ if it
+caught anybody else's eye;--'R. R.', and 'his niece,' and
+'Bleecker-street,'--that would tell plain enough."
+
+"_Dear uncle, F. has followed you here on business of the greatest
+importance. Pray let her see you--she is at the old place_."
+
+"It will not do," thought Fleda again,--"there is still less to catch his
+eye--I cannot trust it. And if I were to put 'Queechy' over it, that
+would give the clue to the Evelyns and everybody. But I had better risk
+anything rather than his seeing it--"
+
+The miserable needlessness of the whole thing, the pitiful weighing of
+sorrow against sorrow, and shame against shame overcame her for a little;
+and then dashing away the tears she had no time for and locking up the
+strong box of her heart, she took her pencil again.
+
+"_Queechy_.
+
+"_Let me see you at the old place. I have come here on urgent business_
+for you. _Do not deny me, for H---'s sake_!"
+
+With a trifle of alteration she thought this would do; and went on to make
+a number of fair copies of it for so many papers, This was done and all
+traces of it out of the way before Mrs. Pritchard came in and the
+breakfast; and after bracing herself with coffee, though the good
+housekeeper was still sadly dissatisfied with her indifference to some
+more substantial brace in the shape of chickens and ham, Fleda prepared
+herself inwardly and outwardly to brave the wind and the newspaper
+offices, and set forth. It was a bright keen day; she was sorry; she would
+it had been cloudy. It seemed as if she could not hope to escape some eyes
+in such an atmosphere.
+
+She went to the library first, and there requested the librarian, whom she
+knew, to bring her from the reading-room the files of morning and evening
+papers. They were many more than she had supposed; she had not near
+advertisements enough. Paper and ink were at hand however, and making
+carefully her list of the various offices, morning and evening separate,
+she wrote out a copy of the notice for each of them.
+
+The morning was well on by the time she could leave the library. It was
+yet far from the fashionable hour, however, and sedulously shunning the
+recognition of anybody, in hopes that it would be one step towards her
+escaping theirs, she made her way down the bright thoroughfare as far as
+the City Hall, and then crossed over the Park and plunged into a region
+where it was very little likely she would see a face that she knew. She
+saw nothing else either that she knew; in spite of having studied the map
+of the city in the library she was forced several times to ask her way, as
+she visited office after office, of the evening papers first, till she had
+placed her notice with each one of them. Her courage almost failed her,
+her heart did quite, after two or three. It was a trial from which her
+whole nature shrank, to go among the people, to face the eyes, to exchange
+talk with the lips, that were at home in those purlieus; look at them she
+did not. Making her slow way through the choked narrow streets, where the
+mere confusion of business was bewildering,--very, to any one come from
+Queechy; among crowds, of what mixed and doubtful character, hurrying
+along and brushing with little ceremony past her; edging by loitering
+groups that filled the whole sidewalk, or perhaps edging through them,
+groups whose general type of character was sufficiently plain and unmixed;
+entering into parley with clerk after clerk who looked at such a visiter
+as an anomaly,--poor Fleda almost thought so too, and shrank within
+herself; venturing hardly her eyes beyond her thick veil, and shutting her
+ears resolutely as far as possible to all the dissonant rough voices that
+helped to assure her she was where she ought not to be. Sometimes she felt
+that it was _impossible_ to go on and finish her task; but a thought or
+two nerved her again to plunge into another untried quarter or make good
+her entrance to some new office through a host of loungers and waiting
+news-boys collected round the door. Sometimes in utter discouragement she
+went on and walked to a distance and came back, in the hope of a better
+opportunity. It was a long business; and she often had to wait. The end of
+her list was reached at last, and the paper was thrown away; but she did
+not draw free breath till she had got to the west side of Broadway again,
+and turned her back upon them all.
+
+It was late then, and the street was thinned of a part of its gay throng.
+Completely worn, in body as well as mind, with slow faltering steps, Fleda
+moved on among those still left; looking upon them with a curious eye as
+if they and she belonged to different classes of beings; so very far her
+sobered and saddened spirit seemed to herself from their stir of business
+and gayety; if they had been a train of lady-flies or black ants Fleda
+would hardly have felt that she had less in common with them. It was a
+weary long way up to Bleecker-street, as she was forced to travel it.
+
+The relief was unspeakable to find herself within her uncle's door with
+the sense that her dreaded duty was done, and well and thoroughly. Now her
+part was to be still and wait. But with the relief came also a reaction
+from the strain of the morning. Before her weary feet had well mounted the
+stairs her heart gave up its control; and she locked herself in her room
+to yield to a helpless outpouring of tears which she was utterly unable to
+restrain, though conscious that long time could not pass before she would
+be called to dinner. Dinner had to wait.
+
+"Miss Fleda," said the housekeeper in a vexed tone when the meal was half
+over,--"I didn't know you ever did any thing wrong."
+
+"You are sadly mistaken, Mrs. Pritchard," said Fleda half lightly,
+half sadly.
+
+"You're looking not a bit better than last night, and if anything rather
+worse," Mrs. Pritchard went on. "It isn't right, Miss Fleda. You oughtn't
+to ha' set the first step out of doors, I know you oughtn't, this blessed
+day; and you've been on your feet these seven hours,--and you shew it!
+You're just ready to drop."
+
+"I will rest to-morrow," said Fleda,--"or try to."
+
+"You are fit for nothing but bed," said the housekeeper,--"and you've
+been using yourself, Miss Fleda, as if you had the strength of an
+elephant. Now do you think you've been doing right?"
+
+Fleda would have made some cheerful answer, but she was not equal to it;
+she had lost all command of herself, and she dropped knife and fork to
+burst into a flood of exceeding tears. Mrs. Pritchard equally astonished
+and mystified, hurried questions, apologies, and consolations, one upon
+another; and made up her mind that there was something mysterious on foot
+about which she had better ask no questions. Neither did she, from that
+time. She sealed up her mouth, and contented herself with taking the best
+care of her guest that she possibly could. Needed enough, but all of
+little avail.
+
+The reaction did not cease with that day. The next, Sunday, was spent on
+the sofa, in a state of utter prostration. With the necessity for exertion
+the power had died. Fleda could only lie upon the cushions, and sleep
+helplessly, while Mrs. Pritchard sat by, anxiously watching her; curiosity
+really swallowed up in kind feeling. Monday was little better, but towards
+the after part of the day the stimulant of anxiety began to work again,
+and Fleda sat up to watch for a word from her uncle, But none came, and
+Tuesday morning distressed Mrs. Pritchard with its want of amendment. It
+was not to be hoped for, Fleda knew, while this fearful watching lasted.
+Her uncle might not have seen the advertisement--he might not have got her
+letter--he might be even then setting sail to quit home forever. And she
+could do nothing but wait. Her nerves were alive to every stir; every
+touch of the bell made her tremble; it was impossible to read, to lie
+down, to be quiet or still anywhere. She had set the glass of expectancy
+for one thing in the distance; and all things else were a blur or a blank.
+
+They had sat down to dinner that Tuesday, when a ring at the door which
+had made her heart jump was followed--yes, it was,--by the entrance of the
+maid-servant holding a folded bit of paper in her hand. Fleda did not wait
+to ask whose it was; she seized it and saw; and sprang away up stairs. It
+was a sealed scrap of paper, that had been the back of a letter,
+containing two lines without signature.
+
+"I will meet you _at Dinah's_--if you come there alone about sundown."
+
+Enough! Dinah was an old black woman who once had been a very attached
+servant in Mr. Rossitur's family, and having married and become a widow
+years ago, had set up for herself in the trade of a washerwoman, occupying
+an obscure little tenement out towards Chelsea. Fleda had rather a shadowy
+idea of the locality, though remembering very well sundry journeys of
+kindness she and Hugh had made to it in days gone by. But she recollected
+it was in Sloman-street and she knew she could find it; and dropping upon
+her knees poured out thanks too deep to be uttered and too strong to be
+even thought without a convulsion of tears. Her dinner after that was but
+a mental thanksgiving; she was hardly conscious of anything beside; and a
+thankful rejoicing for all her weary labours. Their weariness was sweet to
+her now. Let her but see him;--the rest was sure.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLII.
+
+
+
+  How well appaid she was her bird to find.
+
+  Sidney.
+
+
+Fleda counted the minutes till it wanted an hour of sundown; and then
+avoiding Mrs. Pritchard made her escape out of the house. A long walk was
+before her and the latter part of it through a region which she wished to
+pass while the light was good. And she was utterly unable to travel at any
+but a very gentle rate. So she gave herself plenty of time.
+
+It was a very bright afternoon and all the world was astir. Fleda
+shielded herself with a thick veil and went up one of the narrow
+streets, not daring to venture into Broadway; and passing Waverly Place
+which was almost as bright, turned down Eighth-street. A few blocks now
+and she would be out of all danger of meeting any one that knew her. She
+drew her veil close and hurried on. But the proverb saith "a miss is as
+good as a mile," and with reason; for if fate wills the chances make
+nothing. As Fleda set her foot down to cross Fifth Avenue she saw Mr.
+Carleton on the other side coming up from Waverly Place. She went as
+slowly as she dared, hoping that he would pass without looking her way,
+or be unable to recognize her through her thick wrapper. In vain,--she
+soon saw that she was known; he was waiting for her, and she must put up
+her veil and speak to him.
+
+"Why I thought you had left New York," said he;--"I was told so."
+
+"I had left it--I have left it, sir," said Fleda;--"I have only come back
+for a day or two--"
+
+"Have you been ill?" he said with a sudden change of tone, the light in
+his eye and smile giving place to a very marked gravity.
+
+Fleda would have answered with a half smile, but such a sickness of heart
+came over her that speech failed and she was very near bursting into
+tears. Mr. Carleton looked at her earnestly a moment, and then put the
+hand which Fleda had forgotten he still held, upon his arm and began to
+walk forward gently with her. Something in the grave tenderness with which
+this was done reminded Fleda irresistibly of the times when she had been
+a child under his care; and somehow her thoughts went off on a tangent
+back to the further days of her mother and father and grandfather, the
+other friends from whom she had had the same gentle protection, which now
+there was no one in the world to give her. And their images did never seem
+more winning fair than just then,--when their place was left most
+especially empty. Her uncle she had never looked up to in the same way,
+and whatever stay he had been was cut down. Her aunt leaned upon _her_;
+and Hugh had always been more of a younger than an elder brother. The
+quick contrast of those old happy childish days was too strong; the glance
+back at what she had had, made her feel the want. Fleda blamed herself,
+reasoned and fought with herself;--but she was weak in mind and body, her
+nerves were unsteady yet, her spirits unprepared for any encounter or
+reminder of pleasure; and though vexed and ashamed she _could_ not hold
+her head up, and she could not prevent tear after tear from falling as
+they went along; she could only hope that nobody saw them.
+
+Nobody spoke of them. But then nobody said anything; and the silence at
+last frightened her into rousing herself She checked her tears and raised
+her head; she ventured no more; she dared not turn her face towards her
+companion. He looked at her once or twice, as if in doubt whether to
+speak or not.
+
+"Are you not going beyond your strength?" he said at length gently.
+
+Fleda said no, although in a tone that half confessed his suspicion. He
+was silent again, however, and she cast about in vain for something to
+speak of; it seemed to her that all subjects of conversation in general
+had been packed up for exportation, neither eye nor memory could light
+upon a single one. Block after block was passed, the pace at which he
+walked, and the manner of his care for her, alone shewing that he knew
+what a very light hand was resting upon his arm.
+
+"How pretty the curl of blue smoke is from that chimney," he said.
+
+It was said with a tone so carelessly easy that Fleda's heart jumped for
+one instant in the persuasion that he had seen and noticed nothing
+peculiar about her.
+
+"I know it," she said eagerly,--"I have often thought of it--especially
+here in the city--"
+
+"Why is it? what is it?--"
+
+Fleda's eye gave one of its exploratory looks at his, such as he
+remembered from years ago, before she spoke.
+
+"Isn't it contrast?--or at least I think that helps the effect here."
+
+"What do you make the contrast?" he said quietly.
+
+"Isn't it," said Fleda with another glance, "the contrast of something
+pure and free and upward-tending, with what is below it. I did not mean
+the mere painter's contrast. In the country smoke is more picturesque, but
+in the city I think it has more character."
+
+"To how many people do you suppose it ever occurred that smoke had a
+character?" said he smiling.
+
+"You are laughing at me, Mr. Carleton? perhaps I deserve it."
+
+"You do not think that," said he with a look that forbade her to think it.
+"But I see you are of Lavater's mind, that everything has a physiognomy?"
+
+"I think he was perfectly right," said Fleda. "Don't you, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"To some people, yes!--But the expression is so subtle that only very nice
+sensibilities, with fine training, can hope to catch it; therefore to the
+mass of the world Lavater would talk nonsense."
+
+"That is a gentle hint to me. But if I talk nonsense I wish you would set
+me right, Mr. Carleton;--I am very apt to amuse myself with tracing out
+fancied analogies in almost everything, and I may carry it too far--too
+far--to be spoken of wisely. I think it enlarges one's field of pleasure
+very much. Where one eye is stopped, another is but invited on."
+
+"So," said Mr. Carleton, "while that puff of smoke would lead one
+person's imagination only down the chimney to the kitchen fire, it
+would take another's----where did yours go?" said he suddenly turning
+round upon her.
+
+Fleda met his eye again, without speaking; but her look had perhaps more
+than half revealed her thought, for she was answered with a smile so
+intelligent and sympathetic that she was abashed.
+
+"How very much religion heightens the enjoyments of life," Mr. Carleton
+said after a while.
+
+Fieda's heart throbbed an answer; she did not speak.
+
+"Both in its direct and indirect action. The mind is set free from
+influences that narrowed its range and dimmed its vision; and refined to a
+keener sensibility, a juster perception, a higher power of appreciation,
+by far, than it had before. And then, to say nothing of religion's own
+peculiar sphere of enjoyment, technically religious,--what a field of
+pleasure it opens to its possessor in the world of moral beauty, most
+partially known to any other,--and the fine but exquisite analogies of
+things material with things spiritual,--those _harmonies of Nature_, to
+which, talk as they will, all other ears are deaf!"
+
+"You know," said Fleda with full eyes that she dared not shew, "how Henry
+Martyn said that he found he enjoyed painting and music so much more after
+he became a Christian."
+
+"I remember. It is the substituting a just medium for a false one--it is
+putting nature within and nature without in tune with each other, so that
+the chords are perfect now which were jarring before."
+
+"And yet how far people would be from believing you, Mr. Carleton."
+
+"Yes--they are possessed with the contrary notion. But in all the
+creation nothing has a one-sided usefulness;--what a reflection it would
+be upon the wisdom of its author if godliness alone were the
+exception--if it were not 'profitable for the life that now is, as well
+as for that which is to come'!"
+
+"They make that work the other way, don't they?" said Fleda.--"Not being
+able to see how thorough religion should be for anybody's happiness, they
+make use of your argument to conclude that it is not what the Bible
+requires. How I have heard that urged--that God intended his creatures to
+be happy--as a reason why they should disobey him. They lay hold on the
+wrong end of the argument and work backwards."
+
+"Precisely.
+
+"'God intended his creatures to be happy.
+
+"'Strict obedience would make them unhappy.
+
+"'Therefore, he does not intend them to obey.'"
+
+"They never put it before them quite so clearly," said Fleda.
+
+"They would startle at it a little. But so they would at the right stating
+of the case."
+
+"And how would that be, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"It might be somewhat after this fashion--
+
+"'God requires nothing that is not for the happiness of his people--
+
+"'He requires perfect obedience--
+
+"'Therefore perfect obedience is for their happiness'
+
+"But unbelief will not understand that. Did it ever strike you how much
+there is in those words 'Come and see'?--All that argument can do, after
+all, is but to persuade to that. Only faith will submit to terms and enter
+the narrrow gate; and only obedience knows what the prospect is on the
+other side."
+
+"But isn't it true, Mr. Carleton, that the world have some cause for their
+opinion?--judging as they do by the outside? The peculiar pleasures of
+religion, as you say, are out of sight, and they do not always find in
+religious people that enlargement and refinement of which you were
+speaking."
+
+"Because they make unequal comparisons. Recollect that, as God has
+declared, the ranks of religion are not for the most part filled from the
+wise and the great. In making your estimate you must measure things equal
+in other respects. Compare the same man with himself before he was a
+Christian or with his unchristianized fellows--and you will find
+invariably the refining, dignifying, ennobling, influence of true
+religion; the enlarged intelligence and the greater power of enjoyment."
+
+"And besides those causes of pleasure-giving that you mentioned," said
+Fleda,--"there is a mind at ease; and how much that is alone. If I may
+judge others by myself,--the mere fact of being unpoised--unresting--
+disables the mind from a thousand things that are joyfully relished by
+one entirely at ease."
+
+"Yes," said he,--"do you remember that word--'The stones of the field
+shall be at peace with thee'?"
+
+"I am afraid people would understand you as little as they would me, Mr.
+Carleton," said Fleda laughing.
+
+He smiled, rather a prolonged smile, the expression of which Fleda could
+not make out; she felt that _she_ did not quite understand him.
+
+"I have thought," said he after a pause, "that much of the beauty we find
+in many things is owing to a hidden analogy--the harmony they make with
+some unknown string of the mind's harp which they have set a vibrating.
+But the music of that is so low and soft that one must listen very closely
+to find out what it is."
+
+"Why that is the very theory of which I gave you a smoky illustration a
+little while ago," said Fleda. "I thought I was on safe ground, after what
+you said about the characters of flowers, for that was a little--"
+
+"Fanciful?" said he smiling.
+
+"What you please," said Fleda colouring a little,--"I am sure it is true.
+The theory, I mean. I have many a time felt it, though I never put it in
+words. I shall think of that."
+
+"Did you ever happen to see the very early dawn of a winter's
+morning?" said he.
+
+But he laughed the next instant at the comical expression of Fleda's face
+as it was turned to him.
+
+"Forgive me for supposing you as ignorant as myself. I have seen
+it--once."
+
+"Appreciated it, I hope, that time?" said Fleda.
+
+"I shall never forget it."
+
+"And it never wrought in you a desire to see it again?"
+
+"I might see many a dawn," said he smiling, "without what I saw then. It
+was very early--and a cloudy morning, so that night had still almost
+undisturbed possession of earth and sky; but in the south-eastern quarter,
+between two clouds, there was a space of fair white promise, hardly making
+any impression upon the darkness but only set off by it. And upon this one
+bright spot in earth or heaven, rode the planet of the morning--the sun's
+forerunner--bright upon the brightness. All else was dusky--except where
+overhead the clouds had parted again and shewed a faint old moon,
+glimmering down upon the night it could no longer be said to 'rule'."
+
+"Beautiful!" said Fleda. "There is hardly any time I like so well as the
+dawn of a winter morning with an old moon in the sky. Summer weather has
+no beauty like it--in some things."
+
+"Once," continued Mr, Carleton, "I should have seen no more than I have
+told you--the beauty that every cultivated eye must take in. But now,
+methought I saw the dayspring that has come upon a longer night--and from
+out of the midst of it there was the fair face of the morning star looking
+at me with its sweet reminder and invitation--looking over the world with
+its aspect of triumphant expectancy;--there was its calm assurance of the
+coming day,--its promise that the star of hope which now there were only a
+few watching eyes to see, should presently be followed by the full beams
+of the Sun of righteousness making the kingdoms of the world his
+own.--Your memory may bring to you the words that came to mine,--the
+promise 'to him that overcometh', and the beauty of the lips that made
+it--the encouragement to 'patient continuance in well-doing', 'till the
+day break and the shadows flee away.'--And there on the other hand was the
+substituted light of earth's wisdom and inventions, dominant yet, but
+waning and soon to be put out for ever."
+
+Fleda was crying again, and perhaps that was the reason why Mr. Carleton
+was silent for some time. She was very sorry to shew herself so weak, but
+she could not help it; part of his words had come too close. And when she
+had recovered again she was absolutely silent too, for they were nearing
+Sloman-street and she could not take him there with her. She did not know
+what to say, nor what he would think; and she said not another word till
+they came to the corner. There she must stop and speak.
+
+"I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Carleton," she said drawing her hand
+from his arm, "for taking care of me all this disagreeable way--I will not
+give you any more trouble."
+
+"You are not going to dismiss me?" said he looking at her with a
+countenance of serious anxiety.
+
+"I must," said Fleda ingenuously,--"I have business to attend to here--"
+
+"But you will let me have the pleasure of waiting for you?"
+
+"O no," said Fleda hesitating and flushing,--"thank you, Mr.
+Carleton,--but pray do not--I don't know at all how long I may be
+detained."
+
+He bowed, she thought gravely, and turned away, and she entered the little
+wretched street; with a strange feeling of pain that she could not
+analyze. She did not know where it came from, but she thought if there
+only had been a hiding-place for her she could have sat down and wept a
+whole heartful. The feeling must be kept back now, and it was soon
+forgotten in the throbbing of her heart at another thought which took
+entire possession.
+
+The sun was not down, there was time enough, but it was with a step and
+eye of hurried anxiety that Fleda passed along the little street, for fear
+of missing her quest or lest Dinah should have changed her domicil. Yet
+would her uncle have named it for their meeting if he had not been sure
+of it? It was very odd he should have appointed that place at all, and
+Fleda was inclined to think he must have seen Dinah by some chance, or it
+never would have come into his head. Still her eye passed unheeding over
+all the varieties of dinginess and misery in her way, intent only upon
+finding that particular dingy cellar-way which used to admit her to
+Dinah's premises. It was found at last, and she went in.
+
+The old woman, herself most unchanged, did not know the young lady, but
+well remembered the little girl whom Fleda brought to her mind. And then
+she was overjoyed to see her, and asked a multitude of questions, and told
+a long story of her having met Mr. Rossitur in the street the other day
+"in the last place where she'd have looked to see him;" and how old he had
+grown, and how surprised she had been to see the grey hairs in his head.
+Fleda at last gave her to understand that she expected him to meet her
+there and would like to see him alone; and the good woman immediately took
+her work into another apartment, made up the fire and set up the chairs,
+and leaving her assured Fleda she would lock up the doors "and not let no
+one come through."
+
+It was sundown, and later, Fleda thought, and she felt as if every pulse
+was doing double duty. No matter--if she were shattered and the work done.
+But what work!--Oh the needlessness, the cruelty, the folly of it! And how
+much of the ill consequences she might be unable after all to ward off.
+She took off her hat, to relieve a nervous smothered feeling; and walked,
+and sat down; and then sat still, from trembling inability to do anything
+else. Dinah's poor little room, clean though it was, looked to her the
+most dismal place in the world from its association with her errand; she
+hid her face on her knees that she might have no disagreeableness to
+contend with but that which could not be shut out.
+
+It had lain there some time, till a sudden felling of terror at the
+growing lateness made her raise it to look at the window. Mr. Rossitur was
+standing still before her, he must have come in very softly,--and
+looking,--oh Fleda had not imagined him looking so changed. All was
+forgotten,--the wrong, and the needlessness, and the indignation with
+which she had sometimes thought of it; Fleda remembered nothing but love
+and pity, and threw herself upon his neck with such tears of tenderness
+and sympathy, such kisses of forgiveness and comfort-speaking, as might
+have broken a stouter heart than Mr. Rossitur's. He held her in his arms
+for a few minutes, passively suffering her caresses, and then gently
+unloosing her hold placed her on a seat; sat down a little way off,
+covered his face and groaned aloud.
+
+Fleda could not recover herself at once. Then shaking off her agitation
+she came and knelt down by his side and putting one arm over his shoulder
+laid her cheek against his forehead. Words were beyond reach, but his
+forehead was wet with her tears; and kisses, of soft entreaty, of winning
+assurance, said all she could say.
+
+"What did you come here for, Fleda?" said Mr. Rossitur at length, without
+changing his position.
+
+"To bring you home, uncle Rolf."
+
+"Home!" said he, with an accent between bitterness and despair.
+
+"Yes, for it's all over, it's all forgotten--there is no more to be said
+about it at all," said Fleda, getting her words out she didn't know how.
+
+"What is forgotten?" said he harshly.
+
+"All that you would wish, sir," replied Fleda softly and gently;--"there
+is no more to be done about it; and I came to tell you if possible before
+it was too late. Oh I'm so glad!--" and her arms and her cheek pressed
+closer as fresh tears stopped her voice.
+
+"How do you know, Fleda?" said Mr. Rossitur raising his head and bringing
+hers to his shoulder, while his arms in turn enclosed her.
+
+Fleda whispered, "He told me so himself."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Mr. Thorn."
+
+The words were but just spoken above her breath. Mr. Rossitur was silent
+for some time.
+
+"Are you sure you understood him?"
+
+"Yes, sir; it could not have been spoken plainer."
+
+"Are you quite sure he meant what he said, Fleda?"
+
+"Perfectly sure, uncle Rolf! I know he did."
+
+"What stipulation did he make beforehand?"
+
+"He did it without any stipulation, sir."
+
+"What was his inducement then? If I know him he is not a man to act
+without any."
+
+Fleda's cheek was dyed, but except that she gave no other answer.
+
+"Why has it been left so long?" said her uncle presently.
+
+"I don't know, sir--he said nothing about that. He promised that neither
+we nor the world should hear anything more of it."
+
+"The world?" said Mr. Rossitur.
+
+"No sir, he said that only one or two persons had any notion of it and
+that their secrecy he had the means of securing."
+
+"Did he tell you anything more?"
+
+"Only that he had the matter entirely under his control and that never a
+whisper of it should be heard again, No promise could be given more fully
+and absolutely."
+
+Mr. Rossitur drew a long breath, speaking to Fleda's ear very great
+relief, and was silent.
+
+"And what reward is he to have for this, Fleda?" he said after some
+musing.
+
+"All that my hearty thanks and gratitude can give, as far as I am
+concerned, sir."
+
+"Is that what he expects, Fleda?"
+
+"I cannot help what he expects," said Fleda, in some distress.
+
+"What have you engaged yourself to, my child?"
+
+"Nothing in the world, uncle Rolf!" said Fleda earnestly--"nothing in the
+world. I haven't engaged myself to anything. The promise was made freely,
+without any sort of stipulation."
+
+Mr. Rossitur looked thoughtful and disquieted. Fleda's tears were
+pouring again.
+
+"I will not trust him," he said,--"I will not stay in the country!"
+
+"But you will come home, uncle?" said Fleda, terrified.
+
+"Yes my dear child--yes my dear child!" he said tenderly, putting his arms
+round Fleda again and kissing, with an earnestness of acknowledgment that
+went to her heart, her lips and brow,--"you shall do what you will with
+me; and when I go, we will all go together."
+
+From Queechy! From America!--But she had no time for that thought now.
+
+"You said 'for Hugh's sake,'" Mr. Rossitur observed after a pause, and
+with some apparent difficulty;--"what of him?"
+
+"He is not well, uncle Rolf," said Fleda,--"and I think the best medicine
+will be the sight of you again."
+
+Mr. Rossitur looked pale and was silent a moment.
+
+"And my wife?" he said.
+
+His face, and the thought of those faces at home, were too much for Fleda;
+she could not help it; "Oh, uncle Rolf," she said, hiding her face, "they
+only want to see you again now!"
+
+Mr. Rossitur leaned his head in his hands and groaned; and Fleda could but
+cry; she felt there was nothing to say.
+
+"It was for Marion," he said at length;--"it was when I was hard pressed
+and I was fearful if it were known that it might ruin her prospects.--I
+wanted that miserable sum--only four thousand dollars--that fellow
+Schwiden asked to borrow it of me for a few days, and to refuse would have
+been to confess all. I dared not try my credit, and I just madly took that
+step that proved irretrievable--I counted at the moment upon funds that
+were coming to me only the next week, sure, I thought, as possible,--but
+the man cheated me, and our embarrassments thickened from that time; that
+thing has been a weight--oh a weight of deadening power!--round my neck
+ever since. I have died a living death these six years!--"
+
+"I know it, dear uncle--I know it all!" said Fleda, bringing the
+sympathizing touch of her cheek to his again.
+
+"The good that it did has been unspeakably overbalanced by the evil--even
+long ago I knew that."
+
+"The good that it did"! It was no time _then_ to moralize, but he must
+know that Marion was at home, or he might incautiously reveal to her what
+happily there was no necessity for her ever knowing. And the story must
+give him great and fresh pain----
+
+"Dear uncle Rolf!" said Fleda pressing closer to him, "we may be happier
+than we have been in a long time, if you will only take it so. The cloud
+upon you has been a cloud upon us."
+
+"I know it!" he exclaimed,--"a cloud that served to shew me that my jewels
+were diamonds!"
+
+"You have an accession to your jewels, uncle Rolf."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean," said Fleda trembling, "that there are two more at home."
+
+He held her back to look at her.
+
+"Can't you guess who?"
+
+"No!" said he. "What do you mean?"
+
+"I must tell you, because they know nothing, and needn't know, of all
+this matter."
+
+"What are you talking about?"
+
+"Marion is there----"
+
+"Marion!" exclaimed Mr. Rossitur, with quick changes of expression,--"
+Marion!--At Queechy!--and her husband?"
+
+"No sir,--a dear little child."
+
+"Marion!--and her husband--where is he?"
+
+Fleda hesitated.
+
+"I don't know--I don't know whether she knows--"
+
+"Is he dead?"
+
+"No sir--"
+
+Mr. Rossitur put her away and got up and walked, or strode, up and down,
+up and down, the little apartment. Fleda dared not look at him, even by
+the faint glimmer that came from the chimney.
+
+But abroad it was perfectly dark--the stars were shining, the only lamps
+that illumined the poor little street, and for a long time there had been
+no light in the room but that of the tiny wood fire. Dinah never could be
+persuaded of the superior cheapness of coal. Fleda came at last to her
+uncle's side and putting her arm within his said,
+
+"How soon will you set off for home, uncle Rolf?"
+
+"To-morrow morning."
+
+"You must take the boat to Bridgeport now--you know the river is fast."
+
+"Yes I know----"
+
+"Then I will meet you at the wharf, uncle Rolf,--at what o'clock?"
+
+"My dear child," said he, stopping and passing his hand tenderly over her
+cheek, "are you fit for it to-morrow? You had better stay where you are
+quietly for a few days--you want rest."
+
+"No, I will go home with you," said Fleda, "and rest there. But hadn't we
+better let Dinah in and bid her good bye? for I ought to be somewhere else
+to get ready."
+
+Dinah was called, and a few kind words spoken, and with a more
+substantial remembrance, or reward, from Fleda's hand, they left her.
+
+Fleda had the support of her uncle's arm till they came within sight of
+the house, and then he stood and watched her while she went the rest of
+the way alone.
+
+[Illustration: Then he stood and watched her.]
+
+Anything more white and spirit-looking, and more spirit-like in its
+purity and peacefulness, surely did not walk that night. There was music
+in her ear, and abroad in the star-light, more ethereal than Ariel's,
+but she knew where it came from; it was the chimes of her heart that
+were ringing; and never a happier peal, nor never had the mental
+atmosphere been more clear for their sounding. Thankfulness,--that was
+the oftenest note,--swelling thankfulness for her success,--joy for
+herself and for the dear ones at home,--generous delight at having been
+the instrument of their relief,--the harmonies of pure affections,
+without any grating now,--the hope well grounded she thought, of
+improvement in her uncle and better times for them all,--a childlike
+peace that was at rest with itself and the world,--these were mingling
+and interchanging their music, and again and again in the midst of it
+all, faith rang the last chime in heaven.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIII.
+
+
+
+  As some lone bird at day's departing hour
+  Sings in the sunbeam of the transient shower,
+  Forgetful though its wings are wet the while.
+
+  Bowles.
+
+
+Happily possessed with the notion that there was some hidden mystery in
+Fleda's movements, Mrs. Pritchard said not a word about her having gone
+out, and only spoke in looks her pain at the imprudence of which she
+had been guilty. But when Fleda asked to have a carriage ordered to
+take her to the boat in the morning, the good housekeeper could not
+hold any longer.
+
+"Miss Fleda," said she with a look of very serious remonstrance,--"I
+don't know what you're thinking of, but _I_ know you're fixing to kill
+yourself. You are no more fit to go to Queechy to-morrow than you were to
+be out till seven o'clock this evening; and if you saw yourself you
+wouldn't want me to say any more. There is not the least morsel of colour
+in your face, and you look as if you had a mind to get rid of your body
+altogether as fast as you can! You want to be in bed for two days
+running, now this minute."
+
+"Thank you, dear Mrs. Pritchard," said Fleda smiling; "you are very
+careful of me; but I must go home to-morrow, and go to bed afterwards."
+
+The housekeeper looked at her a minute in silence, and then said, "Don't,
+dear Miss Fleda!"--with an energy of entreaty which brought the tears into
+Fleda's eyes. But she persisted in desiring the carriage; and Mrs.
+Pritchard was silenced, observing however that she shouldn't wonder if she
+wasn't able to go after all. Fleda herself was not without a doubt on the
+subject before the evening was over. The reaction, complete now, began to
+make itself felt; and morning settled the question. She was not able even
+to rise from her bed.
+
+The housekeeper was, in a sort, delighted; and Fleda was in too passive a
+mood of body and mind to have any care on the subject. The agitation of
+the past days had given way to an absolute quiet that seemed as if nothing
+could ever ruffle it again, and this feeling was seconded by the extreme
+prostration of body. She was a mere child in the hands of her nurse, and
+had, Mrs. Pritchard said, "if she wouldn't mind her telling,--the sweetest
+baby-face that ever had so much sense belonging to it."
+
+The morning was half spent in dozing slumbers, when Fleda heard a rush of
+footsteps, much lighter and sprightlier than good Mrs. Pritchard's, coming
+up the stairs and pattering along the entry to her room; and with little
+ceremony in rushed Florence and Constance Evelyn. They almost smothered
+Fleda with their delighted caresses, and ran so hard their questions about
+her looks and her illness, that she was well nigh spared the trouble of
+answering.
+
+"You horrid little creature!" said Constance,--"why didn't you come
+straight to our house? just think of the injurious suspicions you have
+exposed us to!--to say nothing of the extent of fiction we have found
+ourselves obliged to execute. I didn't expect it of you, little Queechy."
+
+Fleda kept her pale face quiet on the pillow, and only smiled her
+incredulous curiosity.
+
+"But when did you come back, Fleda?" said Miss Evelyn.
+
+"We should never have known a breath about your being here," Constance
+went on. "We were sitting last night in peaceful unconsciousness of there
+being any neglected calls upon our friendship in the vicinity, when Mr.
+Carleton came in and asked for you. Imagine our horror!--we said you had
+gone out early in the afternoon and had not returned."
+
+"You didn't say that!" said Fleda colouring.
+
+"And he remarked at some length," said Constance, "upon the importance of
+young ladies having some attendance when they are out late in the evening,
+and that you in particular were one of those persons--he didn't say, but
+he intimated, of a slightly volatile disposition,--whom their friends
+ought not to lose sight of."
+
+"But what brought you to town again, Fleda?" said the elder sister.
+
+"What makes you talk so, Constance?" said Fleda.
+
+"I haven't told you the half!" said Constance demurely. "And then mamma
+excused herself as well as she could, and Mr. Carleton said very seriously
+that he knew there was a great element of head-strongness in your
+character--he had remarked it, he said, when you were arguing with Mr.
+Stackpole."
+
+"Constance, be quiet!" said her sister. "_Will_ you tell me, Fleda, what
+you have come to town for? I am dying with curiosity."
+
+"Then it's inordinate curiosity, and ought to be checked, my dear," said
+Fleda smiling.
+
+"Tell me!"
+
+"I came to take care of some business that could not very well be attended
+to at a distance."
+
+"Who did you come with?"
+
+"One of our Queechy neighbours that I heard was coming to New York."
+
+"Wasn't your uncle at home?"
+
+"Of course not. If he had been, there would have been no need of my
+stirring."
+
+"But was there nobody else to do it but you?"
+
+"Uncle Orrin away, you know; and Charlton down at his post--Fort
+Hamilton, is it?--I forget which fort--he is fast there."
+
+"He is not so very fast," said Constance, "for I see him every now and
+then in Broadway shouldering Mr. Thorn instead of a musket; and he has
+taken up the distressing idea that it is part of his duty to oversee the
+progress of Florence's worsted-work--(I've made over that horrid thing to
+her, Fleda)--or else his precision has been struck with the anomaly of
+blue stars on a white ground, and he is studying that,--I don't know
+which,--and so every few nights he rushes over from Governor's Island, or
+somewhere, to prosecute enquiries. Mamma is quite concerned about him--she
+says he is wearing himself out."
+
+The mixture of amusement, admiration, and affection, with which the other
+sister looked at her and laughed with her was a pretty thing to see.
+
+"But where is your other cousin,--Hugh?" said Florence.
+
+"He was not well."
+
+"Where is your uncle?"
+
+"He will be at home to-day I expect; and so should I have been--I meant to
+be there as soon as he was,--but I found this morning that I was not well
+enough,--to my sorrow."
+
+"You were not going alone!"
+
+"O no--a friend of ours was going to-day."
+
+"I never saw anybody with so many friends!" said Florence. "But you are
+coming to us now, Fleda. How soon are you going to get up?"
+
+"O by to-morrow," said Fleda smiling;--"but I had better stay where I am
+the little while I shall be here--I must go home the first minute I can
+find an opportunity."
+
+"But you sha'n't find an opportunity till we've had you," said Constance.
+"I'm going to bring a carriage for you this afternoon. I could bear the
+loss of your friendship, my dear, but not the peril of my own reputation.
+Mr. Carleton is under the impression that you are suffering from a
+momentary succession of fainting fits, and if we were to leave you here
+in an empty house to come out of them at your leisure, what would he
+think of us?"
+
+What would he think!--Oh world! Is this it?
+
+But Fleda was not able to be moved in the afternoon; and it soon appeared
+that nature would take more revenge than a day's sleep for the rough
+handling she had had the past week. Fleda could not rise from her bed the
+next morning; and instead of that a kind of nondescript nervous fever set
+in; nowise dangerous, but very wearying. She was nevertheless extremely
+glad of it, for it would serve to explain to all her friends the change of
+look which had astonished them. They would make it now the token of
+coming, not of past, evil. The rest she took with her accustomed patience
+and quietness, thankful for everything after the anxiety and the relief
+she had just before known.
+
+Dr. Gregory came home from Philadelphia in the height of her attack, and
+aggravated it for a day or two with the fear of his questioning. But
+Fleda was surprised at his want of curiosity. He asked her indeed what
+she had come to town for, but her whispered answer of "Business," seemed
+to satisfy him, for he did not inquire what the business was. He did ask
+her furthermore what had made her get sick; but this time he was
+satisfied more easily still, with a very curious sweet smile which was
+the utmost reply Fleda's wits at the moment could frame. "Well, get
+well," said he kissing her heartily once or twice, "and I won't quarrel
+with you about it."
+
+The getting well however promised to be a leisurely affair. Dr. Gregory
+staid two or three days, and then went on to Boston, leaving Fleda in no
+want of him.
+
+Mrs. Pritchard was the tenderest and carefullest of nurres. The Evelyns
+did everything _but_ nurse her. They sat by her, talked to her, made her
+laugh, and not seldom made her look sober too, with their wild tales of
+the world and the world's doings. But they were indeed very affectionate
+and kind, and Fleda loved them for it. If they wearied her sometimes with
+their talk, it was a change from the weariness of fever and silence that
+on the whole was useful.
+
+She was quieting herself one morning, as well as she could, in the midst
+of both, lying with shut eyes against her pillow, and trying to fix her
+mind on pleasant things, when she heard Mrs. Pritchard open the door and
+come in. She knew it was Mrs. Pritchard, so she didn't move nor look. But
+in a moment, the knowledge that Mrs. Pritchard's feet had stopped just by
+the bed, and a strange sensation of something delicious saluting her made
+her open her eyes; when they lighted upon a huge bunch of violets, just
+before them and in most friendly neighbourhood to her nose. Fleda started
+up, and her "Oh!" fairly made the housekeeper laugh; it was the very
+quintessence of gratification.
+
+"Where did you get them?"
+
+"I didn't get them indeed, Miss Fleda," said the housekeeper gravely, with
+an immense amount of delighted satisfaction.
+
+"Delicious!--Where did they come from?"
+
+"Well they must have come from a greenhouse, or hot-house, or something of
+that kind, Miss Fleda,--these things don't grow nowhere out o' doors at
+this time."
+
+Mrs. Pritchard guessed Fleda had got the clue, from her quick change of
+colour and falling eye. There was a quick little smile too; and "How
+kind!" was upon the end of Fleda's tongue, but it never got any further.
+Her energies, so far as expression was concerned, seemed to be
+concentrated in the act of smelling. Mrs. Pritchard stood by.
+
+"They must be put in water," said Fleda,--"I must have a dish for
+them--Dear Mrs. Pritchard, will you get me one?"
+
+The housekeeper went smiling to herself. The dish was brought, the violets
+placed in it, and a little table at Fleda's request was set by the side of
+the bed close to her pillow, for them to stand upon. And Fleda lay on her
+pillow and looked at them.
+
+There never were purer-breathed flowers than those. All the pleasant
+associations of Fleda's life seemed to hang about them, from the time when
+her childish eyes had first made acquaintance with violets, to the
+conversation in the library a few days ago; and painful things stood
+aloof; they had no part. The freshness of youth, and the sweetness of
+spring-time, and all the kindly influences which had ever joined with both
+to bless her, came back with their blessing in the violets' reminding
+breath. Fleda shut her eyes and she felt it; she opened her eyes, and the
+little double blue things smiled at her good humouredly and said, "Here we
+are--you may shut them again." And it was curious how often Fleda gave
+them a smile back as she did so.
+
+Mrs. Pritchard thought Fleda lived upon the violets that day rather than
+upon food and medicine; or at least, she said, they agreed remarkably well
+together. And the next day it was much the same.
+
+"What will you do when they are withered?" she said that evening. "I shall
+have to see and get some more for you."
+
+"Oh they will last a great while," said Fleda smiling.
+
+But the next morning Mrs. Pritchard came into her room with a great bunch
+of roses, the very like of the one Fleda had had at the Evelyns'. She
+delivered them with a sort of silent triumph, and then as before stood by
+to enjoy Fleda and the flowers together. But the degree of Fleda's
+wonderment, pleasure, and gratitude, made her reception of them, outwardly
+at least, this time rather grave.
+
+"You may throw the others away now, Miss Fleda," said the
+housekeeper smiling.
+
+"Indeed I shall not!--"
+
+"The violets, I suppose, is all gone," Mrs. Pritchard went on;--but I
+never _did_ see such a bunch of roses as that since I lived
+anywhere.--They have made a rose of you, Miss Fleda."
+
+"How beautiful!--" was Fleda's answer.
+
+"Somebody--he didn't say who--desired to know particularly how Miss
+Ringgan was to-day."
+
+"Somebody is _very_ kind!" said Fleda from the bottom of her heart. "But
+dear Mrs. Pritchard, I shall want another dish."
+
+Somebody was kind, she thought more and more; for there came every day or
+two the most delicious bouquets, every day different. They were _at least_
+equal in their soothing and refreshing influences to all the efforts of
+all the Evelyns and Mrs. Pritchard put together. There never came any name
+with them, and there never was any need. Those bunches of flowers
+certainly had a physiognomy; and to Fleda were (not the flowers but the
+choosing, cutting, and putting of them together) the embodiment of an
+amount of grace, refined feeling, generosity, and kindness, that her
+imagination never thought of in connection with but one person. And his
+kindness was answered, perhaps Mrs. Pritchard better than Fleda guessed
+how well, from the delighted colour and sparkle of the eye with which
+every fresh arrival was greeted as it walked into her room. By Fleda's
+order the bouquets were invariably put out of sight before the Evelyns
+made their first visit in the morning, and not brought out again till all
+danger of seeing them any more for the day was past. The regular coming of
+these floral messengers confirmed Mrs. Pritchard in her mysterious
+surmises about Fleda, which were still further strengthened by this
+incomprehensible order; and at last she got so into the spirit of the
+thing that if she heard an untimely ring at the door she would catch up a
+glass of flowers and run as if they had been contraband, without a word
+from anybody.
+
+The Evelyns wrote to Mrs. Rossitur, by Fleda's desire, so as not to alarm
+her; merely saying that Fleda was not quite well, and that they meant to
+keep her a little while to recruit herself; and that Mrs. Rossitur must
+send her some clothes. This last clause was tha particular addition of
+Constance.
+
+The fever lasted a fortnight, and then went off by degrees, leaving her
+with a very small portion of her ordinary strength. Fleda was to go to the
+Evelyns as soon as she could bear it; at present she was only able to come
+down to the little back parlour and sit in the doctor's arm chair, and eat
+jelly, and sleep, and look at Constance, and when Constance was not there
+look at her flowers. She could hardly bear a book as yet. She hadn't a bit
+of colour in her face, Mrs. Pritchard said, but she looked better than
+when she came to town; and to herself the good housekeeper added, that she
+looked happier too. No doubt that was true. Fleda's principal feeling,
+ever since she lay down in her bed, had been thankfulness; and now that
+the ease of returning health was joined to this feeling, her face with all
+its subdued gravity was as untroubled in its expression as the faces of
+her flowers.
+
+She was disagreeably surprised one day, after she had been two or three
+days down stairs, by a visit from Mrs. Thorn. In her well-grounded dread
+of seeing one person Fleda had given strict orders that no _gentleman_
+should be admitted; she had not counted upon this invasion. Mrs. Thorn had
+always been extremely kind to her, but though Fleda gave her credit for
+thorough good-heartedness, and a true liking for herself, she could not
+disconnect her attentions from another thought, and therefore always
+wished them away; and never had her kind face been more thoroughly
+disagreeable to Fleda than when it made its appearance in the doctor's
+little back parlour on this occasion. With even more than her usual
+fondness, or Pleda's excited imagination fancied so, Mrs. Thorn lavished
+caresses upon her, and finally besought her to go out and take the air in
+her carriage. Fleda tried most earnestly to get rid of this invitation,
+and was gently unpersuadable, till the lady at last was brought to promise
+that she should see no creature during the drive but herself. An ominous
+promise! but Fleda did not know any longer how, to refuse without hurting
+a person for whom she had really a grateful regard. So she went. And
+doubted afterwards exceedingly whether she had done well.
+
+She took special good care to see nobody again till she went to the
+Evelyns. But then precautions were at an end. It was no longer possible to
+keep herself shut up. She had cause, poor child, the very first night of
+her coming, to wish herself back again.
+
+This first evening she would fain have pleaded weakness as her excuse and
+gone to her room, but Constance laid violent hands on her and insisted
+that she should stay at least a little while with them. And she seemed
+fated to see all her friends in a bevy. First came Charlton; then followed
+the Decaturs, whom she knew and liked very well, and engrossed her,
+happily before her cousin had time to make any enquiries; then came Mr.
+Carleton; then Mr. Stackpole. Then Mr. Thorn, in expectation of whom
+Fleda's breath had been coming and going painfully all the evening. She
+could not meet him without a strange mixture of embarrassment and
+confusion with the gratitude she wished to express, an embarrassment not
+at all lessened by the air of happy confidence with which he came forward
+to her. It carried an intimation that almost took away the little strength
+she had. And if anything could have made his presence more intolerable, it
+was the feeling she could not get rid of that it was the cause why Mr.
+Carleton did not come near her again; though she prolonged her stay in the
+drawing-room in the hope that he would. It proved to be for Mr. Thorn's
+benefit alone.
+
+"Well you staid all the evening after all," said Constance as they were
+going up stairs.
+
+"Yes--I wish I hadn't," said Fleda. "I wonder when I shall be likely to
+find a chance of getting back to Queechy."
+
+"You're not fit yet, so you needn't trouble yourself about it," said
+Constance. "We'll find you plenty of chances."
+
+Fleda could not think of Mr. Thorn without trembling. His manner meant--so
+much more than it had any right, or than she had counted upon. He
+seemed--she pressed her hands upon her face to get rid of the
+impression--he seemed to take for granted precisely that which she had
+refused to admit; he seemed to reckon as paid for that which she had
+declined to set a price upon. Her uncle's words and manner came up in her
+memory. She could see nothing best to do but to get home as fast as
+possible. She had no one here to fall back upon. Again that vision of
+father and mother and grandfather flitted across her fancy; and though
+Fleda's heart ended by resting down on that foundation to which it always
+recurred, it rested with a great many tears.
+
+For several days she denied herself absolutely to morning visitors of
+every kind. But she could not entirely absent herself from the
+drawing-room in the evening; and whenever the family were at home there
+was a regular levee. Mr. Thorn could not be avoided then. He was always
+there, and always with that same look and manner of satisfied confidence.
+Fleda was as grave, as silent, as reserved, as she could possibly be and
+not be rude; but he seemed to take it in excellent good part, as being
+half indisposition and half timidity. Fleda set her face earnestly towards
+home, and pressed Mrs. Evelyn to find her an opportunity, weak or strong,
+of going there; but for those days as yet none presented itself.
+
+Mr. Carleton was at the house almost as often as Mr. Thorn, seldom staying
+so long however, and never having any more to do with Fleda than he had
+that first evening. Whenever he did come in contact with her, he was, she
+thought, as grave as he was graceful. That was to be sure his common
+manner in company, yet she could not help thinking there was some
+difference since the walk they had taken together, and it grieved her.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIV.
+
+
+
+  The beat-laid schemes o' mice and men
+  Gang aft agley.
+
+  Burns.
+
+
+After a few days Charlton verified what Constance had said about his not
+being very _fast_ at Fort Hamilton, by coming again to see them one
+morning. Fleda asked him if he could not get another furlough to go with
+her home, but he declared he was just spending one which was near out; and
+he could not hope for a third in some time; he must be back at his post by
+the day after to-morrow.
+
+"When do you want to go, coz?"
+
+"I would to-morrow, if I had anybody to go with me," said Fleda sighing.
+
+"No you wouldn't," said Constance,--"you are well enough to go out now,
+and you forget we are all to make Mrs. Thorn happy to-morrow night."
+
+"I am not," said Fleda.
+
+"Not? you can't help yourself; you must; you said you would."
+
+"I did not indeed."
+
+"Well then I said it for you, and that will do just as well. Why my dear,
+if you don't--just think!--the Thorns will be in a state--I should prefer
+to go through a hedge of any description rather than meet the trying
+demonstrations which will encounter me on every side."
+
+"I am going to Mrs. Decatur's," said Fleda;--"she invited me first, and I
+owe it to her, she has asked me so often and so kindly."
+
+"I shouldn't think you'd enjoy yourself there," said Florence; "they don't
+talk a bit of English these nights. If I was going, my dear, I would act
+as your interpreter, but my destiny lies in another direction."
+
+"If I cannot make anybody understand my French I will get somebody to
+condescend to my English," said Fleda.
+
+"Why do you talk French?" was the instant question from both mouths.
+
+"Unless she has forgotten herself strangely," said Charlton. "Talk! she
+will talk to anybody's satisfaction--that happens to differ from her; and
+I think her tongue cares very little which language it wags in. There is
+no danger about Fleda's enjoying herself, where people are talking."
+
+Fleda laughed at him, and the Evelyns rather stared at them both.
+
+"But we are all going to Mrs. Thorn's? you can't go alone?"
+
+"I will make Charlton take me," said Fleda,--"or rather I will take him,
+if he will let me. Will you, Charlton? will you take care of me to Mrs.
+Decatur's to-morrow night?"
+
+"With the greatest pleasure, my dear coz, but I have another engagement in
+the course of the evening."
+
+"Oh that is nothing," said Fleda;--"if you will only go with me, that
+is all I care for. You needn't stay but ten minutes. And you can call
+for me," she added, turning to the Evelyns,--"as you come back from
+Mrs. Thorn's."
+
+To this no objection could be made, and the ensuing raillery Fleda bore
+with steadiness at least if not with coolness; for Charlton heard it, and
+she was distressed.
+
+She went to Mrs. Decatur's the next evening in greater elation of spirits
+than she had known since she left her uncle's; delighted to be missing
+from the party at Mrs. Thorn's, and hoping that Mr. Lewis would be
+satisfied with this very plain hint of her mind. A little pleased too to
+feel quite free, alone from too friendly eyes, and ears that had too
+lively a concern in her sayings and doings. She did not in the least care
+about going to Mrs. Decatur's; her joy was that she was not at the other
+place. But there never was elation so outwardly quiet. Nobody would have
+suspected its existence.
+
+The evening was near half over when Mr. Carleton came in. Fleda had half
+hoped he would be there, and now immediately hoped she might have a
+chance to see him alone and to thank him for his flowers; she had not
+been able to do that yet. He presently came up to speak to her just as
+Charlton, who had found attraction enough to keep him so long, came to
+tell he was going.
+
+"You are looking better," said the former, as gravely as ever, but with an
+eye of serious interest that made the word something.
+
+"I am better," said Fleda gratefully.
+
+"So much better that she is in a hurry to make herself worse," said her
+cousin. "Mr. Carleton, you are a professor of medicine, I believe,--I have
+an indistinct impression of your having once prescribed a ride on
+horseback for somebody;--wouldn't you recommend some measure of prudence
+to her consideration?"
+
+"In general," Mr. Carleton answered gravely; "but in the present case I
+could not venture upon any special prescription, Capt. Rossitur."
+
+"As for instance, that she should remain in New York till she is fit to
+leave it?--By the way, what brought you here again in such a hurry, Fleda?
+I haven't heard that yet."
+
+The question was rather sudden. Fleda was a little taken by surprise; her
+face shewed some pain and confusion both. Mr. Carleton prevented her
+answer, she could not tell whether with design.
+
+"What imprudence do you charge your cousin with, Capt. Rossitur?"
+
+"Why she is in a great hurry to get back to Queechy, before she is able
+to go anywhere--begging me to find an escort for her. It is lucky I
+can't. I didn't know I ever should be glad to be 'posted up' in this
+fashion, but I am."
+
+"You have not sought very far, Capt. Rossitur," said the voice of Thorn
+behind him. "Here is one that will be very happy to attend Miss Fleda,
+whenever she pleases."
+
+Fleda's shocked start and change of countenance was seen by more eyes
+than one pair. Thorn's fell, and a shade crossed his countenance too, for
+an instant, that Fleda's vision was too dazzled to see. Mr. Carleton
+moved away.
+
+"Why are _you_ going to Queechy?" said Charlton astonished.
+
+His friend was silent a moment, perhaps for want of power to speak. Fleda
+dared not look at him.
+
+"It is not impossible,--unless this lady forbid me. I am not a fixture."
+
+"But what brought you here, man, to offer your services?" said
+Charlton;--"most ungallantly leaving so many pairs of bright eyes to shine
+upon your absence."
+
+"Mr. Thorn will not find himself in darkness here, Capt. Rossitur," said
+Mrs. Decatur.
+
+"It's my opinion he ought, ma'am," said Charlton.
+
+"It is my opinion every man ought, who makes his dependance on gleams of
+sunshine," said Mr. Thorn rather cynically. "I cannot say I was thinking
+of brightness before or behind me."
+
+"I should think not," said Charlton;--"you don't look as if you had seen
+any in a good while."
+
+"A light goes out every now and then," said Thorn, "and it takes one's
+eyes some time to get accustomed to it. What a singular world we live in,
+Mrs. Decatur!"
+
+"That is so new an idea," said the lady laughing, "that I must request an
+explanation."
+
+"What new experience of its singularity has your wisdom made?" sid his
+friend. "I thought you and the world knew each other's faces pretty
+well before."
+
+"Then you have not heard the news?"
+
+"What news?"
+
+"Hum--I suppose it is not about yet," said Thorn composedly. "No--you
+haven't heard it."
+
+"But what, man?" said Charlton,--"let's hear your news, for I must be
+off."
+
+"Why--but it is no more than rumour yet--but it is said that strange
+things are coming to light about a name that used to be held in very
+high respect."
+
+"In this city?"
+
+"In this city?--yes--it is said proceedings are afoot against one of our
+oldest citizens, on charge of a very grave offence."
+
+"Who?--and what offence? what do you mean?"
+
+"Is it a secret, Mr. Thorn?" said Mrs. Decatur.
+
+"If you have not heard, perhaps it is as well not to mention names too
+soon;--if it comes out it will be all over directly; possibly the family
+may hush it up, and in that case the less said the better; but those have
+it in hand that will not let it slip through their fingers."
+
+Mrs. Decatur turned away, saying "how shocking such things were;" and
+Thorn, with a smile which did not however light up his face, said,
+
+"You may be off, Charlton, with no concern for the bright eyes you leave
+behind you--I will endeavour to atone for my negligence elsewhere, by my
+mindfulness of them."
+
+"Don't excuse you," said Charlton;--but his eye catching at the moment
+another attraction opposite in the form of man or woman, instead of
+quitting the room he leisurely crossed it to speak to the new-comer; and
+Thorn with an entire change of look and manner pressed forward and offered
+his arm to Fleda, who was looking perfectly white. If his words had needed
+any commentary it was given by his eye as it met hers in speaking the last
+sentence to Mrs. Decatur. No one was near whom she knew and Mr. Thorn led
+her out to a little back room where the gentlemen had thrown off their
+cloaks, where the air was fresher, and placing her on a seat stood waiting
+before her till she could speak to him.
+
+"What do you mean, Mr. Thorn?" Fleda looked as much as said, when she
+could meet his face.
+
+"I may rather ask you what _you_ mean, Miss Fleda," he answered gravely.
+
+Fleda drew breath painfully.
+
+"I mean nothing," she said lowering her head again,--"I have done
+nothing--"
+
+"Did you think I meant nothing when I agreed to do all you wished?"
+
+"I thought you said you would do it freely," she said, with a tone of
+voice that might have touched anybody, there was such a sinking of
+heart in it.
+
+"Didn't you understand me?"
+
+"And is it all over now?" said Fleda after a pause.
+
+"Not yet--but it soon may be. A weak hand may stop it now,--it will soon
+be beyond the power of the strongest."
+
+"And what becomes of your promise that it should no more be heard of?"
+said Fleda, looking up at him with a colourless face but eyes that put the
+question forcibly nevertheless.
+
+"Is any promise bound to stand without its conditions?"
+
+"I made no conditions," said Fleda quickly.
+
+"Forgive me,--but did you not permit me to understand them?"
+
+"No!--or if I did I could not help it."
+
+"Did you say that you wished to help it?" said he gently.
+
+"I must say so now, then, Mr. Thorn," said Fleda withdrawing the hand he
+had taken;--"I did not mean or wish you to think so, but I was too ill to
+speak--almost to know what I did--It was not my fault--"
+
+"You do not make it mine, that I chose such a time, selfishly, I grant, to
+draw from your lips the words that are more to me than life?"
+
+"Cannot you be generous?"--_for once_, she was very near saying.
+
+"Where you are concerned, I do not know how."
+
+Fleda was silent a moment, and then bowed her face in her hands.
+
+"May I not ask that question of you?" said he, bending down and
+endeavouring to remove them;--"will you not say--or look--that word that
+will make others happy beside me?"
+
+"I cannot, sir."
+
+"Not for their sakes?" he said calmly.
+
+"Can you ask me to do for theirs what I would not for my own?"
+
+"Yes--for mine," he said, with a meaning deliberateness.
+
+Fleda was silent, with a face of white determination.
+
+"It will be beyond _eluding_, as beyond recall, the second time. I may
+seem selfish--I am selfish--but dear Miss Ringgan you do not see all,--you
+who make me so can make me anything else with a touch of your hand--it is
+selfishness that would be bound to your happiness, if you did but entrust
+it to me."
+
+Fleda neither spoke nor looked at him and rose up from her chair.
+
+"Is this _your_ generosity?" he said, pointedly though gently.
+
+"That is not the question now, sir," said Fleda, who was trembling
+painfully. "I cannot do evil that good may come."
+
+"But _evil_?" said he detaining her,--"what evil do I ask of you?--to
+_remove_ evil, I do."
+
+Fleda clasped her hands, but answered calmly,
+
+"I cannot make any pretences, sir;--I cannot promise to give what is not
+in my power."
+
+"In whose power then?" said he quickly.
+
+A feeling of indignation came to Fleda's aid, and she turned away. But he
+stopped her still.
+
+"Do you think I do not understand?" he said with a covert sneer that had
+the keenness and hardness, and the brightness, of steel.
+
+"_I_ do not, sir," said Fleda.
+
+"Do you think I do not know whom you came here to meet?"
+
+Fleda's glance of reproach was a most innocent one, but it did not
+check him.
+
+"Has that fellow renewed his old admiration of you?" he went on in the
+same tone.
+
+"Do not make me desire his old protection," said Fleda, her gentle face
+roused to a flush of displeasure.
+
+"Protection!" said Charlton coming in,--"who wants protection? here it
+is--protection from what? my old friend Lewis? what the deuce does this
+lady want of protection, Mr. Thorn?"
+
+It was plain enough that Fleda wanted it, from the way she was drooping
+upon his arm.
+
+"You may ask the lady herself," said Thorn, in the same tone he had before
+used,--"I have not the honour to be her spokesman."
+
+"She don't need one," said Charlton,--"I addressed myself to you--speak
+for yourself, man."
+
+"I am not sure that it would be her pleasure I should," said Thorn.
+"Shall I tell this gentleman, Miss Ringgan, who needs protection, and
+from what?--"
+
+Fleda raised her head, and putting her hand on his arm looked a
+concentration of entreaty--lips were sealed.
+
+"Will you give me," said he gently taking the hand in his own, "your
+sign manual for Capt. Rossitur's security? It is not too late.--Ask it
+of her, sir!"
+
+"What does this mean?" said Charlton looking from his cousin to his
+friend.
+
+"You shall have the pleasure of knowing, sir, just so soon as I find it
+convenient."
+
+"I will have a few words with you on this subject, my fine fellow," said
+Capt. Rossitur, as the other was preparing to leave the room.
+
+"You had better speak to somebody else," said Thorn. "But I am ready."
+
+Charlton muttered an imprecation upon his absurdity, and turned his
+attention to Fleda, who needed it. And yet desired anything else. For a
+moment she had an excuse for not answering his questions in her inability;
+and then opportunely Mrs. Decatur came in to look after her; and she was
+followed by her daughter. Fleda roused all her powers to conceal and
+command her feelings; rallied herself; said she had been a little weak and
+faint; drank water, and declared herself able to go back into the
+drawing-room. To go home would have been her utmost desire, but at the
+instant her energies were all bent to the one point of putting back
+thought and keeping off suspicion. And in the first hurry and bewilderment
+of distress the dread of finding herself alone with Charlton till she had
+had time to collect her thoughts would of itself have been enough to
+prevent her accepting the proposal.
+
+She entered the drawing-room again on Mrs. Decatur's arm, and had stood a
+few minutes talking or listening, with that same concentration of all her
+faculties upon the effort to bear up outwardly, when Charlton came up to
+ask if he should leave her. Fleda made no objection, and he was out of her
+sight, far enough to be beyond reach or recall, when it suddenly struck
+her that she ought not to have let him go without speaking to
+him,--without entreating him to see her in the morning before he saw
+Thorn. The sickness of this new apprehension was too much for poor Fleda's
+power of keeping up. She quietly drew her arm from Mrs. Decatur's, saying
+that she would sit down; and sought out a place for herself apart from the
+rest by an engraving stand; where for a little while, not to seem
+unoccupied, she turned over print after print that she did not see. Even
+that effort failed at last; and she sat gazing at one of Sir Thomas
+Lawrence's bright-faced children, and feeling as if in herself the tides
+of life were setting back upon their fountain preparatory to being still
+forever. She became sensible that some one was standing beside the
+engravings, and looked up at Mr. Carleton.
+
+"Are you ill?" he said, very gently and tenderly.
+
+The answer was a quick motion of Fleda's hand to her head, speaking sudden
+pain, and perhaps sudden difficulty of self-command. She did not speak.
+
+"Will you have anything?"
+
+A whispered "no."
+
+"Would you like to return to Mrs. Evelyn's?--I have a carriage here."
+
+With a look of relief that seemed to welcome him as her good angel, Pleda
+instantly rose up, and took the arm he offered her. She would have
+hastened from the room then, but he gently checked her pace; and Fleda was
+immediately grateful for the quiet and perfect shielding from observation
+that his manner secured her. He went with her up the stairs, and to the
+very door of the dressing-room. There Fleda hurried on her shoes and
+mufflers in trembling fear that some one might come and find her, gained
+Mr. Carleton's arm again, and was placed in the carriage.
+
+The drive was in perfect silence, and Fleda's agony deepened and
+strengthened with every minute. She had freedom to think, and thought did
+but carry a torch into chamber after chamber of misery. There seemed
+nothing to be done. She could not get hold of Charlton; and if she
+could?--Nothing could be less amenable than his passions to her gentle
+restraints. Mr. Thorn was still less approachable or manageable, except in
+one way, that she did not even think of. His insinuations about Mr.
+Carleton did not leave even a tinge of embarrassment upon her mind; they
+were cast from her as insulting absurdities, which she could not think of
+a second time without shame.
+
+The carriage rolled on with them a long time without a word being said.
+Mr. Carleton knew that she was not weeping nor faint. But as the light of
+the lamps was now and then cast within the carriage he saw that her face
+looked ghastly; and he saw too that its expression was not of a quiet
+sinking under sorrow, nor of an endeavour to bear up against it, but a
+wild searching gaze into the darkness of _possibilities_. They had near
+reached Mrs. Evelyn's.
+
+"I cannot see you so," he said, gently touching the hand which lay
+listlessly beside him. "You are ill!"
+
+Again the same motion of the other hand to her face, the quick token of
+great pain suddenly stirred.
+
+"For the sake of old times, let me ask," said he, "can nothing be done?"
+
+Those very gentle and delicate tones of sympathy and kindness Were too
+much to bear. The hand was snatched away to be pressed to her face. Oh
+that those old times were back again, and she a child that could ask his
+protection!--No one to give it now.
+
+He was silent a moment. Fleda's head bowed beneath the mental pressure.
+
+"Has Dr. Gregory returned?"
+
+The negative answer was followed by a half-uttered exclamation of
+longing,--checked midway, but sufficiently expressive of her want.
+
+"Do you trust me?" he said after another second of pausing.
+
+"Perfectly!" said Fleda amidst her tears, too much excited to know what
+she was saying, and in her simplicity half forgetting that she was not a
+child still;--"more than any one in the world!"
+
+The few words he had spoken, and the manner of them, had curiously borne
+her back years in a minute; she seemed to be under his care more than for
+the drive home. He did not speak again for a minute; when he did his tone
+was very quiet and lower than before.
+
+"Give me what a friend _can_ have in charge to do for you, and it
+shall be done."
+
+Fleda raised her head and looked out of the window in a silence of doubt.
+The carriage stopped at Mrs. Evelyn's.
+
+"Not now," said Mr. Carleton, as the servant was about to open the
+door;--"drive round the square--till I speak to you."
+
+Fleda was motionless and almost breathless with uncertainty. If Charlton
+could be hindered from meeting Mr. Thorn--But how, could Mr. Carleton
+effect it?--But there was that in him or in his manner which invariably
+created confidence in his ability, or fear of it, even in strangers; and
+how much more in her who had a childish but very clear recollection of
+several points in his character which confirmed the feeling. And might not
+something be done, through his means, to facilitate her uncle's escape? of
+whom she seemed to herself now the betrayer.--But to tell him the story
+I--a person of his high nice notions of character--what a distance it
+would put even between his friendship and her,--but that thought was
+banished instantly, with one glance at Mr. Thorn's imputation of
+ungenerousness. To sacrifice herself to _him_ would not have been
+generosity,--to lower herself in the esteem of a different character, she
+felt, called for it. There was time even then too for one swift thought of
+the needlessness and bitter fruits of wrong-doing. But here they
+were;--should she make them known?--and trouble Mr. Carleton, friend
+though he were, with these miserable matters in which he had no
+concern?--She sat with a beating heart and a very troubled brow, but a
+brow as easy to read as a child's. It was the trouble of anxious
+questioning. Mr. Carleton watched it for a little while,--undecided as
+ever, and more pained.
+
+"You said you trusted me," he said quietly, taking her hand again.
+
+"But--I don't know what you could do, Mr. Carleton," Fleda said with a
+trembling voice.
+
+"Will you let me be the judge of that?"
+
+"I cannot bear to trouble you with these miserable things--"
+
+"You cannot," said he with that same quiet tone, "but by thinking and
+saying so. I can have no greater pleasure than to take pains for you."
+
+Fleda heard these words precisely and with the same simplicity as a child
+would have heard them, and answered with a very frank burst of
+tears,--soon, as soon as possible, according to her custom, driven back;
+though even in the act of quieting herself they broke forth again as
+uncontrollably as at first. But Mr. Carleton had not long to wait. She
+raised her head again after a short struggle, with the wonted look of
+patience sitting upon her brow, and wiping away her tears paused merely
+for breath and voice. He was perfectly silent.
+
+"Mr. Carleton, I will tell you," she began;--"I hardly know whether I
+ought or ought not,--" and her hand went to her forehead for a
+moment,--"but I cannot think to-night--and I have not a friend to
+apply to--"
+
+She hesitated; and then went on, with a voice that trembled and
+quavered sadly.
+
+"Mr. Thorn has a secret--of my uncle's--in his power--which he
+promised--without conditions--to keep faithfully; and now insists that he
+will not--but upon conditions--"
+
+"And cannot the conditions be met?"
+
+"No--and--O I may as well tell you at once?" said Fleda in bitter
+sorrow,--"it is a crime that he committed--"
+
+"Mr. Thorn?"
+
+"No--oh no!" said Fleda weeping bitterly,--"not he--"
+
+Her agitation was excessive for a moment; then she threw it off, and spoke
+more collectedly, though with exceeding depression of manner.
+
+"It was long ago--when he was in trouble--he put Mr. Thorn's name to a
+note, and never was able to take it up;--and nothing was ever heard about
+it till lately; and last week he was going to leave the country, and Mr.
+Thorn promised that the proceedings should be entirely given up; and that
+was why I came to town, to find uncle Rolf and bring him home; and I did,
+and he is gone; and now Mr. Thorn says it is all going on again and that
+he will not escape this time;--and I have done it!--"
+
+Fleda writhed again in distress.
+
+"Thorn promised without conditions?"
+
+"Certainly--he promised freely--and now he insists upon them; and you
+see uncle Rolf would have been safe out of the country now, if it hadn't
+been for me--"
+
+"I think I can undo this snarl," said Mr. Carleton calmly.
+
+"But that is not all," said Fleda, a little quieted;--"Charlton came in
+this evening when we were talking, and he was surprised to find me so, and
+Mr. Thorn was in a very ill humour, and some words passed between them;
+and Charlton threatened to see him again; and Oh if he does!" said poor
+Fleda,--"that will finish our difficulties!--for Charlton is very hot, and
+I know how it will end--how it must end--"
+
+"Where is your cousin to be found?"
+
+"I don't know where he lodges when he is in town."
+
+"You did not leave him at Mrs. Decatur's. Do you know where he is
+this evening?"
+
+"Yes!" said Fleda, wondering that she should have heard and
+remembered,--"he said he was going to meet a party of his brother
+officers at Mme. Fouché's--a sister-in-law of his Colonel, I believe."
+
+"I know her. This note--was it the name of the young Mr. Thorn, or of his
+father that was used?"
+
+"Of his father!--"
+
+"Has _he_ appeared at all in this business?"
+
+"No," said Fleda, feeling for the first time that there was something
+notable about it.
+
+"What sort of person do you take him to be?"
+
+"Very kind--very pleasant, always, he has been to me, and I should think
+to everybody,--very unlike the son"
+
+Mr. Carleton had ordered the coachman back to Mrs. Evelyn's.
+
+"Do you know the amount of the note? It may be desirable that I should not
+appear uninformed."
+
+"It was for four thousand dollars" Fleda said in the low voice of shame.
+
+"And when given?"
+
+"I don't know exactly--but six years ago--some time in the winter of '43,
+it must have been."
+
+He said no more till the carriage stopped; and then before handing her out
+of it, lifted her hand to his lips. That carried all the promise Fleda
+wanted from him. How oddly, how curiously, her hand kept the feeling of
+that kiss upon it all night.
+
+
+
+Chapter XLV.
+
+
+
+  Heat not a furnace for your friend so hot
+  That it may singe yourself.
+
+  Shakspeare.
+
+
+Mr. Carleton went to Mme. Fouché's, who received most graciously, as
+any lady would, his apology for introducing himself unlooked-for, and
+begged that he would commit the same fault often. As soon as
+practicable he made his way to Charlton, and invited him to breakfast
+with him the next morning.
+
+Mrs. Carleton always said it never was known that Guy was refused anything
+he had a mind to ask. Charlton, though taken by surprise, and certainly
+not too much prepossessed in his favour, was won by an influence that
+where its owner chose to exert it was generally found irresistible; and
+not only accepted the invitation, but was conscious to himself of doing it
+with a good deal of pleasure. Even when Mr. Carleton made the further
+request that Capt. Rossitur would in the mean time see no one on business,
+of any kind, intimating that the reason would then be given, Charlton
+though startling a little at this restraint upon his freedom of motion
+could do no other than give the desired promise, and with the utmost
+readiness.
+
+Guy then went to Mr. Thorn's.--It was by this time not early.
+
+"Mr. Lewis Thorn--is he at home?"
+
+"He is, sir," said the servant admitting him rather hesitatingly.
+
+"I wish to see him a few moments on business."
+
+"It is no hour for business," said the voice of Mr. Lewis from over the
+balusters;--"I can't see anybody to-night."
+
+"I ask but a few minutes," said Mr. Carleton. "It is important."
+
+"It may be any thing!" said Thorn. "I won't do business after
+twelve o'clock."
+
+Mr. Carleton desired the servant to carry his card, with the same request,
+to Mr, Thorn the elder.
+
+"What's that?" said Thorn as the man came up stairs,--"my father?--Pshaw!
+_he_ can't attend to it--Well, walk up, sir, if you please!--may as well
+have it over and done with it."
+
+Mr. Carleton mounted the stairs and followed the young gentleman into an
+apartment to which he rapidly led the way.
+
+"You've no objections to this, _I_ suppose?" Thorn remarked as he locked
+the door behind them.
+
+"Certainly not," said Mr. Carleton coolly, taking out the key and putting
+it in his pocket;--"my business is private--it needs no witnesses."
+
+"Especially as it so nearly concerns yourself," said Thorn sneeringly.
+
+"Which part of it, sir?" said Mr. Carleton with admirable breeding. It
+vexed at the same time that it constrained Thorn.
+
+"I'll let you know presently!" he said, hurriedly proceeding to the lower
+end of the room where some cabinets stood, and unlocking door after door
+in mad haste.
+
+The place had somewhat the air of a study, perhaps Thorn's private room. A
+long table stood in the middle of the floor, with materials for writing,
+and a good many books were about the room, in cases and on the tables,
+with maps and engravings and portfolios, and a nameless collection of
+articles, the miscellaneous gathering of a man of leisure and some
+literary taste.
+
+Their owner presently came back from the cabinets with tokens of a very
+different kind about him.
+
+"There, sir!" he said, offering to his guest a brace of most
+inhospitable-looking pistols,--"take one and take your stand, as soon as
+you please--nothing like coming to the point at once!"
+
+He was heated and excited even more than his manner indicated. Mr.
+Carleton glanced at him and stood quietly examining the pistol he had
+taken. It was all ready loaded.
+
+"This is a business that comes upon me by surprise," he said calmly,--"I
+don't know what I have to do with this, Mr. Thorn."
+
+"Well I do," said Thorn, "and that's enough. Take your place, sir! You
+escaped me once, but"--and he gave his words dreadful emphasis,--"you
+won't do it the second time!"
+
+"You do not mean," said the other, "that your recollection of such an
+offence has lived out so many years?"
+
+"No sir! no sir!" said Thorn,--"it is not that. I despise it, as I do the
+offender. You have touched me more nearly."
+
+"Let me know in what," said Mr. Carleton turning his pistol's mouth down
+upon the table and leaning on it.
+
+"You know already,--what do you ask me for?" said Thorn who was
+foaming,--"if you say you don't you lie heartily. I'll tell you nothing
+but out of _this_--"
+
+"I have not knowingly injured you, sir,--in a whit."
+
+"Then a Carleton may be a liar," said Thorn, "and you are one--dare say
+not the first. Put yourself there, sir, will you?"
+
+"Well," said Guy carelessly,--"if it is decreed that I am to fight of
+course there's no help for it; but as I have business on hand that might
+not be so well done afterwards I must beg your attention to that in the
+first place."
+
+"No, sir," said Thorn,--"I'll attend to nothing--I'll hear nothing from
+you. I know you!--I'll not hear a word. I'll see to the business!--Take
+your stand."
+
+"I will not have anything to do with pistols," said Mr. Carleton coolly,
+laying his out of his hand;--"they make too much noise."
+
+"Who cares for the noise?" said Thorn. "It won't hurt you; and the door
+is locked."
+
+"But people's ears are not," said Guy.
+
+Neither tone nor attitude nor look had changed in the least its calm
+gracefulness. It began to act upon Thorn.
+
+"Well, in the devil's name, have your own way," said he, throwing down his
+pistol too, and going back to the cabinets at the lower end of the
+room,--"there are rapiers here, if you like them better--_I_ don't,--the
+shortest the best for me,--but here they are--take your choice."
+
+Guy examined them carefully for a few minutes, and then laid them both,
+with a firm hand upon them, on the table.
+
+"I will choose neither, Mr. Thorn, till you have heard me. I came here to
+see you on the part of others--I should be a recreant to my charge if I
+allowed you or myself to draw me into anything that might prevent my
+fulfilling it. That must be done first."
+
+Thorn looked with a lowering brow on the indications of his opponent's eye
+and attitude; they left him plainly but one course to take.
+
+"Well speak and have done," he said as in spite of himself;--but I know
+it already."
+
+"I am here as a friend of Mr. Rossitur."
+
+"Why don't you say a friend of somebody else, and come nearer the truth?"
+said Thorn.
+
+There was an intensity of expression in his sneer, but pain was there
+as well as anger; and it was with even a feeling of pity that Mr.
+Carleton answered,
+
+"The truth will be best reached, sir, if I am allowed to choose my
+own words."
+
+There was no haughtiness in the steady gravity of this speech,
+whatever there was in the quiet silence he permitted to follow. Thorn
+did not break it.
+
+"I am informed of the particulars concerning this prosecution of Mr.
+Rossitur--I am come here to know if no terms can be obtained."
+
+"No!" said Thorn,--"no terms--I won't speak of terms. The matter will
+be followed up now till the fellow is lodged in jail, where he
+deserves to be."
+
+"Are you aware, sir, that this, if done, will be the cause of very great
+distress to a family who have _not_ deserved it?"
+
+"That can't be helped," said Thorn. "Of course!--it must cause distress,
+but you can't act upon that. Of course when a man turns rogue he ruins his
+family--that's part of his punishment--and a just one."
+
+"The law is just," said Mr. Carleton,--"but a friend may be merciful."
+
+"I don't pretend to be a friend," said Thorn viciously,--"and I have no
+cause to be merciful. I like to bring a man to public shame when he has
+forfeited his title to anything else; and I intend that Mr. Rossitur shall
+become intimately acquainted with the interior of the State's Prison."
+
+"Did it ever occur to you that public shame _might_ fall upon other than
+Mr. Rossitur? and without the State Prison?"
+
+Thorn fixed a somewhat startled look upon the steady powerful eye of his
+opponent, and did not like its meaning.
+
+"You must explain yourself, sir," he said haughtily.
+
+"I am acquainted with _all_ the particulars of this proceeding, Mr.
+Thorn. If it goes abroad, so surely will they."
+
+"She told you, did she?" said Thorn in a sudden flash of fury.
+
+Mr. Carleton was silent, with his air of imperturbable reserve,
+telling and expressing nothing but a cool independence that put the
+world at a distance.
+
+"Ha!" said Thorn,--"it is easy to see why our brave Englishman comes
+here to solicit 'terms' for his honest friend Rossitur--he would not
+like the scandal of franking letters to Sing Sing. Come, sir," he said
+snatching up the pistol,--"our business is ended--come, I say! or I
+won't wait for you."
+
+But the pistol was struck from his baud.
+
+"Not yet," said Mr. Carleton calmly,--"you shall have your turn at
+these,--mind, I promise you;--but my business must be done first--till
+then, let them alone!"
+
+"Well what is it?" said Thorn impatiently. "Rossitur will be a convict, I
+tell you; so you'll have to give up all thoughts of his niece, or pocket
+her shame along with her. What more have you got to say? that's all your
+business, I take it."
+
+"You are mistaken, Mr. Thorn," said Mr. Carleton gravely.
+
+"Am I? In what?"
+
+"In every position of your last speech."
+
+"It don't affect your plans and views, I suppose, personally, whether this
+prosecution is continued or not?"
+
+"It does not in the least."
+
+"It is indifferent to you, I suppose, what sort of a Queen consort you
+carry to your little throne of a provinciality down yonder?"
+
+"I will reply to you, sir, when you come back to the subject," said Mr.
+Carleton coldly.
+
+"You mean to say that your pretensions have not been in the way of mine?"
+
+"I have made none, sir."
+
+"Doesn't she like you?"
+
+"I have never asked her."
+
+"Then what possessed her to tell you all this to-night?"
+
+"Simply because I was an old friend and the only one at hand, I presume."
+
+"And you do not look for any reward of your services, of course?"
+
+"I wish for none, sir, but her relief."
+
+"Well, it don't signify," said Thorn with a mixture of expressions in his
+face,--"if I believed you, which I don't,--it don't signify a hair what
+you do, when once this matter is known. I should never think of advancing
+_my_ pretensions into a felon's family."
+
+"You know that the lady in whose welfare you take so much interest will in
+that case suffer aggravated distress as having been the means of hindering
+Mr. Rossitur's escape,"
+
+"Can't help it," said Thorn, beating the table with a ruler;--"so she has;
+she must suffer for it. It isn't my fault."
+
+"You are willing then to abide the consequences of a full disclosure of
+all the circumstances?--for part will not come out without the whole?"
+
+"There is happily nobody to tell them," said Thorn with a sneer.
+
+"Pardon me--they will not only be told, but known thoroughly in all the
+circles in this country that know Mr. Thorn's name."
+
+"_The lady_" said Thorn in the same tone, "would hardly relish such
+a publication of _her_ name--_her welfare_ would be scantily
+advantaged by it."
+
+"I will take the risk of that upon myself," said Mr. Carleton quietly;
+"and the charge of the other."
+
+"You dare not!" said Thorn. "You shall not go alive out of this room to do
+it! Let me have it, sir! you said you would--"
+
+His passion was at a fearful height, for the family pride which had been
+appealed to felt a touch of fear, and his other thoughts were confirmed
+again, besides the dim vision of a possible thwarting of all his plans.
+Desire almost concentrated itself upon revenge against the object that
+threatened them. He had thrown himself again towards the weapons which lay
+beyond his reach, but was met and forcibly withheld from them.
+
+"Stand back!" said Mr. Carleton. "I said I would, but I am not
+ready;--finish this business first."
+
+"What is there to finish?" said Thorn furiously;--"you will never live to
+do anything out of these doors again--you are mocking yourself."
+
+"My life is not in your hands, sir, and I will settle this matter before I
+put it in peril. If not with you, with Mr. Thorn your father, to whom it
+more properly belongs."
+
+"You cannot leave the room to see him," said Thorn sneeringly.
+
+"That is at my pleasure," said the other,--"unless hindered by means I do
+not think you will use."
+
+Thorn was silent.
+
+"Will you yield anything of justice, once more, in favour of this
+distressed family?"
+
+"That is, yield the whole, and let the guilty go free."
+
+"When the punishment of the offender would involve that of so many
+unoffending, who in this case would feel it with peculiar severity."
+
+"He deserves it, if it was only for the money he has kept me out of--he
+ought to be made to refund what he has stolen, if it took the skin off
+his back!"
+
+"That part of his obligation," said Mr. Carleton, "I am authorized to
+discharge, on condition of having the note given up. I have a cheque
+with me which I am commissioned to fill up, from one of the best names
+here. I need only the date of the note, which the giver of the cheque
+did not know."
+
+Thorn hesitated, again tapping the table with the ruler in a troubled
+manner. He knew by the calm erect figure before him and the steady eye he
+did not care to meet that the threat of disclosure would be kept. He was
+not prepared to brave it,--in case his revenge should fail;--and if it
+did not----
+
+"It is deuced folly," he said at length with a half laugh,--"for I shall
+have it back again in five minutes, if my eye don't play me a
+trick,--however, if you will have it so--I don't care. There are chances
+in all things--"
+
+He went again to the cabinets, and presently brought the endorsed note.
+Mr. Carleton gave it a cool and careful examination, to satisfy himself of
+its being the true one; and then delivered him the cheque; the blank duly
+filled up.
+
+"There are chances in nothing, sir," he said, as he proceeded to burn the
+note effectually in the candle.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that there is a Supreme Disposer of all things, who among the rest
+has our lives in his hand. And now, sir, I will give you that chance at my
+life for which you have been so eagerly wishing."
+
+[Illustration: "Well, take your place," said Thorn.]
+
+"Well take your place," said Thorn seizing his pistol,--"and take your
+arms--put yourself at the end of the table----!"
+
+"I shall stand here," said Mr. Carleton, quietly folding his arms;--"you
+may take your place where you please."
+
+"But you are not armed!" said Thorn impatiently,--"why don't you get
+ready? what are you waiting for?"
+
+"I have nothing to do with arms," said Mr. Carleton smiling; "I have no
+wish to hurt you, Mr. Thorn; I bear you no ill-will. But you may do what
+you please with me."
+
+"But you promised!" said Thorn in desperation.
+
+"I abide by my promise, sir."
+
+Thorn's pistol hand fell; he looked _dreadfully_. There was a silence of
+several minutes.
+
+"Well?"--said Mr. Carleton looking up and smiling.
+
+"I can do nothing unless you will," said Thorn hoarsely, and looking
+hurriedly away.
+
+"I am at your pleasure, sir! But on my own part I have none to gratify."
+
+There was silence again, during which Thorn's face was pitiable in its
+darkness. He did not stir.
+
+"I did not come here in enmity, Mr. Thorn," said Guy after a little
+approaching him;--"I have none now. If you believe me you will throw away
+the remains of yours and take my hand in pledge of it."
+
+Thorn was ashamed and confounded, in the midst of passions that made
+him at the moment a mere wreck of himself. He inwardly drew back
+exceedingly from the proposal. But the grace with which the words were
+said wrought upon all the gentlemanly character that belonged to him,
+and made it impossible not to comply. The pistol was exchanged for Mr.
+Carleton's hand.
+
+"I need not assure you," said the latter, "that nothing of what we have
+talked of to-night shall ever be known or suspected, in any quarter,
+unless by your means."
+
+Thorn's answer was merely a bow, and Mr. Carleton withdrew, his quondam
+antagonist lighting him ceremoniously to the door.
+
+It was easy for Mr. Carleton the next morning to deal with his guest at
+the break fast-table.
+
+The appointments of the service were such as of themselves to put Charlton
+in a good humour, if he had not come already provided with that happy
+qualification; and the powers of manner and conversation which his
+entertainer brought into play not only put them into the background of
+Capt. Rossitur's perceptions but even made him merge certain other things
+in fascination, and lose all thought of what probably had called him
+there. Once before, he had known Mr. Carleton come out in a like manner,
+but this time he forgot to be surprised.
+
+The meal was two thirds over before the business that had drawn them
+together was alluded to.
+
+"I made an odd request of you last night, Capt. Rossitur," said his
+host;--"you haven't asked for an explanation."
+
+"I had forgotten all about it," said Rossitur candidly. "I am
+_inconséquent_ enough myself not to think everything odd that requires an
+explanation."
+
+"Then I hope you will pardon me if mine seem to touch upon what is not my
+concern. You had some cause to be displeased with Mr. Thorn's behaviour
+last night?"
+
+Who told you as much?--was in Rossitur's open eyes, and upon his tongue;
+but few ever asked naughty questions of Mr Carleton. Charlton's eyes came
+back, not indeed to their former dimensions, but to his plate, in silence.
+
+"He was incomprehensible," he said after a minute,--"and didn't act
+like himself--I don't know what was the matter. I shall call him to
+account for it."
+
+"Capt. Rossitur, I am going to ask you a favour."
+
+"I will grant it with the greatest pleasure," said Charlton,--"if it lie
+within my power."
+
+"A wise man's addition," said Mr. Carleton,--"but I trust you will not
+think me extravagant. I will hold myself much obliged to you if you will
+let Mr. Thorn's folly, or impertinence, go this time without notice."
+
+Charlton absolutely laid down his knife in astonishment; while at the same
+moment this slight let to the assertion of his dignity roused it to
+uncommon pugnaciousness.
+
+"Sir--Mr. Carleton--" he stammered,--"I would be very happy to grant
+anything in my power,--but this, sir,--really goes beyond it."
+
+"Permit me to say," said Mr. Carleton, "that I have myself seen Thorn upon
+the business that occasioned his discomposure, and that it has been
+satisfactorily arranged; so that nothing more is to be gained or desired
+from a second interview."
+
+Who gave you authority to do any such thing?--was again in Charlton's
+eyes, and an odd twinge crossed his mind; but as before his thoughts
+were silent.
+
+"_My_ part of the business cannot have been arranged," he said,--"for it
+lies in a question or two that I must put to the gentleman myself."
+
+"What will that question or two probably end in?" said Mr. Carleton
+significantly.
+
+"I can't tell!" said Rossitur,--"depends on himself--it will end according
+to his answers."
+
+"Is his offence so great that it cannot be forgiven upon my entreaty?"
+
+"Mr. Carleton!" said Rossitur,--"I would gladly pleasure you, sir, but you
+see, this is a thing a man owes to himself."
+
+"What thing, sir?"
+
+"Why, not to suffer impertinence to be offered him with impunity."
+
+"Even though the punishment extend to hearts at home that must feel it far
+more heavily than the offender?"
+
+"Would you suffer yourself to be insulted, Mr. Carleton?" said Rossitur,
+by way of a mouth stopper.
+
+"Not if I could help it," said Mr. Carleton smiling;--"but if such a
+misfortune happened, I don't know how it would be repaired by being made a
+matter of life and death."
+
+"But honour might," said Rossitur.
+
+"Honour is not reached, Capt. Rossitur. Honour dwells in a strong citadel,
+and a squib against the walls does in no wise affect their security."
+
+"But also it is not consistent with honour to sit still and suffer it."
+
+"Question. The firing of a cracker, I think, hardly warrants a sally."
+
+"It calls for chastisement though," said Rossitur a little shortly.
+
+"I don't know that," said Mr. Carleton gravely. "We have it on the highest
+authority that it is the glory of man to _pass by_ a transgression."
+
+"But you can't go by that," said Charlton a little fidgeted;--"the world
+wouldn't get along so;--men must take care of themselves."
+
+"Certainly. But what part of themselves is cared for in this resenting of
+injuries?"
+
+"Why, their good name!"
+
+"As how affected?--pardon me."
+
+"By the world's opinion," said Rossitur,--"which stamps every man with
+something worse than infamy who cannot protect his own standing."
+
+"That is to say," said Mr. Carleton seriously,--"that Capt. Rossitur will
+punish a fool's words with death, or visit the last extremity of distress
+upon those who are dearest to him, rather than leave the world in any
+doubt of his prowess."
+
+"Mr. Carleton!" said Rossitur colouring. "What do you mean by
+speaking so, sir?"
+
+"Not to displease you, Capt. Rossitur."
+
+"Then you count the world's opinion for nothing?"
+
+"For less than nothing--compared with the regards I have named."
+
+"You would brave it without scruple?"
+
+"I do not call him a brave man who would not, sir."
+
+"I remember," said Charlton half laughing,--"you did it yourself once; and
+I must confess I believe nobody thought you lost anything by it."
+
+"But forgive me for asking," said Mr. Carleton,--"is this terrible world a
+party to _this_ matter? In the request which I made,--and which I have not
+given up, sir,--do I presume upon any more than the sacrifice of a little
+private feeling?"
+
+"Why, yes,--" said Charlton looking somewhat puzzled, "for I promised the
+fellow I would see to it, and I must keep my word."
+
+"And you know how that will of necessity issue."
+
+"I can't consider that, sir; that is a secondary matter. I must do what I
+told him I would."
+
+"At all hazards?" said Mr. Carleton.
+
+"What hazards?"
+
+"Not hazard, but certainty,--of incurring a reckoning far less easy to
+deal with."
+
+"What, do you mean with yourself?" said Rossitur.
+
+"No sir," said Mr. Carleton, a shade of even sorrowful expression crossing
+his face;--"I mean with one whose displeasure is a more weighty
+matter;--one who has declared very distinctly, 'Thou shalt not kill.'"
+
+"I am sorry for it," said Rossitur after a disturbed pause of some
+minutes,--"I wish you had asked me anything else; but we can't take this
+thing in the light you do, sir. I wish Thorn had been in any spot of the
+world but at Mrs. Decatur's last night, or that Fleda hadn't taken me
+there; but since he was, there is no help for it,--I must make him account
+for his behaviour, to her as well as to me. I really don't know how to
+help it, sir."
+
+"Let me beg you to reconsider that," Mr. Carleton said with a smile which
+disarmed offence,--"for if you will not help it, I must."
+
+Charlton looked in doubt for a moment and then asked "how he would help
+it?"
+
+"In that case, I shall think it my duty to have you bound over to keep
+the peace."
+
+He spoke gravely now, and with that quiet tone which always carries
+conviction. Charlton stared unmistakably and in silence.
+
+"You are not in earnest?" he then said.
+
+"I trust you will permit me to leave you forever in doubt on that
+point," said Mr. Carleton, with again a slight giving way of the muscles
+of his face.
+
+"I cannot indeed," said Rossitur. "Do you mean what you said just now?"
+
+"Entirely."
+
+"But Mr. Carleton," said Rossitur, flushing and not knowing exactly how to
+take him up,--"is this the manner of one gentleman towards another?"
+
+He had not chosen right, for he received no answer but an absolute
+quietness which needed no interpretation. Charlton was vexed and confused,
+but somehow it did not come into his head to pick a quarrel with his host,
+in spite of his irritation. That was perhaps because he felt it to be
+impossible.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said, most unconsciously verifying Fleda's words
+in his own person,--"but Mr. Carleton, do me the favour to say that I have
+misunderstood your words. They are incomprehensible to me, sir."
+
+"I must abide by them nevertheless, Capt. Rossitur," Mr. Carleton
+answered with a smile. "I will not permit this thing to be done, while, as
+I believe, I have the power to prevent it. You see," he said, smiling
+again,--"I put in practice my own theory."
+
+Charlton looked exceedingly disturbed, and maintained a vexed and
+irresolute silence for several minutes, realizing the extreme
+disagreeableness of having more than his match to deal with.
+
+"Come, Capt. Kossitur," said the other turning suddenly round upon
+him,--"say that you forgive me what you know was meant in no
+disrespect to you?"
+
+"I certainly should not," said Rossitur, yielding however with a half
+laugh, "if it were not for the truth of the proverb that it takes two to
+make a quarrel."
+
+"Give me your hand upon that. And now that the question of honour is taken
+out of your hands, grant not to me but to those for whom I ask it, your
+promise to forgive this man."
+
+Charlton hesitated, but it was difficult to resist the request, backed as
+it was with weight of character and grace of manner, along with its
+intrinsic reasonableness; and he saw no other way so expedient of getting
+out of his dilemma.
+
+"I ought to be angry with somebody," he said, half laughing and a little
+ashamed;--"if you will point out any substitute for Thorn I will let him
+go--since I cannot help myself--with pleasure."
+
+"I will bear it," said Mr. Carleton lightly. "Give me your promise for
+Thorn and hold me your debtor in what amount you please."
+
+"Very well--I forgive him," said Rossitur;--"and now Mr. Carleton I shall
+have a reckoning with you some day for this."
+
+"I will meet it. When you are next in England you shall come down to----
+shire, and I will give you any satisfaction you please."
+
+They parted in high good-humour; but Charlton looked grave as he went down
+the staircase; and very oddly all the way down to Whitehall his head was
+running upon the various excellencies and perfections of his cousin Fleda.
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVI
+
+
+
+                    There is a fortune coming
+  Towards you, dainty, that will take thee thus,
+  And set thee aloft.
+
+  Ben Jonson.
+
+
+That day was spent by Fleda in the never-failing headache which was sure
+to visit her after any extraordinary nervous agitation or too great mental
+or bodily trial. It was severe this time, not only from the anxiety of the
+preceding night but from the uncertainty that weighed upon her all day
+long. The person who could have removed the uncertainty came indeed to the
+house, but she was too ill to see anybody.
+
+The extremity of pain wore itself off with the day, and at evening she was
+able to leave her room and come down stairs. But she was ill yet, and
+could do nothing but sit in the corner of the sofa, with her hair unbound,
+and Florence gently bathing her head with cologne.
+
+Anxiety as well as pain had in some measure given place to exhaustion, and
+she looked a white embodiment of endurance which gave a shock to her
+friends' sympathy. Visitors were denied,--and Constance and Edith devoted
+their eyes and tongues at least to her service, if they could do no more.
+
+It happened that Joe Manton was out of the way, holding an important
+conference with a brother usher next door, a conference that he had no
+notion would be so important when he began it; when a ring on his own
+premises summoned one of the maid-servants to the door. She knew nothing
+about "not at home," and unceremoniously desired the gentleman to "walk
+up,"--"the ladies were in the drawing-room."
+
+The door had been set wide open for the heat, and Fleda was close in the
+corner behind it; gratefully permitting Florence's efforts with the
+cologne, which yet she knew could avail nothing but the kind feelings of
+the operator; for herself patiently waiting her enemy's time. Constance
+was sitting on the floor looking at her.
+
+"I can't conceive how you can bear so much," she said at length.
+
+Fleda thought, how little she knew what was borne!
+
+"Why you could bear it I suppose if you had to," said Edith
+philosophically.
+
+"She knows she looks most beautiful," said Florence, softly passing her
+cologned hands down over the smooth hair;--"she knows
+
+  "'Il faut souffrir pour être belle.'"
+
+"La migraine ne se guérit avec les douceurs," said Mr. Carleton
+entering;--"try something sharp, Miss Evelyn."
+
+"Where are we to get it?" said Constance springing up, and adding in a
+most lack-a-daisical aside to her mother, "(Mamma!--the fowling
+piece!)--Our last vinegar hardly comes under the appellation; and you
+don't expect to find anything volatile in this house, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+He smiled.
+
+"Have you none for grave occasions, Miss Constance?"
+
+"I won't retort the question about 'something sharp,'" said Constance
+arching her eyebrows, "because it is against my principles to make people
+uncomfortable; but you have certainly brought in some medicine with you,
+for Miss Ringgan's cheeks a little while ago were as pure as her
+mind--from a tinge of any sort--and now, you see--"
+
+"My dear Constance," said her mother, "Miss Ringgan's cheeks will stand a
+much better chance if you come away and leave her in peace. How can she
+get well with such a chatter in her ears."
+
+"Mr. Carleton and I, mamma, are conferring upon measures of relief,--and
+Miss Ringgan gives token of improvement already."
+
+"For which I am very little to be thanked," said Mr. Carleton. "But I am
+not a bringer of bad news, that she should look pale at the sight of me."
+
+"Are you a bringer of any news?" said Constance, "O do let us have them,
+Mr. Carleton!--I am dying for news--I haven't heard a bit to-day."
+
+"What is the news, Mr. Carleton?" said her mother's voice, from the more
+distant region of the fire.
+
+"I believe there are no general news, Mrs. Evelyn."
+
+"Are there any particular news?" said Constance.--"I like particular news
+infinitely the best!"
+
+"I am sorry, Miss Constance, I have none for you. But--will this headache
+yield to nothing?"
+
+"Fleda prophesied that it would to time," said Florence;--"she Would not
+let us try much beside."
+
+"And I must confess there has been no volatile agency employed at all,"
+said Constance;--"I never knew time have less of it; and Fleda seemed to
+prefer him for her physician."
+
+"He hasn't been a good one to-day," said Edith nestling affectionately
+to her side. "Isn't it better, Fleda?"--for she had covered her eyes
+with her hand.
+
+"Not just now," said Fleda softly.
+
+"It is fair to change physicians if the first fails," said Mr. Carleton.
+"I have had a slight experience in headache-curing,--if you will permit
+me, Miss Constance, I will supersede time and try a different
+prescription."
+
+He went out to seek it; and Fleda leaned her head in her hand and tried to
+quiet the throbbing heart every pulsation of which was felt so keenly at
+the seat of pain. She knew from Mr. Carleton's voice and manner,--she
+_thought_ she knew,--that he had exceeding good tidings for her; once
+assured of that she would soon be better; but she was worse now.
+
+"Where is Mr. Carleton gone?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"I haven't the least idea, mamma--he has ventured upon an extraordinary
+undertaking and has gone off to qualify himself, I suppose. I can't
+conceive why he didn't ask Miss Ringgan's permission to change her
+physician, instead of mine."
+
+"I suppose he knew there was no doubt about that." said Edith, hitting the
+precise answer of Fleda's thoughts.
+
+"And what should make him think there was any doubt about mine?" said
+Constance tartly.
+
+"O you know," said her sister, "you are so odd nobody can tell what you
+will take a fancy to."
+
+"You are--extremely liberal in your expressions, at least, Miss Evelyn,--I
+must say," said Constance, with a glance of no doubtful
+meaning.--"Joe--did you let Mr. Carleton in?"
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"Well let him in next time; and don't let in anybody else."
+
+Whereafter the party relapsed into silent expectation.
+
+It was not many minutes before Mr. Carleton returned.
+
+"Tell your friend, Miss Constance," he said putting an exquisite little
+vinaigrette into her hand,--"that I have nothing worse for her than that."
+
+"Worse than this!" said Constance examining it. "Mr. Carleton--I doubt
+exceedingly whether smelling this will afford Miss Ringgan any benefit."
+
+"Why, Miss Constance?"
+
+"Because--it has made me sick only to look at it!"
+
+"There will be no danger for her," he said smiling.
+
+"Won't there?--Well, Fleda my dear--here, take it," said the young
+lady;--"I hope you are differently constituted from me, for I feel a
+sudden pain since I saw it;--but as you keep your eyes shut and so escape
+the sight of this lovely gold chasing, perhaps it will do you no
+mischief."
+
+"It will do her all the more good for that," said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+The only ears that took the benefit of this speech were Edith's and Mr.
+Carleton's; Fleda's were deafened by the rush of feeling. She very little
+knew what she was holding. Mr. Carleton stood with rather significant
+gravity watching the effect of his prescription, while Edith beset her
+mother to know why the outside of the vinaigrette being of gold should
+make it do Fleda any more good; the disposing of which question
+effectually occupied Mrs. Evelyn's attention for some time.
+
+"And pray how long is it since you took up the trade of a physician, Mr.
+Carleton?" said Constance.
+
+"It is--just about nine years, Miss Constance," he answered gravely.
+
+But that little reminder, slight as it was, overcame the small remnant of
+Fleda's self-command; the vinaigrette fell from her hands and her face was
+hid in them; whatever became of pain, tears must flow.
+
+"Forgive me," said Mr. Carleton gently, bending down towards her, "for
+speaking when I should have been silent.--Miss Evelyn, and Miss Constance,
+will you permit me to order that my patient be left in quiet."
+
+And he took them away to Mrs. Evelyn's quarter, and kept them all three
+engaged in conversation, too busily to trouble Fleda with any attention;
+till she had had ample time to try the effect of the quiet and of the
+vinegar both. Then he went himself to look after her.
+
+"Are you better?" said he, bending down and speaking low.
+
+Fleda opened her eyes and gave him, what a look!--of grateful feeling. She
+did not know the half that was in it; but he did. That she was better was
+a very small item.
+
+"Ready for the coffee?" said he smiling.
+
+"O no," whispered Fleda,--"it don't matter about that--never mind
+the coffee!"
+
+But he went back with his usual calmness to Mrs. Evelyn and begged
+that she would have the goodness to order a cup of rather strong
+coffee to be made.
+
+"But Mr. Carleton, sir," said that lady,--"I am not at all sure that it
+would be the best thing for Miss Ringgan--if she is better,--I think it
+would do her far more good to go to rest and let sleep finish her cure,
+before taking something that will make sleep impossible."
+
+"Did you ever hear of a physician, Mrs. Evelyn," he said smiling, "that
+allowed his prescriptions to be interfered with? I must beg you will do me
+this favour."
+
+"I doubt very much whether it will be a favour to Miss Ringgan," said Mrs.
+Evelyn,--"however--"
+
+And she rang the bell and gave the desired order, with a somewhat
+disconcerted face. But Mr. Carleton again left Fleda to herself and
+devoted his attention to the other ladies, with so much success, though
+with his usual absence of effort, that good humour was served long before
+the coffee.
+
+Then indeed he played the physician's part again; made the coffee himself
+and saw it taken, according to his own pleasure; skilfully however seeming
+all the while, except to Fleda, to be occupied with everything else. The
+group gathered round her anew; she was well enough to bear their talk by
+this time; by the time the coffee was drunk quite well.
+
+"Is it quite gone?" asked Edith.
+
+"The headache?--yes."
+
+"You will owe your physician a great many thanks, my dear Fleda," said
+Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+Fleda's only answer to this, however, was by a very slight smile; and
+she presently left the room to go up stairs and arrange her yet
+disarranged hair.
+
+"That is a very fine girl," remarked Mrs. Evelyn, preparing half a cup of
+coffee for herself in a kind of amused abstraction,--"my friend Mr. Thorn
+will have an excellent wife of her."
+
+"Provided she marries him," said Constance somewhat shortly.
+
+"I am sure I hope she won't," said Edith,--"and I don't believe
+she will."
+
+"What do you think of his chances of success, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"Your manner of speech would seem to imply that they are very good, Mrs.
+Evelyn," he answered coolly.
+
+"Well don't you think so?" said Mrs. Evelyn, coming back to her seat with
+her coffee-cup, and apparently dividing her attention between it and her
+subject,--"It's a great chance for her--most girls in her circumstances
+would not refuse it--_I_ think he's pretty sure of his ground."
+
+"So I think," said Florence.
+
+"It don't prove anything, if he is," said Constance dryly. "I hate people
+who are always sure of their ground!"
+
+"What do you think, Mr. Carleton?" said Mrs. Evelyn, taking little
+satisfied sips of her coffee.
+
+"May I ask, first, what is meant by the 'chance' and what by the
+'circumstances.'"
+
+"Why Mr. Thorn has a fine fortune, you know, and he is of an excellent
+family--there is not a better family in the city--and very few young men
+of such pretensions would think of a girl that has no name nor standing."
+
+"Unless she had qualities that would command them," said Mr. Carleton.
+
+"But Mr. Carleton, sir," said the lady,--"do you think that can be? do you
+think a woman can fill gracefully a high place in society if she has had
+disadvantages in early life to contend with that were calculated to unfit
+her for it?"
+
+"But mamma," said Constance,--"Fleda don't shew any such thing."
+
+"No, she don't shew it," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"but I am not talking of
+Fleda--I am talking of the effect of early disadvantages. What do you
+think, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"Disadvantages of what kind, Mrs. Evelyn?"
+
+"Why, for instance--the strange habits of intercourse, on familiar terms,
+with rough and uncultivated people,--such intercourse for years--in all
+sorts of ways,--in the field and in the house,--mingling with them as one
+of them--it seems to me it must leave its traces on the mind and on the
+habits of acting and thinking?"
+
+"There is no doubt it does," he answered with an extremely
+unconcerned face.
+
+"And then there's the actual want of cultivation," said Mrs. Evelyn,
+warming;--"time taken up with other things, you know,--usefully and
+properly, but still taken up,--so as to make much intellectual acquirement
+and accomplishments impossible; it can't be otherwise, you know,--neither
+opportunity nor instructors; and I don't think anything can supply the
+want in after life--it isn't the mere things themselves which may be
+acquired--the mind should grow up in the atmosphere of them--don't you
+think so, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+He bowed.
+
+"Music, for instance, and languages, and converse with society, and a
+great many things, are put completely beyond reach;--Edith, my dear, you
+are not to touch the coffee,--nor Constance either,--no I will not let
+you,--And there could not be even much reading, for want of books if for
+nothing else. Perhaps I am wrong, but I confess I don't see how it is
+possible in such a case"--
+
+She checked herself suddenly, for Fleda with the slow noiseless step that
+weakness imposed had come in again and stood by the centre-table.
+
+"We are discussing a knotty question, Miss Ringgan," said Mr. Carleton
+with a smile, as he brought a bergère for her; "I should like to have your
+voice on it."
+
+There was no seconding of his motion. He waited till she had seated
+herself and then went on.
+
+"What in your opinion is the best preparation for wearing
+prosperity well?"
+
+A glance at Mrs. Evelyn's face which was opposite her, and at one or two
+others which had undeniably the air of being _arrested_, was enough for
+Fleda's quick apprehension. She knew they had been talking of her. Her
+eyes stopped short of Mr. Carleton's and she coloured and hesitated. No
+one spoke.
+
+"By prosperity you mean--?"
+
+"Rank and fortune," said Florence, without looking up.
+
+"Marrying a rich man, for instance," said Edith, "and having one's
+hands full."
+
+This peculiar statement of the case occasioned a laugh all round, but the
+silence which followed seemed still to wait upon Fleda's reply.
+
+"Am I expected to give a serious answer to that question?" she said a
+little doubtfully.
+
+"Expectations are not stringent things," said her first questioner
+smiling. "That waits upon your choice."
+
+"They are horridly stringent, _I_ think," said Constance. "We shall all be
+disappointed if you don't, Fleda my dear."
+
+"By wearing it 'well' you mean, making a good use of it?"
+
+"And gracefully," said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+"I think I should say then," said Fleda after some little hesitation and
+speaking with evident difficulty,--"Such an experience as might teach one
+both the worth and the worthlessness of money."
+
+Mr. Carleton's smile was a sufficiently satisfied one; but Mrs.
+Evelyn retorted,
+
+"The _worth_ and the _worthlessness!_--Fleda my dear, I don't
+understand--"
+
+"And what experience teaches one the worth and what the worthlessness of
+money?" said Constance;--"Mamma is morbidly persuaded that I do not
+understand the first--of the second I have an indefinite idea from never
+being able to do more than half that I want with it."
+
+Fleda smiled and hesitated again, in a way that shewed she would willingly
+be excused, but the silence left her no choice but to speak.
+
+"I think," she said modestly, "that a person can hardly understand the
+true worth of money,--the ends it can best subserve,--that has not been
+taught it by his own experience of the want; and--"
+
+"What follows?" said Mr. Carleton.
+
+"I was going to say, sir, that there is danger, especially when people
+have not been accustomed to it, that they will greatly overvalue and
+misplace the real worth of prosperity; unless the mind has been steadied
+by another kind of experience, and has learnt to measure things by a
+higher scale."
+
+"And how when they _have_ been accustomed to it?" said Florence.
+
+"The same danger, without the 'especially'," said Fleda, with a look that
+disclaimed any assuming.
+
+"One thing is certain," said Constance,--"you hardly ever see _les
+nouveaux riches_ make a graceful use of anything.--Fleda my dear, I am
+seconding all of your last speech that I understand. Mamma, I perceive, is
+at work upon the rest."
+
+"I think we ought all to be at work upon it," said Mrs. Evelyn, "for Miss
+Ringgan has made it out that there is hardly anybody here that is
+qualified to wear prosperity well."
+
+"I was just thinking so," said Florence.
+
+Fleda said nothing, and perhaps her colour rose a little.
+
+"I will take lessons of her," said Constance, with eyebrows just raised
+enough to neutralize the composed gravity of the other features,--"as soon
+as I have an amount of prosperity that will make it worth while."
+
+"But I don't think," said Florence, "that a graceful use of things is
+consistent with such a careful valuation and considering of the exact
+worth of everything--it's not my idea of grace."
+
+"Yet _propriety_ is an essential element of gracefulness, Miss Evelyn."
+
+"Well," said Florence,--"certainly; but what then?"
+
+"Is it attainable, in the use of means, without a nice knowledge of their
+true value?"
+
+"But, Mr. Carleton, I am sure I have seen improper things--things improper
+in a way--gracefully done?"
+
+"No doubt; but, Miss Evelyn," said he smiling "the impropriety did not in
+those cases, I presume, attach itself to the other quality. The graceful
+_manner_ was strictly proper to its ends, was it not, however the ends
+might be false?"
+
+"I don't know," said Florence;--"you have gone too deep for me. But do
+you think that close calculation, and all that sort of thing, is
+likely to make people use money, or anything else, gracefully? I never
+thought it did."
+
+"Not close calculation alone," said Mr. Carleton.
+
+"But do you think it is _consistent_ with gracefulness?"
+
+"The largest and grandest views of material things that man has ever
+taken, Miss Evelyn, stand upon a basis of the closest calculation."
+
+Florence worked at her worsted and looked very dissatisfied.
+
+"O Mr. Carleton," said Constance as he was going,--"don't leave your
+vinaigrette--there it is on the table."
+
+He made no motion to take it up.
+
+"Don't you know, Miss Constance, that physicians seldom like to have
+anything to do with their own prescriptions?"
+
+"It's very suspicious of them," said Constance;--"but you must take it,
+Mr. Carleton, if you please, for I shouldn't like the responsibility of
+its being left here; and I am afraid it would be dangerous to our peace of
+mind, besides."
+
+"I shall risk that," he said laughing. "Its work is not done."
+
+"And then, Mr. Carleton," said Mrs. Evelyn, and Fleda knew with what a
+look,--"you know physicians are accustomed to be paid when their
+prescriptions are taken."
+
+But the answer to this was only a bow, so expressive in its air of haughty
+coldness that any further efforts of Mrs. Evelyn's wit were chilled for
+some minutes after he had gone.
+
+Fleda had not seen this. She had taken up the vinaigrette, and was
+thinking with acute pleasure that Mr. Carleton's manner last night and
+to-night had returned to all the familiar kindness of old times. Not as it
+had been during the rest of her stay in the city. She could be quite
+contented now to have him go back to England, with this pleasant
+remembrance left her. She sat turning over the vinaigrette, which to her
+fancy was covered with hieroglyphics that no one else could read; of her
+uncle's affair, of Charlton's danger, of her own distress, and the
+kindness which had wrought its relief, more penetrating and pleasant than
+even the fine aromatic scent which fairly typified it,--Constance's voice
+broke in upon her musings.
+
+"Isn't it awkward?" she said as she saw Fleda handling and looking at the
+pretty toy,--"Isn't it awkward? I sha'n't have a bit of rest now for fear
+something will happen to that. I hate to have people do such things!"
+
+"Fleda my dear," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"I wouldn't handle it, my love; you
+may depend there is some charm in it--some mischievous hidden
+influence,--and if you have much to do with it I am afraid you will
+find a gradual coldness stealing over you, and a strange forgetfulness
+of Queechy, and you will perhaps lose your desire ever to go back there
+any more."
+
+The vinaigrette dropped from Fleda's fingers, but beyond a heightened
+colour and a little tremulous gravity about the lip, she gave no other
+sign of emotion.
+
+"Mamma," said Florence laughing,--"you are too bad!"
+
+"Mamma," said Constance, "I wonder how any tender sentiment for you can
+continue to exist in Fleda's breast!--By the way, Fleda, my dear, do you
+know that we have heard of two escorts for you? but I only tell you
+because I know you'll not be fit to travel this age."
+
+"I should not be able to travel to-morrow," said Fleda.
+
+"They are not going to-morrow," said Mrs. Evelyn quietly.
+
+"Who are they?"
+
+"Excellent ones," said Mrs. Evelyn. "One of them is your old friend
+Mr. Olmney,"
+
+"Mr. Olmney!" said Fleda. "What has brought him to New York?"
+
+"Really," said Mrs. Evelyn laughing,--"I do not know. What should keep
+him away? I was very glad to see him, for my part. Maybe he has come to
+take you home."
+
+"Who is the other?" said Fleda.
+
+"That's another old friend of yours--Mrs. Renney."
+
+"Mrs. Renney?--who is she?" said Fleda.
+
+"Why don't you know? Mrs. Renney--she used to live with your aunt Lucy in
+some capacity--years ago,--when she was in New York,--housekeeper, I
+think; don't you remember her?"
+
+"Perfectly, now," said Fleda. "Mrs. Renney!--"
+
+"She has been housekeeper for Mrs. Schenck these several years, and she is
+going somewhere out West to some relation, her brother, I believe, to take
+care of his family; and her road leads her your way."
+
+"When do they go, Mrs. Evelyn?"
+
+"Both the same day, and both the day after to-morrow. Mr. Olmney takes the
+morning train, he says, unless you would prefer some other,--I told him
+you were very anxious to go,--and Mrs. Renney goes in the afternoon. So
+there's a choice for you."
+
+"Mamma," said Constance, "Fleda is not fit to go at all, either time."
+
+"I don't think she is," said Mrs. Evelyn. "But she knows best what she
+likes to do."
+
+Thoughts and resolutions came swiftly one after another into Fleda's mind
+and were decided upon in as quick succession. First, that she must go the
+day after to-morrow, at all events. Second, that it should not be with
+Mr. Olmney. Third, that to prevent that, she must not see him in the mean
+time, and therefore--yes, no help for it,--must refuse to see any one that
+called the next day; there was to be a party in the evening, so then she
+would be safe. No doubt Mr. Carleton would come, to give her a more
+particular account of what he had done, and she wished unspeakably to hear
+it; but it was not possible that she should make an exception in his
+favour and admit him alone. That could not be. If friends would only be
+simple and straightforward and kind,--one could afford to be
+straightforward too;--but as it was she must not do what she longed to do
+and they would be sure to misunderstand. There was indeed the morning of
+the day following left her if Mr. Olmney did not take it into his head to
+stay. And it might issue in her not seeing Mr. Carleton at all, to bid
+good-bye and thank him? He would not think her ungrateful, he knew better
+than that, but still--Well! so much for kindness!--
+
+"What _are_ you looking so grave about?" said Constance.
+
+"Considering ways and means," Fleda said with a slight smile.
+
+"Ways and means of what?"
+
+"Going."
+
+"You don't mean to go the day after to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It's too absurd for anything! You sha'n't do it."
+
+"I must indeed."
+
+"Mamma," said Constance, "if you permit such a thing, I shall hope that
+memory will be a fingerboard of remorse to you, pointing to Miss Ringgan's
+pale cheeks."
+
+"I shall charge it entirely upon Miss Ringgan's own fingerboard," said
+Mrs. Evelyn, with her complacently amused face. "Fleda, my dear,--shall I
+request Mr. Olmney to delay his journey for a day or two, my love, till
+you are stronger?"
+
+"Not at all, Mrs. Evelyn! I shall go then;--if I am not ready in the
+morning I will take Mrs. Renney in the afternoon--I would quite as lief go
+with her."
+
+"Then I will make Mr. Olmney keep to his first purpose," said Mrs. Evelyn.
+
+Poor Fleda, though with a very sorrowful heart, kept her resolutions, and
+for very forlornness and weariness slept away a great part of the next
+day. Neither would she appear in the evening, for fear of more people than
+one. It was impossible to tell whether Mrs. Evelyn's love of mischief
+would not bring Mr. Olmney there, and the Thorns, she knew, were invited.
+Mr. Lewis would probably absent himself, but Fleda could not endure even
+the chance of seeing his mother. She wanted to know, but dared not ask,
+whether Mr. Carleton had been to see her. What if to-morrow morning should
+pass without her seeing him? Fleda pondered this uncertainty a little,
+and then jumped out of bed and wrote him the heartiest little note of
+thanks and remembrance that tears would let her write; sealed it, and
+carried it herself to the nearest branch of the despatch post the first
+thing next morning.
+
+She took a long look that same morning at the little vinaigrette which
+still lay on the centre-table, wishing very much to take it up stairs and
+pack it away among her things. It was meant for her she knew, and she
+wanted it as a very pleasant relic from the kind hands that had given it;
+and besides, he might think it odd if she should slight his intention. But
+how odd it would seem to him if he knew that the Evelyns had half
+appropriated it. And appropriate it anew, in another direction, she could
+not. She could not without their knowledge, and they would put their own
+absurd construction on what was a simple matter of kindness; she could not
+brave it.
+
+[Illustration: "I told him, 'O you were not gone yet!'"]
+
+The morning, a long one it was, had passed away; Fleda had just finished
+packing her trunk, and was sitting with a faint-hearted feeling of body
+and mind, trying to rest before being called to her early dinner, when
+Florence came to tell her it was ready.
+
+"Mr. Carleton was here awhile ago," she said, "and he asked for you; but
+mamma said you were busy; she knew you had enough to tire you without
+coming down stairs to see him. He asked when you thought of going."
+
+"What did you tell him?"
+
+"I told him, 'O you were not gone yet!'--it's such a plague to be bidding
+people good-bye--_I_ always want to get rid of it. Was I right?"
+
+Fleda said nothing, but in her heart she wondered what possible concern it
+could be of her friends if Mr. Carleton wanted to see her before she went
+away. She felt it was unkind--they did not know how unkind, for they did
+not understand that he was a very particular friend and an old
+friend--they could not tell what reason there was for her wishing to bid
+him good-bye. She thought she should have liked to do it, very much.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVII.
+
+
+
+  Methought I was--there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and
+  methought I had,--But man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say
+  what methought I had.--Midsummer Night's Dream.
+
+
+Mrs. Evelyn drove down to the boat with Fleda and did not leave her till
+she was safely put in charge of Mrs. Renney. Fleda immediately retreated
+to the innermost depths of the ladies' cabin, hoping to find some rest for
+the body at least if not forgetfulness for the mind.
+
+The latter was not to be. Mrs. Renney was exceeding glad to see her and
+bent upon knowing what had become of her since those days when they used
+to know each other.
+
+"You're just the same, Miss Fleda, that you used to be--you're very little
+altered--I can see that--though you're looking a good deal more thin and
+pale--you had very pretty roses in your cheeks in those times.--Yes, I
+know, I understood Mrs. Evelyn to say you had not been well; but allowing
+for that I can see you are just yourself still--I'm glad of it. Do you
+recollect, Miss Fleda, what a little thing you was then?"
+
+"I recollect, very well," said Fleda.
+
+"I'm sure of another thing--you're just as good as you used to be," said
+the housekeeper looking at her complacently. "Do you remember how you used
+to come into my room to see me make jelly? I see it as well as if it was
+yesterday;--and you used to beg me to let you squeeze the lemons; and I
+never could refuse you, because you never did anything I didn't want you
+to; and do you mind how I used to tie you up in a big towel for fear you
+would stain your dress with the acid, and I'd stand and watch to see you
+putting all your strength to squeeze 'em clean, and be afraid that Mrs.
+Rossitur would be angry with me for letting you spoil your hands, but you
+used to look up and smile at me so, I couldn't help myself but let you do
+just whatever you had a mind. You don't look quite so light and bright as
+you did in those times; but to be sure, you ain't feeling well! See
+here--just let me pull some of these things onto this settee, and you put
+yourself down there and rest--pillows--let's have another pillow,--there,
+how's that?"
+
+Oh if Fleda might have silenced her! She thought it was rather hard that
+she should have two talkative companions on this journey of all others.
+The housekeeper paused no longer than to arrange her couch and see her
+comfortably laid down.
+
+"And then Mr. Hugh would come in to find you and carry you away--he never
+could bear to be long from you. How is Mr. Hugh, Miss Fleda? he used to
+be always a very delicate looking child. I remember you and him used to
+be always together--he was a very sweet boy! I have often said I never
+saw such another pair of children. How does Mr. Hugh have his health,
+Miss Fleda?"
+
+"Not very well, just now," said Fleda gently, and shutting her eyes that
+they might reveal less.
+
+There was need; for the housekeeper went on to ask particularly after
+every member of the family, and where they had been living, and as much
+as she conveniently could about how they had been living. She was very
+kind through it all, or she tried to be; but Fleda felt there was a
+difference since the time when her aunt kept house in State street and
+Mrs. Renney made jellies for her. When her neighbours' affairs were
+exhausted Mrs. Renney fell back upon her own, and gave Fleda a very
+circumstantial account of the occurrences that were drawing her westward;
+how so many years ago her brother had married and removed thither; how
+lately his wife had died; what in general was the character of his wife,
+and what, in particular, the story of her decease; how many children were
+left without care, and the state of her brother's business which demanded
+a great deal; and how finally, she, Mrs. Renney, had received and
+accepted an invitation to go on to Belle Rivière and be housekeeper de
+son chef. And as Fleda's pale worn face had for some time given her no
+sign of attention the housekeeper then hoped she was asleep, and placed
+herself so as to screen her and have herself a good view of everything
+that was going on in the cabin.
+
+But poor Fleda was not asleep, much as she rejoiced in being thought so.
+Mind and body could get no repose, sadly as the condition of both called
+for it. Too worn to sleep, perhaps;--too down-hearted to rest. She blamed
+herself for it, and told over to herself the causes, the recent causes,
+she had of joy and gratitude; but it would not do. Grateful she could be
+and was; but tears that were not the distillation of joy came with her
+gratitude; came from under the closed eyelid in spite of her; the pillow
+was wet with them. She excused herself, or tried to, with thinking that
+she was weak and not very well, and that her nerves had gone through so
+much for a few days past it was no wonder if a reaction left her without
+her usual strength of mind. And she could not help thinking there had been
+a want of kindness in the Evelyns to let her come away to-day to make such
+a journey, at such a season, under such guardianship. But it was not all
+that; she knew it was not. The journey was a small matter; only a little
+piece of disagreeableness that was well in keeping with her other
+meditations. She was going home and home had lost all its fair-seeming;
+its honours were withered. It would be pleasant indeed to be there again
+to nurse Hugh; but nurse him for what?--life or death?--she did not like
+to think; and beyond that she could fix upon nothing at all that looked
+bright in the prospect; she almost thought herself wicked, but she could
+not. If she might hope that her uncle would take hold of his farm like a
+man, and redeem his character and his family's happiness on the old
+place,--that would have been something; but he had declared a different
+purpose, and Fleda knew him too well to hope that he would be better than
+his word. Then they must leave the old homestead, where at least the
+associations of happiness clung, and go to a strange land. It looked
+desolate to Fleda, wherever it might be. Leave Queechy!--that she loved
+unspeakably beyond any other place in the world; where the very hills had
+been the friends of her childhood, and where she had seen the maples grow
+green and grow red through as many-coloured changes of her own fortunes;
+the woods where the shade of her grandfather walked with her and where the
+presence even of her father could be brought back by memory; where the air
+was sweeter and the sunlight brighter, by far, than in any other place,
+for both had some strange kindred with the sunny days of long ago. Poor
+Fleda turned her face from Mrs. Renney, and leaving doubtful prospects and
+withering comforts for a while as it were out of sight, she wept the fair
+outlines and the red maples of Queechy as if they had been all she had to
+regret. They had never disappointed her. Their countenance had comforted
+her many a time, under many a sorrow. After all, it was only fancy
+choosing at which shrine the whole offering of sorrow should be made. She
+knew that many of the tears that fell were due to some other. It was in
+vain to tell herself they were selfish; mind and body were in no condition
+to struggle with anything.
+
+It had fallen dark some time, and she had wept and sorrowed herself into a
+half-dozing state, when a few words spoken near aroused her.
+
+"It is snowing,"--was said by several voices.
+
+"Going very slow, ain't we?" said Fleda's friend in a suppressed voice.
+
+"Yes, 'cause it's so dark, you see; the Captain dursn't let her run."
+
+Some poor witticism followed from a third party about the 'Butterfly's'
+having run herself off her legs the first time she ever ran at all; and
+then Mrs. Renney went on.
+
+"Is the storm so bad, Hannah?"
+
+"Pretty thick--can't see far ahead--I hope we'll make out to find our way
+in--that's all _I_ care for."
+
+"How far are we?"
+
+"Not half way yet--I don't know--depends on what headway we make, you
+know;--there ain't much wind yet, that's a good thing."
+
+"There ain't any danger, is there?"
+
+This of course the chambermaid denied, and a whispered colloquy followed
+which Fleda did not try to catch. A new feeling came upon her weary
+heart,--a feeling of fear. There was a sad twinge of a wish that she were
+out of the boat and safe back again with the Evelyns, and a fresh sense of
+the unkindness of letting her come away that afternoon so attended. And
+then with that sickness of heart the forlorn feeling of being alone, of
+wanting some one at hand to depend upon, to look to. It is true that in
+case of real danger none such could be a real protection,--and yet not so
+neither, for strength and decision can live and make live where a moment's
+faltering will kill, and weakness must often falter of necessity. "All
+the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth" to his people; she thought of
+that, and yet she feared, for his ways are often what we do not like. A
+few moments of sick-heartedness and trembling,--and then Fleda mentally
+folded her arms about a few other words of the Bible and laid her head
+down in quiet again.--"_The Lord is my refuge and my fortress; my God; in
+him will I trust_."
+
+And then what comes after,--"_He shall cover thee with his feathers, and
+under his wings shalt thou trust; his truth shall be thy shield and
+buckler_."
+
+Fleda lay quiet till she was called to tea.
+
+"Bless me, how pale you are!" said the housekeeper, as Fleda raised
+herself up at this summons,--"do you feel very bad, Miss Fleda?"
+
+Fleda said no.
+
+"Are you frighted?" said the housekeeper;--"there's no need of
+that--Hannah says there's no need--we'll be in by and by."
+
+"No, Mrs. Renney," said Fleda smiling. "I believe I am not very
+strong yet."
+
+The housekeeper and Hannah both looked at her with strangely touched
+faces, and again begged her to try the refreshment of tea. But Fleda
+would not go down, so they served her up there with great zeal and
+tenderness. And then she waited patiently and watched the people in the
+cabin, as they sat gossiping in groups or stupefying in solitude; and
+thought how miserable a thing is existence where religion and refinement
+have not taught the mind to live in somewhat beyond and above its
+every-day concern.
+
+Late at night the boat arrived safe at Bridgeport. Mrs. Renney and Fleda
+had resolved to stay on board till morning, when the former promised to
+take her to the house of a sister she had living in the town; as the cars
+would not leave the place till near eleven o'clock. Kest was not to be
+hoped for meantime in the boat, on the miserable couch which was the best
+the cabin could furnish; but Fleda was so thankful to have finished the
+voyage in safety that she took thankfully everything else, even lying
+awake. It was a wild night. The wind rose soon after they reached
+Bridgeport, and swept furiously over the boat, rattling the tiller chains
+and making Fleda so nervously alive to possibilities that she got up two
+or three times to see if the boat were fast to her moorings. It was very
+dark, and only by a fortunately placed lantern she could see a bit of the
+dark wharf and one of the posts belonging to it, from which the lantern
+never budged; so at last, quieted or tired out, nature had her rights, and
+she slept.
+
+It was not refreshing rest after all, and Fleda was very glad that Mrs.
+Renney's impatience for something comfortable made her willing to be astir
+as early as there was any chance of finding people up in the town. Few
+were abroad when they left the boat, they two. Not a foot had printed the
+deep layer of snow that covered the wharf. It had fallen thick during the
+night. Just then it was not snowing; the clouds seemed to have taken a
+recess, for they hung threatening yet; one uniform leaden canopy was over
+the whole horizon.
+
+"The snow ain't done yet," said Mrs. Renney.
+
+"No, but the worst of our journey is over," said Fleda. "I am glad to be
+on the land."
+
+"I hope we'll get something to eat here," said Mrs. Renney as they stepped
+along over the wharf. "They ought to be ashamed to give people such a
+mess, when it's just as easy to have things decent. My! how it has snowed.
+I declare, if I'd ha' known I'd ha' waited till somebody had tracked a
+path for us. But I guess it's just as well we didn't,--you look as like a
+ghost as you can, Miss Fleda. You'll be better when you get some
+breakfast. You'd better catch on to my arm--I'll waken up the seven
+sleepers but what I'll have something to put life into you directly."
+
+Fleda thanked her but declined the proffered accommodation, and followed
+her companion in the narrow beaten path a few travellers had made in the
+street, feeling enough like a ghost, if want of flesh and blood reality
+were enough. It seemed a dream that she was walking through the grey light
+and the empty streets of the little town; everything looked and felt so
+wild and strange.
+
+If it was a dream she was soon waked out of it. In the house where they
+were presently received and established in sufficient comfort, there was
+such a little specimen of masculine humanity as never shewed his face in
+dream land yet; a little bit of reality enough to bring any dreamer to his
+senses. He seemed to have been brought up on stove heat, for he was ail
+glowing yet from a very warm bed he had just tumbled out of somewhere, and
+he looked at the pale thin stranger by his mother's fireplace as if she
+were an anomaly in the comfortable world. If he could have contented
+himself with looking!--but he planted himself firmly on the rug just two
+feet from Fleda, and with a laudable and most persistent desire to examine
+into the causes of what he could not understand he commenced inquiring,
+
+"Are you cold?--say! Are you cold?--say!"--in a tone most provokingly made
+up of wonder and dulness. In vain Fleda answered him, that she was not
+very cold and would soon not be cold at all by that good fire;--the
+question came again, apparently in all its freshness, from the
+interrogator's mind,--"Are you cold?--say!--"
+
+And silence and words, looking grave and laughing, were alike thrown away.
+Fleda shut her eyes at length and used the small remnant of her patience
+to keep herself quiet till she was called to breakfast. After breakfast
+she accepted the offer of her hostess to go up stairs and lie down till
+the cars were ready; and there got some real and much needed refreshment
+of sleep and rest.
+
+It lasted longer than she bad counted upon. For the cars were not ready
+at eleven o'clock; the snow last night had occasioned some perplexing
+delays. It was not till near three o'clock that the often-despatched
+messenger to the dépôt brought back word that they might go as soon as
+they pleased. It pleased Mrs. Renney to be in a great hurry, for her
+baggage was in the cars she said, and it would be dreadful if she and it
+went different ways; so Fleda and her companion hastened down to the
+station house and choose their places some time before anybody else
+thought of coming. They had a long, very tiresome waiting to go through,
+and room for some uneasy speculations about being belated and a night
+journey. But Fleda was stronger now, and bore it all with her usual
+patient submission. At length, by degrees the people dropped in and
+filled the cars, and they get off.
+
+"How early do you suppose we shall reach Greenfield?" said Fleda.
+
+"Why we ought to get there between nine and ten o'clock, I should think,"
+said her companion. "I hope the snow will hold up till we get there,"
+
+Fleda thought it a hope very unlikely to be fulfilled. There were as yet
+no snow-flakes to be seen near by, but at a little distance the low
+clouds seemed already to enshroud every clump of trees and put a mist
+about every hill. They surely would descend more palpably soon.
+
+It was pleasant to be moving swiftly on again towards the end of their
+journey, if Fleda could have rid herself of some qualms about the possible
+storm and the certain darkness; they might not reach Greenfield by ten
+o'clock; and she disliked travelling in the night at any time. But she
+could do nothing, and she resigned herself anew to the comfort and trust
+she had built upon last night. She had the seat next the window, and with
+a very sober kind of pleasure watched the pretty landscape they were
+flitting by--misty as her own prospects,--darkening as they?--no, she
+would not allow that thought. "'Surely I know that it shall be well with
+them that fear God;' and I can trust him." And she found a strange
+sweetness in that naked trust and clinging of faith, that faith never
+tried never knows. But the breath of daylight was already gone, though the
+universal spread of snow gave the eye a fair range yet, white, white, as
+far as the view could reach, with that light misty drapery round
+everything in the distance and merging into the soft grey sky; and every
+now and then as the wind served, a thick wreath of white vapour came by
+from the engine and hid all, eddying past the windows and then skimming
+off away over the snowy ground from which it would not lift; a more
+palpable veil for a moment of the distant things,--and then broken,
+scattered, fragmentary, lovely in its frailty and evanishing. It was a
+pretty afternoon, but a sober; and the bare black solitary trees near hand
+which the cars flew by, looked to Fleda constantly like finger-posts of
+the past; and back at their bidding her thoughts and her spirits went,
+back and forward, comparing, in her own mental view, what had once been so
+gay and genial with its present bleak and chill condition. And from this,
+in sudden contrast, came a strangely fair and bright image of Heaven--its
+exchange of peace for all this turmoil,--of rest for all this weary
+bearing up of mind and body against the ills that beset both,--of its
+quiet home for this unstable strange world where nothing is at a
+stand-still--of perfect and pure society for the unsatisfactory and
+wearying friendships that the most are here. The thought came to Fleda
+like one of those unearthly clear Northwestern skies from which a storm
+cloud has rolled away, that seem almost to mock Earth with their distance
+from its defilement and agitations. "Truly I know that it shall be well
+with them that fear God!"--She could remember Hugh,--she could not think
+of the words without him,--and yet say them with the full bounding
+assurance. And in that weary and uneasy afternoon her mind rested and
+delighted itself with two lines of George Herbert, that only a Christian
+can well understand,--
+
+  "Thy power and love,--my love and trust,
+  Make one place everywhere."
+
+But the night fell, and Fleda at last could see nothing but the dim rail
+fences they were flying by, and the reflection from some stationary
+lantern on the engine or one of the forward cars, that always threw a
+bright spot of light on the snow. Still she kept her eyes fastened out of
+the window; anything but the view _inboard_. They were going slowly now,
+and frequently stopping; for they were out of time, and some other trains
+were to be looked out for. Nervous work; and whenever they stopped the
+voices which at other times were happily drowned in the rolling of the
+car-wheels, rose and jarred in discords far less endurable. Fleda shut
+her ears to the words, but it was easy enough without words to understand
+the indications of coarse and disagreeable natures in whose neighbourhood
+she disliked to find herself; of whose neighbourhood she exceedingly
+disliked to be reminded. The muttered oath, the more than muttered jest,
+the various laughs that tell so much of head or heart emptiness,--the
+shadowy but sure tokens of that in human nature which one would not
+realize and which one strives to forget;--Fleda shrank within herself and
+would gladly have stopped her ears; did sometimes covertly. Oh if home
+could be but reached, and she out of this atmosphere! how well she
+resolved that never another time, by any motive, of delicacy or
+otherwise, she would be tempted to trust herself in the like again
+without more than womanly protection. The hours rolled wearily on; they
+heard nothing of Greenfield yet.
+
+They came at length to a more obstinate stop than usual. Fleda took her
+hands from her ears to ask what was the matter.
+
+"I don't know," said Mrs. Renney. "I hope they won't keep us a great while
+waiting here."
+
+The door swung open and the red comforter and tarpaulin hat of one of the
+brakemen shewed itself a moment. Presently after "Can't get on"--was
+repeated by several voices in the various tones of assertion,
+interrogation, and impatience. The women folks, having nobody to ask
+questions of, had nothing for it but to be quiet and use their ears.
+
+"Can't get on!" said another man coming in,--"there's nothing but snow out
+o' doors--track's all foul."
+
+A number of people instantly rushed out to see.
+
+"Can't get on any further to-night?" asked a quiet old gentleman of the
+news-bringer.
+
+"Not another inch, sir;--worse off than old Dobbs was in the
+mill-pond,--we've got half way but we can't turn and go back."
+
+"And what are we going to do?" said an unhappy wight not quick in drawing
+conclusions.
+
+"I s'pose we'll all be stiff by the morning," answered the other
+gravely,--"unless the wood holds out, which ain't likely."
+
+How much there is in even a cheery tone of voice, Fleda was sorry when
+this man took his away with him. There was a most uncheering confusion of
+tongues for a few minutes among the people he had left, and then the car
+was near deserted; everybody went out to bring his own wits to bear upon
+the obstacles in the way of their progress. Mrs. Renney observed that she
+might as well warm her feet while she could, and went to the stove for
+the purpose.
+
+Poor Fleda felt as if she had no heart left. She sat still in her place
+and leaned her head upon the back of the deserted chair before her, in
+utter inability to keep it up. The night journey was bad enough, but
+_this_ was more than she had counted upon. Danger, to be sure, there might
+be none in standing still there all night, unless perhaps the danger of
+death from the cold;--she had heard of such things;--but to sit there till
+morning among all those people and obliged to hear their unloosed
+tongues,--Fleda felt almost that she could not bear it,--a most forlorn
+feeling, with which came anew a keen reflection upon the Evelyns for
+having permitted her to run even the hazard of such trouble. And in the
+morning, if well it came, who would take care of them in all the
+subsequent annoyance and difficulty of getting out of the snow?--
+
+It must have taken very little time for these thoughts to run through her
+head, for half a minute had not flown when the vacant seat beside her was
+occupied and a hand softly touched one of hers which lay in her lap.
+Fleda started up in terror,--to have the hand taken and her eye met by
+Mr. Carleton.
+
+"Mr. Carleton!--O sir, how glad I am to see you!"--was said by eye and
+cheek as unmistakably as by word.
+
+"Have you come from the clouds?"
+
+"I might rather ask that question of you," said he smiling.
+
+"You have been invisible ever since the night when I had the honour of
+playing the part of your physician."
+
+"I could not help it, sir,--I was sure you would believe it. I wanted
+exceedingly to see you and to thank you--as well as I could--but I was
+obliged to leave it--"
+
+She could hardly say so much. Her swimming eye gave him more thanks than
+he wanted. But she scolded herself vigorously and after a few minutes was
+able to look and speak again.
+
+"I hoped you would not think me ungrateful, sir, but in case you might, I
+wrote to let you know that you were mistaken."
+
+"You wrote to me!" said he.
+
+"Yes, sir--yesterday morning--at least it was put in the post
+yesterday morning."
+
+"It was more unnecessary than you are aware off," he said with a smile and
+turning one of his deep looks away from her.
+
+"Are we fast here for all night, Mr. Carleton?" she said presently.
+
+"I am afraid so--I believe so--I have been out to examine and the storm is
+very thick."
+
+"You need not look so about it for me," said Fleda;--"I don't care for it
+at all now."
+
+And a long-drawn breath half told how much she had cared for it, and what
+a burden was gone.
+
+"You look very little like breasting hardships," said Mr. Carleton,
+bending on her so exactly the look of affectionate care that she had
+often had from him when she was a child, that Fleda was very near
+overcome again.
+
+"O you know," she said, speaking by dint of great force upon
+herself,--"You know the will is everything, and mine is very good--"
+
+But he looked extremely unconvinced and unsatisfied.
+
+"I am so comforted to see you sitting there, sir," Fleda went on
+gratefully,--"that I am sure I can bear patiently all the rest."
+
+His eye turned away and she did not know what to make of his gravity. But
+a moment after he looked again and spoke with his usual manner.
+
+"That business you entrusted to me," he said in a lower tone,--"I believe
+you will have no more trouble with it."
+
+"So I thought!--so I gathered--the other night,--" said Fleda, her heart
+and her face suddenly full of many things.
+
+"The note was given up--I saw it burned."
+
+Fleda's two hands clasped each other mutely.
+
+"And will he be silent?"
+
+"I think he will choose to be so--for his own sake."
+
+The only sake that would avail in that quarter, Fleda knew. How had Mr.
+Carleton ever managed it!
+
+"And Charlton?" she said after a few minutes' tearful musing.
+
+"I had the pleasure of Capt. Rossitur's company to breakfast, the next
+morning,--and I am happy to report that there is no danger of any trouble
+arising there."
+
+"How shall I ever thank you, sir!" said Fleda with trembling lips.
+
+His smile was so peculiar she almost thought he was going to tell her. But
+just then Mrs. Renney having accomplished the desirable temperature of her
+feet, came back to warm her ears, and placed herself on the next seat;
+happily not the one behind but the one before them, where her eyes were
+thrown away; and the lines of Mr. Carleton's mouth came back to their
+usual quiet expression.
+
+"You were in particular haste to reach home?" he asked.
+
+Fleda said no, not in the abstract; it made no difference whether to-day
+or to-morrow.
+
+"You had heard no ill news of your cousin?"
+
+"Not at all, but it is difficult to find an opportunity of making the
+journey, and I thought I ought to come yesterday."
+
+He was silent again; and the baffled seekers after ways and means who had
+gone out to try arguments upon the storm, began to come pouring back into
+the car. And bringing with them not only their loud and coarse voices with
+every shade of disagreeableness aggravated by ill-humour, but also an
+average amount of snow upon their hats and shoulders, the place was soon
+full of a reeking atmosphere of great coats. Fleda was trying to put up
+her window, but Mr. Carleton gently stopped her and began bargaining with
+a neighbouring fellow-traveller for the opening of his.
+
+"Well, sir, I'll open it if you wish it," said the man civilly, "but
+they say we sha'n't have nothing to make fires with more than an hour
+or two longer;--so maybe you'll think we can't afford to let any too
+much cold in."
+
+The gentleman however persisting in his wish and the wish being moreover
+backed with those arguments to which every grade of human reason is
+accessible, the window was opened. At first the rush of fresh air was a
+great relief; but it was not very long before the raw snowy atmosphere
+which made its way in was felt to be more dangerous, if it was more
+endurable, than the close pent-up one it displaced. Mr. Carleton ordered
+the window closed again; and Fleda's glance of meek grateful patience was
+enough to pay any reasonable man for his share of the suffering. _Her_
+share of it was another matter. Perhaps Mr. Carleton thought so, for he
+immediately bent himself to reward her and to avert the evil, and for that
+purpose brought into play every talent of manner and conversation that
+could beguile the time and make her forget what she was among. If success
+were his reward he had it. He withdrew her attention completely from all
+that was around her, and without tasking it; she could not have borne
+that. He did not seem to task himself; but without making any exertion he
+held her eye and ear and guarded both from communication with things
+disagreeable. He knew it. There was not a change in her eye's happy
+interest, till in the course of the conversation Fleda happened to mention
+Hugh, and he noticed the saddening of the eye immediately afterwards.
+
+"Is he ill?" said Mr. Carleton.
+
+"I don't know," said Fleda faltering a little,--"he was not--very,--but a
+few weeks ago--"
+
+Her eye explained the broken sentences which there in the neighbourhood of
+other ears she dared not finish.
+
+"He will be better after he has seen you," said Mr. Carleton gently.
+
+"Yes--"
+
+A very sorrowful and uncertain "yes," with an "if" in the speaker's mind
+which she did not bring out.
+
+"Can you sing your old song yet,--" said Mr. Carleton softly,--
+
+  "'Yet one thing secures us.
+  Whatever betide?'"
+
+But Fleda burst into tears.
+
+"Forgive me," he whispered earnestly,--"for reminding you of that,--you
+did not need it, and I have only troubled you."
+
+"No sir, you have not," said Fleda,--"it did not trouble me--and Hugh
+knows it better than I do. I cannot bear anything to-night, I believe--"
+
+"So you have remembered that, Mr. Carleton?" she said a minute after.
+
+"Do you remember that?" said he, putting her old little Bible into her
+hand.
+
+Fleda seized it, but she could hardly bear the throng of images that
+started up around it. The smooth worn cover brought so back the childish
+happy days when it had been her constant companion--the shadows of the
+Queechy of old, and Cynthia and her grandfather; and the very atmosphere
+of those times when she had led a light-hearted strange wild life all
+alone with them, reading the Encyclopædia and hunting out the
+wood-springs. She opened the book and slowly turned over the leaves where
+her father's hand had drawn those lines, of remark and affection, round
+many a passage,--the very look of them she knew; but she could not see it
+now, for her eyes were dim and tears were dropping fast into her
+lap,--she hoped Mr. Carleton did not see them, but she could not help it;
+she could only keep the book out of the way of being blotted. And there
+were other and later associations she had with it too,--how dear!--how
+tender!--how grateful!
+
+Mr. Carleton was quite silent for a good while--till the tears had ceased;
+then he bent towards her so as to be heard no further off.
+
+"It has been for many years my best friend and companion," he said in
+a low tone.
+
+Fleda could make no answer, even by look.
+
+"At first," he went on softly, "I had a strong association of you with it;
+but the time came when I lost that entirely, and itself quite swallowed up
+the thought of the giver."
+
+A quick glance and smile told how well Fleda understood, how heartily she
+was pleased with that. But she instantly looked away again.
+
+"And now," said Mr. Carleton after a pause,--"for some time past, I have
+got the association again; and I do not choose to have it so. I have come
+to the resolution to put the book back into your hands and not receive it
+again, unless the giver go with the gift."
+
+Fleda looked up, a startled look of wonder, into his face, but the dark
+eye left no doubt of the meaning of his words; and in unbounded confusion
+she turned her own and her attention, ostensibly, to the book in her hand,
+though sight and sense were almost equally out of her power. For a few
+minutes poor Fleda felt as if all sensation had retreated to her
+finger-ends. She turned the leaves over and over, as if willing to cheat
+herself or her companion into the belief that she had something to think
+of there, while associations and images of the past were gone with a
+vengeance, swallowed up in a tremendous reality of the present; and the
+book, which a minute ago was her father's Bible, was now--what was
+it?--something of Mr. Carleton's which she must give back to him. But
+still she held it and looked at it--conscious of no one distinct idea but
+that, and a faint one besides that he might like to be repossessed of his
+property in some reasonable time--time like everything else was in a
+whirl; the only steady thing in creation seemed to be that perfectly still
+and moveless figure by her side--till her trembling fingers admonished her
+they would not be able to hold anything much longer; and gently and
+slowly, without looking, her hand put the book back towards Mr. Carleton.
+That both were detained together she knew but hardly felt;--the thing was
+that she had given it!--
+
+There was no other answer; and there was no further need that Mr. Carleton
+should make any efforts for diverting her from the scene and the
+circumstances where they were. Probably he knew that, for he made none. He
+was perfectly silent for a long time, and Fleda was deaf to any other
+voice that could be raised, near or far. She could not even think.
+
+Mrs. Renney was happily snoring, and most of the other people had
+descended into their coat collars, or figuratively speaking had lowered
+their blinds, by tilting over their hats in some uncomfortable position
+that signified sleep; and comparative quiet had blessed the place for some
+time; as little noticed indeed by Fleda as noise would have been. The sole
+thing that she clearly recognized in connection with the exterior world
+was that clasp in which one of her hands lay. She did not know that the
+car had grown quiet, and that only an occasional grunt of ill-humour, or
+waking-up colloquy, testified that it was the unwonted domicile of a
+number of human beings who were harbouring there in a disturbed state of
+mind. But this state of things could not last. The time came that had been
+threatened, when their last supply of extrinsic warmth was at an end.
+Despite shut windows, the darkening of the stove was presently followed by
+a very sensible and fast-increasing change of temperature; and this
+addition to their causes of discomfort roused every one of the company
+from his temporary lethargy. The growl of dissatisfied voices awoke again,
+more gruff than before; the spirit of jesting had long languished and now
+died outright, and in its stead came some low and deep and bitter-spoken
+curses. Poor Mrs. Renney shook off her somnolency and shook her shoulders,
+a little business shake, admonitory to herself to keep cool; and Fleda
+came to the consciousness that some very disagreeable chills were making
+their way over her.
+
+"Are you warm enough?" said Mr. Carleton suddenly, turning to her.
+
+"Not quite," said Fleda hesitating,--"I feel the cold a little. Please
+don't, Mr. Carleton!--" she added earnestly as she saw him preparing to
+throw off his cloak, the identical black fox which Constance had described
+with so much vivacity;--"pray do not! I am not very cold--I can bear a
+little--I am not so tender as you think me; I do not need it, and you
+would feel the want very much after wearing it.--I won't put it on."
+
+But he smilingly bade her "stand up," stooping down and taking one of her
+hands to enforce his words, and giving her at the same time the benefit of
+one of those looks of good humoured wilfulness to which his mother always
+yielded, and to which Fleda yielded instantly, though with a colour
+considerably heightened at the slight touch of peremptoriness in his tone.
+
+"You are not offended with me, Elfie?" he said in another manner, when she
+had sat down again and he was arranging the heavy folds of the cloak.
+
+Offended!--A glance answered.
+
+"You shall have everything your own way," he whispered gently, as he
+stooped down to bring the cloak under her feet,--"_except yourself_."
+
+What good care should be taken of that exception was said in the dark
+eye at which Fleda hardly ventured half a glance. She had much ado to
+command herself.
+
+She was shielded again from all the sights and sounds within reach. She
+was in a maze. The comfort of the fur cloak was curiously mixed with the
+feeling of something else, of which that was an emblem,--a surrounding of
+care and strength which would effectually be exerted for her
+protection,--somewhat that Fleda had not known for many a long day,--the
+making up of the old want. Fleda had it in her heart to cry like a baby.
+Such a dash of sunlight had fallen at her feet that she hardly dared look
+at it for fear of being dazzled; but she could not look anywhere that she
+did not see the reflection.
+
+In the mean time the earful of people settled again into sullen quietude.
+The cold was not found propitious to quarrelling. Those who could subsided
+anew into lethargy, those who could not gathered in their outposts to make
+the best defence they might of the citadel. Most happily it was not an
+extreme night; cold enough to be very disagreeable and even (without a fur
+cloak) dangerous; but not enough to put even noses and ears in immediate
+jeopardy. Mr. Carleton had contrived to procure a comfortable wrapper for
+Mrs. Renney from a Yankee who for the sake of being "a warm man" as to his
+pockets was willing to be cold otherwise for a time. The rest of the great
+coats and cloaks which were so alert and erect a little while ago were
+doubled up on every side in all sorts of despondent attitudes. A dull
+quiet brooded over the assembly; and Mr. Carleton walked up and down the
+vacant space. Once he caught an anxious glance from Fleda, and came
+immediately to her side.
+
+"You need not be troubled about me," he said with a most genial smile;--"I
+am not suffering--never was further from it in my life."
+
+Fleda could neither answer nor look.
+
+"There are not many hours of the night to wear out," he said. "Can't you
+follow your neighbour's example?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"This watching is too hard for you. You will have another headache
+to-morrow."
+
+"No--perhaps not," she said with a grateful look up.
+
+"You do not feel the cold now, Elfie?"
+
+"Not at all--not in the least--I am perfectly comfortable--I am doing
+very well--"
+
+He stood still, and the changing lights and shades on Fleda's cheek
+grew deeper.
+
+"Do you know where we are, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"Somewhere between a town the name of which I have forgotten and a place
+called Quarrenton, I think; and Quarrenton, they tell me, is but a few
+miles from Greenfield. Our difficulties will vanish, I hope, with the
+darkness."
+
+He walked again, and Fleda mused, and wondered at herself in the black
+fox. She did not venture another look, though her eye took in nothing very
+distinctly but the outlines of that figure passing up and down through the
+car. He walked perseveringly; and weariness at last prevailed over
+everything else with Fleda; she lost herself with her head leaning against
+the bit of wood between the windows.
+
+The rousing of the great coats, and the growing gray light, roused her
+before her uneasy sleep had lasted an hour. The lamps were out, the car
+was again spotted with two long rows of window-panes, through which the
+light as yet came but dimly. The morning had dawned at last, and seemed to
+have brought with it a fresh accession of cold, for everybody was on the
+stir. Fleda put up her window to get a breath of fresh air and see how the
+day looked.
+
+A change of weather had come with the dawn. It was not fine yet. The
+snowing had ceased, but the clouds hung overhead still, though not with
+the leaden uniformity of yesterday; they were higher and broken into many
+a soft grey fold, that promised to roll away from the sky by and by. The
+snow was deep on the ground; every visible thing lapped in a thick white
+covering; a still, very grave, very pretty winter landscape, but somewhat
+dreary in its aspect to a trainful of people fixed in the midst of it out
+of sight of human habitation. Fleda felt that, but only in the abstract;
+to her it did not seem dreary; she enjoyed the wild solitary beauty of the
+scene very much, with many a grateful thought of what might have been. As
+it was, she left difficulties entirely to others.
+
+As soon as it was light the various inmates of the strange dormitory
+gathered themselves up and set out on foot for Quarrenton. By one of them
+Mr. Carleton sent an order for a sleigh, which in as short a time as
+possible arrived, and transported him and Fleda and Mrs. Renney, and one
+other ill-bestead woman, safely to the little town of Quarrenton.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLVIII.
+
+
+
+  Welcome the sour cup of prosperity! Affliction may one day smile again,
+  and till then, Sit thee down, sorrow!--Love's Labour Lost.
+
+
+It had been a wild night, and the morning looked scared. Perhaps it was
+only the particular locality, for if ever a place shewed bleak and winter
+stricken the little town of Quarrenton was in that condition that morning.
+The snow overlaid and enveloped everything, except where the wind had been
+at work; and the wind and the grey clouds seemed the only agencies abroad.
+Nor a ray of sunlight to relieve the uniform sober tints, the universal
+grey and white, only varied where a black house-roof, partially cleared,
+or a blacker bare-branched tree, gave it a sharp interruption. There was
+not a solitary thing that bore an indication of comfortable life, unless
+the curls of smoke that went up from the chimneys; and Fleda was in no
+condition to study their physiognomy.
+
+A little square hotel, perched alone on a rising ground, looked the
+especial bleak and unpromising spot of the place. It bore however the
+imposing title of the Pocahontas; and there the sleigh set them down.
+
+They were ushered up-stairs into a little parlour furnished in the usual
+style, with one or two articles a great deal too showy for the place and a
+general dearth as to the rest. A lumbering mahogany sofa, that shewed as
+much wood and as little promise as possible; a marble-topped centre-table;
+chairs in the minority and curtains minus; and the hearth-rug providently
+turned bottom upwards. On the centre-table lay a pile of Penny Magazines,
+a volume of selections of poetry from various good authors, and a
+sufficient complement of newspapers. The room was rather cold, but of that
+the waiter gave a reasonable explanation in the fact that the fire had not
+been burning long.
+
+Furs however might be dispensed with, or Fleda thought so; and taking off
+her bonnet she endeavoured to rest her weary head against the sharp-cut
+top of the sofa-back, which seemed contrived expressly to punish and
+forbid all attempts at ease-seeking. The mere change of position was still
+comparative ease. But the black fox had not done duty yet. Its ample folds
+were laid over the sofa, cushion-back and all, so as at once to serve for
+pillow and mattress, and Fleda being gently placed upon it laid her face
+down again upon the soft fur, which gave a very kindly welcome not more to
+the body than to the mind. Fleda almost smiled as she felt that. The furs
+were something more than a pillow for her cheek--they were the soft image
+of somewhat for her mind to rest on. But entirely exhausted, too much for
+smiles or tears, though both were near, she resigned herself as helplessly
+as an infant to the feeling of rest; and in five minutes was in a state of
+dreamy unconsciousness.
+
+Mrs. Renney, who had slept a great part of the night, courted sleep anew
+in the rocking-chair, till breakfast should be ready; the other woman had
+found quarters in the lower part of the house; and Mr. Carleton stood
+still with folded arms to read at his leisure the fair face that rested so
+confidingly upon the black fur of his cloak, looking so very fair in the
+contrast. It was the same face he had known in time past,--the same, with
+only an alteration that had added new graces but had taken away none of
+the old. Not one of the soft outlines had grown hard under Time's
+discipline; not a curve had lost its grace or its sweet mobility; and yet
+the hand of Time had been there; for on brow and lip and cheek and eyelid
+there was that nameless grave composure which said touchingly that hope
+had long ago clasped hands with submission. And perhaps, that if hope's
+anchor had not been well placed, ay, even where it could not be moved, the
+storms of life might have beaten even hope from her ground and made a
+clean sweep of desolation over all she had left. Not the storms of the
+last few weeks. Mr. Carleton saw and understood their work in the
+perfectly colourless and thin cheek. But these other finer drawn
+characters had taken longer to write. He did not know the instrument, but
+he read the hand-writing, and came to his own resolutions therefrom.
+
+Yet if not untroubled she had remained unspotted by the world; that was as
+clear as the other. The slight eyebrow sat with its wonted calm purity of
+outline just where it used; the eyelid fell as quietly; the forehead above
+it was as unruffled; and if the mouth had a subdued gravity that it had
+taken years to teach, it had neither lost any of the sweetness nor any of
+the simplicity of childhood. It was a strange picture that Mr. Carleton
+was looking at,--strange for its rareness. In this very matter of
+simplicity, that the world will never leave those who belong to it. Half
+sitting and half reclining, she had given herself to rest with the
+abandonment and self-forgetfulness of a child; her attitude had the very
+grace of a child's unconsciousness; and her face shewed that even in
+placing herself there she had lost all thought of any other presence or
+any other eyes than her own; even of what her hand and cheek lay upon,
+and what it betokened. It meant something to Mr. Carleton too; and if
+Fleda could have opened her eyes she would have seen in those that were
+fixed upon her a happy promise for her future life. She was beyond making
+any such observations; and Mrs. Renney gave no interruption to his till
+the breakfast bell rang.
+
+Mr. Carleton had desired the meal to be served in a private room. But he
+was met with a speech in which such a confusion of arguments endeavoured
+to persuade him to be of another mind, that he had at last given way. It
+was asserted that the ladies would have their breakfast a great deal
+quicker and a great deal hotter with the rest of the company; and in the
+same breath that it would be a very great favour to the house if the
+gentleman would not put them to the inconvenience of setting a separate
+table; the reasons of which inconvenience were set forth in detail, or
+would have been if the gentleman would have heard them; and desirous
+especially of haste, on Fleda's account, Mr. Carleton signified his
+willingness to let the house accommodate itself. Following the bell a
+waiter now came to announce and conduct them to their breakfast.
+
+Down the stairs, through sundry narrow turning passages, they went to a
+long low room at one corner of the house; where a table was spread for a
+very nondescript company, as it soon proved, many of their last night's
+companions having found their way thither. The two _ladies_, however, were
+given the chief posts at the head, as near as possible to a fiery hot
+stove, and served with tea and coffee from a neighbouring table by a young
+lady in long ringlets who was there probably for their express honour. But
+alas for the breakfast! They might as good have had the comfort of a
+private room, for there was none other to be had. Of the tea and coffee it
+might be said as once it was said of two bad roads--"whichever one you
+take you will wish you had taken the other;" the beefsteak was a problem
+of impracticability; and the chickens--Fleda could not help thinking that
+a well-to-do rooster which she saw flapping his wings in the yard, must in
+all probability be at that very moment endeavouring to account for a
+sudden breach in his social circle; and if the oysters had been some very
+fine ladies they could hardly have retained less recollection of their
+original circumstances. It was in vain to try to eat or to drink; and
+Fleda returned to her sofa with even an increased appetite for rest, the
+more that her head began to take its revenge for the trials to which it
+had been put the past day and night.
+
+She had closed her eyes again in her old position. Mrs. Renney was tying
+her bonnet-strings. Mr. Carleton was pacing up and down.
+
+"Aren't you going to get ready, Miss Ringgan?" said the former.
+
+"How soon will the cars be here?" exclaimed Fleda starting up.
+
+"Presently," said Mr. Carleton; "but," said he, coming up to her
+and taking her hands,--"I am going to prescribe for you again--will
+you let me?"
+
+Fleda's face gave small promise of opposition.
+
+"You are not fit to travel now. You need some hours of quiet rest before
+we go any further."
+
+"But when shall we get home?" said Fleda.
+
+"In good time--not by the railroad--there is a nearer way that will take
+us to Queechy without going through Greenfield. I have ordered a room to
+be made ready for you--will you try if it be habitable?"
+
+Fleda submitted; and indeed there was in his manner a sort of gentle
+determination to which few women would have opposed themselves; besides
+that her head threatened to make a journey a miserable business.
+
+"You are ill now," said Mr. Carleton. "Cannot you induce your companion to
+stay and attend you?"
+
+"I don't want her," said Fleda.
+
+Mr. Carleton however mooted the question himself with Mrs. Renney, but she
+represented to him, though with much deference, that the care of her
+property must oblige her to go where and when it went. He rang and ordered
+the housekeeper to be sent.
+
+Presently after a young lady in ringlets entered the room, and first
+taking a somewhat leisurely survey of the company, walked to the window
+and stood there looking out. A dim recollection of her figure and air made
+Fleda query whether she were not the person sent for; but it was several
+minutes before it came into Mr. Carleton's head to ask if she belonged to
+the house.
+
+"I do, sir," was the dignified answer.
+
+"Will you shew this lady the room prepared for her? And take care that she
+wants nothing."
+
+The owner of the ringlets answered not, but turning the front view of them
+full upon Fleda seemed to intimate that she was ready to act as her guide.
+She hinted however that the rooms were very _airy_ in winter and that
+Fleda would stand a better chance of comfort where she was. But this Fleda
+would not listen to, and followed her adviser to the half warmed and
+certainly very airy apartment which had been got ready for her. It was
+probably more owing to something in her own appearance than to Mr.
+Carleton's word of admonition on the subject that her attendant was really
+assiduous and kind.
+
+"Be you of this country?" she said abruptly, after her good offices as
+Fleda thought were ended, and she had just closed her eyes.
+
+She opened them again and said "yes."
+
+"Well, that ain't in the parlour, is he?"
+
+"What?" said Fleda.
+
+"One of our folks?"
+
+"An American, you mean?--No."
+
+"I thought he wa'n't--What is he?"
+
+"He is English."
+
+"Is he your brother?"
+
+"No."
+
+The young lady gave her a good look out of her large dark eyes, and
+remarking that "she thought they didn't look much like," left the room.
+
+The day was spent by poor Fleda between pain and stupor, each of which
+acted in some measure to check the other; too much exhausted for nervous
+pain to reach the height it sometimes did, while yet that was sufficient
+to prevent stupor from sinking into sleep. Beyond any power of thought or
+even fancy, with only a dreamy succession of images flitting across her
+mind, the hours passed she knew not how; that they did pass she knew from
+her handmaid in the long curls who was every now and then coming in to
+look at her and give her fresh water; it needed no ice. Her handmaid told
+her that the cars were gone by--that it was near noon--then that it was
+past noon. There was no help for it; she could only lie still and wait; it
+was long past noon before she was able to move; and she was looking ill
+enough yet when she at last opened the door of the parlour and slowly
+presented herself.
+
+Mr. Carleton was there alone, Mrs. Renney having long since accompanied
+her baggage. He came forward instantly and led Fleda to the sofa, with
+such gentle grave kindness that she could hardly bear it; her nerves had
+been in an unsteady state all day. A table was set and partially spread
+with evidently much more care than the one of the morning; and Fleda sat
+looking at it afraid to trust herself to look anywhere else. For years she
+had been taking care of others; and now there was something so strange in
+this feeling of being cared for, that her heart was full. Whatever Mr.
+Carleton saw or suspected of this, it did not appear. On the contrary his
+manner and his talk on different matters was as cool, as quiet, as
+graceful, as if neither he nor Fleda had anything particular to think of;
+avoiding even an allusion to whatever might in the least distress her.
+Fleda thought she had a great many reasons to be grateful to him, but she
+never thanked him for anything more than at that moment she thanked him
+for the delicacy which so regarded her delicacy and put her in a few
+minutes completely at her ease as she could be.
+
+The refreshments were presently brought, and Fleda was served with them
+in a way that went as far as possible towards making them satisfactory;
+but though a great improvement upon the morning they furnished still but
+the substitute for a meal. There was a little pause then after the horses
+were ordered.
+
+"I am afraid you have wanted my former prescription to-day," said Mr.
+Carleton, after considering the little-improved colour of Fleda's face.
+
+"I have indeed."
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+Fleda hesitated, and then in a little confusion said she supposed it was
+lying on Mrs. Evelyn's centre-table.
+
+"How happens that?" said he smiling.
+
+"Because--I could not help it, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda with no little
+difficulty;--"I was foolish--I could not bring it away."
+
+He understood and was silent.
+
+"Are you fit to bear a long ride in the cold?" he said compassionately a
+few minutes after.
+
+"Oh yes!--It will do me good."
+
+"You have had a miserable day, have you not?"
+
+"My head has been pretty bad,--" said Fleda a little evasively.
+
+"Well, what would you have?" said he lightly;--"doesn't that make a
+miserable day of it?"
+
+Fleda hesitated and coloured,--and then conscious that her cheeks were
+answering for her, coloured so exceedingly that she was fain to put both
+her hands up to hide what they only served the more plainly to shew. No
+advantage was taken. Mr. Carleton said nothing; she could not see what
+answer might be in his face. It was only by a peculiar quietness in his
+tone whenever he spoke to her afterwards that Fleda knew she had been
+thoroughly understood. She dared not lift her eyes.
+
+They had soon employment enough around her. A sleigh and horses better
+than anything else Quarrenton had been known to furnish, were carrying
+her rapidly towards home; the weather had perfectly cleared off, and in
+full brightness and fairness the sun was shining upon a brilliant world.
+It was cold indeed, though the only wind was that made by their progress;
+but Fleda had been again unresistingly wrapped in the furs and was for
+the time beyond the reach of that or any other annoyance. She eat
+silently and quietly enjoying; so quietly that a stranger might have
+questioned there being any enjoyment in the case. It was a very
+picturesque broken country, fresh-covered with snow; and at that hour,
+late in the day, the lights and shadows were a constantly varying charm
+to the eye. Clumps of evergreens stood out in full disclosure against the
+white ground; the bare branches of neighbouring trees, in all their
+barrenness, had a wild prospective or retrospective beauty peculiar to
+themselves. On the wavy white surface of the meadow-land, or the steep
+hill-sides, lay every variety of shadow in blue and neutral tint; where
+they lay not the snow was too brilliant to be borne. And afar off,
+through a heaven bright and cold enough to hold the canopy over Winter's
+head, the ruler of the day was gently preparing to say good-bye to the
+world. Fleda's eye seemed to be new set for all forms of beauty, and
+roved from one to the other, as grave and bright as nature itself.
+
+For a little way Mr. Carleton left her to her musings and was as silent as
+she. But then he gently drew her into a conversation that broke up the
+settled gravity of her face and obliged her to divide her attention
+between nature and him, and his part of it he knew how to manage. But
+though eye and smile constantly answered him he could win neither to a
+straightforward bearing.
+
+They were about a mile from Queechy when Pleda suddenly exclaimed,
+
+"O Mr. Carleton, please stop the sleigh I--"
+
+The horses were stopped.
+
+"It is only Earl Douglass--our farmer," Fleda said in explanation,--"I
+want to ask how they are at home."
+
+In answer to her nod of recognition Mr. Douglass came to the side of the
+vehicle; but till he was there, close, gave her no other answer by word or
+sign; when there, broke forth his accustomed guttural,
+
+"How d'ye do!"
+
+"How d'ye do, Mr. Douglass," said Fleda. "How are they all at home?"
+
+"Well, there ain't nothin' new among 'em, as I've heerd on," said Earl,
+diligently though stealthily at the same time qualifying himself to make a
+report of Mr. Carleton,--"I guess they'll be glad to see you. _I_ be."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Douglass. How is Hugh?"
+
+"He ain't nothin' different from what he's been for a spell back--at least
+I ain't heerd that he was.--Maybe he is, but if he is I han't heerd speak
+of it, and if he was, I think I should ha' heerd speak of it. He _was_
+pretty bad a spell ago--about when you went away--but he's been better
+sen. So they say. I ha'n't seen him.--Well Flidda," he added with somewhat
+of a sly gleam in his eye,--"do you think you're going to make up your
+mind to stay to hum this time?"
+
+"I have no immediate intention of running away, Mr. Douglass," said Fleda,
+her pale cheeks turning rose as she saw him looking curiously up and down
+the edges of the black fox. His eye came back to hers with a good-humoured
+intelligence that she could hardly stand.
+
+"It's time you was back," said he. "Your uncle's to hum,--but he don't do
+me much good, whatever he does to other folks--nor himself nother, as far
+as the farm goes; there's that corn"--
+
+"Very well, Mr. Douglass," said Fleda,--"I shall be at home now and I'll
+see about it."
+
+"_Very_ good!" said Earl as he stepped back,--"Queechy can't get along
+without you, that's no mistake."
+
+They drove on a few minutes in silence.
+
+"Aren't you thinking, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda, "that my countrymen are a
+strange mixture?"
+
+"I was not thinking of them at all at this moment. I believe such a notion
+has crossed my mind."
+
+"It has crossed mine very often," said Fleda.
+
+"How do you read them? what is the basis of it?"
+
+[Illustration: "How are they all at home?"]
+
+"I think,--the strong self-respect which springs from the security and
+importance that republican institutions give every man. But," she added
+colouring, "I have seen very little of the world and ought not to judge."
+
+"I have no doubt you are quite right," said Mr. Carleton smiling. "But
+don't you think an equal degree of self-respect may consist with giving
+honour where honour is due?"
+
+"Yes--" said Fleda a little doubtfully,--"where religion and not
+republicanism is the spring of it."
+
+"Humility and not pride," said he. "Yes--you are right."
+
+"My countrymen do yield honour where they think it is due," said Fleda;
+"especially where it is not claimed. They must give it to reality, not to
+pretension. And I confess I would rather see them a little rude in their
+independence than cringing before mere advantages of external
+position;--even for my own personal pleasure."
+
+"I agree with you, Elfie,--putting perhaps the last clause out of the
+question."
+
+"Now that man," said Fleda, smiling at his look,--"I suppose his address
+must have struck you as very strange; and yet there was no want of respect
+under it. I am sure he has a true thorough respect and even regard for me,
+and would prove it on any occasion."
+
+"I have no doubt of that."
+
+"But it does not satisfy you?"
+
+"Not quite. I confess I should require more from any one under my
+control."
+
+"Oh nobody is under control here," said Fleda. "That is, I mean,
+individual control. Unless so far as self-interest comes in. I suppose
+that is all-powerful here as elsewhere."
+
+"And the reason it gives less power to individuals is that the greater
+freedom of resources makes no man's interest depend so absolutely on one
+other man. That is a reason you cannot regret. No--your countrymen have
+the best of it, Elfie. But do you suppose that this is a fair sample of
+the whole country?"
+
+"I dare not say that," said Fleda. "I am afraid there is not so much
+intelligence and cultivation everywhere. But I am sure there are many
+parts of the land that will bear a fair comparison with it."
+
+"It is more than I would dare say for my own land."
+
+"I should think--" Fleda suddenly stopped.
+
+"What?--" said Mr. Carleton gently.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir,--I was going to say something very presumptuous."
+
+"You cannot," he said in the same tone.
+
+"I was going to say," said Fleda blushing, "that I should think there
+might be a great deal of pleasure in raising the tone of mind and
+character among the people,--as one could who had influence over a large
+neighbourhood."
+
+His smile was very bright in answer.
+
+"I have been trying that, Elfie, for the last eight years."
+
+Fleda's eye looked now eagerly in pleasure and in curiosity for more. But
+he was silent.
+
+"I was thinking a little while ago," he said, "of the time once before
+when I rode here with you--when you were beginning to lead me to the
+problem I have been trying to work out ever since.--When I left you in
+Paris I went to resolve with myself the question, What I had to do in the
+world?--Your little Bible was my invaluable help. I had read very little
+of it when I threw aside all other books; and my problem was soon solved.
+I saw that the life has no honour nor value which is not spent to the
+glory of God. I saw the end I was made for--the happiness I was fitted
+for--the dignity to which even a fallen creature may rise, through his
+dear Redeemer and surety."
+
+Fleda's eyes were down now. Mr. Carleton was silent a moment, watching one
+or two bright witnesses that fell from them.
+
+"The next conclusion was easy,--that my work was at home.--I have wanted
+my good fairy," Mr. Carleton went on smiling. "But I hope she will be
+contented to carry the standard of Christianity, without that of
+republicanism."
+
+"But Christianity tends directly to republicanism, Mr. Carleton," said
+Fleda, trying to laugh.
+
+"I know that," said he smiling, "and I am willing to know it. But the
+leaven of truth is one thing, and the powder train of the innovator
+is another."
+
+Fleda sat thinking that she had very little in common with the layers of
+powder trains. She did not know the sleigh was passing Deepwater Lake,
+till Mr. Carleton said,--
+
+"I am glad, my dear Elfie, for your sake, that we are almost at the end of
+your journey."
+
+"I should think you might be glad for your own sake, Mr. Carleton."
+
+"No--my journey is not ended--"
+
+"Not?"
+
+"No--it will not be ended till I get back to New York, or rather till I
+find myself here again--I shall make very little delay there--"
+
+"But you will not go any further to-night?" said Fleda, her eye this time
+meeting his fully.
+
+"Yes--I must take the first train to New York. I have some reason to
+expect my mother by this steamer."
+
+"Back to New York!" said Fleda. "Then taking care of me has just hindered
+you in your business."
+
+But even as she spoke she read the truth in his eye and her own fell in
+confusion.
+
+"My business?" said he smiling;--"you know it now, Elfie. I arrived at
+Mrs. Evelyn's just after you had quitted it, intending to ask you to take
+the long talked of drive; and learned to my astonishment that you had left
+the city, and as Edith kindly informed me, under no better guardianship
+than that in which I found you. I was just in time to reach the boat."
+
+"And you were in the boat night before last?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"I should have felt a great deal easier if I had known that," said Fleda.
+
+"So should I," said he, "but you were invisible, till I discerned you in
+the midst of a crowd of people before me in the car."
+
+Fleda was silent till the sleigh stopped and Mr. Carleton had
+handed her out.
+
+"What's going to be done
+
+"I will send somebody down to help you with it," said Fleda. "It is too
+heavy for one alone."
+
+"Well I reckon it is," said he. "I guess you didn't know I was a
+cousin, did you?"
+
+"No," said Fleda.
+
+"I believe I be."
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"I am Pierson Barnes. I live to Quarrenton for a year back. Squire Joshua
+Springer's your uncle, ain't he?"
+
+"Yes, my father's uncle."
+
+"Well he's mine too. His sister's my mother."
+
+"I'll send somebody to help you, Mr. Barnes."
+
+She took Mr. Carleton's arm and walked half the way up to the house
+without daring to look at him.
+
+"Another specimen of your countrymen," he said smiling.
+
+There was nothing but quiet amusement in the tone, and there was not the
+shadow of anything else in his face. Fleda looked, and thanked him
+mentally, and drew breath easier. At the house door he made a pause.
+
+"You are coming in, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"Not now."
+
+"It is a long drive to Greenfield, Mr. Carleton;--you must not turn away
+from a country house till we have shewn ourselves unworthy to live in it.
+You will come in and let us give you something more substantial than those
+Quarrenton oysters. Do not say no," she said earnestly as she saw a
+refusal in his eye,--"I know what you are thinking of, but they do not
+know that you have been told anything--it makes no difference."
+
+She laid her gentle detaining hand, as irresistible in its way as most
+things, upon his arm, and he followed her in.
+
+Only Hugh was in the sitting-room, and he was in a great easy-chair by the
+fire. It struck to Fleda's heart; but there was no time but for a flash of
+thought. He had turned his face and saw her. Fleda meant to have
+controlled herself and presented Mr. Carleton properly, but Hugh started
+up, he saw nothing but herself, and one view of the ethereal delicacy of
+his face made Fleda for a moment forget everything but him. They were in
+each other's arms, and then still as death. Hugh was unconscious that a
+stranger was there, and though Fleda was very conscious that one was there
+who was no stranger,--there was so much in both hearts, so much of sorrow
+and joy, and gratitude and tenderness, on the one part and on the other,
+so much that even if they had been alone lips could only have said
+silently,--that for a little while they kissed each other and wept in a
+passionate attempt to speak what their hearts were too full of.
+
+Fleda at last whispered to Hugh that somebody else was there and turned
+to make as well as she might the introduction. But Mr. Carleton did not
+need it, and made his own with that singular talent which in all
+circumstances, wherever he chose to exert it, had absolute power. Fleda
+saw Hugh's countenance change, with a kind of pleased surprise, and
+herself stood still under the charm for a minute; then she recollected she
+might be dispensed with. She took up her little spaniel who was in an
+agony of gratulation at her feet, and went out into the kitchen.
+
+"Well do you mean to say you are here at last?" said Barby, her grey eyes
+flashing pleasure as she came forward to take the half hand which, owing
+to King's monopoly, was all Fleda had to give her. "Have you come home to
+stay, Fleda?"
+
+"I am tired enough to be quiet," said Fleda. "But dear Barby, what have
+you got in the house?--I want supper as quickly as it can be had."
+
+"Well you do look dreadful bad," said Barby eying her. "Why there ain't
+much particular, Fleda; nobody's had any heart to eat lately; I thought I
+might a'most as well save myself the fuss of getting victuals. Hugh lives
+like a bird, and Mis' Rossitur ain't much better, and I think all of 'em
+have been keeping their appetites till you came back; 'cept Philetus and
+me; we keep it up pretty well. Why you're come home hungry, ain't you?"
+
+"No, not I," said Fleda, "but there's a gentleman here that came with me
+that must have something before he goes away again. What have you Barby?"
+
+"Who is he?" said Barby.
+
+"A friend that took care of me on the way--I'll tell you about it,--but in
+the mean time, supper, Barby."
+
+"Is he a New Yorker, that one must be curious for?"
+
+"As curious as you like," said Fleda, "but he is not a New Yorker."
+
+"Where _is_ he from, then?" said Barby, who was busily putting on the
+tea-kettle.
+
+"England."
+
+"England!" said Barby facing about. "Oh if he's an Englishman I don't care
+for him, Fleda."
+
+"But you care for me," said Fleda laughing; "and for my sake don't let our
+hospitality fail to somebody who has been very kind to me, if he is an
+Englishman; and he is in haste to be off."
+
+"Well I don't know what we're a going to give him," said Barby looking at
+her. "There ain't much in the pantry besides cold pork and beans that
+Philetus and me made our dinner on--they wouldn't have it in there, and
+eat nothing but some pickerel the doctor sent down--and cold fish ain't
+good for much."
+
+"None of them left uncooked?"
+
+"Yes, there's a couple--he sent a great lot--I guess he thought there
+was more in the family--but two ain't enough to go round; they're
+little ones."
+
+"No, but put them down and I'll make an omelette. Just get the things
+ready for me, Barby, will you, while I run up to see aunt Lucy. The hens
+have begun to lay?"
+
+"La yes--Philetus fetches in lots of eggs--he loves 'em, I reckon--but you
+ain't fit this minute to do a thing but rest, Fleda."
+
+"I'll rest afterwards. Just get the things ready for me, Barby, and an
+apron; and the table--I'll be down in a minute. And Barby, grind some
+coffee, will you?"
+
+But as she turned to run up stairs, her uncle stood in her way, and the
+supper vanished from Fleda's head. His arms were open and she was silently
+clasped in them, with so much feeling on both sides that thought and well
+nigh strength for anything else on her part was gone. His smothered words
+of deep blessing overcame her. Fleda could do nothing but sob, in
+distress, till she recollected Barby. Putting her arms round his neck then
+she whispered to him that Mr. Carleton was in the other room and shortly
+explained how he came to be there, and begged her uncle would go in and
+see him till supper should be ready. Enforcing this request with a parting
+kiss on his cheek, she ran off up stairs. Mr. Rossitur looked extremely
+moody and cloudy for a few minutes, and then went in and joined his guest.
+Mrs. Rossitur and her daughter could not be induced to shew themselves.
+
+Little Rolf, however, had no scruples of any kind. He presently edged
+himself into the room to see the stranger whom he no sooner saw than with
+a joyous exclamation he bounded forward to claim an old friend.
+
+"Why, Mr. Carleton," exclaimed Mr. Rossitur in surprise, "I was not aware
+that this young gentleman had the honour of your acquaintance."
+
+"But I have!" said Rolf.
+
+"In London, sir, I had that pleasure," said Mr. Carleton.
+
+"I think it was _I_ had the pleasure," said Rolf, pounding one hand upon
+Mr. Carleton's knee.
+
+"Where is your mother?"
+
+"She wouldn't come down," said Rolf,--"but I guess she will when she knows
+who is here--"
+
+And he was darting away to tell her, when Mr. Carleton, within whose arms
+he stood, quietly restrained him, and told him he was going away
+presently, but would come again and see his mother another time.
+
+"Are you going back to England, sir?"
+
+"By and by."
+
+"But you will come here again first?"
+
+"Yes--if Mr. Rossitur will let me."
+
+"Mr. Carleton knows he commands his own welcome," said that gentleman
+somewhat stately. "Go and tell your aunt Fleda that tea is ready, Rolf."
+
+"She knows," said Rolf. "She was making an omelette--I guess it was for
+this gentleman!"
+
+Whose name he was not clear of yet. Mr. Rossitur looked vexed, but Hugh
+laughed and asked if his aunt gave him leave to tell that. Rolf entered
+forthwith into discussion on this subject, while Mr. Carleton who had not
+seemed to hear it engaged Mr. Rossitur busily in another; till the
+omelette and Fleda came in. Rolf's mind however was ill at ease.
+
+"Aunt Fleda," said he, as soon as she had fairly taken her place at the
+head of the table, "would you mind my telling that you made the omelette
+for this gentleman?"
+
+Fleda cast a confused glance first at the person in question and then
+round the table, but Mr. Carleton without looking at her answered
+instantly,
+
+"Don't you understand, Rolf, that the same kindness which will do a favour
+for a friend will keep him in ignorance of it?"
+
+Rolf pondered a moment and then burst forth,
+
+"Why, sir, wouldn't you like it as well for knowing she made it?"
+
+It was hardly in human gravity to stand this. Fleda herself laughed, but
+Mr. Carleton as unmoved as possible answered him, "Certainly not!"--and
+Rolf was nonplussed.
+
+The supper was over. Hugh had left the room, and Mr. Rossitur had before
+that gone out to give directions about Mr. Carleton's horses. He and Fleda
+were left alone.
+
+"I have something against you, fairy," said he lightly, taking her hand
+and putting it to his lips. "You shall not again do me such honour as you
+have done me to-day--I did not deserve it, Elfie."
+
+The last words were spoken half reproachfully. Fleda stood a moment
+motionless, and then by some curious revulsion of feeling put both her
+hands to her face and burst into tears.
+
+She struggled against them, and spoke almost immediately,
+
+"You will think me very foolish, Mr. Carleton,--I am ashamed of
+myself--but I have lived here so long in this way,--my spirits have grown
+so quieted by different things,--that it seems sometimes as if I could not
+bear anything.--I am afraid--"
+
+"Of what, my dear Elfie?"
+
+But she did not answer, and her tears came again.
+
+"You are weary and spent," he said gently, repossessing himself of one of
+her hands. "I will ask you another time what you are afraid of, and rebuke
+all your fears."
+
+"I deserve nothing but rebuke now," said Fleda.
+
+But her hand knew, by the gentle and quiet clasp in which it lay, that
+there was no disposition to give it.
+
+"Do not speak to me for a minute," she said hastily as she heard some
+one coming.
+
+She went to the window and stood there looking out till Mr. Carleton came
+to bid her good-bye.
+
+"Will you permit me to say to Mrs. Evelyn," he said in a low tone, "that
+you left a piece of your property in her house and have commissioned me to
+bring it you?"
+
+"Yes--" said Fleda, hesitating and looking a little confused,--"but--will
+you let me write a note instead, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"Certainly!--but what are you thinking of, Elfie? what grave doubt is
+lying under your brow?"
+
+All Fleda's shadows rolled away before that clear bright eye.
+
+"I have found by experience," she said, smiling a little but looking
+down,--"that whenever I tell my secret thoughts to anybody I have some
+reason afterwards to be sorry for it."
+
+"You shall make me an exception to your rule, however, Elfie."
+
+Fleda looked up, one of her looks half questioning, half fearing, and then
+answered, a little hesitating,
+
+"I was afraid, sir, that if you went to Mrs. Evelyn's on that errand--I
+was afraid you would shew them you were displeased."
+
+"And what then?" said he quietly.
+
+"Only--that I wanted to spare them what always gives me a cold chill."
+
+"Gives you!" said Mr. Carleton.
+
+"No sir--only by sympathy--I thought my agency would be the gentlest."
+
+"I see I was right," she said, looking up as he did not answer,--"they
+don't deserve it,--not half so much as you think. They talk--they don't
+know what. I am sure they never meant half they said--never meant to annoy
+me with it, I mean,--and I am sure they have a true love for me; they have
+shewn it in a great many ways. Constance especially never shewed me
+anything else. They have been very kind to me; and as to letting me come
+away as they did, I suppose they thought I was in a greater hurry to get
+home than I really was--and they would very likely not have minded
+travelling so themselves; I am so different from them that they might in
+many things judge me by themselves and yet judge far wrong."
+
+Fleda was going on, but she suddenly became aware that the eye to which
+she was speaking had ceased to look at the Evelyns, even in imagination,
+and she stopped short.
+
+"Will you trust me, after this, to see Mrs. Evelyn without the note?" said
+he smiling.
+
+But Fleda gave him her hand very demurely without raising her eyes again,
+and he went.
+
+Barby who had come in to clear away the table took her stand at the
+window to watch Mr. Carleton drive off. Fleda had retreated to the fire.
+Barby looked in silence till the sleigh was out of sight.
+
+"Is he going back to England now?" she said coming back to the table.
+
+"No."
+
+Barby gathered a pile of plates together and then enquired,
+
+"Is he going to settle in America?"
+
+"Why no, Barby! What makes you ask such a thing?"
+
+"I thought he looked as if he had dressed himself for a cold climate,"
+said Barby dryly.
+
+Fleda sat down by Hugh's easy-chair and laid her head on his breast.
+
+"I like your Mr. Carleton very much," Hugh whispered after awhile.
+
+"Do you?" said Fleda, a little wondering at Hugh's choice of that
+particular pronominal adjective.
+
+"Very much indeed. But he has changed, Fleda?"
+
+"Yes--in some things--some great things."
+
+"He says he is coming again," said Hugh.
+
+Fleda's heart beat. She was silent.
+
+"I am very glad," repeated Hugh, "I like him very much. But you won't
+leave me, Fleda,--will you?"
+
+"Leave you?" said Fleda looking at him.
+
+"Yes," said Hugh smiling, and drawing her head down again;--I always
+thought what he came over here for. But you will stay with me while I want
+you, Fleda?"
+
+"While you want me!" said Fleda again.
+
+"Yes.--It won't be long."
+
+"What won't be long?"
+
+"I," said Hugh quietly. "Not long. I am very glad I shall not leave you
+alone, dear Fleda--very glad!--promise me you will not leave me any more."
+
+"Don't talk so, dear Hugh!"
+
+"But it is true, Fleda," said Hugh gently. "I know it. I sha'n't be here
+but a little while. I am so glad you are come home, dear Fleda!--You will
+not let anybody take you away till I am gone first?"
+
+Fleda drew her arm close around Hugh's neck and was still,--still even to
+his ear,--for a good while. A hard battle must be fought, and she must not
+be weak, for his sake and for everybody's sake. Others of the family had
+come or were coming into the room. Hugh waited till a short breath, but
+freer drawn, told him he might speak.
+
+"Fleda--" he whispered.
+
+"What?"
+
+"I am very happy.--I only want your promise about that."
+
+"I can't talk to you, Hugh."
+
+"No, but promise me."
+
+"What?"
+
+"That you will not let anybody take you away while I want you."
+
+"I am sure he would not ask it," said Fleda, hiding her cheeks and eyes at
+once in his breast.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XLIX.
+
+
+
+  Do you think I shall not love a sad Pamela as well as a joyful?
+
+  Sidney.
+
+
+Mr. Carleton came back without his mother; she had chosen to put off her
+voyage till spring. He took up his quarters at Montepoole, which, far
+though it was, was yet the nearest point where his notions of ease could
+have freedom enough.
+
+One would have thought that saw him,--those most nearly concerned almost
+did think,--that in his daily coming to Queechy Mr. Carleton sought
+everybody's pleasure rather than his own. He was Fleda's most gentle and
+kind assistant in taking care of Hugh, soon dearly valued by the sick one,
+who watched for and welcomed his coming as a bright spot in the day; and
+loved particularly to have Mr. Carleton's hand do anything for him. Rather
+than almost any other. His mother's was too feeling; Fleda's Hugh often
+feared was weary; and his father's, though gentle to him as to an infant,
+yet lacked the mind's training. And though Marion was his sister in blood,
+Guy was his brother in better bonds. The deep blue eye that little Fleda
+had admired Hugh learned to love and rest on singularly.
+
+To the rest of the family Mr. Carleton's influence was more soothing and
+cheering than any cause beside. To all but the head of it. Even Mrs.
+Rossitur, after she had once made up her mind to see him, could not bear
+to be absent when he was in the house. The dreaded contrast with old times
+gave no pain, either to her or Marion. Mr. Carleton forgot so completely
+that there was any difference that they were charmed into forgetting it
+too. But Mr. Rossitur's pride lay deeper, or had been less humbled by
+sorrow; the recollections that his family let slip never failed to gall
+him when Mr. Carleton was present; and if now and then for a moment these
+were banished by his guest's graces of mind and manner, the next breath
+was a sigh for the circles and the pleasures they served to recall, now
+seeming for ever lost to him. Mr. Carleton perceived that his company
+gave pain and not pleasure to his host and for that reason was the less in
+the house, and made his visits to Hugh at times when Mr. Rossitur was not
+in the way. Fleda he took out of the house and away with him, for her good
+and his own.
+
+To Fleda the old childish feeling came back, that she was in somebody's
+hands who had a marvellous happy way of managing things about her and even
+of managing herself. A kind of genial atmosphere, that was always doing
+her good, yet so quietly and so skilfully that she could only now and then
+get a chance even to look her thanks. Quietly and efficiently he was
+exerting himself to raise the tone of her mind, to brighten her spirits,
+to reach those sober lines that years of patience had drawn round her eye
+and mouth, and charm them away. So gently, so indirectly, by efforts so
+wisely and gracefully aimed, he set about it, that Fleda did not know what
+he was doing; but _he_ knew. He knew when he saw her brow unbend and her
+eye catch its old light sparkle, that his conversation and the thoughts
+and interests with which he was rousing her mind or fancy, were working,
+and would work all he pleased. And though the next day he might find the
+old look of patient gravity again, he hardly wished it not there, for the
+pleasure of doing it away. Hugh's anxious question to Fleda had been very
+uncalled for, and Fleda's assurance was well-grounded; that subject was
+never touched upon.
+
+Fleda's manner with Mr. Carleton was peculiar and characteristic. In the
+house, before others, she was as demure and reserved as though he had been
+a stranger; she never placed herself near him, nor entered into
+conversation with him, unless when he obliged her; but when they were
+alone there was a frank confidence and simplicity in her manner that most
+happily answered the high-bred delicacy that had called it out.
+
+One afternoon of a pleasant day in March Fleda and Hugh were sitting alone
+together in the sick room. Hugh was weaker than usual, but not confined to
+his bed; he was in his great easy-chair which had been moved up-stairs for
+him again. Fleda had been repeating hymns.
+
+"You are tired," Hugh said.
+
+"No--"
+
+"There's something about you that isn't strong," said Hugh fondly. "I
+wonder where is Mr. Carleton to-day. It is very pleasant, isn't it?"
+
+"Very pleasant, and warm; it is like April; the snow all went off
+yesterday, and the ground is dry except in spots."
+
+"I wish he would come and give you a good walk. I have noticed how you
+always come back looking so much brighter after one of your walks or rides
+with him."
+
+"What makes you think so, dear Hugh?" said Fleda a little troubled.
+
+"Only my eyes," said Hugh smiling. "It does me as much good as you,
+Fleda."
+
+"I _never_ want to go and leave you, Hugh."
+
+"I am very glad there is somebody to take you. I wish he would come. You
+want it this minute."
+
+"I don't think I shall let him take me if he comes."
+
+"Whither? and whom?" said another voice.
+
+"I didn't know you were there, sir," said Fleda suddenly rising.
+
+"I am but just here--Rolf admitted me as he passed out."
+
+Coming in between them and still holding the hand of one Mr. Carleton bent
+down towards the other.
+
+"How is Hugh, to-day?"
+
+It was pleasant to see, that meeting of eyes,--the grave kindliness on the
+one side, the confident affection on the other. But the wasted features
+said as plainly as the tone of Hugh's gentle reply, that he was passing
+away,--fast.
+
+"What shall I do for you?"
+
+"Take Fleda out and give her a good walk. She wants it."
+
+"I will, presently. You are weary--what shall I do to rest you?"
+
+"Nothing--" said Hugh, closing his eyes with a very placid look;--"unless
+you will put me in mind of something about heaven, Mr. Carleton."
+
+"Shall I read to you?--Baxter,--or something else?"
+
+"No--just give me something to think of while you're gone,--as you have
+done before, Mr. Carleton."
+
+"I will give you two or three of the Bible bits on that subject; they are
+but hints and indications you know--rather rays of light that stream out
+from the place than any description of it; but you have only to follow one
+of these indications and see whither it will lead you. The first I
+recollect is that one spoken to Abraham, 'Fear not--I am thy shield, and
+thy exceeding great reward.'"
+
+"Don't go any further, Mr. Carleton," said Hugh with a smile. "Fleda--do
+you remember?"
+
+They sat all silent, quite silent, all three, for nobody knew how long.
+
+"You were going to walk," said Hugh without looking at them.
+
+Fleda however did not move till a word or two from Mr. Carleton had backed
+Hugh's request; then she went.
+
+"Is she gone?" said Hugh. "Mr. Carleton, will you hand me that
+little desk."
+
+It was his own. Mr. Carleton brought it. Hugh opened it and took out a
+folded paper which he gave to Mr. Carleton, saying that he thought he
+ought to have it.
+
+"Do you know the handwriting, sir?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ah she has scratched it so. It is Fleda's."
+
+Hugh shut his eyes again and Mr. Carleton seeing that he had settled
+himself to sleep went to the window with the paper. It hardly told him
+anything he did not know before, though set in a fresh light.
+
+  "Cold blew the east wind
+  And thick fell the rain,
+  I looked for the tops
+  Of the mountains in vain;
+  Twilight was gathering
+  And dark grew the west,
+  And the woodfire's crackling
+  Toned well with the rest.
+
+  "Speak fire and tell me--
+  Thy flickering flame
+  Fell on me in years past--
+  Say, am I the same?
+  Has my face the same brightness
+  In those days it wore?--
+  My foot the same lightness
+  As it crosses the floor?
+
+  "Methinks there are changes--
+  Am weary to-night,--
+  I once was as tireless
+  As the bird on her flight;
+  My bark in full measure
+  Threw foam from the prow;--
+  Not even for pleasure
+  Would I care to move now.
+
+  "Tis not the foot only
+  That lieth thus still,--
+  I am weary in spirit,
+  I am listless in will.
+  My eye vainly peereth
+  Through the darkness, to find
+  Some object that cheereth--
+  Some light for the mind.
+
+  "What shadows come o'er me--
+  What things of the past,--
+  Bright things of my childhood
+  That fled all too fast,
+  The scenes where light roaming
+  My foot wandered free,
+  Come back through the gloamin'--
+  Come all back to me.
+
+  "The cool autumn evening,
+  The fair summer morn,--
+  The dress and the aspect
+  Some dear ones have worn,--
+  The sunshiny places--
+  The shady hill-side--
+  The words and the faces
+  That might not abide.--
+
+  "Die out little fire--
+  Ay, blacken and pine!--
+  So have paled many lights
+  That were brighter than thine.
+  I can quicken thy embers
+  Again with a breath,
+  But the others lie cold
+  In the ashes of death."
+
+Mr. Carleton had read near through the paper before Fleda came in.
+
+"I have kept you a long time, Mr. Carleton," she said coming up to the
+window; "I found aunt Lucy wanted me."
+
+But she saw with a little surprise the deepening eye which met her, and
+which shewed, she knew, the working of strong feeling. Her own eye went to
+the paper in search of explanation.
+
+"What have you there?--Oh, Mr. Carleton," she said, putting her hand over
+it,--"Please to give it to me!"
+
+Fleda's face was very much in earnest. He took the hand but did not give
+her the paper, and looked his refusal.
+
+"I am ashamed you should see that!--who gave it to you?"
+
+"You shall wreak your displeasure on no one but me," he said smiling.
+
+"But have you read it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I am very sorry!"
+
+"I am very glad, my dear Elfie."
+
+"You will think--you will think what wasn't true,--it was just a mood I
+used to get into once in a while--I used to be angry with myself for it,
+but I could not help it--one of those listless fits would take me now
+and then--"
+
+"I understand it, Elfie."
+
+"I am very sorry you should know I ever felt or wrote so."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"It was very foolish and wrong--"
+
+"Is that a reason for my not knowing it?"
+
+"No--not a good one--But you have read it now,--won't you let me have it?"
+
+"No--I shall ask for all the rest of the portfolio, Elfie," he said as he
+put it in a place of security.
+
+"Pray do not!" said Fleda most unaffectedly.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I remember Mrs. Carleton says you always have what you ask for."
+
+"Give me permission to put on your bonnet, then," said he laughingly,
+taking it from her hand.
+
+The air was very sweet, the footing pleasant. The first few steps of the
+walk were made by Fleda in silence, with eager breath and a foot that grew
+lighter as it trod.
+
+"I don't think it was a right mood of mind I had when I wrote that," she
+said. "It was morbid. But I couldn't help it.--Yet if one could keep
+possession of those words you quoted just now, I suppose one never would
+have morbid feelings, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"Perhaps not; but human nature has a weak hold of anything, and many
+things may make it weaker."
+
+"Mine is weak," said Fleda. "But it is possible to keep firm hold of those
+words, Mr. Carleton?"
+
+"Yes--by strength that is not human nature's--And after all the firm hold
+is rather that in which we are held, or ours would soon fail. The very
+hand that makes the promise its own must be nerved to grasp it. And so it
+is best, for it keeps us looking off always to the Author and Finisher of
+our faith."
+
+"I love those words," said Fleda. "But Mr. Carleton, how shall one be
+_sure_ that one has a right to those other words--those I mean that you
+told to Hugh? One cannot take the comfort of them unless one is _sure_."
+
+Her voice trembled.
+
+"My dear Elfie, the promises have many of them their _double_--stamped
+with the very same signet--and if that sealed counterpart is your own, it
+is the sure earnest and title to the whole value of the promise."
+
+"Well--in this case?" said Fleda eagerly.
+
+"In this case,--God says, 'I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great
+reward.' Now see if your own heart can give the countersign,--'_Thou art
+my portion, O Lord_!'"
+
+Fleda's head sank instantly and almost lay upon his arm.
+
+"If you have the one, my dear Elfie, the other is yours--it is the note of
+hand of the maker of the promise--sure to be honoured. And if you want
+proof here it is,--and a threefold cord is not soon broken.--'Because he
+hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on
+high, because he hath known my name. He shall call upon me, and I will
+answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour
+him. With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.'"
+
+There was a pause of some length. Fleda had lifted up her head, but walked
+along very quietly, not seeming to care to speak.
+
+"Have you the countersign, Elfie?"
+
+Fleda flashed a look at him, and only restrained herself from
+weeping again.
+
+"Yes.--But so I had then, Mr. Carleton--only sometimes I got those fits
+of feeling--I forgot it, I suppose."
+
+"When were these verses written?"
+
+"Last fall;--uncle Rolf was away, and aunt Lucy unhappy,--and I believe I
+was tired--I suppose it was that."
+
+For a matter of several rods each was busy with his own musings. But Mr.
+Carleton bethought himself.
+
+"Where are you, Elfie?"
+
+"Where am I?"
+
+"Yes--Not at Queechy?"
+
+"No indeed," said Fleda laughing. "Far enough away."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"At Paris--at the Marché des Innocens."
+
+"How did you get to Paris?"
+
+"I don't know--by a bridge of associations, I suppose, resting one end on
+last year, and the other on the time when I was eleven years old."
+
+"Very intelligible," said Mr. Carleton smiling.
+
+"Do you remember that morning, Mr. Carleton?--when you took Hugh and me to
+the Marché des Innocens?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"I have thanked you a great many times since for getting up so early
+that morning."
+
+"I think I was well paid at the time. I remember I thought I had seen one
+of the prettiest sights I had even seen in Paris."
+
+"So I thought!" said Fleda. "It has been a pleasant picture in my
+imagination ever since."
+
+There was a curious curl in the corners of Mr. Carleton's mouth which
+made Fleda look an inquiry--a look so innocently wistful that his
+gravity gave way.
+
+"My dear Elfie!" said he, "you are the very child you were then."
+
+"Am I?" said Fleda. "I dare say I am, for I feel so. I have the very same
+feeling I used to have then, that I am a child, and you taking the care of
+me into your own hands."
+
+"One half of that is true, and the other half nearly so."
+
+"How good you always were to me!" Fleda said with a sigh.
+
+"Not necessary to balance the debtor and creditor items on both sides," he
+said with a smile, "as the account bids fair to run a good while."
+
+A silence again, during which Fleda is clearly _not_ enjoying the
+landscape nor the fine weather.
+
+"Elfie,--what are you meditating?"
+
+She came back from her meditations with a very frank look.
+
+"I was thinking,--Mr. Carleton,--of your notions about female education."
+
+"Well?--"
+
+They had paused upon a rising ground. Fleda hesitated, and then looked up
+in his face.
+
+"I am afraid you will find me wanting, and when you do, will you put me in
+the way of being all you wish me to be?"
+
+Her look was ingenuous and tender, equally. He gave her no answer, except
+by the eye of grave intentness that fixed hers till she could meet it no
+longer and her own fell. Mr. Carleton recollected himself.
+
+"My dear Elfie," said he, and whatever the look had meant Elfie was at no
+loss for the tone now,--"what do you consider yourself deficient in?"
+
+Fleda spoke with a little difficulty.
+
+"I am afraid in a good many things--in general reading,--and in what are
+called accomplishments--"
+
+"You shall read as much as you please by and by," said he, "provided you
+will let me read with you; and as for the other want, Elfie, it is rather
+a source of gratification to me."
+
+Elfie very naturally asked why?
+
+"Because as soon as I have the power I shall immediately constitute myself
+your master in the arts of riding and drawing, and in any other art or
+acquisition you may take a fancy to, and give you lessons diligently."
+
+"And will there be gratification in that?" said Fleda.
+
+His answer was by a smile. But he somewhat mischievously asked her, "Will
+there not?"--and Fleda was quiet.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter L.
+
+
+
+  Friends, I sorrow not to leave ye;
+  If this life an exile be,
+  We who leave it do but journey
+  Homeward to our family.
+
+  Spanish Ballad.
+
+
+The first of April came.
+
+Mr. Rossitur had made up his mind not to abide at Queechy, which only held
+him now by the frail thread of Hugh's life. Mr. Carleton knew this, and
+had even taken some steps towards securing for him a situation in the West
+Indies. But it was unknown to Fleda; she had not heard her uncle say
+anything on the subject since she came home; and though aware that their
+stay was a doubtful matter, she still thought it might be as well to have
+the garden in order. Philetus could not be trusted to do everything wisely
+of his own head, and even some delicate jobs of hand could not be safely
+left to his skill; if the garden was to make any headway Fleda's head and
+hand must both be there, she knew. So as the spring opened she used to
+steal away from the house every morning for an hour or two, hardly letting
+her friends know what she was about, to make sure that peas and potatoes
+and radishes and lettuce were in the right places at the right times, and
+to see that the later and more delicate vegetables were preparing for. She
+took care to have this business well over before the time that Mr.
+Carleton ever arrived from the Pool.
+
+One morning she was busy in dressing the strawberry beds, forking up the
+ground between the plants and filling the vacancies that the severe winter
+or some irregularities of fall dressing had made. Mr. Skillcorn was
+rendering a somewhat inefficient help, or perhaps amusing himself with
+seeing how she worked. The little old silver-grey hood was bending down
+over the strawberries, and the fork was going at a very energetic rate.
+
+"Philetus--"
+
+"Marm!"
+
+"Will you bring me that bunch of strawberry plants that lies at the corner
+of the beds, in the walk?--and my trowel?"
+
+"I will!--" said Mr. Skillcorn.
+
+It was another hand however that brought them and laid them beside her;
+but Fleda very intent upon her work and hidden under her close hood did
+not find it out. She went on busily putting in the plants as she found
+room for them, and just conscious, as she thought, that Philetus was still
+standing at her side she called upon him from time to time, or merely
+stretched out her hand, for a fresh plant as she had occasion for it.
+
+"Philetus," she said at length, raising her voice a little that it might
+win to him round the edge of her hood without turning her face,--"I wish
+you would get the ground ready for that other planting of potatoes--you
+needn't stay to help me any longer."
+
+"'Tain't me, I guess," said the voice of Philetus on the other side of
+her.
+
+Fleda looked in astonishment to make sure that it really was Mr. Skillcorn
+proceeding along the garden path in that quarter, and turning jumped up
+and dropped her trowel and fork, to have her hands otherwise occupied. Mr.
+Skillcorn walked off leisurely towards the potato ground, singing to
+himself in a kind of consolatory aside,--
+
+  "I cocked up my beaver, and who but I!--
+  The lace in my hat was so gallant and so gay,
+  That I flourished like a king in his own coun_tray_."
+
+"There is one of your countrymen that is an odd variety, certainly," said
+Mr. Carleton, looking after him with a very comic expression of eye.
+
+"Is he not!" said Fleda. "And hardly a common one. There never was a line
+more mathematically straight than the course of Philetus's ideas; they
+never diverge, I think, to the right hand or the left, a jot from his own
+self-interest."
+
+"You will be an invaluable help to me, Elfie, if you can read my English
+friends as closely."
+
+"I am afraid you will not let me come as close to them," said Fleda
+laughing.
+
+"Perhaps not. I shouldn't like to pay too high a premium for the
+knowledge. How is Hugh, to-day?"
+
+Fleda answered with a quick change of look and voice that he was
+much as usual.
+
+"My mother has written me that she will be here by the Europa, which is
+due to-morrow--I must set off for New York this afternoon; therefore I
+came so early to Queechy."
+
+Fleda was instinctively pulling off her gardening gloves, as they walked
+towards the house.
+
+"Aunt Miriam wants to see you, Mr. Carleton--she begged I would ask you to
+come there some time--"
+
+"With great pleasure--shall we go there now, Elfie?"
+
+"I will be ready in five minutes."
+
+Mrs. Rossitur was alone in the breakfast-room when they went in. Hugh she
+reported was asleep, and would be just ready to see Mr. Carleton by the
+time they got back. They stood a few minutes talking, and then Fleda went
+to get ready.
+
+Both pair of eyes followed her as she left the room and then met with
+perfect understanding.
+
+"Will you give your child to me, Mrs. Rossitur?" said the gentleman.
+
+"With all my heart!" exclaimed Mrs. Rossitur bursting into tears,--"even
+if I were left alone entirely--"
+
+Her agitation was uncontrolled for a minute, and then she said, with
+feeling seemingly too strong to be kept in,
+
+"If I were only sure of meeting her in heaven, I could be content to be
+without her till then!--"
+
+"What is in the way, my dear madam?" said Mr. Carleton, with a gentle
+sympathy that touched the very spring he meant it should. Mrs. Rossitur
+waited a minute, but it was only till tears would let her speak, and then
+said like a child,--
+
+"Oh, it is all darkness!--"
+
+"Except this," said he, gently and clearly, "that Jesus Christ is a
+sun and a shield; and those that put themselves at his feet are safe
+from all fear, and they who go to him for light shall complain of
+darkness no more."
+
+"But I do not know how--"
+
+"Ask him and he will tell you."
+
+"But I am unworthy even to look up towards him," said Mrs. Rossitur,
+struggling, it seemed, between doubts and wishes.
+
+"He knows that, and yet he has bid you come to him. He knows that,--and
+knowing it, he has taken your responsibility and paid your debt, and
+offers you now a clean discharge, if you will take it at his hand;--and
+for the other part of this unworthiness, that blood cannot do away, blood
+has brought the remedy--'Shall we who are evil give good things to our
+children, and shall not our Father which is in heaven give his Holy Spirit
+to them that ask him?'"
+
+"But must I do nothing?" said Mrs. Rossitur, when she had remained quiet
+with her face in her hands for a minute or two after he had done speaking.
+
+"Nothing but be willing--be willing to have Christ in all his offices, as
+your Teacher, your King, and your Redeemer--give yourself to him, dear
+Mrs. Rossitur, and he will take care of the rest."
+
+"I am willing!" she exclaimed. Fresh tears came, and came freely. Mr.
+Carleton said no more, till hearing some noise of opening and shutting
+doors above stairs Mrs. Rossitur hurriedly left the room, and Fleda came
+in by the other entrance.
+
+"May I take you a little out of the way, Mr. Carleton?" she said when they
+had passed through the Deepwater settlement.--"I have a message to carry
+to Mrs. Elster--a poor woman out here beyond the lake. It is not a
+disagreeable place."
+
+"And what if it were?"
+
+"I should not perhaps have asked you to go with me," said Fleda a little
+doubtfully.
+
+"You may take me where you will, Elfie," he said gently. "I hope to do as
+much by you some day."
+
+Fleda looked up at the piece of elegance beside her, and thought what a
+change must have come over him if _he_ would visit poor places. He was
+silent and grave however, and so was she, till they arrived at the house
+they were going to.
+
+Certainly it was not a disagreeable place. Barby's much less strong minded
+sister had at least a good share of her practical nicety. The little board
+path to the door was clean and white still, with possibly a trifle less
+brilliant effect. The room and its old inhabitants were very comfortable
+and tidy; the patchwork counterpane as gay as ever. Mrs. Elster was alone,
+keeping company with a snug little wood fire, which was near as much
+needed in that early spring weather as it had been during the winter.
+
+Mr. Carleton had come back from his abstraction, and stood taking half
+unconscious note of these things, while Fleda was delivering her message
+to the old woman. Mrs. Elster listened to her implicitly with every now
+and then an acquiescing nod or ejaculation, but so soon as Fleda had said
+her say she burst out, with a voice that had never known the mufflings of
+delicacy and was now pitched entirely beyond its owner's ken. Looking hard
+at Mr. Carleton,
+
+"Fleda!--Is _this_ the gentleman that's to be your--_husband?_"
+
+The last word elevated and brought out with emphatic distinctness of
+utterance.
+
+If the demand had been whether the gentleman in question was a follower of
+Mahomet, it would hardly have been more impossible for Fleda to give an
+affirmative answer; but Mr. Carleton laughed and bringing his face a
+little nearer the old crone, answered,
+
+"So she has promised, ma'am."
+
+[Illustration: "Is this the gentleman that's to be your husband?"]
+
+It was curious to see the lines of the old woman's face relax as she
+looked at him.
+
+"He's--worthy of you!--as far as looks goes," she said in the same key as
+before, apostrophizing Fleda who had drawn back, but not stirring her eyes
+from Mr. Carleton all the time. And then she added to him with a little
+satisfied nod, and in a very decided tone of information,
+
+"She will make you a good wife!"
+
+"Because she has made a good friend?" said Mr. Carleton quietly. "Will you
+let me be a friend too?"
+
+He had turned the old lady's thoughts into a golden channel, whence, as
+she was an American, they had no immediate issue in words; and Fleda and
+Mr. Carleton left the house without anything more.
+
+Fleda felt nervous. But Mr. Carleton's first words were as coolly and as
+gravely spoken as if they had just come out from a philosophical lecture;
+and with an immediate spring of relief she enjoyed every step of the way
+and every word of the conversation which was kept up with great life, till
+they reached Mrs. Plumfield's door.
+
+No one was in the sitting-room. Fleda left Mr. Carleton there and passed
+gently into the inner apartment, the door of which was standing ajar.
+
+But her heart absolutely leaped into her mouth, for Dr. Quackenboss and
+Mr. Olmney were there on either side of her aunt's bed. Fleda came forward
+and shook hands.
+
+"This is quite a meeting of friends," said the doctor blandly, yet with a
+perceptible shading of the whilome broad sunshine of his
+face.--"Your--a--aunt, my dear Miss Ringgan,--is in a most extraordinary
+state of mind!"
+
+Fleda was glad to hide her face against her aunt's and asked her
+how she did.
+
+"Dr. Quackenboss thinks it extraordinary, Fleda," said the old lady with
+her usual cheerful sedateness,--"that one who has trusted God and had
+constant experience of his goodness and faithfulness for forty years
+should not doubt him at the end of it."
+
+"You have no doubt--of any kind, Mrs. Plumfield?" said the clergyman.
+
+"Not the shadow of a doubt!" was the hearty, steady reply.
+
+"You mistake, my dear madam," said Dr. Quackenboss,--"pardon me--it is not
+that--I would be understood to say, merely, that I do not comprehend how
+such--a--such security--can be attained respecting what seems
+so--a--elevated--and difficult to know."
+
+"Only by believing," said Mrs. Plumfield with a very calm smile. "'He that
+believeth on him shall not be ashamed;'--'shall _not_ be ashamed!'" she
+repeated slowly.
+
+Dr. Quackenboss looked at Fleda, who kept her eyes fixed upon her aunt.
+
+"But it seems to me--I beg pardon--perhaps I am arrogant--" he said with a
+little bow,--"but it appears to me almost--in a manner--almost
+presumptuous, not to be a little doubtful in such a matter until the time
+comes. Am I--do you disapprove of me, Mr. Olmney?"
+
+Mr. Olmney silently referred him for his answer to the person he had first
+addressed, who had closed her eyes while he was speaking.
+
+"Sir," she said, opening them,--"it can't be presumption to obey God, and
+he tells me to rejoice. And I do--I do!--'Let all those that love thee
+rejoice in thee and be glad in thee!'--But mind!" she added energetically,
+fixing her strong grey eye upon him--"he does not tell _you_ to
+rejoice--do not think it--not while you stand aloof from his terms of
+peace. Take God at his word, and be happy;--but if not, you have nothing
+to do with the song that I sing!"
+
+The doctor stared at her till she had done speaking, and then slunk out
+of her range of vision behind the curtains of the bed-post. Not
+silenced however.
+
+"But--a--Mr. Olmney," said he hesitating--"don't you think that there is
+in general--a--a becoming modesty, in--a--in people that have done
+wrong, as we all have,--putting off being sure until they are so? It
+seems so to me!"
+
+"Come here, Dr. Quackenboss," said aunt Miriam.
+
+She waited till he came to her side, and then taking his hand and looking
+at him very kindly, she said,
+
+"Sir, forty years ago I found in the Bible, as you say, that I was a
+sinner, and that drove me to look for something else. I found then God's
+promise that if I would give my dependence entirely to the substitute he
+had provided for me and yield my heart to his service, he would for
+Christ's sake hold me quit of all my debts and be my father, and make me
+his child. And, sir, I did it. I abhor every other dependence--the things
+you count good in me I reckon but filthy rags. At the same time, I know
+that ever since that day, forty years ago, I have lived in his service and
+tried to live to his glory. And now, sir, shall I disbelieve his promise?
+do you think he would be pleased if I did?"
+
+The doctor's mouth was stopped, for once. He drew back as soon as he could
+and said not another word.
+
+Before anybody had broken the silence Seth came in; and after shaking
+hands with Fleda, startled her by asking whether that was not Mr. Carleton
+in the other room.
+
+"Yes," Fleda said,--"he came to see aunt Miriam."
+
+"Ain't you well enough to see him, mother?"
+
+"Quite--and very happy," said she.
+
+Seth immediately went back and invited him in. Fleda dared not look up
+while the introductions were passing,--of "the Rev. Mr. Olmney," and of
+"Dr. Quackenboss,"--the former of whom Mr. Carleton took cordially by the
+hand, while Dr. Quackenboss conceiving that his hand must be as
+acceptable, made his salutation with an indescribable air at once of
+attempted gracefulness and ingratiation. Fleda saw the whole in the
+advancing line of the doctor's person, a vision of which crossed her
+downcast eye. She drew back then, for Mr. Carleton came where she was
+standing to take her aunt's hand; Seth had absolutely stayed his way
+before to make the said introductions.
+
+Mrs. Plumfield was little changed by years or disease since he had seen
+her. There was somewhat more of a look of bodily weakness than there used
+to be; but the dignified, strong-minded expression of the face was even
+heightened; eye and brow were more pure and unclouded in their
+steadfastness. She looked very earnestly at her visiter and then with
+evident pleasure from the manner of his look and greeting. Fleda watched
+her eye softening with a gratified expression and fixed upon him as he was
+gently talking to her.
+
+Mr. Olmney presently came round to take leave, promising to see her
+another time, and passing Fleda with a frank grave pressure of the hand
+which gave her some pain. He and Seth left the room. Fleda was hardly
+conscious that Dr. Quackenboss was still standing at the foot of the bed
+making the utmost use of his powers of observation. He could use little
+else, for Mr. Carleton and Mrs. Plumfield after a few words on each side,
+had as it were by common consent come to a pause. The doctor, when a
+sufficient time had made him fully sensible of this, walked up to Fleda,
+who wished heartily at the moment that she could have presented the
+reverse end of the magnet to him. Perhaps however it was that very thing
+which by a perverse sort of attraction drew him towards her.
+
+"I suppose--a--we may conclude," said he with a somewhat saturnine
+expression of mischief,--that Miss Ringgan contemplates forsaking the
+agricultural line before a great while."
+
+"I have not given up my old habits, sir," said Fleda, a good deal vexed.
+
+"No--I suppose not--but Queechy air is not so well suited for them--other
+skies will prove more genial," he said; she could not help thinking,
+pleased at her displeasure.
+
+"What is the fault of Queechy air, sir?" said Mr. Carleton,
+approaching them.
+
+"Sir!" said the doctor, exceedingly taken aback, though the words had
+been spoken in the quietest manner possible,--'it--a--it has no fault,
+sir,--that I am particularly aware of--it is perfectly salubrious.
+Mrs. Plumfield, I will bid you good-day;--I--a--I _hope_ you will get
+well again!"
+
+"I hope not, sir!" said aunt Miriam, in the same clear hearty tones which
+had answered him before.
+
+The doctor took his departure and made capital of his interview with Mr.
+Carleton; who he affirmed he could tell by what he had seen of him was a
+very deciduous character, and not always conciliating in his manners.
+
+Fleda waited with a little anxiety for what was to follow the doctor's
+leave-taking.
+
+It was with a very softened eye that aunt Miriam looked at the two who
+were left, clasping Fleda's hand again; and it was with a very softened
+voice that she next spoke.
+
+"Do you remember our last meeting, sir?"
+
+"I remember it well," he said.
+
+"Fleda tells me you are a changed man since that time?"
+
+He answered only by a slight and grave bow.
+
+"Mr. Carleton," said the old lady,--"I am a dying woman--and this child is
+the dearest thing in the world to me after my own,--and hardly after
+him.--Will you pardon me--will you bear with me, if that I may die in
+peace, I say, sir, what else it would not become me to say?--and it is for
+her sake."
+
+"Speak to me freely as you would to her," he said with a look that gave
+her full permission.
+
+Fleda had drawn close and hid her face in her aunt's neck. Aunt Miriam's
+hand moved fondly over her cheek and brow for a minute or two in silence;
+her eye resting there too.
+
+"Mr. Carleton, this child is to belong to you--how will you guide her?"
+
+"By the gentlest paths," he said with a smile.
+
+A whispered remonstrance from Fleda to her aunt had no effect.
+
+"Will her best interests be safe in your hands?"
+
+"How shall I resolve you of that, Mrs. Plumfield?" he said gravely.
+
+"Will you help her to mind her mother's prayer and keep herself unspotted
+from the world?"
+
+"As I trust she will help me."
+
+A rogue may answer questions, but an eye that has never known the shadow
+of double-dealing makes no doubtful discoveries of itself. Mrs. Plumfield
+read it and gave it her very thorough respect.
+
+"Mr. Carleton--pardon me, sir,--I do not doubt you--but I remember hearing
+long ago that you were rich and great in the world--it is dangerous for a
+Christian to be so--Can she keep in your grandeur the simplicity of heart
+and life she has had at Queechy?"
+
+"May I remind you of your own words, my dear madam? By the blessing of
+God all things are possible. These things you speak of are not in
+themselves evil; if the mind be set on somewhat else, they are little
+beside a larger storehouse of material to work with--an increased
+stewardship to account for."
+
+"She has been taking care of others all her life," said aunt Miriam
+tenderly;--"it is time she was taken care of; and these feet are very
+unfit for rough paths; but I would rather she should go on struggling as
+she has done with difficulties and live and die in poverty, than that the
+lustre of her heavenly inheritance should be tarnished even a little.--I
+would, my darling!--"
+
+"But the alternative is not, so," said Mr. Carleton with gentle grace,
+touching Fleda's hand who he saw was a good deal disturbed. "Do not make
+her afraid of me, Mrs. Plumfield."
+
+"I do not believe I need," said aunt Miriam, "and I am sure I could
+not,--but sir, you will forgive me?"
+
+"No madam--that is not possible."
+
+"One cannot stand where I do," said the old lady, "without learning a
+little the comparative value of things; and I seek my child's good,--that
+is my excuse. I could not be satisfied to take her testimony--"
+
+"Take mine, madam," said Mr. Carleton. "I have learned the comparative
+value of things too; and I will guard her highest interests as carefully
+as I will every other--as earnestly as you can desire."
+
+"I thank you, sir," said the old lady gratefully. "I am sure of it. I
+shall leave her in good hands. I wanted this assurance. And if ever there
+was a tender plant that was not fitted to grow on the rough side of the
+world--I think this is one," said she, kissing earnestly the face that yet
+Fleda did not dare to lift up.
+
+Mr. Carleton did not say what he thought. He presently took kind leave of
+the old lady and went into the next room, where Fleda soon rejoined him
+and they set off homewards.
+
+Fleda was quietly crying all the way down the hill. At the foot of the
+hill Mr. Carleton resolutely slackened his pace.
+
+"I have one consolation," he said, "my dear Elfie--you will have the less
+to leave for me."
+
+She put her hand with a quick motion upon his, and roused her self.
+
+"She is a beautiful rebuke to unbelief. But she is hardly to be mourned
+for, Elfie."
+
+"Oh I was not crying for aunt Miriam," said Fleda.
+
+"For what then?" he said gently.
+
+"Myself."
+
+"That needs explanation," he said in the same tone. "Let me have
+it, Elfie."
+
+"O--I was thinking of several things," said Fleda, not exactly wishing to
+give the explanation.
+
+"Too vague," said Mr. Carleton smiling. "Trust me with a little more of
+your mind, Elfie."
+
+Fleda glanced up at him, half smiling, and yet with filling eyes, and then
+as usual, yielded to the winning power of the look that met her.
+
+"I was thinking," she said, keeping her head carefully down,--"of some of
+the things you and aunt Miriam were saying just now,--and--how good for
+nothing I am."
+
+"In what respect?" said Mr. Carleton with praiseworthy gravity.
+
+Fleda hesitated, and he pressed the matter no further; but more unwilling
+to displease him than herself she presently went on, with some difficulty;
+wording what she had to say with as much care as she could.
+
+"I was thinking--how gratitude--or not gratitude alone--but how one can be
+full of the desire to please another,--a fellow-creature,--and find it
+constantly easy to do or bear anything for that purpose; and how slowly
+and coldly duty has to move alone in the direction where it should be the
+swiftest and warmest."
+
+She knew he would take her words as simply as she said them; she was not
+disappointed. He was silent a minute and then said gravely,--
+
+"Is this a late discovery, Elfie?"
+
+"No--only I was realizing it strongly just now."
+
+"It is a complaint we may all make. The remedy is, not to love less what
+we know, but to know better that of which we are in ignorance. We will be
+helps and not hindrances to each other, Elfie."
+
+"You have said that before," said Fleda still keeping her head down.
+
+"What?"
+
+"About my being a help to you!"
+
+"It will not be the first time," said he smiling,--"nor the second. Your
+little hand first held up a glass to gather the scattered rays of truth
+that could not warm me into a centre where they must burn."
+
+"Very innocently," said Fleda with a little unsteady feeling of voice.
+
+"Very innocently," said Mr. Carleton smiling. "A veritable lens could
+hardly have been more unconscious of its work or more pure of design."
+
+"I do not think that was quite so either, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda.
+
+"It was so, my dear Elfie, and your present speech is nothing against it.
+This power of example is always unconsciously wielded; the medium ceases
+to be clear so soon as it is made anything but a medium. The bits of truth
+you aimed at me wittingly would have been nothing if they had not come
+through that medium."
+
+"Then apparently one's prime efforts ought to be directed to oneself."
+
+"One's first efforts, certainly. Your silent example was the first thing
+that moved me."
+
+"Silent example!" said Fleda catching her breath a little. "Mine ought to
+be very good, for I can never do good in any other way."
+
+"You used to talk pretty freely to me."
+
+"It wasn't my fault, I am certain," said Fleda half laughing. "Besides, I
+was sure of my ground. But in general I never can speak to people about
+what will do them any good."
+
+"Yet whatever be the power of silent example there are often times when a
+word is of incalculable importance."
+
+"I know it," said Fleda earnestly,--"I have felt it very often, and
+grieved that I could not say it, even at the very moment when I knew it
+was wanting."
+
+"Is that right, Elfie?"
+
+"No," said Fleda, with quick watering eyes,--"It is not right at
+all;--but it is constitutional with me. I never can talk to other people
+of what concerns my own thoughts and feelings."
+
+"But this concerns other people's thoughts and feelings."
+
+"Yes, but there is an implied revelation of my own."
+
+"Do you expect to include me in the denomination of 'other people'?"
+
+"I don't know," said Fleda laughing.
+
+"Do you wish it?"
+
+Fleda looked down and up, and coloured, and said she didn't know.
+
+"I will teach you," said he smiling.
+
+The rest of the day by both was given to Hugh.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LI.
+
+
+
+  O what is life but a sum of love,
+    And death but to lose it all?
+  Weeds be for those that are left behind,
+    And not for those that fall!
+
+  Milnes.
+
+"Here's something come, Fleda," said Barby walking into the sick room one
+morning a few days afterwards,--"a great bag of something--more than you
+can eat up in a fortnight--it's for Hugh."
+
+"It's extraordinary that anybody should send _me_ a great bag of anything
+eatable," said Hugh.
+
+"Where did it come from?" said Fleda.
+
+"Philetus fetched it--he found it down to Mr. Sampion's when he went with
+the sheep-skins."
+
+"How do you know it's for me?" said Hugh.
+
+"'Cause it's written on, as plain as a pikestaff. I guess it's a
+mistake though."
+
+"Why?" said Fleda; "and what is it?"
+
+"O I don't much think 'twas meant for him," said Barby. "It's oysters."
+
+"Oysters!"
+
+"Yes--come out and look at 'em--you never see such fine fellows. I've
+heerd say," said Barby abstractedly as Fleda followed her out and she
+displayed to view some magnificent Ostraceans,--"I've heerd say that an
+English shilling was worth two American ones, but I never understood it
+rightly till now."
+
+To all intents and purposes those were English oysters, and worth twice as
+much as any others Fleda secretly confessed.
+
+That evening, up in the sick room,--it was quite evening, and all the
+others of the family were taking rest or keeping Mr. Rossitur company
+down stairs,--Fleda was carefully roasting some of the same oysters for
+Hugh's supper. She had spread out a glowing bed of coals on the hearth,
+and there lay four or five of the big bivalves, snapping and sputtering in
+approbation of their quarters in a most comfortable manner; and Fleda
+standing before the fire tended them with a double kind of pleasure. From
+one friend, and for another, those were most odorous oysters. Hugh sat
+watching them and her, the same in happy simplicity that he had been at
+eleven years old.
+
+"How pleasant those oysters smell," said he. "Fleda, they remind me so
+of the time when you and I used to roast oysters in Mrs. Renney's room
+for lunch--do you recollect?--and sometimes in the evening when
+everybody was gone out, you know; and what an airing we used to have to
+give the dining-room afterwards. How we used to enjoy them, Fleda--you
+and I all alone."
+
+"Yes," said Fleda in a tone of doubtful enjoyment. She was shielding her
+face with a paper and making self-sacrificing efforts to persuade a large
+oyster-shell to stand so on the coals as to keep the juice.
+
+"Don't!" said Hugh;--"I would rather the oysters should burn than you. Mr.
+Carleton wouldn't thank me for letting you do so."
+
+"Never mind!" said Fleda arranging the oysters to her satisfaction,--"he
+isn't here to see. Now Hugh, my dear--these are ready as soon as I am."
+
+"I am ready," said Hugh. "How long it is since we had a roast
+oyster, Fleda!"
+
+"They look good, don't they?"
+
+A little stand was brought up between them with the bread and butter and
+the cups; and Fleda opened oysters and prepared tea for Hugh, with her
+nicest, gentlest, busiest of hands; making every bit to be twice as sweet,
+for her sympathizing eyes and loving smile and pleasant word commenting.
+She shared the meal with him, but her own part was as slender as his and
+much less thought of. His enjoyment was what she enjoyed, though it was
+with a sad twinge of alloy which changed her face whenever it was where he
+could not see it; when turned upon him it was only bright and
+affectionate, and sometimes a little too tender; but Fleda was too good a
+nurse to let that often appear.
+
+"Mr. Carleton did not bargain for your opening his oysters, Fleda. How
+kind it was of him to send them."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How long will he be gone, Fleda?"
+
+"I don't know--he didn't say. I don't believe many days."
+
+Hugh was silent a little while she was putting away the stand and the
+oyster-shells. Then she came and sat down by him.
+
+"You have burnt yourself over those things," said he sorrowfully;--"you
+-shouldn't have done it. It is not right."
+
+"Dear Hugh," said Fleda lightly, laying her head on his shoulder,--"I
+like to burn myself for you."
+
+"That's just the way you have been doing all your life."
+
+"Hush!" she said softly.
+
+"It is true,--for me and for everybody else. It is time you were taken
+better care of, dear Fleda."
+
+"Don't, dear Hugh!"
+
+"I am right though," said he. "You are pale and worn now with waiting upon
+me and thinking of me. It is time you were gone. But I think it is well I
+am going too, for what should I do in the world without you, Fleda?"
+
+Fleda was crying now, intensely though quietly; but Hugh went on with
+feeling as calm as it was deep.
+
+"What should I have done all these years?--or any of us? How you have
+tired yourself for everybody--in the garden and in the kitchen and with
+Earl Douglass--how we could let you I don't know, but I believe we could
+not help it."
+
+Fleda put her hand upon his mouth. But he took it away and went on--
+
+"How often I have seen you sleeping all the evening on the sofa with a
+pale face, tired out--Dear Fleda," said he kissing her cheek, "I am glad
+there's to be an end put to it. And all the day you went about with such a
+bright face that it made mother and me happy to look at you; and I knew
+then, many a time, it was for our sakes--
+
+"Why do you cry so, Fleda? I like to think of it, and to talk of it, now
+that I know you won't do so any more. I knew the whole truth, and it went
+to the bottom of my heart; but I could do nothing but love you--I did
+that!--Don't cry so, Fleda!--you ought not.--You have been the sunshine of
+the house. My spirit never was so strong as yours; I should have been
+borne to the ground, I know, in all these years, if it had not been for
+you; and mother--you have been her life."
+
+"You have been tired too," Fleda whispered.
+
+"Yes at the saw-mill. And then you would come up there through the sun to
+look at me, and your smile would make me forget everything sorrowful for
+the rest of the day--except that I couldn't help you."
+
+"Oh you did--you did--you helped me always, Hugh."
+
+"Not much. I couldn't help you when you were sewing for me and father till
+your fingers and eyes were aching, and you never would own that you were
+anything but 'a little' tired--it made my heart ache. Oh I knew it all,
+dear Fleda.--I am very, very glad that you will have somebody to take care
+of you now that will not let you burn your fingers for him or anybody
+else. It makes me happy!"
+
+"You make me very unhappy, dear Hugh."
+
+"I don't mean it," said Hugh tenderly. "I don't believe there is anybody
+else in the world that I could be so satisfied to leave you with."
+
+Fleda made no answer to that. She sat up and tried to recover herself.
+
+"I hope he will come back in time," said Hugh, settling himself back in
+the easy-chair with a weary look, and closing his eyes.
+
+"In time for what?"
+
+"To see me again."
+
+"My dear Hugh!--he will to be sure, I hope."
+
+"He must make haste," said Hugh. "But I want to see him again very
+much, Fleda."
+
+"For anything in particular?"
+
+"No--only because I love him. I want to see him once more."
+
+Hugh slumbered; and Fleda by his side wept tears of mixed feeling till she
+was tired.
+
+Hugh was right. But nobody else knew it, and his brother was not sent for.
+
+It was about a week after this, when one night a horse and wagon came up
+to the back of the house from the road, the gentleman who had been driving
+leading the horse. It was late, long past Mr. Skillcorn's usual hour of
+retiring, but some errand of business had kept him abroad and he stood
+there looking on. The stars gave light enough.
+
+"Can you fasten my horse where he may stand a little while, sir? without
+taking him out?"
+
+"I guess I can," replied Philetus, with reasonable confidence,--"if
+there's a rope's end some place--"
+
+And forthwith he went back into the house to seek it. The gentleman
+patiently holding his horse meanwhile, till he came out.
+
+"How is Mr. Hugh to-night?"
+
+"Well--he ain't just so smart, they say," responded Philetus, insinuating
+the rope's end as awkwardly as possible among the horse's head-gear,--"I
+believe he's dying."
+
+Instead of going round now to the front of the house, Mr. Carleton knocked
+gently at the kitchen door and asked the question anew of Barby.
+
+"He's--Come in, sir, if you please," she said, opening wide the door for
+him to enter,--"I'll tell 'em you're here."
+
+"Do not disturb any one for me," said he.
+
+"I won't disturb 'em!" said Barby, in a tone a little though unconsciously
+significant.
+
+Mr. Carleton neglected the chair she had placed for him, and remained
+standing by the mantelpiece, thinking of the scenes of his early
+introduction to that kitchen. It wore the same look it had done then;
+under Barby's rule it was precisely the same thing it had been under
+Cynthia's.--The passing years seemed a dream, and the passing generations
+of men a vanity, before the old house more abiding than they. He stood
+thinking of the people he had seen gathered by that fireplace and the
+little household fairy whose childish ministrations had given such a
+beauty to the scene,--when a very light step crossed the painted floor and
+she was there again before him. She did not speak a word; she stood still
+a moment trying for words, and then put her hand upon Mr. Carleton's arm
+and gently drew him out of the room with her.
+
+The family were all gathered in the room to which she brought him. Mr.
+Rossitur, as soon as he saw Mr. Carleton come in, shrunk back where he
+could be a little shielded by the bed-post. Marion's face was hid on the
+foot of the bed. Mrs. Rossitur did not move. Leaving Mr. Carleton on the
+near side of the bed Fleda went round to the place she seemed to have
+occupied before, at Hugh's right hand; and they were all still, for he was
+in a little doze, lying with his eyes closed, and the face as gently and
+placidly sweet as it had been in his boyhood. Perhaps Mr. Rossitur looked
+at it; but no other did just then, except Mr. Carleton. His eye rested
+nowhere else. The breathing of an infant could not be more gentle; the
+face of an angel not more peacefully at rest. "So he giveth his beloved
+sleep,"--thought the gentleman, as he gazed on the brow from which all
+care, if care there had ever been, seemed to have taken flight.
+
+Not yet--not quite yet; for Hugh suddenly opened his eyes and without
+seeing anybody else, said,
+
+"Father--"
+
+Mr. Rossitur left the bed-post and came close to where Fleda was standing,
+and leaning forward, touched his son's head, but did not speak.
+
+"Father--" said Hugh, in a voice so gentle that it seemed as if strength
+must be failing,--"what will you do when you come to lie here?"
+
+Mr. Rossitur put his hands to his face.
+
+"Father--I must speak now if I never did before--once I must speak to
+you,--what will you do when you come to lie where I do?--what will you
+trust to?"
+
+The person addressed was as motionless as a statue. Hugh did not move his
+eyes from him.
+
+"Father, I will be a living warning and example to you, for I know that
+I shall live in your memory--you shall remember what I say to you--that
+Jesus Christ is a dear friend to those that trust in him, and if he is
+not yours it will be because you will not let him. You shall remember my
+testimony, that he can make death sweeter than life--in his presence is
+fulness of joy--at his right hand there are pleasures for evermore. He
+is better,--he is more to me,--even than you all, and he will be to you
+a better friend than the poor child you are losing, though you do not
+know it now. It is he that has made my life in this world happy--only
+he--and I have nothing to look to but him in the world I am going to.
+But what will you do in the hour of death, as I am, if he isn't your
+friend, father?"
+
+Mr. Rossitur's frame swayed, like a tree that one sees shaken by a distant
+wind, but he said nothing.
+
+"Will you remember me happily, father, if you come to die without having
+done as I begged you? Will you think of me in heaven and not try to come
+there too? Father, will you be a Christian?--will you not?--for my
+sake--for _little Hugh's_ sake, as you used to call him?--Father?--"
+
+Mr. Rossitur knelt down and hid his face in the coverings; but he did not
+utter a word.
+
+Hugh's eye dwelt on him for a moment with unspeakable expression, and his
+lip trembled. He said no more; he closed his eyes; and for a little time
+there was nothing to be heard but the sobs which could not be restrained,
+from all but the two gentlemen. It probably oppressed Hugh, for after a
+while he said with a weary sigh and without opening his eyes,
+
+"I wish somebody would sing."
+
+Nobody answered at first.
+
+"Sing what, dear Hugh?" said Fleda, putting aside her tears and leaning
+her face towards him.
+
+"Something that speaks of my want," said Hugh.
+
+"What do you want, dear Hugh?"
+
+"Only Jesus Christ," he said with a half smile.
+
+But they were silent as death. Fleda's face was in her hands and her
+utmost efforts after self-control wrought nothing but tears. The stillness
+had lasted a little while, when very softly and sweetly the notes of a
+hymn floated to their ears, and though they floated on and filled the
+room, the voice was so nicely modulated that its waves of sweetness broke
+gently upon the nearest ear.
+
+  "Jesus, the sinner's friend, to Thee,
+  Lost and undone, for aid I flee;
+  Weary of earth, myself, and sin,
+  Open thine arms and take me in.
+
+  "Pity and save my sin-sick soul,--
+  'Tis thou alone canst make me whole;
+  Dark, till in me thine image shine,
+  And lost I am, till thou art mine.
+
+  "At length I own it cannot be,
+  That I should fit myself for thee,
+  Here now to thee I all resign,--
+  Thine is the work, and only thine.
+
+  "What shall I say thy grace to move?--
+  Lord, I am sin, but thou art love!
+  I give up every plea beside,--
+  Lord, I am lost,--but thou hast died!"
+
+They were still again after the voice had ceased; almost perfectly still;
+though tears might be pouring, as indeed they were from every eye, there
+was no break to the silence, other than a half-caught sob now and then
+from a kneeling figure whose head was in Marion's lap.
+
+"Who was that?" said Hugh, when the singer had been silent a minute.
+
+Nobody answered immediately; and then Mr. Carleton bending over him, said,
+
+"Don't you know me, dear Hugh?"
+
+"Is it Mr. Carleton?"
+
+Hugh looked pleased, and clasped both of his hands upon Guy's which he
+laid upon his breast. For a second he closed his eyes and was silent.
+
+"Was it you sang?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You never sang for me before," he remarked.
+
+He was silent again.
+
+"Are you going to take Fleda away?"
+
+"By and by," said Mr. Carleton gently.
+
+"Will you take good care of her?"
+
+Mr. Carleton hesitated, and then said, so low that it could reach but one
+other person's ear,
+
+"What hand and life can."
+
+"I know it," said Hugh. "I am very glad you will have her. You will not
+let her tire herself any more."
+
+Whatever became of Fleda's tears she had driven them away and leaning
+forward she touched her cheek to his, saying with a clearness and
+sweetness of voice that only intensity of feeling could have given her at
+the moment,
+
+"I am not tired, dear Hugh."
+
+Hugh clasped one arm round her neck and kissed her--again and again,
+seeming unable to say anything to her in any other way; still keeping his
+hold of Mr. Carleton's hand.
+
+"I give all my part of her to you," he said at length. "Mr. Carleton, I
+shall see both of you in heaven?"
+
+"I hope so," was the answer, in those very calm and clear tones that have
+a singular effect in quieting emotion, while they indicate anything but
+the want of it.
+
+"I am the best off of you all," Hugh said.
+
+He lay still for awhile with shut eyes. Fleda had withdrawn herself from
+his arms and stood at his side, with a bowed head, but perfectly quiet. He
+still held Mr. Carleton's hand, as something he did not want to part with.
+
+"Fleda," said he, "who is that crying?--Mother--come here."
+
+Mr. Carleton gave place to her. Hugh pulled her down to him till her face
+lay upon his, and folded both his arms around her.
+
+"Mother," he said softly, "will you meet me in heaven?--say yes."
+
+"How can I, dear Hugh?"
+
+"You can, dear mother," said he kissing her with exceeding tenderness of
+expression,--"my Saviour will be yours and take you there. Say you will
+give yourself to Christ--dear mother!--sweet mother! promise me I shall
+see you again!--"
+
+Mrs. Rossitur's weeping it was difficult to hear. But Hugh hardly shedding
+a tear still kissed her, repeating, "Promise me, dear mother--promise me
+that you will;"--till Mrs. Rossitur in an agony sobbed out the word he
+wanted,--and Hugh hid his face then in her neck.
+
+Mr. Carleton left the room and went down stairs. He found the sitting-room
+desolate, untenanted and cold for hours; and he went again into the
+kitchen. Barby was there for some time, and then she left him alone.
+
+He had passed a long while in thinking and walking up and down, and he was
+standing musing by the fire, when Fleda again came in. She came in
+silently, to his side, and putting her arm within his laid her face upon
+it with a simplicity of trust and reliance that went to his heart; and she
+wept there for a long hour. They hardly changed their position in all that
+time; and her tears flowed silently though incessantly, the only tokens of
+sympathy on his part being such a gentle caressing smoothing of her hair
+or putting it from her brow as he had used when she was a child. The
+bearing of her hand and head upon his arm in time shewed her increasingly
+weary. Nothing shewed him so.
+
+"Elfie--my dear Elfie," he said at last very tenderly, in the same way
+that he would have spoken nine years before--"Hugh gave his part of you to
+me--I must take care of it."
+
+Fleda tried to rouse herself immediately.
+
+"This is poor entertainment for you, Mr. Carleton," she said, raising her
+head and wiping away the tears from her face.
+
+"You are mistaken," he said gently. "You never gave me such pleasure but
+twice before, Elfie."
+
+Fleda's head went down again instantly, and this time there was something
+almost caressing in the motion.
+
+"Next to the happiness of having friends on earth," he said soothingly,
+"is the happiness of having friends in heaven. Don't weep any more
+to-night, my dear Elfie."
+
+"He told me to thank you--" said Fleda. But stopping short and clasping
+with convulsive energy the arm she held, she shed more violent tears than
+she had done that night before. The most gentle soothing, the most tender
+reproof, availed at last to quiet her; and she stood clinging to his arm
+still and looking down into the fire.
+
+"I did not think it would be so soon," she said.
+
+"It was not soon to him, Elfie."
+
+"He told me to thank you for singing. How little while it seems since we
+were children together--how little while since before that--when I was a
+little child here--how different!"
+
+"No, the very same," said he, touching his lips to her forehead,--"you are
+the very same child you were then; but it is time you were my child, for I
+see you would make yourself ill. No--" said he softly taking the hand
+Fleda raised to her face,--"no more tonight--tell me how early I may see
+you in the morning--for, Elfie, I must leave you after breakfast."
+
+Fleda looked up inquiringly.
+
+"My mother has brought news that determines me to return to England
+immediately."
+
+"To England!"
+
+"I have been too long from home--I am wanted there."
+
+Fleda looked down again and did her best not to shew what she felt.
+
+"I do not know how to leave you--and now--but I must. There are
+disturbances among the people, and my own are infected. I _must_ be there
+without delay."
+
+"Political disturbances?" said Fleda.
+
+"Somewhat of that nature--but partly local. How early may I come to you?"
+
+"But you are not going away tonight? It is very late."
+
+"That is nothing--my horse is here."
+
+Fleda would have begged in vain, if Barby had not come in and added her
+word, to the effect that it would be a mess of work to look for lodgings
+at that time of night, and that she had made the west room ready for Mr.
+Carleton. She rejected with great sincerity any claim to the thanks with
+which Fleda as well as Mr. Carleton repaid her; "there wa'n't no trouble
+about it," she said. Mr. Carleton however found his room prepared for him
+with all the care that Barby's utmost ideas of refinement and exactness
+could suggest.
+
+It was still very early the next morning; when he left it and came into
+the sitting-room, but he was not the first there. The firelight glimmered
+on the silver and china of the breakfast table, all set; everything was in
+absolute order, from the fire to the two cups and saucers which were alone
+on the board. A still silent figure was standing by one of the windows
+looking out. Not crying; but that Mr. Carleton knew from the unmistakable
+lines of the face was only because tears were waiting another time; quiet
+now, it would not be by and by. He came and stood at the window with her.
+
+"Do you know," he said, after a little, "that Mr. Rossitur purposes to
+leave Queechy?"
+
+"Does he?" said Fleda rather starting, but she added not another word,
+simply because she felt she could not safely.
+
+"He has accepted, I believe, a consulship at Jamaica."
+
+"Jamaica!" said Fleda. "I have heard him speak of the West Indies--I am
+not surprised--I know it was likely he would not stay here."
+
+How tightly her fingers that were free grasped the edge of the
+window-frame. Mr. Carleton saw it and softly removed them into his
+own keeping.
+
+"He may go before I can be here again. But I shall leave my mother to take
+care of you, Elfie."
+
+"Thank you," said Fleda faintly. "You are very kind--"
+
+"Kind to myself," he said smiling. "I am only taking care of my own. I
+need not say that you will see me again as early as my duty can make it
+possible;--but I may be detained, and your friends may be
+gone--Elfie--give me the right to send if I cannot come for you. Let me
+leave my wife in my mother's care."
+
+Fleda looked down, and coloured, and hesitated; but the expression in her
+face was not that of doubt.
+
+"Am I asking too much?" he said gently.
+
+"No sir," said Fleda,--"and--but--"
+
+"What is in the way?"
+
+But it seemed impossible for Fleda to tell him.
+
+"May I not know?" he said, gently putting away the hair from Fleda's face,
+which looked distressed. "Is it only your feeling?"
+
+"No sir," said Fleda,--"at least--not the feeling you think it is--but--I
+could not do it without giving great pain."
+
+Mr. Carleton was silent.
+
+"Not to anybody you know, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda, suddenly fearing a
+wrong interpretation of her words,--"I don't mean that--I mean somebody
+else--the person--the only person you could apply to--" she said, covering
+her face in utter confusion.
+
+"Do I understand you?" said he smiling. "Has this gentleman any reason to
+dislike the sight of me?"
+
+"No sir," said Fleda,--"but he thinks he has."
+
+"That only I meant," said he. "You are quite right, my dear Elfie; I of
+all men ought to understand that."
+
+The subject was dropped, and in a few minutes his gentle skill had well
+nigh made Fleda forget what they had been talking about. Himself and his
+wishes seemed to be put quite out of his own view, and out of hers as far
+as possible; except that the very fact made Fleda recognize with
+unspeakable gratitude and admiration the kindness and grace that were
+always exerted for her pleasure. If her good-will could have been put into
+the cups of coffee she poured out for him, he might have gone in the
+strength of them all the way to England. There was strength of another
+kind to be gained from her face of quiet sorrow and quiet self-command
+which were her very childhood's own.
+
+"You will see me at the earliest possible moment," he said when at last
+taking leave.--"I hope to be free in a short time; but it may not be.
+Elfie--if I should be detained longer than I hope--if I should not be able
+to return in a reasonable time, will you let my mother bring you out?--if
+I cannot come to you will you come to me?"
+
+Fleda coloured a good deal, and said, scarce intelligibly, that she hoped
+he would be able to come. He did not press the matter. He parted from her
+and was leaving the room. Fleda suddenly sprang after him, before he had
+reached the door, and laid her hand on his arm.
+
+"I did not answer your question, Mr. Carleton," she said with cheeks that
+were dyed now,--"I will do whatever you please--whatever you think best."
+
+His thanks were most gratefully though silently spoken, and he went away.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LII.
+
+
+
+  Daughter, they seem to say,
+    Peace to thy heart!
+  We too, yes, daughter,
+    Have been as thou art.
+  Hope-lifted, doubt-depressed,
+    Seeing in part,--
+  Tried, troubled, tempted,--
+    Sustained,--as thou art.
+
+  Unknown.
+
+
+Mr. Rossitur was disposed for no further delay now in leaving Queechy. The
+office at Jamaica, which Mr. Carleton and Dr. Gregory had secured for him,
+was immediately accepted; and every arrangement pressed to hasten his
+going. On every account he was impatient to be out of America, and
+especially since his son's death. Marion was of his mind. Mrs. Rossitur
+had more of a home feeling, even for the place where home had not been to
+her as happy as it might.
+
+They were sad weeks of bustle and weariness that followed Hugh's death;
+less sad perhaps for the weariness and the bustle. There was little time
+for musing, no time for lingering regrets. If thought and feeling played
+their Eolian measures on Fleda's harpstrings, they were listened to only
+by snatches, and she rarely sat down and cried to them.
+
+A very kind note had been received from Mrs. Carleton.
+
+April gave place to May. One afternoon Fleda had taken an hour or two to
+go and look at some of the old places on the farm, that she loved and
+that were not too far to reach. A last look she guessed it might be, for
+it was weeks since she had had a spare afternoon, and another she might
+not he able to find. It was a doubtful pleasure she sought too, but she
+must have it.
+
+She visited the long meadow and the height that stretched along it, and
+even went so far as the extremity of the valley, at the foot of the
+twenty-acre lot, and then stood still to gather up the ends of memory.
+There she had gone chestnutting with Mr. Ringgan--thither she had guided
+Mr. Carleton and her cousin Rossitur that day when they were going after
+wood-cock--there she had directed and overseen Earl Douglass's huge crop
+of corn. How many pieces of her life were connected with it. She stood for
+a little while looking at the old chestnut trees, looking and thinking,
+and turned away soberly with the recollection, "The world passeth
+away,--but the word of our God shall stand forever." And though there was
+one thought that was a continual well of happiness in the depth of Fleda's
+heart, her mind passed it now, and echoed with great joy the countersign
+of Abraham's privilege,--"Thou art my portion, O Lord!"--And in that
+assurance every past and every hoped-for good was sweet with added
+sweetness. She walked home without thinking much of the long meadow.
+
+It was a chill spring afternoon and Fleda was in her old trim, the black
+cloak, the white shawl over it, and the hood of grey silk. And in that
+trim she walked into the sitting-room.
+
+A lady was there, in a travelling dress, a stranger. Fleda's eye took in
+her outline and feature one moment with a kind of bewilderment, the next
+with perfect intelligence. If the lady had been in any doubt, Fleda's
+cheeks alone would have announced her identity. But she came forward
+without hesitation after the first moment, pulling off her hood, and stood
+before her visiter, blushing in a way that perhaps Mrs. Carleton looked at
+as a novelty in her world. Fleda did not know how she looked at it, but
+she had nevertheless an instinctive feeling, even at the moment, that the
+lady wondered how her son should have fancied particularly anything that
+went about under such a hood.
+
+Whatever Mrs. Carleton thought, her son's fancies she knew were
+unmanageable; and she had far too much good breeding to let her thoughts
+be known; unless to one of those curious spirit thermometers that can tell
+a variation of temperature through every sort of medium. There might have
+been the slightest want of forwardness to do it, but she embraced Fleda
+with great cordiality.
+
+"This is for the old time--not for the new, dear Fleda," she said. "Do you
+remember me?"
+
+"Perfectly!--very well," said Fleda, giving Mrs. Carleton for a moment a
+glimpse of her eyes.--"I do not easily forget."
+
+"Your look promises me an advantage from that, which I do not deserve, but
+which I may as well use as another. I want all I can have, Fleda."
+
+There was a half look at the speaker that seemed to deny the truth of
+that, but Fleda did not otherwise answer. She begged her visiter to sit
+down, and throwing off the white shawl and black cloak, took tongs in hand
+and began to mend the fire. Mrs. Carleton sat considering a moment the
+figure of the fire-maker, not much regardful of the skill she was bringing
+to bear upon the sticks of wood.
+
+Fleda turned from the fire to remove her visitor's bonnet and wrappings,
+but the former was all Mrs. Carleton would give her; she threw off shawl
+and tippet on the nearest chair.
+
+It was the same Mrs. Carleton of old,--Fleda saw while this was
+doing,--unaltered almost entirely. The fine figure and bearing were the
+same; time had made no difference; even the face had paid little tribute
+to the years that had passed by it; and the hair held its own without a
+change. Bodily and mentally she was the same. Apparently she was thinking
+the like of Fleda.
+
+"I remember you very well," she said with kindly accent when Fleda sat
+down by her. "I have never forgotten you. A dear little creature you were.
+I always knew that."
+
+Fleda hoped privately the lady would see no occasion to change her mind;
+but for the present she was bankrupt in words.
+
+"I was in the same room this morning at Montepoole where we used to dine,
+and it brought back the whole thing to me--the time when you were sick
+there with us. I could think of nothing else. But I don't think I was your
+favourite, Fleda."
+
+Such a rush of blood again answered her as moved Mrs. Carleton in common
+kindness to speak of common things. She entered into a long story of her
+journey--of her passage from England--of the steamer that brought her--of
+her stay in New York;--all which Fleda heard very indifferently well. She
+was more distinctly conscious of the handsome travelling dress which
+seemed all the while to look as its wearer had done, with some want of
+affinity upon the little grey hood which lay on the chair in the corner.
+Still she listened and responded as became her, though for the most part
+with eyes that did not venture from home. The little hood itself could
+never have kept its place with less presumption, nor with less flutter of
+self-distrust.
+
+Mrs. Carleton came at last to a general account of the circumstances that
+had determined Guy to return home so suddenly, where she was more
+interesting. She hoped he would not be detained, but it was impossible to
+tell. It was just as it might happen.
+
+"Are you acquainted with the commission I have been charged with?" she
+said, when her narrations had at last lapsed into silence and Fleda's eyes
+had returned to the ground.
+
+"I suppose so, ma'am," said Fleda with a little smile.
+
+"It is a very pleasant charge," said Mrs. Carleton softly kissing her
+cheek. Something in the face itself must have called forth that kiss, for
+this time there were no requisitions of politeness.
+
+"Do you recognize my commission, Fleda?"
+
+Fleda did not answer. Mrs. Carleton sat a few minutes thoughtfully drawing
+back the curls from her forehead, Mr. Carleton's very gesture, but not by
+any means with his fingers; and musing perhaps on the possibility of a
+hood's having very little to do with what it covered.
+
+"Do you know," she said, "I have felt as if I were nearer to Guy since I
+have seen you."
+
+The quick smile and colour that answered this, both very bright, wrought
+in Mrs Carleton an instant recollection that her son was very apt to be
+right in his judgments and that probably the present case might prove him
+so. The hand which had played with Fleda's hair was put round her waist,
+very affectionately, and Mrs. Carleton drew near her.
+
+"I am sure we shall love each other, Fleda," she said.
+
+It was said like Fleda, not like Mrs. Carleton, and answered as simply.
+Fleda had gained her place. Her head was in Mrs. Carleton's neck, and
+welcomed there.
+
+"At least I am sure I shall love you," said the lady kissing her,--"and I
+don't despair on my own account,--for somebody else's sake."
+
+"No--" said Fleda,--but she was not fluent to-day. She sat up and
+repeated, "I have not forgotten old times either, Mrs. Carleton."
+
+"I don't want to think of the old time--I want to think of the new,"--she
+seemed to have a great fancy for stroking back those curls of hair;--"I
+want to tell you how happy I am, dear Fleda."
+
+Fleda did not say whether she was happy or unhappy, and her look might
+have been taken for dubious. She kept her eyes on the ground, while Mrs.
+Carleton drew the hair off from her flushing cheeks, and considered the
+face laid bare to her view; and thought it was a fair face--a very
+presentable face--delicate and lovely--a face that she would have no
+reason to be ashamed of, even by her son's side. Her speech was not
+precisely to that effect.
+
+"You know now why I have come upon you at such a time. I need not ask
+pardon?--I felt that I should be hardly discharging my commission if I did
+not see you till you arrived in New York. My wishes I could have made to
+wait, but not my trust. So I came."
+
+"I am very glad you did!"
+
+She could fain have persuaded the lady to disregard circumstances and stay
+with her, at least till the next day, but Mrs. Carleton was unpersuadable.
+She would return immediately to Montepoole.
+
+"And how long shall you be here now?" she said.
+
+"A few days--it will not be more than a week."
+
+"Do you know how soon Mr. Rossitur intends to sail for Jamaica?"
+
+"As soon as possible--he will make his stay in New York very short--not
+more than a fortnight perhaps,--as short as he can."
+
+"And then, my dear Fleda, I am to have the charge of you--for a little
+while--am I not?"
+
+Fleda hesitated and began to say, "Thank you," but it was finished with a
+burst of very hearty tears.
+
+Mrs. Carleton knew immediately the tender spot she had touched. She put
+her arms about Fleda and caressed her as gently as her own mother might
+have done.
+
+"Forgive me, dear Fleda!--I forgot that so much that is sad to you must
+come before what is so much pleasure to me.--Look up and tell me that you
+forgive me."
+
+Fleda soon looked up, but she looked very sorrowful, and said nothing.
+Mrs. Carleton watched her face for a little while, really pained.
+
+"Have you heard from Guy since he went away?" she whispered.
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"I have."
+
+And therewith she put into Fleda's hand a letter,--not Mrs. Carleton's
+letter, as Fleda's first thought was. It had her own name and the seal
+was unbroken. But it moved Mrs. Carleton's wonder to see Fleda cry again,
+and longer than before. She did not understand it. She tried soothing,
+but she ventured no attempt at consoling, for she did not know what was
+the matter.
+
+"You will let me go now, I know," she said smilingly, when Fleda was again
+recovered and standing before the fire with a face _not_ so sorrowful,
+Mrs. Carleton saw. "But I must say something--I shall not hurt you again."
+
+"Oh no, you did not hurt me at all--it was not what you said."
+
+"You will come to me, dear Fleda? I feel that I want you very much."
+
+"Thank you--but there is my uncle Orrin, Mrs. Carleton,--Dr. Gregory."
+
+"Dr. Gregory? He is just on the eve of sailing for Europe--I thought
+you knew it."
+
+"On the _eve?_--so soon?"
+
+"Very soon, he told me. Dear Fleda--shall I remind you of my commission,
+and who gave it to me?"
+
+Fleda hesitated still; at least she stood looking into the fire and did
+not answer.
+
+"You do not own his authority yet," Mrs. Carleton went on,--"but I am sure
+his wishes do not weigh for nothing with you, and I can plead them."
+
+Probably it was a source of some gratification to Mrs. Carleton to see
+those deep spots on Fleda's cheeks. They were a silent tribute to an
+invisible presence that flattered the lady's affection,--or her pride.
+
+"What do you say, dear Fleda--to him and to me?" she said smiling and
+kissing her.
+
+"I will come, Mrs. Carleton."
+
+The lady was quite satisfied and departed on the instant, having got, she
+said, all she wanted; and Fleda--cried till her eyes were sore.
+
+The days were few that remained to them in their old home; not more than a
+week, as Fleda had said. It was the first week in May.
+
+The evening before they were to leave Queechy, Fleda and Mrs. Rossitur
+went together to pay their farewell visit to Hugh's grave. It was some
+distance off. They walked there arm in arm without a word by the way.
+
+The little country grave-yard lay alone on a hill-side, a good way from
+any house, and out of sight even of any but a very distant one. A sober
+and quiet place, no tokens of busy life immediately near, the fields
+around it being used for pasturing sheep, except an instance or two of
+winter grain now nearing its maturity. A by-road not much travelled led to
+the grave-yard, and led off from it over the broken country, following the
+ups and downs of the ground to a long distance away, without a moving
+thing upon it in sight near or far. No sound of stirring and active
+humanity. Nothing to touch the perfect repose. But every lesson of the
+place could be heard more distinctly amid that silence of all other
+voices. Except indeed nature's voice; that was not silent; and neither did
+it jar with the other. The very light of the evening fell more tenderly
+upon the old grey stones and the thick grass in that place.
+
+Fleda and Mrs. Rossitur went softly to one spot where the grass was not
+grown and where the bright white marble caught the eye and spoke of grief
+fresh too. Oh that that were grey and moss-grown like the others! The
+mother placed herself where the staring black letters of Hugh's name could
+not remind her so harshly that it no more belonged to the living; and
+sitting down on the ground hid her face; to struggle through the parting
+agony once more with added bitterness.
+
+Fleda stood awhile sharing it, for with her too it was the last time, in
+all likelihood. If she had been alone, her grief might have witnessed
+itself bitterly and uncontrolled; but the selfish relief was foregone, for
+the sake of another, that it might be in her power by and by to minister
+to a heart yet sorer and weaker than hers. The tears that fell so quietly
+and so fast upon the foot of Hugh's grave were all the deeper-drawn and
+richer-fraught.
+
+Awhile she stood there; and then passed round to a group a little way off,
+that had as dear and strong claims upon her love and memory. These were
+not fresh, not very; oblivion had not come there yet; only Time's
+softening hand. Was it softening?--for Fleda's head was bent down further
+here, and tears rained faster. It was hard to leave these! The cherished
+names that from early years had lived in her child's heart,--from this
+their last earthly abiding-place she was to part company. Her mother's and
+her father's graves were there, side by side; and never had Fleda's heart
+so clung to the old grey stones, never had the faded lettering seemed so
+dear,--of the dear names and of the words of faith and hope that were
+their dying or living testimony. And next to them was her grandfather's
+resting-place; and with that sunshiny green mound came a throng of
+strangely tender and sweet associations, more even than with the other
+two. His gentle, venerable, dignified figure rose before her, and her
+heart yearned towards it. In imagination Fleda pressed again to her breast
+the withered hand that had led her childhood so kindly; and overcome here
+for a little she kneeled down upon the sod and bent her head till the long
+grass almost touched it, in an agony of human sorrow. Could she leave
+them?--and for ever in this world? and be content to see no more these
+dear memorials till others like them should be raised for herself, far
+away?--But then stole in consolations not human, nor of man's
+devising,--the words that were written upon her mother's tombstone,--
+
+"_Them that sleep in Jesus will God bring with him_."--It was like the
+march of angel's feet over the turf. And her mother had been a meek child
+of faith, and her father and grandfather, though strong men, had bowed
+like little children to the same rule.--Fleda's head bent lower yet, and
+she wept, even aloud, but it was one half in pure thankfulness and a joy
+that the world knows nothing of. Doubtless they and she were one;
+doubtless though the grass now covered their graves, the heavenly bond in
+which they were held would bring them together again in light, to a new
+and more beautiful life that should know no severing. Asleep in
+Jesus;--and even as he had risen so should they,--they and others that she
+loved,--all whom she loved best. She could leave their graves; and with an
+unspeakable look of thanks to Him who had brought life and immortality to
+light, she did; but not till she had there once again remembered her
+mother's prayer, and her aunt Miriam's words, and prayed that rather
+anything might happen to her than that prosperity and the world's favour
+should draw her from the simplicity and humility of a life above the
+world. Rather than not meet them in joy at the last,--oh let her want what
+she most wished for in this world.
+
+If riches have their poisonous snares, Fleda carried away from this place
+a strong antidote. With a spirit strangely simple, pure, and calm she went
+back to her aunt.
+
+Poor Mrs. Rossitur was not quieted, but at Fleda's touch and voice, gentle
+and loving as the spirit of love and gentleness could make them, she tried
+to rouse herself; lifted up her weary head and clasped her arms about her
+niece. The manner of it went to Fleda's heart, for there was in it both a
+looking to her for support and a clinging to her as another dear thing she
+was about to lose. Fleda could not speak for the heart-ache.
+
+"It is harder to leave this place than all the rest," Mrs. Rossitur
+murmured, after some little time had passed on.
+
+"He is not here," said Fleda's soothing voice. It set her aunt to
+crying again.
+
+"No--I know it--" she said.
+
+"We shall see him again. Think of that."
+
+"You will," said Mrs. Rossitur very sadly.
+
+"And so will you, dear aunt Lucy,--_dear_ aunt Lucy--you promised him?"
+
+"Yes--" sobbed Mrs. Rossitur,--"I promised him--but I am such a poor
+creature--"
+
+"So poor that Jesus cannot save you?--or will not?--No, dear aunt
+Lucy--you do not think that;--only trust him--you do trust him now,
+do you not?"
+
+A fresh gush of tears came with the answer, but it was in the affirmative;
+and after a few minutes Mrs. Rossitur grew more quiet.
+
+"I wish something were done to this," she said, looking at the fresh earth
+beside her;--"if we could have planted something--"
+
+"I have thought of it a thousand times," said Fleda sighing;--I would have
+done it long ago if I could have got here;--but it doesn't matter, aunt
+Lucy,--I wish I could have done it."
+
+"You?" said Mrs. Rossitur;--"my poor child! you have been wearing yourself
+out working for me,--I never was worth anything!"--she said, hiding her
+face again.
+
+"When you have been the dearest and best mother to me? Now that is not
+right, aunt Lucy--look up and kiss me."
+
+The pleading sweet tone of voice was not to be resisted. Mrs. Rossitur
+looked up and kissed her earnestly enough but with unabated self reproach.
+
+"I don't deserve to kiss you, for I have let you try yourself beyond your
+strength.--How you look!--Oh how you look!--"
+
+"Never mind how I look," said Fleda bringing her face so close that her
+aunt could not see it. "You helped me all you could, aunt Lucy--don't talk
+so--and I shall look well enough by and by. I am not so very tired."
+
+"You always were so!" exclaimed Mrs. Rossitur clapping her in her arms
+again;--"and now I am going to lose you too--My dear Fleda!--that gives me
+more pleasure than anything else in the world!--"
+
+But it was a pleasure well cried over.
+
+"We shall all meet again, I hope,--I will hope,--" said Mrs. Rossitur
+meekly when Fleda had risen from her arms;
+
+"Dear aunty!--but before that--in England--you will come to see me--Uncle
+Rolf will bring you."
+
+Even then Fleda could not say even that without the blood mounting to her
+face. Mrs. Rossitur shook her head and sighed; but smiled a little too, as
+if that delightful chink of possibility let some light in.
+
+"I shouldn't like to see Mr. Carleton now," she said, "for I could not
+look him in the face; and I am afraid he wouldn't want to look in mine, he
+would be so angry with me."
+
+[Illustration: Slowly and lingeringly they moved away.]
+
+The sun was sinking low on that fair May afternoon and they had two miles
+to walk to get home. Slowly and lingeringly they moved away.
+
+The talk with her aunt had shaken Fleda's calmness and she could have
+cried now with all her heart; but she constrained herself. They stopped a
+moment at the fence to look the last before turning their backs upon the
+place. They lingered, and still Mrs. Rossitur did not move, and Fleda
+could not take away her eyes.
+
+It was that prettiest time of nature which while it shows indeed the
+shade side of everything, makes it the occasion of a fair contrast The
+grave-stones cast long shadows over the ground, foretokens of night
+where another night was resting already; the longest stretched away from
+the head of Hugh's grave. But the rays of the setting sun softly touching
+the grass and the face of the white tombstone seemed to say, "Thy
+brother shall rise again." Light upon the grave! The promise kissing the
+record of death!--It was impossible to look in calmness. Fleda bowed her
+head upon the paling and cried with a straitened heart, for grief and
+gratitude together.
+
+Mrs. Rossitur had not moved when Fleda looked up again. The sun was yet
+lower; the sunbeams, more slant, touched not only that bright white
+stone--they passed on beyond, and carried the promise to those other grey
+ones, a little further off; that she had left--yes, for the last time; and
+Fleda's thoughts went forward swiftly to the time of the promise.--"_Then_
+shall be brought to pass the saying which is written, Death is swallowed
+up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
+The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks
+be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus
+Christ."--And then as she looked, the sunbeams might have been a choir of
+angels in light singing, ever so softly, "Glory to God in the highest, and
+on earth peace, good will towards men."
+
+With a full heart Fleda clasped her aunt's arm, and they went gently down
+the lane without saying one word to each other, till they had left the
+graveyard far behind them and were in the high road again.
+
+Fleda internally thanked Mr. Carleton for what he had said to her on a
+former occasion, for the thought of his words had given her courage, or
+strength, to go beyond her usual reserve in speaking to her aunt; and she
+thought her words had done good.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LIII.
+
+
+
+  Use your pleasure: If your love do not persuade you to come, let not
+  my letter.
+
+  Merchant of Venice.
+
+
+On the way home Mrs. Rossitur and Fleda went a trifle out of their road to
+say good-bye to Mrs. Douglass's family. Fleda had seen her aunt Miriam in
+the morning, and bid her a conditional farewell; for, as after Mrs.
+Rossitur's sailing she would be with Mrs. Carleton, she judged it little
+likely that she should see Queechy again.
+
+They had time for but a minute at Mrs. Douglass's. Mrs. Rossitur had
+shaken hands and was leaving the house when Mrs. Douglass pulled
+Fleda back.
+
+"Be you going to the West Indies too, Fleda?"
+
+"No, Mrs. Douglass."
+
+"Then why don't you stay here?"
+
+"I want to be with my aunt while I can," said Fleda.
+
+"And then do you calculate to stop in New York?"
+
+"For awhile," said Fleda colouring.
+
+"O go 'long!" said Mrs. Douglass, "I know all about it. Now do you s'pose
+you're agoing to be any happier among all those great folks than you
+would be if you staid among little folks?" she added tartly; while
+Catherine looked with a kind of incredulous admiration at the future lady
+of Carleton.
+
+"I don't suppose that greatness has anything to do with happiness, Mrs.
+Douglass," said Fleda gently.
+
+So gently,--and so calmly sweet the face was that said it that Mrs.
+Douglass's mood was overcome.
+
+"Well you ain't agoing to forget Queechy?" she said, shaking Fleda's hand
+with a hearty grasp.
+
+"Never--never!"
+
+"I'll tell you what I think," said Mrs. Douglass, the tears in her eyes
+answering those in Fleda's.--"It'll be a happy house that gets you into
+it, wherever 'tis! I only wish it wa'n't out o' Queechy."
+
+Fleda thought on the whole as she walked home that she did not wish any
+such thing. Queechy seemed dismantled, and she thought she would rather go
+to a new place now that she had taken such a leave of every thing here.
+
+Two things remained however to be taken leave of; the house and Barby.
+Happily Fleda had little time for the former. It was a busy evening, and
+the morning would be more busy; she contrived that all the family should
+go to rest before her, meaning then to have one quiet look at the old
+rooms by herself; a leave-taking that no other eyes should interfere with.
+She sat down before the kitchen fire-place, but she had hardly realized
+that she was alone when one of the many doors opened and Barby's tall
+figure walked in.
+
+"Here you be," she half whispered. "I knowed there wouldn't be a minute's
+peace to-morrow; so I thought I'd bid you good-bye to-night."
+
+Fleda gave her a smile and a hand, but did not speak. Barby drew up a
+chair beside her, and they sat silent for some time, while quiet tears
+from the eyes of each said a great many things.
+
+"Well, I hope you'll be as happy as you deserve to be,"--were Barby's
+first words, in a voice very altered from its accustomed firm and
+spirited accent.
+
+"Make some better wish for me than that, dear Barby."
+
+"I wouldn't want any better for myself," said Barby determinately.
+
+"I would for you," said Fleda.
+
+She thought of Mr. Carleton's words again, and went on in spite of
+herself.
+
+"It is a mistake, Barby. The best of us do not deserve anything good; and
+if we have the sight of a friend's face, or the very sweet air we breathe,
+it is because Christ has bought it for us. Don't let us forget that, and
+forget him."
+
+"I do, always," said Barby crying,--"forget everything. Fleda, I wish
+you'd pray for me when you are far away, for I ain't as good as you be."
+
+"Dear Barby," said Fleda, touching her shoulder affectionately, "I haven't
+waited to be far away to do that."
+
+Barby sobbed for a few minutes with the strength of a strong nature that
+rarely gave way in that manner; and then dashed her tears right and left,
+not at all as if she were ashamed of them, but with a resolution not to
+be overcome.
+
+"There won't be nothing good left in Queechy, when you're gone, you and
+Mis' Plumfield--without I go and look at the place where Hugh lies--"
+
+"Dear Barby," said Fleda with softening eyes, "won't you be something good
+yourself?"
+
+Barby put up her hand to shield her face. Fleda was silent for she saw
+that strong feeling was at work.
+
+"I wish I could," Barby broke forth at last, "if it was only for
+your sake."
+
+"Dear Barby," said Fleda, "you can do this for me--you can go to church
+and hear what Mr. Olmney says. I should go away happier if I thought you
+would, and if I thought you would follow what he says; for dear Barby
+there is a time coming when you will wish you were a Christian more than
+you do now; and not for my sake."
+
+"I believe there is, Fleda."
+
+"Then will you?--won't you give me so much pleasure?"
+
+"I'd do a'most anything to do you a pleasure."
+
+"Then do it, Barby."
+
+"Well, I'll go," said Barby. "But now just think of that, Fleda, how you
+might have stayed in Queechy all your days and done what you liked with
+everybody. I'm glad you ain't, though; I guess you'll be better off."
+
+Fleda was silent upon that.
+
+"I'd like amazingly to see how you'll be fixed," said Barby after a trifle
+of ruminating. "If 'twa'n't for my old mother I'd be 'most a mind to pull
+up sticks and go after you."
+
+"I wish you could, Barby; only I am afraid you would not like it so well
+there as here."
+
+"Maybe I wouldn't. I s'pect them English folks has ways of their own, from
+what I've heerd tell; they set up dreadful, don't they?"
+
+"Not all of them," said Fleda.
+
+"No, I don't believe but what I could get along with Mr. Carleton well
+enough--I never see any one that knowed how to behave himself better."
+
+Fleda gave her a smiling acknowledgment of this compliment.
+
+"He's plenty of money, ha'n't he?"
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"You'll be sot up like a princess, and never have anything to do no more."
+
+"O no," said Fleda laughing,--"I expect to have a great deal to do; if I
+don't find it, I shall make it."
+
+"I guess it'll be pleasant work," said Barby. "Well, I don't care! you've
+done work enough since you've lived here that wa'n't pleasant, to play for
+the rest of your days; and I'm glad on't. I guess he don't hurt himself.
+You wouldn't stand it much longer to do as you have been doing lately."
+
+"That couldn't be helped," said Fleda; "but that I may stand it to-morrow
+I am afraid we must go to bed, Barby."
+
+Barby bade her good-night and left her. But Fleda's musing mood was gone.
+She had no longer the desire to call back the reminiscences of the old
+walls. All that page of her life, she felt, was turned over; and after a
+few minutes' quiet survey of the familiar things, without the power of
+moralizing over them as she could have done half an hour before, she left
+them--for the next day had no eyes but for business.
+
+It was a trying week or two before Mr. Rossitur and his family were fairly
+on shipboard. Fleda as usual, and more than usual,--with the eagerness of
+affection that felt its opportunities numbered and would gladly have
+concentrated the services of years into days,--wrought, watched, and
+toiled, at what expense to her own flesh and blood Mrs. Rossitur never
+knew, and the others were too busy to guess. But Mrs. Carleton saw the
+signs of it, and was heartily rejoiced when they were fairly gone and
+Fleda was committed to her hands.
+
+For days, almost for weeks, after her aunt was gone Fleda could do little
+but rest and sleep; so great was the weariness of mind and body, and the
+exhaustion of the animal spirits, which had been kept upon a strain to
+hide her feelings and support those of others. To the very last moment
+affection's sweet work had been done; the eye, the voice, the smile, to
+say nothing of the hands, had been tasked and kept in play to put away
+recollections, to cheer hopes, to soften the present, to lighten the
+future; and hardest of all, to do the whole by her own living example. As
+soon as the last look and wave of the hand were exchanged and there was no
+longer anybody to lean upon her for strength and support, Fleda shewed how
+weak she was, and sank into a state of prostration as gentle and deep
+almost as an infant's.
+
+As sweet and lovely as a child too, Mrs. Carleton declared her to be;
+sweet and lovely as _she_ was when a child; and there was no going beyond
+that. As neither this lady nor Fleda had changed essentially since the
+days of their former acquaintanceship, it followed that there was still as
+little in common between them, except indeed now the strong ground of
+affection. Whatever concerned her son concerned Mrs. Carleton in almost
+equal degree; anything that he valued she valued; and to have a thorough
+appreciation of him was a sure title to her esteem. The consequence of all
+this was that Fleda was now the most precious thing in the world to her
+after himself; especially since her eyes, sharpened as well as opened by
+affection, could find in her nothing that she thought unworthy of him. In
+her personally, country and blood Mrs. Carleton might have wished changed;
+but her desire that her son should marry, the strongest wish she had known
+for years, had grown so despairing that her only feeling now on the
+subject was joy; she was not in the least inclined to quarrel with his
+choice. Fleda had from her the tenderest care, as well as the utmost
+delicacy that affection and good-breeding could teach. And Fleda needed
+both, for she was slow in going back to her old health and strength; and
+stripped on a sudden of all her old friends, on this turning-point of her
+life, her spirits were in that quiet mood that would have felt any jarring
+most keenly.
+
+The weeks of her first languor and weariness were over, and she was
+beginning again to feel and look like herself. The weather was hot and the
+city disagreeable now, for it was the end of June; but they had pleasant
+rooms upon the Battery, and Fleda's windows looked out upon the waving
+tops of green trees and the bright waters of the bay. She used to lie
+gazing out at the coming and going vessels with a curious fantastic
+interest in them; they seemed oddly to belong to that piece of her life,
+and to be weaving the threads of her future fate as they flitted about in
+all directions before her. In a very quiet, placid mood, not as if she
+wished to touch one of the threads, she lay watching the bright sails that
+seemed to carry the shuttle of life to and fro; letting Mrs. Carleton
+arrange and dispose of everything and of her as she pleased.
+
+She was on her couch as usual, looking out one fair morning, when Mrs.
+Carleton came in to kiss her and ask how she did. Fleda said better.
+
+"Better! you always say 'better'," said Mrs. Carleton; "but I don't see
+that you get better very fast. And sober;--this cheek is too sober," she
+added, passing her hand fondly over it;--"I don't like to see it so."
+
+"That is just the way I have been feeling, ma'am--unable to rouse myself.
+I should be ashamed of it, if I could help it."
+
+"Mrs. Evelyn has been here begging that we would join her in a party to
+the Springs--Saratoga--how would you like that?"
+
+"I should like anything that you would like, ma'am," said Fleda, with a
+thought how she would like to read Montepoole for Saratoga.
+
+"The city is very hot and dusty just now."
+
+"Very, and I am sorry to keep you in it, Mrs. Carleton."
+
+"Keep me, love?" said Mrs. Carleton bending down her face to her again;--"
+it's a pleasure to be kept anywhere by you."
+
+Fleda shut her eyes, for she could hardly bear a little word now.
+
+"I don't like to keep _you_ here--it is not myself I am thinking of. I
+fancy a change would do you good."
+
+"You are very kind, ma'am."
+
+"Very interested kindness," said Mrs. Carleton. "I want to see you looking
+a little better before Guy comes--I am afraid he will look grave at both
+of us." But as she paused and stroked Fleda's cheek it came into her mind
+to doubt the truth of the last assertion, and she ended off with, "I wish
+he would come!--"
+
+So Fleda wished truly; for now, cut off as she was from her old
+associations, she longed for the presence of the one friend that was to
+take place of them all.
+
+"I hope we shall hear soon that there is some prospect of his getting
+free," Mrs. Carleton went on. "He has been gone now,--how many weeks?--I
+am looking for a letter to-day. And there it is!--"
+
+The maid at this moment entered with the steamer despatches. Mrs. Carleton
+pounced upon the one she knew and broke it open.
+
+"Here it is!--and there is yours, Fleda."
+
+With kind politeness she went off to read her own and left Fleda to study
+hers at her leisure. An hour after she came in again. Fleda's face was
+turned from her.
+
+"Well what does he say?" she asked in a lively tone.
+
+"I suppose the same he has said to you, ma'am," said Fleda.
+
+"I don't suppose it indeed," said Mrs. Carleton laughing, "He has given me
+sundry charges, which if he has given you it is morally certain we shall
+never come to an understanding."
+
+"I have received no charges." said Fleda.
+
+"I am directed to be very careful to find out your exact wish in the
+matter and to let you follow no other. So what is it, my sweet Fleda?"
+
+"I promised--" said Fleda colouring and turning her letter over. But there
+she stopped.
+
+"Whom and what?" said Mrs. Carleton after she had waited a
+reasonable time.
+
+"Mr. Carleton."
+
+"What did you promise, my dear Fleda?"
+
+"That--I would do as he said."
+
+"But he wishes you to do as you please."
+
+Fleda brought her eyes quick out of Mrs. Carleton's view, and was silent.
+
+"What do you say, dear Fleda?" said the lady, taking her hand and
+bending over her.
+
+"I am sure we shall be expected," said Fleda. "I will go."
+
+"You are a darling girl!" said Mrs. Carleton kissing her again and again.
+"I will love you forever for that. And I am sure it will be the best thing
+for you--the sea will do you good--and ne vous en déplaise, our own home
+is pleasanter just now than this dusty town. I will write by this steamer
+and tell Guy we will be there by the next. He will have everything in
+readiness, I know, at all events; and in half an hour after you get there,
+my dear Fleda, you will be established in all your rights--as well as if
+it had been done six months before. Guy will know how to thank you. But
+after all, Fleda, you might do him this grace--considering how long he has
+been waiting upon you."
+
+Something in Fleda's eyes induced Mrs. Carleton to say, laughing,
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"He never waited for me," said Fleda simply.
+
+"Didn't he?--But my dear Fleda I--" said Mrs. Carleton in amused
+extremity,--"how long is it since you knew what he came out here for?"
+
+"I don't know now, ma'am," said Fleda. But she became angelically rosy the
+next minute.
+
+"He never told you?"
+
+"No."--
+
+"And you never asked him?"
+
+"Why no, ma'am!"
+
+"He will be well suited in a wife," said Mrs. Carleton laughing. "But he
+can have no objection to your knowing now, I suppose. He never told me but
+at the latest. You must know, Fleda, that it has been my wish for a great
+many years that Guy would marry--and I almost despaired, he was so
+difficult to please--his taste in everything is so fastidious; but I am
+glad of it now," she added, kissing Fleda's cheek. "Last spring--not this
+last, but a year ago--one evening at home I was talking to him on this
+subject; but he met everything I said lightly--you know his way--and I saw
+my words took no hold. I asked him at last in a kind of desperation if he
+supposed there was a woman in the world that could please him; and he
+laughed, and said if there was he was afraid she was not in that
+hemisphere. And a day or two after he told me he was going to America."
+
+"Did he say for what?"
+
+"No,--but I guessed as soon as I found he was prolonging his stay, and I
+was sure when he wrote me to come out to him. But I never knew till I
+landed, Fleda my dear, any more than that. The first question I asked him
+was who he was going to introduce to me."
+
+The interval was short to the next steamer, but also the preparations were
+few. A day or two after the foregoing conversation, Constance Evelyn
+coming into Fleda's room found her busy with some light packing.
+
+"My dear little creature!" she exclaimed ecstatically,--"are you
+going with us?"
+
+"No," said Fleda.
+
+"Where are you going then?"
+
+"To England."
+
+"England!--Has--I mean, is there any addition to my list of acquaintances
+in the city?"
+
+"Not that I know of," said Fleda, going on with her work.
+
+"And you are going to England!--Greenhouses will be a desolation to me!--"
+
+"I hope not," said Fleda smiling;--"you will recover yourself, and your
+sense of sweetness, in time."
+
+"It will have nothing to act upon!--And you are going to England!--I think
+it is very mean of you not to ask me to go too and be your bridesmaid."
+
+"I don't expect to have such a thing," said Fleda.
+
+"Not?--Horrid! I wouldn't be married so, Fleda. You don't know the
+world, little Queechy; the art _de vous faire valoir_ I am afraid is
+unknown to you."
+
+"So it may remain with my good will," said Fleda.
+
+"Why?" said Constance.
+
+"I have never felt the want of it," said Fleda simply.
+
+"When are you going?" said Constance after a minute's pause.
+
+"By the Europa."
+
+"But this is a very sudden move!"
+
+"Yes--very sudden."
+
+"I should think you would want a little time to make preparations."
+
+"That is all happily taken off my hands," said Fleda. "Mrs. Carleton has
+written to her sister in England to take care of it for me."
+
+"I didn't know that Mrs. Carleton had a sister.--What's her name?"
+
+"Lady Peterborough."
+
+Constance was silent again.
+
+"What are you going to do about mourning, Fleda? wear white, I suppose. As
+nobody there knows anything about you, you won't care."
+
+"I do not care in the least," said Fleda calmly; "my feeling would quite
+as soon choose white as black. Mourning so often goes alone, that I should
+think grief might be excused for shunning its company."
+
+"And as you have not put it on yet," said Constance, "you won't feel the
+change. And then in reality after all he was only a cousin."
+
+Fleda's quiet mood, sober and tender as it was, could go to a certain
+length of endurance, but this asked too much. Dropping the things from her
+hands, she turned from the trunk beside which she was kneeling and hiding
+her face on a chair wept such tears as cousins never shed for each other.
+Constance was startled and distressed; and Fleda's quick sympathy knew
+that she must be, before she could see it.
+
+"You needn't mind it at all, dear Constance," she said as soon as she
+could speak,--"it's no matter--I am in such a mood sometimes that I cannot
+bear anything. Don't think of it," she said kissing her.
+
+Constance however could not for the remainder of her visit get back her
+wonted light mood, which indeed had been singularly wanting to her during
+the whole interview.
+
+Mrs. Carleton counted the days to the steamer, and her spirits rose with
+each one. Fleda's spirits were quiet to the last degree, and passive, too
+passive, Mrs. Carleton thought. She did not know the course of the years
+that had gone, and could not understand how strangely Fleda seemed to
+herself now to stand alone, broken off from her old friends and her former
+life, on a little piece of time that was like an isthmus joining two
+continents. Fleda felt it all exceedingly; felt that she was changing from
+one sphere of life to another; never forgot the graves she had left at
+Queechy, and as little the thoughts and prayers that had sprung up beside
+them. She felt, with all Mrs. Carleton's kindness, that she was completely
+alone, with no one on her side the ocean to look to; and glad to be
+relieved from taking active part in anything she made her little Bible her
+companion for the greater part of the time.
+
+"Are you going to carry that sober face all the way to Carleton?" said
+Mrs. Carleton one day pleasantly.
+
+"I don't know, ma'am."
+
+"What do you suppose Guy will think of it?"
+
+But the thought of what he would think of it, and what he would say to
+it, and how fast he would brighten it, made Fleda burst into tears.
+Mrs. Carleton resolved to talk to her no more, but to get her home as
+fast as possible.
+
+"I have one consolation," said Charlton Rossitur as he shook hands with
+her on board the steamer;--"I have received permission, from
+head-quarters, to come and see you in England; and to that I shall look
+forward constantly from this time."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter LIV.
+
+
+
+  The full sum of me
+  Is sum of something; which to term in gross,
+  Is an unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractis'd;
+  Happy in this, she is not yet so old
+  But she may learn; and happier than this,
+  She is not bred so dull but she can learn;
+  Happiest of all, is that her gentle spirit
+  Commits itself to yours to be directed,
+  As from her lord, her governor, her king.
+
+  Merchant of Venice.
+
+
+They had a very speedy passage to the other side, and partly in
+consequence of that Mr. Carleton was _not_ found waiting for them in
+Liverpool. Mrs. Carleton would not tarry there but hastened down at once
+to the country, thinking to be at home before the news of their arrival.
+
+It was early morning of one fair day in July when they were at last
+drawing near the end of their journey. They would have reached it the
+evening before but for a storm which had constrained them to stop and
+wait over the night at a small town about eight miles off. For fear
+then of passing Guy on the road his mother sent a servant before, and
+making an extraordinary exertion was actually herself in the carriage
+by seven o'clock.
+
+Nothing could be fairer than that early drive, if Fleda might have enjoyed
+it in peace. The sweet morning air was exceeding sweet, and the summer
+light fell upon a perfect luxuriance of green things. Out of the carriage
+Fleda's spirits were at home, but not within it; and it was sadly irksome
+to be obliged to hear and respond to Mrs. Carleton's talk, which was kept
+up, she knew, in the charitable intent to divert her. She was just in a
+state to listen to nature's talk; to the other she attended and replied
+with a patient longing to be left free that she might steady and quiet
+herself. Perhaps Mrs. Carleton's tact discovered this in the
+matter-of-course and uninterested manner of her rejoinders; for as they
+entered the park gates she became silent, and the long drive from them to
+the house was made without a word on either side.
+
+For a length of way the road was through a forest of trees of noble
+growth, which in some places closed their arms overhead and in all
+sentinelled the path in stately array. The eye had no scope beyond the
+ranks of this magnificent body; Carleton park was celebrated for its
+trees; but magnificent though they were and dearly as Fleda loved every
+form of forest beauty, she felt oppressed. The eye forbidden to range, so
+was the mind, shut in to itself; and she only felt under the gloom and
+shadow of those great trees the shadow of the responsibilities and of the
+change that were coming upon her. But after a while the ranks began to be
+thinned and the ground to be broken; the little touches of beauty with
+which the sun had enlivened the woodland began to grow broader and
+cheerfuller; and then as the forest scattered away to the right and left,
+gay streams of light came through the glades and touched the surface of
+the rolling ground, where in the hollows, on the heights, on the sloping
+sides of the dingles, knots of trees of yet more luxuriant and picturesque
+growth, planted or left by the cultivator's hand long ago and trained by
+no hand but nature's, stood so as to distract a painter's eye; and just
+now, in the fresh gilding of the morning and with all the witchery of the
+long shadows upon the uneven ground certainly charmed Fleda's eye and mind
+both. Fancy was dancing again, albeit with one hand upon gravity's
+shoulder, and the dancing was a little nervous too. But she looked and
+caught her breath as she looked, while the road led along the very edge of
+a dingle, and then was lost in a kind of enchanted open woodland--it
+seemed so--and then passing through a thicket came out upon a broad sweep
+of green turf that wiled the eye by its smooth facility to the distant
+screen of oaks and beeches and firs on its far border. It was all new.
+Fleda's memory had retained only an indistinct vision of beauty, like the
+face of an angel in a cloud as painters have drawn it; now came out the
+beautiful features one after another, as if she had never seen them.
+
+So far nature had seemed to stand alone. But now another hand appeared,
+not interfering with nature but adding to her. The road came upon a belt
+of the shrubbery where the old tenants of the soil were mingled with
+lighter and gayer companionship and in some instances gave it place;
+though in general the mingling was very graceful. There was never any
+crowding of effects; it seemed all nature still, only as if several climes
+had joined together to grace one. Then that was past; and over smooth
+undulating ground, bearing a lighter growth of foreign wood with here and
+there a stately elm or ash that disdained their rivalry, the carriage came
+under the brown walls and turrets of the house. Fleda's mood had changed
+again; and as the grave outlines rose above her, half remembered and all
+the more for that imposing, she trembled at the thought of what she had
+come there to do and to be. She felt very nervous and strange and out of
+place, and longed for the familiar free and voice that would bid her be at
+home. Mrs. Carleton, now, was not enough of a stand-by. With all that,
+Fleda descended from the carriage with her usual quiet demureness; no one
+that did not know her well would have seen in her any other token of
+emotion than a somewhat undue and wavering colour.
+
+They were welcomed, at least one of them was, with every appearance of
+sincerity by the most respectable-looking personage who opened to them and
+whom Fleda remembered instantly. The array of servants in the hall would
+almost have startled her if she had not recollected the same thing on her
+first coming to Carleton. She stepped in with a curious sense of that
+first time, when she had come there a little child.
+
+"Where is your master?' was Mrs. Carleton's immediate demand.
+
+"Mr. Carleton set off this morning for Liverpool."
+
+Mrs. Carleton gave a quick glance at Fleda, who kept her eyes at home.
+
+"We did not meet him--we have not passed him--how long ago?" were her next
+rapid words.
+
+"My master left Carleton as early as five o'clock--he gave orders to drive
+as fast as possible."
+
+"Then he had gone through Hollonby an hour before we left it," said Mrs.
+Carleton looking again to her companion;--"but he will hear of us at
+Carstairs--we stopped there yesterday afternoon--he will be back again in
+a few hours I am sure. Then we have been expected?"
+
+"Yes ma'am--my master gave orders that you should be expected."
+
+"Is all well, Popham?"
+
+"All is well, madam!"
+
+"Is Lady Peterborough here?"
+
+"His lordship and Lady Peterborough arrived the day before yesterday," was
+the succint reply.
+
+Drawing Fleda's arm within hers and giving kind recognition to the rest
+who stood around, Mrs. Carleton led her to the stairs and mounted them,
+repeating in a whisper, "He will be here presently again." They went to
+Mrs. Carleton's dressing room, Fleda wondering in an interval fever
+whether "orders had been given" to expect her also; from the old butler's
+benign look at her as he said "All is well!" she could not help thinking
+it. If she maintained her outward quiet it was the merest external crust
+of seeming; there was nothing like quiet beneath it; and Mrs. Carleton's
+kiss and fond words of welcome were hardly composing.
+
+Mrs. Carleton made her sit down, and with very gentle hands was busy
+arranging her hair, when the housekeeper came in; to pay her more
+particular respects and to offer her services. Fleda hardly ventured a
+glance to see whether _she_ looked benign. She was a dignified elderly
+person, as stately and near as handsome as Mrs. Carleton herself.
+
+"My dear Fleda," said the latter when she had finished the hair,--"I am
+going to see my sister--will you let Mrs. Fothergill help you in anything
+you want, and take you then to the library--you will find no one, and I
+will come to you there. Mrs. Fothergill, I recommend you to the particular
+care of this lady."
+
+The recommendation was not needed, Fleda thought, or was very effectual;
+the housekeeper served her with most assiduous care, and in absolute
+silence. Fleda hurried the finishing of her toilet.
+
+"Are the people quiet in the country?" she forced herself to say.
+
+"Perfectly quiet, ma'am. It needed only that my master should be at home
+to make them so."
+
+"How is that?"
+
+"He has their love and their ear, ma'am, and so it is that he can just do
+his pleasure with them."
+
+"How is it in the neighbouring country?"
+
+"They're quiet, ma'am, I believe,--mostly--there's been some little
+disturbance in one place and another, and more fear of it, as well as I
+can make out, but it's well got over, as it appears. The noblemen and
+gentlemen in the country around were very glad, all of them I am told, of
+Mr. Carleton's return. Is there nothing more I can do for you, ma'am?"
+
+The last question was put with an indefinable touch of kindliness which
+had not softened the respect of her first words. Fleda begged her to show
+the way to the library, which Mrs. Fothergill immediately did, remarking
+as she ushered her in that "those were Mr. Carleton's favourite rooms."
+
+Fleda did not need to be told that; she put the remark and the benignity
+together, and drew a nervous inference. But Mrs. Fothergill was gone and
+she was alone. Nobody was there, as Mrs. Carleton had said.
+
+Fleda stood still in the middle of the floor, looking around her, in a
+bewildered effort to realize the past and the present; with all the mind
+in the world to cry, but there was too great a pressure of excitement and
+too much strangeness of feeling at work. Nothing before her in the dimly
+familiar place served at all to lessen this feeling, and recovering from
+her maze she went to one of the glazed doors, which stood open, and turned
+her back upon the room with its oppressive recollections. Her eye lighted
+upon nothing that was not quiet now. A secluded piece of smooth green,
+partially bordered with evergreens and set with light shrubbery of rare
+kinds, exquisitely kept; over against her a sweetbriar that seemed to have
+run wild, indicating, Fleda was sure, the entrance of the path to the rose
+garden, that her memory alone would hardly have helped her to find. All
+this in the bright early summer morning, and the sweet aromatic smell of
+firs and flowers coming with every breath. There were draughts of
+refreshment in the air. It composed her, and drinking it in delightedly
+Fleda stood with folded arms in the doorway, half forgetting herself and
+her position, and going in fancy from the firs and the roses over a very
+wide field of meditation indeed. So lost, that she started fearfully on
+suddenly becoming aware that a figure had come just beside her.
+
+It was an elderly and most gentlemanly-looking man, as a glance made her
+know. Fleda was reassured and ashamed in a breath. The gentleman did not
+notice her confusion, however, otherwise than by a very pleasant and
+well-bred smile, and immediately entered into some light remarks on the
+morning, the place, and the improvements Mr. Carleton had made in the
+latter. Though he said the place was one of those which could bear very
+well to want improvement; but Carleton was always finding something to do
+which excited his admiration.
+
+"Landscape gardening is one of the pleasantest of amusements," said Fleda.
+
+"I have just knowledge enough in the matter to admire;--to originate any
+ideas is beyond me; I have to depend for them upon my gardener,--and my
+wife--and so I lose a pleasure, I suppose; but every man has his own
+particular hobby. Carleton, however, has more than his share--he has half
+a dozen, I think."
+
+"Half a dozen hobbies!" said Fleda.
+
+"Perhaps I should not call them hobbies, for he manages to ride them all
+skilfully; and a hobby-horse, I believe, always runs away with the man?"
+
+Fleda could hardly return his smile. She thought people were possessed
+with an unhappy choice of subjects in talking to her that morning. But
+fancying that she had very ill kept up her part in the conversation and
+must have looked like a simpleton, she forced herself to break the silence
+which followed the last remark, and asked the same question she had asked
+Mrs. Fothergill,--if the country was quiet?
+
+"Outwardly quiet," he said;--"O yes--there is no more difficulty--that is,
+none which cannot easily be handled. There was some danger a few months
+ago, but it is blown over; all was quiet on Carleton's estates so soon as
+he was at home, and that of course had great influence on the
+neighbourhood. No, there is nothing to be apprehended. He has the hearts
+of his people completely, and one who has their hearts can do what he
+pleases with their heads, you know. Well he deserves it--he has done a
+great deal for them."
+
+Fleda was afraid to ask in what way,--but perhaps he read the question
+in her eyes.
+
+"That's one of his hobbies--ameliorating the condition of the poorer
+classes on his estates. He has given himself to it for some years back; he
+has accomplished a great deal for them--a vast deal indeed! He has changed
+the face of things, mentally and morally, in several places, with his
+adult schools, and agricultural systems, and I know not what; but the most
+powerful means I think after all has been the weight of his personal
+influence, by which he can introduce and carry through any measure;
+neither ignorance nor prejudice nor obstinacy seem to make head against
+him. It requires a peculiar combination of qualities, I think,--very
+peculiar and rare,--to deal successfully with the mind of the masses."
+
+"I should think so indeed," said Fleda.
+
+"He has it--I don't comprehend it--and I have not studied his machinery
+enough to understand that; but I have seen the effects. Never should have
+thought he was the kind of man either--but there it is!--I don't
+comprehend him. There is only one fault to be found with him though."
+
+"What is that?" said Fleda smiling.
+
+"He has built a fine dissenting chapel down here towards Hollonby," he
+said gravely, looking her in the face,--"and what is yet worse, his uncle
+tells me, he goes there half the time himself!"
+
+Fleda could not help laughing, nor colouring, at his manner.
+
+"I thought it was always considered a meritorious action to build a
+church," she said.
+
+"Indubitably.--But you see, this was a chapel."
+
+The laugh and the colour both grew more unequivocal--Fleda could
+not help it.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir--I have not learned such nice
+distinctions--Perhaps a chapel was wanted just in that place."
+
+"That is presumable. But _he_ might be wanted somewhere else. However,"
+said the gentleman with a good-humoured smile,--"his uncle forgives him;
+and if his mother cannot influence him,--I am afraid nobody else will.
+There is no help for it. And I should be very sorry to stand ill with him.
+I have given you the dark side of his character."
+
+"What is the other side in the contrast?" said Fleda, wondering at herself
+for her daring.
+
+"It is not for me to say," he answered with a slight shrug of the
+shoulders and an amused glance at her;--"I suppose it depends upon
+people's vision,--but if you will permit me, I will instance a bright spot
+that was shewn to me the other day, that I confess, when I look at it,
+dazzles my eyes a little."
+
+Fleda only bowed; she dared not speak again.
+
+"There was a poor fellow--the son of one of Mr. Carleton's old tenants
+down here at Enchapel,--who was under sentence of death, lying in prison
+at Carstairs. The father, I am told, is an excellent man and a good
+tenant; the son had been a miserable scapegrace, and now for some crime--I
+forget what--had at last been brought to justice. The evidence against him
+was perfect and the offence was not trifling--there was not the most
+remote chance of a pardon, but it seemed the poor wretch had been building
+up his dependence upon that hope and was resting on it; and consequently
+was altogether indisposed and unfit to give his attention to the subjects
+that his situation rendered proper for him.
+
+"The gentleman who gave me this story was requested by a brother
+clergyman to go with him to visit the prisoner. They found him quite
+stupid--unmovable by all that could be urged, or rather perhaps the style
+of the address, as it was described to me, was fitted to confound and
+bewilder the man rather than enlighten him. In the midst of all this Mr.
+Carleton came in--he was just then on the wing for America, and he had
+heard of the poor creature's condition in a visit to his father. He
+came,--my informant said,--like a being of a different planet. He took the
+man's hand,--he was chained foot and wrist,--'My poor friend,' he said, 'I
+have been thinking of you here, shut out from the light of the sun, and I
+thought you might like to see the face of a friend';--with that singular
+charm of manner which he knows how to adapt to everybody and every
+occasion. The man was melted at once--at his feet, as it were;--he could
+do anything with him. Carleton began then, quietly, to set before him the
+links in the chain of evidence which had condemned him--one by one--in
+such a way as to prove to him, by degrees but irresistibly, that he had no
+hope in this world. The man was perfectly subdued--sat listening and
+looking into those powerful eyes that perhaps you know,--taking in all his
+words and completely in his hand. And then Carleton went on to bring
+before him the considerations that he thought should affect him in such a
+case, in a way that this gentleman said was indescribably effective and
+winning; till that hardened creature was broken down,--sobbing like a
+child,--actually sobbing!--"
+
+Fleda did her best, but she was obliged to hide her face in her hands, let
+what would be thought of her.
+
+"It was the finest exhibition of eloquence, this gentleman said, he
+had ever listened to.--For me it was an exhibition of another kind. I
+would have believed such an account of few men, but of all the men I
+know I would least have believed it of Guy Carleton a few years ago;
+even now I can hardly believe it. But it is a thing that would do
+honour to any man."--
+
+Fleda felt that the tears were making their way between her fingers, but
+she could not help it; and she presently knew that her companion had gone
+and she was left alone again. Who was this gentleman? and how much did he
+know about her? More than that she was a stranger, Fleda was sure; and
+dreading his return, or that somebody else might come and find her with
+tokens of tears upon her face, she stepped out upon the greensward and
+made for the flaunting sweet-briar that seemed to beckon her to visit its
+relations.
+
+The entrance of a green path was there, or a grassy glade, more or less
+wide, leading through a beautiful growth of firs and larches. No roses,
+nor any other ornamental shrubs; only the soft, well-kept footway through
+the woodland. Fleda went gently on and on, admiring, where the trees
+sometimes swept back, leaving an opening, and at other places stretched
+their graceful branches over her head. The perfect condition of
+everything to the eye, the rich coloured vegetation,--of varying colour
+above and below,--the absolute retirement, and the strong pleasant smell
+of the evergreens, had a kind of charmed effect upon senses and mind too.
+It was a fairyland sort of place. The presence of its master seemed
+everywhere; it was like him; and Fleda pressed on to see yet livelier
+marks of his character and fancy beyond. By degrees the wood began to thin
+on one side; then at once the glade opened into a bright little lawn rich
+with roses in full bloom. Fleda was stopped short at the sudden vision of
+loveliness. There was the least possible appearance of design; no dry beds
+were to be seen; the luxuriant clumps of Provence and white roses, with
+the varieties of the latter, seemed to have chosen their own places; only
+to have chosen them very happily. One hardly imagined that they had
+submitted to dictation, if it were not that Queen Flora never was known to
+make so effective a disposition of her forces without help. The screen of
+trees was very thin on the border of this opening, so thin that the light
+from beyond came through. On a slight rocky elevation which formed the
+further side of it sat an exquisite little Moorish temple, about which and
+the face of the rock below some Noisette and Multiflora climbers were
+vying with each other; and just at the entrance of the further path a
+white dog-rose had thrown itself over the way, covering the lower branches
+of the trees with its blossoms.
+
+Fleda stood spell bound a good while, with a breath oppressed with
+pleasure. But what she had seen excited her to see more, and a dim
+recollection of the sea-view from somewhere in the walk drew her on. Roses
+met her now frequently. Now and then a climber, all alone, seemed to have
+sought protection in a tree by the path-side, and to have displayed itself
+thence in the very wantonness of security, hanging out its flowery
+wreaths, fearless of hand or knife. Clusters of Noisettes, or of French or
+Damask roses, where the ground was open enough, stood without a rival and
+needing no foil, other than the beautiful surrounding of dark evergreen
+foliage. But the distance was not long before she came out upon a wider
+opening and found what she was seeking--the sight of the sea. The glade,
+here, was upon the brow of high ground, and the wood disappearing entirely
+for a space left the eye free to go over the lower tree-tops and the
+country beyond to the distant shore and sea-line. Roses were here too; the
+air was full of the sweetness of Damask and Bourbon varieties; and a few
+beautiful Banksias, happily placed, contrasted without interfering with
+them. It was very still;--it was very perfect;--the distant country was
+fresh-coloured with the yet early light which streamed between the trees
+and laid lines of enchantment upon the green turf; and the air came up
+from the sea-board and bore the breath of the roses to Fleda every now and
+then with a gentle puff of sweetness. Such light--she had seen none such
+light since she was a child. Was it the burst of mental sunshine that had
+made it so bright?--or was she going to be really a happy child again?
+No--no,--not that; and yet something very like it. So like it that she
+almost startled at herself. She went no further. She could not have borne,
+just then, to see any more; and feeling her heart too full she stood even
+there, with hands crossed upon her bosom, looking away from the roses to
+the distant sea-line.
+
+[Illustration: The roses could not be sweeter to any one.]
+
+That said something very different. That was very sobering; if she had
+needed sobering, which she did not. But it helped her to arrange the
+scattered thoughts which had been pressing confusedly upon her brain.
+"Look away from the roses" indeed she could not, for the same range of
+vision took in the sea and them,--and the same range of thought. These
+might stand for an emblem of the present; that, of the future,--grave,
+far-off, impenetrable;--and passing as it were the roses of time Fleda
+fixed upon that image of eternity; and weighing the one against the other,
+felt, never in her life more keenly, how wild it would be to forget in
+smelling the roses her preparations for that distant voyage that must be
+made from the shores where they grow. With one eye upon this brightest
+bits of earth before her, the other mentally was upon Hugh's grave. The
+roses could not be sweeter to any one; but in view of the launching away
+into that distant sea-line, in view of the issues on the other shore, in
+view of the welcome that might be had there,--the roses might fade and
+wither, but her happiness could not go with their breath. They were
+something to be loved, to be used, to be thankful for,--but not to live
+upon; something too that whispered of an increased burden of
+responsibility, and never more deeply than at that moment did Fleda
+remember her mother's prayer; never more simply recognized that happiness
+could not be made of these things. She might be as happy at Queechy as
+here. It depended on the sunlight of undying hopes, which indeed would
+give wonderful colour to the flowers that might be in her way;--on the
+possession of resources the spring of which would never dry;--on the peace
+which secures the continual feast of a merry heart. Fleda could take her
+new honours and advantages very meekly, and very soberly, with all her
+appreciation of them. The same work of life was to be done here as at
+Queechy. To fulfil the trust committed to her, larger here--to keep her
+hope for the future--undeceived by the sunshine of earth to plant her
+roses where they would bloom everlastingly.
+
+The weight of these things bowed Fleda to the ground and made her bury her
+face in her hands. But there was one item of happiness from which her
+thoughts never even in imagination dissevered themselves, and round it
+they gathered now in their weakness. A strong mind and heart to uphold
+hers,--a strong hand for here to rest in,--that was a blessing; and Fleda
+would have cried heartily but that her feelings were too high wrought.
+They made her deaf to the light sound of footsteps coming over the
+grass,--till two hands gently touched hers and lifted her up, and then
+Fleda was at home. But surprised and startled she could hardly lift up her
+face. Mr. Carleton's greeting was as grave and gentle as if she had been a
+stray child.
+
+"Do not fancy I am going to thank you for the grace you have shewn me,"
+said he lightly. "I know you would never have done it if circumstances had
+not been hard pleaders in my cause. I will thank you presently when you
+have answered one or two questions for me."
+
+"Questions?" said Fleda looking up. But she blushed the next instant at
+her own simplicity.
+
+He was leading her back on the path she had come. No further however than
+to the first opening, where the climbing dog-rose hung over the way.
+There he turned aside crossing the little plot of greensward, and they
+ascended some steps cut in the rock to the pavilion Fleda had looked at
+from a distance.
+
+It stood high enough to command the same sea-view. On that side it was
+entirely open, and of very light construction on the others. Several
+people were there; Fleda could hardly tell how many; and when Lord
+Peterborough was presented to her she did not find out that he was her
+morning's acquaintance. Her eye only took in besides that there were one
+or two ladies, and a clergyman in the dress of the Church of England; she
+could not distinguish. Yet she stood beside Mr. Carleton with all her
+usual quiet dignity, though her eye did not leave the ground and her words
+were in no higher key than was necessary, and though she could hardly bear
+the unchanged easy tone of his. The birds were in a perfect ecstasy all
+about them; the soft breeze came through the trees, gently waving the
+branches and stirring the spray wreaths of the roses, the very fluttering
+of summer's drapery; some roses looked in at the lattice, and those which
+could not be there sent in their congratulations on the breath of the
+wind, while the words were spoken that bound them together.
+
+Mr. Carleton then dismissing his guests to the house, went with Fleda
+again the other way. He had felt the extreme trembling of the hand which
+he took, and would not go in till it was quieted. He led her back to the
+very rose-bush where he had found her, and in his own way, presently
+brought her spirit home from its trembling and made it rest; and then
+suffered her to stand a few minutes quite silent, looking out again over
+the fair rich spread of country that lay between them and the sea.
+
+"Now tell me, Elfie," said he softly, drawing back with the same old
+caressing and tranquillizing touch the hair that hung over her
+brow,--"what you were thinking about when I found you here?--in the very
+luxury of seclusion--behind a rose-bush."
+
+Fleda looked a quick look, smiled, and hesitated, and then said it was
+rather a confusion of thoughts.
+
+"It will be a confusion no longer when you have disentangled them for me."
+
+"I don't know--" said Fleda. And she was silent, but so was he, quietly
+waiting for her to go on.
+
+"Perhaps you will wonder at me, Mr. Carleton," she said, hesitating and
+colouring.
+
+"Perhaps," he said smiling;--"but if I do I will not keep you in
+ignorance, Elfie."
+
+"I was almost bewildered, in the first place,--with beauty--and then--"
+
+"Do you like the rose garden?"
+
+"Like it!--I cannot speak of it!"
+
+"I don't want you to speak of it," said he smiling at her. "What followed
+upon liking it, Elfie?"
+
+"I was thinking," said Fleda, looking resolutely away from him,--"in the
+midst of all this,--that it is not these things which make people happy."
+
+"There is no question of that," he replied. "I have realized it thoroughly
+for a few months past."
+
+"No, but seriously, I mean," said Fleda pleadingly.
+
+"And seriously you are quite right, dear Elfie. What then?"
+
+"I was thinking," said Fieda, speaking with some difficulty, "of Hugh's
+grave,--and of the comparative value of things; and afraid, I
+believe,--especially--here--"
+
+"Of making a wrong estimate?"
+
+"Yes--and of not doing and being just what I ought."
+
+Mr. Carleton was silent for a minute, considering the brow from which his
+fingers drew off the light screen.
+
+"Will you trust me to watch over and tell you?"
+
+Fleda did not trust her voice to tell him, but her eyes did it.
+
+"As to the estimate--the remedy is to 'keep ourselves in the love of
+God;' and then these things are the gifts of our Father's hand and will
+never be put in competition with him. And they are never so sweet as when
+taken so."
+
+"Oh I know that!"
+
+"This is a danger I share with you. We will watch over each other."
+
+Fleda was silent with filling eyes.
+
+"We do not seek our happiness in these things," he said tenderly. "I never
+found it in them. For years, whatever others may have judged, I have felt
+myself a poor man; because I had not in the world a friend in whom I could
+have entire sympathy. And if I am rich now, it is not in any treasure that
+I look to enjoy in this world alone."
+
+"Oh do not, Mr. Carleton!" exclaimed Fleda, bowing her head in distress,
+and giving his hand an earnest entreaty.
+
+"What shall I not do?" said he half laughing and half gently, bringing her
+face near enough for his lips to try another kind of eloquence. "You shall
+not do this, Elfie, for any so light occasion.--Was this the whole burden
+of those grave thoughts?"
+
+"Not quite--entirely--" she said stammering. "But grave thoughts are not
+always unhappy."
+
+"Not always. I want to know what gave yours a tinge of that colour
+this morning."
+
+"It was hardly that.--You know what Foster says about 'power to its very
+last particle being duty'--I believe it frightened me a little."
+
+"If you feel that as strongly as I do, Elfie, it will act as a strong
+corrective to the danger of false estimates."
+
+"I do feel it," said Fleda. "One of my fears was that I should not feel
+it enough."
+
+"One of my cares will be that you do not act upon it too fiercely," said
+he smiling. "The power being limited so is the duty. But you shall have
+power enough, Elfie, and work enough. I have precisely what I have
+needed--my good sprite back again."
+
+"With a slight difference."
+
+"What difference?"
+
+"She is to act under direction now."
+
+"Not at all--only under safe control," he said laughing.
+
+"I am very glad of the difference, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda, with a grave
+and grateful remembrance of it.
+
+"If you think the sprite's old office is gone, you are mistaken," said he.
+"What were your other fears?--one was that you should not feel enough your
+responsibility, and the other that you might forget it."
+
+"I don't know that there were any other particular fears," said Fleda;--"I
+had been thinking of all these things--"
+
+"And what else?"
+
+Her colour and her silence begged him not to ask. He said no more, and let
+her stand still again looking off through the roses, while her mind more
+quietly and lightly went over the same train of thoughts that had moved it
+before; gradually calmed; came back from being a stranger to being at
+home, at least in one presence; and ended, her action even before her look
+told him where, as her other hand unconsciously was joined to the one
+already on his arm. A mute expression of feeling the full import of which
+he read, even before her eye coming back from its musings was raised to
+him, perhaps unconsciously too, with all the mind in it; its timidity was
+not more apparent than its simplicity of clinging affection and
+dependence. Mr. Carleton's answer was in three words, but in the tone and
+manner that accompanied them there was a response to every part of her
+appeal; so perfect that Fleda was confused at her own frankness.
+
+They began to move towards the house, but Fleda was in a maze again and
+could hardly realize anything. "His wife"!--was she that?--had so
+marvellous a change really been wrought in her?--the little asparagus
+cutter of Queechy transformed into the mistress of all this domain, and of
+the stately mansion of which they caught glimpses now and then, as they
+drew near it by another approach into which Mr. Carleton had diverged. And
+his wife!--that was the hardest to realize of all.
+
+She was as far from realizing it when she got into the house. They
+entered now at once into the breakfast-room where the same party were
+gathered whom she had met once before that morning. Mr. Carleton the
+elder, and Lord Peterborough and Lady Peterborough, she had met without
+seeing. But Fleda could look at them now; and if her colour came and went
+as frankly as when she was a child, she could speak to them and meet
+their advances with the same free and sweet self-possession as then; the
+rare dignity of a little wood-flower, that is moved by a breath, but
+recovers as easily and instantly its quiet standing. There were one or
+two who looked a little curiously at first to see whether this new member
+of the family were worthy of her place and would fill it to satisfy them.
+Not Mr. Carleton; he never sought to ascertain the value of anything that
+belonged to him by a popular vote; and his own judgment always stood
+carelessly alone. But Mrs. Carleton was less sure of her own ground or of
+others. For five minutes she noted Fleda's motions and words, her blushes
+and smiles, as she stood talking to one and another;--for five minutes,
+and then with a little smile at her sister Mrs. Carleton moved off to the
+breakfast-table, well pleased that Lady Peterborough was too engaged to
+answer her. Fleda had won them all. Mr. Carleton's intervening shield of
+grace and kindness was only needed here against the too much attention or
+attraction that might distress her. He was again, now they were in
+presence of others, exactly what he had been to her when she was a child,
+the same cool and efficient friend and protector. Nobody in the room
+shewed less thought of her _except_ in action; a great many little things
+done for her pleasure or comfort, so quietly that nobody knew it but one
+person, and she hardly noticed it at the time. All could not have the
+same tact.
+
+There was an uninterrupted easy flow of talk at the table, which Fleda
+heard just enough to join in where it was necessary; the rest of the time
+she sat in a kind of abstraction, dipping enormous strawberries one by
+one into white sugar, with a curious want of recognition between them and
+the ends of her fingers; it never occurred to her that they had picked
+baskets full.
+
+"I have done something for which you will hardly thank me, Mr. Carleton,"
+said Lord Peterborough. "I have driven this lady to tears within the first
+hour of her being in the house."
+
+"If she will forgive you, I will, my lord," Mr. Carleton answered
+carelessly.
+
+"I will confess myself though," continued his lordship looking at the face
+that was so intent over the strawberries. "I was under the impression when
+I first saw a figure in the window that it was Lady Peterborough. I own as
+soon as I found it was a stranger I had my suspicions--which did not lack
+confirmation in the course of the interview--I trust I am forgiven the
+means I used."
+
+"It seems you had your curiosity too, my lord," said Mr. Carleton
+the uncle.
+
+"Which ought in all justice to have lacked gratification," said Lady
+Peterborough. "I hope Fleda will not be too ready to forgive you."
+
+"I expect forgiveness nevertheless," said he looking at Fleda. "Must I
+wait for it?"
+
+"I am much obliged to you, sir."
+
+And then she gave him a very frank smile and blush as she added, "I beg
+pardon--you know my tongue is American."
+
+"I don't like that," said his lordship gravely.
+
+"Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," said the
+elder Carleton. "The heart being English, we may hope the tongue will
+become so too."
+
+"I will not assure you of that, sir," Fleda said laughingly, though her
+cheeks showed the conversation was not carried on without effort. Oddly
+enough nobody saw it with any dissatisfaction.
+
+"Of what, madam?" said Lord Peterborough.
+
+"That I will not always keep a rag of the stars and stripes flying
+somewhere."
+
+But that little speech had almost been too much for her equanimity.
+
+"Like Queen Elizabeth who retained the crucifix when she gave up the
+profession of popery."
+
+"Very unlike indeed!" said Fleda, endeavouring to understand what Mr.
+Carleton was saying to her about wood strawberries and hautbois.
+
+"Will you allow that, Carleton?"
+
+"What, my lord?"
+
+"A rival banner to float alongside of St. George's?"
+
+'"The flags are friendly, my lord."
+
+"Hum--just now,--they may seem so.--Has your little standard-bearer
+anything of a rebellious disposition?"
+
+"Not against any lawful authority, I hope," said Fleda.
+
+"Then there is hope for you, Mr. Carleton, that you will be able to
+prevent the introduction of mischievous doctrines."
+
+"For shame, Lord Peterborough!" said his wife,--"what atrocious
+suppositions you are making. I am blushing, I am sure, for your want of
+discernment."
+
+"Why--yes--" said his lordship, looking at another face whose blushes were
+more unequivocal,--"it may seem so--there is no appearance of anything
+untoward, but she is a woman after all. I will try her. Mrs. Carleton,
+don't you think with my Lady Peterborough that in the present nineteenth
+century women ought to stand more on that independent footing from which
+lordly monopoly has excluded them?"
+
+The first name Fleda thought belonged to another person, and her downcast
+eyelids prevented her seeing to whom it was addressed. It was no matter,
+for any answer was anticipated.
+
+"The boast of independence is not engrossed by the boldest footing, my
+lord."
+
+"She has never considered the subject," said Lady Peterborough.
+
+"It is no matter," said his lordship. "I must respectfully beg an answer
+to my question."
+
+The silence made Fleda look up.
+
+"Don't you think that the rights of the weak ought to be on a perfect
+equality with those of the strong?"
+
+"The rights of the weak _as such_--yes, my lord."
+
+The gentlemen smiled; the ladies looked rather puzzled.
+
+"I have no more to say, Mr. Carleton," said his lordship, "but that we
+must make an Englishwoman of her!"
+
+"I am afraid she will never be a perfect cure," said Mr. Carleton smiling.
+
+"I conceive it might require peculiar qualities in the physician,--but I
+do not despair. I was telling her of some of your doings this morning, and
+happy to see that they met with her entire disapproval."
+
+Mr. Carleton did not even glance towards Fleda and made no answer, but
+carelessly gave the conversation another turn; for which she thanked him
+unspeakably.
+
+There was no other interruption of any consequence to the well-bred flow
+of talk and kindliness of manner on the part of all the company, that put
+Fleda as much as possible at her ease. Still she did not realize anything,
+and yet she did realize it so strongly that her woman's heart could not
+rest till it bad eased itself in tears. The superbly appointed table at
+which she sat,--her own, though Mrs. Carleton this morning presided,--the
+like of which she had not seen since she was at Carleton before; the
+beautiful room with its arrangements, bringing back a troop of
+recollections of that old time; all the magnificence about her, instead of
+elevating sobered her spirits to the last degree. It pressed home upon her
+that feeling of responsibility, of the change that come over her; and
+though beneath it all very happy, Fleda hardly knew it, she longed so to
+be alone and to cry. One person's eyes, however little seemingly observant
+of her, read sufficiently well the unusual shaded air of her brow and her
+smile. But a sudden errand of business called him abroad immediately after
+breakfast.
+
+The ladies seized the opportunity to carry Fleda up and introduce her to
+her dressing-room and take account of Lady Peterborough's commission, and
+ladies and ladies' maids soon formed a busy committee of dress and
+decorations. It did not enliven Fleda, it wearied her, though she forgave
+them the annoyance in gratitude for the pleasure they took in looking at
+her. Even the delight her eye had from the first minute she saw it, in the
+beautiful room, and her quick sense of the carefulness with which it had
+been arranged for her, added to the feeling with which she was oppressed;
+she was very passive in the hands of her friends.
+
+In the midst of all this the housekeeper was called in and formally
+presented, and received by Fleda with a mixture of frankness and
+bashfulness that caused Mrs. Fothergill afterwards to pronounce her "a
+lady of a very sweet dignity indeed."
+
+"She is just such a lady as you might know my master would have fancied,"
+said Mr. Spenser.
+
+"And what kind of a lady is that?" said Mrs. Fothergill.
+
+But Mr. Spenser was too wise to enter into any particulars and merely
+informed Mrs. Fothergill that she would know in a few days.
+
+"The first words Mrs. Carleton said when Mr. Carleton got home," said the
+old butler,--"she put both her hands on his arms and cried out, 'Guy, I am
+delighted with her!'"
+
+"And what did _he_ say?" said Mrs. Fothergill.
+
+"He!" echoed Mr. Spenser in a tone of indignant intelligence,--"what
+should _he_ say?--He didn't say anything; only asked where she was,
+I believe."
+
+In the midst of silks, muslins and jewels Mr. Carleton found Fleda still
+on his return; looking pale and even sad, though nobody but himself
+through her gentle and grateful bearing would have discerned it. He took
+her out of the hands of the committee and carried her down to the little
+library, adjoining the great one, but never thrown open,--_his_ room, as
+it was called, where more particularly art and taste had accumulated their
+wealth of attractions.
+
+"I remember this very well," said Fleda. "This beautiful room!"
+
+"It is as free to you as to me, Elfie; and I never gave the freedom of it
+to any one else."
+
+"I will not abuse it," said Fleda.
+
+"I hope not, my dear Elfie," said he smiling,--"for the room will want
+something to me now when you are not in it; and a gift is abused that is
+not made free use of."
+
+A large and deep bay window in the room looked upon the same green lawn
+and fir wood with the windows of the library. Like those this casement
+stood open, and Mr. Carleton leading Fleda there remained quietly beside
+her for a moment, watching her face which his last words had a little
+moved from its outward composure. Then, gently and gravely as if she had
+been a child, putting his arm round her shoulders and drawing her to him
+he whispered,
+
+"My dear Elfie,--you need not fear being misunderstood--"
+
+Fleda started and looked up to see what he meant. But his face said it so
+plainly, in its perfect intelligence and sympathy with her, that her
+barrier of self-command and reserve was all broken down; and hiding her
+head in her hands upon his breast she let the pent-up burden upon her
+heart come forth in a flood of unrestrained tears. She could not help
+herself. And when she would fain have checked them after the first burst
+and bidden them, according to her habit to wait another time, it was out
+of her power; for the same kindness and tenderness that had set them a
+flowing, perhaps witting of her intent, effectually hindered its
+execution. He did not say a single word, but now and then a soft touch of
+his hand or of his lips upon her brow, in its expressive tenderness would
+unnerve all her resolution and oblige her to have no reserve that time at
+least in letting her secret thoughts and feelings be known, as far as
+tears could tell them. She wept, at first in spite of herself and
+afterwards in the very luxury of indulged feeling; till she was as quiet
+as a child, and the weight of oppression was all gone. Mr. Carleton did
+not move, nor speak, till she did.
+
+"I never knew before how good you were, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda
+raising her head at length, as soon as she dared, but still held fast by
+that kind arm.
+
+"What new light have you got on the subject?" said he, smiling.
+
+"Why," said Fleda, trying as hard as ever did sunshine to scatter the
+remnants of a cloud,--it was a bright cloud too by this time, "I have
+always heard that men cannot endure the sight of a woman's tears."
+
+"You shall give me a reward then. Elfie."
+
+"What reward?" said Fleda.
+
+"Promise me that you will shed them nowhere else."
+
+"Nowhere else?--"
+
+"But here--in my arms."
+
+"I don't feel like crying any more now," said Fleda evasively;--at
+least."--for drops were falling rather fast again,--" not sorrowfully."
+
+"Promise me, Elfie," said Mr. Carleton after a pause.
+
+But Fleda hesitated still and looked dubious.
+
+"Come!--" he said smiling,--"you know you promised a little while ago that
+you would have a particular regard to my wishes."
+
+Fleda's cheeks answered that appeal with sufficient brightness, but she
+looked down and said demurely,
+
+"I am sure one of your wishes is that I should not say anything rashly."
+
+"Well?--"
+
+"One cannot answer for such wilful things as tears."
+
+"And for such wilful things as men?" said he smiling.
+
+But Fleda was silent.
+
+"Then I will alter the form of my demand. Promise me that no shadow of
+anything shall come over your spirit that you do not let me either share
+or remove."
+
+There was no trifling in the tone,--full of gentleness as it was; there
+could be no evading its requisition. But the promise demanded was a grave
+one. Fleda was half afraid to make it. She looked up, in the very way he
+had seen her do when a child, to find a warrant for her words before she
+uttered them. But the full, clear, steadfast eye into which she looked for
+two seconds, authorized as well as required the promise; and hiding her
+face again on his breast Fleda gave it, amid a gush of tears every one of
+which was illumined with heart-sunshine.
+
+
+
+The End.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Queechy, Susan Warner
+(AKA Elizabeth Wetherell)
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUEECHY ***
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+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Queechy, Susan Warner (AKA Elizabeth Wetherell)
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+  
+    h1,h2,h3,h4 { text-align: center; font-weight: bold; font-variant: small-caps }
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+    .smallcaps { font-variant: small-caps }
+    img { border-style: none }
+  
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+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Queechy, by Susan Warner
+(AKA Elizabeth Wetherell)
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
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+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: Queechy
+
+Author: Susan Warner
+            (AKA Elizabeth Wetherell)
+
+Release Date: September, 2005 [EBook #8874]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on August 18, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUEECHY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus01.jpg"><img src="images/illus01.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="She stopped a moment when she came upon the bridge."
+      title="She stopped a moment when she came upon the bridge." /><br /> She
+      stopped a moment when she came upon the bridge.</a>
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      Queechy.
+    </h1>
+    <p class="smallcaps">
+      by
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      Elizabeth Wetherell.
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      Illustrated<br /><br /> By Frederic Dielman.
+    </h2>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "I hope I may speak of woman without offence to ladies."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote class="smallcaps">
+      <p>
+        The Guardian
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <h1>
+      Contents.
+    </h1>
+    <ol style="list-style-type: upper-roman">
+      <li>
+        <a href="#01">Curtain Rises at Queechy</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#02">Things Loom Out Dimly Through the Smoke</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#03">You Amuse Me and I'll Amuse You</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#04">Aunt Miriam</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#05">As to Whether a Flower Can Grow in the Woods</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#06">Queechy at Dinner</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#07">The Curtain Falls Upon the Scene</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#08">The Fairy Leaves the House</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#09">How Mr. Carleton Happened To Be Not at Home</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#10">The Fairy and the Englishman</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#11">A Little Candle</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#12">Spars Below</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#13">The Fairy Peeps into an English House, but Does Not Stay
+        There</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#14">Two Bibles in Paris</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#15">Very Literary</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#16">Dissolving View--Ending with a Saw-Mill in the Distance</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#17">Rain and Water--Cresses for Breakfast</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#18">Mr. Rossitur's Wits Sharpened upon a Ploughshare</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#19">Fleda Goes After Help and Finds Dr. Quackenboss</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#20">Society in Queechy</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#21">"The Sweetness of a Man's Friend by a Hearty Counsel"</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#22">Wherein a Great Many People Pay Their Respects in Form and
+        Substance</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#23">The Captain Out-Generalled by the Fairy</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#24">A Breath of the World at Queechy</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#25">"As Good a Boy as You Need to Have"</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#26">Pine Knots</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#27">Sweet--In Its Consequences</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#28">The Brook's Old Song--And the New</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#29">Flighty and Unsatisfactory</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#30">Disclosures--By Mr. Skillcorn</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#31">Mr. Olmney's Cause Argued</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#32">Sometimes Inconvenient "From the Loophole of Retreat to
+        Peep at Such a World"</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#33">Fleda's White Muslin</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#34">How the Fairy Engaged the Two Englishmen</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#35">Fleda Forgets Herself</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#36">The Roses and the Gentlemen</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#37">"An Unseen Enemy Round the Corner"</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#38">The Fairy at Her Work Again</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#39">A Night of Uncertain Length</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#40">A Thorn Enters</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#41">Dealings with the Press</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#42">Ends with Sweet Music</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#43">How Fleda Was Watched by Blue Eyes</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#44">What Pleasant People One Meets in Society</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#45">How Much Trouble One May Have about a Note</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#46">Aromatic Vinegar</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#47">The Fur Cloak on a Journey</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#48">Quarrenton to Queechy</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#49">Montepoole Becomes a Point of Interest</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#50">The House on "The Hill" Once More</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#51">The First One That Left Queechy</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#52">The Last Sunset There</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#53">Fleda Alone on an Isthmus</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="#54">The Moorish Temple before Breakfast</a>
+      </li>
+    </ol>
+    <h1>
+      List of Illustrations.
+    </h1>
+    <ul>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus01.jpg">She stopped a moment when she came upon the
+        bridge. (<i>Frontispiece</i>)</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus02.jpg">She made a long job of her bunch of holly.</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus03.jpg">"I wasn't thinking of myself in
+        particular."</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus04.jpg">"Who's got it now, Cynthy?"</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus05.jpg">Fleda coloured and looked at her
+        grandfather.</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus06.jpg">Fleda was sitting, her face bowed in her
+        hands.</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus07.jpg">She stood back and watched.</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus08.jpg">Then he seated himself beside her.</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus09.jpg">The children were always together.</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus10.jpg">"He is not a pug."</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus11.jpg">"They will expect me at home."</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus12.jpg">"Well, sir, you know the road by Deacon
+        Patterson's?"</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus13.jpg">"O uncle Rolf, don't have anything to do
+        with him."</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus14.jpg">"Look at these roses, and don't ask me for
+        papers!"</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus15.jpg">She knelt down before him.</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus16.jpg">"How lovely it is, Hugh!"</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus17.jpg">Philetus was left to "shuck" and bring home
+        a load of the fruit.</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus18.jpg">"And there goes Mr. Carleton!" said
+        Constance.</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus19.jpg">Fleda saw with a start that it was Mr.
+        Carleton.</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus20.jpg">"I am sure Mr. Thorn will excuse me."</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus21.jpg">"My dear child," he said, holding her face
+        in both his hands.</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus22.jpg">Mrs. Rossitur sat there alone.</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus23.jpg">Barby's energies and fainting remedies were
+        again put in use.</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus24.jpg">Then he stood and watched her.</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus25.jpg">"Well, take your place," said Thorn.</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus26.jpg">"I told him, 'O you were not gone yet!'"</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus27.jpg">"How are they all at home?"</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus28.jpg">"Is this the gentleman that's to be your
+        husband?"</a>
+      </li>
+      <li>
+        <a href="images/illus29.jpg">Slowly and lingeringly they moved away.</a>
+      </li>
+    </ul>
+    <h1>
+      Queechy.
+    </h1>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="01"></a>Chapter I.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        A single cloud on a sunny day<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;When all the rest of
+        heaven is clear,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;A frown upon the atmosphere,<br />
+        &nbsp;&nbsp;That hath no business to appear,<br /> When skies are blue
+        and earth is gay.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Byron.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Come, dear grandpa!--the old mare and the wagon are at the gate--all
+      ready."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, dear!"--responded a cheerful hearty voice, "they must wait a bit; I
+      haven't got my hat yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O I'll get that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the little speaker, a girl of some ten or eleven years old, dashed
+      past the old gentleman and running along the narrow passage which led to
+      his room soon returned with the hat in her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, dear,--but that ain't all. I must put on my great-coat--and I must
+      look and see if I can find any money--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O yes--for the post-office. It's a beautiful day, grandpa. Cynthy!--won't
+      you come and help grandpa on with his great-coat?--And I'll go out and
+      keep watch of the old mare till you're ready."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A needless caution. For the old mare, though spirited enough for her
+      years, had seen some fourteen or fifteen of them and was in no sort of
+      danger of running away. She stood in what was called the back meadow, just
+      without the little paling fence that enclosed a small courtyard round the
+      house. Around this courtyard rich pasture-fields lay on every side, the
+      high road cutting through them not more than a hundred or two feet from
+      the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little girl planted herself on the outside of the paling and setting
+      her back to it eyed the old mare with great contentment; for besides other
+      grounds for security as to her quiet behaviour, one of the men employed
+      about the farm, who had harnessed the equipage, was at the moment busied
+      in putting some clean straw in the bottom of the vehicle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Watkins," said the child presently to this person, "here is a strap that
+      is just ready to come unbuckled."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you know about straps and buckles?" said the man rather grumly.
+      But he came round however to see what she meant, and while he drew the one
+      and fastened the other took special good care not to let Fleda know that
+      her watchful eyes had probably saved the whole riding party from ruin; as
+      the loosing of the strap would of necessity have brought on a trial of the
+      old mare's nerves which not all her philosophy could have been expected to
+      meet. Fleda was satisfied to see the buckle made fast, and that Watkins,
+      roused by her hint or by the cause of it, afterwards took a somewhat
+      careful look over the whole establishment. In high glee then she climbed
+      to her seat in the little wagon, and her grandfather coming out coated and
+      hatted with some difficulty mounted to his place beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think Watkins might have taken the trouble to wash the wagon, without
+      hurting himself," said Fleda; "it is all specked with mud since last
+      time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ha'n't he washed it!" said the old gentleman in a tone of displeasure.
+      "Watkins!"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well."--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why didn't you wash the wagon as I told you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I did."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's all over slosh."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's Mr. Didenhover's work--he had it out day 'fore yesterday; and if
+      you want it cleaned, Mr. Ringgan, you must speak to him about it. Mr.
+      Didenhover may file his own doings; it's more than I'm a going to."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old gentleman made no answer, except to acquaint the mare with the
+      fact of his being in readiness to set out. A shade of annoyance and
+      displeasure for a moment was upon his face; but the gate opening from the
+      meadow upon the high road had hardly swung back upon its hinges after
+      letting them out when he recovered the calm sweetness of demeanour that
+      was habitual with him, and seemed as well as his little granddaughter to
+      have given care the go-by for the time. Fleda had before this found out
+      another fault in the harness, or rather in Mr. Didenhover, which like a
+      wise little child she kept to herself. A broken place which her
+      grandfather had ordered to be properly mended was still tied up with the
+      piece of rope which had offended her eyes the last time they had driven
+      out. But she said not a word of it, because "it would only worry grandpa
+      for nothing;" and forgetting it almost immediately she moved on with him
+      in a state of joyous happiness that no mud-stained wagon nor untidy
+      rope-bound harness could stir for an instant. Her spirit was like a clear
+      still-running stream which quietly and surely deposits every defiling and
+      obscuring admixture it may receive from its contact with the grosser
+      elements around; the stream might for a moment be clouded; but a little
+      while, and it would run as clear as ever. Neither Fleda nor her
+      grandfather cared a jot for the want of elegancies which one despised, and
+      the other if she had ever known had well nigh forgotten. What mattered it
+      to her that the little old green wagon was rusty and worn, or that years
+      and service had robbed the old mare of all the jauntiness she had ever
+      possessed, so long as the sun shone and the birds sang? And Mr. Ringgan,
+      in any imaginary comparison, might be pardoned for thinking that <i>he</i>
+      was the proud man, and that his poor little equipage carried such a
+      treasure as many a coach and four went without.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where are we going first, grandpa? to the post-office?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just there!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How pleasant it is to go there always, isn't it, grandpa? You have the
+      paper to get, and I--I don't very often get a letter, but I have always
+      the <i>hope</i> of getting one; and that's something. Maybe I'll have one
+      to-day, grandpa?" "We'll see. It's time those cousins of yours wrote to
+      you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O <i>they</i> don't write to me--it's only Aunt Lucy; I never had a
+      letter from a single one of them, except once from little Hugh,--don't you
+      remember, grandpa? I should think he must be a very nice little boy,
+      shouldn't you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Little boy? why I guess he is about as big as you are, Fleda--he is
+      eleven years old, ain't he?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, but I am past eleven, you know, grandpa, and I am a little girl."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This reasoning being unanswerable Mr. Ringgan only bade the old mare trot
+      on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a pleasant day in autumn. Fleda thought it particularly pleasant
+      for riding, for the sun was veiled with thin hazy clouds. The air was mild
+      and still, and the woods, like brave men, putting the best face upon
+      falling fortunes. Some trees were already dropping their leaves; the
+      greater part standing in all the varied splendour which the late frosts
+      had given them. The road, an excellent one, sloped gently up and down
+      across a wide arable country, in a state of high cultivation and now
+      shewing all the rich variety of autumn. The redish buckwheat patches, and
+      fine wood tints of the fields where other grain had been; the bright green
+      of young rye or winter wheat, then soberer coloured pasture or meadow
+      lands, and ever and anon a tuft of gay woods crowning a rising ground, or
+      a knot of the everlasting pines looking sedately and steadfastly upon the
+      fleeting glories of the world around them, these were mingled and
+      interchanged and succeeded each other in ever-varying fresh combinations.
+      With its high picturesque beauty the whole scene had a look of thrift and
+      plenty and promise which made it eminently cheerful. So Mr. Ringgan and
+      his little granddaughter both felt it to be. For some distance the grounds
+      on either hand the road were part of the old gentleman's farm; and many a
+      remark was exchanged between him and Fleda as to the excellence or
+      hopefulness of this or that crop or piece of soil; Fleda entering into all
+      his enthusiasm, and reasoning of clover leys and cockle and the proper,
+      harvesting of Indian corn and other like matters, with no lack of interest
+      or intelligence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O grandpa," she exclaimed suddenly, "won't you stop a minute and let me
+      get out. I want to get some of that beautiful bittersweet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you want that for?" said he. "You can't get out very well."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O yes I can--please, grandpa! I want some of it <i>very</i> much--just
+      one minute!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped, and Fleda got out and went to the roadside, where a
+      bittersweet vine had climbed into a young pine tree and hung it as it were
+      with red coral. But her one minute was at least four before she had
+      succeeded in breaking off as much as she could carry of the splendid
+      creeper; for not until then could Fleda persuade herself to leave it. She
+      came back and worked her way up into the wagon with one hand full as it
+      could hold of her brilliant trophies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now what good'll that do you?" inquired Mr. Ringgan good-humouredly, as
+      he lent Fleda what help he could to her seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why grandpa, I want it to put with cedar and pine in a jar at home--it
+      will keep for ever so long, and look beautiful. Isn't that handsome?--only
+      it was a pity to break it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why yes, it's handsome enough," said Mr. Ringgan, "but you've got
+      something just by the front door there at home that would do just as
+      well--what do you call it?--that naming thing there?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What, my burning bush? O grandpa! I wouldn't cut that for any thing in
+      the world! It's the only pretty thing about the house; and besides," said
+      Fleda, looking up with a softened mien, "you said that it was planted by
+      my mother. O grandpa! I wouldn't cut that for any thing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Ringgan laughed a pleased laugh. "Well, dear!" said he, "it shall grow
+      till it's as big as the house, if it will."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It won't do that," said Fleda. "But I am very glad I have got this
+      bittersweet--this is just what I wanted. Now if I can only find some
+      holly--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We'll come across some, I guess, by and by," said Mr. Ringgan; and Fleda
+      settled herself again to enjoy the trees, the fields, the roads, and all
+      the small handiwork of nature, for which her eyes had a curious
+      intelligence. But this was not fated to be a ride of unbroken pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why what are those bars down for?" she said as they came up with a field
+      of winter grain. "Somebody's been in here with a wagon. O grandpa! Mr.
+      Didenhover has let the Shakers have my butternuts!--the butternuts that
+      you told him they mustn't have."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old gentleman drew up his horse. "So he has!" said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their eyes were upon the far end of the deep lot, where at the edge of one
+      of the pieces of woodland spoken of, a picturesque group of men and boys
+      in frocks and broad-brimmed white hats were busied in filling their wagon
+      under a clump of the now thin and yellow leaved butternut trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The scoundrel!" said Mr. Ringgan under his breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Would it be any use, grandpa, for me to jump down and run and tell them
+      you don't want them to take the butternuts?--I shall have so few."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, dear, no," said her grandfather, "they have got 'em about all by this
+      time; the mischief's done. Didenhover meant to let 'em have 'em unknown to
+      me, and pocket the pay himself. Get up!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda drew a long breath, and gave a hard look at the distant wagon where
+      <i>her</i> butternuts were going in by handfuls. She said no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was but a few fields further on that the old gentleman came to a sudden
+      stop again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ain't there some of my sheep over yonder there, Fleda,--along with Squire
+      Thornton's?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know, grandpa," said Fleda,--"I can't see--yes, I do see--yes,
+      they are, grandpa; I see the mark."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought so!" said Mr. Ringgan bitterly; "I told Didenhover, only three
+      days ago, that if he didn't make up that fence the sheep would be out, or
+      Squire Thornton's would be in;--only three days ago!--Ah well!" said he,
+      shaking the reins to make the mare move on again,--"it's all of a
+      piece.--Every thing goes--I can't help it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why do you keep him, grandpa, if he don't behave right?" Fleda ventured
+      to ask gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Cause I can't get rid of him, dear," Mr. Ringgan answered rather
+      shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And till they got to the post-office he seemed in a disagreeable kind of
+      muse, which Fleda did not choose to break in upon. So the mile and a half
+      was driven in sober silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Shall I get out and go in, grandpa?" said Fleda when he drew up before
+      the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, deary," said he in his usual kind tone; "you sit still. Holloa
+      there!--Good-day, Mr. Sampion--have you got any thing for me?" The man
+      disappeared and came out again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's your paper, grandpa," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, and something else," said Mr. Ringgan: "I declare!--Miss Fleda
+      Ringgan--care of E. Ringgan, Esq.'--There, dear, there it is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Paris!" exclaimed Fleda, as she clasped the letter and both her hands
+      together. The butternuts and Mr Didenhover were forgotten at last. The
+      letter could not be read in the jolting of the wagon, but, as Fleda said,
+      it was all the pleasanter, for she had the expectation of it the whole way
+      home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where are we going now, grandpa?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To Queechy Run."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That will give us a nice long ride. I am very glad. This has been a good
+      day. With my letter and my bittersweet I have got enough, haven't I,
+      grandpa?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Queechy Run was a little village, a very little village, about half a mile
+      from Mr. Ringgan's house. It boasted however a decent brick church of some
+      size, a school-house, a lawyer's office, a grocery store, a dozen or two
+      of dwelling-houses, and a post-office; though for some reason or other Mr.
+      Ringgan always chose to have his letters come through the Sattlersville
+      post-office, a mile and a half further off. At the door of the lawyer's
+      office Mr. Ringgan again stopped, and again shouted "Holloa!"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good-day, sir. Is Mr. Jolly within?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you ask him to be so good as to step here a moment? I cannot very
+      well get out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Jolly was a comfortable-looking little man, smooth and sleek, pleasant
+      and plausible, reasonably honest too, as the world goes; a nice man to
+      have to do with, the world went so easy with his affairs that you were
+      sure he would make no unnecessary rubs in your own. He came now fresh and
+      brisk to the side of the wagon, with that uncommon hilarity which people
+      sometimes assume when they have a disagreeable matter on hand that must be
+      spoken of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good-morning, sir! Fine day, Mr. Jolly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Beautiful day, sir! Splendid season! How do you do, Mr. Ringgan?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, sir, I never was better in my life, barring this lameness, that
+      disables me very much. I can't go about and see to things any more as I
+      used to. However--we must expect evils at my time of life. I don't
+      complain. I have a great deal to be thankful for."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir,--we have a great deal to be thankful for," said Mr. Jolly
+      rather abstractedly, and patting the old mare with kind attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you seen that fellow McGowan?" said Mr. Ringgan abruptly, and in a
+      lower tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have seen him," said Mr. Jolly, coming back from the old mare to
+      business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's a hard customer I guess, ain't he?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's as ugly a cur as ever was whelped!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What does he say?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Says he must have it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you tell him what I told you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I told him, sir, that you had not got the returns from your farm that you
+      expected this year, owing to one thing and 'nother; and that you couldn't
+      make up the cash for him all at once; and that he would have to wait a
+      spell, but that he'd be sure to get it in the long run. Nobody ever
+      suffered by Mr. Ringgan yet, as I told him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, sir,--he was altogether refractible--he's as pig-headed a fellow as
+      I ever see."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What did he say?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He gave me names, and swore he wouldn't wait a day longer--said he'd
+      waited already six months."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He has so. I couldn't meet the last payment. There's a year's rent due
+      now. I can't help it. There needn't have been an hour,--if I could go
+      about and attend to things myself. I have been altogether disappointed in
+      that Didenhover."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I expect you have."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you suppose he'll do, Mr. Jolly?--McGowan, I mean."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I expect he'll do what the law'll let him, Mr. Ringgan; I don't know
+      what'll hinder him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's a worse turn than I thought my infirmities would ever play me," said
+      the old gentleman after a short pause,--"first to lose the property
+      altogether, and then not to be permitted to wear out what is left of life
+      in the old place--there won't be much."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So I told him, Mr. Ringgan. I put it to him. Says I, 'Mr. McGowan, it's a
+      cruel hard business; there ain't a man in town that wouldn't leave Mr.
+      Ringgan the shelter of his own roof as long as he wants any, and think it
+      a pleasure,--if the rent was anyhow.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well--well!" said the old gentleman, with a mixture of dignity and
+      bitterness,--"it doesn't much matter. My head will find a shelter somehow,
+      above ground or under it. The Lord will provide.--Whey! stand still, can't
+      ye! what ails the fool? The creature's seen years enough to be steady," he
+      added with a miserable attempt at his usual cheerful laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda had turned away her head and tried not to hear when the lowered
+      tones of the speakers seemed to say that she was one too many in the
+      company. But she could not help catching a few bits of the conversation,
+      and a few bits were generally enough for Fleda's wit to work upon; she had
+      a singular knack at putting loose ends of talk together. If more had been
+      wanting, the tones of her grandfather's voice would have filled up every
+      gap in the meaning of the scattered words that came to her ear. Her heart
+      sank fast as the dialogue went on, and she needed no commentary or
+      explanation to interpret the bitter little laugh with which it closed. It
+      was a chill upon all the rosy joys and hopes of a most joyful and hopeful
+      little nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old mare was in motion again, but Fleda no longer cared or had the
+      curiosity to ask where they were going. The bittersweet lay listlessly in
+      her lap; her letter, clasped to her breast, was not thought of; and tears
+      were quietly running one after the other down her cheeks and falling on
+      her sleeve; she dared not lift her handkerchief nor turn her face towards
+      her grandfather lest they should catch his eye. Her grandfather?--could it
+      be possible that he must be turned out of his old home in his old age?
+      could it be possible? Mr. Jolly seemed to think it might be, and her
+      grandfather seemed to think it must. Leave the old house! But where would
+      he go?--Son or daughter he had none left; resources be could have none, or
+      this need not happen. Work he could not; be dependent upon the charity of
+      any kin or friend she knew he would never; she remembered hearing him once
+      say he could better bear to go to the almshouse than do any such thing.
+      And then, if they went, he would have his pleasant room no more where the
+      sun shone in so cheerfully, and they must leave the dear old kitchen where
+      they had been so happy, and the meadows and hills would belong to somebody
+      else; and she would gather her stores of buttercups and chestnuts under
+      the loved old trees never again. But these things were nothing, though the
+      image of them made the tears come hot and fast, these were nothing in her
+      mind to the knowledge or the dread of the effect the change would have
+      upon Mr. Ringgan. Fleda knew him and knew it would not be slight. Whiter
+      his head could not be, more bowed it well might, and her own bowed in
+      anticipation as her childish fears and imaginings ran on into the possible
+      future. Of McGowan's tender mercies she had no hope. She had seen him
+      once, and being unconsciously even more of a physiognomist than most
+      children are, that one sight of him was enough to verify all Mr. Jolly had
+      said. The remembrance of his hard sinister face sealed her fears. Nothing
+      but evil could come of having to do with such a man. It was however still
+      not so much any foreboding of the future that moved Fleda's tears as the
+      sense of her grandfather's present pain,--the quick answer of her gentle
+      nature to every sorrow that touched him. His griefs were doubly hers. Both
+      from his openness of character and her penetration, they could rarely be
+      felt unshared; and she shared them always in more than due measure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In beautiful harmony, while the child had forgotten herself in keen
+      sympathy with her grandfather's sorrows, he on the other hand had half
+      lost sight of them in caring for her. Again, and this time not before any
+      house but in a wild piece of woodland, the little wagon came to a stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ain't there some holly berries that I see yonder?" said Mr.
+      Ringgan,--"there, through those white birch stems? That's what you were
+      wanting, Fleda, ain't it? Give your bittersweet to me while you go get
+      some,--and here, take this knife dear, you can't break it. Don't cut
+      yourself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's eyes were too dim to see white birch or holly, and she had no
+      longer the least desire to have the latter; but with that infallible tact
+      which assuredly is the gift of nature and no other, she answered, in a
+      voice that she forced to be clear, "O yes, thank you, grandpa;"--and
+      stealthily dashing away the tears clambered down from the rickety little
+      wagon and plunged with a cheerful <i>step</i> at least through trees and
+      underbrush to the clump of holly. But if anybody had seen Fleda's
+      face!--while she seemed to be busied in cutting as large a quantity as
+      possible of the rich shining leaves and bright berries. Her grandfather's
+      kindness and her effort to meet it had wrung her heart; she hardly knew
+      what she was doing, as she cut off sprig after sprig and threw them down
+      at her feet; she was crying sadly, with even audible sobs. She made a long
+      job of her bunch of holly. But when at last it must come to an end she
+      choked back her tears, smoothed her face, and came back to Mr. Ringgan
+      smiling and springing over the stones and shrubs in her way, and
+      exclaiming at the beauty of her vegetable stores. If her cheeks were red
+      he thought it was the flush of pleasure and exercise, and she did not let
+      him get a good look at her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why you've got enough to dress up the front room chimney," said he.
+      "That'll be the best thing you can do with 'em, won't it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The front room chimney! No, indeed I won't, grandpa. I don't want 'em
+      where nobody can see them, and you know we are never in there now it is
+      cold weather."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, dear! anyhow you like to have it. But you ha'n't a jar in the house
+      big enough for them, have you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O I'll manage--I've got an old broken pitcher without a handle, grandpa,
+      that'll do very well."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A broken pitcher! that isn't a very elegant vase," said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O you wouldn't know it is a pitcher when I have fixed it. I'll cover up
+      all the broken part with green, you know. Are we going home now, grandpa?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, I want to stop a minute at uncle Joshua's."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Joshua was a brother-in-law of Mr. Ringgan, a substantial farmer and
+      very well to do in the world! He was found not in the house but abroad in
+      the field with his men, loading an enormous basket-wagon with corn-stalks.
+      At Mr. Ringgan's shout he got over the fence and came to the wagon-side.
+      His face showed sense and shrewdness, but nothing of the open nobility of
+      mien which nature had stamped upon that of his brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus02.jpg"><img src="images/illus02.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="She made a long job of her bunch of holly."
+      title="She made a long job of her bunch of holly." /><br /> She made a long
+      job of her bunch of holly.</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fine morning, eh?" said he. "I'm getting in my corn stalks."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So I see," said Mr. Ringgan. "How do you find the new way of curing them
+      answer?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fine as ever you see. Sweet as a nut. The cattle are mad after them. How
+      are you going to be off for fodder this winter?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's more than I can tell you," said Mr. Ringgan. "There ought to be more
+      than plenty; but Didenhover contrives to bring everything out at the wrong
+      end. I wish I was rid of him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He'll never get a berth with <i>me</i>, I can tell you," said uncle
+      Joshua laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Brother," said Mr. Ringgan, lowering his tone again, "have you any loose
+      cash you could let me have for six months or so?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Uncle Joshua took a meditative look down the road, turned a quid of
+      tobacco in his cheek, and finally brought his eyes again to Mr. Ringgan
+      and answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I don't see as I can," said he. "You see Josh is just a going to
+      set up for himself at Kenton, and he'll want some help of me; and I expect
+      that'll be about as much as I can manage to lay my hands on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know who has any that he would be likely to lend?" said Mr.
+      Ringgan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, I don't. Money is rather scarce. For your rent, eh?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, for my rent! The farm brings me in nothing but my living. That
+      Didenhover is ruining me, brother Joshua."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's feathering his own nest, I reckon."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You may swear to that. There wa'n't as many bushels of grain, by
+      one-fourth, when they were threshed out last year, as I had calculated
+      there would be in the field. I don't know what on earth he could have done
+      with it. I suppose it'll be the same thing over this year."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Maybe he has served you as Deacon Travis was served by one of his help
+      last season--the rascal bored holes in the granary floor and let out the
+      corn so, and Travis couldn't contrive how his grain went till the floor
+      was empty next spring, and then he see how it was."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ha!--did he catch the fellow?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not he--he had made tracks before that. A word in your ear--I wouldn't
+      let Didenhover see much of his salary till you know how he will come out
+      at the end."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He has got it already!" said Mr. Ringgan, with a nervous twitch at the
+      old mare's head; "he wheedled me out of several little sums on one
+      pretence and another,--he had a brother in New York that he wanted to send
+      some to, and goods that he wanted to get out of pawn, and so on,--and I
+      let him have it! and then there was one of those fatting steers that he
+      proposed to me to let him have on account, and I thought it was as good a
+      way of paying him as any; and that made up pretty near the half of what
+      was due to him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I warrant you his'n was the fattest of the whole lot. Well, keep a tight
+      hold of the other half, brother Elzevir, that's my advice to you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The other half he was to make upon shares."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Whew I--well--I wish you well rid of him; and don't make such another
+      bargain again. Good-day to ye!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was with a keen pang that little Fleda saw the down-hearted look of her
+      grandfather as again he pave the old mare notice to move on. A few minutes
+      passed in deep thought on both sides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Grandpa," said Fleda, "wouldn't Mr. Jolly perhaps know of somebody that
+      might have some money to lend?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I declare!" said the old gentleman after a moment, "that's not a bad
+      thought. I wonder I didn't have it myself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They turned about, and without any more words measured back their way to
+      Queechy Run. Mr. Jolly came out again, brisk and alert as ever; but after
+      seeming to rack his brains in search of any actual or possible
+      money-lender was obliged to confess that it was in vain; he could not
+      think of one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I'll tell you what, Mr. Ringgan," he concluded, "I'll turn it over in
+      my mind to-night and see if I can think of any thing that'll do, and if I
+      can I'll let you know. If we hadn't such a nether millstone to deal with,
+      it would be easy enough to work it somehow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So they set forth homewards again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Cheer up, dear!" said the old gentleman heartily, laying one hand on his
+      little granddaughter's lap,--"it will be arranged somehow. Don't you worry
+      your little head with business. God will take care of us."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, grandpa!" said the little girl, looking up with an instant sense of
+      relief at these words; and then looking down again immediately to burst
+      into tears.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="02"></a>Chapter II.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Have you seen but a bright lily grow,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;Before rude hands
+        have touch'd it?<br /> Ha' you mark'd but the fall o' the snow,<br />
+        &nbsp;&nbsp;Before the soil hath smutch'd it?
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Ben Jonson.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Where a ray of light can enter the future, a child's hope can find a
+      way--a way that nothing less airy and spiritual can travel. By the time
+      they reached their own door Fleda's spirits were at par again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very glad we have got home, aren't you, grandpa?" she said as she
+      jumped down; "I'm so hungry. I guess we are both of us ready for supper,
+      don't you think so?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She hurried up stairs to take off her wrappings and then came down to the
+      kitchen, where standing on the broad hearth and warming herself at the
+      blaze, with all the old associations of comfort settling upon her heart,
+      it occurred to her that foundations so established <i>could not</i> be
+      shaken. The blazing fire seemed to welcome her home and bid her dismiss
+      fear; the kettle singing on its accustomed hook looked as if quietly
+      ridiculing the idea that they could be parted company; her grandfather was
+      in his cushioned chair at the corner of the hearth, reading the newspaper,
+      as she had seen him a thousand times; just in the same position, with that
+      collected air of grave enjoyment, one leg crossed over the other, settled
+      back in his chair but upright, and scanning the columns with an intent but
+      most un-careful face. A face it was that always had a rare union of
+      fineness and placidness. The table stood spread in the usual place, warmth
+      and comfort filled every corner of the room, and Pleda began to feel as if
+      she had been in an uncomfortable dream, which was very absurd, but from
+      which she was very glad she had awoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What have you got in this pitcher, Cynthy?" said she. "Muffins!--O let me
+      bake them, will you? I'll bake them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now Fleda," said Cynthy, "just you be quiet. There ain't no place where
+      you can bake 'em. I'm just going to clap 'em in the reflector--that's the
+      shortest way I can take to do 'em. You keep yourself out o' muss."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They won't be muffins if you bake 'em in the reflector, Cynthy; they
+      aren't half so good. Ah, do let me I I won't make a bit of muss."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where'll you do 'em?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In grandpa's room--if you'll just clean off the top of the stove for
+      me--now do, Cynthy! I'll do 'em beautifully and you won't have a bit of
+      trouble.--Come!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It'll make an awful smoke, Flidda; you'll fill your grandpa's room with
+      the smoke, and he won't like that, I guess."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O he won't mind it," said Fleda. "Will you, grandpa?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What, dear?"--said Mr. Ringgan, looking up at her from his paper with a
+      relaxing face which indeed promised to take nothing amiss that she might
+      do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you mind if I fill your room with smoke?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, dear!" said he, the strong heartiness of his acquiescence almost
+      reaching a laugh,--"No, dear!--fill it with anything you like!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing more to be said; and while Fleda in triumph put on an
+      apron and made her preparations, Cynthy on her part, and with a very good
+      grace, went to get ready the stove; which being a wood stove, made of
+      sheet iron, with a smooth even top, afforded in Fleda's opinion the very
+      best possible field for muffins to come to their perfection. Now Fleda
+      cared little in comparison for the eating part of the business; her
+      delight was by the help of her own skill and the stove-top to bring the
+      muffins to this state of perfection; her greatest pleasure in them was
+      over when they were baked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little while had passed, Mr. Ringgan was still busy with his newspaper,
+      Miss Cynthia Gall going in and out on various errands, Fleda shut up in
+      the distant room with the muffins and the smoke; when there came a knock
+      at the door, and Mr. Ringgan's "Come in!"--was followed by the entrance of
+      two strangers, young, well-dressed, and comely. They wore the usual badges
+      of seekers after game, but their guns were left outside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old gentleman's look of grave expectancy told his want of
+      enlightening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I fear you do not remember me, Mr. Ringgan," said the foremost of the two
+      coming up to him,--"my name is Rossitur--Charlton Rossitur--a cousin of
+      your little grand-daughter. I have only"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O I know you now!" said Mr. Ringgan, rising and grasping his hand
+      heartily,--"you are very welcome, sir. How do you do? I recollect you
+      perfectly, but you took me by surprise.--How do you do, sir? Sit down--sit
+      down."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the old gentleman had extended his frank welcome to the second of his
+      visitors almost before the first had time to utter,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My friend Mr. Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I couldn't imagine what was coming upon me," said Mr. Ringgan,
+      cheerfully, "for you weren't anywhere very near my thoughts; and I don't
+      often see much of the gay world that is passing by me. You have grown
+      since I saw you last, Mr. Rossitur. You are studying at West Point, I
+      believe."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir; I <i>was</i> studying there, but I had the pleasure of bringing
+      that to an end last June."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah!--Well, what are you now? Not a cadet any longer, I suppose."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir--we hatch out of that shell lieutenants."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hum.--And do you intend to remain in the army?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly sir, that is my purpose and hope."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Your mother would not like that, I should judge. I do not understand how
+      she ever made up her mind to let you become that thing which hatches out
+      into a lieutenant. Gentle creatures she and her sister both were.--How was
+      it, Mr. Rossitur? were you a wild young gentleman that wanted training?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have had it sir, whether I wanted it or no."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hum!--How is he, Mr. Carleton?--sober enough to command men?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have not seen him tried, sir," said this gentleman smiling; "but from
+      tho inconsistency of the orders he issues to his dogs I doubt it
+      exceedingly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why Carleton would have no orders issued to them at all, I believe," said
+      young Rossitur; "he has been saying 'hush' to me all day." The old
+      gentleman laughed in a way that indicated intelligence with one of the
+      speakers,--which, appeared not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So you've been following the dogs to-day," said he. "Been successful?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not a bit of it," said Rossitur. "Whether we got on the wrong grounds, or
+      didn't get on the right ones, or the dogs didn't mind their business, or
+      there was nothing to fire at, I don't know; but we lost our patience and
+      got nothing in exchange."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Speak for yourself," said the other. "I assure you I was sensible of no
+      ground of impatience while going over such a superb country as this."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It <i>is</i> a fine country," said Mr. Ringgan,--"all this tract; and I
+      ought to know it, for I have hunted every mile of it for many a mile
+      around. There used to be more game than partridges in these hills when I
+      was a young man;--bears and wolves, and deer, and now and then a panther,
+      to say nothing of rattlesnakes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That last mentioned is an irregular sort of game, is it not?" said Mr.
+      Carleton smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, game is what you choose to make it," said the old gentleman. "I
+      have seen worse days' sport than I saw once when we were out after
+      rattlesnakes and nothing else. There was a cave, sir, down under a
+      mountain a few miles to the south of this, right at the foot of a bluff
+      some four or five hundred feet sheer down,--it was known to be a resort of
+      those creatures; and a party of us went out,--it's many years ago now,--to
+      see if we couldn't destroy the nest--exterminate the whole horde. We had
+      one dog with us,--a little dog, a kind of spaniel; a little white and
+      yellow fellow,--and he did the work! Well, sir,--how many of those vermin
+      do you guess that little creature made a finish of that day?--of large and
+      small, sir, there were two hundred and twelve."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He must have been a gallant little fellow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You never saw a creature, sir, take to a sport better; he just dashed in
+      among them, from one to another,--he would catch a snake by the neck and
+      give it a shake, and throw it down and rush at another;--poor fellow, it
+      was his last day's sport,--he died almost as soon as it was over; he must
+      have received a great many bites. The place is known as the rattlesnakes'
+      den to this day, though there are none there now, I believe."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My little cousin is well, I hope," said Mr. Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She? yes, bless her I she is always well. Where is she? Fairy, where are
+      you?--Cynthy, just call Elfieda here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She's just in the thick of the muffins, Mr. Ringgan."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let the muffins burn! Call her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Cynthia accordingly opened a little way the door of the passage, from
+      which a blue stifling smoke immediately made its way into the room, and
+      called out to Fleda. whose little voice was heard faintly responding from
+      the distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's a wonder she can hear through all that smoke," remarked Cynthia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She," said Mr. Ringgan, laughing,--"she's playing cook or housekeeper in
+      yonder, getting something ready for tea. She's a busy little spirit, if
+      ever there was one. Ah! there she is. Come here, Fleda--here's your cousin
+      Rossitur from West Point--and Mr. Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda made her appearance flushed with the heat of the stove and the
+      excitement of turning the muffins, and the little iron spatula she used
+      for that purpose still in her hand; and a fresh and larger puff of the
+      unsavoury blue smoke accompanied her entrance. She came forward however
+      gravely and without the slightest embarrassment to receive her cousin's
+      somewhat unceremonious "How do, Fleda?"--and keeping the spatula still in
+      one hand shook hands with him with the other. But at the very different
+      manner in which Mr. Carleton <i>rose</i> and greeted her, the flush on
+      Fleda's cheek deepened, and she cast down her eyes and stepped back to her
+      grandfather's side with the demureness of a young lady just undergoing the
+      ceremony of presentation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You come upon us out of a cloud, Fleda," said her cousin. "Is that the
+      way you have acquired a right to the name of Fairy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure, no," said Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda did not lift up her eyes, but her mounting colour shewed that she
+      understood both speeches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because if you are in general such a misty personage," Mr. Rossitur went
+      on half laughing, "I would humbly recommend a choice of incense."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O I forgot to open the windows!" exclaimed Fleda ingenuously. "Cynthy,
+      won't you please go and do it? And take this with you," said she, holding
+      out the spatula.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is as good a fairy as <i>I</i> want to see," said her grandfather,
+      passing his arm fondly round her. "She carries a ray of sunshine in her
+      right hand; and that's as magic-working a wand as any fairy ever
+      wielded,--hey, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton bowed. But whether the sunshine of affection in Fleda's
+      glance and smile at her grandfather made him feel that she was above a
+      compliment, or whether it put the words out of his head, certain it is
+      that he uttered none.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So you've had bad success to-day," continued Mr. Ringgan. "Where have you
+      been? and what after? partridges?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir," said Mr. Carleton, "my friend Rossitur promised me a rare bag of
+      woodcock, which I understand to be the best of American feathered game;
+      and in pursuance of his promise led me over a large extent of meadow and
+      swamp land this morning, with which in the course of several hours I
+      became extremely familiar, without flushing a single bird."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Meadow and swamp land?" said the old gentleman. "Whereabouts?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A mile or more beyond the little village over here where we left our
+      horses," said Rossitur. "We beat the ground well, but there were no signs
+      of them even."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We had not the right kind of dog," said Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We had the kind that is always used here," said Rossitur; "nobody knows
+      anything about a Cocker in America."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah, it was too wet," said Mr. Ringgan. "I could have told you that. There
+      has been too much rain. You wouldn't find a woodcock in that swamp after
+      such a day as we had a few days ago. But speaking of game, Mr. Rossitur, I
+      don't know anything in America equal to the grouse. It is far before
+      woodcock. I remember, many years back, going a grouse shooting, I and a
+      friend, down in Pennsylvania,--we went two or three days running, and the
+      birds we got were worth a whole season of woodcock.--But gentlemen, if you
+      are not discouraged with your day's experience and want to try again, <i>I'll</i>
+      put you in a way to get as many woodcock as will satisfy you--if you'll
+      come here to-morrow morning I'll go out with you far enough to shew you
+      the way to the best ground <i>I</i> know for shooting that game in all
+      this country; you'll have a good chance for partridges too in the course
+      of the day; and that ain't bad eating, when you can't get better--is it,
+      Fairy?" he said, with a sudden smiling appeal to the little girl at his
+      side. Her answer again was only an intelligent glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young sportsmen both thanked him and promised to take advantage of his
+      kind offer. Fleda seized the opportunity to steal another look at the
+      strangers; but meeting Mr. Carleton's eyes fixed on her with a remarkably
+      soft and gentle expression she withdrew her own again as fast as possible,
+      and came to the conclusion that the only safe place for them was the
+      floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish I was a little younger and I'd take my gun and go along with you
+      myself," said the old gentleman pleasantly; "but," he added sighing,
+      "there is a time for everything, and my time for sporting is past."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have no right to complain, sir," said Mr. Carleton, with a meaning
+      glance and smile which the old gentleman took in excellent good part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well," said he, looking half proudly, half tenderly, upon the little
+      demure figure at his side, "I don't say that I have. I hope I thank God
+      for his mercies, and am happy. But in this world, Mr. Carleton, there is
+      hardly a blessing but what draws a care after it. Well--well--these things
+      will all be arranged for us!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was plain, however, even to a stranger, that there was some subject of
+      care not vague nor undefined pressing upon Mr. Ringgan's mind as he said
+      this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you heard from my mother lately, Fleda?" said her cousin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why yes," said Mr. Ringgan,--"she had a letter from her only to-day. You
+      ha'n't read it yet, have you, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No grandpa," said the little girl; "you know I've been busy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay," said the old gentleman; "why couldn't you let Cynthia bake the
+      cakes, and not roast yourself over the stove till you're as red as a
+      turkey-cock?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This morning I was like a chicken," said Fleda laughing, "and now like a
+      turkey-cock."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Shall I tell mamma, Fleda," said young Rossitur, "that you put off
+      reading her letter to bake muffins?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda answered without looking up, "Yes, if he pleased."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you suppose she will think?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She will think that you love muffins better than her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda, quietly but firmly,--"she will not think that, because
+      it isn't true."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gentlemen laughed, but Mr. Carleton declared that Fleda's reasoning
+      was unanswerable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I will see you to-morrow," said Mr. Rossitur, "after you have read
+      the letter, for I suppose you will read it sometime. You should have had
+      it before,--it came enclosed to me,--but I forgot unaccountably to mail it
+      to you till a few days ago."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It will be just as good now, sir," said Mr. Ringgan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is a matter in it though," said Rossitur, "about which my mother
+      has given me a charge. We will see you to-morrow. It was for that partly
+      we turned out of our way this evening."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very glad you did," said Mr. Ringgan. "I hope your way will bring
+      you here often. Won't you stay and try some of these same muffins before
+      you go?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this was declined, and the gentlemen departed; Fleda, it must be
+      confessed, seeing nothing in the whole leave-taking but Mr. Carleton's
+      look and smile. The muffins were a very tame affair after it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When supper was over she sat down fairly to her letter, and read it twice
+      through before she folded it up. By this time the room was clear both of
+      the tea equipage and of Cynthia's presence, and Fleda and her grandfather
+      were alone in the darkening twilight with the blazing wood fire; he in his
+      usual place at the side, and she on the hearth directly before it; both
+      silent, both thinking, for some time. At length Mr. Ringgan spoke,
+      breaking as it were the silence and his seriousness with the same effort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well dear!" said he cheerfully,--"what does she say?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O she says a great many things, grandpa; shall I read yon the letter?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No dear, I don't care to hear it; only tell me what she says."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She says they are going to stay in Paris yet a good while longer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hum!"--said Mr. Ringgan. "Well--that ain't the wisest thing I should like
+      to hear of her doing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh but it's because uncle Rossitur likes to stay there, I suppose, isn't
+      it, grandpa?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know, dear. Maybe your aunt's caught the French fever. She used
+      to be a good sensible woman; but when people will go into a whirligig, I
+      think some of their wits get blown away before they come out. Well--what
+      else?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure she is very kind," said Fleda. "She wants to have me go out
+      there and live with her very much. She says I shall have everything I like
+      and do just as I please, and she will make a pet of me and give me all
+      sorts of pleasant things. She says she will take as good care of me as
+      ever I took of the kittens. And there's a long piece to you about it, that
+      I'll give you to read as soon as we have a light. It is very good of her,
+      isn't it, grandpa? I love aunt Lucy very much."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well," said Mr. Ringgan after a pause, "how does she propose to get you
+      there?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why," said Fleda,--"isn't it curious?--she says there is a Mrs. Carleton
+      here who is a friend of hers, and she is going to Paris in a little while,
+      and aunt Lucy asked her if she wouldn't bring me, if you would let me go,
+      and she said she would with great pleasure, and aunt Lucy wants me to come
+      out with her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Carleton!--Hum--" said Mr. Ringgan; "that must be this young man's
+      mother?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, aunt Lucy says she is here with her son,--at least she says they
+      were coming." "A very gentlemanly young man, indeed," said Mr. Ringgan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a grave silence. The old gentleman sat looking on the floor;
+      Fleda sat looking into the fire, with all her might.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well," said Mr. Ringgan after a little, "how would you like it, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What, grandpa?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To go out to Paris to your aunt, with this Mrs. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shouldn't like it at all," said Fleda smiling, and letting her eyes go
+      back to the fire. But looking after the pause of a minute or two again to
+      her grandfather's face, she was struck with its expression of stern
+      anxiety. She rose instantly, and coming to him and laying one hand gently
+      on his knee, said in tones that fell as light on the ear as the touch of a
+      moonbeam on the water, "<i>You</i> do not want me to go, do you, grandpa?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No dear!" said the old gentleman, letting his hand fall upon hers,--"no
+      dear!--that is the last thing I want!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda's keen ear discerned not only the deep affection but something
+      of <i>regret</i> in the voice, which troubled her. She stood, anxious and
+      fearing, while her grandfather lifting his hand again and again let it
+      fall gently upon hers; and amid all the fondness of the action Fleda
+      somehow seemed to feel in it the same regret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You'll not let aunt Lucy, nor anybody else, take me away from you, will
+      you, grandpa?" said she after a little, leaning both arms affectionately
+      on his knee and looking up into his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No indeed, dear!" said he, with an attempt at his usual heartiness,--"not
+      as long as I have a place to keep you. While I have a roof to put my head
+      under, it shall cover yours."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Fleda's hope that would have said enough; but her grandfather's face
+      was so moved from its wonted expression of calm dignity that it was plain
+      <i>his</i> hope was tasting bitter things. Fleda watched in silent grief
+      and amazement the watering eye and unnerved lip; till her grandfather
+      indignantly dashing away a tear or two drew her close to his breast and
+      kissed her. But she well guessed that the reason why he did not for a
+      minute or two say anything, was because he could not. Neither could she.
+      She was fighting with her woman's nature to keep it down,--learning the
+      lesson early!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah well,"--said Mr Ringgan at length, in a kind of tone that might
+      indicate the giving up a struggle which he had no means of carrying on, or
+      the endeavour to conceal it from the too keen-wrought feelings of his
+      little granddaughter,--"there will be a way opened for us somehow. We must
+      let our Heavenly Father take care of us."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And he will, grandpa," whispered Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes dear!--We are selfish creatures. Your father's and your mother's
+      child will not be forgotten."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nor you either, dear grandpa," said the little girl, laying her soft
+      cheek alongside of his, and speaking by dint of a great effort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said he, clasping her more tenderly,--"no--it would he wicked in me
+      to doubt it. He has blessed me all my life long with a great many more
+      blessings than I deserved; and if he chooses to take away the sunshine of
+      my last days I will bow my head to his will, and believe that he does all
+      things well, though I cannot see it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't, dear grandpa," said Fleda, stealing her other arm round his neck
+      and hiding her face there,--"please don't!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He very much regretted that he had said too much. He did not however know
+      exactly how to mend it. He kissed her and stroked her soft hair, but that
+      and the manner of it only made it more difficult for Fleda to recover
+      herself, which she was struggling to do; and when he tried to speak in
+      accents of cheering his voice trembled. Fleda's heart was breaking, but
+      she felt that she was making matters worse, and she had already concluded
+      on a mature review of circumstances that it was her duty to be cheerful.
+      So after a few very heartfelt tears which she could not help, she raised
+      her head and smiled, even while she wiped the traces of them away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "After all, grandpa," said she, "perhaps Mr. Jolly will come here in the
+      morning with some good news, and then we should be troubling ourselves
+      just for nothing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps he will," said Mr. Ringgan, in a way that sounded much more like
+      "Perhaps he won't!" But Fleda was determined now not to <i>seem</i>
+      discouraged again. She thought the best way was to change the
+      conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is very kind in aunt Lucy, isn't it, grandpa, what she has written to
+      me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why no," said Mr. Ringgan, decidedly, "I can't say I think it is any very
+      extraordinary manifestation of kindness in anybody to want you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda smiled her thanks for this compliment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It might be a kindness in me to give you to her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It wouldn't be a kindness to me, grandpa."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know about that," said he gravely. They were getting back to the
+      old subject. Fleda made another great effort at a diversion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Grandpa, was my father like my uncle Rossitur in any thing?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The diversion was effected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not he, dear!" said Mr. Ringgan. "Your father had ten times the man in
+      him that ever your uncle was."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why what kind of a man is uncle Rossitur, grandpa?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ho dear! I can't tell. I ha'n't seen much of him. I wouldn't judge a man
+      without knowing more of him than I do of Mr. Rossitur. He seemed an
+      amiable kind of man. But no one would ever have thought of looking at him,
+      no more than at a shadow, when your father was by."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The diversion took effect on Fleda herself now. She looked up pleased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You remember your father, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes grandpa, but not very well always;--I remember a great many things
+      about him, but I can't remember exactly how he looked,--except once or
+      twice."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, and he wa'n't well the last time you remember him. But he was a
+      noble-looking man--in form and face too--and his looks were the worst part
+      of him. He seemed made of different stuff from all the people around,"
+      said Mr. Ringgan sighing, "and they felt it too I used to notice, without
+      knowing it. When his cousins were 'Sam' and 'Johnny' and 'Bill,' he was
+      always, that is, after he grew up, '<i>Mr. Walter.</i>' I believe they
+      were a little afeard of him. And with all his bravery and fire he could be
+      as gentle as a woman."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know that," said Fleda, whose eyes were dropping soft tears and
+      glittering at the same time with gratified feeling. "What made him be a
+      soldier, grandpa?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh I don't know, dear!--he was too good to make a farmer of--or his high
+      spirit wanted to rise in the world--he couldn't rest without trying to be
+      something more than other folks. I don't know whether people are any
+      happier for it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did <i>he</i> go to West Point, grandpa?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No dear!--he started without having so much of a push as that; but he was
+      one of those that don't need any pushing; he would have worked his way up,
+      put him anywhere you would, and he did,--over the heads of West Pointers
+      and all, and would have gone to the top, I verily believe, if he had lived
+      long enough. He was as fine a fellow as there was in all the army. <i>I</i>
+      don't believe there's the like of him left in it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He had been a major a good while, hadn't he, grandpa?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes. It was just after he was made captain that he went to Albany, and
+      there he saw your mother. She and her sister, your aunt Lucy, were wards
+      of the patroon. I was in Albany, in the legislature, that winter, and I
+      knew them both very well; but your aunt Lucy had been married some years
+      before. She was staying there that winter without her husband--he was
+      abroad somewhere."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was no stranger to these details and had learned long ago what was
+      meant by 'wards' and 'the patroon.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Your father was made a major some years afterwards," Mr. Ringgan went on,
+      "for his fine behaviour out here at the West--what's the name of the
+      place?--I forget it just now--fighting the Indians. There never was
+      anything finer done."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He was brave, wasn't he, grandpa?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Brave!--he had a heart of iron sometimes, for as soft as it was at
+      others. And he had an eye, when he was roused, that I never saw anything
+      that would stand against. But your father had a better sort of courage
+      than the common sort--he had enough of <i>that</i>--but this is a rarer
+      thing--he never was afraid to do what in his conscience he thought was
+      right. Moral courage I call it, and it is one of the very noblest
+      qualities a man can have."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's a kind of courage a woman may have," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--you may have that; and I guess it's the only kind of courage <i>you'll</i>
+      ever be troubled with," said her grandfather looking laughingly at her.
+      "However, any man may walk up to the cannon's mouth, but it is only one
+      here and there that will walk out against men's opinions because he thinks
+      it is right. That was one of the things I admired most in your father."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Didn't my mother have it too?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know--she had about everything that was good. A gweet, pretty
+      creature she was, as I ever saw."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Was she like aunt Lucy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, not much. She was a deal handsomer than your aunt is or ever could
+      have been. She was the handsomest woman, I think, that ever I set eyes
+      upon; and a sweet, gentle, lovely creature. <i>You</i>'ll never match
+      her," said Mr. Ringgan, with a curious twist of his head and sly laughing
+      twist of his eyes at Fleda;--"you may be as <i>good</i> as she was, but
+      you'll never be as good-looking."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda laughed, nowise displeased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You've got her hazel eyes though," remarked Mr. Ringgan, after a minute
+      or two, viewing his little granddaughter with a sufficiently satisfied
+      expression of countenance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Grandpa," said she, "don't you think Mr. Carleton has handsome eyes?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton?--hum--I don't know; I didn't look at his eyes. A very
+      well-looking young man though--very gentlemanly too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda had heard all this and much more about her parents some dozens of
+      times before; but she and her grandfather were never tired of going it
+      over. If the conversation that recalled his lost treasures had of
+      necessity a character of sadness and tenderness, it yet bespoke not more
+      regret that he had lost them than exulting pride and delight in what they
+      had been,--perhaps not so much. And Fleda delighted to go back and feed
+      her imagination with stories of the mother whom she could not remember,
+      and of the father whose fair bright image stood in her memory as the
+      embodiment of all that is high and noble and pure. A kind of guardian
+      angel that image was to little Fleda. These ideal likenesses of her father
+      and mother, the one drawn from history and recollection, the other from
+      history only, had been her preservative from all the untoward influences
+      and unfortunate examples which had surrounded her since her father's death
+      some three or four years before had left her almost alone in her
+      grandfather's house. They had created in her mind a standard of the true
+      and beautiful in character, which nothing she saw around her, after of
+      course her grandfather, and one other exception, seemed at all to meet;
+      and partly from her own innate fineness of nature, and partly from this
+      pure ideal always present with her, she had shrunk almost instinctively
+      from the few varieties of human nature the country-side presented to her,
+      and was in fact a very isolated little being, living in a world of her
+      own, and clinging with all her strong outgoings of affection to her
+      grandfather only; granting to but one other person any considerable share
+      in her regard or esteem. Little Fleda was not in the least misanthropical;
+      she gave her kindly sympathies to all who came in her way on whom they
+      could possibly be bestowed; but these people were nothing to her: her
+      spirit fell off from them, even in their presence; there was no affinity.
+      She was in truth what her grandfather had affirmed of her father, made of
+      different stuff from the rest of the world. There was no tincture of pride
+      in all this; there was no conscious feeling of superiority; she could
+      merely have told you that she did not care to hear these people talk, that
+      she did not love to be with them; though she <i>would</i> have said so to
+      no earthly creature but her grandfather, if even to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus03.jpg"><img src="images/illus03.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="'I wasn't thinking of myself in particular.'"
+      title="'I wasn't thinking of myself in particular.'" /><br /> "I wasn't
+      thinking of myself in particular."</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It must be pleasant," said Fleda, after looking for some minutes
+      thoughtfully into the fire,--"it must be a pleasant thing to have a father
+      and mother."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes dear!" said her grandfather, sighing,--"you have lost a great deal!
+      But there is your aunt Lucy--you are not dependent altogether on me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh grandpa!" said the little girl laying one hand again pleadingly on his
+      knee;--"I didn't mean--I mean--I was speaking in general--I wasn't
+      thinking of myself in particular."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know, dear!" said he, as before taking the little hand in his own and
+      moving it softly up and down on his knee. But the action was sad, and
+      there was the same look of sorrowful stern anxiety. Fleda got up and put
+      her arm over his shoulder, speaking from a heart filled too full.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't want aunt Lucy--I don't care about aunt Lucy; I don't want
+      anything but you, grandpa. I wish you wouldn't talk so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah well, dear," said he, without looking at her,--he couldn't bear to
+      look at her,--"it's well it is so. I sha'n't last a great while--it isn't
+      likely--and I am glad to know there is some one you can fall back upon
+      when I am gone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pleda's next words were scarcely audible, but they contained a reproach to
+      him for speaking so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We may as well look at it, dear," said he gravely; "it must come to
+      that--sooner or later--but you mustn't distress yourself about it
+      beforehand. Don't cry--don't, dear!" said he, tenderly kissing her. "I
+      didn't mean to trouble you so. There--there--look up, dear--let's take the
+      good we have and be thankful for it. God will arrange the rest, in his own
+      good way. Fleda!--I wouldn't have said a word if I had thought it would
+      have worried you so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He would not indeed. But he had spoken as men so often speak, out of the
+      depths of their own passion or bitterness, forgetting that they are
+      wringing the cords of a delicate harp, and not knowing what mischief they
+      have done till they find the instrument all out of tune,--more often not
+      knowing it ever. It is pity,--for how frequently a discord is left that
+      jars all life long; and how much more frequently still the harp, though
+      retaining its sweetness and truth of tone to the end, is gradually
+      unstrung.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Fleda could hardly hold up her head for a long time, and recalling
+      bitterly her unlucky innocent remark which had led to all this trouble she
+      almost made up her mind with a certain heroine of Miss Edgeworth's, that
+      "it is best never to mention things." Mr. Ringgan, now thoroughly alive to
+      the wounds he had been inflicting, held his little pet in his arms,
+      pillowed her head on his breast, and by every tender and soothing action
+      and word endeavoured to undo what he had done. And after a while the agony
+      was over, the wet eyelashes were lifted up, and the meek sorrowful little
+      face lay quietly upon Mr. Ringgan's breast, gazing out into the fire as
+      gravely as if the Panorama of life were there. She little heeded at first
+      her grandfather's cheering talk, she knew it was for a purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ain't it most time for you to go to bed?" whispered Mr. Ringgan when he
+      thought the purpose was effected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Shall I tell Cynthy to get you your milk, grandpa?" said the little girl
+      rousing herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes dear.--Stop,--what if you and me was to have some roast
+      apples?--wouldn't you like it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well--yes, I should, grandpa," said Fleda, understanding perfectly why he
+      wished it, and wishing it herself for that same reason and no other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Cynthy, let's have some of those roast apples," said Mr. Ringgan, "and a
+      couple of bowls of milk here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, I'll get the apples myself, Cynthy," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you needn't take any of the cream off, Cynthy," added Mr. Ringgan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One corner of the kitchen table was hauled up to the fire, to be
+      comfortable, Fleda said, and she and her grandfather sat down on the
+      opposite sides of it to do honour to the apples and milk; each with the
+      simple intent of keeping up appearances and cheating the other into
+      cheerfulness. There is however, deny it who can, an exhilarating effect in
+      good wholesome food taken when one is in some need of it; and Fleda at
+      least found the supper relish exceeding well. Every one furthermore knows
+      the relief of a hearty flow of tears when a secret weight has been
+      pressing on the mind. She was just ready for anything reviving. After the
+      third mouthful she began to talk, and before the bottom of the bowls was
+      reached she had smiled more than once. So her grandfather thought no harm
+      was done, and went to bed quite comforted; and Fleda climbed the steep
+      stairs that led from his door to her little chamber just over his head. It
+      was small and mean, immediately under the roof, with only one window.
+      There were plenty of better rooms in the house, but Fleda liked this
+      because it kept her near her grandfather; and indeed she had always had it
+      ever since her father's death, and never thought of taking any other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had a fashion, this child, in whom the simplicity of practical life
+      and the poetry of imaginative life were curiously blended,--she had a
+      fashion of going to her window every night when the moon or stars were
+      shining to look out for a minute or two before she went to bed; and
+      sometimes the minutes were more than any good grandmother or aunt would
+      have considered wholesome for little Fleda in the fresh night air. But
+      there was no one to watch or reprimand; and whatever it was that Fleda
+      read in earth or sky, the charm which held her one bright night was sure
+      to bring her to her window the next. This evening a faint young moon
+      lighted up but dimly the meadow and what was called the "east-hill,"
+      over-against which the window in question looked. The air was calm and
+      mild; there was no frost to-night; the stillness was entire, and the stars
+      shone in a cloudless sky. Fleda set open the window and looked out with a
+      face that again bore tokens of the experiences of that day. She wanted the
+      soothing speech of nature's voice; and child as she was she could hear it.
+      She did not know, in her simplicity, what it was that comforted and
+      soothed her, but she stood at her window enjoying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was so perfectly still, her fancy presently went to all those people
+      who had hushed their various work and were now resting, or soon would be,
+      in the unconsciousness and the helplessness of sleep. The <i>helplessness</i>,--and
+      then that Eye that never sleeps; that Hand that keeps them all, that is
+      never idle, that is the safety and the strength alike of all the earth and
+      of them that wake or sleep upon it,--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And if he takes care of them all, will he not take care of poor little
+      me?" thought Fleda. "Oh how glad I am I know there is a God!--How glad I
+      am I know he is such a God! and that I can trust in him; and he will make
+      everything go right. How I forget this sometimes! But Jesus does not
+      forget his children. Oh I am a happy little girl!--Grandpa's saying what
+      he did don't make it so--perhaps I shall die the first--but I hope not,
+      for what would become of him!--But this and everything will all be
+      arranged right, and I have nothing to do with it but to obey God and
+      please him, and he will take care of the rest. He has forbidden <i>us</i>
+      to be careful about it too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With grateful tears of relief Fleda shut the window and began to undress
+      herself, her heart so lightened of its burden that her thoughts presently
+      took leave to go out again upon pleasure excursions in various directions;
+      and one of the last things in Fleda's mind before sleep surprised her was,
+      what a nice thing it was for any one to bow and smile so as Mr. Carleton
+      did!
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="03"></a>Chapter III.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        I know each lane, and every alley green,<br /> Dingle or bushy dell of
+        this wild wood,<br /> And every bosky bourn from side to side<br /> My
+        daily walks and ancient neighbourhood.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Milton.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Fleda and her grandfather had but just risen from a tolerably early
+      breakfast the next morning, when the two young sportsmen entered the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ha!" said Mr. Ringgan,--"I declare! you're stirring betimes. Come five or
+      six miles this morning a'ready. Well--that's the stuff to make sportsmen
+      of. Off for the woodcock, hey?--And I was to go with you and shew you the
+      ground.--I declare I don't know how in the world I can do it this morning,
+      I'm so very stiff--ten times as bad as I was yesterday. I had a window
+      open in my room last night, I expect that must have been the cause. I
+      don't see how I could have overlooked it, but I never gave it a thought,
+      till this morning I found myself so lame I could hardly get out of bed.--I
+      am very sorry, upon my word?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very sorry we must lose your company, sir," said the young
+      Englishman, "and for such a cause; but as to the rest!--I dare say your
+      directions will guide us sufficiently."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know about that," said the old gentleman. "It is pretty hard to
+      steer by a chart that is only laid down in the imagination. I set out once
+      to go in New York from one side of the city over into the other, and the
+      first thing I knew I found myself travelling along half a mile out of
+      town. I had to get in a stage and ride back and take a fresh start. Out at
+      the West they say when you are in the woods you can tell which is north by
+      the moss growing on that side of the trees; but if you're lost you'll be
+      pretty apt to find the moss grows on <i>all</i> sides of the trees. I
+      couldn't make out any waymarks at all, in such a labyrinth of brick
+      corners. Well, let us see--if I tell you now it is so easy to mistake one
+      hill for another--Fleda, child, you put on your sun-bonnet and take these
+      gentlemen back to the twenty-acre lot, and from there you can tell 'em how
+      to go so I guess they won't mistake it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By no means!" said Mr. Carleton; "we cannot give her so much trouble; it
+      would be buying our pleasure at much too dear a rate."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tut, tut," said the old gentleman; "she thinks nothing of trouble, and
+      the walk'll do her good. She'd like to be out all day, I believe, if she
+      had any one to go along with, but I'm rather a stupid companion for such a
+      spry little pair of feet. Fleda, look here,--when they get to the lot they
+      can find their own way after that. You know where the place is--where your
+      cousin Seth shot so many woodcock last year, over in Mr. Hurlbut's
+      land,--when you get to the big lot you must tell these gentlemen to go
+      straight over the hill, not Squire Thornton's hill, but mine, at the back
+      of the lot,--they must go straight over it till they come to cleared land
+      on the other side; then they must keep along by the edge of the wood, to
+      the right, till they come to the brook; they must <i>cross the brook</i>,
+      and follow up the opposite bank, and they'll know the ground when they
+      come to it, or they don't deserve to. Do you understand?--now run and get
+      your hat for they ought to be off."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda went, but neither her step nor her look shewed any great willingness
+      to the business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure, Mr. Ringgan," said Mr. Carleton, "your little granddaughter
+      has some reason for not wishing to take such a long walk this morning.
+      Pray allow us to go without her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pho, pho," said the old gentleman, "she wants to go."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I guess she's skeered o' the guns," said Cynthy, happy to get a chance to
+      edge in a word before such company;--"it's that ails her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, well,--she must get used to it," said Mr. Ringgan. "Here she is!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda had it in her mind to whisper to him a word of hope about Mr. Jolly;
+      but she recollected that it was at best an uncertain hope, and that if her
+      grandfather's thoughts were off the subject it was better to leave them
+      so. She only kissed him for good-by, and went out with the two gentlemen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they took up their guns Mr. Carleton caught the timid shunning glance
+      her eye gave at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you dislike the company of these noisy friends of ours, Miss Fleda?"
+      said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda hesitated, and finally said "she didn't much like to be very near
+      them when they were fired."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Put that fear away then," said he, "for they shall keep a respectful
+      silence so long as they have the honour to be in your company. If the
+      woodcock come about us as tame as quails our guns shall not be provoked to
+      say anything till your departure gives them leave."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda smiled her thanks and set forward, privately much confirmed in her
+      opinion that Mr. Carleton had handsome eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At a little distance from the house Fleda left the meadow for an old
+      apple-orchard at the left, lying on a steep side hill. Up this hill-side
+      they toiled; and then found themselves on a ridge of table-land,
+      stretching back for some distance along the edge of a little valley or
+      bottom of perfectly flat smooth pasture-ground. The valley was very
+      narrow, only divided into fields by fences running from side to side. The
+      table-land might be a hundred feet or more above the level of the bottom,
+      with a steep face towards it. A little way back from the edge the woods
+      began; between them and the brow of the hill the ground was smooth and
+      green, planted as if by art with flourishing young silver pines and once
+      in a while a hemlock, some standing in all their luxuriance alone, and
+      some in groups. With now and then a smooth grey rock, or large
+      boulder-stone which had somehow inexplicably stopped on the brow of the
+      hill instead of rolling down into what at some former time no doubt was a
+      bed of water,--all this open strip of the table-land might have stood with
+      very little coaxing for a piece of a gentleman's pleasure-ground. On the
+      opposite side of the little valley was a low rocky height, covered with
+      wood, now in the splendour of varied red and green and purple and brown
+      and gold; between, at their feet, lay the soft quiet green meadow; and off
+      to the left, beyond the far end of the valley, was the glory of the autumn
+      woods again, softened in the distance. A true October sky seemed to
+      pervade all, mildly blue, transparently pure, with that clearness of
+      atmosphere that no other month gives us; a sky that would have conferred a
+      patent of nobility on any landscape. The scene was certainly contracted
+      and nowise remarkable in any of its features, but Nature had shaken out
+      all her colours over the land, and drawn a veil from the sky, and breathed
+      through the woods and over the hill-side the very breath of health,
+      enjoyment, and vigour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they were about over-against the middle of the valley, Mr. Carleton
+      suddenly made a pause and stood for some minutes silently looking. His two
+      companions came to a halt on either side of him, one not a little pleased,
+      the other a little impatient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Beautiful!" Mr. Carleton said at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," said Fleda gravely, "I think it's a pretty place. I like it up
+      here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We sha'n't catch many woodcock among these pines," said young Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wonder," said Mr. Carleton presently, "how any one should have called
+      these 'melancholy days.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who has?" said Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A countryman of yours," said his friend glancing at him. "If he had been
+      a countryman of mine there would have been less marvel. But here is none
+      of the sadness of decay--none of the withering--if the tokens of old age
+      are seen at all it is in the majestic honours that crown a glorious
+      life--the graces of a matured and ripened character. This has nothing in
+      common, Rossitur, with those dull moralists who are always dinning decay
+      and death into one's ears;--this speaks of Life. Instead of freezing all
+      one's hopes and energies, it quickens the pulse with the desire to <i>do</i>.--'The
+      saddest of the year'--Bryant was wrong."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bryant?--oh!"--said young Rossitur; "I didn't know who you were speaking
+      of."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe, now I think of it, he was writing of a somewhat later time of
+      the year,--I don't know, how all this will look in November."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think it is very pleasant in November," said little Fleda sedately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you know Bryant's 'Death of the Flowers,' Rossitur?" said his
+      friend smiling. "What have you been doing all your life?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not studying the fine arts at West Point, Mr. Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then sit down here and let me mend that place in your education. Sit
+      down! and I'll give you something better than woodcock. You keep a
+      game-bag for thoughts, don't you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur wished Mr. Carleton didn't. But he sat down, however, and
+      listened with an unedified face; while his friend, more to please himself
+      it must be confessed than for any other reason, and perhaps with half a
+      notion to try Fleda, repeated the beautiful words. He presently saw they
+      were not lost upon one of his hearers; she listened intently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is very pretty," said Rossitur when he had done. "I believe I have
+      seen it before somewhere."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is no 'smoky light' to day," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Mr. Carleton, smiling to himself. "Nothing but that could
+      improve the beauty of all this, Miss Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>I</i> like it better as it is," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am surprised at that," said young Rossitur. "I thought you lived on
+      smoke."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing in the words, but the tone was not exactly polite. Fleda
+      granted him neither smile nor look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am glad you like it up here," she went on, gravely doing the honours of
+      the place. "I came this way because we shouldn't have so many fences to
+      climb."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are the best little guide possible, and I have no doubt would always
+      lead one the right way," said Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the same gentle, kind, <i>appreciating</i> look. Fleda unconsciously
+      drew a step nearer. There was a certain undefined confidence established
+      between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's a little brook down there in spring," said she pointing to a
+      small grass grown water-course in the meadow, hardly discernible from the
+      height,--"but there's no water in it now. It runs quite full for a while
+      after the snow breaks up; but it dries away by June or July."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are those trees so beautifully tinged with red and orange?--down
+      there by the fence in the meadow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not woodsman enough to inform you," replied Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Those are maples," said Fleda, "sugar maples. The one all orange is a
+      hickory."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you know?" said Mr. Carleton, turning to her. "By your wit as a
+      fairy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know by the colour," said Fleda modestly,--"and by the shape too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fairy," said Mr. Rossitur, "if you have any of the stuff about you, I
+      wish you would knock this gentleman over the head with your wand and put
+      the spirit of moving into him. He is going to sit dreaming here all day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not at all," said his friend springing up.--"I am ready for you--but I
+      want other game than woodcock just now I confess."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They walked along in silence, and had near reached the extremity of the
+      table-land, which towards the end of the valley descended into ground of a
+      lower level covered with woods; when Mr. Carleton who was a little ahead
+      was startled by Fleda's voice exclaiming in a tone of distress, "Oh not
+      the robins!"--and turning about perceived Mr. Rossitur standing still with
+      levelled gun and just in the act to shoot. Fleda had stopped her ears. In
+      the same instant Mr. Carleton had thrown up the gun, demanding of Rossitur
+      with a singular change of expression--"what he meant!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mean?" said the young gentleman, meeting with an astonished face the
+      indignant fire of his companion's eyes,--"why I mean not to meddle with
+      other people's guns, Mr. Carleton. What do <i>you</i> mean?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing but to protect myself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Protect yourself!" said Rossitur, heating as the other cooled,--from
+      what, in the name of wonder?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Only from having my word blown away by your fire," said Carleton,
+      smiling. "Come, Rossitur, recollect yourself--remember our compact."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Compact! one isn't bound to keep compacts with unearthly personages,"
+      said Rossitur, half sulkily and half angrily; "and besides I made none."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton turned from him very coolly and walked on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They left the table-land and the wood, entered the valley again, and
+      passed through a large orchard, the last of the succession of fields which
+      stretched along it. Beyond this orchard the ground rose suddenly, and on
+      the steep hill-side there had been a large plantation of Indian corn. The
+      corn was harvested, but the ground was still covered with numberless
+      little stacks of the corn-stalks. Half way up the hill stood three ancient
+      chestnut trees; veritable patriarchs of the nut tribe they were, and
+      respected and esteemed as patriarchs should be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There are no 'dropping nuts' to-day, either," said Fleda, to whom the
+      sight of her forest friends in the distance probably suggested the
+      thought, for she had not spoken for some time. "I suppose there hasn't
+      been frost enough yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why you have a good memory, Fairy," said Mr. Carleton. "Do you give the
+      nuts leave to fall of themselves?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh sometimes grandpa and I go a nutting," said the little girl getting
+      lightly over the fence,--"but we haven't been this year."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then it is a pleasure to come yet?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda quietly, "the trees near the house have been stripped;
+      and the only other nice place there is for us to go to, Mr. Didenhover let
+      the Shakers have the nuts. I sha'n't get any this year."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Live in the woods and not get any nuts! that won't do, Fairy. Here are
+      some fine chestnuts we are coming to--what would hinder our reaping a good
+      harvest from them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't think there will be any on them," said Fleda; "Mr. Didenhover has
+      been here lately with the men getting in the coin,--I guess they have
+      cleared the trees."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who is Mr. Didenhover?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is grandpa's man."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why didn't you bid Mr. Didenhover let the nuts alone?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O he wouldn't mind if he was told," said Fleda. "He does everything just
+      as he has a mind to, and nobody can hinder him. Yes--they've cleared the
+      trees--I thought so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you know of any other trees that are out of this Mr. Didenhover's
+      way?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," said Fleda,--"I know a place where there used to be beautiful
+      hickory trees, and some chestnuts too, I think; but it is too far off for
+      grandpa, and I couldn't go there alone. This is the twenty-acre lot," said
+      she, looking though she did not say it, "Here I leave you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am glad to hear it," said her cousin. "Now give us our directions,
+      Fleda, and thank you for your services."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stop a minute," said Mr. Carleton. "What if you and I should try to find
+      those same hickory trees, Miss Fleda? Will you take me with you?--or is it
+      too long a walk?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For me?--oh no!" said Fleda with a face of awakening hope; "but," she
+      added timidly, "you were going a shooting, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What on earth are you thinking of, Carleton?" said young Rossitur. "Let
+      the nuts and Fleda alone, do!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By your leave, Mr. Rossitur," said Carleton. "My murderous intents have
+      all left me, Miss Fleda,--I suppose your wand has been playing about
+      me--and I should like nothing better than to go with you over the hills
+      this morning. I have been a nutting many a time in my own woods at home,
+      and I want to try it for once in the New World. Will you take me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O thank you, sir!" said Fleda,--"but we have passed the turning a long
+      way--we must go back ever so far the same way we came to get to the place
+      where we turn off to go up the mountain."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't wish for a prettier way,--if it isn't so far as to tire you,
+      Fairy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh it won't tire me!" said Fleda overjoyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Carleton!" exclaimed young Kossitur. "Can you be so absurd! Lose this
+      splendid day for the woodcock when we may not have another while we are
+      here!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are not a true sportsman, Mr. Rossitur," said the other coolly, "or
+      you would know what it is to have some sympathy with the sports of others.
+      But <i>you</i> will have the day for the woodcock, and bring us home a
+      great many I hope. Miss Fleda, suppose we give this impatient young
+      gentleman his orders and despatch him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought you were more of a sportsman," said the vexed West
+      Pointer,--"or your sympathy would be with me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I tell you the sporting mania was never stronger on me," said the other
+      carelessly. "Something less than a rifle however will do to bring down the
+      game I am after. We will rendezvous at the little village over yonder,
+      unless I go home before you, which I think is more probable. Au revoir!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With careless gracefulness he saluted his disconcerted companion, who
+      moved off with ungraceful displeasure. Fleda and Mr. Carleton then began
+      to follow back the road they had come, in the highest good humour both.
+      Her sparkling face told him with even greater emphasis than her words,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am so much obliged to you, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How you go over fences!" said he,--"like a sprite, as you are."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O I have climbed a great many," said Fleda, accepting however, again with
+      that infallible instinct, the help which she did not need--"I shall be so
+      glad to get some nuts, for I thought I wasn't going to have any this year;
+      and it is so pleasant to have them to crack in the long winter evenings."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You must find them long evenings indeed, I should think."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O no we don't," said Fleda. "I didn't mean they were long in <i>that</i>
+      way. Grandpa cracks the nuts, and I pick them out, and he tells me
+      stories; and then you know he likes to go to bed early. The evenings never
+      seem long."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you are not always cracking nuts."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O no, to be sure not; but there are plenty of other pleasant things to
+      do. I dare say grandpa would have bought some nuts, but I had a great deal
+      rather have those we get ourselves, and then the fun of getting them,
+      besides, is the best part."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was tramping over the ground at a furious rate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How many do you count upon securing to-day?" said Mr. Carleton gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Fleda with a business face,--"there are a good many
+      trees, and fine large ones, and I don't believe anybody has found them
+      out--they are so far out of the way; there ought to be a good parcel of
+      nuts."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But," said Mr. Carleton with perfect gravity, "if we should be lucky
+      enough to find a supply for your winter's store, it would be too much for
+      you and me to bring home, Miss Fleda, unless you have a broomstick in the
+      service of fairydom."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A broomstick!" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes,--did you never hear of the man who had a broomstick that would fetch
+      pails of water at his bidding?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda laughing. "What a convenient broomstick! I wish we had
+      one. But I know what I can do, Mr. Carleton,--if there should be too many
+      nuts for us to bring home I can take Cynthy afterwards and get the rest of
+      them. Cynthy and I could go--grandpa couldn't even if he was as well as
+      usual, for the trees are in a hollow away over on the other side of the
+      mountain. It's a beautiful place."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well," said Mr. Carleton smiling curiously to himself, "in that case I
+      shall be even of more use than I had hoped. But sha'n't we want a basket,
+      Miss Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes indeed," said Fleda,--"a good large one--I am going to run down to
+      the house for it as soon as we get to the turning-off place, if you'll be
+      so good as to sit down and wait for me, sir,--I won't be long after it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said he; "I will walk with you and leave my gun in safe quarters.
+      You had better not travel so fast, or I am afraid you will never reach the
+      hickory trees."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda smiled and said there was no danger, but she slackened her pace, and
+      they proceeded at a more reasonable rate till they reached the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton would not go in, placing his gun in an outer shelter. Fleda
+      dashed into the kitchen, and after a few minutes' delay came out again
+      with a huge basket, which Mr. Carleton took from her without suffering his
+      inward amusement to reach his face, and a little tin pail which she kept
+      under her own guardianship. In vain Mr. Carleton offered to take it with
+      the basket or even to put it in the basket, where he shewed her it would
+      go very well; it must go nowhere but in Fleda's own hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was in restless haste till they had passed over the already twice
+      trodden ground and entered upon the mountain road. It was hardly a road;
+      in some places a beaten track was visible, in others Mr. Carleton wondered
+      how his little companion found her way, where nothing but fresh-fallen
+      leaves and scattered rocks and stones could be seen, covering the whole
+      surface. But her foot never faltered, her eye read way-marks where his saw
+      none, she went on, he did not doubt unerringly, over the leaf-strewn and
+      rock-strewn way, over ridge and hollow, with a steady light swiftness that
+      he could not help admiring. Once they came to a little brawling stream of
+      spring water, hardly three inches deep anywhere but making quite a wide
+      bed for itself in its bright way to the lowlands. Mr. Carleton was
+      considering how he should contrive to get his little guide over it in
+      safety, when quick,--over the little round stones which lifted their heads
+      above the surface of the water, on the tips of her toes, Fleda tripped
+      across before he had done thinking about it. He told her he had no doubt
+      now that she was a fairy and had powers of walking that did not belong to
+      other people. Fleda laughed, and on her little demure figure went picking
+      out the way always with that little tin pail hanging at her side,
+      like--Mr. Carleton busied himself in finding out similes for her. It
+      wasn't very easy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a long distance their way was through a thick woodland, clear of
+      underbrush and very pleasant walking, but permitting no look at the
+      distant country. They wound about, now uphill and now down, till at last
+      they began to ascend in good earnest; the road became better marked, and
+      Mr. Carleton came up with his guide again. Both were obliged to walk more
+      slowly. He had overcome a good deal of Fleda's reserve and she talked to
+      him now quite freely, without however losing the grace of a most exquisite
+      modesty in everything she said or did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you suppose I have been amusing myself with all this while, Miss
+      Fleda?" said he, after walking for some time alongside of her in silence.
+      "I have been trying to fancy what you looked like as you travelled on
+      before me with that mysterious tin pail."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well what <i>did</i> I look like?" said Fleda laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Little Red Riding-Hood, the first thing, carrying her grandmother the pot
+      of butter."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah but I haven't got any butter in this as it happens," said Fleda, "and
+      I hope you are not anything like the wolf, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope not," said he laughing. "Well, then I thought you might be one of
+      those young ladies the fairy-stories tell of, who set out over the world
+      to seek their fortune. That might hold, you know, a little provision to
+      last for a day or two till you found it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda,--"I should never go to seek my fortune."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why not, pray."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't think I should find it any the sooner."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton looked at her and could not make up his mind! whether or not
+      she spoke wittingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, but after all are we not seeking our fortune?" said he. "We are
+      doing something very like it. Now up here on the mountain top perhaps we
+      shall find only empty trees--perhaps trees with a harvest of nuts on
+      them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, but that wouldn't be like finding a fortune," said Fleda;--"if we
+      were to come to a great heap of nuts all picked out ready for us to carry
+      away, <i>that</i> would be a fortune; but now if we find the trees full we
+      have got to knock them down and gather them up and shuck them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Make our own fortunes, eh?" said Mr. Carleton smiling. "Well people do
+      say those are the sweetest nuts, I don't know how it may be. Ha! that is
+      fine. What an atmosphere!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had reached a height of the mountain that cleared them a view, and
+      over the tops of the trees they looked abroad to a very wide extent of
+      country undulating with hill and vale,--hill and valley alike far below at
+      their feet. Fair and rich,--the gently swelling hills, one beyond another,
+      in the patchwork dress of their many-coloured fields,--the gay hues of the
+      woodland softened and melted into a rich autumn glow,--and far away,
+      beyond even where this glow was sobered and lost in the distance, the
+      faint blue line of the Catskill; faint, but clear and distinct through the
+      transparent air. Such a sky!--of such etherealized purity as if made for
+      spirits to travel in and tempting them to rise and free themselves from
+      the soil; and the stillness,--like nature's hand laid upon the soul,
+      bidding it think. In view of all that vastness and grandeur, man's
+      littleness does bespeak itself. And yet, for every one, the voice of the
+      scene is not more humbling to pride than rousing to all that is really
+      noble and strong in character. Not only "What thou art,"--but "What thou
+      mayest be!" What place thou oughtest to fill,--what work thou hast to
+      do,--in this magnificent world. A very extended landscape however genial
+      is also sober in its effect on the mind. One seems to emerge from the
+      narrowness of individual existence, and take a larger view of Life as well
+      as of Creation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps Mr. Carleton felt it so, for after his first expression of
+      pleasure he stood silently and gravely looking for a long time. Little
+      Fleda's eye loved it too, but she looked her fill and then sat down on a
+      stone to await her companion's pleasure, glancing now and then up at his
+      face which gave her no encouragement to interrupt him. It was gravely and
+      even gloomily thoughtful. He stood so long without stirring that poor
+      Fleda began to have sad thoughts of the possibility of gathering all the
+      nuts from the hickory trees, and she heaved a very gentle sigh once or
+      twice; but the dark blue eye which she with reason admired remained fixed
+      on the broad scene below, as if it were reading or trying to read there a
+      difficult lesson. And when at last he turned and began to go up the path
+      again he kept the same face, and went moodily swinging his arm up and
+      down, as if in disturbed thought. Fleda was too happy to be moving to care
+      for her companion's silence; she would have compounded for no more
+      conversation so they might but reach the nut trees. But before they had
+      got quite so far Mr. Carleton broke the silence, speaking in precisely the
+      same tone and manner he had used the last time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look here, Fairy," said he, pointing to a small heap of chestnut burs
+      piled at the foot of a tree,--"here's a little fortune for you already."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's a squirrel!" said Fleda, looking at the place very attentively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There has been nobody else here. He has put them together, ready to be
+      carried off to his nest."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We'll save him that trouble," said Mr. Carleton. "Little rascal! he's a
+      Didenhover in miniature."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh no!" said Fleda; "he had as good a right to the nuts I am sure as we
+      have, poor fellow.--Mr. Carleton--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton was throwing the nuts into the basket. At the anxious and
+      undecided tone in which his name was pronounced he stopped and looked up,
+      at a very wistful face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mightn't we leave these nuts till we come back? If we find the trees over
+      here full we sha'n't want them; and if we don't, these would be only a
+      handful--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And the squirrel would be disappointed?" said Mr. Carleton smiling. "You
+      would rather we should leave them to him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda said yes, with a relieved face, and Mr. Carleton still smiling
+      emptied his basket of the few nuts he had put in, and they walked on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a hollow, rather a deep hollow, behind the crest of the hill, as Fleda
+      had said, they came at last to a noble group of large hickory trees, with
+      one or two chestnuts standing in attendance on the outskirts. And also as
+      Fleda had said, or hoped, the place was so far from convenient access that
+      nobody had visited them; they were thick hung with fruit. If the spirit of
+      the game had been wanting or failing in Mr. Carleton, it must have roused
+      again into full life at the joyous heartiness of Fleda's exclamations. At
+      any rate no boy could have taken to the business better. He cut, with her
+      permission, a stout long pole in the woods; and swinging himself lightly
+      into one of the trees shewed that he was a master in the art of whipping
+      them. Fleda was delighted but not surprised; for from the first moment of
+      Mr. Carleton's proposing to go with her she bad been privately sure that
+      he would not prove an inactive or inefficient ally. By whatever slight
+      tokens she might read this, in whatsoever fine characters of the eye, or
+      speech, or manner, she knew it; and knew it just as well before they
+      reached the hickory trees as she did afterwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When one of the trees was well stripped the young gentleman mounted into
+      another, while Fleda set herself to hull and gather up the nuts under the
+      one first beaten. She could make but little headway however compared with
+      her companion; the nuts fell a great deal faster than she could put them
+      in her basket. The trees were heavy laden and Mr. Carleton seemed
+      determined to have the whole crop; from the second tree he went to the
+      third. Fleda was bewildered with her happiness; this was doing business in
+      style. She tried to calculate what the whole quantity would be, but it
+      went beyond her; one basketful would not take it, nor two, not three,--it
+      wouldn't <i>begin to</i>, Fleda said to herself. She went on hulling and
+      gathering with all possible industry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the third tree was finished Mr. Carleton threw down his pole, and
+      resting himself upon the ground at the foot told Fleda he would wait a few
+      moments before he began again. Fleda thereupon left off her work too, and
+      going for her little tin pail presently offered it to him temptingly
+      stocked with pieces of apple-pie. When he had smilingly taken one, she
+      next brought him a sheet of white paper with slices of young cheese.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, thank you," said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Cheese is very good with apple-pie," said Fleda competently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it?" said he laughing. "Well--upon that--I think you would teach me a
+      good many things, Miss Fleda, if I were to stay here long enough."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish you would stay and try, sir," said Fleda, who did not know exactly
+      what to make of the shade of seriousness which crossed his face. It was
+      gone almost instantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think anything is better eaten out in the woods than it is at home,"
+      said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well I don't know," said her friend. "I have no doubt that is the case
+      with cheese and apple-pie, and especially under hickory trees which one
+      has been contending with pretty sharply. If a touch of your wand, Fairy,
+      could transform one of these shells into a goblet of Lafitte or
+      Amontillado we should have nothing to wish for."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'Amontillado' was Hebrew to Fleda, but 'goblet' was intelligible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sorry!" she said,--"I don't know where there is any spring up
+      here,--but we shall come to one going down the mountain."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know where all the springs are?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, not all, I suppose," said Fleda, "but I know a good many. I have gone
+      about through the woods so much, and I always look for the springs."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And who roams about through the woods with you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh nobody but grandpa," said Fleda. "He used to be out with me a great
+      deal, but he can't go much now,--this year or two."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you go to school?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O no!" said Fleda smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then your grandfather teaches you at home?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No,"--said Fleda,--"father used to teach me,--grandpa doesn't teach me
+      much."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you do with yourself all day long?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O plenty of things," said Fleda, smiling again. "I read, and talk to
+      grandpa, and go riding, and do a great many things."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Has your home always been here, Fairy?" said Mr. Carleton after a few
+      minutes' pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda said "No sir," and there stopped; and then seeming to think that
+      politeness called upon her to say more, she added,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have lived with grandpa ever since father left me here when he was
+      going away among the Indians,--I used to be always with him before."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And how long ago is that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is--four years, sir;--more, I believe. He was sick when he came back,
+      and we never went away from Queechy again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton looked again silently at the child, who had given him these
+      pieces of information with a singular grave propriety of manner, and even
+      as it were reluctantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what do you read, Fairy?" he said after a minute;--"stories of
+      fairy-land?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda, "I haven't any. We haven't a great many books--there are
+      only a few up in the cupboard, and the Encyclop&aelig;dia; father had some
+      books, but they are locked up in a chest. But there is a great deal in the
+      Encyclop&aelig;dia."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Encyclop&aelig;dia!" said Mr. Carleton;--"what do you read in that?
+      what can you find to like there?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I like all about the insects, and birds and animals; and about
+      flowers,--and lives of people, and curious things. There are a great many
+      in it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what are the other books in the cupboard, which you read?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's Quentin Durward," said Fleda,--"and Rob Roy, and Guy Mannering in
+      two little bits of volumes; and the Knickerbocker, and the Christian's
+      Magazine, and an odd volume of Redgauntlet, and the Beauties of Scotland."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And have you read all these, Miss Fleda?" said her companion, commanding
+      his countenance with difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I haven't read quite all of the Christian's Magazine, nor all of the
+      Beauties of Scotland."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All the rest?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O yes," said Fleda,--"and two or three times over. And there are three
+      great red volumes besides, Robertson's history of something, I believe. I
+      haven't read that either."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And which of them all do you like the best?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Fleda,--"I don't know but I like to read the Encyclop&aelig;dia
+      as well as any of them. And then I have the newspapers to read too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think, Miss Fleda," said Mr. Carleton a minute after, "you had better
+      let me take you with my mother over the sea, when we go back again,--to
+      Paris."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You know," said he half smiling, "your aunt wants you, and has engaged my
+      mother to bring you with her if she can."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know it," said Fleda. "But I am not going."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was spoken not rudely but in a tone of quiet determination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Aren't you too tired, sir?" said she gently, when she saw Mr. Carleton
+      preparing to launch into the remaining hickory trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not I!" said he. "I am not tired till I have done, Fairy. And besides,
+      cheese is workingman's fare, you know, isn't it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda gravely,--"I don't think it is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What then?" said Mr. Carleton, stopping as he was about to spring into
+      the tree, and looking at her with a face of comical amusement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It isn't what <i>our</i> men live on," said Fleda, demurely eying the
+      fallen nuts, with a head full of business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They set both to work again with renewed energy, and rested not till the
+      treasures of the trees had been all brought to the ground, and as large a
+      portion of them as could be coaxed and shaken into Fleda's basket had been
+      cleared from the hulls and bestowed there. But there remained a vast
+      quantity. These with a good deal of labour Mr. Carleton and Fleda gathered
+      into a large heap in rather a sheltered place by the side of a rock, and
+      took what measures they might to conceal them. This was entirely at
+      Fleda's instance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You and your maid Cynthia will have to make a good many journeys, Miss
+      Fleda, to get all these home, unless you can muster a larger basket."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O <i>that's</i> nothing," said Fleda. "It will be all fun. I don't care
+      how many times we have to come. You are <i>very</i> good, Mr. Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you think so?" said he. "I wish I did. I wish you would make your wand
+      rest on me, Fairy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My wand?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--you know your grandfather says you are a fairy and carry a wand.
+      What does he say that for, Miss Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda said she supposed it was because he loved her so much; but the rosy
+      smile with which she said it would have let her hearer, if he had needed
+      enlightening, far more into the secret than she was herself. And if the
+      simplicity in her face had not been equal to the wit, Mr. Carleton would
+      never have ventured the look of admiration he bestowed on her. He knew it
+      was safe. <i>Approbation</i> she saw, and it made her smile the rosier;
+      but the admiration was a step beyond her; Fleda could make nothing of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They descended the mountain now with a hasty step, for the day was wearing
+      well on. At the spot where he had stood so long when they went up, Mr.
+      Carleton paused again for a minute. In mountain scenery every hour makes a
+      change. The sun was lower now, the lights and shadows more strongly
+      contrasted, the sky of a yet calmer blue, cool and clear towards the
+      horizon. The scene said still the same that it had said a few hours
+      before, with a touch more of sadness; it seemed to whisper, "All things
+      have an end--thy time may not be for ever--do what thou wouldest
+      do--'while ye have light believe in the light that ye may be children of
+      the light.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether Mr. Carleton read it so or not, he stood for a minute motionless
+      and went down the mountain looking so grave that Fleda did not venture to
+      speak to him, till they reached the neighbourhood of the spring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are you searching for, Miss Fleda?" said her friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was making a busy quest here and there by the side of the little
+      stream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was looking to see if I could find a mullein leaf," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A mullein leaf? what do you want it for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I want it--to make a drinking cup of," said Fleda, her intent bright eyes
+      peering keenly about in every direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A mullein leaf! that is too rough; one of these golden leaves--what are
+      they?--will do better, won't it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is hickory," said Fleda. "No; the mullein leaf is the best because
+      it holds the water so nicely.--Here it is!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And folding up one of the largest leaves into a most artist-like cup, she
+      presented it to Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For me, was all that trouble?" said he. "I don't deserve it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You wanted something, sir," said Fleda. "The water is very cold and
+      nice."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stooped to the bright little stream and filled his rural goblet several
+      times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I never knew what it was to have a fairy for my cup-bearer before," said
+      he. "That was better than anything Bordeaux or Xeres ever sent forth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed to have swallowed his seriousness, or thrown it away with the
+      mullein leaf. It was quite gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is the best spring in all grandpa's ground," said Fleda. "The water
+      is as good as can be."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How came you to be such a wood and water spirit? you must live out of
+      doors. Do the trees ever talk to you? I sometimes think they do to me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know--I think <i>I</i> talk to <i>them</i>," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's the same thing," said her companion smiling. "Such beautiful woods!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Were you never in the country before in the fall, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not here--in my own country often enough--but the woods in England do not
+      put on such a gay face, Miss Fleda, when they are going to be stripped of
+      their summer dress--they look sober upon it--the leaves wither and grow
+      brown and the woods have a dull russet colour. Your trees are true
+      Yankees--they 'never say die!'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, are the Americans more obstinate than the English?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is difficult to compare unknown quantities," said Mr. Carleton
+      laughing and shaking his head. "I see you have good ears for the key-note
+      of patriotism."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked a little hard at him, but he did not explain; and indeed they
+      were hurrying along too much for talking, leaping from stone to stone, and
+      running down the smooth orchard slope. When they reached the last fence,
+      but a little way from the house, Fleda made a resolute pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton--" said she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton put down his basket, and looked in some surprise at the
+      hesitating anxious little face that looked up at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Won't you please not say anything to grandpa about my going away?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why not, Fairy?" said he kindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because I don't think I ought to go."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But may it not be possible," said he, "that your grandfather can judge
+      better in the matter than you can do?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda, "I don't think he can. He would do anything he thought
+      would be most for my happiness; but it wouldn't be for my happiness," she
+      said with an unsteady lip,--"I don't know what he would do if I went!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You think he would have no sunshine if your wand didn't touch him?" said
+      Mr. Carleton smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir," said Fleda gravely,--"I don't think that,--but won't you please,
+      Mr. Carleton, not to speak about it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But are you sure," he said, sitting down on a stone hard by and taking
+      one of her hands, "are you sure that you would not like to go with us? I
+      wish you would change your mind about it. My mother will love you very
+      much, and I will take the especial charge of you till we give you to your
+      aunt in Paris;--if the wind blows a little too rough I will always put
+      myself between it and you," he added smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda smiled faintly, but immediately begged Mr. Carleton "not to say
+      anything to put it into her grandfather's head."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It must be there already, I think, Miss Fleda; but at any rate you know
+      my mother must perform her promise to your aunt Mrs. Rossitur; and she
+      would not do that without letting your grandfather know how glad she would
+      be to take you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda stood silent a moment, and then with a touching look of waiting
+      patience in her sweet face suffered Mr. Carleton to help her over the
+      fence; and they went home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Fleda's unspeakable surprise it was found to be past four o'clock, and
+      Cynthy had supper ready. Mr. Ringgan with great cordiality invited Mr.
+      Carleton to stay with them, but he could not; his mother would expect him
+      to dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is your mother?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "At Montepoole, sir; we have been to Niagara, and came this way on our
+      return; partly that my mother might fulfil the promise she made Mrs.
+      Rossitur--to let you know, sir, with how much pleasure she will take
+      charge of your little granddaughter and convey her to her friends in
+      Paris, if you can think it best to let her go."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hum!--she is very kind." said Mr. Ringgan, with a look of grave and not
+      unmoved consideration which Fleda did not in the least like;--"How long
+      will you stay at Montepoole, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It might be several days, Mr. Carleton said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hum--You have given up this day to Fleda, Mr. Carleton,--suppose you take
+      to-morrow for the game, and come here and try our country fare when you
+      have got through shooting?--you and young Mr. Rossitur?--and I'll think
+      over this question and let you know about it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was delighted to see that her friend accepted this invitation with
+      apparent pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will be kind enough to give my respects to your mother," Mr. Ringgan
+      went on, "and thanks for her kind offer. I may perhaps--I don't
+      know--avail myself of it. If anything should bring Mrs. Carleton this way
+      we should like to see her. I am glad to see my friends," he said, shaking
+      the young gentleman's hand,--"as long as I have a house to ask 'em to!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That will be for many years, I trust," said Mr. Carleton respectfully,
+      struck with something in the old gentleman's manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know, sir!" said Mr. Ringgan, with again the dignified look of
+      trouble;--"it may not be!--I wish you good day, sir."
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="04"></a>Chapter IV.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        A mind that in a calm angelic mood<br /> Of happy wisdom, meditating
+        good,<br /> Beholds, of all from her high powers required,<br /> Much
+        done, and much designed, and more desired.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Wordsworth.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      "I've had such a delicious day, dear grandpa,"--said little Fleda as they
+      sat at supper;--"you can't think how kind Mr. Carleton has been."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Has he?--Well dear--I'm glad on't,--he seems a very nice young man."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's a smart-lookin' feller," said Cynthy, who was pouring out the tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And we have got the greatest quantity of nuts!" Fleda went on,--"enough
+      for all winter. Cynthy and I will have to make ever so many journeys to
+      fetch 'em all; and they are splendid big ones. Don't you say anything to
+      Mr. Didenhover, Cynthy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't desire to meddle with Mr. Didenhover unless I've got to," said
+      Cynthy with an expression of considerable disgust. "You needn't give no
+      charges to me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you'll go with me, Cynthy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I s'pose I'll have to," said Miss Gall dryly, after a short interval of
+      sipping tea and helping herself to sweetmeats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This lady had a pervading acidity of face and temper, but it was no more.
+      To take her name as standing for a fair setting forth of her character
+      would be highly injurious to a really respectable composition, which the
+      world's neglect (there was no other imaginable cause) had soured a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost Fleda's first thought on coming home had been about Mr. Jolly. But
+      she knew very well, without asking, that he had not been there; she would
+      not touch the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I haven't had such a fine day of nutting in a great while, grandpa," she
+      said again; "and you never saw such a good hand as Mr. Carleton is at
+      whipping the trees."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How came he to go with you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know,--I suppose it was to please me, in the first place; but I
+      am sure he enjoyed it himself; and he liked the pie and cheese, too,
+      Cynthy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where did your cousin go?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O he went off after the woodcock. I hope he didn't find any."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you think of those two young men, Fairy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In what way, grandpa?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I mean, which of them do you like the best?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But t'other one's your cousin," said Mr. Ringgan, bending forward and
+      examining his little granddaughter's face with a curious pleased look, as
+      he often did when expecting an answer from her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," said Fleda, "but he isn't so much of a gentleman."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you know that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't think he is," said Fleda quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But why. Fairy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He doesn't know how to keep his word as well, grandpa."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, ay? let's hear about that," said Mr. Ringgan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little reluctantly, for Cynthia was present, Fleda told the story of the
+      robins, and how Mr. Carleton would not let the gun be fired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wa'n't your cousin a little put out by that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They were both put out," said Fleda, "Mr. Carleton was very angry for a
+      minute, and then Mr. Rossitur was angry, but I think he could have been
+      angrier if he had chosen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Ringgan laughed, and then seemed in a sort of amused triumph about
+      something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well dear!" he remarked after a while,--"you'll never buy wooden nutmegs,
+      I expect."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda laughed and hoped not, and asked him why he said so. But he didn't
+      tell her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Ringgan," said Cynthy, "hadn't I better run up the hill after supper,
+      and ask Mis' Plumfield to come down and help to-morrow? I suppose you'll
+      want considerable of a set out; and if both them young men comes you'll
+      want some more help to entertain 'em than I can give you, it's likely?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do so--do so," said the old gentleman. "Tell her who I expect, and ask
+      her if she can come and help you, and me too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O and I'll go with you, Cynthy," said Fleda. "I'll get aunt Miriam to
+      come, I know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should think you'd be run off your legs already, Flidda," said Miss
+      Cynthia; "what ails you to want to be going again?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this remonstrance availed nothing. Supper was hurried through, and
+      leaving the table standing Cynthia and Fleda set off to "run up the hill."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were hardly a few steps from the gate when they heard the clatter of
+      horses' hoofs behind them, and the two young gentlemen came riding
+      hurriedly past, having joined company and taken their horses at Queechy
+      Run. Rossitur did not seem to see his little cousin and her companion; but
+      the doffed cap and low inclination of the other rider as they flew by
+      called up a smile and blush of pleasure to Fleda's face; and the sound of
+      their horses' hoofs had died away in the distance before the light had
+      faded from her cheeks or she was quite at home to Cynthia's observations.
+      She was possessed with the feeling, what a delightful thing it was to have
+      people do things in such a manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That was your cousin, wa'n't it?" said Cynthy, when the spell was off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda, "the other one was my cousin." "Well--I mean one of them
+      fellers that went by. He's a soldier, ain't he?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "An officer," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, it does give a man an elegant look to be in the militie, don't it?
+      I should admire to have a cousin like that. It's dreadful becoming to have
+      that--what is it they call it?--to let the beard grow over the mouth. I
+      s'pose they can't do that without they be in the army can they?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Fleda. "I hope not. I think it is very ugly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you? Oh!--I admire it. It makes a man look so spry!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few hundred yards from Mr. Ringgan's gate the road began to wind up a
+      very long heavy hill. Just at the hill's foot it crossed by a rude bridge
+      the bed of a noisy brook that came roaring down from the higher grounds,
+      turning sundry mill and factory wheels in its way. About half way up the
+      hill one of these was placed, belonging to a mill for sawing boards. The
+      little building stood alone, no other in sight, with a dark background of
+      wood rising behind it on the other side of the brook; the stream itself
+      running smoothly for a small space above the mill, and leaping down madly
+      below, as if it disdained its bed and would clear at a bound every
+      impediment in its way to the sea. When the mill was not going the quantity
+      of water that found its way down the hill was indeed very small, enough
+      only to keep up a pleasant chattering with the stones; but as soon as the
+      stream was allowed to gather all its force and run free its loquacity was
+      such that it would prevent a traveller from suspecting his approach to the
+      mill, until, very near, the monotonous hum of its saw could be heard. This
+      was a place Fleda dearly loved. The wild sound of the waters and the
+      lonely keeping of the scene, with the delicious smell of the new-sawn
+      boards, and the fascination of seeing the great logs of wood walk up to
+      the relentless, tireless up-and-down-going steel; as the generations of
+      men in turn present themselves to the course of those sharp events which
+      are the teeth of Time's saw; until all of a sudden the master spirit, the
+      man-regulator of this machinery, would perform some conjuration on lever
+      and wheel,--and at once, as at the touch of an enchanter, the log would be
+      still and the saw stay its work;--the business of life came to a stand,
+      and the romance of the little brook sprang up again. Fleda never tired of
+      it--never. She would watch the saw play and stop, and go on again; she
+      would have her ears dinned with the hoarse clang of the machinery, and
+      then listen to the laugh of the mill-stream; she would see with untiring
+      patience one board after another cut and cast aside, and log succeed to
+      log; and never turned weary away from that mysterious image of Time's
+      doings. Fleda had besides, without knowing it, the eye of a painter. In
+      the lonely hillside, the odd-shaped little mill, with its accompaniments
+      of wood and water, and the great logs of timber lying about the ground in
+      all directions and varieties of position, there was a picturesque charm
+      for her, where the country people saw nothing but business and a place fit
+      for it. Their hands grew hard where her mind was refining. Where they made
+      dollars and cents, she was growing rich in stores of thought and
+      associations of beauty. How many purposes the same thing serves!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus04.jpg"><img src="images/illus04.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="'Who's got it now, Cynthy?'" title="'Who's got it now, Cynthy?'" /><br />
+      "Who's got it now, Cynthy?"</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That had ought to be your grandpa's mill this minute," observed Cynthy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish it was!" sighed Fleda. "Who's got it now, Cynthy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O it's that chap McGowan, I expect;--he's got pretty much the hull of
+      everything. I told Mr. Ringgan I wouldn't let him have it if it was me, at
+      the time. Your grandpa'd be glad to get it back now, I guess."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda guessed so too; but also guessed that Miss Gall was probably very
+      far from being possessed of the whole rationale of the matter. So she made
+      her no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After reaching the brow of the hill the road continued on a very gentle
+      ascent towards a little settlement half a quarter of a mile off; passing
+      now and then a few scattered cottages or an occasional mill or turner's
+      shop. Several mills and factories, with a store and a very few
+      dwelling-houses were all the settlement; not enough to entitle it to the
+      name of a village. Beyond these and the mill-ponds, of which in the course
+      of the road there were three or four, and with a brief intervening space
+      of cultivated fields, a single farm house stood alone; just upon the
+      borders of a large and very fair sheet of water from which all the others
+      had their supply.--So large and fair that nobody cavilled at its taking
+      the style of a lake and giving its own pretty name of Deepwater both to
+      the settlement and the farm that half embraced it. This farm was Seth
+      Plumfield's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the garden gate Fleda quitted Cynthy and rushed forward to meet her
+      aunt, whom she saw coming round the corner of the house with her gown
+      pinned up behind her from attending to some domestic concern among the
+      pigs, the cows, or the poultry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O aunt Miriam," said Fleda eagerly, "we are going to have company to tea
+      to-morrow--won't you come and help us?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Miriam laid her hands upon Fleda's shoulders and looked at Cynthy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I came up to see if you wouldn't come down to-morrow, Mis' Plumfield,"
+      said that personage, with her usual dry business tone, always a little on
+      the wrong side of sweet;--"your brother has taken a notion to ask two
+      young fellers from the Pool to supper, and they're grand folks I s'pose,
+      and have got to have a fuss made for 'em. I don't know what Mr. Ringgan
+      was thinkin' of, or whether he thinks I have got anything to do or not;
+      but anyhow they're a comin', I s'pose, and must have something to eat; and
+      I thought the best thing I could do would be to come and get you into the
+      works, if I could. I should feel a little queer to have nobody but me to
+      say nothin' to them at the table."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah do come, aunt Miriam!" said Fleda; "it will be twice as pleasant if
+      you do; and besides, we want to have everything very nice, you know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Miriam smiled at Fleda, and inquired of Miss Gall what she had in the
+      house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why I don't know, Mis' Plumfield," said the lady, while Fleda threw her
+      arms round her aunt and thanked her,--"there ain't nothin' particler--pork
+      and beef and the old story. I've got some first-rate pickles. I calculated
+      to make some sort o' cake in the morning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Any of those small hams left?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not a bone of 'em--these six weeks, <i>I</i> don't see how they've gone,
+      for my part. I'd lay any wager there were two in the smoke-house when I
+      took the last one out. If Mr. Didenhover was a little more like a weasel I
+      should think he'd been in."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you cooked that roaster I sent down?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, Mis' Plumfield, I ha'n't--it's such a plaguy sight of trouble!" said
+      Cynthy with a little apologetic giggle;--"I was keepin' it for some day
+      when I hadn't much to do."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll take the trouble of it. I'll be down bright and early in the
+      morning, and we'll see what's best to do. How's your last churning,
+      Cynthy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well--I guess it's pretty middlin,' Mis' Plumfield."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Tisn't anything very remarkable, aunt Miriam," said Fleda shaking her
+      head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, well," said Mrs. Plumfield smiling, "run away down home now, and
+      I'll come to-morrow, and I guess we'll fix it. But who is it that grandpa
+      has asked?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda and Cynthy both opened at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One of them is my cousin, aunt Miriam, that was at West Point, and the
+      other is the nicest English gentleman you ever saw--you will like him very
+      much--he has been with me getting nuts all to-day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They're a smart enough couple of chaps," said Cynthia; "they look as if
+      they lived where money was plenty."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well I'll come to-morrow," repeated Mrs. Plumfield, "and we'll see about
+      it. Good night, dear!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took Fleda's head in both her hands and gave her a most affectionate
+      kiss; and the two petitioners set off homewards again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Miriam was not at all like her brother, in feature, though the moral
+      characteristics suited the relationship sufficiently well. There was the
+      expression of strong sense and great benevolence; the unbending
+      uprightness, of mind and body at once; and the dignity of an essentially
+      noble character, not the same as Mr. Ringgan's, but such as well became
+      his sister. She had been brought up among the Quakers, and though now and
+      for many years a staunch Presbyterian, she still retained a tincture of
+      the calm efficient gentleness of mind and manner that belongs so
+      inexplicably to them. More womanly sweetness than was in Mr. Ringgan's
+      blue eye a woman need not wish to have; and perhaps his sister's had not
+      so much. There was no want of it in her heart, nor in her manner, but the
+      many and singular excellencies of her character were a little overshadowed
+      by super-excellent housekeeping. Not a taint of the littleness that
+      sometimes grows therefrom,--not a trace of the narrowness of mind that
+      over-attention to such pursuits is too apt to bring;--on every important
+      occasion aunt Miriam would come out free and unshackled from all the
+      cobweb entanglements of housewifery; she would have tossed housewifery to
+      the winds if need were (but it never was, for in a new sense she always
+      contrived to make both ends meet). It was only in the unbroken everyday
+      course of affairs that aunt Miriam's face shewed any tokens of that
+      incessant train of <i>small cares</i> which had never left their
+      impertinent footprints upon the broad high brow of her brother. Mr.
+      Ringgan had no affinity with small cares; deep serious matters received
+      his deep and serious consideration; but he had as dignified a disdain of
+      trifling annoyances or concernments as any great mastiff or Newfoundlander
+      ever had for the yelping of a little cur.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="05"></a>Chapter V.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Ynne London citye was I borne,<br /> Of parents of grete note;<br /> My
+        fadre dydd a nobile arms<br /> Emblazon onne hys cote.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Chatterton.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      In the snuggest and best private room of the House at Montepoole a party
+      of ladies and gentlemen were gathered, awaiting the return of the
+      sportsmen. The room had been made as comfortable as any place could be in
+      a house built for "the season," after the season was past. A splendid fire
+      of hickory logs was burning brilliantly and making amends for many
+      deficiencies; the closed wooden shutters gave the reality if not the look
+      of warmth, for though the days might be fine and mild the mornings and
+      evenings were always very cool up there among the mountains; and a table
+      stood at the last point of readiness for having dinner served. They only
+      waited for the lingering woodcock-hunters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was rather an elderly party, with the exception of one young man whose
+      age might match that of the absent two. He was walking up and down the
+      room with somewhat the air of having nothing to do with himself. Another
+      gentleman, much older, stood warming his back at the fire, feeling about
+      his jaws and chin with one hand and looking at the dinner-table in a sort
+      of expectant reverie. The rest, three ladies, sat quietly chatting. All
+      these persons were extremely different from one another in individual
+      characteristics, and all had the unmistakable mark of the habit of good
+      society; as difficult to locate and as easy to recognize as the sense of
+      <i>freshness</i> which some ladies have the secret of diffusing around
+      themselves;--no definable sweetness, nothing in particular, but making a
+      very agreeable impression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of these ladies, the mother of the perambulating young officer (he was
+      a class-mate of Rossitur's), was extremely plain in feature, even more
+      than <i>ordinary</i>. This plainness was not however devoid of sense, and
+      it was relieved by an uncommon amount of good-nature and kindness of
+      heart. In her son the sense deepened into acuteness, and the kindness of
+      heart retreated, it is to be hoped, into some hidden recess of his nature;
+      for it very rarely shewed itself in open expression. That is, to an eye
+      keen in reading the natural signs of emotion; for it cannot be said that
+      his manner had any want of amenity or politeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second lady, the wife of the gentleman on the hearth-rug, or rather on
+      the spot where the hearth-rug should have been, was a strong contrast to
+      this mother and son; remarkably pretty, delicate and even lovely; with a
+      black eye however that though in general soft could shew a mischievous
+      sparkle upon occasion; still young, and one of those women who always were
+      and always will be pretty and delicate at any age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third had been very handsome, and was still a very elegant woman, but
+      her face had seen more of the world's wear and tear. It had never known
+      placidity of expression beyond what the habitual command of good-breeding
+      imposed. She looked exactly what she was, a perfect woman of the world. A
+      very good specimen,--for Mrs. Carleton had sense and cultivation and even
+      feeling enough to play the part very gracefully; yet her mind was bound in
+      the shackles of "the world's" tyrannical forging and had never been free;
+      and her heart bowed submissively to the same authority.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Here they are! Welcome home," exclaimed this lady, as her son and his
+      friend at length made their appearance;--"Welcome home--we are all
+      famishing; and I don't know why in the world we waited for you, for I am
+      sure you don't deserve it. What success? What success, Mr. Rossitur?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Faith ma'am, there's little enough to boast of, as far as I am
+      concerned. Mr. Carleton may speak for himself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very sorry, ma'am, you waited for me," said that gentleman. "I am a
+      delinquent I acknowledge. The day came to an end before I was at all aware
+      of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It would not do to flatter you so far as to tell you why we waited," said
+      Mrs. Evelyn's soft voice. And then perceiving that the gentleman at whom
+      she was looking gave her no answer she turned to the other. "How many
+      woodcock, Mr. Rossitur?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing to shew, ma'am," he replied. "Didn't see a solitary one. I heard
+      some partridges, but I didn't mean to have room in my bag for them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you find the right ground, Rossitur?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I had a confounded long tramp after it if I didn't," said the discomfited
+      sportsman, who did not seem to have yet recovered his good humour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Were you not together?" said Mrs. Carleton. "Where were you, Guy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Following the sport another way, ma'am; I had very good success too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's the total?" said Mr. Evelyn. "How much game did you bag?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Really, sir, I didn't count. I can only answer for a bag full."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ladies and gentlemen!" cried Rossitur, bursting forth,--"What will you
+      say when I tell you that Mr. Carleton deserted me and the sport in a most
+      unceremonious manner, and that he,--the cynical philosopher, the reserved
+      English gentleman, the gay man of the world,--you are all of 'em by turns,
+      aren't you, Carleton?--<i>he!</i>--has gone and made a very cavaliero
+      servante of himself to a piece of rusticity, and spent all to-day in
+      helping a little girl pick up chestnuts!" "Mr. Carleton would be a better
+      man if he were to spend a good many more days in the same manner," said
+      that gentleman, dryly enough. But the entrance of dinner put a stop to
+      both laughter and questioning for a time, all of the party being well
+      disposed to their meat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the pickerel from the lakes, and the poultry and half-kept joints had
+      had their share of attention, and a pair of fine wild ducks were set on
+      the table, the tongues of the party found something to do besides eating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We have had a very satisfactory day among the Shakers, Guy," said Mrs.
+      Carleton; "and we have arranged to drive to Kenton to-morrow--I suppose
+      you will go with us?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "With pleasure, mother, but that I am engaged to dinner about five or six
+      miles in the opposite direction."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Engaged to dinner!--what with this old gentleman where you went last
+      night? And you too, Mr. Rossitur?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have made no promise, ma'am, but I take it I must go."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Vexatious! Is the little girl going with us, Guy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know yet--I half apprehend, yes; there seems to be a doubt in her
+      grandfather's mind, not whether he can let her go, but whether he can keep
+      her, and that looks like it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it your little cousin who proved the successful rival of the woodcock
+      to-day, Carleton?" said Mrs. Evelyn. "What is she?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know, ma'am, upon my word. I presume Carleton will tell you she
+      is something uncommon and quite remarkable."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is she, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What, ma'am?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Uncommon?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come! That <i>is</i> something, from <i>you</i>," said Rossitur's brother
+      officer, Lieut. Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's the uncommonness?" said Mrs. Thorn, addressing herself rather to
+      Mr. Rossitur as she saw Mr. Carleton's averted eye;--"Is she handsome, Mr.
+      Rossitur?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can't tell you, I am sure, ma'am. I saw nothing but a nice child enough
+      in a calico frock, just such as one would see in any farm-house. She
+      rushed into the room when she was first called to see us, from somewhere
+      in distant regions, with an immense iron ladle a foot and a half long in
+      her hand with which she had been performing unknown feats of housewifery;
+      and they had left her head still encircled with a halo of kitchen-smoke.
+      If as they say 'coming events cast their shadows before,' she was the
+      shadow of supper."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh Carleton, Carleton!" said Mrs. Evelyn, but in a tone of very gentle
+      and laughing reproof,--"for shame! What a picture! and of your cousin!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is she a pretty child, Guy?" said Mrs. Carleton, who did not relish her
+      son's grave face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No ma'am--something more than that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How old?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "About ten or eleven."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's an ugly age."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She will never be at an ugly age."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What style of beauty?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The highest--that degree of mould and finish which belongs only to the
+      finest material."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is hardly the kind of beauty one would expect to see in such a
+      place," said Mrs. Carleton. "From one side of her family to be sure she
+      has a right to it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have seen very few examples of it anywhere," said her son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who were her parents?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Her mother was Mrs. Rossitur's sister,--her father--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Amy Carleton!" exclaimed Mrs. Evelyn,--"O I knew her! Was Amy Carleton
+      her mother? O I didn't know whom you were talking of. She was one of my
+      dearest friends. Her daughter may well be handsome--she was one of the
+      most lovely persons I ever knew; in body and mind both. O I loved Amy
+      Carleton very much. I must see this child."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know who her father was," Mrs. Carleton went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O her father was Major Ringgan," said Mrs. Evelyn. "I never saw him, but
+      I have heard him spoken of in very high terms. I always heard that Amy
+      married very well."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Major Ringgan!" said Mrs. Thorn;--"his name is very well known; he was
+      very distinguished."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He was a self-made man entirely," said Mrs. Evelyn, in a tone that
+      conveyed a good deal more than the simple fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, he was a self made man," said Mrs. Thorn, "but I should never think
+      of that where a man distinguishes himself so much; he was very
+      distinguished."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, and for more than officer-like qualities," said Mrs. Evelyn. "I have
+      heard his personal accomplishments as a gentleman highly praised."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So that little Miss Ringgan's right to be a beauty may be considered
+      clearly made out," said Mr. Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is one of those singular cases," said Mr. Carleton, "where purity of
+      blood proves itself, and one has no need to go back to past generations to
+      make any inquiry concerning it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hear him!" cried Rossitur;--"and for the life of me I could see nothing
+      of all this wonder. Her face is not at all striking."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The wonder is not so much in what it <i>is</i> as in what it indicates,"
+      said Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What does it indicate?" said his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Suppose you were to ask me to count the shades of colour in a rainbow,"
+      answered he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hear him!" cried Thorn again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I hope she will go with us and we shall have a chance of seeing
+      her," said Mrs. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If she were only a few years older it is my belief you would see enough
+      of her, ma'am," said young Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The haughty coldness of Mr. Carleton's look at this speech could not be
+      surpassed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But she has beauty of feature too, has she not?" Mrs. Carleton asked
+      again of her son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, in very high degree. The contour of the eye and brow I never saw
+      finer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is a little odd," said Mrs. Evelyn with the slightest touch of a
+      piqued air, (she had some daughters at home)--"that is a kind of beauty
+      one is apt to associate with high breeding, and certainly you very rarely
+      see it anywhere else; and Major Ringgan, however distinguished and
+      estimable, as I have no doubt he was,--And this child must have been
+      brought up with no advantages, here in the country."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear madam," said Mr. Carleton smiling a little, "this high breeding
+      is a very fine thing, but it can neither be given nor bequeathed; and we
+      cannot entail it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But it can be taught, can't it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If it could be taught it is to be hoped it would be oftener learned,"
+      said the young man dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what do we mean, then, when we talk of the high breeding of certain
+      classes--and families? and why are we not disappointed when we look to
+      find it in connection with certain names and positions in society?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not know," said Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You don't mean to say, I suppose, Mr. Carleton," said Thorn bridling a
+      little, "that it is a thing independent of circumstances, and that there
+      is no value in blood?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very nearly--answering the question as you understand it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "May I ask how you understand it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As you do, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is there no high breeding then in the world?" asked good-natured Mrs.
+      Thorn, who could be touched on this point of family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is very little of it. What is commonly current under the name is
+      merely counterfeit notes which pass from hand to hand of those who are
+      bankrupt in the article."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And to what serve then," said Mrs. Evelyn colouring, "the long lists of
+      good old names which even you, Mr. Carleton, I know, do not disdain?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To endorse the counterfeit notes," said Mr. Carleton smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Guy you are absurd!" said his mother. "I will not sit at the table and
+      listen to you if you talk such stuff. What do you mean?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I beg your pardon, mother, you have misunderstood me," said he seriously.
+      "Mind, I have been talking, not of ordinary conformity to what the world
+      requires, but of that fine perfection of mental and moral constitution
+      which in its own natural necessary acting leaves nothing to be desired, in
+      every occasion or circumstance of life. It is the pure gold, and it knows
+      no tarnish; it is the true coin, and it gives what it proffers to give; it
+      is the living plant ever-blossoming, and not the cut and art-arranged
+      flowers. It is a thing of the mind altogether; and where nature has not
+      curiously prepared the soil it is in vain to try to make it grow. <i>This</i>
+      is not very often met with?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No indeed," said Mrs. Carleton;--"but you are so fastidiously nice in all
+      your notions!--at this rate nothing will ever satisfy you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't think it is so very uncommon," said Mrs. Thorn. "It seems to me
+      one sees as much of it as can be expected, Mr. Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton pared his apple with an engrossed air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O no, Mrs. Thorn," said Mrs. Evelyn, "I don't agree with you--I don't
+      think you often see such a combination as Mr. Carleton has been speaking
+      of--very rarely!--but, Mr. Carleton, don't you think it is generally found
+      in that class of society where the habits of life are constantly the most
+      polished and refined?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Possibly," answered he, diving into the core of his apple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, but tell me;--I want to know what you think."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Cultivation and refinement have taught people to recognize and analyze
+      and imitate it; the counterfeits are most current in that society,--but as
+      to the reality I don't know--it is nature's work and she is a little
+      freaky about it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But Guy!" said his mother impatiently;--"this is not selling but giving
+      away one's birthright. Where is the advantage of birth if breeding is not
+      supposed to go along with it. Where the parents have had intelligence and
+      refinement do we not constantly see them inherited by the children? and in
+      an increasing degree from generation to generation?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very extraordinary!" said Mrs. Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not undervalue the blessings of inheritance, mother, believe me, nor
+      deny the general doctrine; though intelligence does not always descend,
+      and manners die out, and that invaluable legacy, <i>a name</i>, may be
+      thrown away. But this delicate thing we are speaking of is not
+      intelligence nor refinement, but comes rather from a happy combination of
+      qualities, together with a peculiarly fine nervous constitution;--the <i>essence</i>
+      of it may consist with an omission, even with an awkwardness, and with a
+      sad ignorance of conventionalities."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But even if that be so, do you think it can ever reach its full
+      development but in the circumstances that are favourable to it?" said Mrs.
+      Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Probably not often; the diamond in some instances wants the graver;--but
+      it is the diamond. Nature seems now and then to have taken a princess's
+      child and dropped it in some odd corner of the kingdom, while she has left
+      the clown in the palace."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "From all which I understand," said Mr. Thorn, "that this little chestnut
+      girl is a princess in disguise."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Really, Carleton!"--Rossitur began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Evelyn leaned back in her chair and quietly eating a piece of apple
+      eyed Mr. Carleton with a look half amused and half discontented, and
+      behind all that, keenly attentive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Take for example those two miniatures you were looking at last night,
+      Mrs. Evelyn," the young man went on;--"Louis XVI. and Marie
+      Antoinette--what would you have more unrefined, more heavy, more <i>animal</i>,
+      than the face of that descendant of a line of kings?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Evelyn bowed her head acquiescingly and seemed to enjoy her apple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>He</i> had a pretty bad lot of an inheritance sure enough, take it all
+      together," said Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well," said Thorn,--"is this little stray princess as well-looking as
+      t'other miniature?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Better, in some respects," said Mr. Carleton coolly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Better!" cried Mrs. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not in the brilliancy of her beauty, but in some of its
+      characteristics;--better in its promise."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Make yourself intelligible, for the sake of my nerves, Guy," said his
+      mother. "Better looking than Marie Antoinette!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My unhappy cousin is said to be a fairy, ma'am," said Mr. Rossitur; "and
+      I presume all this may be referred to enchantment."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That face of Marie Antoinette's," said Mr. Carleton smiling, "is an
+      undisciplined one--uneducated."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Uneducated!" exclaimed Mrs. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't mistake me, mother,--I do not mean that it shows any want of
+      reading or writing, but it does indicate an untrained character--a mind
+      unprepared for the exigencies of life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She met those exigencies indifferent well too," observed Mr. Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay--but pride, and the dignity of rank, and undoubtedly some of the finer
+      qualities of a woman's nature, might suffice for that, and yet leave her
+      utterly unfitted to play wisely and gracefully a part in ordinary life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, she had no such part to play," said Mrs. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly, mother--but I am comparing faces."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well--the other face?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It has the same style of refined beauty of feature, but--to compare them
+      in a word, Marie Antoinette looks to me like a superb exotic that has come
+      to its brilliant perfection of bloom in a hot-house--it would lose its
+      beauty in the strong free air--it would change and droop if it lacked
+      careful waiting upon and constant artificial excitement;--the other," said
+      Mr. Carleton musingly,--is a flower of the woods, raising its head above
+      frost and snow and the rugged soil where fortune has placed it, with an
+      air of quiet patient endurance;--a storm wind may bring it to the ground,
+      easily--but if its gentle nature be not broken, it will look up again,
+      unchanged, and bide its time in unrequited beauty and sweetness to the
+      end."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The exotic for me!" cried Rossitur,--"if I only had a place for her. I
+      don't like pale elegancies."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'd make a piece of poetry of that if I was you, Carleton," said Mr.
+      Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton has done that already," said Mrs. Evelyn smoothly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I never heard you talk so before, Guy," said his mother looking at him.
+      His eyes had grown dark with intensity of expression while he was
+      speaking, gazing at visionary flowers or beauties through the dinner-table
+      mahogany. He looked up and laughed as she addressed him, and rising turned
+      off lightly with his usual sir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I congratulate you, Mrs. Carleton," Mrs. Evelyn whispered as they went
+      from the table, "that this little beauty is not a few years older."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why?" said Mrs. Carleton. "If she is all that Guy says, I would give
+      anything in the world to see him married."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Time enough," said Mrs. Evelyn with a knowing smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Mrs. Carleton,--"I think he would be happier. He is a
+      restless spirit--nothing satisfies him--nothing fixes him. He cannot rest
+      at home--he abhors politics--he flits way from country to country and
+      doesn't remain long anywhere."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you with him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I with him. I should like to see if a wife could not persuade him to
+      stay at home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I guess you have petted him too much," said Mrs. Evelyn slyly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I cannot have petted him too much, for he has never disappointed me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--of course not; but it seems you find it difficult to lead him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No one ever succeeded in doing that," said Mrs. Carleton, with a smile
+      that was anything but an ungratified one. "He never wanted driving, and to
+      lead him is impossible. You may try it, and while you think you are going
+      to gain your end, if he thinks it worth while, you will suddenly find that
+      he is leading you. It is so with everybody--in some inexplicable way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Evelyn thought the mystery was very easily explicable as far as the
+      mother was concerned; and changed the conversation.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="06"></a>Chapter VI.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        To them life was a simple art<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;Of duties to be done,<br />
+        A game where each man took his part,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;A race where all
+        must run;<br /> A battle whose great scheme and scope<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;They
+        little cared to know,<br /> Content, as men-at-arms, to cope<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;Each
+        with his fronting foe.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Milnes.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      On so great and uncommon an occasion as Mr. Ringgan's giving a
+      dinner-party the disused front parlour was opened and set in order; the
+      women-folks, as he called them, wanting the whole back part of the house
+      for their operations. So when the visitors arrived, in good time, they
+      were ushered into a large square bare-looking room--a strong contrast even
+      to their dining-room at the Poolwhich gave them nothing of the welcome of
+      the pleasant farmhouse kitchen, and where nothing of the comfort of the
+      kitchen found its way but a very strong smell of roast pig. There was the
+      cheerless air of a place where nobody lives, or thinks of living. The very
+      chairs looked as if they had made up their minds to be forsaken for a term
+      of months; it was impossible to imagine that a cheerful supper had ever
+      been laid upon the stiff cold-looking table that stood with its leaves
+      down so primly against the wall. All that a blazing fire could do to make
+      amends for deficiencies, it did; but the wintry wind that swept round the
+      house shook the paper window-shades in a remorseless way; and the utmost
+      efforts of said fire could not prevent it from coming in and giving
+      disagreeable impertinent whispers at the ears of everybody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Ringgan's welcome, however, was and would have been the same thing
+      anywhere--genial, frank, and dignified; neither he nor it could be changed
+      by circumstances. Mr. Carleton admired anew, as he came forward, the fine
+      presence and noble look of his old host; a look that it was plain had
+      never needed to seek the ground; a brow that in large or small things had
+      never been crossed by a shadow of shame. And to a discerning eye the face
+      was not a surer index of a lofty than of a peaceful and pure mind; too
+      peace-loving and pure perhaps for the best good of his affairs in the
+      conflict with a selfish and unscrupulous world. At least now, in the time
+      of his old age and infirmity; in former days his straightforward wisdom
+      backed by an indomitable courage and strength had made Mr. Ringgan no safe
+      subject for either braving or overreaching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's keen-sighted affection was heartily gratified by the manner in
+      which her grandfather was greeted by at least one of his guests, and that
+      the one about whose opinion she cared the most. Mr. Carleton seemed as
+      little sensible of the cold room as Mr. Ringgan himself. Fleda felt sure
+      that her grandfather was appreciated; and she would have sat delightedly
+      listening to what the one and the other were presently saying, if she had
+      not taken notice that her cousin looked <i>astray</i>. He was eying the
+      fire with a profound air and she fancied he thought it poor amusement.
+      Little as Fleda in secret really cared about that, with an instant
+      sacrifice of her own pleasure she quietly changed her position for one
+      from which she could more readily bring to bear upon Mr. Rossitur's
+      distraction the very light artillery of her conversation; and attacked him
+      on the subject of the game he had brought home. Her motive and her manner
+      both must have been lost upon the young gentleman. He forthwith set about
+      amusing himself in a way his little entertainer had not counted upon,
+      namely, with giving a chase to her wits; partly to pass away the time, and
+      partly to gratify his curiosity, as he said, "to see what Fleda was made
+      of." By a curious system of involved, startling, or absurd questions, he
+      endeavoured to puzzle or confound or entrap her. Fleda however steadily
+      presented a grave front to the enemy, and would every now and then
+      surprise him with an unexpected turn or clever doubling, and sometimes,
+      when he thought he had her in a corner, jump over the fence and laugh at
+      him from the other side. Mr. Rossitur's respect for his little adversary
+      gradually increased, and finding that she had rather the best of the game
+      he at last gave it up, just as Mr. Ringgan was asking Mr. Carleton if he
+      was a judge of stock? Mr. Carleton saying with a smile "No, but he hoped
+      Mr. Ringgan would give him his first lesson,"--the old gentleman
+      immediately arose with that alacrity of manner he always wore when he had
+      a visitor that pleased him, and taking his hat and cane led the way out;
+      choosing, with a man's true carelessness of housewifery etiquette, the
+      kitchen route, of all others. Not even admonished by the sight of the
+      bright Dutch oven before the fire that he was introducing his visitors
+      somewhat too early to the pig, he led the whole party through, Cynthia
+      scuttling away in haste across the kitchen with something that must not be
+      seen, while aunt Miriam looked out at the company through the crack of the
+      pantry door, at which Fleda ventured a sly glance of intelligence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a fine though a windy and cold afternoon; the lights and shadows
+      were driving across the broad upland and meadows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is a fine arable country," remarked Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Capital, sir,--capital, for many miles round, if we were not so far from
+      a market. I was one of the first that broke ground in this township,--one
+      of the very first settlers--I've seen the rough and the smooth of it, and
+      I never had but one mind about it from the first. All this--as far as you
+      can see--I cleared myself; most of it with my own hand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That recollection must attach you strongly to the place, I should think,
+      sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hum--perhaps I cared too much for it," he replied, "for it is taken away
+      from me. Well--it don't matter now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it not yours?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir!--it <i>was</i> mine, a great many years; but I was obliged to
+      part with it, two years ago, to a scoundrel of a fellow--McGowan up
+      here--he got an advantage over me. I can't take care of myself any more as
+      I used to do, and I don't find that other people deal by me just as I
+      could wish--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent for a moment and then went on,--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes sir! when I first set myself down here, or a little further that way
+      my first house was,--a pretty rough house, too,--there wa'n't two settlers
+      beside within something like ten miles round.--I've seen the whole of it
+      cleared, from the cutting of the first forest trees till this day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have seen the nation itself spring up within that time," remarked his
+      guest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not exactly--that question of our nationality was settled a little before
+      I came here. I was born rather too late to see the whole of that play--I
+      saw the best of it though--boys were men in those days. My father was in
+      the thick of it from beginning to end."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In the army, was he?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ho yes, sir! he and every child he had that wasn't a girl--there wasn't a
+      man of the name that wa'n't on the right side. I was in the army myself
+      when I was fifteen. I was nothing but a fifer--but I tell you sir! there
+      wasn't a general officer in the country that played his part with a
+      prouder heart than I did mine!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And was that the general spirit of the ranks?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not altogether," replied the old gentleman, passing his hand several
+      times abstractedly over his white hair, a favourite gesture with
+      him,--"not exactly that--there was a good deal of mixture of different
+      materials, especially in this state; and where the feeling wasn't pretty
+      strong it was no wonder if it got tired out; but the real stuff, the true
+      Yankee blood, was pretty firm! Ay, and some of the rest! There was a good
+      deal to try men in those days. Sir, I have seen many a time when I had
+      nothing to dine upon but my fife, and it was more than that could do to
+      keep me from feeling very empty!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But was this a common case? did this happen often?" said Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pretty often--pretty often, sometimes," answered the old gentleman.
+      "Things were very much out of order, you see, and in some parts of the
+      country it was almost impossible to get the supplies the men needed.
+      Nothing would have kept them together,--nothing under heaven--but the love
+      and confidence they had in one name. Their love of right and independence
+      wouldn't have been strong enough, and besides a good many of them got
+      disheartened. A hungry stomach is a pretty stout arguer against abstract
+      questions. I have seen my father crying like a child for the wants and
+      sufferings he was obliged to see and couldn't relieve."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And then you used to relieve yourselves, grandpa," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How was that, Fairy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked at her grandfather, who gave a little preparatory laugh and
+      passed his hand over his head again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why yes," said he,--"we used to think the tories, King George's men you
+      know, were fair game; and when we happened to be in the neighbourhood of
+      some of them that we knew were giving all the help they could to the
+      enemy, we used to let them cook our dinners for us once in a while."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How did you manage that, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, they used to have little bake-ovens to cook their meats and so on,
+      standing some way out from the house,--did you never gee one of
+      them?--raised on four little heaps of stone; the bottom of the oven is one
+      large flat stone, and the arch built over it;--they look like a great
+      bee-hive. Well--we used to watch till we saw the good woman of the house
+      get her oven cleverly heated, and put in her batch of bread, or her meat
+      pie, or her pumpkin and apple pies!--whichever it was--there didn't any of
+      'em come much amiss--and when we guessed they were pretty nigh done, three
+      or four of us would creep in and whip off the whole--oven and all!--to a
+      safe place. I tell you," said he with a knowing nod of his head at the
+      laughing Fleda,--"those were first-rate pies!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And then did you put the oven back again afterwards, grandpa?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I guess not often, dear!" replied the old gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you think of such lawless proceedings, Miss Fleda?" said Mr.
+      Carleton, laughing at or with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O I like it," said Fleda. "You liked those pies all the better, didn't
+      you, grandpa, because you had got them from the tories?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That we did! If we hadn't got them maybe King George's men would, in some
+      shape. But we weren't always so lucky as to get hold of an oven full. I
+      remember one time several of us had been out on a foraging expedition----
+      there, sir, what do you think of that for a two and a half year old?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had come up with the chief favourite of his barn-yard, a fine
+      deep-coloured Devon bull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know what one might see in Devonshire," he remarked presently,
+      "but I know <i>this</i> country can't shew the like of him!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A discussion followed of the various beauties and excellencies of the
+      animal; a discussion in which Mr. Carleton certainly took little part,
+      while Mr. Ringgan descanted enthusiastically upon 'hide' and 'brisket' and
+      'bone,' and Rossitur stood in an abstraction, it might be scornful, it
+      might be mazed. Little Fleda quietly listening and looking at the
+      beautiful creature, which from being such a treasure to her grandfather
+      was in a sort one to her, more than half understood them all; but Mr.
+      Ringgan was too well satisfied with the attention of one of his guests to
+      miss that of the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That fellow don't look as if <i>he</i> had ever known short commons," was
+      Rossitur's single remark as they turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You did not give us the result of your foraging expedition, sir," said
+      Mr. Carleton in a different manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do, grandpa," said Fleda softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ha!--Oh it is not worth telling," said the old gentleman, look ing
+      gratified;--"Fleda has heard my stories till she knows them by heart--she
+      could tell it as well herself. What was it?--about the pig?--We had been
+      out, several of us, one afternoon to try to get up a supper--or a dinner,
+      for we had had none--and we had caught a pig. It happened that I was the
+      only one of the party that had a cloak, and so the pig was given to me to
+      carry home, because I could hide it the best. Well sir!--we were coming
+      home, and had set our mouths for a prime supper, when just as we were
+      within a few rods of our shanty who should come along but our captain! My
+      heart sank as it never has done at the thought of a supper before or
+      since, I believe! I held my cloak together as well as I could, and kept
+      myself back a little, so that if the pig shewed a cloven foot behind me,
+      the captain might not see it. But I almost gave up all for lost when I saw
+      the captain going into the hut with us. There was a kind of a rude
+      bedstead standing there; and I set myself down upon the side of it, and
+      gently worked and eased my pig off under my cloak till I got him to roll
+      down behind the bed. I knew," said Mr. Ringgan laughing, "I knew by the
+      captain's eye as well as I knew anything, that he smelt a rat; but he kept
+      our counsel, as well as his own; and when he was gone we took the pig out
+      into the woods behind the shanty and roasted him finely, and we sent and
+      asked Capt. Sears to supper; and he came and helped us eat the pig with a
+      great deal of appetite, and never asked no questions how we came by him!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wonder your stout-heartedness did not fail, in the course of so long a
+      time," said Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never sir!" said the old gentleman. "I never doubted for a moment what
+      the end would be. My father never doubted for a moment. We trusted in God
+      and in Washington!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you see actual service yourself?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir--I never did. I wish I had. I should like to have had the honour
+      of striking one blow at the rascals. However they were hit pretty well. I
+      ought to be contented. My father saw enough of fighting--he was colonel of
+      a regiment--he was at the affair of Burgoyne. <i>That</i> gave us a lift
+      in good time. What rejoicing there was everywhere when that news came! I
+      could have fifed all day upon an empty stomach and felt satisfied. People
+      reckoned everywhere that the matter was settled when that great piece of
+      good fortune was given us. And so it was!--wa'n't it, dear?" said the old
+      gentleman, with one of those fond, pleased, sympathetic looks to Fleda
+      with which he often brought up what he was saying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "General Gates commanded there?" said Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes sir--Gates was a poor stick--I never thought much of him. That fellow
+      Arnold distinguished himself in the actions before Burgoyne's surrender.
+      He fought like a brave man. It seems strange that so mean a scamp should
+      have had so much blood in him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, are great fighters generally good men, grandpa?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not exactly, dear!" replied her grandfather;--"but such little-minded
+      rascality is not just the vice one would expect to find in a gallant
+      soldier."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Those were times that made men," said Mr. Carleton musingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," answered the old gentleman gravely,--"they were times that called
+      for men, and God raised them up. But Washington was the soul of the
+      country, sir!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, the time made him," said Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I beg your pardon," said the old gentleman with a very decided little
+      turn of his head,--"I think he made the time. I don't know what it would
+      have been, sir, or what it would have come to, but for him. After all, it
+      is rather that the things which try people shew what is in them;--I hope
+      there are men enough in the country yet, though they haven't as good a
+      chance to shew what they are."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Either way," said his guest smiling; "it is a happiness, Mr. Ringgan, to
+      have lived at a time when there was something worth living for."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well--I don't know--" said the old gentleman;--"those times would make
+      the prettiest figure in a story or a romance, I suppose; but I've tried
+      both, and on the whole," said he with another of his looks at Fleda,--"I
+      think I like these times the best!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda smiled her acquiescence. His guest could not help thinking to
+      himself that however pacific might be Mr. Ringgan's temper, no man in
+      those days that tried men could have brought to the issue more stern
+      inflexibility and gallant fortitude of bearing. His frame bore evidence of
+      great personal strength, and his eye, with all its mildness, had an
+      unflinching dignity that <i>could</i> never have quailed before danger or
+      duty. And now, while he was recalling with great animation and pleasure
+      the scenes of his more active life, and his blue eye was shining with the
+      fire of other days, his manner had the self-possession and quiet
+      sedateness of triumph that bespeak a man always more ready to do than to
+      say. Perhaps the contemplation of the noble Roman-like old figure before
+      him did not tend to lessen the feeling, even the sigh of regret, with
+      which the young man said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There was something then for a man to do!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is always that," said the old gentleman quietly. "God has given
+      every man his work to do; and 'tain't difficult for him to find out what.
+      No man is put here to be idle."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But," said his companion, with a look in which not a little haughty
+      reserve was mingled with a desire to speak out his thoughts, "half the
+      world are busy about hum-drum concerns and the other half doing nothing,
+      or worse."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know about that," said Mr. Ringgan;--"that depends upon the way
+      you take things. 'Tain't always the men that make the most noise that are
+      the most good in the world. Hum-drum affairs needn't be hum-drum in the
+      doing of 'em. It is my maxim," said the old gentleman looking at his
+      companion with a singularly open pleasant smile,--"that a man may be great
+      about a'most anything--chopping wood, if he happens to be in that line. I
+      used to go upon that plan, sir. Whatever I have set my hand to do, I have
+      done it as well as I knew how to; and if you follow that rule out you'll
+      not be idle, nor hum-drum neither. Many's the time that I have mowed what
+      would be a day's work for another man, before breakfast."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rossitur's smile was not meant to be seen. But Mr. Carleton's, to the
+      credit of his politeness and his understanding both, was frank as the old
+      gentleman's own, as he answered with a good-humoured shake of his head,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can readily believe it, sir, and honour both your maxim and your
+      practice. But I am not exactly in that line."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why don't you try the army?" said Mr. Ringgan with a look of interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is not a cause worth fighting for," said the young man, his brow
+      changing again. "It is only to add weight to the oppressor's hand, or
+      throw away life in the vain endeavour to avert it. I will do neither."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But all the world is open before such a young man as you," said Mr.
+      Ringgan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A large world," said Mr. Carleton with his former mixture of
+      expression,--"but there isn't much in it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Politics?" said Mr. Ringgan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is to lose oneself in a seething-pot, where the scum is the most
+      apparent thing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But there is society?" said Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing better or more noble than the succession of motes that flit
+      through a sunbeam into oblivion."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, why not then sit down quietly on one's estates and enjoy them, one
+      who has enough?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And be a worm in the heart of an apple."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well then," said Rossitur laughing, though not knowing exactly how far he
+      might venture, "there is nothing left for you, as I don't suppose you
+      would take to any of the learned professions, but to strike out some new
+      path for yourself--hit upon some grand invention for benefiting the human
+      race and distinguishing your own name at once."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But while he spoke his companion's face had gone back to its usual look of
+      imperturbable coolness; the dark eye was even haughtily unmoved, till it
+      met Fleda's inquiring and somewhat anxious glance. He smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The nearest approach I ever made to that," said he, "was when I went
+      chestnuting the other day. Can't you find some more work for me, Fairy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Taking Fleda's hand with his wonted graceful lightness of manner he walked
+      on with her, leaving the other two to follow together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You would like to know, perhaps," observed Mr. Rossitur in rather a low
+      tone,--"that Mr. Carleton is an Englishman."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, ay?" said Mr. Ringgan. "An Englishman, is he?--Well sir,--what is it
+      that I would like to know?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>That"</i> said Rossitur. "I would have told you before if I could. I
+      supposed you might not choose to speak quite so freely, perhaps, on
+      American affairs before him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I haven't two ways of speaking, sir, on anything," said the old gentleman
+      a little dryly. "Is your friend very tender on that chapter?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O not that I know of at all," said Rossitur; "but you know there is a
+      great deal of feeling still among the English about it--they have never
+      forgiven us heartily for whipping them; and I know Carleton is related to
+      the nobility and all that, you know; so I thought--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah well!" said the old gentleman,--"we don't know much about nobility and
+      such gimcracks in this country. I'm not much of a courtier. I am pretty
+      much accustomed to speak my mind as I think it.--He's wealthy, I suppose?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's more than that, sir. Enormous estates! He's the finest fellow in the
+      world--one of the first young men in England."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have been there yourself and know?" said Mr. Ringgan, glancing at his
+      companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If I have not, sir, others have told me that do."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah well," said Mr. Ringgan placidly,--"we sha'n't quarrel, I guess. What
+      did he come out here for, eh?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Only to amuse himself. They are going back again in a few weeks, and I
+      intend accompanying them to join my mother in Paris. Will my little cousin
+      be of the party?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were sauntering along towards the house. A loud calling of her name
+      the minute before had summoned Fleda thither at the top of her speed; and
+      Mr. Carleton turned to repeat the same question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old gentleman stopped, and striking his stick two or three times
+      against the ground looked sorrowfully undetermined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I don't know!--" he said at last,--"it's a pretty hard
+      matter--she'd break her heart about it, I suppose,--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dare urge nothing, sir," said Mr. Carleton. "I will only assure you
+      that if you entrust your treasure to us she shall be cherished as you
+      would wish, till we place her in the hands of her aunt."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know that, sir,--I do not doubt it," said Mr. Ringgan, "but--I'll tell
+      you by and by what I conclude upon," he said with evident relief of manner
+      as Fleda came bounding back to them. "Mr. Rossitur, have you made your
+      peace with Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was not aware that I had any to make, sir," replied the young
+      gentleman. "I will do it with pleasure if my little cousin will tell me
+      how. But she looks as if she needed enlightening as much as myself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She has something against you, I can tell you," said the old gentleman,
+      looking amused, and speaking as if Fleda were a curious little piece of
+      human mechanism which could hear its performances talked of with all the
+      insensibility of any other toy. "She gives it as her judgment that Mr.
+      Carleton is the most of a gentleman, because he keeps his promise."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh grandpa!"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Fleda's cheek was hot with a distressful blush. Rossitur coloured
+      with anger. Mr. Carleton's smile had a very different expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If Fleda will have the goodness to recollect," said Rossitur, "I cannot
+      be charged with breaking a promise, for I made none."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But Mr. Carleton did," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is right, Mr. Rossitur, she is right," said that gentleman; "a
+      fallacy might as well elude Ithuriel's spear as the sense of a pure
+      spirit--there is no need of written codes. Make your apologies, man, and
+      confess yourself in the wrong."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pho, pho," said the old gentleman,--"she don't take it very much to
+      heart. I guess <i>I</i> ought to be the one to make the apologies," he
+      added, looking at Fleda's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda commanded herself, with difficulty, and announced that dinner
+      was ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Rossitur tells me, Mr. Carleton, you are an Englishman," said his
+      host. "I have some notion of that's passing through my head before, but
+      somehow I had entirely lost sight of it when I was speaking so freely to
+      you a little while ago--about our national quarrel--I know some of your
+      countrymen owe us a grudge yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not I, I assure you," said the young Englishman. "I am ashamed of them
+      for it. I congratulate you on being Washington's countryman and a sharer
+      in his grand struggle for the right against the wrong."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Ringgan shook his guest's hand, looking very much pleased; and having
+      by this time arrived at the house the young gentlemen were formally
+      introduced at once to the kitchen, their dinner, and aunt Miriam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not too much to say that the entertainment gave perfect satisfaction
+      to everybody--better fate than attends most entertainments. Even Mr.
+      Rossitur's ruffled spirit felt the soothing influence of good cheer, to
+      which he happened to be peculiarly sensible, and came back to its average
+      condition of amenity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Doubtless that was a most informal table, spread according to no rules
+      that for many generations at least have been known in the refined world;
+      an anomaly in the eyes of certainly one of the company. Yet the board had
+      a character of its own, very far removed from vulgarity, and suiting
+      remarkably well with the condition and demeanour of those who presided
+      over it--a comfortable, well-to-do, substantial look, that could afford to
+      dispense with minor graces; a self-respect that was not afraid of
+      criticism. Aunt Miriam's successful efforts deserve to be celebrated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the middle of the table the polished amber of the pig's arched back
+      elevated itself,--a striking object,--but worthy of the place he filled,
+      as the honours paid him by everybody abundantly testified. Aunt Miriam had
+      sent down a basket of her own bread, made out of the new flour, brown and
+      white, both as sweet and fine as it is possible for bread to be; the
+      piled-up slices were really beautiful. The superb butter had come from
+      aunt Miriam's dairy too, for on such an occasion she would not trust to
+      the very doubtful excellence of Miss Cynthia's doings. Every spare place
+      on the table was filled with dishes of potatoes and pickles and
+      sweetmeats, that left nothing to be desired in their respective kinds; the
+      cake was a delicious presentment of the finest of material; and the pies,
+      pumpkin pies, such as only aunt Miriam could make, rich compounds of
+      everything <i>but</i> pumpkin, with enough of that to give them a
+      name--Fleda smiled to think how pleased aunt Miriam must secretly be to
+      see the homage paid her through them. And most happily Mrs. Plumfield had
+      discovered that the last tea Mr. Ringgan had brought from the little
+      Queechy store was not very good, and there was no time to send up on "the
+      hill" for more, so she made coffee. Verily it was not Mocha, but the thick
+      yellow cream with which the cups were filled readily made up the
+      difference. The most curious palate found no want.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everybody was in a high state of satisfaction, even to Miss Cynthia Grail;
+      who, having some lurking suspicion that Mrs. Plumfield might design to cut
+      her out of her post of tea-making, had slipped herself into her usual
+      chair behind the tea-tray before anybody else was ready to sit down. No
+      one at table bestowed a thought upon Miss Cynthia, but as she thought of
+      nothing else she may be said to have had her fair share of attention. The
+      most unqualified satisfaction however was no doubt little Fleda's.
+      Forgetting with a child's happy readiness the fears and doubts which had
+      lately troubled her, she was full of the present, enjoying with a most
+      unselfish enjoyment everything that pleased anybody else. <i>She</i> was
+      glad that the supper was a fine one, and so approved, because it was her
+      grandfather's hospitality and her aunt Miriam's housekeeping; little
+      beside was her care for pies or coffee. She saw with secret glee the
+      expression of both her aunt's and Mr. Ringgan's face; partly from pure
+      sympathy, and partly because, as she knew, the cause of it was Mr.
+      Carleton, whom privately Fleda liked very much. And after all perhaps he
+      had directly more to do with her enjoyment than all other causes together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certainly that was true of him with respect to the rest of the
+      dinner-table. None at that dinner-table had ever seen the like. With all
+      the graceful charm of manner with which he would have delighted a courtly
+      circle, he came out from his reserve and was brilliant, gay, sensible,
+      entertaining, and witty, to a degree that assuredly has very rarely been
+      thrown away upon an old farmer in the country and his un-polite sister.
+      They appreciated him though, as well as any courtly circle could have
+      done, and he knew it. In aunt Miriam's strong sensible face, when not full
+      of some hospitable care, he could see the reflection of every play of his
+      own; the grave practical eye twinkled and brightened, giving a ready
+      answer to every turn of sense or humour in what he was saying. Mr.
+      Ringgan, as much of a child for the moment as Fleda herself, had lost
+      everything disagreeable and was in the full genial enjoyment of talk,
+      rather listening than talking, with his cheeks in a perpetual dimple of
+      gratification, and a low laugh of hearty amusement now and then rewarding
+      the conversational and kind efforts of his guest with a complete triumph.
+      Even the subtle charm which they could not quite recognise wrought
+      fascination. Miss Cynthia declared afterwards, half admiring and half
+      vexed, that he spoiled her supper, for she forgot to think how it tasted.
+      Rossitur--his good humour was entirely restored; but whether even Mr.
+      Carleton's power could have achieved that without the perfect seasoning of
+      the pig and the smooth persuasion of the richly-creamed coffee, it may
+      perhaps be doubted. He stared, mentally, for he had never known his friend
+      condescend to bring himself out in the same manner before; and he wondered
+      what he could see in the present occasion to make it worth while.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mr. Carleton did not think his efforts thrown away. He understood and
+      admired his fine old host and hostess; and with all their ignorance of
+      conventionalities and absence of what is called <i>polish</i> of manner,
+      he could enjoy the sterling sense, the good feeling, the true hearty
+      hospitality, and the dignified courtesy which both of them shewed. No
+      matter of the outside; this was in the grain. If mind had lacked much
+      opportunity it had also made good use of a little; his host, Mr. Carleton
+      found, had been a great reader, was well acquainted with history and a
+      very intelligent reasoner upon it; and both he and his sister shewed a
+      strong and quick aptitude for intellectual subjects of conversation. No
+      doubt aunt Miriam's courtesy had not been taught by a dancing master, and
+      her brown-satin gown had seen many a fashion come and go since it was
+      made, but a <i>lady</i> was in both; and while Rossitur covertly smiled,
+      Mr. Carleton paid his sincere respect where he felt it was due. Little
+      Fleda's quick eye hardly saw, but more than half felt, the difference. Mr.
+      Carleton had no more eager listener now than she, and perhaps none whose
+      unaffected interest and sympathy gave him more pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus05.jpg"><img src="images/illus05.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="Fleda coloured and looked at her grandfather."
+      title="Fleda coloured and looked at her grandfather." /><br /> Fleda
+      coloured and looked at her grandfather.</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they rose from the table Mr. Ringgan would not be <i>insinuated</i>
+      into the cold front room again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, no," said he,--"what's the matter?--the table? Push the table back,
+      and let it take care of itself,--come, gentlemen, sit down--draw up your
+      chairs round the fire, and a fig for ceremony! Comfort, sister Miriam,
+      against politeness, any day in the year;--don't you say so too, Fairy?
+      Come here by me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Miss Fleda," said Mr. Carleton, "will you take a ride with me to
+      Montepoole to-morrow? I should like to make you acquainted with my
+      mother."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda coloured and looked at her grandfather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you say, deary?" he inquired fondly; "will you go?--I believe,
+      sir, your proposal will prove a very acceptable one. You will go, won't
+      you, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda would very much rather not! But she was always exceedingly afraid of
+      hurting people's feelings; she could not bear that Mr. Carleton should
+      think she disliked to go with him, so she answered yes, in her usual sober
+      manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then the door opened and a man unceremoniously walked in, his
+      entrance immediately following a little sullen knock that had made a
+      mockery of asking permission. An ill-looking man, in the worst sense; his
+      face being a mixture of cunning, meanness, and insolence. He shut the door
+      and came with a slow leisurely step into the middle of the room without
+      speaking a word. Mr. Carleton saw the blank change in Fleda's face. She
+      knew him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you wish to see me, Mr. McGowan?" said Mr. Ringgan, not without
+      something of the same change.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I guess I ha'n't come here for nothing," was the gruff retort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wouldn't another time answer as well?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't mean to find you here another time," said the man chuckling,--"I
+      have given you notice to quit, and now I have come to tell you you'll
+      clear out. I ain't a going to be kept out of my property for ever. If I
+      can't get my money from you, Elzevir Ringgan, I'll see you don't get no
+      more of it in your hands."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very well, sir," said the old gentleman;--"You have said all that is
+      necessary."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have got to hear a little more, though," returned the other, "I've an
+      idea that there's a satisfaction in speaking one's mind. I'll have that
+      much out of you! Mr. Ringgan, a man hadn't ought to make an agreement to
+      pay what he doesn't <i>mean</i> to pay, and what he has made an agreement
+      to pay he ought to meet and be up to, if he sold his soul for it! You call
+      yourself a Christian, do you, to stay in another man's house, month after
+      month, when you know you ha'n't got the means to give him the rent for it!
+      That's what <i>I</i> call stealing, and it's what I'd live in the County
+      House before I'd demean myself to do I and so ought you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, well! neighbour," said Mr. Ringgan, with patient dignity,--"it's no
+      use calling names. You know as well as I do how all this came about. I
+      hoped to be able to pay you, but I haven't been able to make it out,
+      without having more time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Time!" said the other. "Time to cheat me out of a little more houseroom.
+      If I was agoing to live on charity, Mr. Ringgan, I'd come out and say so,
+      and not put my hand in a man's pocket this way. You'll quit the house by
+      the day after to morrow, or if you don't I'll let you hear a little more
+      of me that you won't like!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stalked out, shutting the door after him with a bang. Mr. Carleton had
+      quitted the room a moment before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nobody moved or spoke at first, when the man was gone, except Miss
+      Cynthia, who as she was taking something from the table to the pantry
+      remarked, probably for Mr. Rossitur's benefit, that "Mr. Ringgan had to
+      have that man punished for something he did a few years ago when he was
+      justice of the peace, and she guessed likely that was the reason he had a
+      grudge agin him ever since." Beyond this piece of dubious information
+      nothing was said. Little Fleda stood beside her grandfather with a face of
+      quiet distress; the tears silently running over her flushed cheeks, and
+      her eyes fixed upon Mr. Ringgan with a tender touching look of sympathy,
+      most pure from self-recollection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton presently came in to take leave of the disturbed family. The
+      old gentleman rose and returned his shake of the hand with even a degree
+      more than usual of his manly dignity, or Mr. Carleton thought so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good day to you, sir!" he said heartily. "We have had a great deal of
+      pleasure in your society, and I shall always be very happy to see
+      you--wherever I am." And then following him to the door and wringing his
+      hand with a force he was not at all aware of, the old gentleman added in a
+      lower tone, "I shall let her go with you!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton read his whole story in the stern self-command of brow, and
+      the slight convulsion of feature which all the self-command could not
+      prevent. He returned warmly the grasp of the hand answering merely, "I
+      will see you again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda wound her arms round her grandfather's neck when they were gone, and
+      did her best to comfort him, assuring him that "they would be just as
+      happy somewhere else." And aunt Miriam earnestly proffered her own home.
+      But Fleda knew that her grandfather was not comforted. He stroked her head
+      with the same look of stern gravity and troubled emotion which had grieved
+      her so much the other day. She could not win him to a smile, and went to
+      bed at last feeling desolate. She had no heart to look out at the night.
+      The wind was sweeping by in wintry gusts; and Fleda cried herself to sleep
+      thinking how it would whistle round the dear old house when their ears
+      would not be there to hear it.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="07"></a>Chapter VII.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        He from his old hereditary nook<br /> Must part; the summons came,--our
+        final leave we took.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Wordsworth.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton came the next day, but not early, to take Fleda to
+      Montepoole. She had told her grandfather that she did not think he would
+      come, because after last night he must know that she would not want to go.
+      About twelve o'clock however he was there, with a little wagon, and Fleda
+      was fain to get her sun bonnet and let him put her in. Happily it was her
+      maxim never to trust to uncertainties, so she was quite ready when he came
+      and they had not to wait a minute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though Fleda had a little dread of being introduced to a party of
+      strangers and was a good deal disappointed at being obliged to keep her
+      promise, she very soon began to be glad. She found her fear gradually
+      falling away before Mr. Carleton's quiet kind reassuring manner; he took
+      such nice care of her; and she presently made up her mind that he would
+      manage the matter so that it would not be awkward. They had so much
+      pleasant talk too. Fleda had found before that she could talk to Mr.
+      Carleton, nay she could not help talking to him; and she forgot to think
+      about it. And besides, it was a pleasant day, and they drove fast, and
+      Fleda's particular delight was driving; and though the horse was a little
+      gay she had a kind of intuitive perception that Mr. Carleton knew how to
+      manage him. So she gave up every care and was very happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Mr. Carleton asked after her grandfather, Fleda answered with great
+      animation, "O he's very well! and such a happy thing--You heard what that
+      man said last night, Mr. Carleton, didn't you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well it is all arranged;--this morning Mr. Jolly--he's a friend of
+      grandpa's that lives over at Queechy Run and knew about all this--he's a
+      lawyer--he came this morning and told grandpa that he had found some one
+      that could lend him the money he wanted and there was no trouble about it;
+      and we are so happy, for we thought we should have to go away from where
+      we live now, and I know grandpa would have felt it dreadfully. If it
+      hadn't been for that,--I mean, for Mr. Jolly's coming--I couldn't have
+      gone to Montepoole to-day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then I am very glad Mr. Jolly made his appearance," said Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So am I," said Fleda;--"but I think it was a little strange that Mr.
+      Jolly wouldn't tell us who it was that he had got the money from. Grandpa
+      said he never saw Mr. Jolly so curious."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they got to the Pool Fleda's nervousness returned a little; but she
+      went through the dreaded introduction with great demureness and perfect
+      propriety. And throughout the day Mr. Carleton had no reason to fear
+      rebuke for the judgment which he had pronounced upon his little paragon.
+      All the flattering attention which was shewn her, and it was a good deal,
+      could not draw Fleda a line beyond the dignified simplicity which seemed
+      natural to her; any more than the witty attempts at raillery and
+      endeavours to amuse themselves at her expense, in which some of the
+      gentlemen shewed their wisdom, could move her from her modest
+      self-possession. <i>Very</i> quiet, <i>very</i> modest, as she invariably
+      was, awkwardness could not fasten upon her; her colour might come and her
+      timid eye fall; it often did; but Fleda's wits were always in their place
+      and within call. She would shrink from a stranger's eye, and yet when
+      spoken to her answers were as ready and acute as they were marked for
+      simplicity and gentleness. She was kept to dinner; and though the
+      arrangement and manner of the service must have been strange to little
+      Fleda, it was impossible to guess from word or look that it was the first
+      time within her recollection that she had ever seen the like. Her native
+      instincts took it all as quietly as any old liberalized traveller looks
+      upon the customs of a new country. Mr. Carleton smiled as he now and then
+      saw a glance of intelligence or admiration pass between one and another of
+      the company; and a little knowing nod from Mrs. Evelyn and many a look
+      from his mother confessed he had been quite right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those two, Mrs. Evelyn and Mrs. Carleton, were by far the most kind and
+      eager in their attention to Fleda. Mrs. Thorn did little else but look at
+      her. The gentlemen amused themselves with her. But Mr. Carleton, true to
+      the hopes Fleda had founded upon his good-nature, had stood her friend all
+      the day, coming to her help if she needed any, and placing himself easily
+      and quietly between her and anything that threatened to try or annoy her
+      too much. Fleda felt it with grateful admiration. Yet she noticed, too,
+      that he was a very different person at this dinner-table from what he had
+      been the other day at her grandfather's. Easy and graceful, always, he
+      filled his own place, but did not seem to care to do more; there was even
+      something bordering on haughtiness in his air of grave reserve. He was not
+      the life of the company here; he contented himself with being all that the
+      company could possibly require of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the whole Fleda was exceedingly well pleased with her day, and thought
+      all the people in general very kind. It was quite late before she set out
+      to go home again; and then Mrs. Evelyn and Mrs. Carleton were extremely
+      afraid lest she should take cold, and Mr. Carleton without saying one word
+      about it wrapped her up so very nicely after she got into the wagon, in a
+      warm cloak of his mother's. The drive home, through the gathering shades
+      of twilight, was to little Fleda thoroughly charming. It was almost in
+      perfect silence, but she liked that; and all the way home her mind was
+      full of a shadowy beautiful world that seemed to lie before and around
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a happy child that Mr. Carleton lifted from the wagon when they
+      reached Queechy. He read it in the utter lightheartedness of brow and
+      voice, and the spring to the ground which hardly needed the help of his
+      hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thank you, Mr. Carleton," she said when she had reached her own door; (he
+      would not go in) "I have had a very nice time!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good night," said he. "Tell your grandfather I will come to-morrow to see
+      him about some business."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda ran gayly into the kitchen. Only Cynthia was there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is grandpa, Cynthy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He went off into his room a half an hour ago. I believe he's laying down.
+      He ain't right well, I s'pect. What's made you so late?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O they kept me," said Fleda. Her gayety suddenly sobered, she took off
+      her bonnet and coat and throwing them down in the kitchen stole softly
+      along the passage to her grandfather's room. She stopped a minute at the
+      door and held her breath to see if she could hear any movement which might
+      tell her he was not asleep. It was all still, and pulling the iron latch
+      with her gentlest hand Fleda went on tiptoe into the room. He was lying on
+      the bed, but awake, for she had made no noise and the blue eyes opened and
+      looked upon her as she came near.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you not well, dear grandpa?" said the little girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing made of flesh and blood ever spoke words of more spirit-like
+      sweetness,--not the beauty of a fine organ, but such as the sweetness of
+      angel-speech might be; a whisper of love and tenderness that was hushed by
+      its own intensity. He did not answer, or did not notice her first
+      question; she repeated it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you feel well?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not exactly, dear!" he replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was the shadow of somewhat in his tone, that fell upon his little
+      granddaughter's heart and brow at once. Her voice next time, though not
+      suffered to be anything but clear and cheerful still, had in part the
+      clearness of apprehension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is the matter?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh--I don't know, dear!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She felt the shadow again, and he seemed to say that time would shew her
+      the meaning of it. She put her little hand in one of his which lay outside
+      the coverlets, and stood looking at him; and presently said, but in a very
+      different key from the same speech to Mr. Carleton,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have had a very nice time, dear grandpa."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her grandfather made her no answer. He brought the dear little hand to his
+      lips and kissed it twice, so earnestly that it was almost passionately;
+      then laid it on the side of the bed again, with his own upon it, and
+      patted it slowly and fondly and with an inexpressible kind of sadness in
+      the manner. Fleda's lip trembled and her heart was fluttering, but she
+      stood so that he could not see her face in the dusk, and kept still till
+      the rebel features were calm again and she had schooled the heart to be
+      silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Ringgan had closed his eyes, and perhaps was asleep, and his little
+      granddaughter sat quietly down on a chair by the bedside to watch by him,
+      in that gentle sorrowful patience which women often know but which hardly
+      belongs to childhood. Her eye and thoughts, as she sat there in the dusky
+      twilight, fell upon the hand of her grandfather which still fondly held
+      one of her own; and fancy travelled fast and far, from what it was to what
+      it had been. Rough, discoloured, stiff, as it lay there now, she thought
+      how it had once had the hue and the freshness and the grace of youth, when
+      it had been the instrument of uncommon strength and wielded an authority
+      that none could stand against. Her fancy wandered over the scenes it had
+      known; when it had felled trees in the wild forest, and those fingers,
+      then supple and slight, had played the fife to the struggling men of the
+      Revolution; how its activity had outdone the activity of all other hands
+      in clearing and cultivating those very fields where her feet loved to run;
+      how in its pride of strength it had handled the scythe and the sickle and
+      the flail, with a grace and efficiency that no other could attain; and how
+      in happy manhood that strong hand had fondled and sheltered and led the
+      little children that now had grown up and were gone!--Strength and
+      activity, ay, and the fruits of them, were passed away;--his children were
+      dead;--his race was run;--the shock of corn was in full season, ready to
+      be gathered. Poor little Fleda! her thought had travelled but a very
+      little way before the sense of these things entirely overcame her; her
+      head bowed on her knees, and she wept tears that all the fine springs of
+      her nature were moving to feed--many, many,--but poured forth as quietly
+      as bitterly; she smothered every sound. That beautiful shadowy world with
+      which she had been so busy a little while ago,--alas! she had left the
+      fair outlines and the dreamy light and had been tracking one solitary path
+      through the wilderness, and she saw how the traveller foot-sore and
+      weather-beaten comes to the end of his way. And after all, he comes to <i>the
+      end</i>.--"Yes, and I must travel through life and come to the end, too,"
+      thought little Fleda,--"life is but a passing through the world; my hand
+      must wither and grow old too, if I live long enough, and whether or no, I
+      must come to <i>the end</i>.--Oh, there is only one thing that ought to be
+      very much minded in this world!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That thought, sober though it was, brought sweet consolation. Fleda's
+      tears, if they fell as fast, grew brighter, as she remembered with
+      singular tender joy that her mother and her father had been ready to see
+      the end of their journey, and were not afraid of it, that her grandfather
+      and her aunt Miriam were happy in the same quiet confidence and she
+      believed she herself was a lamb of the Good Shepherd's flock. "And he will
+      let none of his lambs be lost," she thought. "How happy I am! How happy we
+      all are!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her grandfather still lay quiet as if asleep, and gently drawing her hand
+      from under his, Fleda went and got a candle and sat down by him again to
+      read, carefully shading the light so that it might not awake him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He presently spoke to her, and more cheerfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you reading, dear?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, grandpa!" said the little girl looking up brightly. "Does the candle
+      disturb you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, dear!--What have you got there?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I just took up this volume of Newton that has the hymns in it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Read out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda read Mr. Newton's long beautiful hymn, "The Lord will provide;" but
+      with her late thoughts fresh in her mind it was hard to get through the
+      last verses;--
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "No strength of our own,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;Or goodness we claim;<br /> But
+        since we have known<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;The Saviour's great name,<br /> In
+        this, our strong tower,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;For safety we hide:<br /> The
+        Lord is our power,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;The Lord will provide.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "When life sinks apace,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;And death is in view,<br /> This
+        word of his grace<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;Shall comfort us through.<br /> No
+        fearing nor doubting,--<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;With Christ on our side,<br />
+        We hope to die shouting,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;The Lord will provide."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The little reader's voice changed, almost broke, but she struggled
+      through, and then was quietly crying behind her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Read it again," said the old gentleman after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is no 'cannot' in the vocabulary of affection. Fleda waited a minute
+      or two to rally her forces, and then went through it again, more steadily
+      than the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--" said Mr. Ringgan calmly, folding his hands,--"that will do! That
+      trust won't fail, for it is founded upon a rock. 'He is a rock; and he
+      knoweth them that put their trust in him!' I have been a fool to doubt
+      ever that he would make all things work well--The Lord will provide!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Grandpa," said Fleda, but in an unsteady voice, and shading her face with
+      her hand still,--"I can remember reading this hymn to my mother once when
+      I was so little that 'suggestions' was a hard word to me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, ay,--I dare say," said the old gentleman,--"your mother knew that
+      Rock and rested her hope upon it,--where mine stands now. If ever there
+      was a creature that might have trusted to her own doings, I believe she
+      was one, for I never saw her do anything wrong,--as I know. But she knew
+      Christ was all. Will you follow him as she did, dear?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda tried in vain to give an answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know what her last prayer for you was, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, grandpa."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was that you might be kept 'unspotted from the world.' I heard her
+      make that prayer myself." And stretching out his hand the old gentleman
+      laid it tenderly upon Fleda's bowed head, saying with strong earnestness
+      and affection, even <i>his</i> voice somewhat shaken, "God grant that
+      prayer!--whatever else he do with her, keep my child from the evil!--and
+      bring her to join her father and mother in heaven!--and me!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said no more;--but Fleda's sobs said a great deal. And when the sobs
+      were hushed, she still sat shedding quiet tears, sorrowed and disturbed by
+      her grandfather's manner. She had never known it so grave, so solemn; but
+      there was that shadow of something else in it besides, and she would have
+      feared if she had known what to fear. He told her at last that she had
+      better go to bed, and to say to Cynthy that he wanted to see her. She was
+      going, and had near reached the door, when he said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Elfleda!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She hastened back to the bedside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Kiss me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He let her do so twice, without moving, and then holding her to his breast
+      he pressed one long earnest passionate kiss upon her lips, and released
+      her,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda told Cynthy that her grandfather wished her to come to him, and then
+      mounted the stairs to her little bedroom. She went to the window and
+      opening it looked out at the soft moonlit sky; the weather was mild again
+      and a little hazy, and the landscape was beautiful. But little Fleda was
+      tasting realities, and she could not go off upon dream-journeys to seek
+      the light food of fancy through the air. She did not think to-night about
+      the people the moon was shining on; she only thought of one little sad
+      anxious heart,--and of another down stairs, more sad and anxious still,
+      she feared;--what could it be about? Now that Mr. Jolly had settled all
+      that troublesome business with McGowan?--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she stood there at the window, gazing out aimlessly into the still
+      night,--it was very quiet,--she heard Cynthy at the back of the house
+      calling out, but as if she were afraid of making too much noise,
+      "Watkins!--Watkins!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sound had business, if not anxiety, in it. Fleda instinctively held
+      her breath to listen. Presently she heard Watkins reply; but they were
+      round the corner, she could not easily make out what they said. It was
+      only by straining her ears that she caught the words,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Watkins, Mr. Ringgan wants you to go right up on the hill to Mis'
+      Plumfield's and tell her he wants her to come right down--he thinks"--the
+      voice of the speaker fell, and Fleda could only make out the last
+      words,--"Dr. James." More was said, but so thick and low that she could
+      understand nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had heard enough. She shut the window, trembling, and fastened again
+      the parts of her dress she had loosened; and softly and hastily went down
+      the stairs into the kitchen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Cynthy!--what is the matter with grandpa?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why ain't you in bed, Flidda?" said Cynthy with some sharpness. "That's
+      what you had ought to be. I am sure your grandpa wants you to be abed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But tell me," said Fleda anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know as there's anything the matter with him," said Cynthy.
+      "Nothing much, I suppose. What makes you think anything is the matter?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because I heard you telling Watkins to go for aunt Miriam." Fleda could
+      not say,--"and the doctor."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well your grandpa thought he'd like to have her come down, and he don't
+      feet right well,--so I sent Watkins up; but you'd better go to bed,
+      Flidda; you'll catch cold if you sit up o'night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was unsatisfied, the more because Cynthy would not meet the keen
+      searching look with which the little girl tried to read her face. She was
+      not to be sent to bed, and all Cynthy's endeavours to make her change her
+      mind were of no avail. Fleda saw in them but fresh reason for staying, and
+      saw besides, what Cynthy could not hide, a somewhat of wandering and
+      uneasiness in her manner which strengthened her resolution. She sat down
+      in the chimney corner, resolved to wait till her aunt Miriam came; there
+      would be satisfaction in her, for aunt Miriam always told the truth, the
+      whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a miserable three-quarters of an hour. The kitchen seemed to wear a
+      strange desolate look, though seen in its wonted bright light of fire and
+      candles, and in itself nice and cheerful as usual. Fleda looked at it also
+      through that vague fear which casts its own lurid colour upon everything.
+      The very flickering of the candle blaze seemed of ill omen, and her
+      grandfather's empty chair stood a signal of pain to little Fleda whenever
+      she looked at it. She sat still, in submissive patience, her cheek pale
+      with the working of a heart too big for that little body. Cynthia was
+      going in and out of her grandfather's room, but Fleda would not ask her
+      any more questions, to be disappointed with word-answers; she waited, but
+      the minutes seemed very long,--and very sad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The characteristic outward calm which Fleda had kept, and which belonged
+      to a nature uncommonly moulded to patience and fortitude, had yet perhaps
+      heightened the pressure of excited fear within. When at last she saw the
+      cloak and hood of aunt Miriam coming through the moonlight to the kitchen
+      door, she rushed to open it, and quite overcome for the moment threw her
+      arms around her and was speechless. Aunt Miriam's tender and quiet voice
+      comforted her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You up yet, Fleda! Hadn't you better go to bed? 'Tisn't good for you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's what I've been a telling her," said Cynthy, "but she wa'n't a mind
+      to listen to me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the two little arms embraced aunt Miriam's cloak and wrappers and the
+      little face was hid there still, and Fleda's answer was a half smothered
+      ejaculation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am <i>so</i> glad you are come, dear aunt Miriam!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Miriam kissed her again, and again repeated her request.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O no--I can't go to bed," said Fleda crying;--"I can't till I know--I am
+      <i>sure</i> something is the matter, or Cynthy wouldn't look so. <i>Do</i>
+      tell me, aunt Miriam!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can't tell you anything, dear, except that grandpa is not well--that is
+      all I know--I am going in to see him. I will tell you in the morning how
+      he is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda, "I will wait here till you come out. I couldn't sleep."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Plumfield made no more efforts to persuade her, but rid herself of
+      cloak and hood and went into Mr. Ringgan's room. Fleda placed herself
+      again in her chimney corner. Burying her face in her hands, she sat
+      waiting more quietly; and Cynthy, having finished all her business, took a
+      chair on the hearth opposite to her. Both were silent and motionless,
+      except when Cynthy once in a while got up to readjust the sticks of wood
+      on the fire. They sat there waiting so long that Fleda's anxiety began to
+      quicken again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you think the doctor is a long time coming, Cynthy?" said she
+      raising her head at last. Her question, breaking that forced silence,
+      sounded fearful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It seems kind o' long," said Cynthy. "I guess Watkins ha'n't found him to
+      hum."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Watkins indeed presently came in and reported as much, and that the wind
+      was changing and it was coming off cold; and then his heavy boots were
+      heard going up the stairs to his room overhead; but Fleda listened in vain
+      for the sound of the latch of her grandfather's door, or aunt Miriam's
+      quiet foot-fall in the passage; listened and longed, till the minutes
+      seemed like the links of a heavy chain which she was obliged to pass over
+      from hand to hand, and the last link could not be found. The noise of
+      Watkins' feet ceased overhead, and nothing stirred or moved but the
+      crackling flames and Cynthia's elbows, which took turns each in resting
+      upon the opposite arm, and now and then a tell-tale gust of wind in the
+      trees. If Mr. Ringgan was asleep, why did not aunt Miriam come out and see
+      them,--if he was better, why not come and tell them so. He had been asleep
+      when she first went into his room, and she had come back for a minute then
+      to try again to get Fleda to bed; why could she not come out for a minute
+      once more. Two hours of watching and trouble had quite changed little
+      Fleda; the dark ring of anxiety had come under each eye in her little pale
+      face; she looked herself almost ill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Miriam's grave step was heard coming out of the room at last,--it did
+      not sound cheerfully in Fleda's ears. She came in, and stopping to give
+      some direction to Cynthy, walked up to Fleda. Her face encouraged no
+      questions. She took the child's head tenderly in both her hands, and told
+      her gently, but it was in vain that she tried to make her voice quite as
+      usual, that she had better go to bed--that she would be sick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked up anxiously in her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How is he?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But her next word was the wailing cry of sorrow,--"Oh grandpa!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old lady took the little child in her arms and they both sat there by
+      the fire until the morning dawned.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="08"></a>Chapter VIII.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        <br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Patience
+        and sorrow strove<br /> Who should express her goodliest.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        King Lear.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      When Mr. Carleton knocked at the front door the next day about two o'clock
+      it was opened to him by Cynthy. He asked for his late host.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Ringgan is dead."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dead!" exclaimed the young man much shocked;--"when? how?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Won't you come in, sir?" said Cynthy;--"maybe you'll see Mis' Plumfield."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, certainly," replied the visitor. "Only tell me about Mr. Ringgan."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He died last night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What was the matter with him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Cynthy in a business-like tone of voice,--"I s'pose
+      the doctor knows, but he didn't say nothing about it. He died very
+      sudden."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Was he alone?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--his sister was with him; he had been complaining all the evening that
+      he didn't feel right, but I didn't think nothing of it and I didn't know
+      as he did; and towards evening he went and laid down, and Flidda was with
+      him a spell, talking to him; and at last he sent her to bed and called me
+      in and said he felt mighty strange and he didn't know what it was going to
+      be, and that he had as lieve I should send up and ask Mis' Plumfield to
+      come down, and perhaps I might as well send for the doctor too. And I sent
+      right off, but the doctor wa'n't to hum, and didn't get here till long
+      after. Mis' Plumfield, she come; and Mr. Ringgan was asleep then, and I
+      didn't know as it was going to be anything more after all than just a
+      turn, such as anybody might take; and Mis' Plumfield went in and sot by
+      him; and there wa'n't no one else in the room; and after a while he come
+      to, and talked to her, she said, a spell; but he seemed to think it was
+      something more than common ailed him; and all of a sudden he just riz up
+      half way in bed and then fell back and died,--with no more warning than
+      that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And how is the little girl?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why," said Cynthy, looking off at right angles from her visitor, "she's
+      middling now, I s'pose, but she won't be before long, or else she must be
+      harder to make sick than other folks.--We can't get her out of the room,"
+      she added, bringing her eyes to bear, for an instant, upon the young
+      gentleman,--"she stays in there the hull time since morning--I've tried,
+      and Mis' Plumfield's tried, and everybody has tried, and there can't none
+      of us manage it; she will stay in there and it's an awful cold room when
+      there ain't no fire."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cynthy and her visitor were both taking the benefit of the chill blast
+      which rushed in at the open door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>The room</i>?" said Mr. Carleton. "The room where the body lies?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--it's dreadful chill in there when the stove ain't heated, and she
+      sits there the hull time. And she ha'n't 'got much to boast of now: she
+      looks as if a feather would blow her away."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door at the further end of the hall opened about two inches and a
+      voice called out through the crack,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Cynthy!--Mis' Plumfield wants to know if that is Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well she'd like to see him. Ask him to walk into the front room, she
+      says."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cynthy upon this shewed the way, and Mr. Carleton walked into the same
+      room where a very few days before he had been so kindly welcomed by his
+      fine old host. Cold indeed it was now, as was the welcome he would have
+      given. There was no fire in the chimney, and even all the signs of the
+      fire of the other day had been carefully cleared away; the clean empty
+      fireplace looked a mournful assurance that its cheerfulness would not soon
+      come back again. It was a raw disagreeable day, the paper window shades
+      fluttered uncomfortably in the wind, which had its way now; and the very
+      chairs and tables seemed as if they had taken leave of life and society
+      for ever. Mr. Carleton walked slowly up and down, his thoughts running
+      perhaps somewhat in the train where poor little Fleda's had been so busy
+      last night, and wrapped up in broadcloth as he was to the chin, he
+      shivered when he heard the chill wind moaning round the house and rustling
+      the paper hangings and thought of little Fleda's delicate frame, exposed
+      as Cynthia had described it. He made up his mind it must not be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Plumfield presently came in, and met him with the calm dignity of
+      that sorrow which needs no parade and that truth and meekness of character
+      which can make none. Yet there was nothing like stoicism, no affected or
+      proud repression of feeling; her manner was simply the dictate of good
+      sense borne out by a firm and quiet spirit. Mr. Carleton was struck with
+      it, it was a display of character different from any he had ever before
+      met with; it was something he could not quite understand. For he wanted
+      the key. But all the high respect he had felt for this lady from the first
+      was confirmed and strengthened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After quietly receiving Mr. Carleton's silent grasp of the hand, aunt
+      Miriam said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I troubled you to stop, sir, that I might ask you how much longer you
+      expect to stop at Montepoole."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not more than two or three days, he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I understood," said aunt Miriam after a minute's pause, "that Mrs.
+      Carleton was so kind as to say she would take care of Elfleda to France
+      and put her in the hands of her aunt."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She would have great pleasure in doing it," said Mr. Carleton. "I can
+      promise for your little niece that she shall have a mother's care so long
+      as my mother can render it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Miriam was silent, and he saw her eyes fill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You should not have had the pain of seeing me to-day," said he gently,
+      "if I could have known it would give you any; but since I am here, may I
+      ask, whether it is your determination that Fleda shall go with us?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was my brother's," said aunt Miriam, sighing;--"he told me--last
+      night--that he wished her to go with Mrs. Carleton--if she would still be
+      so good as to take her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have just heard about her, from the housekeeper," said Mr, Carleton,
+      "what has disturbed me a good deal. Will you forgive me, if I venture to
+      propose that she should come to us at once. Of course we will not leave
+      the place for several days--till you are ready to part with her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Miriam hesitated, and again the tears flushed to her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe it would be best," she said,--"since it must be--I cannot get
+      the child away from her grandfather--I am afraid I want firmness to do
+      it--and she ought not to be there--she is a tender little creature--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For once self-command failed her--she was obliged to cover her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A stranger's hands cannot be more tender of her than ours will be," said
+      Mr. Carleton, his warm pressure of aunt Miriam's hand repeating the
+      promise. "My mother will bring a carriage for her this afternoon, if you
+      will permit."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you please, sir,--since it must be, it does not matter a day sooner or
+      later," repeated aunt Miriam,--"if she can be got away.--I don't know
+      whether it will be possible."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton had his own private opinion on that point. He merely promised
+      to be there again in a few hours and took his leave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He came, with his mother, about five o'clock in the afternoon. They were
+      shewn this time into the kitchen, where they found two or three neighbours
+      and friends with aunt Miriam and Cynthy. The former received them with the
+      same calm simplicity that Mr. Carleton had admired in the morning, but
+      said she was afraid their coming would be in vain; she had talked with
+      Fleda about the proposed plan and could not get her to listen to it. She
+      doubted whether it would be possible to persuade her. And yet--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Miriam's self-possession seemed to be shaken when she thought of
+      Fleda; she could not speak of her without watering eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She's fixing to be sick as fast as ever she can," remarked Cynthia dryly,
+      in a kind of aside meant for the audience;--"there wa'n't a grain of
+      colour in her face when I went in to try to get her out a little while
+      ago; and Mis' Plumfield ha'n't the heart to do anything with her, nor
+      nobody else."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mother, will you see what you can do?" said Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Carleton went, with an expression of face that her son, nobody else,
+      knew meant that she thought it a particularly disagreeable piece of
+      business. She came back after the lapse of a few minutes, in tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can do nothing with her," she said hurriedly;--"I don't know what to
+      say to her; and she looks like death. Go yourself, Guy; you can manage her
+      if any one can."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton went immediately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The room into which a short passage admitted him was cheerless indeed. On
+      a fair afternoon the sun's rays came in there pleasantly, but this was a
+      true November day; a grey sky and a chill raw wind that found its way in
+      between the loose window-sashes and frames. One corner of the room was
+      sadly tenanted by the bed which held the remains of its late master and
+      owner. At a little table between the windows, with her back turned towards
+      the bed, Fleda was sitting, her face bowed in her hands, upon the old
+      quarto bible that lay there open; a shawl round her shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton went up to the side of the table and softly spoke her name.
+      Fleda looked up at him for an instant, and then buried her face in her
+      hands on the book as before. That look might have staggered him, but that
+      Mr. Carleton rarely was staggered in any purpose when he had once made up
+      his mind. It did move him,--so much that he was obliged to wait a minute
+      or two before he could muster firmness to speak to her again. Such a
+      look,--so pitiful in its sorrow, so appealing in its helplessness, so
+      imposing in its purity,--he had never seen, and it absolutely awed him.
+      Many a child's face is lovely to look upon for its innocent purity, but
+      more commonly it is not like this; it is the purity of snow, unsullied,
+      but not unsullyable; there is another kind more ethereal, like that of
+      light, which you feel is from another sphere and will not know soil. But
+      there were other signs in the face that would have nerved Mr. Carleton's
+      resolution if he had needed it. Twenty-four hours had wrought a sad
+      change. The child looked as if she had been ill for weeks. Her cheeks were
+      colourless; the delicate brow would have seemed pencilled on marble but
+      for the dark lines which weeping and watching, and still more sorrow, had
+      drawn underneath; and the beautiful moulding of the features shewed under
+      the transparent skin like the work of the sculptor. She was not crying
+      then, but the open pages of the great bible had been wet with very many
+      tears since her head had rested there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus06.jpg"><img src="images/illus06.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="Fleda was sitting, her face bowed in her hands."
+      title="Fleda was sitting, her face bowed in her hands." /><br /> Fleda was
+      sitting, her face bowed in her hands.</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda," said Mr. Carleton after a moment,--"you must come with me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words were gently and tenderly spoken, yet they had that tone which
+      young and old instinctively know it is vain to dispute. Fleda glanced up
+      again, a touching imploring look it was very difficult to bear, and her
+      "Oh no--I cannot,"--went to his heart. It was not resistance but entreaty,
+      and all the arguments she would have urged seemed to lie in the mere tone
+      of her voice. She had no power of urging them in any other way, for even
+      as she spoke her head went down again on the bible with a burst of sorrow.
+      Mr. Carleton was moved, but not shaken in his purpose. He was silent a
+      moment, drawing back the hair that fell over Fleda's forehead with a
+      gentle caressing touch; and then he said, still lower and more tenderly
+      than before, but without flinching, "You must come with me, Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mayn't I stay," said Fleda, sobbing, while he could see in the tension of
+      the muscles a violent effort at self-control which he did not like to
+      see,--"mayn't I stay till--till--the day after to-morrow?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, dear Fleda," said he, still stroking her head kindly,--"I will bring
+      you back, but you must go with me now, Your aunt wishes it and we all
+      think it is best. I will bring you back."--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sobbed bitterly for a few minutes. Then she begged in smothered words
+      that he would leave her alone a little while. He went immediately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She checked her sobs when she heard the door close upon him, or as soon as
+      she could, and rising went and knelt down by the side of the bed. It was
+      not to cry, though what she did could not be done without many tears,--it
+      was to repeat with equal earnestness and solemnity her mother's prayer,
+      that she might be kept pure from the world's contact. There beside the
+      remains of her last dear earthly friend, as it were before going out of
+      his sight forever, little Fleda knelt down to set the seal of faith and
+      hope to his wishes, and to lay the constraining hand of Memory upon her
+      conscience. It was soon done,--and then there was but one thing more to
+      do. But oh, the tears that fell as she stood there before she could go on;
+      how the little hands were pressed to the bowed face, as if <i>they</i>
+      would have borne up the load they could not reach; the convulsive
+      struggle, before the last look could be taken, the last good-by said! But
+      the sobs were forced back, the hands wiped off the tears, the quivering
+      features were bidden into some degree of calmness; and she leaned forward,
+      over the loved face that in death had kept all its wonted look of mildness
+      and placid dignity. It was in vain to try to look through Fleda's blinded
+      eyes; the hot tears dropped fast, while her trembling lips kissed--and
+      kissed,--those cold and silent that could make no return; and then feeling
+      that it was the last, that the parting was over, she stood again by the
+      side of the bed as she had done a few minutes before, in a convulsion of
+      grief, her face bowed down and her little frame racked with feeling too
+      strong for it; shaken visibly, as if too frail to bear the trial to which
+      it was put.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton had waited and waited, as he thought long enough, and now at
+      last came in again, guessing how it was with her. He put his arm round the
+      child and gently drew her away, and sitting down took her on his knee; and
+      endeavoured rather with actions than with words to soothe and comfort her;
+      for he did not know what to say. But his gentle delicate way, the soft
+      touch with which he again stroked back her hair or took her hand, speaking
+      kindness and sympathy, the loving pressure of his lips once or twice to
+      her brow, the low tones in which he told her that she was making herself
+      sick,--that she must not do so,--that she must let him take care of
+      her,--were powerful to soothe or quiet a sensitive mind, and Fleda felt
+      them. It was a very difficult task, and if undertaken by any one else
+      would have been more likely to disgust and distress her. But his spirit
+      had taken the measure of hers, and he knew precisely how to temper every
+      word and tone so as just to meet the nice sensibilities of her nature. He
+      had said hardly anything, but she had understood all he meant to say, and
+      when he told her at last, softly, that it was getting late and she must
+      let him take her away, she made no more difficulty; rose up and let him
+      lead her out of the room without once turning her head to look back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Carleton looked relieved that there was a prospect of getting away,
+      and rose up with a happy adjusting of her shawl round her shoulders. Aunt
+      Miriam came forward to say good-by, but it was very quietly said. Fleda
+      clasped her round the neck convulsively for an instant, kissed her as if a
+      kiss could speak a whole heartful, and then turned submissively to Mr.
+      Carleton and let him lead her to the carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no fault to be found with Mrs. Carleton's kindness when they
+      were on the way. She held the forlorn little child tenderly in her arm,
+      and told her how glad she was to have her with them, how glad she should
+      be if she were going to keep her always; but her saying so only made Fleda
+      cry, and she soon thought it best to say nothing. All the rest of the way
+      Fleda was a picture of resignation; transparently pale, meek and pure, and
+      fragile seemingly, as the delicatest wood-flower that grows. Mr. Carleton
+      looked grieved, and leaning forward he took one of her hands in his own
+      and held it affectionately till they got to the end of their journey. It
+      marked Fleda's feeling towards him that she let it lie there without
+      making a motion to draw it away. She was so still for the last few miles
+      that her friends thought she had fallen asleep; but when the carriage
+      stopped and the light of the lantern was flung inside, they saw the grave
+      hazel eyes broad open and gazing intently out of the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will order tea for us in your dressing-room, mother?" said Mr.
+      Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Us</i>--who is <i>us?</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda and me,--unless you will please to make one of the party."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly I will, but perhaps Fleda might like it better down stairs.
+      Wouldn't you, dear?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you please, ma'am," said Fleda. "Wherever you please."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But which would you rather, Fleda?" said Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I would <i>rather</i> have it up-stairs," said Fleda gently, "but it's no
+      matter."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We will have it up-stairs," said Mrs. Carleton. "We will be a nice little
+      party up there by ourselves. You shall not come down till you like."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are hardly able to walk up," said Mr. Carleton tenderly. "Shall I
+      carry you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tears rushed to Fleda's eyes, but she said no, and managed to mount
+      the stairs, though it was evidently an exertion. Mrs. Carleton's
+      dressing-room, as her son had called it, looked very pleasant when they
+      got there. It was well lighted and warmed and something answering to
+      curtains had been summoned from its obscurity in store-room or garret and
+      hung up at the windows,--"them air fussy English folks had made such a
+      pint of it," the landlord said. Truth was, that Mr. Carleton as well as
+      his mother wanted this room as a retreat for the quiet and privacy which
+      travelling in company as they did they could have nowhere else. Everything
+      the hotel could furnish in the shape of comfort had been drawn together to
+      give this room as little the look of a public house as possible. Easy
+      chairs, as Mrs. Carleton remarked with a disgusted face, one could not
+      expect to find in a country inn; there were instead as many as half a
+      dozen of "those miserable substitutes" as she called rocking-chairs, and
+      sundry fashions of couches and sofas, in various degrees of elegance and
+      convenience. The best of these, a great chintz-covered thing, full of
+      pillows, stood invitingly near the bright fire. There Mr. Carleton placed
+      little Fleda, took off her bonnet and things, and piled the cushions about
+      her just in the way that would make her most easy and comfortable. He said
+      little, and she nothing, but her eyes watered again at the kind tenderness
+      of his manner. And then he left her in peace till the tea came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tea was made in that room for those three alone. Fleda knew that Mr.
+      and Mrs. Carleton staid up there only for her sake, and it troubled her,
+      but she could not help it. Neither could she be very sorry so far as one
+      of them was concerned. Mr. Carleton was too good to be wished away. All
+      that evening his care of her never ceased. At tea, which the poor child
+      would hardly have shared but for him, and after tea, when in the absence
+      of bustle she had leisure to feel more fully her strange circumstances and
+      position, he hardly permitted her to feel either, doing everything for her
+      ease and pleasure and quietly managing at the same time to keep back his
+      mother's more forward and less happily adapted tokens of kind feeling.
+      Though she knew he was constantly occupied with her Fleda could not feel
+      oppressed; his kindness was as pervading and as unobtrusive as the summer
+      air itself; she felt as if she was in somebody's hands that knew her wants
+      before she did, and quietly supplied or prevented them, in a way she could
+      not tell how. It was very rarely that she even got a chance to utter the
+      quiet and touching "thank you," which invariably answered every token of
+      kindness or thoughtfulness that permitted an answer. How greatly that
+      harsh and sad day was softened to little Fleda'a heart by the good feeling
+      and fine breeding of one person. She thought when she went to bed that
+      night, thought seriously and gratefully, that since she must go over the
+      ocean and take that long journey to her aunt, how glad she was, how
+      thankful she ought to be, that she had so very kind and pleasant people to
+      go with. Kind and pleasant she counted them both; but what more she
+      thought of Mr. Carleton it would be hard to say. Her admiration of him was
+      very high, appreciating as she did to the full all that charm of manner
+      which she could neither analyze nor describe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her last words to him that night, spoken with a most wistful anxious
+      glance into his face, were,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will take me back again, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew what she meant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly I will. I promised you, Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Whatever Guy promises you may be very sure he will do," said his mother
+      with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda believed it. But the next morning it was very plain that this
+      promise he would not be called upon to perform; Fleda would not be well
+      enough to go to the funeral. She was able indeed to get up, but she lay
+      all day upon the sofa in the dressing-room. Mr. Carleton had bargained for
+      no company last night; to-day female curiosity could stand it no longer;
+      and Mrs. Thorn and Mrs. Evelyn came up to look and gossip openly and to
+      admire and comment privately, when they had a chance. Fleda lay perfectly
+      quiet and still, seeming not much to notice or care for their presence;
+      they thought she was tolerably easy in body and mind, perhaps tired and
+      sleepy, and like to do well enough after a few days. How little they knew!
+      How little they could imagine the assembly of Thought which was holding in
+      that child's mind; how little they deemed of the deep, sad, serious look
+      into life which that little spirit was taking. How far they were from
+      fancying while they were discussing all manner of trifles before her,
+      sometimes when they thought her sleeping, that in the intervals between
+      sadder and weighter things her nice instincts were taking the gauge of all
+      their characters; unconsciously, but surely; how they might have been
+      ashamed if they had known that while they were busy with all affairs in
+      the universe but those which most nearly concerned them, the little child
+      at their side whom they had almost forgotten was secretly looking up to
+      her Father in heaven, and asking to be kept pure from the world! "Not unto
+      the wise and prudent;"--how strange it may seem in one view of the
+      subject,--in another, how natural, how beautiful, how reasonable!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda did not ask again to be taken to Queechy. But as the afternoon drew
+      on she turned her face away from the company and shielded it from view
+      among the cushions, and lay in that utterly motionless state of body which
+      betrays a concentrated movement of the spirits in some hidden direction.
+      To her companions it betrayed nothing. They only lowered their tones a
+      little lest they should disturb her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had grown dark, and she was sitting up again, leaning against the
+      pillows and in her usual quietude, when Mr. Carleton came in. They had not
+      seen him since before dinner. He came to her side and taking her hand made
+      some gentle inquiry how she was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She has had a fine rest," said Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She has been sleeping all the afternoon," said Mrs. Carleton,--"she lay
+      as quiet as a mouse, without stirring;--you were sleeping, weren't you,
+      dear?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's lips hardly formed the word "no," and her features were quivering
+      sadly. Mr. Carleton's were impenetrable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear Fleda," said he, stooping down and speaking with equal gravity and
+      kindliness of manner,--"you were not able to go."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's shake of the head gave a meek acquiescence. But her face was
+      covered, and the gay talkers around her were silenced and sobered by the
+      heaving of her little frame with sobs that she could not keep back. Mr.
+      Carleton secured the permanence of their silence for that evening. He
+      dismissed them the room again and would have nobody there but himself and
+      his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead of being better the next day Fleda was not able to get up; she was
+      somewhat feverish and exceedingly weak. She lay like a baby, Mrs. Carleton
+      said, and gave as little trouble. Gentle and patient always, she made no
+      complaint, and even uttered no wish, and whatever they did made no
+      objection. Though many a tear that day and the following paid its faithful
+      tribute to the memory of what she had lost, no one knew it; she was never
+      seen to weep; and the very grave composure of her face and her passive
+      unconcern as to what was done or doing around her alone gave her friends
+      reason to suspect that the mind was not as quiet as the body. Mr. Carleton
+      was the only one who saw deeper; the only one that guessed why the little
+      hand often covered the eyes so carefully, and read the very, very grave
+      lines of the mouth that it could not hide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as she could bear it he had her brought out to the dressing-room
+      again, and laid on the sofa; and it was several days before she could be
+      got any further. But there he could be more with her and devote himself
+      more to her pleasure; and it was not long before he had made himself
+      necessary to the poor child's comfort in a way beyond what he was aware
+      of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not the only one who shewed her kindness. Unwearied care and most
+      affectionate attention were lavished upon her by his mother and both her
+      friends; they all thought they could not do enough to mark their feeling
+      and regard for her. Mrs. Carleton and Mrs. Evelyn nursed her by night and
+      by day. Mrs. Evelyn read to her. Mrs. Thorn would come often to look and
+      smile at her and say a few words of heart-felt pity and sympathy. Yet
+      Fleda could not feel quite at home with any one of them. They did not see
+      it. Her manner was affectionate and grateful, to the utmost of their wish;
+      her simple natural politeness, her nice sense of propriety, were at every
+      call; she seemed after a few days to be as cheerful and to enter as much
+      into what was going on about her as they had any reason to expect she
+      could; and they were satisfied. But while moving thus smoothly among her
+      new companions, in secret her spirit stood aloof; there was not one of
+      them that could touch her, that could understand her, that could meet the
+      want of her nature. Mrs. Carleton was incapacitated for it by education;
+      Mrs. Evelyn by character; Mrs. Thorn by natural constitution. Of them all,
+      though by far the least winning and agreeable in personal qualifications,
+      Fleda would soonest have relied on Mrs. Thorn, could soonest have loved
+      her. Her homely sympathy and kindness made their way to the child's heart;
+      Fleda felt them and trusted them. But there were too few points of
+      contact. Fleda thanked her, and did not wish to see her again. With Mrs.
+      Carleton Fleda had almost nothing at all in common. And that
+      notwithstanding all this lady's politeness, intelligence, cultivation, and
+      real kindness towards herself. Fleda would readily have given her credit
+      for them all; and yet, the nautilus may as soon compare notes with the
+      navigator, the canary might as well study Maelzel's Metronome, as a child
+      of nature and a woman of the world comprehend and suit each other. The
+      nature of the one must change or the two must remain the world wide apart.
+      Fleda felt it, she did not know why. Mrs. Carleton was very kind, and
+      perfectly polite; but Fleda had no pleasure in her kindness, no trust in
+      her politeness; or if that be saying too much, at least she felt that for
+      some inexplicable reason both were unsatisfactory. Even the tact which
+      each possessed in an exquisite degree was not the same in each; in one it
+      was the self-graduating power of a clever machine,--in the other, the
+      delicateness of the sensitive plant. Mrs. Carleton herself was not without
+      some sense of this distinction; she confessed, secretly, that there was
+      something in Fleda out of the reach of her discernment, and consequently
+      beyond the walk of her skill; and felt, rather uneasily, that more
+      delicate hands were needed to guide so delicate a nature. Mrs. Evelyn came
+      nearer the point. She was very pleasant, and she knew how to do things in
+      a charming way; and there were times, frequently, when Fleda thought she
+      was everything lovely. But yet, now and then a mere word, or look, would
+      contradict this fair promise, a something of <i>hardness</i> which Fleda
+      could not reconcile with the soft gentleness of other times; and on the
+      whole Mrs. Evelyn was unsure ground to her; she could not adventure her
+      confidence there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With Mr. Carleton alone Fleda felt at home. He only, she knew, completely
+      understood and appreciated her. Yet she saw also that with others he was
+      not the same as with her. Whether grave or gay there was about him an air
+      of cool indifference, very often reserved and not seldom haughty; and the
+      eye which could melt and glow when turned upon her, was sometimes as
+      bright and cold as a winter sky. Fleda felt sure however that she might
+      trust him entirely so far as she herself was concerned; of the rest she
+      stood in doubt. She was quite right in both cases. Whatever else there
+      might be in that blue eye, there was truth in it when it met hers; she
+      gave that truth her full confidence and was willing to honour every
+      draught made upon her charity for the other parts of his character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He never seemed to lose sight of her. He was always doing something for
+      which Fleda loved him, but so quietly and happily that she could neither
+      help his taking the trouble nor thank him for it. It might have been
+      matter of surprise that a gay young man of fashion should concern himself
+      like a brother about the wants of a little child; the young gentlemen down
+      stairs who were not of the society in the dressing-room did make
+      themselves very merry upon the subject, and rallied Mr. Carleton with the
+      common amount of wit and wisdom about his little sweetheart; a raillery
+      which met the most flinty indifference. But none of those who saw Fleda
+      ever thought strange of anything that was done for her; and Mrs. Carleton
+      was rejoiced to have her son take up the task she was fain to lay down. So
+      he really, more than any one else, had the management of her; and Fleda
+      invariably greeted his entrance into the room with a faint smile, which
+      even the ladies who saw agreed was well worth working for.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="09"></a>Chapter IX.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        If large possessions, pompous titles, honourable charges, and profitable
+        commissions, could have made this proud man happy, there would have been
+        nothing wanting.--L'Estrange.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Several days had passed. Fleda'a cheeks had gained no colour, but she had
+      grown a little stronger, and it was thought the party might proceed on
+      their way without any more tarrying; trusting that change and the motion
+      of travelling would do better things for Fleda than could be hoped from
+      any further stay at Montepoole. The matter was talked over in an evening
+      consultation in the dressing-room, and it was decided that they would set
+      off on the second day thereafter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was lying quietly on her sofa, with her eyes closed, having had
+      nothing to say during the discussion. They thought she had perhaps not
+      heard it. Mr. Carleton's sharper eyes, however, saw that one or two tears
+      were glimmering just under the eyelash. He bent down over her and
+      whispered,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know what you are thinking of Fleda, do I not?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was thinking of aunt Miriam," Fleda said in an answering whisper,
+      without opening her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will take care of that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked up and smiled most expressively her thanks, and in five
+      minutes was asleep. Mr. Carleton stood watching her, querying how long
+      those clear eyes would have nothing to hide,--how long that bright purity
+      could resist the corrosion of the world's breath; and half thinking that
+      it would be better for the spirit to pass away, with its lustre upon it,
+      than stay till self-interest should sharpen the eye, and the lines of
+      diplomacy write themselves on that fair brow. "Better so; better so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are you thinking of so gloomily, Guy?" said his Mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is a tender little creature to struggle with a rough world."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She won't have to struggle with it," said Mrs. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She will do very well," said Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't think she'd find it a rough world, where <i>you</i> were, Mr.
+      Carleton," said Mrs. Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thank you ma'am," he said smiling. "But unhappily my power reaches very
+      little way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps," said Mrs. Evelyn with a sly smile,--"that might be arranged
+      differently--Mrs. Rossitur--I have no doubt--would desire nothing better
+      than a smooth world for her little niece--and Mr. Carleton's power might
+      be unlimited in its extent."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no answer, and the absolute repose of all the lines of the young
+      gentleman's face bordered too nearly on contempt to encourage the lady to
+      pursue her jest any further.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day Fleda was well enough to bear moving. Mr. Carleton had her
+      carefully bundled up, and then carried her down stairs and placed her in
+      the little light wagon which had once before brought her to the Pool.
+      Luckily it was a mild day, for no close carriage was to be had for love or
+      money. The stage coach in which Fleda had been fetched from her
+      grandfather's was in use, away somewhere. Mr. Carleton drove her down to
+      aunt Miriam's, and leaving her there he went off again; and whatever he
+      did with himself it was a good two hours before he came back. All too
+      little yet they were for the tears and the sympathy which went to so many
+      things both in the past and in the future. Aunt Miriam had not said half
+      she wished to say, when the wagon was at the gate again, and Mr. Carleton
+      came to take his little charge away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found her sitting happily in aunt Miriam's lap. Fleda was very grateful
+      to him for leaving her such a nice long time, and welcomed him with even a
+      brighter smile than usual. But her head rested wistfully on her aunt's
+      bosom after that; and when he asked her if she was almost ready to go, she
+      hid her face there and put her arms about her neck. The old lady held her
+      close for a few minutes, in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Elfleda," said aunt Miriam gravely and tenderly,--"do you know what was
+      your mother's prayer for you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes,"--she whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What was it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That I--might be kept--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Unspotted from the world!" repeated aunt Miriam, in a tone of tender and
+      deep feeling;--"My sweet blossom!--how wilt thou keep so? Will you
+      remember always your mother's prayer?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will try."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How will you try, Fleda?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will pray."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Miriam kissed her again and again, fondly repeating, "The Lord hear
+      thee!--The Lord bless thee!--The Lord keep thee!--as a lily among thorns,
+      my precious little babe;--though in the world, not of it.--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you think that is possible?" said Mr. Carleton significantly, when a
+      few moments after they had risen and were about to separate. Aunt Miriam
+      looked at him in surprise and asked,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To live in the world and not be like the world?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She cast her eyes upon Fleda, fondly smoothing down her soft hair with
+      both hands for a minute or two before she answered,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By the help of one thing sir, yes!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what is that?" said he quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The blessing of God, with whom all things are possible."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes fell, and there was a kind of incredulous sadness in his half
+      smile which aunt Miriam understood better than he did. She sighed as she
+      folded Fleda again to her breast and whisperingly bade her "Remember!" But
+      Fleda knew nothing of it; and when she had finally parted from aunt Miriam
+      and was seated in the little wagon on her way home, to her fancy the best
+      friend she had in the world was sitting beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither was her judgment wrong, so far as it went. She saw true where she
+      saw at all. But there was a great deal she could not see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton was an unbeliever. Not maliciously,--not wilfully,--not
+      stupidly;--rather the fool of circumstance. His skepticism might be traced
+      to the joint workings of a very fine nature and a very bad education. That
+      is, education in the broad sense of the term; of course none of the means
+      and appliances of mental culture had been wanting to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was an uncommonly fine example of what nature alone can do for a man. A
+      character of nature's building is at best a very ragged affair, without
+      religion's finishing hand; at the utmost a fine ruin--no more. And if that
+      be the <i>utmost</i>, of nature's handiwork, what is at the other end of
+      the scale?--alas! the rubble stones of the ruin; what of good and fair
+      nature had reared there was not strong enough to stand alone. But religion
+      cannot work alike on every foundation; and the varieties are as many as
+      the individuals. Sometimes she must build the whole, from the very ground;
+      and there are cases where nature's work stands so strong and fair that
+      religion's strength may be expended in perfecting and enriching and
+      carrying it to an uncommon height of grace and beauty, and dedicating the
+      fair temple to a new use.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of religion Mr. Carleton had nothing at all, and a true Christian
+      character had never crossed his path near enough for him to become
+      acquainted with it. His mother was a woman of the world; his father had
+      been a man of the world; and what is more, so deep-dyed a politician that
+      to all intents and purposes, except as to bare natural affection, he was
+      nothing to his son and his son was nothing to him. Both mother and father
+      thought the son a piece of perfection, and mothers and fathers have very
+      often indeed thought so on less grounds. Mr. Carleton saw, whenever he
+      took time to look at him, that Guy had no lack either of quick wit or
+      manly bearing; that he had pride enough to keep him from low company and
+      make him abhor low pursuits; if anything more than pride and better than
+      pride mingled with it, the father's discernment could not reach so far. He
+      had a love for knowledge too, that from a child made him eager in seeking
+      it, in ways both regular and desultory; and tastes which his mother
+      laughingly said would give him all the elegance of a woman, joined to the
+      strong manly character which no one ever doubted he possessed. <i>She</i>
+      looked mostly at the outside, willing if that pleased her to take
+      everything else upon trust; and the grace of manner which a warm heart and
+      fine sensibilities and a mind entirely frank and above board had given
+      him, from his earliest years had more than met all her wishes. No one
+      suspected the stubbornness and energy of will which was in fact the
+      back-bone of his character. Nothing tried it. His father's death early
+      left little Guy to his mother's guardianship. Contradicting him was the
+      last thing she thought of, and of course it was attempted by no one else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If she would ever have allowed that he had a fault, which she never would,
+      it was one that grew out of his greatest virtue, an unmanageable truth of
+      character; and if she ever unwillingly recognised its companion virtue,
+      firmness of will, it was when she endeavoured to combat certain
+      troublesome demonstrations of the other. In spite of all the grace and
+      charm of manner in which he was allowed to be a model, and which was as
+      natural to him as it was universal, if ever the interests of truth came in
+      conflict with the dictates of society he flung minor considerations behind
+      his back and came out with some startling piece of bluntness at which his
+      mother was utterly confounded. These occasions were very rare; he never
+      sought them. Always where it was possible he chose either to speak or be
+      silent in an unexceptionable manner. But sometimes the barrier of
+      conventionalities, or his mother's unwise policy, pressed too hard upon
+      his integrity or his indignation; and he would then free the barrier and
+      present the shut-out truth in its full size and proportions before his
+      mother's shocked eyes. It was in vain to try to coax or blind him; a
+      marble statue is not more unruffled by the soft air of summer; and Mrs.
+      Carleton was fain to console herself with the reflection that Guy's very
+      next act after one of these breaks would be one of such happy fascination
+      that the former would be forgotten; and that in this world of
+      discordancies it was impossible on the whole for any one to come nearer
+      perfection. And if there was inconvenience there were also great comforts
+      about this character of truthfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So nearly up to the time of his leaving the University the young heir
+      lived a life of as free and uncontrolled enjoyment as the deer on his
+      grounds, happily led by his own fine instincts to seek that enjoyment in
+      pure and natural sources. His tutor was proud of his success; his
+      dependants loved his frank and high bearing; his mother rejoiced in his
+      personal accomplishments, and was secretly well pleased that his tastes
+      led him another way from the more common and less safe indulgences of
+      other young men. He had not escaped the temptations of opportunity and
+      example. But gambling was not intellectual enough, jockeying was too
+      undignified, and drinking too coarse a pleasure for him. Even hunting and
+      coursing charmed him but for a few times; when he found he could out-ride
+      and out leap all his companions, he hunted no more; telling his mother,
+      when she attacked him on the subject, that he thought the hare the
+      worthier animal of the two upon a chase; and that the fox deserved an
+      easier death. His friends twitted him with his want of spirit and want of
+      manliness; but such light shafts bounded back from the buff suit of cool
+      indifference in which their object was cased; and his companions very soon
+      gave over the attempt either to persuade or annoy him, with the conclusion
+      that "nothing could be done with Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same wants that had displeased him in the sports soon led him to
+      decline the company of those who indulged in them. From the low-minded,
+      from the uncultivated, from the unrefined in mind and manner, and such
+      there are in the highest class of society as well as in the less-favoured,
+      he shrank away in secret disgust or weariness. There was no affinity. To
+      his books, to his grounds, which he took endless delight in overseeing, to
+      the fine arts in general, for which he had a great love and for one or two
+      of them a great talent,--he went with restless energy and no want of
+      companionship; and at one or the other, always pushing eagerly forward
+      after some point of excellence or some new attainment not yet reached, and
+      which sprang up after one another as fast as ever "Alps on Alps," he was
+      happily and constantly busy. Too solitary, his mother thought,--caring
+      less for society than she wished to see him; but that she trusted would
+      mend itself. He would be through the University and come of age and go
+      into the world as a matter of necessity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But years brought a change--not the change his mother looked for. That
+      restless active energy which had made the years of his youth so happy,
+      became, in connection with one or two other qualities, a troublesome
+      companion when he had reached the age of manhood and obeying manhood's law
+      had "put away childish things." On what should it spend itself? It had
+      lost none of its strength; while his fastidious notions of excellence and
+      a far-reaching clear-sightedness which belonged to his truth of nature,
+      greatly narrowed the sphere of its possible action. He could not delude
+      himself into the belief that the oversight of his plantations and the
+      perfecting his park scenery could be a worthy end of existence; or that
+      painting and music were meant to be the stamina of life; or even that
+      books were their own final cause. These things had refined and enriched
+      him;--they might go on doing so to the end of his days;--but <i>for what</i>?
+      For what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is said that everybody has his niche, failing to find which nobody
+      fills his place or acts his part in society. Mr. Carleton could not find
+      his niche, and he consequently grew dissatisfied everywhere. His mother's
+      hopes from the University and the World, were sadly disappointed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the University he had not lost his time. The pride of character which
+      joined with less estimable pride of birth was a marked feature in his
+      composition, made him look with scorn upon the ephemeral pursuits of one
+      set of young men; while his strong intellectual tastes drew him in the
+      other direction; and the energetic activity which drove him to do
+      everything well that he once took in hand, carried him to high
+      distinction. Being there he would have disdained to be anywhere but at the
+      top of the tree. But out of the University and in possession of his
+      estates, what should he do with himself and them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A question easy to settle by most young men! very easy to settle by Guy,
+      if he had had the clue of Christian truth to guide him through the
+      labyrinth. But the clue was wanting, and the world seemed to him a world
+      of confusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A certain clearness of judgment is apt to be the blessed handmaid of
+      uncommon truth of character; the mind that knows not what it is to play
+      tricks upon its neighbours is rewarded by a comparative freedom from
+      self-deception. Guy could not sit down upon his estates and lead an insect
+      life like that recommended by Rossitur. His energies wanted room to expend
+      themselves. But the world offered no sphere that would satisfy him; even
+      had his circumstances and position laid all equally open. It was a busy
+      world, but to him people seemed to be busy upon trifles, or working in a
+      circle, or working mischief; and his nice notions of what <i>ought to be</i>
+      were shocked by what he saw <i>was</i>, in every direction around him. He
+      was disgusted with what he called the drivelling of some unhappy specimens
+      of the Church which had come in his way; he disbelieved the truth of what
+      such men professed. If there had been truth in it, he thought, they would
+      deserve to be drummed out of the profession. He detested the crooked
+      involvments and double-dealing of the law. He despised the butterfly life
+      of a soldier; and as to the other side of a soldier's life, again he
+      thought, what is it for?--to humour the arrogance of the proud,--to pamper
+      the appetite of the full,--to tighten the grip of the iron hand of
+      power;--and though it be sometimes for better ends, yet the soldier cannot
+      choose what letters of the alphabet of obedience he will learn. Politics
+      was the very shaking of the government sieve, where if there were any
+      solid result it was accompanied with a very great flying about of chaff
+      indeed. Society was nothing but whip syllabub,--a mere conglomeration of
+      bubbles,--as hollow and as unsatisfying. And in lower departments of human
+      life, as far as he knew, he saw evils yet more deplorable. The Church
+      played at shuttlecock with men's credulousness, the law with their purses,
+      the medical profession with their lives, the military with their liberties
+      and hopes. He acknowledged that in all these lines of action there was
+      much talent, much good intention, much admirable diligence and acuteness
+      brought out--but to what great general end? He saw in short that the
+      machinery of the human mind, both at large and in particular, was out of
+      order. He did not know what was the broken wheel the want of which set all
+      the rest to running wrong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a strange train of thought for a very young man, but Guy had
+      lived much alone, and in solitude one is like a person who has climbed a
+      high mountain; the air is purer about him, his vision is freer; the eye
+      goes straight and clear to the distant view which below on the plain a
+      thousand things would come between to intercept. But there was some
+      morbidness about it too. Disappointment in two or three instances where he
+      had given his full confidence and been obliged to take it back had
+      quickened him to generalize unfavourably upon human character, both in the
+      mass and in individuals. And a restless dissatisfaction with himself and
+      the world did not tend to a healthy view of things. Yet truth was at the
+      bottom; truth rarely arrived at without the help of revelation. He
+      discerned a want he did not know how to supply. His fine perceptions felt
+      the jar of the machinery which other men are too busy or too deaf to hear.
+      It seemed to him hopelessly disordered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This habit of thinking wrought a change very unlike what his mother had
+      looked for. He mingled more in society, but Mrs. Carleton saw that the eye
+      with which he looked upon it was yet colder than it wont to be. A cloud
+      came over the light gay spirited manner he had used to wear. The charm of
+      his address was as great as ever where he pleased to shew it, but much
+      more generally now he contented himself with a cool reserve, as impossible
+      to disturb as to find fault with. His temper suffered the same eclipse. It
+      was naturally excellent. His passions were not hastily moved. He had never
+      been easy to offend; his careless good-humour and an unbounded proud
+      self-respect made him look rather with contempt than anger upon the things
+      that fire most men; though when once moved to displeasure it was stern and
+      abiding in proportion to the depth of his character. The same good-humour
+      and cool self-respect forbade him even then to be eager in shewing
+      resentment; the offender fell off from his esteem and apparently from the
+      sphere of his notice as easily as a drop of water from a duck's wing, and
+      could with as much ease regain his lost lodgment, but unless there were
+      wrong to be righted or truth to be vindicated he was in general safe from
+      any further tokens of displeasure. In those cases Mr. Carleton was an
+      adversary to be dreaded. As cool, as unwavering, as persevering there as
+      in other things, he there as in other things no more failed of his end.
+      And at bottom these characteristics remained the same; it was rather his
+      humour than his temper that suffered a change. That grew more gloomy and
+      less gentle. He was more easily irritated and would shew it more freely
+      than in the old happy times had ever been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Carleton would have been glad to have those times back again. It
+      could not be. Guy could not be content any longer in the Happy Valley of
+      Amhara. Life had something for him to do beyond his park palings. He had
+      carried manly exercises and personal accomplishments to an uncommon point
+      of perfection; he knew his library well and his grounds thoroughly, and
+      had made excellent improvement of both; it was in vain to try to persuade
+      him that seed-time and harvest were the same thing, and that he had
+      nothing to do but to rest in what he had done; shew his bright colours and
+      flutter like a moth in the sunshine, or sit down like a degenerate bee in
+      the summer time and eat his own honey. The power of action which he knew
+      in himself could not rest without something to act upon. It longed to be
+      doing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Conscience is often morbidly far-sighted. Mr. Carleton had a very large
+      tenantry around him and depending upon him, in bettering whose condition,
+      if he had but known it, all those energies might have found full play. It
+      never entered into his head. He abhorred <i>business</i>,--the detail of
+      business; and his fastidious taste especially shrank from having anything
+      to do among those whose business was literally their life. The eye
+      sensitively fond of elegance, the extreme of elegance, in everything, and
+      permitting no other around or about him, could not bear the tokens of
+      mental and bodily wretchedness among the ignorant poor; he escaped from
+      them as soon as possible; thought that poverty was one of the
+      irregularities of this wrong-working machine of a world, and something
+      utterly beyond his power to do away or alleviate; and left to his steward
+      all the responsibility that of right rested on his own shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And at last unable to content himself in the old routine of things he
+      quitted home and England, even before he was of age, and roved from place
+      to place, trying, and trying in vain, to soothe the vague restlessness
+      that called for a very different remedy.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "On change de ciel,--l'on ne change point du sol."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="10"></a>Chapter X.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Faire Christabelle, that ladye bright,<br /> Was had forth of the towre:<br />
+        But ever she droopeth in her minde,<br /> As, nipt by an ungentle winde,<br />
+        Doth some faire lillye flowre.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Syr Cauline
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      That evening, the last of their stay at Montepoole, Fleda was thought well
+      enough to take her tea in company. So Mr. Carleton carried her down,
+      though she could have walked, and placed her on the sofa in the parlour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whatever disposition the young officers might have felt to renew their
+      pleasantry on the occasion, it was shamed into silence. There was a pure
+      dignity about that little pale face which protected itself. They were
+      quite struck, and Fleda had no reason to complain of want of attention
+      from any of the party. Mr. Evelyn kissed her. Mr. Thorn brought a little
+      table to the side of the sofa for her cup of tea to stand on, and handed
+      her the toast most dutifully; and her cousin Rossitur went back and forth
+      between her and the tea-urn. All of the ladies seemed to take immense
+      satisfaction in looking at her, they did it so much; standing about the
+      hearth-rug with their cups in their hands, sipping their tea. Fleda was
+      quite touched with everybody's kindness, but somebody at the back of the
+      sofa whom she did not see was the greatest comfort of all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You must let me carry you up-stairs when you go, Fleda," said her cousin.
+      "I shall grow quite jealous of your friend Mr. Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda smiling a little,--"I shall not let any one but him carry
+      me up,--if he will."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We shall all grow jealous of Mr. Carleton," said Thorn "He means to
+      monopolize you, keeping you shut up there up-stairs."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He didn't keep me shut up," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton was welcome to monopolize her, if it depended on her vote.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not fair play, Carleton," continued the young officer, wisely shaking his
+      head,--"all start alike, or there's no fun in the race. You've fairly
+      distanced us--left us nowhere."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He might have talked Chinese and been as intelligible to Fleda, and as
+      interesting to Guy, for all that appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How are we going to proceed to-morrow, Mr. Evelyn?" said Mrs. Carleton.
+      "Has the missing stage-coach returned yet? or Will it be forthcoming in
+      the morning?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Promised, Mrs. Carleton. The landlord's faith stands pledged for it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then it won't disappoint us, of course. What a dismal way of travelling!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This young country hasn't grown up to post-coaches yet," said Mrs.
+      Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How many will it hold?" inquired Mrs. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hum!--Nine inside, I suppose."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And we number ten, with the servants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just take us," said Mr. Evelyn. "There's room on the box for one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It will not take me," said Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How will you go? ride?" said his mother "I should think you would, since
+      you have found a horse you like so well."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By George! I wish there was another that <i>I</i> liked," said Rossitur,
+      "and I'd go on horseback too. Such weather. The landlord says it's the
+      beginning of Indian summer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's too early for that," said Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, eight inside will do very well for one day," said Mrs. Carleton.
+      "That will give little Fleda a little more space to lie at her ease."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You may put Fleda out of your calculations too, mother," said Mr.
+      Carleton. "I will take care of her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How in the world," exclaimed his mother,--"if you are on horseback?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Fleda twisted herself round so as to give a look of bright inquiry at
+      his face. She got no answer beyond a smile, which however completely
+      satisfied her. As to the rest he told his mother that he had arranged it
+      and they should see in the morning. Mrs. Carleton was far from being at
+      ease on the subject of his arrangements, but she let the matter drop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was secretly very much pleased. She thought she would a great deal
+      rather go with Mr. Carleton in the little wagon than in the stage-coach
+      with the rest of the people. Privately she did not at all admire Mr. Thorn
+      or her cousin Rossitur. They amused her though; and feeling very much
+      better and stronger in body, and at least quiet in mind, she sat in
+      tolerable comfort on her sofa, looking and listening to the people who
+      were gayly talking around her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the gaps of talk she sometimes thought she heard a distressed sound in
+      the hall. The buzz of tongues covered it up,--then again she heard
+      it,--and she was sure at last that it was the voice of a dog. Never came
+      an appeal in vain from any four-footed creature to Fleda's heart. All the
+      rest being busy with their own affairs, she quietly got up and opened the
+      door and looked out, and finding that she was right went softly into the
+      hall. In one corner lay her cousin Rossitur's beautiful black pointer,
+      which she well remembered and had greatly admired several times. The poor
+      creature was every now and then uttering short cries, in a manner as if he
+      would not, but they were forced from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is the matter with him?" asked Fleda, stepping fearfully towards the
+      dog, and speaking to Mr. Carleton who had come out to look after her. As
+      she spoke the dog rose and came crouching and wagging his tail to meet
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O Mr. Carleton!" Fleda almost screamed,--"look at him! O what is the
+      matter with him! he's all over bloody! Poor creature!"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You must ask your cousin, Fleda," said Mr. Carleton, with as much cold
+      disgust in his countenance as it often expressed; and that is saying a
+      good deal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda could speak in the cause of a dog, where she would have been silent
+      in her own. She went back to the parlour and begged her cousin with a face
+      of distress to come out into the hall,--she did not say for what. Both he
+      and Thorn followed her. Rossitur's face darkened as Fleda repeated her
+      inquiry, her heart so full by this time as hardly to allow her to make
+      any.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why the dog didn't do his duty and has been punished," he said gloomily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Punished?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Shot," said Mr. Carleton coolly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Shot!" exclaimed Fleda, bursting into heart-wrung tears,--"Shot!--O how
+      <i>could</i> any one do it! Oh how could you, how could you, cousin
+      Charlton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a picture. The child was crying bitterly, her fingers stroking the
+      poor dog's head with a touch in which lay, O what tender healing, if the
+      will had but had magnetic power. Carleton's eye glanced significantly from
+      her to the young officers. Rossitur looked at Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was not Charlton--it was I, Miss Fleda," said the latter. "Charlton
+      lent him to me to-day, and he disobeyed me, and so I was angry with him
+      and punished him a little severely; but he'll soon get over it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But all Fleda's answer was, "I am very sorry!--I am very sorry!--poor
+      dog!!"--and to weep such tears as made the young gentlemen for once
+      ashamed of themselves. It almost did the child a mischief. She did not get
+      over it all the evening. And she never got over it as far as Mr. Thorn was
+      concerned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Carleton hoped, faintly, that Guy would come to reason by the next
+      morning and let Fleda go in the stage-coach with the rest of the people.
+      But he was as unreasonable as ever, and stuck to his purpose. She had
+      supposed however, with Fleda, that the difference would be only an open
+      vehicle and his company instead of a covered one and her own. Both of them
+      were sadly discomfited when on coming to the hall door to take their
+      carriages it was found that Mr. Carleton's meaning was no less than to
+      take Fleda before him on horseback. He was busy even then in arranging a
+      cushion on the pommel of the saddle for her to sit upon. Mrs. Carleton
+      burst into indignant remonstrances; Fleda silently trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mr. Carleton had his own notions on the subject, and they were not
+      moved by anything his mother could say. He quietly went on with his
+      preparations; taking very slight notice of the raillery of the young
+      officers, answering Mrs. Evelyn with polite words, and silencing his
+      mother as he came up with one of those looks out of his dark eyes to which
+      she always forgave the wilfulness for the sake of the beauty and the
+      winning power. She was completely conquered, and stepped back with even a
+      smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But, Carleton!" cried Rossitur impatiently,--"you can't ride so! you'll
+      find it deucedly inconvenient."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Possibly," said Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda would be a great deal better off in the stage-coach."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you studied medicine, Mr. Rossitur?" said the young man. "Because I
+      am persuaded of the contrary."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't believe your horse will like it," said Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My horse is always of my mind, sir; or if he be not I generally succeed
+      in convincing him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But there is somebody else that deserves to be consulted," said Mrs.
+      Thorn. "I wonder how little Fleda will like it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will ask her when we get to our first stopping-place," said Mr.
+      Carleton smiling. "Come, Fleda!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda would hardly have said a word if his purpose had been to put her
+      under the horse's feet instead of on his back. But she came forward with
+      great unwillingness and a very tremulous little heart. He must have
+      understood the want of alacrity in her face and manner, though he took no
+      notice of it otherwise than by the gentle kindness with which he led her
+      to the horse-block and placed her upon it. Then mounting, and riding the
+      horse up close to the block, he took Fleda in both hands and bidding her
+      spring, in a moment she was safely seated before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first it seemed dreadful to Fleda to have that great horse's head so
+      near her, and she was afraid that her feet touching him would excite his
+      most serious disapprobation. However a minute or so went by and she could
+      not see that his tranquillity seemed to be at all ruffled, or even that he
+      was sensible of her being upon his shoulders. They waited to see the
+      stage-coach off, and then gently set forward. Fleda feared very much again
+      when she felt the horse moving under her, easy as his gait was, and
+      looking after the stagecoach in the distance, now beyond call, she felt a
+      little as if she was a great way from help and dry land, cast away on a
+      horse's back. But Mr. Carleton's arm was gently passed round her, and she
+      knew it held her safely and would not let her fall, and he bent down his
+      face to her and asked her so kindly and tenderly, and with such a look
+      too, that seemed to laugh at her fears, whether she felt afraid?--and with
+      such a kind little pressure of his arm that promised to take care of
+      her,--that Fleda's courage mounted twenty degrees at once. And it rose
+      higher every minute; the horse went very easily, and Mr. Carleton held her
+      so that she could not be tired, and made her lean against him; and before
+      they had gone a mile Fleda began to be delighted. Such a charming way of
+      travelling! Such a free view of the country!--and in this pleasant weather
+      too, neither hot nor cold, and when all nature's features were softened by
+      the light veil of haze that hung over them and kept off the sun's glare.
+      Mr. Carleton was right. In the stage-coach Fleda would have sat quiet in a
+      corner and moped the time sadly away, now she was roused, excited,
+      interested, even cheerful; forgetting herself, which was the very thing of
+      all others to be desired for her. She lost her fears; she was willing to
+      have the horse trot or canter as fast as his rider pleased; but the
+      trotting was too rough for her, so they cantered or paced along most of
+      the time, when the hills did not oblige them to walk quietly up and down,
+      which happened pretty often. For several miles the country was not very
+      familiar to Fleda. It was however extremely picturesque; and she sat
+      silently and gravely looking at it, her head lying upon Mr. Carleton's
+      breast, her little mind very full of thoughts and musings, curious, deep,
+      sometimes sorrowful, but not unhappy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid I tire you, Mr. Carleton!" said she in a sudden fit of
+      recollection, starting up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His look answered her, and his arm drew her back to her place again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are <i>you</i> not tired, Elfie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh no!----You have got a new name for me, Mr. Carleton,' said she a
+      moment after, looking up and smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you like it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are my good genius," said he,--"so I must have a peculiar title for
+      you, different from what other people know you by."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is a genius, sir?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well a sprite then," said he smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A sprite!" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have read a story of a lady, Elfie, who had a great many little
+      unearthly creatures, a kind of sprites, to attend upon her. Some sat in
+      the ringlets of her hair and took charge of them; some hid in the folds of
+      her dress and made them lie gracefully; another lodged in a dimple in her
+      cheek, and another perched on her eyebrows, and so on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To take care of her eyebrows?" said Fleda laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--to smooth out all the ill-humoured wrinkles and frowns, I suppose."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But am I such a sprite?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Something like it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why what do I do?" said Fleda, rousing herself in a mixture of
+      gratification and amusement that was pleasant to behold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What office would you choose, Elfie? what good would you like to do me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a curious wistful look with which Fleda answered his question, an
+      innocent look, in which Mr. Carleton read perfectly that she felt
+      something was wanting in him, and did not know exactly what. His smile
+      almost made her think she had been mistaken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are just the sprite you would wish to be, Elfie," he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's head took its former position, and she sat for some time musing
+      over his question and answer, till a familiar waymark put all such
+      thoughts to flight. They were passing Deepwater Lake, and would presently
+      be at aunt Miriam's. Fleda looked now with a beating heart. Every foot of
+      ground was known to her. She was seeing it perhaps for the last time. It
+      was with even an intensity of eagerness that she watched every point and
+      turn of the landscape, endeavouring to lose nothing in her farewell view,
+      to give her farewell look at every favourite clump of trees and old rock,
+      and at the very mill-wheels, which for years whether working or at rest
+      had had such interest for her. If tears came to bid their good-by too,
+      they were hastily thrown off, or suffered to roll quietly down; <i>they</i>
+      might bide their time; but eyes must look now or never. How pleasant, how
+      pleasant, the quiet old country seemed to Fleda as they went long!--in
+      that most quiet light and colouring; the brightness of the autumn glory
+      gone, and the sober warm hue which the hills still wore seen under that
+      hazy veil. All the home-like peace of the place was spread out to make it
+      hard going away. Would she ever see any other so pleasant again? Those
+      dear old hills and fields, among which she had been so happy,--they were
+      not to be her home any more; would she ever have the same sweet happiness
+      anywhere else?--"The Lord will provide!" thought little Fleda with
+      swimming eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was hard to go by aunt Miriam's. Fleda eagerly looked, as well as she
+      could, but no one was to be seen about the house. It was just as well. A
+      sad gush of tears must come then, but she got rid of them as soon as
+      possible, that she might not lose the rest of the way, promising them
+      another time. The little settlement on "the hill" was passed,--the
+      factories and mills and mill-ponds, one after the other; they made Fleda
+      feel very badly, for here she remembered going with her grandfather to see
+      the work, and there she had stopped with him at the turner's shop to get a
+      wooden bowl turned, and there she had been with Cynthy when she went to
+      visit an acquaintance; and there never was a happier little girl than
+      Fleda had been in those old times. All gone!--It was no use trying to help
+      it; Fleda put her two hands to her face and cried at last a silent but not
+      the less bitter leave-taking of the shadows of the past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She forced herself into quiet again, resolved to look to the last. As they
+      were going down the hill past the saw-mill Mr. Carleton noticed that her
+      head was stretched out to look back at it, with an expression of face he
+      could not withstand. He wheeled about immediately and went back and stood
+      opposite to it. The mill was not working to-day. The saw was standing
+      still, though there were plenty of huge trunks of trees lying about in all
+      directions waiting to be cut up. There was a desolate look of the place.
+      No one was there; the little brook, most of its waters cut oft', did not
+      go roaring and laughing down the hill, but trickled softly and plaintively
+      over the stones. It seemed exceeding sad to Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thank you, Mr. Carleton," she said after a little earnest fond looking at
+      her old haunt;--"you needn't stay any longer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as soon as they had crossed the little rude bridge at the foot of the
+      hill they could see the poplar trees which skirted the courtyard fence
+      before her grandfather's house. Poor Fleda's eyes could hardly serve her.
+      She managed to keep them open till the horse had made a few steps more and
+      she had caught the well-known face of the old house looking at her through
+      the poplars. Her fortitude failed, and bowing her little head she wept so
+      exceedingly that Mr. Carleton was fain to draw bridle and try to comfort
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Elfie!--do not weep so," he said tenderly. "Is there anything you
+      would like?--Can I do anything for you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had to wait a little. He repeated his first query.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O--it's no matter," said Fleda, striving to conquer her tears, which
+      found their way again,--"if I only could have gone into the house once
+      more!--but it's no matter--you needn't wait, Mr. Carleton--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The horse however remained motionless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you think you would feel better, Elfie, if you had seen it again?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh yes!--But never mind, Mr. Carleton,--you may go on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton ordered his servant to open the gate, and rode up to the back
+      of the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid there is nobody here, Elfie," he said; "the house seems all
+      shut up."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know how I can get in," said Fleda,--"there's a window down stairs--I
+      don't believe it is fastened,--if you wouldn't mind waiting, Mr.
+      Carleton,--I won't keep you long?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child had dried her tears, and there was the eagerness of something
+      like hope in her face. Mr. Carleton dismounted and took her off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I must find a way to get in too, Elfie,--I cannot let you go alone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O I can open the door when I get in," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you have not the key."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's no key--it's only hoi ted on the inside, that door. I can open
+      it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She found the window unfastened, as she had expected; Mr. Carleton held it
+      open while she crawled in and then she undid the door for him. He more
+      than half questioned the wisdom of his proceeding. The house had a dismal
+      look; cold, empty, deserted,--it was a dreary reminder of Fleda's loss,
+      and he feared the effect of it would be anything but good. He followed and
+      watched her, as with an eager business step she went through the hall and
+      up the stairs, putting her head into every room and giving an earnest
+      wistful look all round it. Here and there she went in and stood a moment,
+      where associations were more thick and strong; sometimes taking a look out
+      of a particular window, and even opening a cupboard door, to give that
+      same kind and sorrowful glance of recognition at the old often resorted to
+      hiding place of her own or her grandfather's treasures and trumpery. Those
+      old corners seemed to touch Fleda more than all the rest; and she turned
+      away from one of them with a face of such extreme sorrow that Mr. Carleton
+      very much regretted he had brought her into the house. For her sake,--for
+      his own, it was a curious show of character. Though tears were sometimes
+      streaming, she made no delay and gave him no trouble; with the calm
+      steadiness of a woman she went regularly through the house, leaving no
+      place unvisited, but never obliging him to hasten her away. She said not a
+      word during the whole time; her very crying; was still; the light tread of
+      her little feet was the only sound in the silent empty rooms; and the
+      noise of their footsteps in the halls and of the opening and shutting
+      doors echoed mournfully through the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had left her grandfather's room for the last. Mr. Carleton did not
+      follow her in there, guessing that she would rather be alone. But she did
+      not come back, and he was forced to go to fetch her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chill desolateness of that room had been too much for poor little
+      Fleda. The empty bedstead, the cold stove, the table bare of books, only
+      one or two lay upon the old bible,--the forlorn order of the place that
+      bespoke the master far away, the very sunbeams that stole in at the little
+      windows and met now no answering look of gladness or gratitude,--it had
+      struck the child's heart too heavily, and she was standing crying by the
+      window. A second time in that room Mr. Carleton sat down and drew his
+      little charge to his breast and spoke words of soothing and sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very sorry I brought you here, dear Elfie," he said kindly. "It was
+      too hard for you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O no!"--even through her tears Fleda said,--"she was very glad."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hadn't we better try to overtake our friends?" he whispered after another
+      pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She immediately, almost immediately, put away her tears, and with a quiet
+      obedience that touched him went with him from the room; fastened the door
+      and got out again at the little window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O Mr. Carleton!" she said with great earnestness when they had almost
+      reached the horses, "won't you wait for me <i>one</i> minute more?--I just
+      want a piece of the burning bush "--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus07.jpg"><img src="images/illus07.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="She stood back and watched." title="She stood back and watched." /><br />
+      She stood back and watched.</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Drawing her hand from him she rushed round to the front of the house. A
+      little more slowly Mr. Carleton followed, and found her under the burning
+      bush, tugging furiously at a branch beyond her strength to break off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's too much for you, Elfie," said he, gently taking her hand from the
+      tree,--"let my hand try."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood back and watched, tears running down her face, while he got a
+      knife from his pocket and cut off the piece she had been trying for,
+      nicely, and gave it to her. The first movement of Fleda's head was down,
+      bent over the pretty spray of red berries; but by the time she stood at
+      the horse's side she looked up at Mr. Carleton and thanked him with a face
+      of more than thankfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was crying however, constantly till they had gone several miles on
+      their way again, and Mr. Carleton doubted he had done wrong. It passed
+      away, and she had been sitting quite peacefully for some time, when he
+      told her they were near the place where they were to stop and join their
+      friends. She looked up most gratefully in his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Carleton, for what you did!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was afraid I had made a mistake, Elfie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, no, you didn't."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you think you feel any easier after it, Elfie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh yes!--indeed I do," said she looking up again,--"thank you, Mr.
+      Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A gentle kind pressure of his arm answered her thanks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ought to be a good sprite to you, Mr. Carleton," Fleda said after
+      musing a little while,--"you are so very good to me!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps Mr. Carleton felt too much pleasure at this speech to make any
+      answer, for he made none.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is only selfishness, Elfie," said he presently, looking down to the
+      quiet sweet little face which seemed to him, and was, more pure than
+      anything of earth's mould he had ever seen.--"You know I must take care of
+      you for my own sake."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda laughed a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what will you do when we get to Paris?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know. I should like to have you always, Elfie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You'll have to get aunt Lucy to give me to you," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton," said she a few minutes after, "is that story in a book?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What story?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "About the lady and the little sprites that waited on her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, it is in a book; you shall see it, Elfie.--Here we are!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And here it was proposed to stay till the next day, lest Fleda might not
+      be able to bear so much travelling at first. But the country inn was not
+      found inviting; the dinner was bad and the rooms were worse;
+      uninhabitable, the ladies said; and about the middle of the afternoon they
+      began to cast about for the means of reaching Albany that night. None very
+      comfortable could be had; however it was thought better to push on at any
+      rate than wear out the night in such a place. The weather was very mild;
+      the moon at the full.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How is Fleda to go this afternoon?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She shall decide herself," said Mrs. Carleton. "How will you go, my sweet
+      Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was lying upon a sort of rude couch which had been spread for her,
+      where she had been sleeping incessantly ever since she arrived, the hour
+      of dinner alone excepted. Mrs. Carleton repeated her question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid Mr. Carleton must be tired," said Fleda, without opening her
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That means that you are, don't it?" said Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton smiled and went out to press forward the arrangements. In
+      spite of good words and good money there was some delay. It was rather
+      late before the cavalcade left the inn; and a journey of several hours was
+      before them. Mr. Carleton rode rather slowly too, for Fleda's sake, so the
+      evening had fallen while they were yet a mile or two from the city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His little charge had borne the fatigue well, thanks partly to his
+      admirable care, and partly to her quiet pleasure in being with him. She
+      had been so perfectly still for some distance that he thought she had
+      dropped asleep. Looking down closer however to make sure about it he saw
+      her thoughtful clear eyes most unsleepily fixed upon the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are you gazing at, Elfie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The look of thought changed to a look of affection as the eyes were
+      brought to bear upon him, and she answered with a smile,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing,--I was looking at the stars."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are you dreaming about?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wasn't dreaming," said Fleda,--"I was thinking."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thinking of what?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O of pleasant things."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mayn't I know them?--I like to hear of pleasant things."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was thinking,--" said Fleda, looking up again at the stars, which shone
+      with no purer ray than those grave eyes sent back to them,--"I was
+      thinking--of being ready to die."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words, and the calm thoughtful manner in which they were said,
+      thrilled upon Mr. Carleton with a disagreeable shock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How came you to think of such a thing?" said he lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know,"--said Fleda, still looking at the stars,--"I suppose--I
+      was thinking--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What?" said Mr. Carleton, inexpressibly curious to get at the workings of
+      the child's mind, which was not easy, for Fleda was never very forward to
+      talk of herself;--"what were you thinking? I want to know how you could
+      get such a thing into your head."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It wasn't very strange," said Fleda. "The stars made me think of heaven,
+      and grandpa's being there, and then I thought how he was ready to go there
+      and that made him ready to die--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wouldn't think of such things, Elfie," said Mr. Carleton after a few
+      minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why not, sir?" said Fleda quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't think they are good for you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But Mr. Carleton," said Fleda gently,--"if I don't think about it, how
+      shall <i>I</i> ever be ready to die?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is not fit for you," said he, evading the question,--"it is not
+      necessary now,--there's time enough. You are a little body and should have
+      none but gay thoughts."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But Mr. Carleton," said Fleda with timid earnestness,--"don't you think
+      one could have gay thoughts better if one knew one was ready to die?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What makes a person ready to die, Elfie?" said her friend, disliking to
+      ask the question, but yet more unable to answer hers, and curious to hear
+      what she would say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O--to be a Christian," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I have seen Christians," said Mr. Carleton, "who were no more ready
+      to die than other people."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then they were make-believe Christians," said Fleda decidedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What makes you think so?" said her friend, carefully guarding his
+      countenance from anything like a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because," said Fleda, "grandpa was ready, and my father was ready, and my
+      mother too; and I know it was because they were Christians."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps your kind of Christians are different from my kind," said Mr.
+      Carleton, carrying on the conversation half in spite of himself. "What do
+      you mean by a Christian, Elfie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, what the Bible means," said Fleda, looking at him with innocent
+      earnestness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton was ashamed to tell her he did not know what that was, or he
+      was unwilling to say what he felt would trouble the happy confidence she
+      had in him. He was silent; but as they rode on, a bitter wish crossed his
+      mind that he could have the simple purity of the little child in his arms;
+      and he thought he would give his broad acres supposing it possible that
+      religion could be true,--in exchange for that free happy spirit that looks
+      up to all its possessions in heaven.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="11"></a>Chapter XI.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Starres are poore books and oftentimes do misse;<br /> This book of
+        starres lights to eternall blisse.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        George Herber.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The voyage across the Atlantic was not, in itself, at all notable. The
+      first half of the passage was extremely unquiet, and most of the
+      passengers uncomfortable to match. Then the weather cleared; and the rest
+      of the way, though lengthened out a good deal by the tricks of the wind,
+      was very fair and pleasant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fifteen days of tossing and sea-sickness had brought little Fleda to look
+      like the ghost of herself. So soon as the weather changed and sky and sea
+      were looking gentle again, Mr. Carleton had a mattress and cushions laid
+      in a sheltered corner of the deck for her, and carried her up. She had
+      hardly any more strength than a baby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are you looking at me so for, Mr. Carleton?" said she, a little
+      while after he had carried her up, with a sweet serious smile that seemed
+      to know the answer to her question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stooped down and clasped her little thin hand, as reverentially as if
+      she really had not belonged to the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are more like a sprite than I like to see you just now," said he,
+      unconsciously fastening the child's heart to himself with the magnetism of
+      those deep eyes.--"I must get some of the sailors' salt beef and sea
+      biscuit for you--they say that is the best thing to make people well."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O I feel better already," said Fleda, and settling her little face upon
+      the cushion and closing her eyes, she added,--"thank you, Mr. Carleton!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fresh air began to restore her immediately; she was no more sick, her
+      appetite came back; and from that time, without the help of beef and
+      sea-biscuit, she mended rapidly. Mr. Carleton proved himself as good a
+      nurse on the sea as on land. She seemed to be never far from his thoughts.
+      He was constantly finding out something that would do her good or please
+      her; and Fleda could not discover that he took any trouble about it; she
+      could not feel that she was a burden to him; the things seemed to come as
+      a matter of course. Mrs. Carleton was not wanting in any shew of kindness
+      or care, and yet, when Fleda looked back upon the day, it somehow was Guy
+      that had done everything for her; she thought little of thanking anybody
+      but him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were other passengers that petted her a great deal, or would have
+      done so, if Fleda's very timid retiring nature had not stood in the way.
+      She was never bashful, nor awkward; but yet it was only a very peculiar,
+      sympathetic, style of address that could get within the wall of reserve
+      which in general hid her from other people. Hid, what it could; for
+      through that reserve a singular modesty, sweetness, and gracefulness of
+      spirit would shew themselves. But there was much more behind. There were
+      no eyes however on board that did not look kindly on little Fleda,
+      excepting only two pair. The Captain shewed her a great deal of flattering
+      attention, and said she was a pattern of a passenger; even the sailors
+      noticed and spoke of her and let slip no occasion of shewing the respect
+      and interest she had raised. But there were two pair of eyes, and one of
+      them Fleda thought most remarkably ugly, that were an exception to the
+      rest; these belonged to her cousin Rossitur and Lieut. Thorn. Rossitur had
+      never forgiven her remarks upon his character as a gentleman and declared
+      preference of Mr. Carleton in that capacity; and Thorn was mortified at
+      the invincible childish reserve which she opposed to all his advances; and
+      both, absurd as it seems, were jealous of the young Englishman's advantage
+      over them. Both not the less, because their sole reason for making her a
+      person of consequence was that he had thought fit to do so. Fleda would
+      permit neither of them to do anything for her that she could help.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They took their revenge in raillery, which was not always good-natured.
+      Mr. Carleton never answered it in any other way than by his look of cold
+      disdain,--not always by that; little Fleda could not be quite so unmoved.
+      Many a time her nice sense of delicacy confessed itself hurt, by the deep
+      and abiding colour her cheeks would wear after one of their ill mannered
+      flings at her. She bore them with a grave dignity peculiar to herself, but
+      the same nice delicacy forbade her to mention the subject to any one; and
+      the young gentlemen contrived to give the little child in the course of
+      the voyage a good deal of pain. She shunned them at last as she would the
+      plague. As to the rest Fleda liked her life on board ship amazingly. In
+      her quiet way she took all the good that offered and seemed not to
+      recognise the ill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton had bought for her a copy of The Rape of the Lock, and
+      Bryant's poems. With these, sitting or lying among her cushions, Fleda
+      amused herself a great deal; and it was an especial pleasure when he would
+      sit down by her and read and talk about them. Still a greater was to watch
+      the sea, in its changes of colour and varieties of agitation, and to get
+      from Mr. Carleton, bit by bit, all the pieces of knowledge concerning it
+      that he had ever made his own. Even when Fleda feared it she was
+      fascinated; and while the fear went off the fascination grew deeper.
+      Daintily nestling among her cushions she watched with charmed eyes the
+      long rollers that came up in detachments of three to attack the good ship,
+      that like a slandered character rode patiently over them; or the crested
+      green billows, or sometimes the little rippling waves that shewed old
+      Ocean's placidest face; while with ears as charmed as if he had been
+      delivering a fairy tale she listened to all Mr. Carleton could tell her of
+      the green water where the whales feed, or the blue water where Neptune
+      sits in his own solitude, the furtherest from land, and the pavement under
+      his feet outdoes the very canopy overhead in its deep colouring; of the
+      transparent seas where the curious mysterious marine plants and animals
+      may be clearly seen many feet down, and in the North where hundreds of
+      feet of depth do not hide the bottom; of the icebergs; and whirling great
+      fields of ice, between which if a ship gets she had as good be an almond
+      in a pair of strong nut crackers. How the water grows colder and murkier
+      as it is nearer the shore; how the mountain waves are piled together; and
+      how old Ocean, like a wise man, however roughened and tumbled outwardly by
+      the currents of Life, is always calm at heart. Of the signs of the
+      weather; the out-riders of the winds, and the use the seaman makes of the
+      tidings they bring; and before Mr. Carleton knew where he was he found
+      himself deep in the science of navigation, and making a star-gazer of
+      little Fleda. Sometimes kneeling beside him as he sat on her mattress,
+      with her hand leaning on his shoulder, Fleda asked, listened, and looked;
+      as engaged, as rapt, as interested, as another child would be in Robinson
+      Crusoe, gravely drinking in knowledge with a fresh healthy taste for it
+      that never had enough. Mr. Carleton was about as amused and as interested
+      as she. There is a second taste of knowledge that some minds get in
+      imparting it, almost as sweet as the first relish. At any rate Fleda never
+      felt that she had any reason to fear tiring him; and his mother
+      complaining of his want of sociableness said she believed Guy did not like
+      to talk to anybody but that little pet of his and one or two of the old
+      sailors. If left to her own resources Fleda was never at a loss; she
+      amused herself with her books, or watching the sailors, or watching the
+      sea, or with some fanciful manufacture she had learned from one of the
+      ladies on board, or with what the company about her were saying and doing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening she had been some time alone, looking out upon the restless
+      little waves that were tossing and tumbling in every direction. She had
+      been afraid of them at first and they were still rather fearful to her
+      imagination. This evening as her musing eye watched them rise and fall her
+      childish fancy likened them to the up-springing chances of
+      life,--uncertain, unstable, alike too much for her skill and her strength
+      to manage. She was not more helpless before the attacks of the one than of
+      the other. But then--that calm blue Heaven that hung over the sea. It was
+      like the heaven of power and love above her destinies; only this was far
+      higher and more pure and abiding. "He knoweth them that trust in him."
+      "There shall not a hair of your head perish."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not these words perhaps, but something like the sense of them was in
+      little Fleda's head. Mr. Carleton coming up saw her gazing out upon the
+      water with an eye that seemed to see nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Elfie!--Are you looking into futurity?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No,--yes,--not exactly," said Fleda smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, yes, and not exactly!" said he throwing himself down beside her.--"
+      What does all that mean?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wasn't exactly looking into futurity," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What then?--Don't tell me you were 'thinking;' I know that dready. What?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was always rather shy of opening her cabinet of thoughts. She
+      glanced at him, and hesitated, and then yielded to a fascination of eye
+      and smile that rarely failed of its end. Looking off to the sea again, as
+      if she had left her thoughts there, she said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was only thinking of that beautiful hymn of Mr. Newton's."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What hymn?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That long one, 'The Lord will provide.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know it?--Tell it to me, Elfie--let us see whether I shall think
+      it beautiful."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda knew the whole and repeated it.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Though troubles assail,<br /> And dangers affright,<br /> Though friends
+        should all fall,<br /> And foes all unite;<br /> Yet one thing secures us<br />
+        Whatever betide,<br /> The Scripture assures us<br /> 'The Lord will
+        provide.'
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "The birds without barn<br /> Or storehouse are fed;<br /> From them let
+        us learn<br /> To trust for our bread.<br /> His saints what is fitting<br />
+        Shall ne'er be denied,<br /> So long as 'tis written,<br /> 'The Lord will
+        provide.'
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "His call we obey,<br /> Like Abraham of old,<br /> Not knowing our way,<br />
+        But faith makes us bold.<br /> And though we are strangers,<br /> We have
+        a good guide,<br /> And trust in all dangers<br /> 'The Lord will
+        provide.'
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "We may like the ships<br /> In tempests be tossed<br /> On perilous
+        deeps,<br /> But cannot be lost.<br /> Though Satan enrages<br /> The wind
+        and the tide,<br /> The promise engages<br /> 'The Lord will provide.'
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "When Satan appears<br /> To stop up our path,<br /> And fills us with
+        fears,<br /> We triumph by faith.<br /> He cannot take from us,<br />
+        Though oft he has tried,<br /> This heart-cheering promise,<br /> 'The
+        Lord will provide.'
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "He tells us we're weak,<br /> Our hope is in vain,<br /> The good that we
+        seek<br /> We ne'er shall obtain;<br /> But when such suggestions<br /> Our
+        spirits have tried,<br /> This answers all questions.<br /> 'The Lord will
+        provide.'
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "No strength of our own,<br /> Or goodness we claim;<br /> But since we
+        have known<br /> The Saviour's great name<br /> In this, our strong tower,<br />
+        For safety we hide;<br /> The Lord is our power!<br /> 'The Lord will
+        provide.'
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "When life sinks apace,<br /> And death is in view,<br /> This word of his
+        grace<br /> Shall comfort us through.<br /> No fearing nor doubting,<br />
+        With Christ on our side,<br /> We hope to die shouting,<br /> 'The Lord
+        will provide.'"
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Guy listened very attentively to the whole. He was very far from
+      understanding the meaning of several of the verses, but the bounding
+      expression of confidence and hope he did understand, and did feel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Happy to be so deluded!" he thought.--"I almost wish I could share the
+      delusion!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was gloomily silent when she had done, and little Fleda's eyes were so
+      full that it was a little while before she could look towards him and ask
+      in her gentle way, "Do you like it, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was gratified by his grave, "Yes!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But, Elfie," said he smiling again, "you have not told me your thoughts
+      yet. What had these verses to do with the sea you were looking at so
+      hard?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing--I was thinking," said Fleda slowly,--"that the sea seemed
+      something like the world,--I don't mean it was like, but it made me think
+      of it; and I thought how pleasant it is to know that God takes care of his
+      people."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't he take care of everybody?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--in one sort of way," said Fleda; "but then it is only his children
+      that he has promised to keep from everything that will hurt them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't see how that promise is kept, Elfie. I think those who call
+      themselves so meet with as many troubles as the rest of the world, and
+      perhaps more."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," said Fleda quickly, "they have troubles, but then God won't let the
+      troubles do them any harm."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A subtle evasion, thought Mr. Carleton.--"Where did you learn that,
+      Elfie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Bible says so," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, how do you know it from that?" aid Mr. Carleton, impelled, he
+      hardly knew whether by his bad or his good angel, to carry on the
+      conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why," said Fleda, looking as if it were a very simple question and Mr.
+      Carleton were catechising her,--"you know, Mr. Carleton, the Bible was
+      written by men who were taught by God exactly what to say, so there could
+      be nothing in it that is not true."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you know those men were so taught?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Bible says so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A child's answer!--but with a child's wisdom in it, not learnt of the
+      schools. "He that is of God heareth God's words." To little Fleda, as to
+      every simple and humble intelligence, the Bible proved itself; she had no
+      need to go further.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton did not smile, for nothing would have tempted him to hurt her
+      feelings; but he said, though conscience did not let him do it without a
+      twinge,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But don't you know, Elfie, there are some people who do not believe the
+      Bible?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah but those are bad people," replied Fleda quickly;--"all good people
+      believe it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A child's reason again, but hitting the mark this time. Unconsciously,
+      little Fleda had brought forward a strong argument for her cause. Mr.
+      Carleton felt it, and rising up that he might not be obliged to say
+      anything more, he began to pace slowly up and down the deck, turning the
+      matter over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was it so? that there were hardly any good men (he thought there might be
+      a few) who did not believe in the Bible and uphold its authority? and that
+      all the worst portion of society was comprehended in the other class?--and
+      if so, how had he overlooked it? He had reasoned most unphilosophically
+      from a few solitary instances that had come under his own eye; but
+      applying the broad principle of induction it could not be doubted that the
+      Bible was on the side of all that is sound, healthful, and hopeful, in
+      this disordered world. And whatever might be the character of a few
+      exceptions, it was not supposable that a wide system of hypocrisy should
+      tell universally for the best interests of mankind. Summoning history to
+      produce her witnesses, as he went on with his walk up and down, he saw
+      with increasing interest, what he had never seen before, that the Bible
+      had come like the breath of spring upon the moral waste of mind; that the
+      ice-bound intellect and cold heart of the world had waked into life under
+      its kindly influence and that all the rich growth of the one and the other
+      had come forth at its bidding. And except in that sun-lightened tract, the
+      world was and had been a waste indeed. Doubtless in that waste, intellect
+      had at different times put forth sundry barren shoots, such as a vigorous
+      plant can make in the absence of the sun, but also like them immature,
+      unsound, and groping vainly after the light in which alone they could
+      expand and perfect themselves; ripening no seed for a future and richer
+      growth. And flowers the wilderness had none. The affections were stunted
+      and overgrown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this was so,--how had he overlooked it? His unbelief had come from a
+      thoughtless, ignorant, one-sided view of life and human things. The
+      disorder and ruin which he saw, where he did not also see the adjusting
+      hand at work, had led him to refuse his credit to the Supreme Fabricator.
+      He thought the waste would never be reclaimed, and did not know how much
+      it already owed to the sun of revelation; but what was the waste where
+      that light had not been!--Mr. Carleton was staggered. He did not know what
+      to think. He began to think he had been a fool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor little Fleda was meditating less agreeably the while. With the sure
+      tact of truth she had discerned that there was more than jest in the
+      questions that had been put to her. She almost feared that Mr. Carleton
+      shared himself the doubts he had so lightly spoken of, and the thought
+      gave her great distress. However, when he came to take her down to tea,
+      with all his usual manner, Fleda's earnest look at him ended in the
+      conviction that there was nothing very wrong under that face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For several days Mr. Carleton pondered the matter of this evening's
+      conversation, characteristically restless till he had made up his mind. He
+      wished very much to draw Fleda to speak further upon the subject, but it
+      was not easy; she never led to it. He sought in vain an opportunity to
+      bring it in easily, and at last resolved to make one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Elfie," said he one morning when all the rest of the passengers were
+      happily engaged at a distance with the letter-bags,--"I wish you would let
+      me hear that favourite hymn of yours again,--I like it very much."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was much gratified, and immediately with great satisfaction repeated
+      the hymn. Its peculiar beauty struck him yet more the second time than the
+      first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you understand those two last verses?" said he when she had done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda said "Yes!" rather surprised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not," he said gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda paused a minute or two, and then finding that it depended on her to
+      enlighten him, said in her modest way,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why it means that we have no goodness of our own, and only expect to be
+      forgiven and taken to heaven for the Saviour's sake."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton asked, "How<i>for his sake</i>?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why you know, Mr. Carleton, we don't deserve to go there, and if we are
+      forgiven at all it must be for what he has done."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what is that, Elfie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He died for us," said Fleda, with a look of some anxiety into Mr.
+      Carleton's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Died for us!--And what end was that to serve, Elfie?" said he, partly
+      willing to hear the full statement of the matter, and partly willing to
+      see how far her intelligence could give it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because we are sinners," said Fleda, "and God has said that sinners shall
+      die."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then how can he keep his word and forgive at all?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because Christ has died <i>for us</i>," said Fleda eagerly;--"instead of
+      us."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you understand the justice of letting one take the place of others?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He was willing, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda, with a singular wistful
+      expression that touched him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Still, Elfie," said he after a minute's silence,--"how could the ends of
+      justice be answered by the death of one man in the place of millions?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, Mr. Carleton, but he was God as well as man," Fleda said, with a
+      sparkle in her eye which perhaps delayed her companion's rejoinder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What should induce him, Elfie," he said gently, "to do such a thing for
+      people who had displeased him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because he loved us, Mr. Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She answered with so evident a strong and clear appreciation of what she
+      was saying that it half made its way into Mr. Carleton's mind by the force
+      of sheer sympathy. Her words came almost as something new.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certainly Mr. Carleton had heard these things before, though perhaps never
+      in a way that appealed so directly to his intelligence and his candour. He
+      was again silent an instant, pondering, and so was Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know, Elfie," said Mr. Carleton, "there are some people who do not
+      believe that the Saviour was anything more than a man?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes I know it," said Fleda;--"it is very strange!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why is it strange?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because the Bible says it so plainly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But those people hold I believe that the Bible does not say it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't see how they could have read the Bible," said Fleda. "Why he said
+      so himself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who said so?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Jesus Christ. Don't <i>you</i> believe it, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw he did not, and the shade that had come over her face was
+      reflected in his before he said "No."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But perhaps I shall believe it yet, Elfie," he said kindly. "Can you shew
+      me the place in your Bible where Jesus says this of himself?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked in despair. She hastily turned over the leaves of her Bible
+      to find the passages he had asked for, and Mr. Carleton was cut to the
+      heart to see that she twice was obliged to turn her face from him and
+      brush her hand over her eyes, before she could find them. She turned to
+      Matt. xxvi. 63, 64, 65, and without speaking gave him the book, pointing
+      to the passage. He read it with great care, and several times over. "You
+      are right, Elfie," he said. "I do not see how those who honour the
+      authority of the Bible and the character of Jesus Christ can deny the
+      truth of his own declaration. If that is false so must those be."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda took the Bible and hurriedly sought out another passage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Grandpa shewed me these places," she said, "once when we were talking
+      about Mr. Didenhover--<i>he</i> didn't believe that. There are a great
+      many other places, grandpa said; but one is enough;"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave him the latter part of the twentieth chapter of John.--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You see, Mr. Carleton, he let Thomas fall down and worship him and call
+      him God; and if he had <i>not</i> been, you know----God is more displeased
+      with that than with any thing.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "With what, Elfie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "With men's worshipping any other than himself. He says he 'will not give
+      his glory to another.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid I can't find it," said Fleda,--"it is somewhere in Isaiah, I
+      know"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She tried in vain; and failing, then looked up in Mr. Carleton's face to
+      see what impression had been made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You see Thomas believed when he <i>saw</i>" said he, answering her;--"I
+      will believe too when I see."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah if you wait for that--" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her voice suddenly checked, she bent her face down again to her little
+      Bible, and there was a moment's struggle with herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you looking for something more to shew me?" said Mr. Carleton kindly,
+      stooping his face down to hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not much," said Fleda hurriedly; and then making a great effort she
+      raised her head and gave him the book again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look here, Mr. Carleton,--Jesus said, 'Blessed are they that have <i>not</i>
+      seen and yet have believed.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton was profoundly struck, and the thought recurred to him
+      afterwards and was dwelt upon.--"Blessed are they that have <i>not</i>
+      seen, and yet have believed." It was strange at first, and then he
+      wondered that it should ever have been so. His was a mind peculiarly open
+      to conviction, peculiarly accessible to truth; and his attention being
+      called to it he saw faintly now what he had never seen before, the beauty
+      of the principle of <i>faith</i>;--how natural, how reasonable, how <i>necessary</i>,
+      how honourable to the Supreme Being, how happy even for man, that the
+      grounds of his trust in God being established, his acceptance of many
+      other things should rest on that trust alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton now became more reserved and unsociable than ever. He wearied
+      himself with thinking. If be could have got at the books, he would have
+      spent his days and nights in studying the evidences of Christianity, but
+      the ship was bare of any such books, and he never thought of turning to
+      the most obvious of all, the Bible itself. His unbelief was shaken; it was
+      within an ace of falling in pieces to the very foundation; or rather he
+      began to suspect how foundationless it had been. It came at last to one
+      point with him;--If there were a God, he would not have left the world
+      without a revelation,--no more would he have suffered that revelation to
+      defeat its own end by becoming corrupted or alloyed, if there was such a
+      revelation it could be no other than the Bible;--and his acceptance of the
+      whole scheme of Christianity now hung upon the turn of a hair. Yet he
+      could not resolve himself. He balanced the counter-doubts and arguments,
+      on one side and on the other, and strained his mind to the task;--he could
+      not weigh them nicely enough. He was in a maze; and seeking to clear and
+      calm his judgment that he might see the way out, it was in vain that he
+      tried to shake his dizzied head from the effect of the turns it had made.
+      By dint of anxiety to find the right path reason had lost herself in the
+      wilderness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was not, as Mr. Carleton had feared she would be, at all alienated
+      from him by the discovery that had given her so much pain. It wrought in
+      another way, rather to add a touch of tender and anxious interest to the
+      affection she had for him. It gave her however much more pain than he
+      thought. If he had seen the secret tears that fell on his account he would
+      have been grieved; and if he had known of the many petitions that little
+      heart made for him--he could hardly have loved her more than he did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening Mr. Carleton had been a long while pacing up and down the deck
+      in front of little Fleda's nest, thinking and thinking, without coming to
+      any end. It was a most fair evening, near sunset, the sky without a cloud
+      except two or three little dainty strips which set off its blue. The ocean
+      was very quiet, only broken into cheerful mites of waves that seemed to
+      have nothing to do but sparkle. The sun's rays were almost level now, and
+      a long path of glory across the sea led off towards his sinking disk.
+      Fleda sat watching and enjoying it all in her happy fashion, which always
+      made the most of everything good, and was especially quick in catching any
+      form of natural beauty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton's thoughts were elsewhere; too busy to take note of things
+      around him. Fleda looked now and then as he passed at his gloomy brow,
+      wondering what he was thinking of, and wishing that he could have the same
+      reason to be happy that she had. In one of his turns his eye met her
+      gentle glance; and vexed and bewildered as he was with study there was
+      something in that calm bright face that impelled him irresistibly to ask
+      the little child to set the proud scholar right. Placing himself beside
+      her, he said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Elfie, how do you know there is a God?--what reason have you for thinking
+      so, out of the Bible?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a strange look little Fleda gave him. He felt it at the time, and
+      he never forgot it. Such a look of reproach, sorrow, and <i>pity</i>, he
+      afterwards thought, as an angel's face might have worn. The <i>question</i>
+      did not seem to occupy her a moment. After this answering look she
+      suddenly pointed to the sinking sun and said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who made that, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton's eyes, following the direction of hers, met the long bright
+      rays whose still witness-bearing was almost too powerful to be borne. The
+      sun was just dipping majestically into the sea, and its calm
+      self-assertion seemed to him at that instant hardly stronger than its
+      vindication of its Author.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A slight arrow may find the joint in the armour before which many
+      weightier shafts have fallen powerless. Mr. Carleton was an unbeliever no
+      more from that time.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="12"></a>Chapter XII.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        He borrowed a box of the ear of the Englishman, and swore he would pay
+        him again when he was able.--Merchant of Venice.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      One other incident alone in the course of the voyage deserves to be
+      mentioned; both because it served to bring out the characters of several
+      people, and because it was not,--what is?--without its lingering
+      consequences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorn and Rossitur had kept up indefatigably the game of teasing Fleda
+      about her "English admirer," as they sometimes styled him. Poor Fleda grew
+      more and more sore on the subject. She thought it was very strange that
+      two grown men could not find enough to do to amuse themselves without
+      making sport of the comfort of a little child. She wondered they could
+      take pleasure in what gave her so much pain; but so it was; and they had
+      it up so often that at last others caught it from them; and though not in
+      malevolence yet in thoughtless folly many a light remark was made and
+      question asked of her that set little Fleda's sensitive nerves a
+      quivering. She was only too happy that they were never said before Mr.
+      Carleton; that would have been a thousand times worse. As it was, her
+      gentle nature was constantly suffering from the pain or the fear of these
+      attacks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where's Mr. Carleton?" said her cousin coming up one day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Fleda,--"I don't know but he is gone up into one of
+      the tops."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Your humble servant leaves you to yourself a great while this morning, it
+      seems to me. He is growing very inattentive."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wouldn't permit it, Miss Fleda, if I were you," said Thorn maliciously.
+      "You let him have his own way too much."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish you wouldn't talk so, cousin Charlton!" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But seriously," said Charlton, "I think you had better call him to
+      account. He is very suspicious lately. I have observed him walking by
+      himself and looking very glum indeed. I am afraid he has taken some fancy
+      into his head that would not suit you. I advise you to enquire into it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wouldn't give myself any concern about it!" said Thorn lightly,
+      enjoying the child's confusion and his own fanciful style of
+      backbiting,--"I'd let him go if he has a mind to, Miss Fleda. He's no such
+      great catch. He's neither lord nor knight--nothing in the world but a
+      private gentleman, with plenty of money I dare say, but you don't care for
+      that;--and there's as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it. I don't
+      think much of him!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He is wonderfully better than <i>you</i>, thought Fleda as she looked in
+      the young gentleman's face for a second, but she said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, Fleda," said Charlton laughing, "it wouldn't be a killing affair,
+      would it? How has this English admirer of yours got so far in your
+      fancy?--praising your pretty eyes, eh?--Eh?" he repeated, as Fleda kept a
+      dignified silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda in displeasure,--"he never says such things."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No?" said Charlton. "What then? What does he say? I wouldn't let him make
+      a fool of me if I were you. Fleda!--did he ever ask you for a kiss?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No!" exclaimed Fleda half beside herself and bursting into tears;--"I
+      wish you wouldn't talk so! How can you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had carried the game pretty far that time, and thought best to leave
+      it. Fleda stopped crying as soon as she could, lest somebody should see
+      her; and was sitting quietly again, alone as before, when one of the
+      sailors whom she had never spoken to came by, and leaning over towards her
+      with a leer as he passed, said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is this the young English gentleman's little sweetheart?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Fleda! She had got more than she could bear. She jumped up and ran
+      down into the cabin; and in her berth Mrs. Carleton found her some time
+      afterwards, quietly crying, and most sorry to be discovered. She was
+      exceeding unwilling to tell what had troubled her. Mrs. Carleton, really
+      distressed, tried coaxing, soothing, reasoning, promising, in a way the
+      most gentle and kind that she could use.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh it's nothing--it's nothing," Fleda said at last eagerly,--"it's
+      because I am foolish--it's only something they said to me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who, love?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again was Fleda most unwilling to answer, and it was after repeated urging
+      that she at last said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Cousin Charlton and Mr. Thorn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Charlton and Mr. Thorn!--What did they say? What did they say, darling
+      Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O it's only that they tease me," said Fleda, trying hard to put an end to
+      the tears which caused all this questioning, and to speak as if they were
+      about a trifle. But Mrs. Carleton persisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do they say to tease you, love? what is it about?--Guy, come in here
+      and help me to find out what is the matter with Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda hid her face in Mrs. Carleton's neck, resolved to keep her lips
+      sealed. Mr. Carleton came in, but to her great relief his question was
+      directed not to her but his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda has been annoyed by something those young men, her cousin and Mr.
+      Thorn, have said to her;--they tease her, she says, and she will not tell
+      me what it is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton did not ask, and he presently left the state-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O I am afraid he will speak to them!" exclaimed Fleda as soon as he was
+      gone.--"O I oughtn't to have said that!"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Carleton tried to soothe her and asked what she was afraid of. But
+      Fleda would not say any more. Her anxious fear that she had done mischief
+      helped to dry her tears, and she sorrowfully resolved she would keep her
+      griefs to herself next time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rossitur and Thorn were in company with a brother officer and friend of
+      the latter when Mr. Carleton approached them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Rossitur and Mr. Thorn," said he, "you have indulged yourselves in a
+      style of conversation extremely displeasing to the little girl under my
+      mother's care. You will oblige me by abandoning it for the future."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was certainly in Mr. Carleton's manner a sufficient degree of the
+      cold haughtiness with which he usually expressed displeasure; though his
+      words gave no other cause of offence. Thorn retorted rather insolently,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shall oblige myself in the matter, and do as I think proper."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have a right to speak as I please to my own cousin," said Rossitur
+      sulkily,--"without asking anybody's leave. I don't see what you have to do
+      with it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Simply that she is under my protection and that I will not permit her to
+      be annoyed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't see how she is under your protection," said Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I do not see how the potency of it will avail in this case,' said his
+      companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Neither position is to be made out in words," said Mr. Carleton calmly.
+      "You see that I desire there be no repetition of the offence. The rest I
+      will endeavour to make clear if I am compelled to it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stop, sir!" said Thorn, as the young Englishman was turning away, adding
+      with an oath,--"I won't bear this! You shall answer this to me, sir!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Easily," said the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And me too," said Rossitur. "You have an account to settle with me,
+      Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will answer what you please," said Carleton carelessly,--"and as soon
+      as we get to land--provided you do not in the mean time induce me to
+      refuse you the honour."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However incensed, the young men endeavoured to carry it off with the same
+      coolness that their adversary shewed. No more words passed. But Mrs.
+      Carleton, possibly quickened by Fleda's fears, was not satisfied with the
+      carriage of all parties, and resolved to sound her son, happy in knowing
+      that nothing but truth was to be had from him. She found an opportunity
+      that very afternoon when he was sitting alone on the deck. The
+      neighbourhood of little Fleda she hardly noticed. Fleda was curled up
+      among her cushions, luxuriously bending over a little old black Bible
+      which was very often in her hand at times when she was quiet and had no
+      observation to fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Reading!--always reading?" said Mrs. Carleton, as she came up and took a
+      place by her son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By no means!" he said, closing his book with a smile;--"not enough to
+      tire any one's eyes on this voyage, mother."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish you liked intercourse with living society," said Mrs. Carleton,
+      leaning her arm on his shoulder and looking at him rather wistfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You need not wish that,--when it suits me," he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But none suits you. Is there any on board?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A small proportion," he said, with the slight play of feature which
+      always effected a diversion of his mother's thoughts, no matter in what
+      channel they had been flowing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But those young men," she said, returning to the charge,--"you hold
+      yourself very much aloof from them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not answer, even by a look, but to his mother the perfectly quiet
+      composure of his face was sufficiently expressive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know what you think, but Guy, you always had the same opinion of them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have never shewn any other."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Guy," she said speaking low and rather anxiously,--"have you got into
+      trouble with those young men?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>I</i> am in no trouble, mother," he answered somewhat haughtily; "I
+      cannot speak for them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Carleton waited a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have done something to displease them, have you not?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They have displeased me, which is somewhat more to the purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But their folly is nothing to you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No,--not their folly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Guy," said his mother, again pausing a minute, and pressing her hand more
+      heavily upon his shoulder, "you will not suffer this to alter the friendly
+      terms you have been on?--whatever it be,--let it pass."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly--if they choose to apologize and behave themselves."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What, about Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have no idea they meant to trouble her--I suppose they did not at all
+      know what they were doing,--thoughtless nonsense,--and they could have had
+      no design to offend you. Promise me that you will not take any further
+      notice of this!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook off her beseeching hand as he rose up, and answered haughtily,
+      and not without something like an oath, that he <i>would</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Carleton knew him better than to press the matter any further; and
+      her fondness easily forgave the offence against herself, especially as her
+      son almost immediately resumed his ordinary manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had well nigh passed from the minds of both parties, when in the middle
+      of the next day Mr. Carleton asked what had become of Fleda?--he had not
+      seen her except at the breakfast table. Mrs. Carleton said she was not
+      well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's the matter?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She complained of some headache--I think she made herself sick
+      yesterday--she was crying all the afternoon, and I could not get her to
+      tell me what for. I tried every means I could think of, but she would not
+      give me the least clue--she said 'no' to everything I guessed--I can't
+      bear to see her do so--it makes it all the worse she does it so
+      quietly--it was only by a mere chance I found she was crying at all, but I
+      think she cried herself ill before she stopped. She could not eat a
+      mouthful of breakfast."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton said nothing and with a changed countenance went directly
+      down to the cabin. The stewardess, whom he sent in to see how she was,
+      brought back word that Fleda was not asleep but was too ill to speak to
+      her. Mr. Carleton went immediately into the little crib of a state-room.
+      There he found his little charge, sitting bolt upright, her feet on the
+      rung of a chair and her hands grasping the top to support herself. Her
+      eyes were closed, her face without a particle of colour, except the dark
+      shade round the eyes which bespoke illness and pain. She made no attempt
+      to answer his shocked questions and words of tender concern, not even by
+      the raising of an eyelid, and he saw that the intensity of pain at the
+      moment was such as to render breathing itself difficult. He sent off the
+      stewardess with all despatch after iced water and vinegar and brandy, and
+      himself went on an earnest quest of restoratives among the lady passengers
+      in the cabin, which resulted in sundry supplies of salts and cologne; and
+      also offers of service, in greater plenty still, which he all refused.
+      Most tenderly and judiciously he himself applied various remedies to the
+      suffering child, who could not direct him otherwise than by gently putting
+      away the things which she felt would not avail her. Several were in vain.
+      But there was one bottle of strong aromatic vinegar which was destined to
+      immortalize its owner in Fleda's remembrance. Before she had taken three
+      whiffs of it her colour changed. Mr. Carleton watched the effect of a few
+      whiffs more, and then bade the stewardess take away all the other things
+      and bring him a cup of fresh strong coffee. By the time it came Fleda was
+      ready for it, and by the time Mr. Carleton had administered the coffee he
+      saw it would do to throw his mother's shawl round her and carry her up on
+      deck, which he did without asking any questions. All this while Fleda had
+      not spoken a word, except once when he asked her if she felt better. But
+      she had given him, on finishing the coffee, a full look and half smile of
+      such pure affectionate gratitude that the young gentleman's tongue was
+      tied for some time after.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With happy skill, when he had safely bestowed Fleda among her cushions on
+      deck, Mr. Carleton managed to keep off the crowd of busy inquirers after
+      her well-doing, and even presently to turn his mother's attention another
+      way, leaving Fleda to enjoy all the comfort of quiet and fresh air at
+      once. He himself, seeming occupied with other things, did no more but keep
+      watch over her, till he saw that she was able to bear conversation again.
+      Then he seated himself beside her and said softly,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus08.jpg"><img src="images/illus08.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="Then he seated himself beside her."
+      title="Then he seated himself beside her." /><br /> Then he seated himself
+      beside her.</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Elfie,--what were you crying about all yesterday afternoon?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda changed colour, for soft and gentle as the tone was she heard in it
+      a determination to have the answer; and looking up beseechingly into his
+      face she saw in the steady full blue eye that it was a determination she
+      could not escape from. Her answer was an imploring request that he would
+      not ask her. But taking one of her little hands and carrying it to his
+      lips, he in the same tone repeated his question. Fleda snatched away her
+      hand and burst into very frank tears; Mr. Carleton was silent, but she
+      knew through silence that he was only quietly waiting for her to answer
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish you wouldn't ask me, sir," said poor Fleda, who still could not
+      turn her face to meet his eye;--"It was only something that happened
+      yesterday."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What was it, Elfie?--You need not be afraid to tell me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was only--what you said to Mrs. Carleton yesterday,--when she was
+      talking--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "About my difficulty with those gentlemen?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," said Fleda, with a new gush of tears, as if her grief stirred
+      afresh at the thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton was silent a moment; and when he spoke there was no
+      displeasure and more tenderness than usual in his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What troubled you in that, Elfie? tell me the whole."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was sorry, because,--it wasn't right," said Fleda, with a grave
+      truthfulness which yet lacked none of her universal gentleness and
+      modesty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What wasn't right?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To speak--I am afraid you won't like me to say it, Mr. Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will, Elfie,--for I ask you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To speak to Mrs. Carleton so, and besides,--you know what you said, Mr.
+      Carleton--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was <i>not</i> right," said he after a minute,--"and I very seldom use
+      such an expression, but you know one cannot always be on one's guard,
+      Elfie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But," said Fleda with gentle persistence, "one can always do what is
+      right."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The deuce one can!--thought Mr, Carleton to himself. "Elfie,--was that all
+      that troubled you?--that I had said what was not right?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It wasn't quite that only," said Fleda hesitating,--"What else?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stooped her face from his sight and he could but just understand her
+      words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was disappointed--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What, in me!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her tears gave the answer; she could add to them nothing but an assenting
+      nod of her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They would have flowed in double measure if she had guessed the pain she
+      had given. Her questioner heard her with a keen pang which did not leave
+      him for days. There was some hurt pride in it, though other and more
+      generous feelings had a far larger share. He, who had been admired,
+      lauded, followed, cited, and envied, by all ranks of his countrymen and
+      countrywomen;--in whom nobody found a fault that could be dwelt upon amid
+      the lustre of his perfections and advantages;--one of the first young men
+      in England, thought so by himself as well as by others;--this little pure
+      being had been <i>disappointed</i> in him. He could not get over it. He
+      reckoned the one judgment worth all the others. Those whose direct or
+      indirect flatteries had been poured at his feet were the proud, the
+      worldly, the ambitious, the interested, the corrupted;--their praise was
+      given to what they esteemed, and that, his candour said, was the least
+      estimable part of him. Beneath all that, this truth-loving,
+      truth-discerning little spirit had found enough to weep for. She was right
+      and they were wrong. The sense of this was so keen upon him that it was
+      tea or fifteen minutes before he could recover himself to speak to his
+      little reprover. He paced up and down the deck, while Fleda wept more and
+      more from the fear of having offended or grieved him. But she was soon
+      reassured on the former point. She was just wiping away her tears, with
+      the quiet expression of patience her face often wore, when Mr. Carleton
+      sat down beside her and took one of her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Elfie," said he,--"I promise you I will never say such a thing again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He might well call her his good angel, for it was an angelic look the
+      child gave him. So purely humble, grateful, glad,--so rosy with joyful
+      hope,--the eyes were absolutely sparkling through tears. But when she saw
+      that his were not dry, her own overflowed. She clasped her other hand to
+      his hand and bending down her face affectionately upon it, she wept,--if
+      ever angels weep,--such tears as they.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Elfie," said Mr. Carleton, as soon as he could,--"I want you to go down
+      stairs with me; so dry those eyes, or my mother will be asking all sorts
+      of difficult questions."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Happiness is a quick restorative. Elfie was soon ready to go where he
+      would.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They found Mrs. Carleton fortunately wrapped up in a new novel, some
+      distance apart from the other persons in the cabin. The novel was
+      immediately laid aside to take Fleda on her lap and praise Guy's nursing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But she looks more like a wax figure yet than anything else, don't she,
+      Guy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not like any that ever I saw," said Mr. Carleton gravely. "Hardly
+      substantial enough. Mother, I have come to tell you I am ashamed of myself
+      for having given you such cause of offence yesterday."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Carleton's quick look, as she laid her hand on her son's arm, said
+      sufficiently well that she would have excused him from making any apology
+      rather than have him humble himself in the presence of a third person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda heard me yesterday," said he; "it was right she should hear me
+      to-day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then my dear Guy," said his mother with a secret eagerness which she did
+      not allow to appear,--"if I may make a condition for my forgiveness, which
+      you had before you asked for it,--will you grant me one favour?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly, mother,--if I can."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You promise me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As well in one word as in two."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Promise me that you will never, by any circumstances, allow yourself to
+      be drawn into--what is called <i>an affair of honour</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton's brow changed, and without making any reply, perhaps to
+      avoid his mother's questioning gaze, he rose up and walked two or three
+      times the length of the cabin. His mother and Fleda watched him
+      doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you see how you have got me into trouble, Elfie?" said he, stopping
+      before them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked wonderingly, and Mrs. Carleton exclaimed, "What trouble?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Elfie," said he, without immediately answering his mother, "what would
+      your conscience do with two promises both of which cannot be kept?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What such promises have you made?" said Mrs Carleton eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let me hear first what Fleda says to my question."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why," said Fleda, looking a little bewildered,--"I would keep the right
+      one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not the one first made?" said he smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda,--"not unless it was the right one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But don't you think one ought to keep one's word, in any event?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't think anything can make it right to do wrong," Fleda said
+      gravely, and not without a secret trembling consciousness to what point
+      she was speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He left them and again took several turns up and down the cabin before he
+      sat down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have not given me your promise yet, Guy," said his mother, whose eye
+      had not once quitted him. "You said you would."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I said, if I could."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well?--you can?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have two honourable meetings of the proscribed kind now on hand, to
+      which I stand pledged."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda hid her face in an agony. Mrs. Carleton's agony was in every line of
+      hers as she grasped her son's wrist exclaiming, "Guy, promise me!" She had
+      words for nothing else. He hesitated still a moment, and then meeting his
+      mother's look he said gravely and steadily,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I promise you, mother, I never will."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His mother threw herself upon his breast and hid her face there, too much
+      excited to have any thought of her customary regard to appearances;
+      sobbing out thanks and blessings even audibly. Fleda's gentle head was
+      bowed in almost equal agitation; and Mr. Carleton at that moment had no
+      doubt that he had chosen well which promise to keep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There remained however a less agreeable part of the business to manage.
+      After seeing his mother and Fleda quite happy again, though without
+      satisfying in any degree the curiosity of the former, Guy went in search
+      of the two young West Point officers. They were together, but without
+      Thorn's friend, Capt. Beebee. Him Carleton next sought and brought to the
+      forward deck where the others were enjoying their cigars; or rather
+      Charlton Rossitur was enjoying his, with the happy self satisfaction of a
+      pair of epaulettes off duty. Thorn had too busy a brain to be much of a
+      smoker. Now, however, when it was plain that Mr. Carleton had something to
+      say to them, Charlton's cigar gave way to his attention; it was displaced
+      from his mouth and held in abeyance; while Thorn puffed away more intently
+      than ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Gentlemen," Carleton began,--"I gave you yesterday reason to expect that
+      so soon as circumstances permitted, you should have the opportunity which
+      offended honour desires of trying sounder arguments than those of reason
+      upon the offender. I have to tell you to-day that I will not give it you.
+      I have thought further of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it a new insult that you mean by this, sir?" exclaimed Rossitur in
+      astonishment. Thorn's cigar did not stir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Neither new nor old. I mean simply that I have changed my mind."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But this is very extraordinary!" said Rossitur. "What reason do you
+      give?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I give none, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In that case," said Capt. Beebee, "perhaps Mr. Carleton will not object
+      to explain or unsay the things which gave offence yesterday."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I apprehend there is nothing to explain, sir,--I think I must have been
+      understood; and I never take back my words, for I am in the habit of
+      speaking the truth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then we are to consider this as a further, unprovoked, unmitigated insult
+      for which you will give neither reason nor satisfaction!" cried Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have already disclaimed that, Mr. Rossitur."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are we, on mature deliberation, considered unworthy of tha <i>honour</i>
+      you so condescendingly awarded to us yesterday?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My reasons have nothing to do with you, sir, nor with your friend; they
+      are entirely personal to myself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton must be aware," said Capt. Beebee, "that his conduct, if
+      unexplained, will bear a very strange construction."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton was coldly silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It never was heard of," the Captain went on,--"that a gentleman declined
+      both to explain and to give satisfaction for any part of his conduct which
+      had called for it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It never was heard that a <i>gentleman</i> did," said Thorn, removing his
+      cigar a moment for the purpose of supplying the emphasis which his friend
+      had carefully omitted to make.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you say, Mr. Carleton," said Rossitur, "that you did not mean to
+      offend us yesterday in what you said?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, Mr. Rossitur."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will not!" cried the Captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, sir; for your friends had given me, as I conceived, just cause of
+      displeasure; and I was, and am, careless of offending those who have done
+      so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You consider yourself aggrieved, then, in the first place?" said Beebee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have said so, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then," said the Captain, after a puzzled look out to sea, "supposing that
+      my friends disclaim all intention to offend you in that case--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In that case I should be glad, Capt. Beebee, that they had changed their
+      line of tactics--there is nothing to change in my own."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then what are we to understand by this strange refusal of a meeting, Mr.
+      Carleton? what does it mean?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It means one thing in my own mind, sir, and probably another in yours;
+      but the outward expression I choose to give it is that I will not reward
+      uncalled-for rudeness with an opportunity of self-vindication."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are," said Thorn sneeringly, "probably careless as to the figure your
+      own name will cut in connection with this story?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Entirely so," said Mr. Carleton, eying him steadily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are aware that your character is at our mercy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A slight bow seemed to leave at their disposal the very small portion of
+      his character he conceived to lie in that predicament.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will expect to hear yourself spoken of in terms that befit a man who
+      has cowed out of an engagement he dared not fulfil?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of course," said Carleton haughtily, "by my present refusal I give you
+      leave to say all that, and as much more as your ingenuity can furnish in
+      the same style; but not in my hearing, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You can't help yourself," said Thorn, with the same sneer. "You have rid
+      yourself of a gentleman's means of protection,--what others will you use?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will leave that to the suggestion of the moment. I do not doubt it will
+      be found fruitful."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nobody doubted it who looked just then on his steady sparkling eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I consider the championship of yesterday given up of course," Thorn went
+      on in a kind of aside, not looking at anybody, and striking his cigar
+      against the guards to clear it of ashes;--"the champion has quitted the
+      field; and the little princess but lately so walled in with defences must
+      now listen to whatever knight and squire may please to address to her.
+      Nothing remains to be seen of her defender but his spurs."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They may serve for the heels of whoever is disposed to annoy her," said
+      Mr. Carleton. "He will need them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He left the group with the same air of imperturbable self-possession which
+      he had maintained during the conference. But presently Rossitur, who had
+      his private reasons for wishing to keep friends with an acquaintance who
+      might be of service in more ways than one, followed him and declared
+      himself to have been, in all his nonsense to Fleda, most undesirous of
+      giving displeasure to her temporary guardian, and sorry that it had fallen
+      out so. He spoke frankly, and Mr. Carleton, with the same cool
+      gracefulness with which he had carried on the quarrel, waived his
+      displeasure, and admitted the young gentleman apparently to stand as
+      before in his favour. Their reconciliation was not an hour old when Capt.
+      Beebee joined them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sorry I must trouble you with a word more on this disagreeable
+      subject, Mr. Carleton," he began, after a ceremonious salutation,--"My
+      friend, Lieut. Thorn, considers himself greatly outraged by your
+      determination not to meet him. He begs to ask, by me, whether it is your
+      purpose to abide by it at all hazards?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is some misunderstanding here, which I greatly regret.--I hope you
+      will see and excuse the disagreeable necessity I am under of delivering
+      the rest of my friend's message."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Say on, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Thorn declares that if you deny him the common courtesy which no
+      gentleman refuses to another, he will proclaim your name with the most
+      opprobrious adjuncts to all the world, and in place of his former regard
+      he will hold you in the most unlimited contempt, which he will have no
+      scruple about shewing on all occasions."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton coloured a little, but replied coolly,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have not lived in Mr. Thorn's favour. As to the rest, I forgive
+      him!--except indeed he provoke me to measures for which I never will
+      forgive him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Measures!" said the Captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope not! for my own self-respect would be more grievously hurt than
+      his. But there is an unruly spring somewhere about my composition that
+      when it gets wound up is once in a while too much for me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But," said Rossitur, "pardon me,--have you no regard to the effect of his
+      misrepresentations?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are mistaken, Mr. Rossitur," said Carleton slightly;--this is but the
+      blast of a bellows,--not the Simoom."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then what answer shall I have the honour of carrying back to my friend?"
+      said Capt. Beebee, after a sort of astounded pause of a few minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "None, of my sending, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Capt. Beebee touched his cap, and went back to Mr. Thorn, to whom he
+      reported that the young Englishman was thoroughly impracticable, and that
+      there was nothing to be gained by dealing with him; and the vexed
+      conclusion of Thorn's own mind, in the end, was in favour of the wisdom of
+      letting him alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a very different mood, saddened and disgusted, Mr. Carleton shook
+      himself free of Rossitur and went and stood alone by the guards looking
+      out upon the sea. He did not at all regret his promise to his mother, nor
+      wish to take other ground than that he had taken. Both the theory and the
+      practice of duelling he heartily despised, and he was not weak enough to
+      fancy that he had brought any discredit upon either his sense or his
+      honour by refusing to comply with an unwarrantable and barbarous custom.
+      And he valued mankind too little to be at all concerned about their
+      judgment in the matter. His own opinion was at all times enough for him.
+      But the miserable folly and puerility of such an altercation as that in
+      which he had just been engaged, the poor display of human character, the
+      little low passions which bad been called up, even in himself, alike
+      destitute of worthy cause and aim, and which had perhaps but just missed
+      ending in the death of some and the living death of others,--it all
+      wrought to bring him back to his old wearying of human nature and
+      despondent eying of the everywhere jarrings, confusions, and discordances
+      in the moral world. The fresh sea-breeze that swept by the ship,
+      roughening the play of the waves, and brushing his own cheek with its
+      health-bearing wing, brought with it a sad feeling of contrast. Free, and
+      pure, and steadily directed, it sped on its way, to do its work. And like
+      it all the rest of the natural world, faithful to the law of its Maker,
+      was stamped with the same signet of perfection. Only man, in all the
+      universe, seemed to be at cross purposes with the end of his being. Only
+      man, of all animate or inanimate things, lived an aimless, fruitless,
+      broken life,--or fruitful only in evil. How was this? and whence? and when
+      would be the end? and would this confused mass of warring elements ever be
+      at peace? would this disordered machinery ever work smoothly, without let
+      or stop any more, and work out the beautiful something for which sure it
+      was designed? And could any hand but its first Maker mend the broken wheel
+      or supply the spring that was wanting?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Has not the Desire of all nations been often sought of eyes that were
+      never taught where to look for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton was standing still by the guards, looking thoughtfully out to
+      windward to meet the fresh breeze, as if the Spirit of the Wilderness were
+      in it and could teach him the truth that the Spirit of the World knew not
+      and had not to give, when he became sensible of something close beside
+      him; and looking down met little Fleda's upturned face, with such a look
+      of purity, freshness, and peace, it said as plainly as ever the dial-plate
+      of a clock that <i>that</i> little piece of machinery was working right.
+      There was a sunlight upon it, too, of happy confidence and affection. Mr.
+      Carleton's mind experienced a sudden revulsion. Fleda might see the
+      reflection of her own light in his face as he helped her up to a stand
+      where she could be more on a level with him; putting his arm round her to
+      guard against any sudden roll of the ship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What makes you wear such a happy face?" said he, with an expression half
+      envious, half regretful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know!" said Fleda innocently. "You, I suppose."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked as bright as she did, for a minute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Were you ever angry, Elfie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know--" said Fleda. "I don't know but I have."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled to see that although evidently her memory could not bring the
+      charge, her modesty would not deny it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Were you not angry yesterday with your cousin and that unmannerly friend
+      of his?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda, a shade crossing her face,--"I was not <i>angry</i> "--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as she spoke her hand was softly put upon Mr. Carleton's; as if partly
+      in the fear of what might have grown out of <i>his</i> anger, and partly
+      in thankfulness to him that he had rendered it unnecessary. There was a
+      singular delicate timidity and tenderness in the action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish I had your secret, Elfie," said Mr. Carleton, looking wistfully
+      into the clear eyes that met his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What secret?" said Fleda smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You say one can always do right--is that the reason you are
+      happy?--because you follow that out?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda seriously. "But I think it is a great deal pleasanter."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have no doubt at all of that, neither, I dare say, have the rest of the
+      world; only somehow when it comes to the point they find it is easier to
+      do wrong. What's your secret, Elfie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I haven't any secret," said Fleda. But presently, seeming to bethink
+      herself, she added gently and gravely,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Aunt Miriam says--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She says that when we love Jesus Christ it is easy to please him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And do you love him, Elfie?" Mr Carleton asked after a minute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her answer was a very quiet and sober "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He doubted still whether she were not unconsciously using a form of speech
+      the spirit of which she did not quite realize. That one might "not see and
+      yet believe," he could understand; but for <i>affection</i> to go forth
+      towards an unseen object was another matter. His question was grave and
+      acute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By what do you judge that you do, Elfie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda, with an instant look of appeal, "who else
+      <i>should</i> I love?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If not him "--her eye and her voice made sufficiently plain. Mr. Carleton
+      was obliged to confess to himself that she spoke intelligently, with
+      deeper intelligence than he could follow. He asked no more questions. Yet
+      truth shines by its own light, like the sun. He had not perfectly
+      comprehended her answers, but they struck him as something that deserved
+      to be understood, and he resolved to make the truth of them his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rest of the voyage was perfectly quiet. Following the earnest advice
+      of his friend Capt. Beebee, Thorn had given up trying to push Mr. Carleton
+      to extremity; who on his part did not seem conscious of Thorn's existence.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="13"></a>Chapter XIII.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        There the most daintie paradise on ground<br /> Itselfe doth offer to his
+        sober eye,--<br /> -----The painted flowres, the trees upshooting hye,<br />
+        The dales for shade, the hills for breathing space,<br /> The trembling
+        groves, the christall running by;<br /> And that, which all faire works
+        doth most aggrace,<br /> The art which all that wrought appeared in no
+        place.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        F&aelig;ry Queene.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      They had taken ship for London, as Mr. and Mrs. Carleton wished to visit
+      home for a day or two before going on to Paris. So leaving Charlton to
+      carry news of them to the French capital, so soon as he could persuade
+      himself to leave the English one, they with little Fleda in company posted
+      down to Carleton, in ----shire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a time of great delight to Fleda, that is, as soon as Mr. Carleton
+      had made her feel at home in England; and somehow he had contrived to do
+      that and to scatter some clouds of remembrance that seemed to gather about
+      her, before they had reached the end of their first day's journey. To be
+      out of the ship was itself a comfort, and to be alone with kind friends
+      was much more. With great joy Fleda put her cousin Charlton and Mr. Thorn
+      at once out of sight and out of mind; and gave herself with even more than
+      her usual happy readiness to everything the way and the end of the way had
+      for her. Those days were to be painted days in Fleda's memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She thought Carleton was a very odd place. That is, the house, not the
+      village which went by the same name. If the manner of her two companions
+      had not been such as to put her entirely at her ease she would have felt
+      strange and shy. As it was she felt half afraid of losing herself in the
+      house, to Fleda's unaccustomed eyes it was a labyrinth of halls and
+      staircases, set with the most unaccountable number and variety of rooms;
+      old and new, quaint and comfortable, gloomy and magnificent; some with
+      stern old-fashioned massiveness of style and garniture; others absolutely
+      bewitching (to Fleda's eyes and understanding) in the rich beauty and
+      luxuriousness of their arrangements. Mr. Carleton's own particular haunts
+      were of these; his private room, the little library as it was called, the
+      library, and the music-room, which was indeed rather a gallery of fine
+      arts, so many treasures of art were gathered there. To an older and
+      nice-judging person these rooms would have given no slight indications of
+      their owner's mind--it had been at work on every corner of them. No
+      particular fashion had been followed in anything, nor any model consulted
+      but that which fancy had built to the mind's order. The wealth of years
+      had drawn together an enormous assemblage of matters, great and small,
+      every one of which was fitted either to excite fancy, or suggest thought,
+      or to satisfy the eye by its nice adaptation. And if pride had had the
+      ordering of them, all these might have been but a costly museum, a
+      literary alphabet that its possessor could not put together, an ungainly
+      confession of ignorance on the part of the intellect that could do nothing
+      with this rich heap of material. But pride was not the genius of the
+      place. A most refined taste and curious fastidiousness had arranged and
+      harmonized all the heterogeneous items; the mental hieroglyphics had been
+      ordered by one to whom the reading of them was no mystery. Nothing struck
+      a stranger at first entering, except the very rich effect and faultless
+      air of the whole, and perhaps the delicious facilities for every kind of
+      intellectual cultivation which appeared on every hand; facilities which it
+      must be allowed do seem in general <i>not</i> to facilitate the work they
+      are meant to speed. In this case however it was different. The mind that
+      wanted them bad brought them together to satisfy its own craving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These rooms were Guy's peculiar domain. In other parts of the house, where
+      his mother reigned conjointly with him, their joint tastes had struck out
+      another style of adornment which might be called a style of superb
+      elegance. Not superb alone, for taste had not permitted so heavy a
+      characteristic to be predominant; not merely elegant, for the fineness of
+      all the details would warrant an ampler word. A larger part of the house
+      than both these together had been left as generations past had left it, in
+      various stages of, refinement, comfort and comeliness. It was a day or two
+      before Fleda found out that it was all one; she thought at first that it
+      was a collection of several houses that had somehow inexplicably sat down
+      there with their backs to each other; it was so straggling and irregular a
+      pile of building, covering so much ground, and looking so very unlike the
+      different parts to each other. One portion was quite old; the other parts
+      ranged variously between the present and the far past. After she once
+      understood this it was a piece of delicious wonderment and musing and
+      great admiration to Fleda; she never grew weary of wandering round it and
+      thinking about it, for from a child fanciful meditation was one of her
+      delights. Within doors she best liked Mr. Carleton's favourite rooms.
+      Their rich colouring and moderated light and endless stores of beauty and
+      curiosity made them a place of fascination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out of doors she found still more to delight her. Morning, noon, and night
+      she might be seen near the house gazing, taking in pictures of natural
+      beauty which were for ever after to hang in Fleda's memory as standards of
+      excellence in that sort. Nature's hand had been very kind to the place,
+      moulding the ground in beautiful style. Art had made happy use of the
+      advantage thus given her; and now what appeared was neither art nor
+      nature, but a perfection that can only spring from the hands of both.
+      Fleda's eyes were bewitched. She stood watching the rolling slopes of
+      green turf, <i>so</i> soft and lovely, and the magnificent trees, that had
+      kept their ground for ages and seen generations rise and fall before their
+      growing strength and grandeur. They were scattered here and there on the
+      lawn, and further back stood on the heights and stretched along the ridges
+      of the undulating ground, the outposts of a wood of the same growth still
+      beyond them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you like it, Elfie?" Mr. Carleton asked her the evening of the
+      first day, as he saw her for a length of time looking out gravely and
+      intently from before the hall door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think it is beautiful!" said Fleda. "The ground is a great deal
+      smoother here than it was at home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll take you to ride to-morrow," said he smiling, "and shew you rough
+      ground enough."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As you did when we came from Montepoole?" raid Fleda rather eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Would you like that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, very much,--if <i>you</i> would like it, Mr. Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very well," said he. "So it shall be."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And not a day passed during their short stay that he did not give her one
+      of those rides. He shewed her rough ground, according to his promise, but
+      Fleda still thought it did not look much like the mountains "at home." And
+      indeed unsightly roughnesses had been skilfully covered or removed; and
+      though a large part of the park, which was a very extensive one, was
+      wildly broken and had apparently been left as nature left it, the hand of
+      taste had been there; and many an unsuspected touch instead of hindering
+      had heightened both the wild and the beautiful character. Landscape
+      gardening had long been a great hobby of its owner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How far does your ground come, Mr Carleton?" inquired Fleda on one of
+      these rides, when they had travelled a good distance from home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Further than you can see, Elfie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Further than I can see!--It must be a very large farm!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is not a farm where we are now," said he;--"did you mean that?--this
+      is the park; we are almost at the edge of it on this side."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is the difference between a farm and a park?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The grounds of a farm are tilled for profit; a park is an uncultivated
+      enclosure kept merely for men and women and deer to take pleasure in."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>I</i> have taken a good deal of pleasure in it," said Fleda. "And have
+      you a farm besides, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A good many, Elfie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked surprised, and then remarked that it must be very nice to
+      have such a beautiful piece of ground just for pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She enjoyed it to the full during the few days she was there. And one
+      thing more, the grand piano in the music-room. The first evening of their
+      arrival she was drawn by the far-off sounds, and Mrs. Carleton seeing it
+      went immediately to the music-room with her. The room had no light, except
+      from the moonbeams that stole in through two glass doors which opened upon
+      a particularly private and cherished part of the grounds, in summer-time
+      full of flowers; for in the very refinement of luxury delights had been
+      crowded about this favourite apartment. Mr. Carleton was at the
+      instrument, playing. Fleda sat down quietly in one corner and
+      listened,--in a rapture of pleasure she had hardly ever known from any
+      like source. She did not think it could be greater, till after a time, in
+      a pause of the music, Mrs. Carleton asked her son to sing a particular
+      ballad, and that one was followed by two or three more. Fleda left her
+      corner, she could not contain herself, and favoured by the darkness came
+      forward and stood quite near; and if the performer bad bad light to see
+      by, he would have been gratified with the tribute paid to his power by the
+      unfeigned tears that ran down her cheeks. This pleasure was also repeated
+      from evening to evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know we set off for Paris to-morrow?" said Mrs. Carleton the last
+      evening of their stay, as Fleda came up to the door after a prolonged
+      ramble in the park, leaving Mr. Carleton with one or two gardeners at a
+      little distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes!" said Fleda, with a sigh that was more than half audible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you sorry?" said Mrs. Carleton smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I cannot be glad," said Fleda, giving a sober look over the lawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then you like Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very much!--It is a prettier place than Queechy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But we shall have you here again, dear Fleda," said Mrs. Carleton
+      restraining her smile at this, to her, very moderate complement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps not," said Fleda quietly.--"Mr. Carleton said," she added a
+      minute after with more animation, "that a park was a place for men and
+      women and deer to take pleasure in. I am sure it is for children too!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you have a pleasant ride this morning?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O very!--I always do. There isn't anything I like so well."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What, as to ride on horseback with Guy?" said Mrs. Carleton looking
+      exceedingly benignant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes,--unless--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Unless what, my dear Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Unless, perhaps,--I don't know,--I was going to say, unless perhaps to
+      hear him sing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Carleton's delight was unequivocally expressed; and she promised
+      Fleda that she should have both rides and songs there in plenty another
+      time; a promise upon which Fleda built no trust at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The short journey to Pans was soon made. The next morning Mrs. Carleton
+      making an excuse of her fatigue left Guy to end the care he had rather
+      taken upon himself by delivering his little charge into the hands of her
+      friends. So they drove to the Hotel------, Rue------, where Mr. Rossitur
+      had apartments in very handsome style. The found him alone in the saloon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ha! Carleton--come back again. Just in time--very glad to see you. And
+      who is this?--Ah, another little daughter for aunt Lucy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur, who gave them this greeting very cordially, was rather a
+      fine looking man, decidedly agreeable both in person and manner. Fleda was
+      pleasantly disappointed after what her grandfather had led her to expect.
+      There might be something of sternness in his expression; people gave him
+      credit for a peremptory, not to say imperious temper; but if truly, it
+      could not often meet with opposition. The sense and gentlemanly character
+      which marked his face and bearing had an air of smooth politeness which
+      seemed habitual. There was no want of kindness nor even of tenderness in
+      the way he drew Fleda within his arm and held her there, while he went on
+      talking to Mr. Carleton; now and then stooping his face to look in at her
+      bonnet and kiss her, which was his only welcome. He said nothing to her
+      after his first question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was too busy talking to Guy. He seemed to have a great deal to tell
+      him. There was this for him to see, and that for him to hear, and charming
+      new things which had been done or doing since Mr. Carleton left Paris. The
+      impression upon Fleda's mind after listening awhile was that the French
+      capital was a great Gallery of the Fine Arts, with a magnified likeness of
+      Mr. Carleton's music room at one end of it. She thought her uncle must be
+      most extraordinarily fond of pictures and works of art in general, and
+      must have a great love for seeing company and hearing people sing. This
+      latter taste Fleda was disposed to allow might be a very reasonable one.
+      Mr. Carleton, she observed, seemed much more cool on the whole subject.
+      But meanwhile where was aunt Lucy?--and had Mr. Rossitur forgotten the
+      little armful that he held so fast and so perseveringly? No, for here was
+      another kiss, and another look into her face, so kind that Fleda gave him
+      a piece of her heart from that time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hugh!" said Mr. Rossitur suddenly to somebody she had not seen
+      before,--"Hugh!--here is your little cousin. Take her off to your mother."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A child came forward at this bidding hardly larger than herself. He was a
+      slender graceful little figure, with nothing of the boy in his face or
+      manner; delicate as a girl, and with something almost melancholy in the
+      gentle sweetness of his countenance. Fleda's confidence was given to it on
+      the instant, which had not been the case with anything in her uncle, and
+      she yielded without reluctance the hand he took to obey his father's
+      command. Before two steps had been taken however, she suddenly broke away
+      from him and springing to Mr. Carleton's side silently laid her hand in
+      his. She made no answer whatever to a ligit word or two of kindness that
+      he spoke just for her ear. She listened with downcast eyes and a lip that
+      he saw was too unsteady to be trusted, and then after a moment more,
+      without looking, pulled away her hand and followed her cousin. Hugh did
+      not once get a sight of her face on the way to his mother's room, but
+      owing to her exceeding efforts and quiet generalship he never guessed the
+      cause. There was nothing in her face to raise suspicion when he reached
+      the door and opening it announced her with,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mother, here's cousin Fleda come."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda had seen her aunt before, though several years back, and not long
+      enough to get acquainted with her. But no matter;--it was her mother's
+      sister sitting there, whose face gave her so lovely a welcome at that
+      speech of Hugh's, whose arms were stretched out so eagerly towards her;
+      and springing to them as to a very haven of rest Fleda wept on her bosom
+      those delicious tears that are only shed where the heart is at home. And
+      even before they were dried the ties were knit that bound her to her new
+      sphere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who came with you, dear Fleda?" said Mrs. Rossitur then. "Is Mrs.
+      Carleton here? I must go and thank her for bringing you to me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Mr</i>. Carleton is here," said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I must go and thank him then. Jump down, dear Fleda--I'll be back in a
+      minute."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda got off her lap, and stood looking in a kind of enchanted maze,
+      while her aunt hastily arranged her hair at the glass. Looking, while
+      fancy and memory were making strong the net in which her heart was caught.
+      She was trying to see something of her mother in one who had shared her
+      blood and her affection so nearly. A miniature of that mother was left to
+      Fleda, and she had studied it till she could hardly persuade herself that
+      she had not some recollection of the original; and now she thought she
+      caught a precious shadow of something like it in her aunt Lucy. Not in
+      those pretty bright eyes which had looked through kind tears so lovingly
+      upon her; but in the graceful ringlets about the temples, the delicate
+      contour of the face, and a something, Fleda could only have said it was "a
+      something," about the mouth <i>when at rest</i>, the shadow of her
+      mother's image rejoiced her heart. Rather that faint shadow of the loved
+      lost one for little Fleda, than any other form or combination of beauty on
+      earth. As she stood fascinated, watching the movements of her aunt's light
+      figure, Fleda drew a long breath with which went off the whole burden of
+      doubt and anxiety that had lain upon her mind ever since the journey
+      began. She had not known it was there, but she felt it go. Yet even when
+      that sigh of relief was breathed, and while fancy and feeling were weaving
+      their rich embroidery into the very tissue of Fleda's happiness, most
+      persons would have seen merely that the child looked very sober, and have
+      thought probably that she felt very tired and strange. Perhaps Mrs.
+      Rossitur thought so, for again tenderly kissing her before she left the
+      room she told Hugh to take off her things and make her feel at home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh upon this made Fleda sit down and proceeded to untie her tippet
+      strings and take off her coat with an air of delicate tenderness which
+      shewed he had great pleasure in his task, and which made Fleda take a good
+      deal of pleasure in it too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you tired, cousin Fleda?" said he gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda. "O no."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Charlton said you were tired on board ship."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wasn't tired," said Fleda, in not a little surprise; "I liked it very
+      much."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then maybe I mistook. I know Charlton said <i>he</i> was tired, and I
+      thought he said you were too. You know my brother Charlton, don't you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you glad to come to Paris?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am glad now," said Fleda. "I wasn't glad before."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very glad," said Hugh. "I think you will like it. We didn't know you
+      were coming till two or three days ago when Charlton got here. Do you like
+      to take walks?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, very much."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Father and mother will take us delightful walks in the Tuileries, the
+      gardens you know, and the Champs Elys&eacute;es, and Versailles, and the
+      Boulevards, and ever so many places; and it will be a great deal
+      pleasanter now you are here. Do you know French?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then you'll have to learn. I'll help you if you will let me. It is very
+      easy. Did you get my last letter?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Fleda,--"the last one I had came with one of aunt
+      Lucy's, telling me about Mrs. Carleton--I got it just before "--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alas! before what? Fleda suddenly remembered, and was stopped short. From
+      all the strange scenes and interests which lately had whirled her along,
+      her spirit leaped back with strong yearning recollection to her old home
+      and her old ties; and such a rain of tears witnessed the dearness of what
+      she had lost and the tenderness of the memory that had let them slip for a
+      moment, that Hugh was as much distressed as startled. With great
+      tenderness and touching delicacy he tried to soothe her and at the same
+      time, though guessing to find out what was the matter, lest he should make
+      a mistake.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just before what?" said he, laying his hand caressingly on his little
+      cousin's shoulder;--"Don't grieve so, dear Fleda!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was only just before grandpa died," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh had known of that before, though like her he had forgotten it for a
+      moment. A little while his feeling was too strong to permit any further
+      attempt at condolence; but as he saw Fleda grow quiet he took courage to
+      speak again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Was he a good man?" he asked softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh yes!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then," said Hugh, "you know he is happy now, Fleda. If he loved Jesus
+      Christ he is gone to be with him. That ought to make you glad as well as
+      sorry."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked up, though tears were streaming yet, to give that full happy
+      answer of the eye that no words could do. This was consolation and
+      sympathy. The two children had a perfect understanding of each other from
+      that time forward; a fellowship that never knew a break nor a weakening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur found on her return that Hugh had obeyed her charge to the
+      letter. He had made Fleda feel at home. They were sitting close together,
+      Hugh's hand affectionately clasping hers, and he was holding forth on some
+      subject with a gracious politeness that many of his elders might have
+      copied; while Fleda listened and assented with entire satisfaction. The
+      rest of the morning she passed in her aunt's arms; drinking draughts of
+      pleasure from those dear bright eyes; taking in the balm of gentlest words
+      of love, and soft kisses, every one of which was felt at the bottom of
+      Fleda's heart, and the pleasure of talking over her young sorrows with one
+      who could feel them all and answer with tears as well as words of
+      sympathy. And Hugh stood by the while looking at his little orphan cousin
+      as if she might have dropped from the clouds into his mother's lap, a rare
+      jewel or delicate flower, but much more delicate and precious than they or
+      any other possible gift.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh and Fleda dined alone. For as he informed her his father never would
+      have children at the dinner-table when he had company; and Mr. and Mrs.
+      Carleton and other people were to be there to-day, Fleda made no remark on
+      the subject, by word or look, but she thought none the less. She thought
+      it was a very mean fashion. <i>She</i> not come to the table when
+      strangers were there! And who would enjoy them more? When Mr. Rossitur and
+      Mr Carleton had dined with her grandfather, had she not taken as much
+      pleasure in their society, and in the whole thing, as any other one of the
+      party? And at Carleton, had she not several times dined with a tableful,
+      and been unspeakably amused to watch the different manners and
+      characteristics of people who were strange to her? However, Mr. Rossitur
+      had other notions. So she and Hugh had their dinner in aunt Lucy's
+      dressing-room, by themselves; and a very nice dinner it was, Fleda
+      thought; and Rosaline, Mrs. Rossitur's French maid, was well affected and
+      took admirable care of them. Indeed before the close of the day Rosaline
+      privately informed her mistress, "qu'elle serait ent&circ;t&eacute;e s&ucirc;rement
+      de cet enfant dans trois jours;" and "que son regard vraiment lui serrait
+      le coeur." And Hugh was excellent company, failing all other, and did the
+      honours of the table with the utmost thoughtfulness, and amused Fleda the
+      whole time with accounts of Paris and what they would do and what she
+      should see; and how his sister Marion was at school at a convent, and what
+      kind of a place a convent was; and how he himself always staid at home and
+      learned of his mother and his father; "or by himself," he said, "just as
+      it happened;" and he hoped they would keep Fleda at home too. So Fleda
+      hoped exceedingly, but this stern rule about the dining had made her feel
+      a little shy of her uncle; she thought perhaps he was not kind and
+      indulgent to children like her aunt Lucy; and if he said she must go to a
+      convent she would not dare to ask him to let her stay. The next time she
+      saw him however, she was obliged to change her opinion again, in part; for
+      he was very kind and indulgent, both to her and Hugh; and more than that
+      he was very amusing. He shewed her pictures, and told her new and
+      interesting things; and finding that she listened eagerly he seemed
+      pleased to prolong her pleasure, even at the expense of a good deal of his
+      own time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur was a man of cultivated mind and very refined and fastidious
+      taste. He lived for the pleasures of Art and Literature and the society
+      where these are valued. For this, and not without some secret love of
+      display, he lived in Paris; not extravagant in his pleasures, nor silly in
+      his ostentation, but leading, like a gentleman, as worthy and rational a
+      life as a man can lead who lives only to himself, with no further thought
+      than to enjoy the passing hours. Mr. Rossitur enjoyed them elegantly, and
+      for a man of the world, moderately, bestowing however few of those
+      precious hours upon his children. It was his maxim that they should be
+      kept out of the way whenever their presence might by any chance interfere
+      with the amusements of their elders; and this maxim, a good one certainly
+      in some hands, was in his reading of it a very broad one. Still when he
+      did take time to give his family he was a delightful companion to those of
+      them who could understand him. If they shewed no taste for sensible
+      pleasure he had no patience with them nor desire of their company. Report
+      had done him no wrong in giving him a stern temper; but this almost never
+      came out in actual exercise; Fleda knew it only from an occasional hint
+      now and then, and by her childish intuitive reading of the lines it had
+      drawn round the mouth and brow. It had no disagreeable bearing on his
+      everyday life and manner; and the quiet fact probably served but to
+      heighten the love and reverence in which his family held him very high.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur did once moot the question whether Fleda should not join
+      Marion at her convent. But his wife looked very grave and said that she
+      was too tender and delicate a little thing to be trusted to the hands of
+      strangers; Hugh pleaded, and argued that she might share all his lessons;
+      and Fleda's own face pleaded more powerfully. There was something
+      appealing in its extreme delicacy and purity which seemed to call for
+      shelter and protection from every rough breath of the world; and Mr.
+      Rossitur was easily persuaded to let her remain in the stronghold of home.
+      Hugh had never quitted it. Neither father nor mother ever thought of such
+      a thing. He was the cherished idol of the whole family. Always a delicate
+      child, always blameless in life and behaviour, his loveliness of mind and
+      person, his affectionateness, the winning sweetness that was about him
+      like a halo, and the slight tenure by which they seemed to hold him, had
+      wrought to bind the hearts of father and mother to this child, as it were,
+      with the very life-strings of both. Not his mother was more gentle with
+      Hugh than his much sterner father. And now little Fleda, sharing somewhat
+      of Hugh's peculiar claims upon their tenderness and adding another of her
+      own, was admitted, not to the same place in their hearts,--that could not
+      be,--but to their honour be it spoken, to the same place in all outward
+      shew of thought and feeling. Hugh had nothing that Fleda did not have,
+      even to the time, care, and caresses of his parents. And not Hugh rendered
+      them a more faithful return of devoted affection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus09.jpg"><img src="images/illus09.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="The children were always together."
+      title="The children were always together." /><br /> The children were always
+      together.</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once made easy on the question of school, which was never seriously
+      stirred again, Fleda's life became very happy. It was easy to make her
+      happy; affection and sympathy would have done it almost anywhere; but in
+      Paris she had much more; and after time had softened the sorrow she
+      brought with her, no bird ever found existence less of a burden, nor sang
+      more light-heartedly along its life. In her aunt she had all but the name
+      of a mother; in her uncle, with kindness and affection, she had amusement,
+      interest, and improvement; in Hugh everything;--love, confidence,
+      sympathy, society, help; their tastes, opinions, pursuits, went hand in
+      hand. The two children were always together. Fleda's spirits were brighter
+      than Hugh's, and her intellectual tastes stronger and more universal. That
+      might be as much from difference of physical as of mental constitution.
+      Hugh's temperament led him somewhat to melancholy, and to those studies
+      and pleasures which best side with subdued feeling and delicate nerves.
+      Fleda's nervous system was of the finest too, but, in short, she was as
+      like a bird as possible. Perfect health, which yet a slight thing was
+      enough to shake to the foundation;--joyous spirits, which a look could
+      quell;--happy energies, which a harsh hand might easily crush for ever.
+      Well for little Fleda that so tender a plant was permitted to unfold in so
+      nicely tempered an atmosphere. A cold wind would soon have killed it.
+      Besides all this there were charming studies to be gone through every day
+      with Hugh; some for aunt Lucy to hear, some for masters and mistresses.
+      There were amusing walks in the Boulevards, and delicious pleasure taking
+      in the gardens of Paris, and a new world of people and manners and things
+      and histories for the little American. And despite her early rustic
+      experience Fleda had from nature an indefeasible taste for the elegancies
+      of life; it suited her well to see all about her, in dress, in furniture,
+      in various appliances, as commodious and tasteful as wealth and refinement
+      could contrive it; and she very soon knew what was right in each kind.
+      There were now and then most gleeful excursions in the environs of Paris,
+      when she and Hugh found in earth and air a world of delights more than
+      they could tell anybody but each other. And at home, what peaceful times
+      they two had,--what endless conversations, discussions, schemes,
+      air-journeys of memory and fancy, backward and forward; what sociable
+      dinners alone, and delightful evenings with Mr. and Mrs. Rossitur in the
+      saloon when nobody or only a very few people were there; how pleasantly in
+      those evenings the foundations were laid of a strong and enduring love for
+      the works of art, painted, sculptured, or engraven, what a multitude of
+      curious and excellent bits of knowledge Fleda's ears picked up from the
+      talk of different people. They were capital ears; what they caught they
+      never let fall. In the course of the year her gleanings amounted to more
+      than many another person's harvest.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="14"></a>Chapter XIV.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Heav'n bless thee;<br /> Thou hast the sweetest face I ever look'd on.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Shakspeare.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      One of the greatest of Fleda's pleasures was when Mr. Carleton came to
+      take her out with him. He did that often. Fleda only wished he would have
+      taken Hugh too, but somehow he never did. Nothing but that was wanting to
+      make the pleasure of those times perfect. Knowing that she saw the <i>common
+      things</i> in other company, Guy was at the pains to vary the amusement
+      when she went with him. Instead of going to Versailles or St. Cloud, he
+      would take her long delightful drives into the country and shew her some
+      old or interesting place that nobody else went to see. Often there was a
+      history belonging to the spot, which Fleda listened to with the delight of
+      eye and fancy at once. In the city, where they more frequently walked,
+      still he shewed her what she would perhaps have seen under no other
+      guidance. He made it his business to give her pleasure; and understanding
+      the inquisitive active little spirit he had to do with he went where his
+      own tastes would hardly have led him. The Quai aux Fleurs was often
+      visited, but also the Halle aux Bl&eacute;s, the great Halle aux Vins, the
+      Jardin des Plantes, and the March&eacute; des Innocens. Guy even took the
+      trouble, more for her sake than his own, to go to the latter place once
+      very early in the morning, when the market-bell had not two hours sounded,
+      while the interest and prettiness of the scene were yet in their full
+      life. Hugh was in company this time, and the delight of both children was
+      beyond words, as it would have been beyond anybody's patience that had not
+      a strong motive to back it. They never discovered that Mr. Carleton was in
+      a hurry, as indeed he was not. They bargained for fruit with any number of
+      people, upon all sorts of inducements, and to an extent of which they had
+      no competent notion, but Hugh had his mother's purse, and Fleda was
+      skilfully commissioned to purchase what she pleased for Mrs. Carleton.
+      Verily the two children that morning bought pleasure, not peaches. Fancy
+      and Benevolence held the purse strings, and Economy did not even look on.
+      They revelled too, Fleda especially, amidst the bright pictures of the
+      odd, the new, and the picturesque, and the varieties of character and
+      incident, that were displayed around them; even till the country people
+      began to go away and the scene to lose its charm. It never lost it in
+      memory; and many a time in after life Hugh and Fleda recurred to something
+      that was seen or done "that morning when we bought fruit at the Innocens."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides these scenes of everyday life, which interested and amused Fleda
+      to the last degree, Mr. Carleton shewed her many an obscure part of Paris
+      where deeds of daring and of blood had been, and thrilled the little
+      listener's ear with histories of the Past. He judged her rightly. She
+      would rather at any time have gone to walk with him, than with anybody
+      else to see any show that could be devised. His object in all this was in
+      the first place to give her pleasure, and in the second place to draw out
+      her mind into free communion with his own, which he knew could only be
+      done by talking sense to her. He succeeded as he wished. Lost in the
+      interest of the scenes he presented to her eye and mind, she forgot
+      everything else and shewed him herself; precisely what he wanted to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was strange that a young man, an admired man of fashion, a flattered
+      favourite of the gay and great world, and furthermore a reserved and proud
+      repeller of almost all who sought his intimacy, should seek and delight in
+      the society of a little child. His mother would have wondered if she had
+      known it. Mrs. Rossitur did marvel that even Fleda should have so won upon
+      the cold and haughty young Englishman; and her husband said he probably
+      chose to have Fleda with him because he could make up his mind to like
+      nobody else. A remark which perhaps arose from the utter failure of every
+      attempt to draw him and Charlton nearer together. But Mr. Rossitur was
+      only half right. The reason lay deeper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton had admitted the truth of Christianity, upon what he
+      considered sufficient grounds, and would now have steadily fought for it,
+      as he would for anything else that he believed to be truth. But there he
+      stopped. He had not discovered nor tried to discover whether the truth of
+      Christianity imposed any obligation upon him. He had cast off his
+      unbelief, and looked upon it now as a singular folly. But his belief was
+      almost as vague and as fruitless as his infidelity had been. Perhaps, a
+      little, his bitter dissatisfaction with the world and human things, or
+      rather his despondent view of them, was mitigated. If there was, as he now
+      held, a Supreme Orderer of events, it might be, and it was rational to
+      suppose there would be, in the issues of time, an entire change wrought in
+      the disordered and dishonoured state of his handiwork. There might be a
+      remedial system somewhere,--nay, it might be in the Bible; he meant to
+      look some day. But that <i>he</i> had anything to do with that
+      change--that the working of the remedial system called for hands--that <i>his</i>
+      had any charge in the matter had never entered into his imagination or
+      stirred his conscience. He was living his old life at Paris, with his old
+      dissatisfaction, perhaps a trifle less bitter. He was seeking pleasure in
+      whatever art, learning, literature, refinement, and luxury can do for a
+      man who has them all at command; but there was something within him that
+      spurned this ignoble existence and called for higher aims and worthier
+      exertion. He was not vicious, he never had been vicious, or, as somebody
+      else said, his vices were all refined vices; but a life of mere
+      self-indulgence although pursued without self-satisfaction, is constantly
+      lowering the standard and weakening the forces of virtue,--lessening the
+      whole man. He felt it so; and to leave his ordinary scenes and occupations
+      and lose a morning with little Fleda was a freshening of his better
+      nature; it was like breathing pure air after the fever heat of a sick
+      room; it was like hearing the birds sing after the meaningless jabber of
+      Bedlam. Mr. Carleton indeed did not put the matter quite so strongly to
+      himself. He called Fleda his good angel. He did not exactly know that the
+      office this good angel performed was simply to hold a candle to his
+      conscience. For conscience was not by any means dead in him; it only
+      wanted light to see by. When he turned from the gay and corrupt world in
+      which he lived, where the changes were rung incessantly upon
+      self-interest, falsehood, pride, and the various more or less refined
+      forms of sensuality, and when he looked upon that pure bright little face,
+      so free from selfishness, those clear eyes so innocent of evil, the
+      peaceful brow under which a thought of double-dealing had never hid, Mr.
+      Carleton felt himself in a healthier region. Here as elsewhere, he
+      honoured and loved the image of truth; in the broad sense of truth;--that
+      which suits the perfect standard of right. But his pleasure in this case
+      was invariably mixed with a slight feeling of self-reproach; and it was
+      this hardly recognised stir of his better nature, this clearing of his
+      mental eye-sight under the light of a bright example, that made him call
+      the little torch-bearer his good angel. If this were truth, this purity,
+      uprightness, and singleness of mind, as conscience said it was, where was
+      he? how far wandering from his beloved Idol!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One other feeling saddened the pleasure he had in her society--a belief
+      that the ground of it could not last. "If she could grow up so!"--he said
+      to himself. "But it is impossible. A very few years, and all that clear
+      sunshine of the mind will be overcast;--there is not a cloud now!"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under the working of these thoughts Mr. Carleton sometimes forgot to talk
+      to his little charge, and would walk for a length of way by her side
+      wrapped up in sombre musings. Fleda never disturbed him then, but waited
+      contentedly and patiently for him to come out of them, with her old
+      feeling wondering what he could be thinking of and wishing he were as
+      happy as she. But he never left her very long; he was sure to waive his
+      own humour and give her all the graceful kind attention which nobody else
+      could bestow so well. Nobody understood and appreciated it better than
+      Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day, some months after they had been in Paris, they were sitting in
+      the Place de la Concorde, Mr. Carleton was in one of these thinking fits.
+      He had been giving Fleda a long detail of the scenes that had taken place
+      in that spot--a history of it from the time when it had lain an unsightly
+      waste;--such a graphic lively account as he knew well how to give. The
+      absorbed interest with which she had lost everything else in what he was
+      saying had given him at once reward and motive enough as he went on.
+      Standing by his side, with one little hand confidingly resting on his
+      knee, she gazed alternately into his face and towards the broad
+      highly-adorned square by the side of which they had placed themselves, and
+      where it was hard to realize that the ground had once been soaked in blood
+      while madness and death filled the air; and her changing face like a
+      mirror gave him back the reflection of the times he held up to her view.
+      And still standing there in the same attitude after he had done she had
+      been looking out towards the square in a fit of deep meditation. Mr.
+      Carleton had forgotten her for awhile in his own thoughts, and then the
+      sight of the little gloved hand upon his knee brought him back again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are you musing about, Elfie, dear?" he said cheerfully, taking the
+      hand in one of his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda gave a swift glance into his face, as if to see whether it would be
+      safe for her to answer his question; a kind of exploring look, in which
+      her eyes often acted as scouts for her tongue. Those she met pledged their
+      faith for her security; yet Fleda's look went back to the square and then
+      again to his face in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you like living in Paris?" said he. "You should know by this
+      time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I like it very much indeed," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought you would."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I like Queechy better though," she went on gravely, her eyes turning
+      again to the square.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Like Queechy better! Were you thinking of Queechy just now when I spoke
+      to you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh no!"--with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Were you going over all those horrors I have been distressing you with?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda;--"I <i>was</i> thinking of them, awhile ago."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What then?" said he pleasantly. "You were looking so sober I should like
+      to know how near your thoughts were to mine."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was thinking," said Fleda, gravely, and a little unwillingly, but Guy's
+      manner was not to be withstood,--"I was wishing I could be like the
+      disciple whom Jesus loved."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton let her see none of the surprise he felt at this answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Was there one more loved than the rest?" "Yes--the Bible calls him 'the
+      disciple whom Jesus loved.' That was John."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why was he preferred above the others?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know. I suppose he was more gentle and good than the others, and
+      loved Jesus more. I think aunt Miriam said so when I asked her once."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton thought Fleda had not far to seek for the fulfilment of her
+      wish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But how in the world, Elfie, did you work round to this gentle and good
+      disciple from those scenes of blood you set out with?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why," said Elfie,--"I was thinking how unhappy and bad people are,
+      especially people here, I think; and how much must be done before they
+      will all be brought right;--and then I was thinking of the work Jesus gave
+      his disciples to do; and so I wished I could be like <i>that</i>
+      disciple.--Hugh and I were talking about it this morning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is the work he gave them to do?" said Mr. Carleton, more and more
+      interested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why," said Fleda, lifting her gentle wistful eyes to his and then looking
+      away,--"to bring everybody to be good and happy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And how in the world are they to do that?" said Mr. Carleton, astonished
+      to see his own problem quietly handled by this child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By telling them about Jesus Christ, and getting them to believe and love
+      him," said Fleda, glancing at him again,--"and living so beautifully that
+      people cannot help believing them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That last is an important clause," said Mr. Carleton thoughtfully. "But
+      suppose people will not hear when they are spoken to, Elfie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Some will, at any rate," said Fleda,--"and by and by everybody will."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you know?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because the Bible says so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you sure of that, Elfie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why yes, Mr. Carleton--God has promised that the world shall be full of
+      good people, and then they will be all happy. I wish it was now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But if that be so, Elfie, God can make them all good without our help?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, but I suppose he chooses to do it with our help, Mr. Carleton," said
+      Fleda with equal na&iuml;vet&eacute; and gravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But is not this you speak of," said he, half smiling,--"rather the
+      business of clergymen? you have nothing to do with it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda,--"everybody has something to do with it, the Bible says
+      so; ministers must do it in their way and other people in other ways;
+      everybody has his own work. Don't you remember the parable of the ten
+      talents, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton was silent for a minute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not know the Bible quite as well as you do, Elfie," he said
+      then,--"nor as I ought to do."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elfie's only answer was by a look somewhat like that he well remembered on
+      shipboard he had thought was angel-like,--a look of gentle sorrowful
+      wistfulness which she did not venture to put into words. It had not for
+      that the less power. But he did not choose to prolong the conversation.
+      They rose up and began to walk homeward, Elfie thinking with all the
+      warmth of her little heart that she wished very much Mr. Carleton knew the
+      Bible better; divided between him and "that disciple" whom she and Hugh
+      had been talking about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose you are very busy now, Elfie," observed her companion, when
+      they had walked the length of several squares in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O yes!" said Fleda. "Hugh and I are as busy as we can be. We are busy
+      every minute."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Except when you are on some chase after pleasure?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well," said Fleda laughing,--"that is a kind of business; and all the
+      business is pleasure too. I didn't mean that we were always busy about <i>work</i>.
+      O Mr. Carleton we had such a nice time the day before yesterday!"--And she
+      went on to give him the history of a very successful chase after pleasure
+      which they had made to St. Cloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And yet you like Queechy better?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," said Fleda, with a gentle steadiness peculiar to herself,--if I had
+      aunt Lucy and Hugh and uncle Rolf there and everybody that I care for, I
+      should like it a great deal better."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Unspotted" yet, he thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton," said Fleda presently,--"do you play and sing every day
+      here in Paris?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," said he smiling,--"about every day. Why?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was thinking how pleasant it was at your house, in England."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Has Carleton the honour of rivalling Queechy in your liking?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I haven't lived there so long, you know," said Fleda. "I dare say it
+      would if I had. I think it is quite as pretty a place."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton smiled with a very pleased expression. Truth and politeness
+      had joined hands in her answer with a child's grace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He brought Fleda to her own door and there was leaving her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stop!--O Mr. Carleton," cried Fleda, "come in just for one minute--I want
+      to shew you something."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made no resistance to that. She led him to the saloon, where it
+      happened that nobody was, and repeating "One minute!"--rushed out of the
+      room. In less than that time she came running back with a beautiful
+      half-blown bud of a monthly rose in her hand, and in her face such a bloom
+      of pleasure and eagerness as more than rivalled it. The rose was fairly
+      eclipsed. She put the bud quietly but with a most satisfied air of
+      affection into Mr. Carleton's hand. It had come from a little tree which
+      he had given her on one of their first visits to the Quai aux Fleurs. She
+      had had the choice of what she liked best, and had characteristically
+      taken a flourishing little rose-bush that as yet shewed nothing but leaves
+      and green buds; partly because she would have the pleasure of seeing its
+      beauties come forward, and partly because she thought having no flowers it
+      would not cost much. The former reason however was all that she had given
+      to Mr. Carleton's remonstrances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is all this, Elfie?" said he. "Have you been robbing your rose
+      tree?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Elfie;--"there are plenty more buds! Isn't it lovely? This is
+      the first one. They've been a great while coming out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His eye went from the rose to her; he thought the one was a mere emblem of
+      the other. Fleda was usually very quiet in her demonstrations; it was as
+      if a little green bud had suddenly burst into a flush of loveliness; and
+      he saw, it was as plain as possible, that good-will to him had been the
+      moving power. He was so much struck and moved that his thanks, though as
+      usual perfect in their kind, were far shorter and graver than he would
+      have given if he had felt less. He turned away from the house, his mind
+      full of the bright unsullied purity and single-hearted good-will that had
+      looked out of that beaming little face; he seemed to see them again in the
+      flower held in his hand, and he saw nothing else as he went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton preached to himself all the way home, and his text was a
+      rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Laugh who will. To many it may seem ridiculous, and to most minds it would
+      have been impossible, but to a nature very finely wrought and highly
+      trained, many a voice that grosser senses cannot hear comes with an
+      utterance as clear as it is sweet-spoken; many a touch that coarser nerves
+      cannot heed reaches the springs of the deeper life; many a truth that
+      duller eyes have no skill to see shews its fair features, hid away among
+      the petals of a rose, or peering out between the wings of a butterfly, or
+      reflected in a bright drop of dew. The material is but a veil for the
+      spiritual; but then eyes must be quickened, or the veil becomes an
+      impassable cloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That particular rose was to Mr. Carleton's eye a most perfect emblem and
+      representative of its little giver. He traced out the points of
+      resemblance as he went along. The delicacy and character of refinement for
+      which that kind of rose is remarkable above many of its more superb
+      kindred; a refinement essential and unalterable by decay or otherwise, as
+      true a characteristic of the child as of the flower; a delicacy that
+      called for gentle handling and tender cherishing;--the sweetness, rare
+      indeed, but asserting itself as it were timidly, at least with equally
+      rare modesty,--the very style of the beauty, that with all its loveliness
+      would not startle nor even catch the eye among its more showy neighbours;
+      and the breath of purity that seemed to own no kindred with earth, nor
+      liability to infection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he went on with his musing, and drawing out this fair character from
+      the type before him, the feeling of <i>contrast</i>, that he had known
+      before, pressed upon Mr. Carleton's mind, the feeling of self-reproach,
+      and the bitter wish that he could be again what he once had been,
+      something like this. How changed now he seemed to himself--not a point of
+      likeness left. How much less honourable, how much less worth, how much
+      less dignified, than that fair innocent child. How much better a part she
+      was acting in life--what an influence she was exerting,--as pure, as
+      sweet-breathed, and as unobtrusive, as the very rose in his hand. And
+      he--doing no good to an earthly creature and losing himself by inches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He reached his room, put the flower in a glass on the table, and walked up
+      and down before it. It had come to a struggle between the sense of what
+      was and the passionate wish for what might have been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is late, sir," said his servant opening the door,--"and you were--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not going out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This evening, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--not at all to-day. Spenser!--I don't wish to see any body--let no one
+      come near me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The servant retired and Guy went on with his walk and his meditations,
+      looking back over his life and reviewing, with a wiser ken now, the steps
+      by which he had come. He compared the selfish disgust with which he had
+      cast off the world with the very different spirit of little Fleda's look
+      upon it that morning, the useless, self-pleasing, vain life he was
+      leading, with her wish to be like the beloved disciple and do something to
+      heal the troubles of those less happy than herself. He did not very well
+      comprehend the grounds of her feeling or reasoning, but he began to see,
+      mistily, that his own had been mistaken and wild.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His steps grew slower, his eye more intent, his brow quiet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is right and I am wrong," he thought. "She is by far the nobler
+      creature--worth, many such as I. <i>Like her</i> I cannot be--I cannot
+      regain what I have lost,--I cannot undo what years have done. But I can be
+      something other than I am! If there be a system of remedy, as there well
+      may, it may as well take effect on myself first. She says everybody has
+      his work, I believe her. It must in the nature of things be so. I will
+      make it my business to find out what mine is, and when I have made that
+      sure I will give myself to the doing of it. An Allwise Governor must look
+      for service of me. He shall have it. Whatever my life be, it shall be to
+      some end. If not what I would, what I can. If not the purity of the rose,
+      that of tempered steel!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton walked his room for three hours; then rung for his servant
+      and ordered him to prepare everything for leaving Paris the second day
+      thereafter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning over their coffee he told his mother of his purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Leave Paris!--To-morrow!--My dear Guy, that is rather a sudden notice."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No mother--for I am going alone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His mother immediately bent an anxious and somewhat terrified look upon
+      him. The frank smile she met put half her suspicions out of her head at
+      once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is the matter?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing at all--if by 'matter' you mean mischief."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are not in difficulty with those young men again?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No mother," said he coolly. "I am in difficulty with no one but myself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "With yourself! But why will you not let me go with you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My business will go on better if I am quite alone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What business?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Only to settle this question with myself," said he smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But Guy! you are enigmatical this morning. Is it the question that of all
+      others I wish to see settled?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No mother," said he laughing and colouring a little,--"I don't want
+      another half to take care of till I have this one under management."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't understand you," said Mrs. Carleton "There is no hidden reason
+      under all this that you are keeping from me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I won't say that. But there is none that need give you the least
+      uneasiness. There are one or two matters I want to study out--I cannot do
+      it here, so I am going where I shall be free."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think I shall pass the summer between Switzerland and Germany."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And when and where shall I meet you again?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think at home;--I cannot say when."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "At home!" said his mother with a brightening face. "Then you are
+      beginning to be tired of wandering at last?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not precisely, mother,--rather out of humour."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shall be glad of anything," said his mother, gazing at him admiringly,
+      "that brings you home again, Guy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bring me home a better man, I hope, mother," said he kissing her as he
+      left the room. "I will see you again by and by."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'A better man!'" thought Mrs. Carleton, as she sat with full eyes, the
+      image of her son filling the place where his presence had been;--"I would
+      be willing never to see him better and be sure of his never being worse!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton's farewell visit found Mr. and Mrs. Rossitur not at home.
+      They had driven out early into the country to fetch Marion from her
+      convent for some holiday. Fleda came alone into the saloon to receive him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have your rose in safe keeping, Elfie," he said. "It has done me more
+      good than ever a rose did before."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda smiled an innocently pleased smile. But her look changed when he
+      added,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have come to tell you so and to bid you good-bye."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you going away, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you will be back soon?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, Elfie,--I do not know that I shall ever come back."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke gravely, more gravely than he was used; and Fleda's acuteness saw
+      that there was some solid reason for this sudden determination. Her face
+      changed sadly, but she was silent, her eyes never wavering from those that
+      read hers with such gentle intelligence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will be satisfied to have me go, Elfie, when I tell you that I am
+      going on business which I believe to be duty. Nothing else takes me away.
+      I am going to try to do right," said he smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elfie could not answer the smile. She wanted to ask whether she should
+      never see him again, and there was another thought upon her tongue too;
+      but her lip trembled and she said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shall miss my good fairy," Mr. Carleton went on lightly;--"I don't know
+      how I shall do without her. If your wand was long enough to reach so far I
+      would ask you to touch me now and then, Elfie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Elfie could not stand it. Her head sank. She knew she had a wand that
+      could touch him, and well and gratefully she resolved that its light
+      blessing should "now and then" rest on his head; but he did not understand
+      that; he was talking, whether lightly or seriously, and Elfie knew it was
+      a little of both,--he was talking of wanting her help, and was ignorant of
+      the help that alone could avail him. "Oh that he knew but that!"--What
+      with this feeling and sorrow together the child's distress was exceeding
+      great; and the tokens of grief in one so accustomed to hide them were the
+      more painful to see. Mr. Carleton drew the sorrowing little creature
+      within his arm and endeavoured with a mixture of kindness and lightness in
+      his tone to cheer her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shall often remember you, dear Elfie," he said;--"I shall keep your
+      rose always and take it with me wherever I go.--You must not make it too
+      hard for me to quit Paris--you are glad to have me go on such an errand,
+      are you not?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She presently commanded herself, bade her tears wait till another time as
+      usual, and trying to get rid of those that covered her face, asked him,
+      "What errand?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have been thinking of what we were talking of yesterday, Elfie," he
+      said at length. "I am going to try to discover my duty, and then to do
+      it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda at that clasped his hand, and squeezing it in both hers bent
+      down her little head over it to hide her face and the tears that streamed
+      again. He hardly knew how to understand or what to say to her. He half
+      suspected that there were depths in that childish mind beyond his
+      fathoming. He was not however left to wait long. Fleda, though she might
+      now and then be surprised into shewing it, never allowed her sorrow of any
+      kind to press upon the notice or the time of others. She again checked
+      herself and dried her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is nobody else in Paris that will be so sorry for my leaving it,"
+      said Mr. Carleton, half tenderly and half pleasantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is nobody else that has so much cause," said Elfie, near bursting
+      out again, but she restrained herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you will not come here again, Mr. Carleton?" she said after a few
+      minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not say that--it is possible--if I do, it will be to see you,
+      Elfie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A shadow of a smile passed over her face at that. It was gone instantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My mother will not leave Paris yet," he went on,--"you will see her
+      often."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he saw that Fleda was thinking of something else; she scarce seemed to
+      hear him. She was thinking of something that troubled her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton--" she began, and her colour changed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Speak, Elfie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her colour changed again. "Mr. Carleton--will you be displeased if I say
+      something?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you know me better than to ask me that, Elfie?" he said gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I want to ask you something,--if you won't mind my saying it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is it?" said he, reading in her face that a request was behind. "I
+      will do it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyes sparkled, but she seemed to have some difficulty in going on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will do it, whatever it is," he said watching her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you wait for one moment, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Half an hour."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She sprang away, her face absolutely flashing pleasure through her tears.
+      It was much soberer, and again doubtful and changing colour, when a few
+      minutes afterwards she came back with a book in her hand. With a striking
+      mixture of timidity, modesty, and eagerness in her countenance she came
+      forward, and putting the little volume, which was her own Bible, into Mr.
+      Carleton's hands said under her breath, "Please read it." She did not
+      venture to look up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw what the book was; and then taking the gentle hand which had given
+      it, he kissed it two or three times. If it had been a princess's he could
+      not with more respect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have my promise, Elfie," he said. "I need not repeat it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised her eyes and gave him a look so grateful, so loving, so happy,
+      that it dwelt for ever in his remembrance. A moment after it had faded,
+      and she stood still where he had left her, listening to his footsteps as
+      they went down the stairs. She heard the last of them, and then sank upon
+      her knees by a chair and burst into a passion of tears. Their time was now
+      and she let them come. It was not only the losing a loved and pleasant
+      friend, it was not only the stirring of sudden and disagreeable
+      excitement;--poor Elfie was crying for her Bible. It had been her father's
+      own--it was filled with his marks--it was precious to her above price--and
+      Elfie cried with all her heart for the loss of it. She had done what she
+      had on the spur of the emergency--she was satisfied she had done right;
+      she would not take it back if she could; but not the less her Bible was
+      gone, and the pages that loved eyes had looked upon were for hers to look
+      upon no more. Her very heart was wrung that she should have parted with
+      it,--and yet,--what could she do?--It was as bad as the parting with Mr.
+      Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That agony was over, and even that was shortened, for "Hugh would find out
+      that she had been crying." Hours had passed, and the tears were dried, and
+      the little face was bending over the wonted tasks with a shadow upon its
+      wonted cheerfulness,--when Rosaline came to tell her that Victor said
+      there was somebody in the passage who wanted to see her and would not come
+      in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Mr. Carleton himself. He gave her a parcel, smiled at her without
+      saying a word, kissed her hand earnestly, and was gone again. Fleda ran to
+      her own room, and took the wrappers off such a beauty of a Bible as she
+      had never seen; bound in blue velvet, with clasps of gold and her initials
+      in letters of gold upon the cover. Fleda hardly knew whether to be most
+      pleased or sorry; for to have its place so supplied seemed to put her lost
+      treasure further away than ever. The result was another flood of very
+      tender tears; in the very shedding of which however the new little Bible
+      was bound to her heart with cords of association as bright and as
+      incorruptible as its gold mountings.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="15"></a>Chapter XV.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Her sports were such as carried riches of knowledge upon the stream of
+        light.--Sidney.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Fleda had not been a year in Paris when her uncle suddenly made up his
+      mind to quit it and go home. Some trouble in money affairs, felt or
+      feared, brought him to this step, which a month before he had no definite
+      purpose of ever taking. There was cloudy weather in the financial world of
+      New York and he wisely judged it best that his own eyes should be on the
+      spot to see to his own interests. Nobody was sorry for this determination.
+      Mrs. Rossitur always liked what her husband liked, but she had at the same
+      time a decided predilection for home. Marion was glad to leave her convent
+      for the gay world, which her parents promised she should immediately
+      enter. And Hugh and Fleda had too lively a spring of happiness within
+      themselves to care where its outgoings should be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So home they came, in good mood, bringing with them all manner of Parisian
+      delights that Paris could part with. Furniture, that at home at least they
+      might forget where they were; dresses, that at home or abroad nobody might
+      forget where they had been; pictures and statuary and engravings and
+      books, to satisfy a taste really strong and well cultivated. And indeed
+      the other items were quite as much for this purpose as for any other. A
+      French cook for Mr. Rossitur, and even Rosaline for his wife, who declared
+      she was worth all the rest of Paris. Hugh cared little for any of these
+      things; he brought home a treasure of books and a flute, to which he was
+      devoted. Fleda cared for them all, even Monsieur Emile and Rosaline, for
+      her uncle's and aunt's sake; but her special joy was a beautiful little
+      King Charles which had been sent her by Mr. Carleton a few weeks before.
+      It came with the kindest of letters, saying that some matters had made it
+      inexpedient for him to pass through Paris on his way home, but that he
+      hoped nevertheless to see her soon. That intimation was the only thing
+      that made Fleda sorry to leave Paris. The little dog was a beauty, allowed
+      to be so not only by his mistress but by every one else; of the true black
+      and tan colours; and Fleda's dearly loved and constant companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The life she and Hugh led was little changed by the change of place. They
+      went out and came in as they had done in Paris, and took the same quiet
+      but intense happiness in the same quiet occupations and pleasures; only
+      the Tuileries and Champs Elys&eacute;es had a miserable substitute in the
+      Battery, and no substitute at all anywhere else. And the pleasant drives
+      in the environs of Paris were missed too and had nothing in New York to
+      supply their place. Mrs. Rossitur always said it was impossible to get out
+      of New York by land, and not worth the trouble to do it by water. But then
+      in the house Fleda thought there was a great gain. The dirty Parisian
+      Hotel was well exchanged for the bright, clean, well-appointed house in
+      State street. And if Broadway was disagreeable, and the Park a weariness
+      to the eyes, after the dressed gardens of the French capital, Hugh and
+      Fleda made it up in the delights of the luxuriously furnished library and
+      the dear at-home feeling of having the whole house their own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were left, those two children, quite as much to themselves as ever.
+      Marion was going into company, and she and her mother were swallowed up in
+      the consequent necessary calls upon their time. Marion never had been
+      anything to Fleda. She was a fine handsome girl, outwardly, but seemed to
+      have more of her father than her mother in her composition, though
+      colder-natured and more wrapped up in self than Mr. Rossitur would be
+      called by anybody that knew him. She had never done anything to draw Fleda
+      towards her, and even Hugh had very little of her attention. They did not
+      miss it. They were everything to each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everything,--for now morning and night there was a sort of whirlwind in
+      the house which carried the mother and daughter round and round and
+      permitted no rest; and Mr. Rossitur himself was drawn in. It was worse
+      than it had been in Paris. There, with Marion in her convent, there were
+      often evenings when they did not go abroad nor receive company and spent
+      the time quietly and happily in each other's society. No such evenings
+      now; if by chance there were an unoccupied one Mrs. Rossitur and her
+      daughter were sure to be tired and Mr. Rossitur busy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh and Fleda in those bustling times retreated to the library; Mr.
+      Rossitur would rarely have that invaded; and while the net was so eagerly
+      cast for pleasure among the gay company below, pleasure had often slipped
+      away and hid herself among the things on the library table, and was
+      dancing on every page of Hugh's book and minding each stroke of Fleda's
+      pencil and cocking the spaniel's ears whenever his mistress looked at him.
+      King, the spaniel, lay on a silk cushion on the library table, his nose
+      just touching Fleda's fingers. Fleda's drawing was mere amusement; she and
+      Hugh were not so burthened with studies that they had not always their
+      evenings free, and to tell truth, much more than their evenings. Masters
+      indeed they had; but the heads of the house were busy with the interests
+      of their grown-up child, and perhaps with other interests; and took it for
+      granted that all was going right with the young ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Haven't we a great deal better time than they have down stairs, Fleda?"
+      said Hugh one of these evenings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hum--yes--" answered Fleda abstractedly, stroking into order some old man
+      in her drawing with great intentness.--"King!--you rascal--keep back and
+      be quiet, sir!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing could be conceived more gentle and loving than Fleda's tone of
+      fault-finding, and her repulse only fell short of a caress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's he doing?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wants to get into my lap."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why don't you let him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because I don't choose to--a silk cushion is good enough for his majesty.
+      King!--" (laying her soft cheek against the little dog's soft head and
+      forsaking her drawing for the purpose.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How you do love that dog!" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very well--why shouldn't I?--provided he steals no love from anybody
+      else," said Fleda, still caressing him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What a noise somebody is making down stairs!" said Hugh. "I don't think I
+      should ever want to go to large parties, Fleda, do you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Fleda, whose natural taste for society was strongly
+      developed;--"it would depend upon what kind of parties they were."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shouldn't like them, I know, of whatever kind," said Hugh. "What are
+      you smiling at?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Only Mr. Pickwick's face, that I am drawing here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh came round to look and laugh, and then began again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can't think of anything pleasanter than this room as we are now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You should have seen Mr. Carleton's library," said Fleda in a musing
+      tone, going on with her drawing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Was it so much better than this?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's eyes gave a slight glance at the room and then looked down again
+      with a little shake of her head sufficiently expressive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well," said Hugh, "you and I do not want any better than this, do we,
+      Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's smile, a most satisfactory one, was divided between him and King.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't believe," said Hugh, "you would have loved that dog near so well
+      if anybody else had given him to you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't believe I should!--not a quarter," said Fleda with sufficient
+      distinctness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I never liked that Mr. Carleton as well as you did."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is because you did not know him," said Fleda quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you think he was a good man, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He was very good to me," said Fleda, "always. What rides I did have on
+      that great black horse of his!"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A black horse?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, a great black horse, strong, but so gentle, and he went so
+      delightfully. His name was Harold. Oh I should like to see that
+      horse!--When I wasn't with him, Mr. Carleton used to ride another, the
+      greatest beauty of a horse, Hugh; a brown Arabian--so slender and
+      delicate--her name was Zephyr, ind she used to go like the wind, to be
+      sure. Mr. Carleton said he wouldn't trust me on such a fly-away thing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you didn't use to ride alone?" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh no!--and <i>I</i> wouldn't have been afraid if he had chosen to take
+      me on any one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But do you think, Fleda, he was a <i>good</i> man? as I mean?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure he was better than a great many others," answered Fleda
+      evasively;--"the worst of him was infinitely better than the best of half
+      the people down stairs,--Mr. Sweden included."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sweden"--you don't call his name right."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The worse it is called the better, in my opinion," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I don't like him; but what makes you dislike him so much?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know--partly because uncle Rolf and Marion like him so much, I
+      believe--I don't think there is any moral expression in his face."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wonder why they like him," said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a somewhat irregular and desultory education that the two children
+      gathered under this system of things. The masters they had were rather for
+      accomplishments and languages than for anything solid; the rest they
+      worked out for themselves. Fortunately they both loved books, and rational
+      books; and hours and hours, when Mrs. Rossitur and her daughter were
+      paying or receiving visits, they, always together, were stowed away behind
+      the book-cases or in the library window poring patiently over pages of
+      various complexion; the soft turning of the leaves or Fleda's frequent
+      attentions to King the only sound in the room. They walked together,
+      talking of what they had read, though indeed they ranged beyond that into
+      nameless and numberless fields of speculation, where if they sometimes
+      found fruit they as often lost their way. However the habit of ranging was
+      something. Then when they joined the rest of the family at the
+      dinner-table, especially if others were present, and most especially if a
+      certain German gentleman happened to be there who the second winter after
+      their return Fleda thought came very often, she and Hugh would be sure to
+      find the strange talk of the world that was going on unsuited and
+      wearisome to them, and they would make their escape up stairs again to
+      handle the pencil and to play the flute and to read, and to draw plans for
+      the future, while King crept upon the skirts of his mistress's gown and
+      laid his little head on her feet. Nobody ever thought of sending them to
+      school. Hugh was a child of frail health, and though not often very ill
+      was often near it; and as for Fleda, she and Hugh were inseparable; and
+      besides by this time her uncle and aunt would almost as soon have thought
+      of taking the mats off their delicate shrubs in winter as of exposing her
+      to any atmosphere less genial than that of home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Fleda this doubtful course of mental training wrought singularly well.
+      An uncommonly quick eye and strong memory and clear head, which she had
+      even in childhood, passed over no field of truth or fancy without making
+      their quiet gleanings; and the stores thus gathered, though somewhat
+      miscellaneous and unarranged, were both rich and uncommon, and more than
+      any one or she herself knew. Perhaps such a mind thus left to itself knew
+      a more free and luxuriant growth than could ever have flourished within
+      the confinement of rules. Perhaps a plant at once so strong and so
+      delicate was safest without the hand of the dresser. At all events it was
+      permitted to spring and to put forth all its native gracefulness alike
+      unhindered and unknown. Cherished as little Fleda dearly was, her mind
+      kept company with no one but herself,--and Hugh. As to externals,--music
+      was uncommonly loved by both the children, and by both cultivated with
+      great success. So much came under Mrs. Rossitur's knowledge. Also every
+      foreign Signor and Madame that came into the house to teach them spoke
+      with enthusiasm of the apt minds and flexile tongues that honoured their
+      instructions. In private and in public the gentle, docile, and
+      affectionate children answered every wish both of taste and judgment. And
+      perhaps, in a world where education is <i>not</i> understood, their
+      guardians might be pardoned for taking it for granted that all was right
+      where nothing appeared that was wrong; certainly they took no pains to
+      make sure of the fact. In this case, one of a thousand, their neglect was
+      not punished with disappointment. They never found out that Hugh's mind
+      wanted the strengthening that early skilful training might have given it.
+      His intellectual tastes were not so strong as Fleda's; his reading was
+      more superficial; his gleanings not so sound and in far fewer fields, and
+      they went rather to nourish sentiment and fancy than to stimulate thought
+      or lay up food for it. But his parents saw nothing of this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third winter had not passed, when Fleda's discernment saw that Mr.
+      Sweden, as she called him, the German gentleman, would not cease coming to
+      the house till he had carried off Marion with him. Her opinion on the
+      subject was delivered to no one but Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That winter introduced them to a better acquaintance. One evening Dr.
+      Gregory, an uncle of Mrs. Rossitur's, had been dining with her and was in
+      the drawing-room. Mr. Schweden had been there too, and he and Marion and
+      one or two other young people had gone out to some popular entertainment.
+      The children knew little of Dr. Gregory but that he was a very
+      respectable-looking elderly gentleman, a little rough in his manners; the
+      doctor had not long been returned from a stay of some years in Europe
+      where he had been collecting rare books for a fine public library, the
+      charge of which was now entrusted to him. After talking some time with Mr.
+      and Mrs. Rossitur the doctor pushed round his chair to take a look at the
+      children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So that's Amy's child," said he. "Come here, Amy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is not my name," said the little girl coming forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Isn't it? It ought to be. What is then?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Elfleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Elfleda!--Where in the name of all that is auricular did you get such an
+      outlandish name?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My father gave it to me, sir," said Fleda, with a dignified sobriety
+      which amused the old gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Your father!--Hum--I understand. And couldn't your father find a cap that
+      fitted you without going back to the old-fashioned days of King Alfred?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes sir; it was my grandmother's cap."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid your grandmother's cap isn't all of her that's come down to
+      you," said he, tapping his snuff-box and looking at her with a curious
+      twinkle in his eyes. "What do you call yourself? Haven't you some
+      variations of this tongue-twisting appellative to serve for every day and
+      save trouble?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They call me Fleda," said the little girl, who could not help laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing better than that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda remembered two prettier nick-names which had been hers; but one had
+      been given by dear lips long ago, and she was not going to have it
+      profaned by common use; and "Elfie" belonged to Mr. Carleton. She would
+      own to nothing but Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, Miss Fleda," said the doctor, "are you going to school?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You intend to live without such a vulgar thing as learning?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir--Hugh and I have our lessons at home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Teaching each other, I suppose?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O no, sir," said Fleda laughing;--"Mme. Lascelles and Mr. Schweppenhesser
+      and Signor Barytone come to teach us, besides our music masters."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you ever talk German with this Mr. What's-his-name who has just gone
+      out with your cousin Marion?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I never talk to him at all, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you? why not? Don't you like him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda said "not particularly," and seemed to wish to let the subject pass,
+      but the doctor was amused and pressed it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, why don't you like him?" said he; "I am sure he's a fine looking
+      dashing gentleman,--dresses as well as anybody, and talks as much as most
+      people,--why don't you like him? Isn't he a handsome fellow, eh?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dare say he is, to many people," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She said she didn't think there was any moral expression in his face,"
+      said Hugh, by way of settling the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Moral expression!" cried the doctor,--"moral expression!--and what if
+      there isn't, you Elf!--what if there isn't?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shouldn't care what other kind of expression it had," said Fleda,
+      colouring a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur 'pished' rather impatiently. The doctor glanced at his niece,
+      and changed the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well who teaches you English, Miss Fleda? you haven't told me that yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O that we teach ourselves," said Fleda, smiling as if it was a very
+      innocent question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hum! you do! Pray how do you teach yourselves?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By reading, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Reading! And what do you read? what have you read in the last twelve
+      months, now?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't think I could remember all exactly," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you have got a list of them all," said Hugh, who chanced to have been
+      looking over said list of a day or two before and felt quite proud of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let's have it--let's have it," said the doctor. And Mrs. Rossitur
+      laughing said "Let's have it;" and even her husband commanded Hugh to go
+      and fetch it; so poor Fleda, though not a little unwilling, was obliged to
+      let the list be forthcoming. Hugh brought it, in a neat little book
+      covered with pink blotting paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now for it," said the doctor;--"let us see what this English amounts to.
+      Can you stand fire, Elfleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'Jan. 1. Robinson Crusoe.' [Footnote: A true list made by a child of that
+      age.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hum--that sounds reasonable, at all events."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I had it for a New Year present," remarked Fleda, who stood by with
+      down-cast eyes, like a person undergoing an examination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'Jan. 2. Histoire de France.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What history of France is this?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda hesitated and then said it was by Lacretelle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Lacretelle?--what, of the Revolution?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir, it is before that; it is in five or six large volumes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What, Louis XV's time!" said the doctor muttering to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'Jan. 27. 2. ditto, ditto.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Two' means the second volume I suppose?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hum--if you were a mouse you would gnaw through the wall in time at that
+      rate. This is in the original?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'Feb. 3. Paris. L. E. K.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do these hieroglyphics mean?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That stands for the 'Library of Entertaining Knowledge,'" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But how is this?--do you go hop, skip, and jump through these books, or
+      read a little and then throw them away? Here it is only seven days since
+      you began the second volume of Lacretelle--not time enough to get through
+      it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O no, sir," said Fleda smiling,--"I like to have several books that I am
+      reading in at once,--I mean--at the same time, you know; and then if I am
+      not in the mood of one I take up another."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She reads them all through," said Hugh,--"always, though she reads them
+      very quick."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hum--I understand," said the old doctor with a humorous expression, going
+      on with the list.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'March 3. 3 Hist. de France.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you finish one of these volumes, I suppose, before you begin another;
+      or do you dip into different parts of the same work at once?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O no, sir;--of course not!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'Mar. 5. Modern Egyptians. L. E. K. Ap. 13.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are these dates on the right as well as on the left?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Those on the right shew when I finished the volume."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well I wonder what you were cut out for?" said the doctor. "A
+      Quaker!--you aren't a Quaker, are you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir," said Fleda laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You look like it," said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'Feb. 24. Five Penny Magazines, finished Mar. 4,'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They are in paper numbers, you know, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'April 4. 4 Hist. de F.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let us see--the third volume was finished March 29--I declare you keep it
+      up pretty well."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'Ap. 19. Incidents of Travel'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Whose is that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is by Mr. Stephens."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How did you like it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O very much indeed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, I see you did; you finished it by the first of May. 'Tour to the
+      Hebrides'--what? Johnson's?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Read it all fairly through?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes sir, certainly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled and went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'May 12. Peter Simple!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was quite a shout at the heterogeneous character of Fleda's reading,
+      which she, not knowing exactly what to make of it, heard rather abashed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "' Peter Simple'!" said the doctor, settling himself to go on with his
+      list;--"well, let us see.--' World without Souls.' Why you Elf! read in
+      two days."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is very short, you know, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What did you think of it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I liked parts of it very much."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went on, still smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'June 15. Goldsmith's Animated Nature.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'June 18. 1 Life of Washington.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What Life of Washington?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Marshall's."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hum.--'July 9. 2 Goldsmith's An. Na.' As I live, begun the very day the
+      first volume was finished, did you read the whole of that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O yes, sir. I liked that book very much."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      '4 July 12. 5 Hist, de France.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Two histories on hand at once! Out of all rule, Miss Fleda! We must look
+      after you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes sir; sometimes I wanted to read one, and sometimes I wanted to read
+      the other."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you always do what you want to do, I suppose?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think the reading does me more good in that way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'July 15. Paley's Natural Theology!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was another shout. Poor Fleda's eyes filled with tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What in the world put that book into your head, or before your eyes?"
+      said the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know, sir,--I thought I should like to read it," said Fleda,
+      drooping her eyelids that the bright drops under them might not be seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And finished in eleven days, as I live!" said the doctor wagging his
+      head. 'July 19. 3 Goldsmith's A. N.' 'Aug. 6. 4 Do. Do.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is one of Fleda's favourite books," put in Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So it seems. '6 Hist. de France.'--What does this little cross mean?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That shews when the book is finished," said Fleda, looking on the
+      page,--"the last volume, I mean."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Retrospect of Western Travel'--'Goldsmith's A. N., last vol.'--'Memoirs
+      de Sully'--in the French?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Life of Newton'--What's this?--'Sep. 8. 1 Fairy Queen!'--not Spenser's?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes sir, I believe so--the Fairy Queen, in five volumes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor looked up comically at his niece and her husband, who were both
+      sitting or standing close by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Sep. 10. Paolo e Virginia.'--In what language?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Italian, sir; I was just beginning, and I haven't finished it yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Sep. 16. Milner's Church History'!--What the deuce!--'Vol. 2. Fairy
+      Queen.'--Why this must have been a favourite book too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's one of the books Fleda loves best," said Hugh;--"she went through
+      that very fast."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Over</i> it, you mean, I reckon; how much did you skip, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I didn't skip at all," said Fleda; "I read every word of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Sep. 20. 2 Mem. de Sully.'--Well, you're an industrious mouse, I'll say
+      that for you.--What's this--'Don Quixotte!'--'Life of Howard.'--'Nov. 17.
+      3 Fairy Queen.'--'Nov. 29. 4 Fairy Queen.'--'Dec. 8. 1 Goldsmith's
+      England.'--Well if this list of books is a fair exhibit of your taste and
+      capacity, you have a most happily proportioned set of intellectuals. Let
+      us see--History, fun, facts, nature, theology, poetry and divinity!--upon
+      my soul!--and poetry and history the leading features!--a little fun,--as
+      much as you could lay your hand on I'll warrant, by that pinch in the
+      corner of your eye. And here, the eleventh of December, you finished the
+      Fairy Queen;--and ever since, I suppose, you have been imagining yourself
+      the 'faire Una,' with Hugh standing for Prince Arthur or the Red-cross
+      knight,--haven't you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir. I didn't imagine anything about it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't tell me! What did you read it for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Only because I liked it, sir. I liked it better than any other book I
+      read last year."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You did! Well, the year ends, I see, with another volume of Sully. I
+      won't enter upon this year's list. Pray how much of all these volumes do
+      you suppose you remember? I'll try and find out, next time I come to see
+      you. I can give a guess, if you study with that little pug in your lap."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is not a pug!" said Fleda, in whose arms King was lying
+      luxuriously,--"and he never gets into my lap besides."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus10.jpg"><img src="images/illus10.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="'He is not a pug.'" title="'He is not a pug.'" /><br /> "He is not a
+      pug."</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't he! Why not?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because I don't like it, sir. I don't like to see dogs in laps."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But all the ladies in the land do it, you little Saxon! it is universally
+      considered a mark of distinction."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can't help what all the ladies in the land do," said Fleda. "That won't
+      alter my liking, and I don't think a lady's lap is a place for a dog."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish you were <i>my</i> daughter!" said the old doctor, shaking his
+      head at her with a comic fierce expression of countenance, which Fleda
+      perfectly understood and laughed at accordingly. Then as the two children
+      with the dog went off into the other room, he said, turning to his niece
+      and Mr. Rossitur,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If that girl ever takes a wrong turn with the bit in her teeth, you'll be
+      puzzled to hold her. What stuff will you make the reins of?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't think she ever will take a wrong turn," said Mr. Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A look is enough to manage her, if she did," said his wife. "Hugh is not
+      more gentle."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should be inclined rather to fear her not having stability of character
+      enough," said Mr. Rossitur. "She is so very meek and yielding, I almost
+      doubt whether anything would give her courage to take ground of her own
+      and keep it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hum------well, well!" said the old doctor, walking off after the
+      children. "Prince Arthur, will you bring this damsel up to my den some of
+      these days?--the 'faire Una' is safe from the wild beasts, you know;--and
+      I'll shew her books enough to build herself a house with, if she likes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The acceptance of this invitation led to some of the pleasantest hours of
+      Fleda's city life. The visits to the great library became very frequent.
+      Dr. Gregory and the children were little while in growing fond of each
+      other; he loved to see them and taught them to come at such times as the
+      library was free of visitors and his hands of engagements. Then he
+      delighted himself with giving them pleasure, especially Fleda, whose quick
+      curiosity and intelligence were a constant amusement to him. He would
+      establish the children in some corner of the large apartments, out of the
+      way behind a screen of books and tables; and there shut out from the world
+      they would enjoy a kind of fairyland pleasure over some volume or set of
+      engravings that they could not see at home. Hours and hours were spent so.
+      Fleda would stand clasping her hands before Audubon, or rapt over a finely
+      illustrated book of travels, or going through and through with Hugh the
+      works of the best masters of the pencil and the graver. The doctor found
+      he could trust them, and then all the treasures of the library were at
+      their disposal. Very often he put chosen pieces of reading into their
+      hands; and it was pleasantest of all when he was not busy and came and sat
+      down with them; for with all his odd manner he was extremely kind and
+      could and did put them in the way to profit greatly by their
+      opportunities. The doctor and the children had nice times there together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They lasted for many months, and grew more and more worth. Mr. Schweden
+      carried off Marion, as Fleda had foreseen he would, before the end of
+      spring; and after she was gone something like the old pleasant Paris life
+      was taken up again. They had no more company now than was agreeable, and
+      it was picked not to suit Marion's taste but her father's,--a very
+      different matter. Fleda and Hugh were not forbidden the dinner-table, and
+      so had the good of hearing much useful conversation from which the former,
+      according to custom, made her steady precious gleanings. The pleasant
+      evenings in the family were still better enjoyed than they used to he;
+      Fleda was older; and the snug handsome American house had a home-feeling
+      to her that the wide Parisian saloons never knew. She had become bound to
+      her uncle and aunt by all but the ties of blood; nobody in the house ever
+      remembered that she was not born their daughter; except indeed Fleda
+      herself, who remembered everything, and with whom the forming of any new
+      affections or relations somehow never blotted out or even faded the
+      register of the old. It lived in all its brightness; the writing of past
+      loves and friendships was as plain as ever in her heart; and often, often,
+      the eye and the kiss of memory fell upon it. In the secret of her heart's
+      core; for still, as at the first, no one had a suspicion of the movings of
+      thought that were beneath that childish brow. No one guessed how clear a
+      judgment weighed and decided upon many things. No one dreamed, amid their
+      busy, hustling, thoughtless life, how often, in the street, in her bed, in
+      company and alone, her mother's last prayer was in Fleda's heart; well
+      cherished; never forgotten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her education and Hugh's meanwhile went on after the old fashion. If Mr.
+      Rossitur had more time he seemed to have no more thought for the matter;
+      and Mrs. Rossitur, fine-natured as she was, had never been trained to
+      self-exertion, and of course was entirely out of the way of training
+      others. Her children were pieces of perfection, and needed no oversight;
+      her house was a piece of perfection too. If either had not been, Mrs.
+      Rossitur would have been utterly at a loss how to mend matters,--except in
+      the latter instance by getting a new housekeeper; and as Mrs. Renney, the
+      good woman who held that station, was in everybody's opinion another
+      treasure, Mrs. Rossitur's mind was uncrossed by the shadow of such a
+      dilemma. With Mrs. Renney as with every one else Fleda was held in highest
+      regard; always welcome to her premises and to those mysteries of her trade
+      which were sacred from other intrusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's natural inquisitiveness carried her often to the housekeeper's
+      room, and made her there the same curious and careful observer that she
+      had been in the library or at the Louvre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come," said Hugh one day when he had sought and found her in Mrs.
+      Renney's precincts,--"come away, Fleda! What do you want to stand here and
+      see Mrs. Renney roll butter and sugar for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Mr. Rossitur!" said Fleda,--"you don't understand quelquechoses.
+      How do you know but I may have to get my living by making them, some day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By making what?" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Quelquechoses,--anglic&eacute;, kickshaws,--alias, sweet trifles
+      denominated merrings."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pshaw, Fleda!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Miss Fleda is more likely to get her living by eating them, Mr. Hugh,
+      isn't she?" said the housekeeper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope to decline both lines of life," said Fleda laughingly as she
+      followed Hugh out of the room. But her chance remark had grazed the truth
+      sufficiently near.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those years in New York were a happy time for little Fleda, a time when
+      mind and body flourished under the sun of prosperity. Luxury did not spoil
+      her; and any one that saw her in the soft furs of her winter wrappings
+      would have said that delicate cheek and frame were never made to know the
+      unkindliness of harsher things.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="16"></a>Chapter XVI.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Whereunto is money good?<br /> Who has it not wants hardihood,<br /> Who
+        has it has much trouble and care,<br /> Who once has had it has despair.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Longfellow. <i>From the German</i>.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      It was the middle of winter. One day Hugh and Fleda had come home from
+      their walk. They dashed into the parlour, complaining that it was bitterly
+      cold, and began unrobing before the glowing grate, which was a mass of
+      living fire from end to end. Mrs. Rossitur was there in an easy chair,
+      alone and doing nothing. That was not a thing absolutely unheard of, but
+      Fleda had not pulled off her second glove before she bent down towards her
+      and in a changed tone tenderly asked if she did not feel well?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur looked up in her face a minute, and then drawing her down
+      kissed the blooming cheeks one and the other several times. But as she
+      looked off to the fire again Fleda saw that it was through watering eyes.
+      She dropped on her knees by the side of the easy chair that she might have
+      a better sight of that face, and tried to read it as she asked again what
+      was the matter; and Hugh coming to the other side repeated her question.
+      His mother passed an arm round each, looking wistfully from one to the
+      other and kissing them earnestly, but she said only, with a very
+      heart-felt emphasis, "Poor children!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was now afraid to speak, but Hugh pressed his inquiry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why 'poor' mamma? what makes you say so?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because you are poor really, dear Hugh. We have lost everything we have
+      in the world."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mamma! What do you mean?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Your father has failed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Failed!--But, mamma, I thought he wasn't in business?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So I thought," said Mrs. Rossitur;--"I didn't know people could fail that
+      were not in business; but it seems they can. He was a partner in some
+      concern or other, and it's all broken to pieces, and your father with it,
+      he says."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur's face was distressful. They were all silent for a little;
+      Hugh kissing his mother's wet cheeks. Fleda had softly nestled her head in
+      her bosom. But Mrs. Rossitur soon recovered herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How bad is it, mother?" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As bad as can possibly be."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is <i>everything</i> gone?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Everything."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You don't mean the house, mamma?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The house, and all that is in it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The children's hearts were struck, and they were silent again, only a
+      trembling touch of Fleda's lips spoke sympathy and patience if ever a kiss
+      did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But mamma," said Hugh, after he had gathered breath for it,--"do you mean
+      to say that <i>everything</i>, literally <i>everything</i>, is gone? is
+      there nothing left?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing in the world--not a sou."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then what are we going to do?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur shook her head, and had no words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda <i>looked</i> across to Hugh to ask no more, and putting her arms
+      round her aunt's neck and laying cheek to cheek, she spoke what comfort
+      she could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't, dear aunt Lucy!--there will be some way--things always turn out
+      better than at first--I dare say we shall find out it isn't so bad by and
+      by. Don't you mind it, and then we won't. We can be happy anywhere
+      together."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If there was not much in the reasoning there was something in the tone of
+      the words to bid Mrs. Rossitur bear herself well. Its tremulous sweetness,
+      its anxious love, was without a taint of self-recollection; its sorrow was
+      for <i>her</i>. Mrs. Rossitur felt that she must not shew herself
+      overcome. She again kissed and blessed and pressed closer in her arms her
+      little comforter, while her other hand was given to Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have only heard about it this morning. Your uncle was here telling me
+      just now,--a little while before you came. Don't say anything about it
+      before him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why not? The words struck Fleda disagreeably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What will be done with the house, mamma?" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sold--sold, and everything in it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Papa's books, mamma! and all the things in the library!" exclaimed Hugh,
+      looking terrified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur's face gave the answer; do it in words she could not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The children were a long time silent, trying hard to swallow this bitter
+      pill; and still Hugh's hand was in his mother's and Fleda's head lay on
+      her bosom. Thought was busy, going up and down, and breaking the
+      companionship they had so long held with the pleasant drawing-room and the
+      tasteful arrangements among which Fleda was so much at home;--the easy
+      chairs in whose comfortable arms she had had so many an hour of nice
+      reading; the soft rug where in the very wantonness of frolic she had
+      stretched herself to play with King; that very luxurious, bright grateful
+      of fire, which had given her so often the same warm welcome home, an apt
+      introduction to the other stores of comfort which awaited her above and
+      below stairs; the rich-coloured curtains and carpet, the beauty of which
+      had been such a constant gratification to Fleda's eye; and the exquisite
+      French table and lamps they had brought out with them, in which her uncle
+      and aunt had so much pride and which could nowhere be matched for
+      elegance;--they must all be said 'good-bye' to; and as yet fancy had
+      nothing to furnish the future with; it looked very bare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      King had come in and wagged himself up close to his mistress, but even he
+      could obtain nothing but the touch of most abstracted finger ends. Yet,
+      though keenly recognized, these thoughts were only passing compared with
+      the anxious and sorrowful ones that went to her aunt and uncle; for Hugh
+      and her, she judged, it was less matter. And Mrs. Rossitur's care was most
+      for her husband; and Hugh's was for them all. His associations were less
+      quick and his tastes less keen than Fleda's and less a part of himself.
+      Hugh lived in his affections; with a salvo to them, he could bear to lose
+      anything and go anywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mamma," said he after a long time,--"will anything be done with Fleda's
+      books?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A question that had been in Fleda's mind before, but which she had
+      patiently forborne just then to ask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No indeed!" said Mrs. Rossitur, pressing Fleda more closely and kissing
+      in a kind of rapture the sweet thoughtful face;--"not yours, my darling;
+      they can't touch anything that belongs to you--I wish it was more--and I
+      don't suppose they will take anything of mine either."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah, well!" said Fleda raising her head, "you have got quite a parcel of
+      books, aunt Lucy, and I have a good many--how well it is I have had so
+      many given me since I have been here!--That will make quite a nice little
+      library, both together, and Hugh has some; I thought perhaps we shouldn't
+      have one at all left, and that would have been rather bad."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'Rather bad'! Mrs. Rossitur looked at her, and was dumb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Only don't you wear a sad face for anything!" Fleda went on
+      earnestly;--"we shall be perfectly happy if you and uncle Rolf only will
+      be."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear children!" said Mrs. Rossitur wiping her eyes,--"it is for you I
+      am unhappy--you and your uncle;--I do not think of myself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And we do not think of ourselves, mamma," said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know it--but having good children don't make one care less about them,"
+      said Mrs. Rossitur, the tears fairly raining over her fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh pulled the fingers down and again tried the efficacy of his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you know papa thinks most of you, mamma."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah, your father!"--said Mrs. Rossitur shaking her head,--"I am afraid it
+      will go hard with him!--But I will be happy as long as I have you two, or
+      else I should be a very wicked woman. It only grieves me to think of your
+      education and prospects--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda's piano, mamma!" said Hugh with sudden dismay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur shook her head again and covered her eyes, while Fleda
+      stretching across to Hugh gave him by look and touch an earnest admonition
+      to let that subject alone. And then with a sweetness and gentleness like
+      nothing but the breath of the south wind, she wooed her aunt to hope and
+      resignation. Hugh held back, feeling, or thinking, that Fleda could do it
+      better than he, and watching her progress, as Mrs. Rossitur took her hand
+      from her face, and smiled, at first mournfully and then really mirthfully
+      in Fleda's face, at some sally that nobody but a nice observer would have
+      seen was got up for the occasion. And it was hardly that, so completely
+      had the child forgotten her own sorrow in ministering to that of another.
+      "Blessed are the peacemakers"! It is always so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are a witch or a fairy," said Mrs. Rossitur, catching her again in
+      her arms,--"nothing else! You must try your powers of charming upon your
+      uncle."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda laughed, without any effort; but as to trying her slight wand upon
+      Mr. Rossitur she had serious doubts. And the doubts became certainty when
+      they met at dinner; he looked so grave that she dared not attack him. It
+      was a gloomy meal, for the face that should have lighted the whole table
+      cast a shadow there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without at all comprehending the whole of her husband's character the sure
+      magnetism of affection had enabled Mrs. Rossitur to divine his thoughts.
+      Pride was his ruling passion; not such pride as Mr. Carleton's, which was
+      rather like exaggerated self-respect, but wider and more indiscriminate in
+      its choice of objects. It was pride in his family name; pride in his own
+      talents, which were considerable; pride in his family, wife and children
+      and all of which he thought did him honour,--if they had not his love for
+      them assuredly would have known some diminishing; pride in his wealth and
+      in the attractions with which it surrounded him; and lastly, pride in the
+      skill, taste and connoisseurship which enabled him to bring those
+      attractions together. Furthermore, his love for both literature and art
+      was true and strong; and for many years he had accustomed himself to lead
+      a life of great luxuriousness; catering for body and mind in every taste
+      that could be elegantly enjoyed; and again proud of the elegance of every
+      enjoyment. The change of circumstances which touched his pride wounded him
+      at every point where he was vulnerable at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda had never felt so afraid of him. She was glad to see Dr. Gregory
+      come in to tea. Mr. Rossitur was not there. The doctor did not touch upon
+      affairs, if he had heard of their misfortune; he went on as usual in a
+      rambling cheerful way all tea-time, talking mostly to Fleda and Hugh. But
+      after tea he talked no more but sat still and waited till the master of
+      the house came in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda thought Mr. Rossitur did not look glad to see him. But how could he
+      look glad about anything? He did not sit down, and for a few minutes there
+      was a kind of meaning silence. Fleda sat in the corner with the heartache,
+      to see her uncle's gloomy tramp up and down the rich apartment, and her
+      aunt Lucy gaze at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Humph!--well--So!" said the doctor at last,--"You've all gone overboard
+      with a smash, I understand?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The walker gave him no regard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "True, is it?" said the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur made no answer, unless a smothered grunt might be taken for
+      one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How came it about?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Folly and Devilry."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Humph!--bad capital to work upon. I hope the principal is gone with the
+      interest. What's the amount of your loss?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ruin."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Humph.--French ruin, or American ruin? because there's a difference. What
+      do you mean?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not so happy as to understand you sir, but we shall not pay seventy
+      cents on the dollar."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old gentleman got up and stood before the fire with his back to Mr.
+      Rossitur, saying "that was rather bad."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are you going to do?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur hesitated a few moments for an answer and then said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pay the seventy cents and begin the world anew with nothing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of course!" said the doctor. "I understand that; but where and how? What
+      end of the world will you take up first?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur writhed in impatience or disgust, and after again hesitating
+      answered dryly that he had not determined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you thought of anything in particular?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Zounds! no sir, except my misfortune. That's enough for one day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And too much," said the old doctor, "unless you can mix some other
+      thought with it. That's what I came for. Will you go into business?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was startled by the vehemence with which her uncle said, "No,
+      never!"--and he presently added, "I'll do nothing here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well,--well," said the doctor to himself;--"Will you go into the
+      country?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes!--anywhere!--the further the better."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur startled, but her husband's face did not encourage her to
+      open her lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay but on a farm, I mean?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "On anything, that will give me a standing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought that too," said Dr. Gregory, now whirling about. "I have a fine
+      piece of land that wants a tenant. You may take it at an easy rate, and
+      pay me when the crops come in. I shouldn't expect so young a farmer, you
+      know, to keep any closer terms."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How far is it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Far enough--up in Wyandot County."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How large?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A matter of two or three hundred acres or so. It is very fine, they say.
+      It came into a fellow's hands that owed me what I thought was a bad debt,
+      so for fear he would never pay me I thought best to take it and pay him;
+      whether the place will ever fill my pockets again remains to be seen;
+      doubtful, I think."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll take it, Dr. Gregory, and see if I cannot bring that about."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pooh, pooh! fill your own. I am not careful about it; the less money one
+      has the more it jingles, unless it gets <i>too</i> low indeed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will take it, Dr. Gregory, and feel myself under obligation to you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, I told you, not till the crops come in. No obligation is binding till
+      the term is up. Well, I'll see you further about it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But Rolf!" said Mrs. Rossitur,--"stop a minute, uncle, don't go
+      yet,--Rolf don't know anything in the world about the management of a
+      farm, neither do I."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The 'faire Una' can enlighten you," said the doctor, waving his hand
+      towards his little favourite in the corner,--"but I forgot!--Well, if you
+      don't know, the crops won't come in--that's all the difference."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mrs. Rossitur looked anxiously at her husband. "Do you know exactly
+      what you are undertaking, Rolf?" she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If I do not, I presume I shall discover in time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But it may be too late," said Mrs Rossitur, in the tone of sad
+      remonstrance that had gone all the length it dared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It <i>can not</i> be too late!" said her husband impatiently. "If I do
+      not know what I am taking up, I know very well what I am laying down; and
+      it does not signify a straw what comes after--if it was a snail-shell,
+      that would cover my head!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hum--" said the old doctor,--"the snail is very well in his way, but I
+      have no idea that he was ever cut out for a farmer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you think you will find it a business you would like, Mr. Rossitur?"
+      said his wife timidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I tell you," said he facing about, "it is not a question of liking. I
+      will like anything that will bury me out of the world!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Mrs. Rossitur. She had not yet come to wishing herself buried alive,
+      and she had small faith in the permanence of her husband's taste for it.
+      She looked desponding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You don't suppose," said Mr. Rossitur stopping again in the middle of the
+      floor after another turn and a half,--"you do not suppose that I am going
+      to take the labouring of the farm upon myself? I shall employ some one of
+      course, who understands the matter, to take all that off my hands."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor thought of the old proverb and the alternative the plough
+      presents to those who would thrive by it; Fleda thought of Mr. Didenhover;
+      Mrs. Rossitur would fain have suggested that such an important person must
+      be well paid; but neither of them spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of course," said Mr. Rossitur haughtily as he went on with his walk, "I
+      do not expect any more than you to live in the back-woods the life we have
+      been leading here. That is at an end."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it a very wild country?" asked Mrs. Rossitur of the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No wild beasts, my dear, if that is your meaning,--and I do not suppose
+      there are even many snakes left by this time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, but dear uncle, I mean, is it in an unsettled state?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No my dear, not at all,--perfectly quiet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah but do not play with me," exclaimed poor Mrs. Rossitur between
+      laughing and crying;--"I mean is it far from any town and not among
+      neighbours?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Far enough to be out of the way of morning calls," said the doctor;--"and
+      when your neighbours come to see you they will expect tea by four o'clock.
+      There are not a great many near by, but they don't mind coming from five
+      or six miles off."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur looked chilled and horrified. To her he had described a very
+      wild country indeed. Fleda would have laughed if it had not been for her
+      aunt's face; but that settled down into a doubtful anxious look that
+      pained her. It pained the old doctor too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come," said he touching her pretty chin with his forefinger,--"what are
+      you thinking of? folks may be good folks and yet have tea at four o'clock,
+      mayn't they?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When do they have dinner!" said Mrs. Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I really don't know. When you get settled up there I'll come and see."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hardly," said Mrs. Rossitur. "I don't believe it would be possible for
+      Emile to get dinner before the tea-time; and I am sure I shouldn't like to
+      propose such a thing to Mrs. Renney."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor fidgeted about a little on the hearth-rug and looked comical,
+      perfectly understood by one acute observer in the corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you wise enough to imagine, Lucy," said Mr. Rossitur sternly, "that
+      you can carry your whole establishment with you? What do you suppose Emile
+      and Mrs. Renney would do in a farmhouse?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can do without whatever you can," said Mrs. Rossitur meekly. "I did not
+      know that you would be willing to part with Emile, and I do not think Mrs.
+      Renney would like to leave us."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I told you before, it is no more a question of liking," answered he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And if it were," said the doctor, "I have no idea that Monsieur Emile and
+      Madame Renney would be satisfied with the style of a country kitchen, or
+      think the interior of Yankee land a hopeful sphere for their energies."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What sort of a house is it?" said Mrs. Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A wooden frame house, I believe."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No but, dear uncle, do tell me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What sort of a house?--Humph--Large enough, I am told. It will
+      accommodate you, in one way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Comfortable?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said the doctor shaking his head;--"depends on who's in
+      it. No house is that per se. But I reckon there isn't much plate glass. I
+      suppose you'll find the doors all painted blue, and every fireplace with a
+      crane in it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A crane!" said Mrs. Rossitur, to whose imagination the word suggested
+      nothing but a large water-bird with a long neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay!" said the doctor. "But it's just as well. You won't want hanging
+      lamps there,--and candelabra would hardly be in place either, to hold
+      tallow candles."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tallow candles!" exclaimed Mrs. Rossitur. Her husband winced, but said
+      nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay," said the doctor again,--"and make them yourself if you are a good
+      housewife. Come, Lucy," said he taking her hand, "do you know how the wild
+      fowl do on the Chesapeake?--duck and swim under water till they can shew
+      their heads with safety? O spoil your eyes to see by a tallow candle."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur half smiled, but looked anxiously towards her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pooh, pooh! Rolf won't care what the light burns that lights him to
+      independence,--and when you get there you may illuminate with a whole
+      whale if you like. By the way, Rolf, there is a fine water power up
+      yonder, and a saw-mill in good order, they tell me, but a short way from
+      the house. Hugh might learn to manage it, and it would be fine employment
+      for him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hugh!" said his mother disconsolately. Mr. Rossitur neither spoke nor
+      looked an answer. Fleda sprang forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A saw-mill!--Uncle Orrin!--where is it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just a little way from the house, they say. <i>You</i> can't manage it,
+      fair Saxon!--though you look as if you would undertake all the mills in
+      creation, for a trifle."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No but the place, uncle Orrin;--where is the place?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The place? Hum--why it's up in Wyandot County--some five or six miles
+      from the Montepoole Spring--what's this they call it?--Queechy!--By the
+      way!" said he, reading Fleda's countenance, "it is the very place where
+      your father was born!--it is! I didn't think of that before."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's hands were clasped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O I am very glad!" she said. "It's my old home. It is the most lovely
+      place, aunt Lucy!--most lovely--and we shall have some good neighbours
+      there too. O I am very glad!--The dear old saw-mill!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear old saw-mill!" said the doctor looking at her. "Rolf, I'll tell you
+      what, you shall give me this girl. I want her. I can take better care of
+      her, perhaps, now than you can. Let her come to me when you leave the
+      city--it will be better for her than to help work the saw-mill; and I have
+      as good a right to her as anybody, for Amy before her was like my own
+      child."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor spoke not with his usual light jesting manner but very
+      seriously. Hugh's lips parted,--Mrs. Rossitur looked with a sad thoughtful
+      look at Fleda,--Mr. Rossitur walked up and down looking at nobody. Fleda
+      watched him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What does Fleda herself say?" said he stopping short suddenly. His face
+      softened and his eye changed as it fell upon her, for the first time that
+      day. Fleda saw her opening; she came to him, within his arms, and laid her
+      head upon his breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What does Fleda say?" said he, softly kissing her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's tears said a good deal, that needed no interpreter. She felt her
+      uncle's hand passed more and more tenderly over her head, so tenderly that
+      it made it all the more difficult for her to govern herself and stop her
+      tears. But she did stop them, and looked up at him then with such a
+      face--so glowing through smiles and tears--it was like a very rainbow of
+      hope upon the cloud of their prospects. Mr. Rossitur felt the power of the
+      sunbeam wand, it reached his heart; it was even with a smile that he said
+      as he looked at her,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you go to your uncle Orrin, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not if uncle Rolf will keep me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Keep you!" said Mr. Rossitur;--"I should like to see who wouldn't keep
+      you!--There, Dr. Gregory, you have your answer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hum!--I might have known," said the doctor, "that the 'faire Una' would
+      abjure cities.--Come here, you Elf!"--and he wrapped her in his arms so
+      tight she could not stir,--"I have a spite against you for this. What
+      amends will you make me for such an affront?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let me take breath," said Fleda laughing, "and I'll tell you. You don't
+      want any amends, uncle Orrin."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well," said he, gazing with more feeling than he cared to shew into that
+      sweet face, so innocent of apology-making,--"you shall promise me that you
+      will not forget uncle Orrin and the old house in Bleecker street."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's eyes grew more wistful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And will you promise me that if ever you want anything you will come or
+      send straight there?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If ever I want anything I can't get nor do without," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pshaw!" said the doctor letting her go, but laughing at the same time.
+      "Mind my words, Mr. and Mrs. Rossitur;--if ever that girl takes the wrong
+      bit in her mouth--Well, well! I'll go home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Home he went. The rest drew together particularly near, round the fire;
+      Hugh at his father's shoulder, and Fleda kneeling on the rug between her
+      uncle and aunt with a hand on each; and there was not one of them whose
+      gloom was not lightened by her bright face and cheerful words of hope that
+      in the new scenes they were going to, "they would all be so happy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The days that followed were gloomy; but Fleda's ministry was unceasing.
+      Hugh seconded her well, though more passively. Feeling less pain himself,
+      he perhaps for that very reason was less acutely alive to it in others;
+      not so quick to foresee and ward off, not so skilful to allay it. Fleda
+      seemed to have intuition for the one and a charm for the other. To her
+      there was pain in every parting; her sympathies clung to whatever wore the
+      livery of habit. There was hardly any piece of furniture, there was no
+      book or marble or picture, that she could take leave of without a pang.
+      But it was kept to herself; her sorrowful good-byes were said in secret;
+      before others, in all those weeks she was a very Euphrosyne; light,
+      bright, cheerful, of eye and foot and hand; a shield between her aunt and
+      every annoyance that <i>she</i> could take instead; a good little fairy,
+      that sent her sunbeam wand, quick as a flash, where any eye rested
+      gloomily. People did not always find out where the light came from, but it
+      was her witchery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The creditors would touch none of Mrs. Rossitur's things, her husband's
+      honourable behaviour had been so thorough. They even presented him with
+      one or two pictures which he sold for a considerable sum; and to Mrs.
+      Rossitur they gave up all the plate in daily use; a matter of great
+      rejoicing to Fleda who knew well how sorely it would have been missed. She
+      and her aunt had quite a little library too, of their own private store; a
+      little one it was indeed, but the worth of every volume was now trebled in
+      her eyes. Their furniture was all left behind; and in its stead went some
+      of neat light painted wood which looked to Fleda deliciously countryfied.
+      A promising cook and housemaid were engaged to go with them to the wilds;
+      and about the first of April they turned their backs upon the city.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="17"></a>Chapter XVII.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        The thresher's weary flingin-tree<br /> The lee-lang day had tired me:<br />
+        And whan the day bad closed his e'e,<br /> Far i' the west,<br /> Ben i'
+        the spence, right pensivelie,<br /> I 'gaed to rest.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Burns.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Queechy was reached at night. Fleda had promised herself to be off almost
+      with the dawn of light the next morning to see aunt Miriam, but a heavy
+      rain kept her fast at home the whole day. It was very well; she was wanted
+      there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Despite the rain and her disappointment it was impossible for Fleda to lie
+      abed from the time the first grey light began to break in at her
+      windows,--those old windows that had rattled their welcome to her all
+      night. She was up and dressed and had had a long consultation with herself
+      over matters and prospects, before anybody else had thought of leaving the
+      indubitable comfort of a feather bed for the doubtful contingency of
+      happiness that awaited them down stairs. Fleda took in the whole length
+      and breadth of it, half wittingly and half through some finer sense than
+      that of the understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first view of things could not strike them pleasantly; it was not to
+      be looked for. The doors did not happen to be painted blue; they were a
+      deep chocolate colour; doors and wainscot. The fireplaces were not all
+      furnished with cranes, but they were all uncouthly wide and deep. Nobody
+      would have thought them so indeed in the winter, when piled up with
+      blazing hickory logs, but in summer they yawned uncomfortably upon the
+      eye. The ceilings were low; the walls rough papered or rougher
+      white-washed; the sashes not hung; the rooms, otherwise well enough
+      proportioned, stuck with little cupboards, in recesses and corners and out
+      of the way places, in a style impertinently suggestive of housekeeping,
+      and fitted to shock any symmetrical set of nerves. The old house had
+      undergone a thorough putting in order, it is true; the chocolate paint was
+      just dry, and the paper hangings freshly put up; and the bulk of the new
+      furniture had been sent on before and unpacked, though not a single
+      article of it was in its right place. The house was clean and tight, that
+      is, as tight as it ever was. But the colour had been unfortunately
+      chosen--perhaps there was no help for that;--the paper was <i>very</i>
+      coarse and countryfied; the big windows were startling, they looked so
+      bare, without any manner of drapery; and the long reaches of wall were
+      unbroken by mirror or picture-frame. And this to eyes trained to eschew
+      ungracefulness and that abhorred a vacuum as much as nature is said to do!
+      Even Fleda felt there was something disagreeable in the change, though it
+      reached her more through the channel of other people's sensitiveness than
+      her own. To her it was the dear old house still, though her eyes had seen
+      better things since they loved it. No corner or recess had a pleasanter
+      filling, to her fancy, than the old brown cupboard or shelves which had
+      always been there. But what <i>would</i> her uncle say to them! and to
+      that dismal paper! and what would aunt Lucy think of those rattling window
+      sashes! this cool raw day too, for the first!--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Think as she might Fleda did not stand still to think. She had gone softly
+      all over the house, taking a strange look at the old places and the images
+      with which memory filled them, thinking of the last time, and many a time
+      before that;--and she had at last come back to the sitting-room, long
+      before anybody else was down stairs; the two tired servants were just
+      rubbing their eyes open in the kitchen and speculating themselves awake.
+      Leaving them, at their peril, to get ready a decent breakfast, (by the way
+      she grudged them the old kitchen) Fleda set about trying what her wand
+      could do towards brightening the face of affairs in the other part of the
+      house. It was quite cold enough for a fire, luckily. She ordered one made,
+      and meanwhile busied herself with the various stray packages and articles
+      of wearing apparel that lay scattered about giving the whole place a look
+      of discomfort. Fleda gathered them up and bestowed them in one or two of
+      the impertinent cupboards, and then undertook the labour of carrying out
+      all the wrong furniture that had got into the breakfast-room and bringing
+      in that which really belonged there from the hall and the parlour beyond;
+      moving like a mouse that she might not disturb the people up stairs. A
+      quarter of an hour was spent in arranging to the best advantage these
+      various pieces of furniture in the room; it was the very same in which Mr.
+      Carleton and Charlton Rossitur had been received the memorable day of the
+      roast pig dinner, but that was not the uppermost association in Fleda's
+      mind. Satisfied at last that a happier effect could not be produced with
+      the given materials, and well pleased too with her success, Fleda turned
+      to the fire. It was made, but not by any means doing its part to encourage
+      the other portions of the room to look their best. Fleda knew something of
+      wood fires from old times; she laid hold of the tongs, and touched and
+      loosened and coaxed a stick here and there, with a delicate hand, till,
+      seeing the very opening it had wanted,--without which neither fire nor
+      hope can keep its activity,--the blaze sprang up energetically, crackling
+      through all the piled oak and hickory and driving the smoke clean out of
+      sight. Fleda had done her work. It would have been a misanthropical person
+      indeed that could have come into the room then and not felt his face
+      brighten. One other thing remained,--setting the breakfast table; and
+      Fleda would let no hands but hers do it this morning; she was curious
+      about the setting of tables. How she remembered or divined where
+      everything had been stowed; how quietly and efficiently her little fingers
+      unfastened hampers and pried into baskets, without making any noise; till
+      all the breakfast paraphernalia of silver, china, and table-linen was
+      found, gathered from various receptacles, and laid in most exquisite order
+      on the table. State street never saw better. Fleda stood and looked at it
+      then, in immense satisfaction, seeing that her uncle's eye would miss
+      nothing of its accustomed gratification. To her the old room, shining with
+      firelight and new furniture, was perfectly charming. If those great
+      windows were staringly bright, health and cheerfulness seemed to look in
+      at them. And what other images of association, with "nods and becks and
+      wreathed smiles," looked at her out of the curling flames in the old wide
+      fireplace! And one other angel stood there unseen,--the one whose errand
+      it is to see fulfilled the promise, "Give and it shall be given to you;
+      full measure, and pressed down, and heaped up, and running over."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little while Fleda sat contentedly eying her work; then a new idea
+      struck her and she sprang up. In the next meadow, only one fence between,
+      a little spring of purest water ran through from the woodland; water
+      cresses used to grow there. Uncle Rolf was very fond of them. It was
+      pouring with rain, but no matter. Her heart beating between haste and
+      delight, Fleda slipped her feet into galoches and put an old cloak of
+      Hugh's over her head, and ran out through the kitchen, the old accustomed
+      way. The servants exclaimed and entreated, but Fleda only flashed a bright
+      look at them from under her cloak as she opened the door, and ran off,
+      over the wet grass, under the fence, and over half the meadow, till she
+      came to the stream. She was getting a delicious taste of old times, and
+      though the spring water was very cold and with it and the rain one-half of
+      each sleeve was soon thoroughly wetted, she gathered her cresses and
+      scampered back with a pair of eyes and cheeks that might have struck any
+      city belle chill with envy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then but that's a sweet girl!" said Mary the cook to Jane the housemaid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A lovely countenance she has," answered Jane, who was refined in her
+      speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Take her away and you've taken the best of the house, I'm a thinking."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mrs. Rossitur is a lady," said Jane in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, and a very proper-behaved one she is, and him the same, that is, for
+      a gentleman I maan; but Jane! I say, I'm thinking he'll have eat too much
+      sour bread lately! I wish I knowed how they'd have their eggs boiled, till
+      I'd have 'em ready."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sure it's on the table itself they'll do 'em," said Jane. "They've an
+      elegant little fixture in there for the purpose."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nobody found out how busy Fleda's wand had been in the old breakfast room.
+      But she was not disappointed; she had not worked for praise. Her cresses
+      were appreciated; that was enough. She enjoyed her breakfast, the only one
+      of the party that did. Mr. Rossitur looked moody; his wife looked anxious;
+      and Hugh's face was the reflection of theirs. If Fleda's face reflected
+      anything it was the sunlight of heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How sweet the air is after New York!" said she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They looked at her. There was a fresh sweetness of another kind about that
+      breakfast-table. They all felt it, and breathed more freely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Delicious cresses!" said Mrs. Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, I wonder where they came from," said her husband. "Who got them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I guess Fleda knows," said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They grow in a little stream of spring water over here in the meadow,"
+      said Fleda demurely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, but you don't answer my question," said her uncle, putting his hand
+      under her chin and smiling at the blushing face he brought round to
+      view;--"Who got them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I did."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have been out in the rain?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O Queechy rain don't hurt me, uncle Rolf."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And don't it wet you either?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes sir--a little."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How much?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My sleeves,--O I dried them long ago."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you repeat that experiment, Fleda," said he seriously, but with a
+      look that was a good reward to her nevertheless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is a raw day!" said Mrs. Rossitur, drawing her shoulders together as
+      an ill-disposed window sash gave one of its admonitory shakes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What little panes of glass for such big windows!" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what a pleasant prospect through them," said Fleda,--"look,
+      Hugh!--worth all the Batteries and Parks in the world."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In the world!--in New York you mean," said her uncle. "Not better than
+      the Champs Elys&eacute;es?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Better to me," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For to-day I must attend to the prospect in-doors," said Mrs. Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now aunt Lucy," said Fleda, "you are just going to put yourself down in
+      the corner, in the rocking-chair there, with your book, and make yourself
+      comfortable; and Hugh and I will see to all these things. Hugh and I and
+      Mary and Jane,--that makes quite an army of us, and we can do everything
+      without you, and you must just keep quiet. I'll build you up a fine fire,
+      and then when I don't know what to do I will come to you for orders. Uncle
+      Rolf, would you be so good as just to open that box of books in the hall?
+      because I am afraid Hugh isn't strong enough. I'll take care of you, aunt
+      Lucy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's plans were not entirely carried out, but she contrived pretty well
+      to take the brunt of the business on her own shoulders. She was as busy as
+      a bee the whole day. To her all the ins and outs of the house, its
+      advantages and disadvantages, were much better known than to anybody else;
+      nothing could be done but by her advice; and more than that, she contrived
+      by some sweet management to baffle Mrs. Rossitur's desire to spare her,
+      and to bear the larger half of every burden that should have come upon her
+      aunt. What she had done in the breakfast room she did or helped to do in
+      the other parts of the house; she unpacked boxes and put away clothes and
+      linen, in which Hugh was her excellent helper; she arranged her uncle's
+      dressing-table with a scrupulosity that left nothing uncared-for;--and the
+      last thing before tea she and Hugh dived into the book-box to get out some
+      favourite volumes to lay upon the table in the evening, that the room
+      might not look to her uncle quite so dismally bare. He had been abroad
+      notwithstanding the rain near the whole day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a weary party that gathered round the supper-table that night,
+      weary it seemed as much in mind as in body; and the meal exerted its
+      cheering influence over only two of them; Mr. and Mrs. Rossitur sipped
+      their cups of tea abstractedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't believe that fellow Donohan knows much about his business,"
+      remarked the former at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why don't you get somebody else, then?" said his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I happen to have engaged him, unfortunately."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A pause.--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What doesn't he know?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur laughed, not a pleasant laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It would take too long to enumerate. If you had asked me what part of his
+      business he <i>does</i> understand, I could have told you shortly that I
+      don't know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you do not understand it very well yourself. Are you sure?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Am I sure of what?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That this man does not know his business?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No further sure than I can have confidence in my own common sense."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What will you do?" said Mrs. Rossitur after a moment
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A question men are not fond of answering, especially when they have not
+      made up their minds. Mr. Rossitur was silent, and his wife too, after
+      that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If I could get some long-headed Yankee to go along with him"--he remarked
+      again, balancing his spoon on the edge of his cup in curious illustration
+      of his own mental position at the moment; Donohan being the only fixed
+      point and all the rest wavering in uncertainty. There were a few silent
+      minutes before anybody answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you want one and don't know of one, uncle Rolf," said Fleda, "I dare
+      say cousin Seth might."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That gentle modest speech brought his attention round upon her. His face
+      softened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Cousin Seth? who is cousin Seth?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is aunt Miriam's son," said Fleda. "Seth Plumfield. He's a very good
+      farmer, I know; grandpa used to say he was; and he knows everybody."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mrs. Plumfield," said Mrs. Rossitur, as her husband's eyes went
+      inquiringly to her,--"Mrs. Plumfield was Mr. Ringgan's sister, you
+      remember. This is her son."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Cousin Seth, eh?" said Mr. Rossitur dubiously. "Well--Why Fleda, your
+      sweet air don't seem to agree with you, as far as I see; I have not known
+      you look so--so <i>triste</i>--since we left Paris. What have you been
+      doing, my child?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She has been doing everything, father," said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O! it's nothing," said Fleda, answering Mr. Rossitur's look and tone of
+      affection with a bright smile. "I'm a little tired, that's all."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'A little tired!' She went to sleep on the sofa directly after supper and
+      slept like a baby all the evening; but her power did not sleep with her;
+      for that quiet, sweet, tired face, tired in their service, seemed to bear
+      witness against the indulgence of anything harsh or unlovely in the same
+      atmosphere. A gentle witness-bearing, but strong in its gentleness. They
+      sat close together round the fire, talked softly, and from time to time
+      cast loving glances at the quiet little sleeper by their side. They did
+      not know that she was a fairy, and that though her wand had fallen out of
+      her hand it was still resting upon them.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="18"></a>Chapter XVIII.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        <i>Gon</i>. Here is everything advantageous to lift.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        <i>Ant</i>. True; save means to live.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Tempest.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's fatigue did not prevent her being up before sunrise the next day.
+      Fatigue was forgotten, for the light of a fair spring morning was shining
+      in at her windows and she meant to see aunt Miriam before breakfast. She
+      ran out to find Hugh, and her merry shout reached him before she did, and
+      brought him to meet her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come, Hugh!--I'm going off up to aunt Miriam's, and I want you. Come!
+      Isn't this delicious?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hush!--" said Hugh. "Father's just here in the barn. I can't go, Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's countenance clouded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Can't go! what's the matter?--can't you go, Hugh?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head and went off into the barn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A chill came upon Fleda. She turned away with a very sober step. What if
+      her uncle was in the barn, why should she hush? He never had been a check
+      upon her merriment, never; what was coming now? Hugh too looked disturbed.
+      It was a spring morning no longer. Fleda forgot the glittering wet grass
+      that had set her own eyes a sparkling but a minute ago; she walked along,
+      cogitating, swinging her bonnet by the strings in thoughtful
+      vibration,--till by the help of sunlight and sweet air, and the loved
+      scenes, her spirits again made head and swept over the sudden hindrance
+      they had met. There were the blessed old sugar maples, seven in number,
+      that fringed the side of the road,--how well Fleda knew them. Only
+      skeletons now, but she remembered how beautiful they looked after the
+      October frosts; and presently they would be putting out their new green
+      leaves and be beautiful in another way. How different in their free-born
+      luxuriance from the dusty and city-prisoned elms and willows she had left.
+      She came to the bridge then, and stopped with a thrill of pleasure and
+      pain to look and listen, Unchanged!--all but herself. The mill was not
+      going; the little brook went by quietly chattering to itself, just as it
+      had done the last time she saw it, when she rode past on Mr. Carleton's
+      horse. Four and a half years ago!--And now how strange that she had come
+      to live there again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Drawing a long breath, and swinging her bonnet again, Fleda softly went on
+      up the hill; past the saw-mill, the ponds, the factories, the houses of
+      the settlement. The same, and not the same!--Bright with the morning sun,
+      and yet somehow a little browner and homelier than of old they used to be.
+      Fleda did not care for that; she would hardly acknowledge it to herself;
+      her affection never made any discount for infirmity. Leaving the little
+      settlement behind her thoughts as behind her back, she ran on now towards
+      aunt Miriam's, breathlessly, till field after field was passed and her eye
+      caught a bit of the smooth lake and the old farmhouse in its old place.
+      Very brown it looked, but Fleda dashed on, through the garden and in at
+      the front door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nobody at all was in the entrance room, the common sitting-room of the
+      family. With trembling delight Fleda opened the well-known door and stole
+      noiselessly through the little passage-way to the kitchen. The door of
+      that was only on the latch and a gentle movement of it gave to Fleda's eye
+      the tall figure of aunt Miriam, just before her, stooping down to look in
+      at the open mouth of the oven which she was at that moment engaged in
+      supplying with more work to do. It was a huge one, and beyond her aunt's
+      head Fleda could see in the far end the great loaves of bread, half baked,
+      and more near a perfect squad of pies and pans of gingerbread just going
+      in to take the benefit of the oven's milder mood. Fleda saw all this as it
+      were without seeing it; she stood still as a mouse and breathless till her
+      aunt turned; and then, a spring and a half shout of joy, and she had
+      clasped her in her arms and was crying with her whole heart. Aunt Miriam
+      was taken all aback; she could do nothing but sit down and cry too and
+      forget her oven door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ain't breakfast ready yet, mother?" said a manly voice coming in. "I must
+      be off to see after them ploughs. Hollo!--why mother!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first exclamation was uttered as the speaker put the door to the
+      oven's mouth; the second as he turned in quest of the hand that should
+      have done it. He stood wondering, while his mother and Fleda between
+      laughing and crying tried to rouse themselves and look up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is all this?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you see, Seth?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I see somebody that had like to have spoiled your whole baking--I don't
+      know who it is, yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you now, cousin Seth?" said Fleda shaking away her tears and
+      getting up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ha'n't quite lost my recollection. Cousin, you must give me a
+      kiss.--How do you do? You ha'n't forgot how to colour, I see, for all
+      you've been so long among the pale city-folks."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I haven't forgotten any thing, cousin Seth," said Fleda, blushing indeed
+      but laughing and shaking his hand with as hearty good-will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't believe you have,--anything that is good," said he. "Where have
+      you been all this while?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O part of the time in New York, and part of the time in Paris, and some
+      other places."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well you ha'n't seen anything better than Queechy, or Queechy bread and
+      butter, have you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No indeed!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come, you shall give me another kiss for that," said he, suiting the
+      action to the word;--"and now sit down and eat as much bread and butter as
+      you can. It's just as good as it used to be. Come mother!--I guess
+      breakfast is ready by the looks of that coffee-pot."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Breakfast ready!" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay indeed; it's a good half hour since it ought to ha' been ready. If it
+      ain't I can't stop for it. Them boys will be running their furrows like
+      sarpents 'f I ain't there to start them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Which like serpents," said Fleda,--"the furrows or the men?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I was thinking of the furrows," said he glancing at her;--"I guess
+      there ain't cunning enough in the others to trouble them. Come sit down,
+      and let me see whether you have forgotten a Queechy appetite."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Fleda doubtfully,--"they will expect me at home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't care who expects you--sit down! you ain't going to eat any bread
+      and butter this morning but my mother's--you haven't got any like it at
+      your house. Mother, give her a cup of coffee, will you, and set her to
+      work."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was too willing to comply with the invitation, were it only for the
+      charm of old times. She had not seen such a table for years, and little as
+      the conventionalities of delicate taste were known there, it was not
+      without a comeliness of its own in its air of wholesome abundance and the
+      extreme purity of all its arrangements. If but a piece of cold pork were
+      on aunt Miriam's table, it was served with a nicety that would not have
+      offended the most fastidious; and amid irregularities that the fastidious
+      would scorn, there was a sound excellence of material and preparation that
+      they very often fail to know. Fleda made up her mind she would be wanted
+      at home; all the rather perhaps for Hugh's mysterious "hush"; and there
+      was something in the hearty kindness and truth of these friends that she
+      felt particularly genial. And if there was a lack of silver at the board
+      its place was more than filled with the pure gold of association. They sat
+      down to table, but aunt Miriam's eyes devoured Fleda. Mr. Plum field set
+      about his more material breakfast with all despatch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus11.jpg"><img src="images/illus11.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="'They will expect me at home.'" title="'They will expect me at home.'" /><br />
+      "They will expect me at home."</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So Mr. Rossitur has left the city for good," said aunt Miriam. "How does
+      he like it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He hasn't been here but a day, you know, aunt Miriam," said Fleda
+      evasively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is he anything of a farmer?" asked her cousin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not much," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is he going to work the farm himself?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you mean?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I mean, is he going to work the farm himself, or hire it out, or let
+      somebody else work it on shares?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Fleda;--"I think he is going to have a farmer and
+      oversee things himself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He'll get sick o' that," said Seth; "unless he's the luck to get hold of
+      just the right hand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Has he hired anybody yet?" said aunt Miriam, after a little interval of
+      supplying Fleda with 'bread and butter.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes ma'am, I believe so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's his name?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Donohan,--an Irishman, I believe; uncle Rolf hired him in New York."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For his head man?" said Seth, with a sufficiently intelligible look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," said Fleda. "Why?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he did not immediately answer her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The land's in poor heart now," said he, "a good deal of it; it has been
+      wasted; it wants first-rate management to bring it in order and make much
+      of it for two or three years to come. I never see an Irishman's head yet
+      that was worth more than a joke. Their hands are all of 'em that's good
+      for anything."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe uncle Rolf wants to have an American to go with this man," said
+      Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seth said nothing, but Fleda understood the shake of his head as he
+      reached over after a pickle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you going to keep a dairy, Fleda?" said her aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know, ma'am;--I haven't heard anything about it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Does Mrs. Rossitur know anything about country affairs?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--nothing," Fleda said, her heart sinking perceptibly with every new
+      question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She hasn't any cows yet?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>She</i>!--any cows!--But Fleda only said they had not come; she
+      believed they were coming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What help has she got?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Two women--Irishwomen," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mother you'll have to take hold and learn her," said Mr. Plumfield.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Teach <i>her</i>?" cried Fleda, repelling the idea;--"aunt Lucy? she
+      cannot do anything--she isn't strong enough;--not anything of that kind."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What did she come here for?" said Seth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You know," said his mother, "that Mr. Rossitur's circumstances obliged
+      him to quit New York."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, but that ain't my question. A man had better keep his fingers off
+      anything he can't live by. A farm's one thing or t'other, just as it's
+      worked. The land won't grow specie--it must be fetched out of it. Is Mr.
+      Rossitur a smart man?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very," Fleda said, "about everything but farming."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well if he'll put himself to school maybe, he'll learn," Seth concluded
+      as he finished his breakfast and went off. Fleda rose too, and was
+      standing thoughtfully by the fire, when aunt Miriam came up and put her
+      arms round her. Fleda's eyes sparkled again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're not changed--you're the same little Fleda," she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not quite so little," said Fleda smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not quite so little, but my own darling. The world hasn't spoiled thee
+      yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope not, aunt Miriam."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have remembered your mother's prayer, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Always!"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How tenderly aunt Miriam's hand was passed over the bowed head,--how
+      fondly she pressed her. And Fleda's answer was as fond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wanted to bring Hugh up to see you, aunt Miriam, with me, but he
+      couldn't come. You will like Hugh. He is so good!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will come down and see him," said aunt Miriam; and then she went to
+      look after her oven's doings. Fleda stood by, amused to see the quantities
+      of nice things that were rummaged out of it. They did not look like Mrs.
+      Renney's work, but she knew from old experience that they were good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How early you must have been up, to put these things in," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Put them in! yes, and make them. These were all made this morning,
+      Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This morning!--before breakfast! Why the sun was only just rising when I
+      set out to come up the hill; and I wasn't long coming, aunt Miriam."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To be sure; that's the way to get things done. Before breakfast!--What
+      time do you breakfast, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not till eight or nine o'clock."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Eight or nine!--<i>Here?</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There hasn't been any change made yet, and I don't suppose there will be.
+      Uncle Rolf is always up early, but he can't bear to have breakfast early."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Miriam's face showed what she thought; and Fleda went away with all
+      its gravity and doubt settled like lead upon her heart. Though she had one
+      of the identical apple pies in her hands, which aunt Miriam had quietly
+      said was "for her and Hugh," and though a pleasant savour of old times was
+      about it, Fleda could not get up again the bright feeling with which she
+      had come up the hill. There was a miserable misgiving at heart. It would
+      work off in time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had begun to work off, when at the foot of the hill she met her uncle.
+      He was coming after her to ask Mr. Plumfield about the desideratum of a
+      Yankee. Fleda put her pie in safety behind a rock, and turned back with
+      him, and aunt Miriam told them the way to Seth's ploughing ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A pleasant word or two had get Fleda's spirits a bounding again, and the
+      walk was delightful. Truly the leaves were not on the trees, but it was
+      April, and they soon would be; there was promise in the light, and hope in
+      the air, and everything smelt of the country and spring-time. The soft
+      tread of the sod, that her foot had not felt for so long,--the fresh look
+      of the newly-turned earth,--here and there the brilliance of a field of
+      winter grain,--and that nameless beauty of the budding trees, that the
+      full luxuriance of summer can never equal,--Fleda's heart was springing
+      for sympathy. And to her, with whom association was everywhere so strong,
+      there was in it all a shadowy presence of her grandfather, with whom she
+      had so often seen the spring-time bless those same hills and fields long
+      ago. She walked on in silence, as her manner commonly was when deeply
+      pleased; there were hardly two persons to whom she would speak her mind
+      freely then. Mr. Kossitur had his own thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Can anything equal the spring-time!" she burst forth at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her uncle looked at her and smiled. "Perhaps not; but it is one thing,"
+      said he sighing, "for taste to enjoy and another thing for calculation to
+      improve."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But one can do both, can't one?" said Fleda brightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said he sighing again. "Hardly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda knew he was mistaken and thought the sighs out of place. But they
+      reached her; and she had hardly condemned them before they set her off
+      upon a long train of excuses for him, and she had wrought herself into
+      quite a fit of tenderness by the time they reached her cousin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They found him on a gentle side-hill, with two other men and teams, both
+      of whom were stepping away in different parts of the field. Mr. Plumfield
+      was just about setting off to work his way to the other side of the lot
+      when they came up with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was not ashamed of her aunt Miriam's son, even before such critical
+      eyes as those of her uncle. Farmer-like as were his dress and air, they
+      shewed him nevertheless a well-built, fine-looking man, with the
+      independent bearing of one who has never recognised any but mental or
+      moral superiority. His face might have been called handsome; there was at
+      least manliness in every line of it; and his excellent dark eye shewed an
+      equal mingling of kindness and acute common sense. Let Mr. Plumfield wear
+      what clothes he would one felt obliged to follow Burns' notable example
+      and pay respect to the <i>man</i> that was in them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A fine day, sir," he remarked to Mr. Rossitur after they had shaken
+      hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, and I will not interrupt you but a minute. Mr. Plumfield, I am in
+      want of hands,--hands for this very business you are about,
+      ploughing,--and Fleda says you know everybody; so I have come to ask if
+      you can direct me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Heads or hands, do you want?" said Seth, clearing his boot-sole from some
+      superfluous soil upon the share of his plough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why both, to tell you the truth. I want hands, and teams, for that
+      matter, for I have only two, and I suppose there is no time to be lost.
+      And I want very much to get a person thoroughly acquainted with the
+      business to go along with my man. He is an Irishman, and I am afraid not
+      very well accustomed to the ways of doing things here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Like enough," said Seth;--"and the worst of 'em is you can't learn 'em."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well!--can you help me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Douglass!"--said Seth, raising his voice to speak to one of his
+      assistants who was approaching them,--"Mr. Douglass!--you're holding that
+      'ere plough a little too obleekly for my grounds."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very good, Mr. Plumfield!" said the person called upon, with a quick
+      accent that intimated, "If you don't know what is best it is not my
+      affair!"--the voice very peculiar, seeming to come from no lower than the
+      top of his throat, with a guttural roll of the words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that Earl Douglass?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You remember him?" said her cousin smiling. "He's just where he was, and
+      his wife too.--Well Mr. Rossitur, 'tain't very easy to find what you want
+      just at this season, when most folks have their hands full and help is all
+      taken up. I'll see if I can't come down and give you a lift myself with
+      the ploughing, for a day or two, as I'm pretty beforehand with the spring,
+      but you'll want more than that. I ain't sure--I haven't more hands than
+      I'll want myself, but I think it is possible Squire Springer may spare you
+      one of his'n. He ain't taking in any new land this year, and he's got
+      things pretty snug; I guess he don't care to do any more than
+      common--anyhow you might try. You know where uncle Joshua lives, Fleda?
+      Well Philetus--what now?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had been slowly walking along the fence towards the furthest of Mr.
+      Plumfield's coadjutors, upon whom his eye had been curiously fixed as he
+      was speaking; a young man who was an excellent sample of what is called
+      "the raw material." He had just come to a sudden stop in the midst of the
+      furrow when his employer called to him; and he answered somewhat
+      lack-a-daisically,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why I've broke this here clevis--I ha'n't touched anything nor nothing,
+      and it broke right in teu!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you s'pose'll be done now?" said Mr. Plumfield gravely going up
+      to examine the fracture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well 'twa'n't none of my doings," said the young man. "I ha'n't touched
+      anything nor nothing--and the mean thing broke right in teu. 'Tain't so
+      handy as the old kind o' plough, by a long jump."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You go 'long down to the house and ask my mother for a new clevis; and
+      talk about ploughs when you know how to hold 'em," said Mr. Plumfield.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It don't look so difficult a matter," said Mr. Rossitur,--"but I am a
+      novice myself. What is the principal thing to be attended to in ploughing,
+      Mr. Plumfield?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a twinkle in Seth's eye, as he looked down upon a piece of straw
+      he was breaking to bits, which Fleda, who could see, interpreted
+      thoroughly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well," said he, looking up,--"the breadth of the stitches and the width
+      and depth of the farrow must be regulated according to the nature of the
+      soil and the lay of the ground, and what you're ploughing for;--there's
+      stubble ploughing, and breaking up old lays, and ploughing for fallow
+      crops, and ribbing, where the land has been some years in grass,--and so
+      on; and the plough must be geared accordingly, and so as not to take too
+      much land nor go out of the land; and after that the best part of the work
+      is to guide the plough right and run the furrows straight and even."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke with the most impenetrable gravity, while Mr. Rossitur looked
+      blank and puzzled. Fleda could hardly keep her countenance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That row of poles," said Mr. Rossitur presently,--"are they to guide you
+      in running the furrow straight?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes sir--they are to mark out the crown of the stitch. I keep 'em right
+      between the horses and plough 'em down one after another. It's a kind of
+      way country folks play at ninepins," said Seth, with a glance half
+      inquisitive, half sly, at his questioner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur asked no more. Fleda felt a little uneasy again. It was
+      rather a longish walk to uncle Joshua's, and hardly a word spoken on
+      either side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old gentleman was "to hum;" and while Fleda went back into some remote
+      part of the house to see "aunt Syra," Mr. Rossitur set forth his errand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well,--and so you're looking for help, eh?" said uncle Joshua when he had
+      heard him through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes sir,--I want help."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And a team too?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So I have said, sir," Mr. Rossitur answered rather shortly. "Can you
+      supply me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well,--I don't know as I can," said the old man, rubbing his hands slowly
+      over his knees.--"You ha'n't got much done yet, I s'pose?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing. I came the day before yesterday."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Land's in rather poor condition in some parts, ain't it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I really am not able to say, sir,--till I have seen it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It ought to be," said the old gentleman shaking his head,--the fellow
+      that was there last didn't do right by it--he worked the land too hard,
+      and didn't put on it anywhere near what he had ought to--I guess you'll
+      find it pretty poor in some places. He was trying to get all he could out
+      of it, I s'pose. There's a good deal of fencing to be done too, ain't
+      there?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All that there was, sir,--I have done none since I came."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Seth Plumfield got through ploughing yet?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We found him at it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, he's a smart man. What are you going to do, Mr. Rossitur, with that
+      piece of marsh land that lies off to the south-east of the barn, beyond
+      the meadow, between the hills? I had just sich another, and I"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Before I do anything with the wet land, Mr. ---- I am so unhappy as to
+      have forgotten your name?--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Springer, sir," said the old gentleman,--"Springer--Joshua Springer. That
+      is my name, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Springer, before I do anything with the wet land I should like to
+      have something growing on the dry; and as that is the present matter in
+      hand will you be so good as to let me know whether I can have your
+      assistance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well I don't know,--" said the old gentleman; "there ain't anybody to
+      send but my boy Lucas, and I don't know whether he would make up his mind
+      to go or not."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well sir!"--said Mr. Rossitur rising,--"in that case I will bid you good
+      morning. I am sorry to have given you the trouble."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stop," said the old man,--"stop a bit. Just sit down--I'll go in and see
+      about it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur sat down, and uncle Joshua left him to go into the kitchen
+      and consult his wife, without whose counsel, of late years especially, he
+      rarely did anything. They never varied in opinion, but aunt Syra's wits
+      supplied the steel edge to his heavy metal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know but Lucas would as leave go as not," the old gentleman
+      remarked on coming back from this sharpening process,--"and I can make out
+      to spare him, I guess. You calculate to keep him, I s'pose?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Until this press is over; and perhaps longer, if I find he can do what I
+      want."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You'll find him pretty handy at a' most anything; but I mean,--I s'pose
+      he'll get his victuals with you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have made no arrangements of the kind," said Mr. Rossitur controlling
+      with some effort his rebelling muscles. "Donohan is boarded somewhere
+      else, and for the present it will be best for all in my employ to follow
+      the same plan."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very good," said uncle Joshua, "it makes no difference,--only of course
+      in that case it is worth more, when a man has to find himself and his
+      team."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Whatever it is worth I am quite ready to pay, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very good! You and Lucas can agree about that. He'll be along in the
+      morning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So they parted; and Fleda understood the impatient quick step with which
+      her uncle got over the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that man a brother of your grandfather?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir--Oh no! only his brother-in-law. My grandmother was his sister,
+      but they weren't in the least like each other."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should think they could not," said Mr. Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh they were not!" Fleda repeated. "I have always heard that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After paying her respects to aunt Syra in the kitchen she had come back
+      time enough to hear the end of the discourse in the parlour, and had felt
+      its full teaching. Doubts returned, and her spirits were sobered again.
+      Not another word was spoken till they reached home; when Fleda seized upon
+      Hugh and went off to the rock after her forsaken pie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you succeeded!' asked Mrs. Rossitur while they were gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--that is, a cousin has kindly consented to come and help me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A cousin!" said Mrs. Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay,--we're in a nest of cousins."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In a <i>what</i>, Mr. Rossitur?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In a nest of cousins; and I had rather be in a nest of rooks. I wonder if
+      I shall be expected to ask my ploughmen to dinner! Every second man is a
+      cousin, and the rest are uncles."
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="19"></a>Chapter XIX.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Whilst skies are blue and bright.<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;Whilst flowers are
+        gay,<br /> Whilst eyes that change ere night<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;Make glad
+        the day;<br /> Whilst yet the calm hours creep,<br /> Dream thou--and from
+        thy sleep<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;Then wake to weep.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Shelley.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The days of summer flew by, for the most part lightly, over the heads of
+      Hugh and Fleda. The farm was little to them but a place of pretty and
+      picturesque doings and the scene of nameless delights by wood and stream,
+      in all which, all that summer, Fleda rejoiced; pulling Hugh along with her
+      even when sometimes he would rather have been poring over his books at
+      home. She laughingly said it was good for him; and one half at least of
+      every fine day their feet were abroad. They knew nothing practically of
+      the dairy but that it was an inexhaustible source of the sweetest milk and
+      butter, and indirectly of the richest custards and syllabubs. The flock of
+      sheep that now and then came in sight running over the hill-side, were to
+      them only an image of pastoral beauty and a soft link with the beauty of
+      the past. The two children took the very cream of country life. The books
+      they had left were read with greater eagerness than ever. When the weather
+      was "too lovely to stay in the house," Shakspeare or Massillon or Sully or
+      the "Curiosities of Literature" or "Corinne" or Milner's Church History,
+      for Fleda's reading was as miscellaneous as ever, was enjoyed under the
+      flutter of leaves and along with the rippling of the mountain spring;
+      whilst King curled himself up on the skirt of his mistress's gown and
+      slept for company; hardly more thoughtless and fearless of harm than his
+      two companions. Now and then Fleda opened her eyes to see that her uncle
+      was moody and not like himself, and that her aunt's gentle face was
+      clouded in consequence; and she could not sometimes help the suspicion
+      that he was not making a farmer of himself; but the next summer wind would
+      blow these thoughts away, or the next look of her flowers would put them
+      out of her head. The whole courtyard in front of the house had been given
+      up to her peculiar use as a flower-garden, and there she and Hugh made
+      themselves very busy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the summer-time came to an end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a November morning, and Fleda had been doing some of the last jobs
+      in her flower-beds. She was coming in with spirits as bright as her
+      cheeks, when her aunt's attitude and look, more than usually spiritless,
+      suddenly checked them. Fleda gave her a hopeful kiss and asked for the
+      explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How bright you look, darling!" said her aunt, stroking her cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, but you don't, aunt Lucy. What has happened?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mary and Jane are going away."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Going away!--What for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They are tired of the place--don't like it, I suppose."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very foolish of them! Well, aunt Lucy, what matter? we can get plenty
+      more in their room."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not from the city--not possible; they would not come at this time of
+      year."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sure?--Well, then here we can at any rate."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Here! But what sort of persons shall we get here? And your uncle--just
+      think!"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O but I think we can manage," said Fleda. "When do Mary and Jane want to
+      go?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Immediately!--to-morrow--they are not willing to wait till we can get
+      somebody. Think of it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well let them go," said Fleda,--"the sooner the better."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, and I am sure I don't want to keep them; but--" and Mrs. Rossitur
+      wrung her hands--"I haven't money enough to pay them quite,--and they
+      won't go without it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda felt shocked--so much that she could not help looking it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But can't uncle Rolf give it you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur shook her head. "I have asked him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How much is wanting?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Twenty-five. Think of his not being able to give me that!"--Mrs. Rossitur
+      burst into tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now don't, aunt Lucy!"--said Fleda, guarding well her own
+      composure;--"you know he has had a great deal to spend upon the farm and
+      paying men, and all, and it is no wonder that he should be a little short
+      just now,--now cheer up!--we can get along with this anyhow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I asked him," said Mrs. Rossitur through her tears, "when he would be
+      able to give it to me; and he told me he didn't know!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda ventured no reply but some of the tenderest caresses that lips and
+      arms could give; and then sprang away and in three minutes was at her
+      aunt's side again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look here, aunt Lucy," said she gently,--"here is twenty dollars, if you
+      can manage the five."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where did you get this?" Mrs. Rossitur exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I got it honestly. It is mine, aunt Lucy," said Fleda smiling. "Uncle
+      Orrin gave me some money just before we came away, to do what I liked
+      with; and I haven't wanted to do anything with it till now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this seemed to hurt Mrs. Rossitur more than all the rest. Leaning her
+      head forward upon Fleda's breast and clasping her arms about her she cried
+      worse tears than Fleda had seen her shed. If it had not been for the
+      emergency Fleda would have broken down utterly too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That it should have come to this!--I can't take it, dear Fleda!"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes you must, aunt Lucy," said Fleda soothingly. "I couldn't do anything
+      else with it that would give me so much pleasure. I don't want it--it
+      would lie in my drawer till I don't know when. We'll let these people be
+      off as soon as they please. Don't take it so--uncle Rolf will have money
+      again--only just now he is out, I suppose--and we'll get somebody else in
+      the kitchen that will do nicely--you see if we don't."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur's embrace said what words were powerless to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I don't know how we're to find any one here in the country--I don't
+      know who'll go to look--I am sure your uncle won't want to,--and Hugh
+      wouldn't know--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll go," said Fleda cheerfully;--"Hugh and I. We can do famously--if
+      you'll trust me. I won't promise to bring home a French cook."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No indeed--we must take what we can get. But you can get no one to-day,
+      and they will be off by the morning's coach--what shall we do
+      to-morrow,--for dinner? Your uncle--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll get dinner," said Fleda caressing her;--"I'll take all that on
+      myself. It sha'n't be a bad dinner either. Uncle Rolf will like what I do
+      for him I dare say. Now cheer up, aunt Lucy!--do--that's all I ask of you.
+      Won't you?--for me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She longed to speak a word of that quiet hope with which in every trouble
+      she secretly comforted herself--she wanted to whisper the words that were
+      that moment in her own mind, "Truly I know that it shall be well with them
+      that fear God;"--but her natural reserve and timidity kept her lips shut;
+      to her grief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The women were paid off and dismissed and departed in the next day's coach
+      from Montepoole. Fleda stood at the front door to see them go, with a
+      curious sense that there was an empty house at her back, and indeed upon
+      her back. And in spite of all the cheeriness of her tone to her aunt, she
+      was not without some shadowy feeling that soberer times might be coming
+      upon them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is to be done now?" said Hugh close beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O we are going to get somebody else," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know!--You and I are going to find out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You and I!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes. We are going out after dinner, Hugh dear," said she turning her
+      bright merry face towards him,--"to pick up somebody."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linking her arm within his she went back to the deserted kitchen premises
+      to see how her promise about taking Mary's place was to be fulfilled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know where to look?" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I've a notion;--but the first thing is dinner, that uncle Rolf mayn't
+      think the world is turning topsy turvy. There is nothing at all here,
+      Hugh!--nothing in the world but bread--it's a blessing there is that.
+      Uncle Rolf will have to be satisfied with a coffee dinner to-day, and I'll
+      make him the most superb omelette--that my skill is equal to! Hugh dear,
+      you shall set the table.--You don't know how?--then you shall make the
+      toast, and I will set it the first thing of all. You perceive it is well
+      to know how to do everything, Mr. Hugh Rossitur."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where did you learn to make omelettes?" said Hugh with laughing
+      admiration, as Fleda bared two pretty arms and ran about the very
+      impersonation of good-humoured activity. The table was set; the coffee was
+      making; and she had him established at the fire with two great plates, a
+      pile of slices of bread, and a toasting-iron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where? Oh don't you remember the days of Mrs. Renney? I have seen Emile
+      make them. And by dint of trying to teach Mary this summer I have taught
+      myself. There is no knowing, you see, what a person may come to."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wonder what father would say if he knew you had made all the coffee
+      this summer!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is an unnecessary speculation, my dear Hugh, as I have no intention
+      of telling him. But see!--that is the way with speculators! 'While they go
+      on refining'--the toast burns!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The coffee and the omelette and the toast and Mr. Rossitur's favourite
+      French salad, were served with beautiful accuracy; and he was quite
+      satisfied. But aunt Lucy looked sadly at Fleda's flushed face and saw that
+      her appetite seemed to have gone off in the steam of her preparations.
+      Fleda had a kind of heart-feast however which answered as well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh harnessed the little wagon, for no one was at hand to do it, and he
+      and Fleda set off as early as possible after dinner. Fleda's thoughts had
+      turned to her old acquaintance Cynthia Gall, who she knew was out of
+      employment and staying at home somewhere near Montepoole. They got the
+      exact direction from aunt Miriam who approved of her plan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a pleasant peaceful drive they had. They never were alone together,
+      they two, but vexations seemed to lose their power or be forgotten; and an
+      atmosphere of quietness gather about them, the natural element of both
+      hearts. It might refuse its presence to one, but the attraction of both
+      together was too strong to be resisted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Cynthia's present abode was in an out of the way place, and a good
+      distance off; they were some time in reaching it. The barest-looking and
+      dingiest of houses, set plump in a green field, without one softening or
+      home-like touch from any home-feeling within; not a flower, not a shrub,
+      not an out-house, not a tree near. One would have thought it a deserted
+      house, but that a thin wreath of smoke lazily stole up from one of the
+      brown chimneys; and graceful as that was it took nothing from the hard
+      stern barrenness below which told of a worse poverty than that of paint
+      and glazing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Can this be the place?" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It must be. You stay here with the horse, and I'll go in and seek my
+      fortune.--Don't promise much," said Fleda shaking her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The house stood back from the road. Fleda picked her way to it along a
+      little footpath which seemed to be the equal property of the geese. Her
+      knock brought an invitation to "come in."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An elderly woman was sitting there whose appearance did not mend the
+      general impression. She had the same dull and unhopeful look that her
+      house had.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Does Mrs. Gall live here?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do," said this person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is Cynthia at home?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman upon this raised her voice and directed it at an inner door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Lucindy!" said she in a diversity of tones,--"Lucindy!--tell Cynthy
+      here's somebody wants to see her."--But no one answered, and throwing the
+      work from her lap the woman muttered she would go and see, and left Fleda
+      with a cold invitation to sit down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dismal work! Fleda wished herself out of it. The house did not look
+      poverty-stricken within, but poverty must have struck to the very heart,
+      Fleda thought, where there was no apparent cherishing of anything. There
+      was no absolute distress visible, neither was there a sign of real comfort
+      or of a happy home. She could not fancy it was one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She waited so long that she was sure Cynthia did not hold herself in
+      readiness to see company. And when the lady at last came in it was with
+      very evident marks of "smarting up" about her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why it's Flidda Ringgan!" said Miss Gall after a dubious look or two at
+      her visitor. "How <i>do</i> you do? I didn't 'spect to see <i>you</i>. How
+      much you have growed!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked really pleased and gave Fleda's hand a very strong grasp as she
+      shook it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There ain't no fire here to-day," pursued Cynthy, paying her attentions
+      to the fireplace,--"we let it go down on account of our being all busy out
+      at the back of the house. I guess you're cold, ain't you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda said no, and remembered that the woman she had first seen was
+      certainly not busy at the back of the house nor anywhere else but in that
+      very room, where she had found her deep in a pile of patchwork.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I heerd you had come to the old place. Were you glad to be back again?"
+      Cynthy asked with a smile that might be taken to express some doubt upon
+      the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was very glad to see it again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hain't seen it in a great while. I've been staying to hum this year or
+      two. I got tired o' going out," Cynthy remarked, with again a smile very
+      peculiar and Fleda thought a little sardonical. She did not know how to
+      answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, how do you come along down yonder?" Cynthy went on, making a great
+      fuss with the shovel and tongs to very little purpose. "Ha' you come all
+      the way from Queechy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes. I came on purpose to see you, Cynthy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without staying to ask what for, Miss Gall now went out to "the back of
+      the house" and came running in again with a live brand pinched in the
+      tongs, and a long tail of smoke running after it. Fleda would have
+      compounded for no fire and no choking. The choking was only useful to give
+      her time to think. She was uncertain how to bring in her errand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And how is Mis' Plumfield?" said Cynthy, in an interval of blowing the
+      brand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is quite well; but Cynthy, you need not have taken all that trouble
+      for me. I cannot stay but a few minutes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is wood enough!" Cynthia remarked with one of her grim smiles; an
+      assertion Fleda could not help doubting. Indeed she thought Miss Gall had
+      grown altogether more disagreeable than she used to be in old times. Why,
+      she could not divine, unless the souring effect had gone on with the
+      years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what's become of Earl Douglass and Mis' Douglass? I hain't heerd
+      nothin' of 'em this great while. I always told your grandpa he'd ha' saved
+      himself a great deal o' trouble if he'd ha' let Earl Douglass take hold of
+      things. You ha'n't got Mr. Didenhover into the works again I guess, have
+      you? He was there a good spell after your grandpa died."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I haven't seen Mrs. Douglass," said Fleda. "But Cynthy, what do you think
+      I have come here for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Cynthy, with another of her peculiar looks directed
+      at the fire. "I s'pose you want someh'n nother of me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have come to see if you wouldn't come and live with my aunt, Mrs.
+      Rossitur. We are left alone and want somebody very much; and I thought I
+      would find you out and see if we couldn't have you, first of all,--before
+      I looked for anybody else."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cynthy was absolutely silent. She sat before the fire, her feet stretched
+      out towards it as far as they would go and her arms crossed, and not
+      moving her steady gaze at the smoking wood, or the chimney-back, whichever
+      it might be; but there was in the corners of her mouth the threatening of
+      a smile that Fleda did not at all like.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you say to it, Cynthy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I reckon you'd best get somebody else," said Miss Gall with a kind of
+      condescending dryness, and the smile shewing a little more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why?" said Fleda, "I would a great deal rather have an old friend than a
+      stranger."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Be you the housekeeper?" said Cynthy a little abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O I am a little of everything," said Fleda;--"cook and housekeeper and
+      whatever comes first. I want you to come and be housekeeper, Cynthy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I reckon Mis' Rossitur don't have much to do with her help, does she?"
+      said Cynthy after a pause, during which the corners of her mouth never
+      changed. The tone of piqued independence let some light into Fleda's mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is not strong enough to do much herself, and she wants some one that
+      will take all the trouble from her. You'd have the field all to yourself,
+      Cynthy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Your aunt sets two tables I calculate, don't she?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--my uncle doesn't like to have any but his own family around him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I guess I shouldn't suit!" said Miss Gall, after another little pause,
+      and stooping very diligently to pick up some scattered shreds from the
+      floor. But Fleda could see the flushed face and the smile which pride and
+      a touch of spiteful pleasure in the revenge she was taking made
+      particularly hateful. She needed no more convincing that Miss Gall
+      "wouldn't suit;" but she was sorry at the same time for the perverseness
+      that had so needlessly disappointed her; and went rather pensively back
+      again down the little foot-path to the waiting wagon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is hardly the romance of life, dear Hugh," she said as she seated
+      herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Haven't you succeeded?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's the matter?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O--pride,--injured pride of station! The wrong of not coming to our table
+      and putting her knife into our butter."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And living in such a place!" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You don't know what a place. They are miserably poor, I am sure; and
+      yet--I suppose that the less people have to be proud of the more they make
+      of what is left. Poor people!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Poor Fleda!" said Hugh looking at her. "What will you do now?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O we'll do somehow," said she cheerfully. "Perhaps it is just as well
+      after all, for Cynthy isn't the smartest woman in the world. I remember
+      grandpa used to say he didn't believe she could get a bean into the middle
+      of her bread."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A bean into the middle of her bread!" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda's sobriety was quite banished by his mystified look, and her
+      laugh rang along over the fields before she answered him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That laugh had blown away all the vapours, for the present at least, and
+      they jogged on again very sociably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know," said Fleda, after a while of silent enjoyment in the
+      changes of scene and the mild autumn weather,--"I am not sure that it
+      wasn't very well for me that we came away from New York."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dare say it was," said Hugh,--"since we came; but what makes you say
+      so?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't mean that it was for anybody else, but for me. I think I was a
+      little proud of our nice things there."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>You,</i> Fleda!" said Hugh with a look of appreciating affection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes I was, a little. It didn't make the greatest part of my love for
+      them, I am sure; but I think I had a little, undefined, sort of pleasure
+      in the feeling that they were better and prettier than other people had."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are sure you are not proud of your little King Charles now?" said
+      Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know but I am," said Fleda laughing. "But how much pleasanter it
+      is here on almost every account. Look at the beautiful sweep of the ground
+      off among those hills--isn't it? What an exquisite horizon line, Hugh!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what a sky over it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--I love these fall skies. Oh I would a great deal rather be here than
+      in any city that ever was built!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So would I," said Hugh. "But the thing is--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda knew quite well what the thing was, and did not answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But my dear Hugh," she said presently,--"I don't remember that sweep of
+      hills when we were coming?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You were going the other way," said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes but, Hugh,--I am sure we did not pass these grain fields. We must
+      have got into the wrong road."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh drew the reins, and looked, and doubted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is a house yonder," said Fleda,--"we had better drive on and ask."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is no house--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes there is--behind that piece of wood. Look over it--don't you see a
+      light curl of blue smoke against the sky?--We never passed that house and
+      wood, I am certain. We ought to make haste, for the afternoons are short
+      now, and you will please to recollect there is nobody at home to get tea."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope Lucas will get upon one of his everlasting talks with father,"
+      said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And that it will hold till we get home," said Fleda. "It will be the
+      happiest use Lucas has made of his tongue in a good while."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as they stopped before a substantial-looking farm-house a man came
+      from the other way and stopped there too, with his hand upon the gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How far are we from Queechy, sir?" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're not from it at all, sir," said the man politely. "You're in
+      Queechy, sir, at present."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is this the right road from Montepoole to Queechy village?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is not, sir. It is a very tortuous direction indeed. Have I not the
+      pleasure of speaking to Mr. Rossitur's young gentleman?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur's young gentleman acknowledged his relationship and begged
+      the favour of being set in the right way home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "With much pleasure! You have been shewing Miss Rossitur the picturesque
+      country about Montepoole?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My cousin and I have been there on business, and lost our way coming
+      back."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah I dare say. Very easy. First time you have been there?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes sir, and we are in a hurry to get home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well sir,--you know the road by Deacon Patterson's?--comes out just above
+      the lake?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh did not remember.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well--you keep this road straight on,--I'm sorry you are in a hurry,--you
+      keep on till--do you know when you strike Mr. Harris's ground?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, Hugh knew nothing about it, nor Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well I'll tell you now how it is," said the stranger, "if you'll permit
+      me. You and your--a--cousin--come in and do us the pleasure of taking some
+      refreshment--I know my sister'll have her table set out by this time--and
+      I'll do myself the honour of introducing you to--a--these strange roads
+      afterwards."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thank you, sir, but that trouble is unnecessary--cannot you direct us?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No trouble--indeed sir, I assure you, I should esteem it a favour--very
+      highly. I--I am Dr. Quackenboss, sir; you may have heard--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thank you, Dr. Quackenboss, but we have no time this afternoon--we are
+      very anxious to reach home as soon as possible; if you would be be so good
+      as to put us in the way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus12.jpg"><img src="images/illus12.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="'Well, sir, you know the road by Deacon Patterson's?'"
+      title="'Well, sir, you know the road by Deacon Patterson's?'" /><br />
+      "Well, sir, you know the road by Deacon Patterson's?"</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I--really sir, I am afraid--to a person ignorant of the various
+      localities--You will lose no time--I will just hitch your horse here, and
+      I'll have mine ready by the time this young lady has rested.
+      Miss--a--won't you join with me? I assure you I will not put you to the
+      expense of a minute--Thank you!--Mr. Harden!--Just clap the saddle on to
+      Lollypop and have him up here in three seconds.--Thank you!--My dear
+      Miss--a--won't you take my arm? I am gratified, I assure you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yielding to the apparent impossibility of getting anything out of Dr.
+      Quackenboss, except civility, and to the real difficulty of disappointing
+      such very earnest good will, Fleda and Hugh did what older persons would
+      not have done,--alighted and walked up to the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is quite a fortuitous occurrence," the doctor went on:--"I have
+      often had the pleasure of seeing Mr Rossitur's family in church--in the
+      little church at Queechy Run--and that enabled me to recognise your cousin
+      as soon as I saw him in the wagon. Perhaps Miss--a--you may have possibly
+      heard of my name?--Quackenboss--I don't know that you understood--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have heard it, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My Irishmen, Miss--a--my Irish labourers, can't get hold of but one end
+      of it; they call me Boss--ha, ha, ha!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda hoped his patients did not get hold of the other end of it, and
+      trembled, visibly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hard to pull a man's name to pieces before his face,--ha, ha! but I
+      am--a--not one thing myself,--a kind of heterogynous--I am a piece of a
+      physician and a little in the agricultural line also; so it's all fair."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Irish treat my name as hardly, Dr. Quackenboss--they call me nothing
+      but Miss Ring-again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then Fleda could laugh, and laugh she did, so heartily that the doctor
+      was delighted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ring-again! ha, ha!--Very good!--Well, Miss--a--I shouldn't think that
+      anybody in your service would ever--a--ever let you put your name in
+      practice."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda's delight at the excessive gallantry and awkwardness of this
+      speech was almost too much; or, as the doctor pleasantly remarked, her
+      nerves were too many for her; and every one of them was dancing by the
+      time they reached the hall-door. The doctor's flourishes lost not a bit of
+      their angularity from his tall ungainly figure and a lantern-jawed face,
+      the lower member of which had now and then a somewhat lateral play when he
+      was speaking, which curiously aided the quaint effect of his words. He
+      ushered his guests into the house, seeming in a flow of self-gratulation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The supper-table was spread, sure enough, and hovering about it was the
+      doctor's sister; a lady in whom Fleda only saw a Dutch face, with eyes
+      that made no impression, disagreeable fair hair, and a string of gilt
+      beads round her neck. A painted yellow floor under foot, a room that
+      looked excessively <i>wooden</i> and smelt of cheese, bare walls and a
+      well-filled table, was all that she took in besides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have the honour of presenting you to my sister," said the doctor with
+      suavity. "Flora, the Irish domestics of this young lady call her name Miss
+      Ring-again--if she will let us know how it ought to be called we shall be
+      happy to be informed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Quackenboss was made happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Miss <i>Ringgan</i>--and this young gentleman is young Mr. Rossitur--the
+      gentleman that has taken Squire Ringgan's old place. We were so fortunate
+      as to have them lose their way this afternoon, coming from the Pool, and
+      they have just stepped in to see if you can't find 'em a mouthful of
+      something they can eat, while Lollypop is a getting ready to see them
+      home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Miss Flora immediately disappeared into the kitchen, to order a bit
+      of superior cheese and to have some slices of ham put on the gridiron, and
+      then coming back to the common room went rummaging about from cupboard to
+      cupboard, in search of cake and sweetmeats. Fleda protested and begged in
+      vain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She was so sorry she hadn't knowed," Miss Flora said,--"she'd ha' had
+      some cakes made that maybe they could have eaten, but the bread was dry;
+      and the cheese wa'n't as good somehow as the last one they cut, maybe Miss
+      Ringgan would prefer a piece of newer-made, if she liked it; and she
+      hadn't had good luck with her preserves last summer--the most of 'em had
+      fomented--she thought it was the damp weather, but there was some stewed
+      pears that maybe she would be so good as to approve--and there was some
+      ham! whatever else it was it was hot!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was impossible, it was impossible, to do dishonour to all this
+      hospitality and kindness and pride that was brought out for them. Early or
+      late, they must eat, in mere gratitude. The difficulty was to avoid eating
+      everything. Hugh and Fleda managed to compound the matter with each other,
+      one taking the cake and pears, and the other the ham and cheese. In the
+      midst of all this over flow of good will Fleda bethought her to ask if
+      Miss Flora knew of any girl or woman that would go out to service. Miss
+      Flora took the matter into grave consideration as soon as her anxiety on
+      the subject of their cups of tea had subsided. She did not commit herself,
+      but thought it possible that one of the Finns might be willing to go out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where do they live?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's--a--not far from Queechy Run," said the doctor, whose now and then
+      hesitation in the midst of his speech was never for want of a thought but
+      simply and merely for the best words to clothe it in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it in our way to-night?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could make it so, the doctor said, with pleasure, for it would give him
+      permission to gallant them a little further.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had several miles yet to go, and the sun went down as they were
+      passing through Queechy Run. Under that still cool clear autumn sky Fleda
+      would have enjoyed the ride very much, but that her unfulfilled errand was
+      weighing upon her, and she feared her aunt and uncle might want her
+      services before she could be at home. Still, late as it was, she
+      determined to stop for a minute at Mrs. Finn's and go home with a clear
+      conscience. At her door, and not till there, the doctor was prevailed upon
+      to part company, the rest of the way being perfectly plain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not I!--at least I think not. But, Hugh, don't say anything about all
+      this to aunt Lucy. She would be troubled."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda had certainly when she came away no notion of improving her
+      acquaintance with Miss Anastasia; but the supper, and the breakfast and
+      the dinner of the next day, with all the nameless and almost numberless
+      duties of housework that filled up the time between, wrought her to a very
+      strong sense of the necessity of having some kind of "help" soon. Mrs.
+      Rossitur wearied herself excessively with doing very little, and then
+      looked so sad to see Fleda working on, that it was more disheartening and
+      harder to bear than the fatigue. Hugh was a most faithful and invaluable
+      coadjutor, and his lack of strength was like her own made up by energy of
+      will; but neither of them could bear the strain long; and when the final
+      clearing away of the dinner-dishes gave her a breathing-time she resolved
+      to dress herself and put her thimble in her pocket and go over to Miss
+      Finn's quilting. Miss Lucy might not be like Miss Anastasia; and if she
+      were, anything that had hands and feet to move instead of her own would be
+      welcome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh went with her to the door and was to come for her at sunset.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="20"></a>Chapter XX.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        With superfluity of breeding<br /> First makes you sick, and then with
+        feeding.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Jenyns.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Miss Anastasia was a little surprised and a good deal gratified, Fleda
+      saw, by her coming, and played the hostess with great benignity. The
+      quilting-frame was stretched in an upper room, not in the long kitchen, to
+      Fleda's joy; most of the company were already seated at it, and she had to
+      go through a long string of introductions before she was permitted to take
+      her place. First of all Earl Douglass's wife, who rose up and taking both
+      Fleda's hands squeezed and shook them heartily, giving her with eye and
+      lip a most genial welcome. This lady had every look of being a very <i>clever</i>
+      woman; "a manager" she was said to be; and indeed her very nose had a
+      little pinch which prepared one for nothing superfluous about her. Even
+      her dress could not have wanted another breadth from the skirt and had no
+      fulness to spare about the body. Neat as a pin though; and a well-to-do
+      look through it all. Miss Quackenboss Fleda recognised as an old friend,
+      gilt beads and all. Catherine Douglass had grown up to a pretty girl
+      during the five years since Fleda had left Queechy, and gave her a
+      greeting half smiling, half shy. There was a little more affluence about
+      the flow of her drapery, and the pink ribbon round her neck was confined
+      by a little dainty Jew's harp of a brooch; she had her mother's pinch of
+      the nose too. Then there were two other young ladies;--Miss Letitia Ann
+      Thornton, a tall grown girl in pantalettes, evidently a would-be
+      aristocrat from the air of her head and lip, with a well-looking face and
+      looking well knowing of the same, and sporting neat little white cuffs at
+      her wrists, the only one who bore such a distinction. The third of these
+      damsels, Jessie Healy, impressed Fleda with having been brought up upon
+      coarse meat and having grown heavy in consequence; the other two were
+      extremely fair and delicate, both in complexion and feature. Her aunt Syra
+      Fleda recognised without particular pleasure and managed to seat herself
+      at the quilt with the sewing-woman and Miss Hannah between them. Miss Lucy
+      Finn she found seated at her right hand, but after all the civilities she
+      had just gone through Fleda had not courage just then to dash into
+      business with her, and Miss Lucy herself stitched away and was dumb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So were the rest of the party--rather. The presence of the new-comer
+      seemed to have the effect of a spell. Fleda could not think they had been
+      as silent before her joining them as they were for some time afterwards.
+      The young ladies were absolutely mute, and conversation seemed to flag
+      even among the elder ones; and if Fleda ever raised her eyes from the
+      quilt to look at somebody she was sure to see somebody's eyes looking at
+      her, with a curiosity well enough defined and mixed with a more <i>or less</i>
+      amount of benevolence and pleasure. Fleda was growing very industrious and
+      feeling her cheeks grow warm, when the checked stream of conversation
+      began to take revenge by turning its tide upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you glad to be back to Queechy, Fleda?" said Mrs. Douglass from the
+      opposite far end of the quilt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes ma'am," said Fleda, smiling back her answer,--"on some accounts."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ain't she growed like her father, Mis' Douglass?" said the sewing woman.
+      "Do you recollect Walter Ringgan--what a handsome feller he was?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two opposite girls immediately found something to say to each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She ain't a bit more like him than she is like her mother," said Mrs.
+      Douglass, biting off the end of her thread energetically. "Amy Ringgan was
+      a sweet good woman as ever was in this town."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again her daughter's glance and smile went over to the speaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You stay in Queechy and live like Queechy folks do," Mrs. Douglass added,
+      nodding encouragingly, "and you'll beat both on 'em."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this speech jarred, and Fleda wished it had not been spoken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How does your uncle like farming?" said aunt Syra.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A home-thrust, which Fleda parried by saying he had hardly got accustomed
+      to it yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's been his business? what has he been doing all his life till now?"
+      said the sewing-woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda replied that he had had no business; and after the minds of the
+      company had had time to entertain this statement she was startled by Miss
+      Lucy's voice at her elbow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It seems kind o' curious, don't it, that a man should live to be forty or
+      fifty years old and not know anything of the earth he gets his bread
+      from?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What makes you think he don't?" said Miss Thornton rather tartly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She wa'n't speaking o' nobody," said aunt Syra.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was--I was speaking of <i>man</i>--I was speaking abstractly," said
+      Fleda's right hand neighbour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's abstractly?" said Miss Anastasia scornfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where do you get hold of such hard words, Lucy?" said Mrs. Douglass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know, Mis' Douglass;--they come to me;--it's practice, I suppose.
+      I had no intention of being obscure."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One kind o' word's as easy as another I suppose, when you're used to it,
+      ain't it?" said the sewing-woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's abstractly?" said the mistress of the house again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look in the dictionary, if you want to know," said her sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't want to know--I only want you to tell."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When do you get time for it, Lucy? ha'n't you nothing else to practise?"
+      pursued Mrs. Douglass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, Mis' Douglass; but then there are times for exertion, and other
+      times less disposable; and when I feel thoughtful, or low, I commonly
+      retire to my room and contemplate the stars or write a composition."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sewing-woman greeted this speech with an unqualified ha! ha! and Fleda
+      involuntarily raised her head to look at the last speaker; but there was
+      nothing to be noticed about her, except that she was in rather nicer order
+      than the rest of the Finn family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you get home safe last night?" inquired Miss Quackenboss, bending
+      forward over the quilt to look down to Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda thanked her, and replied that they had been overturned and had
+      several ribs broken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And where have you been, Fleda, all this while?" said Mrs. Douglass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda told, upon which all the quilting-party raised their heads
+      simultaneously to take another review of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Your uncle's wife ain't a Frenchwoman, be she?" asked the sewing-woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda said "oh no"--and Miss Quackenboss remarked that "she thought she
+      wa'n't;" whereby Fleda perceived it had been a subject of discussion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She lives like one, don't she?" said aunt Syra.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Which imputation Fleda also refuted to the best of her power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, don't she have dinner in the middle of the afternoon?" pursued aunt
+      Syra.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was obliged to admit that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And she can't eat without she has a fresh piece of roast meat on table
+      every day, can she?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is not always roast," said Fleda, half vexed and half laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'd rather have a good dish o' bread and 'lasses than the hull on't;"
+      observed old Mrs. Finn; from the corner where she sat manifestly turning
+      up her nose at the far-off joints on Mrs. Rossitur's dinner-table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girls on the other side of the quilt again held counsel together, deep
+      and low.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well didn't she pick up all them notions in that place yonder?--where you
+      say she has been?" aunt Syra went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda; "everybody does so in New York."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I want to know what kind of a place New York is, now," said old Mrs. Finn
+      drawlingly. "I s'pose it's pretty big, ain't it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda replied that it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shouldn't wonder if it was a'most as far as from here to Queechy Run,
+      now, ain't it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The distance mentioned being somewhere about one-eighth of New York's
+      longest diameter, Fleda answered that it was quite as far.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I s'pose there's plenty o' mighty rich folks there, ain't there?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Plenty, I believe," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should hate to live in it awfully!" was the old woman's conclusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should admire to travel in many countries," said Miss Lucy, for the
+      first time seeming to intend her words particularly for Fleda's ear. "I
+      think nothing makes people more genteel. I have observed it frequently."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda said it was very pleasant; but though encouraged by this opening
+      could not muster enough courage to ask if Miss Lucy had a "notion" to come
+      and prove their gentility. Her next question was startling,--if Fleda had
+      ever studied mathematics?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda. "Have you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O my, yes! There was a lot of us concluded we would learn it; and we
+      commenced to study it a long time ago. I think it's a most elevating--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The discussion was suddenly broken off, for the sewing-woman exclaimed, as
+      the other sister came in and took her seat,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why Hannah! you ha'n't been makin' bread with that crock on your hands!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well Mis' Barnes!" said the girl,--"I've washed 'em, and I've made bread
+      with 'em, and even <i>that</i> didn't take it off!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you look at the stars, too, Hannah?" said Mrs. Douglass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amidst a small hubbub of laugh and talk which now became general, poor
+      Fleda fell back upon one single thought--one wish; that Hugh would come to
+      fetch her home before tea-time. But it was a vain hope. Hugh was not to be
+      there till sundown, and supper was announced long before that. They all
+      filed down, and Fleda with them, to the great kitchen below stairs; and
+      she found herself placed in the seat of honour indeed, but an honour she
+      would gladly have escaped, at Miss Anastasia's right hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A temporary locked-jaw would have been felt a blessing. Fleda dared hardly
+      even look about her; but under the eye of her hostess the instinct of
+      good-breeding was found sufficient to swallow everything; literally and
+      figuratively. There was a good deal to swallow. The usual variety of
+      cakes, sweetmeats, beef, cheese, biscuits, and pies, was set out with some
+      peculiarity of arrangement which Fleda had never seen before, and which
+      left that of Miss Quackenboss elegant by comparison. Down each side of the
+      table ran an advanced guard of little sauces, in Indian file, but in
+      companies of three, the file leader of each being a saucer of custard, its
+      follower a ditto of preserves, and the third keeping a sharp look-out in
+      the shape of pickles; and to Fleda's unspeakable horror she discovered
+      that the guests were expected to help themselves at will from these
+      several stores with their own spoons, transferring what they took either
+      to their own plates or at once to its final destination, which last mode
+      several of the company preferred. The advantage of this plan was the
+      necessary great display of the new silver tea-spoons which Mrs. Douglass
+      slyly hinted to aunt Syra were the moving cause of the tea-party. But aunt
+      Syra swallowed sweetmeats and would not give heed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no relief for poor Fleda. Aunt Syra was her next neighbour, and
+      opposite to her, at Miss Anastasia's left hand, was the disagreeable
+      countenance and peering eyes of the old crone her mother. Fleda kept her
+      own eyes fixed upon her plate and endeavoured to see nothing but that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why here's Fleda ain't eating anything," said Mrs. Douglass. "Won't you
+      have some preserves? take some custard, do!--Anastasy, she ha'n't a
+      spoon--no wonder!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda had secretly conveyed hers under cover.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There <i>was</i> one," said Miss Anastasia, looking about where one
+      should have been,--"I'll get another as soon as I give Mis' Springer her
+      tea."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ha'n't you got enough to go round?" said the old woman plucking at her
+      daughter's sleeve,--"Anastasy!--ha'n't you got enough to go round?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This speech which was spoken with a most spiteful simplicity Miss
+      Anastasia answered with superb silence, and presently produced spoons
+      enough to satisfy herself and the company. But Fleda! No earthly
+      persuasion could prevail upon her to touch pickles, sweetmeats, or
+      custard, that evening; and even in the bread and cakes she had a vision of
+      hands before her that took away her appetite. She endeavoured to make a
+      shew with hung beef and cups of tea, which indeed was not Pouchong; but
+      her supper came suddenly to an end upon a remark of her hostess, addressed
+      to the whole table, that they needn't be surprised if they found any bite
+      of pudding in the gingerbread, for it was made from the molasses the
+      children left the other day. Who "the children" were Fleda did not know,
+      neither was it material.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was sundown, but Hugh had not come when they went to the upper rooms
+      again. Two were open now, for they were small and the company promised not
+      to be such. Fathers and brothers and husbands began to come, and loud
+      talking and laughing and joking took place of the quilting chit-chat.
+      Fleda would fain have absorbed herself in the work again, but though the
+      frame still stood there the minds of the company were plainly turned aside
+      from their duty, or perhaps they thought that Miss Anastasia had had
+      admiration enough to dispense with service. Nobody shewed a thimble but
+      one or two old ladies; and as numbers and spirits gathered strength, a
+      kind of romping game was set on foot in which a vast deal of kissing
+      seemed to be the grand wit of the matter. Fleda shrank away out of sight
+      behind the open door of communication between the two rooms, pleading with
+      great truth that she was tired and would like to keep perfectly quiet; and
+      she had soon the satisfaction of being apparently forgotten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the other room some of the older people were enjoying themselves more
+      soberly. Fleda's ear was too near the crack of the door not to have the
+      benefit of more of their conversation than she cared for. It soon put
+      quiet of mind out of the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He'll twist himself up pretty short; that's my sense of it; and he won't
+      take long to do it, nother," said Earl Douglass's voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda would have known it anywhere from its extreme peculiarity. It never
+      either rose or fell much from a certain pitch; and at that level the words
+      gurgled forth, seemingly from an ever-brimming fountain; he never wanted
+      one; and the stream had neither let nor stay till his modicum of sense had
+      fairly run out. People thought he had not a greater stock of that than
+      some of his neighbours; but he issued an amount of word-currency
+      sufficient for the use of the county.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He'll run himself agin a post pretty quick," said uncle Joshua in a
+      confirmatory tone of voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda had a confused idea that somebody was going to hang himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He ain't a workin' things right," said Douglass,--"he ain't a workin'
+      things right; he's takin' hold o' everything by the tail end. He ain't
+      studied the business; he doesn't know when things is right, and he doesn't
+      know when things is wrong;--and if they're wrong he don't know how to set
+      'em right. He's got a feller there that ain't no more fit to be there than
+      I am to be Vice President of the United States; and I ain't a going to say
+      what I think I <i>am</i> fit for, but I ha'n't studied for <i>that</i>
+      place and I shouldn't like to stand an examination for't; and a man hadn't
+      ought to be a farmer no more if he ha'n't qualified himself. That's my
+      idee. I like to see a thing done well if it's to be done at all; and there
+      ain't a stitch o' land been laid right on the hull farm, nor a furrow
+      driv' as it had ought to be, since he come on to it; and I say, Squire
+      Springer, a man ain't going to get along in that way, and he hadn't ought
+      to. I work hard myself, and I calculate to work hard; and I make a livin
+      by't; and I'm content to work hard. When I see a man with his hands in his
+      pockets, I think he'll have nothin' else in 'em soon. I don't believe he's
+      done a hand's turn himself on the land the hull season!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And upon this Mr. Douglass brought up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My son Lucas has been workin' with him, off and on, pretty much the hull
+      time since he come; and <i>he</i> says he ha'n't begun to know how to
+      spell farmer yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, ay! My wife--she's a little harder on folks than I be--I think it
+      ain't worth while to say nothin' of a man without I can say some good of
+      him--that's my idee--and it don't do no harm, nother,--but my wife, she
+      says he's got to let down his notions a peg or two afore they'll hitch
+      just in the right place; and I won't say but what I think she ain't maybe
+      fur from right. If a man's above his business he stands a pretty fair
+      chance to be below it some day. I won't say myself, for I haven't any
+      acquaintance with him, and a man oughtn't to speak but of what he is
+      knowing to,--but I have heerd say, that he wa'n't as conversationable as
+      it would ha' been handsome in him to be, all things considerin'. There
+      seems to be a good many things said of him, somehow, and I always think
+      men don't talk of a man if he don't give 'em occasion; but anyhow I've
+      been past the farm pretty often myself this summer, workin' with Seth
+      Plumfield; and I've took notice of things myself; and I know he's been
+      makin' beds o' sparrowgrass when he had ought to ha' been makin' fences,
+      and he's been helpin' that little girl o' his'n set her flowers, when he
+      would ha' been better sot to work lookin' after his Irishman; but I don't
+      know as it made much matter nother, for if he went wrong Mr. Rossitur
+      wouldn't know how to set him right, and if he was a going right Mr.
+      Rossitur would ha' been just as likely to ha' set him wrong. Well I'm
+      sorry for him!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Rossitur is a most gentlemanlike man," said the voice of Dr.
+      Quackenboss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay,--I dare say he is," Earl responded in precisely the same tone. "I was
+      down to his house one day last summer to see him.--He wa'n't to hum,
+      though."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It would be strange if harm come to a man with such a guardian angel in
+      the house as that man has in his'n," said Dr. Quackenboss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well she's a pretty creetur'!" said Douglass, looking up with some
+      animation. "I wouldn't blame any man that sot a good deal by her. I will
+      say I think she's as handsome as my own darter; and a man can't go no
+      furder than that I suppose."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She won't help his farming much, I guess," said uncle Joshua,--"nor his
+      wife, nother."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda heard Dr. Quackenboss coming through the doorway and started from
+      her corner for fear he might find her out there and know what she had
+      heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He very soon found her out in the new place she had chosen and came up to
+      pay his compliments. Fleda was in a mood for anything but laughing, yet
+      the mixture of the ludicrous which the doctor administered set her nerves
+      a twitching. Bringing his chair down sideways at one angle and his person
+      at another, so as to meet at the moment of the chair's touching the floor,
+      and with a look and smile slanting to match, the doctor said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, Miss Ringgan, has--a--Mrs. Rossitur,--does she feel herself
+      reconciled yet?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Reconciled, sir?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--a--to Queechy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She never quarrelled with it, sir," said Fleda, quite unable to keep from
+      laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes,--I mean--a--she feels that she can sustain her spirits in different
+      situations?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is very well, sir, thank you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It must have been a great change to her--and to you all--coming to this
+      place."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir; the country is very different from the city."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In what part of New York was Mr. Rossitur's former residence?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In State street, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "State street,--that is somewhere in the direction of the Park?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, sir, not exactly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Was Mrs. Rossitur a native of the city?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not of New York. O Hugh, my dear Hugh," exclaimed Fleda in another
+      tone,--"what have you been thinking of?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Father wanted me," said Hugh. "I could not help it, Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are not going to have the cruelty to take your--a--cousin away, Mr.
+      Rossitur?" said the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda was for once happy to be cruel; she would hear no remonstrances.
+      Though her desire for Miss Lucy's "help" had considerably lessened she
+      thought she could not in politeness avoid speaking on the subject, after
+      being invited there on purpose. But Miss Lucy said she "calculated to stay
+      at home this winter," unless she went to live with somebody at Kenton for
+      the purpose of attending a course of philosophy lectures that she heard
+      were to be given there. So that matter was settled; and clasping Hugh's
+      arm Fleda turned away from the house with a step and heart both lightened
+      by the joy of being out of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I couldn't come sooner, Fleda," said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No matter--O I'm so glad to be away! Walk a little faster, dear
+      Hugh.--Have you missed me at home?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you want me to say no or yes?" said Hugh smiling. "We did very
+      well--mother and I--and I have left everything ready to have tea the
+      minute you get home. What sort of a time have you had?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In answer to which Fleda gave him a long history; and then they walked on
+      awhile in silence. The evening was still and would have been dark but for
+      the extreme brilliancy of the stars through the keen clear atmosphere.
+      Fleda looked up at them and drew large draughts of bodily and mental
+      refreshment with the bracing air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know to-morrow will be Thanksgiving day?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ye--what made you think of it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They were talking about it--they make a great fuss here Thanksgiving
+      day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't think we shall make much of a fuss," said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't think we shall. I wonder what I shall do--I am afraid uncle Rolf
+      will get tired of coffee and omelettes in the course of time; and my list
+      of receipts is very limited."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is a pity you didn't beg one of Mrs. Renney's books," said Hugh
+      laughing. "If you had only known--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Tisn't too late!" said Fleda quickly,--"I'll send to New York for one. I
+      will! I'll ask uncle Orrin to get it for me. That's the best thought!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But, Fleda! you're not going to turn cook in that fashion?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It would be no harm to have the book," said Fleda. "I can tell you we
+      mustn't expect to get anybody here that can make an omelette, or even
+      coffee, that uncle Rolf will drink. Oh Hugh!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know where we are going to get anybody!--But don't say anything
+      to aunt Lucy about it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, we can keep Thanksgiving day, Fleda, without a dinner," said Hugh
+      cheerfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes indeed; I am sure I can--after being among these people to-night. How
+      much I have that they want! Look at the Great Bear over there!--isn't that
+      better than New York?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Great Bear hangs over New York too," Hugh said with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah but it isn't the same thing. Heaven hasn't the same eyes for the city
+      and the country."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Hugh and Fleda went quick up to the kitchen door they overtook a dark
+      figure, at whom looking narrowly as she passed, Fleda recognised Seth
+      Plumfield. He was joyfully let into the kitchen, and there proved to be
+      the bearer of a huge dish carefully covered with a napkin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mother guessed you hadn't any Thanksgiving ready," he said,--"and she
+      wanted to send this down to you; so I thought I would come and fetch it
+      myself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O thank her! and thank you, cousin Seth;--how good you are?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mother ha'n't lost her old trick at 'em," said he, "so I hope <i>that's</i>
+      good."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O I know it is," said Fleda. "I remember aunt Miriam's Thanksgiving
+      chicken-pies. Now, cousin Seth, you must come in and see aunt Lucy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said he quietly,--"I've got my farm-boots on--I guess I won't see
+      anybody but you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda would not suffer that, and finding she could not move him she
+      brought her aunt out into the kitchen. Mrs. Rossitur's manner of speaking
+      and thanking him quite charmed Seth, and he went away with a kindly
+      feeling towards those gentle bright eyes which he never forgot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now we've something for to-morrow, Hugh!" said Fleda;--"and such a
+      chicken-pie I can tell you as <i>you</i> never saw. Hugh, isn't it odd how
+      different a thing is in different circumstances? You don't know how glad I
+      was when I put my hands upon that warm pie-dish and knew what it was; and
+      when did I ever care in New York about Emile's doings?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Except the almond gauffres," said Hugh smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I never thought to be so glad of a chicken-pie," said Fleda, shaking her
+      head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Miriam's dish bore out Fleda's praise, in the opinion of all that
+      tasted it; for such fowls, such butter, and such cream, as went to its
+      composition could hardly be known but in an unsophisticated state of
+      society. But one pie could not last for ever; and as soon as the signs of
+      dinner were got rid of, Thanksgiving day though it was, poor Fleda was
+      fain to go up the hill to consult aunt Miriam about the possibility of
+      getting "help."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know, dear Fleda," said she;--"if you cannot get Lucy Finn--I
+      don't know who else there is you can get. Mrs. Toles wants both her
+      daughters at home I know this winter, because she is sick; and Marietta
+      Winchel is working at aunt Syra's;--I don't know--Do you remember Barby
+      Elster, that used to live with me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O yes!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She <i>might</i> go--she has been staying at home these two years, to
+      take care of her old mother, that's the reason she left me; but she has
+      another sister come home now,--Hetty, that married and went to
+      Montepoole,--she's lost her husband and come home to live; so perhaps
+      Barby would go out again. But I don't know,--how do you think your aunt
+      Lucy would get along with her?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear aunt Miriam! you know we must do as we can. We <i>must</i> have
+      somebody."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Barby is a little quick," said Mrs. Plumfield, "but I think she is
+      good-hearted, and she is thorough, and faithful as the day is long. If
+      your aunt and uncle can put up with her ways."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure we can, aunt Miriam. Aunt Lucy's the easiest person in the
+      world to please, and I'll try and keep her away from uncle Rolf. I think
+      we can get along. I know Barby used to like me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But then Barby knows nothing about French cooking, my child; she can do
+      nothing but the common country things. What will your uncle and aunt say
+      to that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Fleda, "but anything is better than nothing. I must
+      try and do what she can't do. I'll come up and get you to teach me, aunt
+      Miriam."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Miriam hugged and kissed her before speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll teach you what I know, my darling;--and now we'll go right off and
+      see Barby--we shall catch her just in a good time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a poor little unpainted house, standing back from the road, and
+      with a double row of boards laid down to serve as a path to it. But this
+      board-walk was scrubbed perfectly clean. They went in without knocking.
+      There was nobody there but an old woman seated before the fire shaking all
+      over with the St. Vitus's Dance. She gave them no salutation, calling
+      instead on "Barby!"--who presently made her appearance from the inner
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Barby!--who's this?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's Mis' Plumfield, mother," said the daughter, speaking loud as to a
+      deaf person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old lady immediately got up and dropped a very quick and what was
+      meant to be a very respect-shewing curtsey, saying at the same time with
+      much deference and with one of her involuntary twitches,--"I ''maun' to
+      know!"--The sense of the ludicrous and the feeling of pity together were
+      painfully oppressive. Fleda turned away to the daughter who came forward
+      and shook hands with a frank look of pleasure at the sight of her elder
+      visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Barby," said Mrs. Plumfield, "this is little Fleda Ringgan--do you
+      remember her?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I 'mind to know!" said Barby, transferring her hand to Fleda's and giving
+      it a good squeeze.--"She's growed a fine gal, Mis' Plumfield. You ha'n't
+      lost none of your good looks--ha' you kept all your old goodness along
+      with 'em?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda laughed at this abrupt question, and said she didn't know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you ha'n't, I wouldn't give much for your eyes," said Barby letting go
+      her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Plumfield laughed too at Barby's equivocal mode of complimenting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who's that young gal, Barby?" inquired Mrs. Elster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's Mis' Plumfield's niece, mother!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She's a handsome little creetur, ain't she?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They all laughed at that, and Fleda's cheeks growing crimson, Mrs.
+      Plumfield stepped forward to ask after the old lady's health; and while
+      she talked and listened Fleda's eyes noted the spotless condition of the
+      room--the white table, the nice rag-carpet, the bright many-coloured
+      patch-work counterpane on the bed, the brilliant cleanliness of the floor
+      where the small carpet left the boards bare, the tidy look of the two
+      women; and she made up her mind that <i>she</i> could get along with Miss
+      Barbara very well. Barby was rather tall, and in face decidedly a
+      fine-looking woman, though her figure had the usual scantling proportions
+      which nature or fashion assigns to the hard-working dwellers in the
+      country. A handsome quick grey eye and the mouth were sufficiently
+      expressive of character, and perhaps of temper, but there were no lines of
+      anything sinister or surly; you could imagine a flash, but not a cloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Barby, you are not tied at home any longer, are you?" said Mrs.
+      Plumfield, coming back from the old lady and speaking rather low;--"now
+      that Hetty is here, can't your mother spare you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well I reckon she could, Mis' Plumfield,--if I could work it so that
+      she'd be more comfortable by my being away."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then you'd have no objection to go out again?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where to?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda's uncle, you know, has taken my brother's old place, and they have
+      no help. They want somebody to take the whole management--just you, Barby.
+      Mrs. Rossitur isn't strong."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nor don't want to be, does she? I've heerd tell of her. Mis' Plumfield, I
+      should despise to have as many legs and arms as other folks and not be
+      able to help myself!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you wouldn't despise to help other folks, I hope," said Mrs.
+      Plumfield smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "People that want you very much too," said Fleda; for she quite longed to
+      have that strong hand and healthy eye to rely upon at home. Barby looked
+      at her with a relaxed face, and after a little consideration said "she
+      guessed she'd try."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mis' Plumfield," cried the old lady as they were moving,--"Mis'
+      Plumfield, you said you'd send me a piece of pork."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I haven't forgotten it, Mrs. Elster--you shall have it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well you get it out for me yourself," said the old woman speaking very
+      energetically,--"don't you send no one else to the barrel for't; because I
+      know you'll give me the biggest piece."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Plumfield laughed and promised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll come up and work it out some odd day," said the daughter nodding
+      intelligently as she followed them to the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We'll talk about that," said Mrs. Plumfield.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She was wonderful pleased with the pie," said Barby, "and so was Hetty;
+      she ha'n't seen anything so good, she says, since she quit Queechy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, Barby," said Mrs. Plumfield, as she turned and grasped her hand,
+      "did you remember your Thanksgiving over it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, Mis' Plumfield," and the fine grey eyes fell to the floor,--"but I
+      minded it only because it had come from you. I seemed to hear you saying
+      just that out of every bone I picked."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You minded <i>my</i> message," said the other gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well I don't mind the things I had ought to most," said Barby in a
+      subdued voice,--"never!--'cept mother--I ain't very apt to forget her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Plumfield saw a tell-tale glittering beneath the drooping eye-lid.
+      She added no more but a sympathetic strong squeeze of the hand she held,
+      and turned to follow Fleda who had gone on ahead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mis' Plumfield!" said Barby, before they had reached the stile that led
+      into the road, where Fleda was standing,--"Will I be sure of having the
+      money regular down yonder? You know I hadn't ought to go otherways, on
+      account of mother."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, it will be sure," said Mrs. Plumfield,--"and regular;" adding
+      quietly, "I'll make it so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a bond for the whole amount in aunt Miriam's eyes; and quite
+      satisfied, Barby went back to the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will she expect to come to our table, aunt Miriam?" said Fleda when they
+      had walked a little way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--she will not expect that--but Barby will want a different kind of
+      managing from those Irish women of yours. She won't bear to be spoken to
+      in a way that don't suit her notions of what she thinks she deserves; and
+      perhaps your aunt and uncle will think her notions rather high--I don't
+      know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is no difficulty with aunt Lucy," said Fleda;--"and I guess I can
+      manage uncle Rolf--I'll try. <i>I</i> like her very much."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Barby is very poor," said Mrs. Plumfield; "she has nothing but her own
+      earnings to support herself and her old mother, and now I suppose her
+      sister and her child; for Hetty is a poor thing--never did much, and now I
+      suppose does nothing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are those Finns poor, aunt Miriam?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O no--not at all--they are very well off."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So I thought--they seemed to have plenty of everything, and silver spoons
+      and all. But why then do they go out to work?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They are a little too fond of getting money I expect," said aunt Miriam.
+      "And they are a queer sort of people rather--the mother is queer and the
+      children are queer--they ain't like other folks exactly--never were."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very glad we are to have Barby instead of that Lucy Finn," said
+      Fleda. "O aunt Miriam! you can't think how much easier my heart feels."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Poor child!" said aunt Miriam looking at her. "But it isn't best, Fleda,
+      to have things work too smooth in this world."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, I suppose not," said Fleda sighing. "Isn't it very strange, aunt
+      Miriam, that it should make people worse instead of better to have
+      everything go pleasantly with them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is because they are apt then to be so full of the present that they
+      forget the care of the future."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, and forget there is anything better than the present, I suppose,"
+      said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So we mustn't fret at the ways our Father takes to keep us from hurting
+      ourselves?" said aunt Miriam cheerfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O no!" said Fleda, looking up brightly in answer to the tender manner in
+      which these words were spoken;--"and I didn't mean that <i>this</i> is
+      much of a trouble--only I am very glad to think that somebody is coming
+      to-morrow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Miriam thought that gentle unfretful face could not stand in need of
+      much discipline.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="21"></a>Chapter XXI.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Wise men alway<br /> Affyrme and say,<br /> That best is for a man<br />
+        Diligently,<br /> For to apply,<br /> The business that he can.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        More.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Fleda waited for Barby's coming the next day with a little anxiety. The
+      introduction and installation however were happily got over. Mrs.
+      Rossitur, as Fleda knew, was most easily pleased; and Barby Elster's quick
+      eye was satisfied with the unaffected and universal gentleness and
+      politeness of her new employer. She made herself at home in half an hour;
+      and Mrs. Rossitur and Fleda were comforted to perceive, by unmistakeable
+      signs, that their presence was not needed in the kitchen and they might
+      retire to their own premises and forget there was another part of the
+      house. Fleda had forgotten it utterly, and deliciously enjoying the rest
+      of mind and body she was stretched upon the sofa, luxuriating over some
+      volume from her remnant of a library; when the inner door was suddenly
+      pushed open far enough to admit the entrance of Miss Elster's head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where's the soft soap?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's book went down and her heart jumped to her mouth, for her uncle
+      was sitting over by the window. Mrs. Rossitur looked up in a maze and
+      waited for the question to be repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I say, where's the soft soap?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Soft soap!" said Mrs. Rossitur,--"I don't know whether there is
+      any.--Fleda, do you know?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was trying to think, aunt Lucy. I don't believe there is any."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Where</i> is it?" said Barby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is none, I believe," said Mrs. Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where <i>was</i> it, then?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nowhere--there has not been any in the house," said Fleda, raising
+      herself up to see over the back of her sofa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There ha'n't been none!" said Miss Elster, in a tone more significant
+      than her words, and shutting the door as abruptly as she had opened it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What upon earth does the woman mean?" exclaimed Mr. Rossitur, springing
+      up and advancing towards the kitchen door. Fleda threw herself before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing at all, uncle Rolf--she doesn't mean anything at all--she doesn't
+      know any better."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will improve her knowledge--get out the way, Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But uncle Rolf, just hear me one moment--please don't!--she didn't mean
+      any harm--these people don't know any manners--just let me speak to her,
+      please uncle Rolf!--" said Fleda laying both hands upon her uncle's
+      arms,--"I'll manage her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur's wrath was high, and he would have run over or knocked down
+      anything less gentle that had stood in his way; but even the harshness of
+      strength shuns to set itself in array against the meekness that does not
+      <i>oppose</i>; if the touch of those hands had been a whit less light, or
+      the glance of her eye less submissively appealing, it would have availed
+      nothing. As it was, he stopped and looked at her, at first scowling, but
+      then with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>You</i> manage her!" said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," said Fleda laughing, and now exerting her force she gently pushed
+      him back towards the seat he had quitted,--"yes. uncle Rolf--you've enough
+      else to manage--don't undertake our 'help.' Deliver over all your
+      displeasure upon me when anything goes wrong--I will be the conductor to
+      carry it off safely into the kitchen and discharge it just at that point
+      where I think it will do most execution. Now will you, uncle
+      Rolf?--Because we have got a new-fashioned piece of firearms in the other
+      room that I am afraid will go off unexpectedly if it is meddled with by an
+      unskilful hand;--and that would leave us without arms, you see, or with
+      only aunt Lucy's and mine, which are not reliable."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You saucy girl!"--said her uncle, who was laughing partly at and partly
+      with her,--"I don't know what you deserve exactly.--Well--keep this
+      precious new operative of yours out of my way and I'll take care to keep
+      out of hers. But mind, you must manage not to have your piece snapping in
+      my face in this fashion, for I won't stand it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so, quieted, Mr. Rossitur sat down to his book again; and Fleda
+      leaving hers open went to attend upon Barby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There ain't much yallow soap neither," said this personage,--"if this is
+      all. There's one thing--if we ha'n't got it we can make it. I must get
+      Mis' Rossitur to have a leach-tub sot up right away. I'm a dreadful hand
+      for havin' plenty o' soap."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is a leach-tub?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, a leach-tub, for to leach ashes in. That's easy enough. I'll fix it,
+      afore we're any on us much older. If Mr. Rossitur'll keep me in good hard
+      wood I sha'n't cost him hardly anything for potash."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll see about it," said Fleda, "and I will see about having the
+      leach-tub, or whatever it is, put up for you. And Barby, whenever you want
+      anything, will you just speak to me about it?--and if I am in the other
+      room ask me to come out here. Because my aunt is not strong, and does not
+      know where things are as well as I do; and when my uncle is in there he
+      sometimes does not like to be disturbed with hearing any such talk. If
+      you'll tell me I'll see and have everything done for you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well--you get me a leach sot up--that's all I'll ask of you just now,"
+      said Barby good-humouredly; "and help me to find the soap-grease, if there
+      is any. As to the rest, I don't want to see nothin' o' him in the kitchen
+      so I'll relieve him if he don't want to see much o' me in the parlour.--I
+      shouldn't wonder if there wa'n't a speck of it in the house."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not a speck was there to be found.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Your uncle's pockets must ha' had a good hole in 'em by this time,"
+      remarked Barby as they came back from the cellar. "However, there never
+      was a crock so empty it couldn't be filled. You get me a leach-tub sot up,
+      and I'll find work for it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From that time Fleda had no more trouble with her uncle and Barby. Each
+      seemed to have a wholesome appreciation of the other's combative qualities
+      and to shun them. With Mrs. Rossitur Barby was soon all-powerful. It was
+      enough that she wanted a thing, if Mrs Rossitur's own resources could
+      compass it. For Fleda, to say that Barby had presently a perfect
+      understanding with her and joined to that a most affectionate careful
+      regard, is not perhaps saying much; for it was true of every one without
+      exception with whom Fleda had much to do. Barby was to all of them a very
+      great comfort and stand-by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was well for them that they had her within doors to keep things, as she
+      called it, "right and tight;" for abroad the only system in vogue was one
+      of fluctuation and uncertainty. Mr. Rossitur's Irishman, Donohan, staid
+      his year out, doing as little good and as much at least negative harm as
+      he well could; and then went, leaving them a good deal poorer than he
+      found them. Dr. Gregory's generosity had added to Mr. Rossitur's own small
+      stock of ready money, giving him the means to make some needed outlays on
+      the farm. But the outlay, ill-applied, had been greater than the income; a
+      scarcity of money began to be more and more felt; and the comfort of the
+      family accordingly drew within more and more narrow bounds. The temper of
+      the head of the family suffered in at least equal degree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the first of Barby's coming poor Fleda had done her utmost to prevent
+      the want of Mons. Emile from being felt. Mr. Rossitur's table was always
+      set by her careful hand, and all the delicacies that came upon it were,
+      unknown to him, of her providing. Even the bread. One day at breakfast Mr.
+      Rossitur had expressed his impatient displeasure at that of Miss Elster's
+      manufacture. Fleda saw the distressed shade that came over her aunt's
+      face, and took her resolution. It was the last time. She had followed her
+      plan of sending for the receipts, and she studied them diligently, both at
+      home and under aunt Miriam. Natural quickness of eye and hand came in aid
+      of her affectionate zeal, and it was not long before she could trust
+      herself to undertake any operation in the whole range of her cookery book.
+      But meanwhile materials were growing scarce and hard to come by. The
+      delicate French rolls which were now always ready for her uncle's plate in
+      the morning had sometimes nothing to back them, unless the unfailing water
+      cress from the good little spring in the meadow. Fleda could not spare her
+      eggs, for perhaps they might have nothing else to depend upon for dinner.
+      It was no burden to her to do these things; she had a sufficient reward in
+      seeing that her aunt and Hugh eat the better and that her uncle's brow was
+      clear; but it <i>was</i> a burden when her hands were tied by the lack of
+      means; for she knew the failure of the usual supply was bitterly felt, not
+      for the actual want, but for that other want which it implied and
+      prefigured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the first dismissal of Donohan Fleda hoped for a good turn of affairs.
+      But Mr. Rossitur, disgusted with his first experiment, resolved this
+      season to be his own head man; and appointed Lucas Springer the second in
+      command, with a posse of labourers to execute his decrees. It did not work
+      well. Mr. Rossitur found he had a very tough prime minister, who would
+      have every one of his plans to go through a kind of winnowing process by
+      being tossed about in an argument. The arguments were interminable, until
+      Mr. Rossitur not unfrequently quit the field with, "Well, do what you like
+      about it!"--not conquered, but wearied. The labourers, either from want of
+      ready money or of what they called "manners" in their employer, fell off
+      at the wrong times, just when they were most wanted. Hugh threw himself
+      then into the breach and wrought beyond his strength; and that tried Fleda
+      worst of all. She was glad to see haying and harvest pass over; but the
+      change of seasons seemed to bring only a change of disagreeableness, and
+      she could not find that hope had any better breathing-time in the short
+      days of winter than in the long days of summer. Her gentle face grew more
+      gentle than ever, for under the shade of sorrowful patience which was
+      always there now its meekness had no eclipse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur was struck with it one morning. She was coming down from her
+      room and saw Fleda standing on the landing-place gazing out of the window.
+      It was before breakfast one cold morning in winter. Mrs. Rossitur put her
+      arms round her softly and kissed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are you thinking about, dear Fleda?--you ought not to be standing
+      here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was looking at Hugh," said Fleda, and her eye went back to the window.
+      Mrs. Rossitur's followed it. The window gave them a view of the ground
+      behind the house; and there was Hugh, just coming in with a large armful
+      of heavy wood which he had been sawing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He isn't strong enough to do that, aunt Lucy," said Fleda softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know it," said his mother in a subdued tone, and not moving her eye,
+      though Hugh had disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is too cold for him--he is too thinly clad to bear this exposure,"
+      said Fleda anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know it," said his mother again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Can't you tell uncle Rolf?--can't you get him to do it? I am afraid Hugh
+      will hurt himself, aunt Lucy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I did tell him the other day--I did speak to him about it," said Mrs.
+      Rossitur; "but he said there was no reason why Hugh should do it,--there
+      were plenty of other people--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But how can he say so when he knows we never can ask Lucas to do anything
+      of the kind, and that other man always contrives to be out of the way when
+      he is wanted?--Oh what is he thinking of?" said Fleda bitterly, as she saw
+      Hugh again at his work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was so rarely that Fleda was seen to shed tears that they always were a
+      signal of dismay to any of the household. There was even agony in Mrs.
+      Rossitur's voice as she implored her not to give way to them. But
+      notwithstanding that, Fleda's tears came this time from too deep a spring
+      to be stopped at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It makes me feel as if all was lost, Fleda, when I see you do so,"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda put her arms about her neck and whispered that "she would not"--that
+      "she should not"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet it was a little while before she could say any more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But, aunt Lucy, he doesn't know what he is doing!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--and I can't make him know. I cannot say anything more, Fleda--it
+      would do no good. I don't know what is the matter--he is entirely changed
+      from what he used to be--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know what is the matter," said Fleda, now turning comforter in her turn
+      as her aunt's tears fell more quietly, because more despairingly, than her
+      own,--"I know what it is--he is not happy;--that is all. He has not
+      succeeded well in these farm doings, and he wants money, and he is
+      worried--it is no wonder if he don't seem exactly as he used to."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And oh, that troubles me most of all!" said Mrs. Rossitur. "The farm is
+      bringing in nothing, I know,--he don't know how to get along with it,--I
+      was afraid it would be so;--and we are paying nothing to uncle Orrin--and
+      it is just a dead weight on his hands;--and I can't bear to think of
+      it!--And what will it come to!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur was now in her turn surprised into shewing the strength of
+      her sorrows and apprehensions. Fleda was fain to put her own out of sight
+      and bend her utmost powers to soothe and compose her aunt, till they could
+      both go down to the breakfast table. She had got ready a nice little dish
+      that her uncle was very fond of; but her pleasure in it was all gone; and
+      indeed it seemed to be thrown away upon the whole table. Half the meal was
+      over before anybody said a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am going to wash my hands of these miserable farm affairs," said Mr.
+      Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you?" said his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes,--of all personal concern in them, that is. I am wearied to death
+      with the perpetual annoyances and vexations, and petty calls upon my
+      time--life is not worth having at such a rate! I'll have done with it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will give up the entire charge to Lucas?" said Mrs. Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus13.jpg"><img src="images/illus13.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="'O uncle Rolf, don't have anything to do with him.'"
+      title="'O uncle Rolf, don't have anything to do with him.'" /><br /> "O
+      uncle Rolf, don't have anything to do with him."</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Lucas!--No!--I wouldn't undergo that man's tongue for another year if he
+      would take out his wages in talking. I could not have more of it in that
+      case than I have had the last six months. After money, the thing that man
+      loves best is certainly the sound of his own voice; and a most
+      insufferable egotist! No,--I have been talking with a man who wants to
+      take the whole farm for two years upon shares--that will clear me of all
+      trouble."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was sober silence for a few minutes, and then Mrs. Rossitur asked
+      who it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "His name is Didenhover."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O uncle Rolf, don't have anything to do with him!" exclaimed Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why not?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because he lived with grandpa a great while ago, and behaved very ill.
+      Grandpa had a great deal of trouble with him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How old were you then?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was young, to be sure," said Fleda hanging her head, "but I remember
+      very well how it was."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You may have occasion to remember it a second time," said Mr. Rossitur
+      dryly, "for the thing is done. I have engaged him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not another word was spoken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur went out after breakfast, and Mrs. Rossitur busied herself
+      with the breakfast cups and a tub of hot water, a work she never would let
+      Fleda share with her and which lasted in consequence long enough, Barby
+      said, to cook and eat three breakfasts. Fleda and Hugh sat looking at the
+      floor and the fire respectively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am going up the hill to get a sight of aunt Miriam," said Fleda,
+      bringing her eyes from the fire upon her aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, dear, do. You have been shut up long enough by the snow. Wrap
+      yourself up well, and put on my snow-boots."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No indeed!" said Fleda. "I shall just draw on another pair of stockings
+      over my shoes, within my India-rubbers--I will take a pair of Hugh's
+      woollen ones."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What has become of your own?" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My own what? Stockings?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Snow-boots."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Worn out, Mr. Rossitur! I have run them to death, poor things. Is that a
+      slight intimation that you are afraid of the same fate for your socks?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Hugh, smiling in spite of himself at her manner,--"I will lend
+      you anything I have got, Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His tone put Fleda in mind of the very doubtful pretensions of the socks
+      in question to be comprehended under the term; she was silent a minute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you go with me, Hugh?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No dear, I can't;--I must get a little ahead with the wood while I can;
+      it looks as if it would snow again; and Barby isn't provided for more than
+      a day or two."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And how for this fire?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh shook his head, and rose up to go forth into the kitchen. Fleda went
+      too, linking her arm in his and bearing affectionately upon it, a sort of
+      tacit saying that they would sink or swim together. Hugh understood it
+      perfectly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very sorry you have to do it, dear Hugh--Oh that wood-shed!--If it
+      had only been made!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never mind--can't help it now--we shall get through the winter by and
+      by."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Can't you get uncle Rolf to help you a little?" whispered Fleda;--"It
+      would do him good." But Hugh only shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are we going to do for dinner, Barby?" said Fleda, still holding
+      Hugh there before the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ain't much choice," said Barby. "It would puzzle anybody to spell much
+      more out of it than pork and ham. There's plenty o' them. <i>I</i> shan't
+      starve this some time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But we had ham yesterday and pork the day before yesterday and ham
+      Monday," said Fleda. "There is plenty of vegetables, thanks to you and me,
+      Hugh," she said with a little reminding squeeze of his arm. "I could make
+      soups nicely, if I had anything to make them of!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's enough to be had for the catching," said Barby. "If I hadn't a
+      man-mountain of work upon me, I'd start out and shoot or steal something."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>You</i> shoot, Barby!" said Fleda laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I guess I can do most anything I set my hand to. If I couldn't I'd shoot
+      myself. It won't do to kill no more o' them chickens."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O no,--now they are laying so finely. Well, I am going up the hill, and
+      when I come home I'll try and make up something, Barby."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Earl Douglass'll go out in the woods now and then, of a day when he
+      ha'n't no work particular to do, and fetch hum as many pigeons and
+      woodchucks as you could shake a stick at."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hugh, my dear," said Fleda laughing, "it's a pity you aren't a hunter--I
+      would shake a stick at you with great pleasure. Well, Barby, we will see
+      when I come home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was just a thinkin," said Barby;--"Mis' Douglass sent round to know if
+      Mis' Rossitur would like a piece of fresh meat--Earl's been killing a
+      sheep--there's a nice quarter, she says, if she'd like to have it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A quarter of mutton?"--said Fleda,--"I don't know--no, I think not,
+      Barby; I don't know when we should be able to pay it back again.--And
+      yet--Hugh, do you think uncle Rolf will kill another sheep this winter?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure he will not," said Hugh;--"there have so many died."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If he only knowed it, that is a reason for killing more," said Barby,--"
+      and have the good of them while he can."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tell Mrs. Douglass we are obliged to her, but we do not want the mutton,
+      Barby."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh went to his chopping and Fleda set out upon her walk; the lines of
+      her face settling into a most fixed gravity so soon as she turned away
+      from the house. It was what might be called a fine winter's day; cold and
+      still, and the sky covered with one uniform grey cloud. The snow lay in
+      uncompromising whiteness thick over all the world; a kindly shelter for
+      the young grain and covering for the soil; but Fleda's spirits just then
+      in another mood saw in it only the cold refusal to hope and the barren
+      check to exertion. The wind had cleared the snow from the trees and
+      fences, and they stood in all their unsoftened blackness and nakedness,
+      bleak and stern. The high grey sky threatened a fresh fall of snow in a
+      few hours; it was just now a lull between two storms; and Fleda's spirits,
+      that sometimes would have laughed in the face of nature's soberness,
+      to-day sank to its own quiet. Her pace neither slackened nor quickened
+      till she reached aunt Miriam's house and entered the kitchen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Miriam was in high tide of business over a pot of boiling lard, and
+      the enormous bread-tray by the side of the fire was half full of very
+      tempting light-brown cruller, which however were little more than a kind
+      of sweet bread for the workmen. In the bustle of putting in and taking out
+      aunt Miriam could give her visitor but a word and a look. Fleda pulled off
+      her hood and sitting down watched in unusual silence the old lady's
+      operations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And how are they all at your house to-day?" aunt Miriam asked as she was
+      carefully draining her cruller out of the kettle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda answered that they were as well as usual, but a slight hesitation
+      and the tell-tale tone of her voice made the old lady look at her more
+      narrowly. She came near and kissed that gentle brow and looking in her
+      eyes asked her what the matter was?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know,--" said Fleda, eyes and voice wavering alike,--"I am
+      foolish, I believe,--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Miriam tenderly put aside the hair from her forehead and kissed it
+      again, but the cruller was burning and she went back to the kettle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I got down-hearted somehow this morning," Fleda went on, trying to steady
+      her voice and school herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>You</i> down-hearted, dear? About what?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a world of sympathy in these words, in the warmth of which
+      Fleda's shut-up heart unfolded itself at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's nothing new, aunt Miriam,--only somehow I felt it particularly this
+      morning,--I have been kept in the house so long by this snow I have got
+      dumpish I suppose.--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Miriam looked anxiously at the tears which seemed to come
+      involuntarily, but she said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We are not getting along well at home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I supposed that," said Mrs. Plumfield quietly. "But anything new?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--uncle Rolf has let the farm--only think of it!--he has let the farm
+      to that Didenhover."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Didenhover!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For two years."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you tell him what you knew about him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, but it was too late--the mischief was done."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Miriam went on skimming out her cruller with a very grave face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How came your uncle to do so without learning about him first?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O I don't know!--he was in a hurry to do anything that would take the
+      trouble of the farm off his hands,--he don't like it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "On what terms has he let him have it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "On shares--and I know, I know, under that Didenhover it will bring us in
+      nothing, and it has brought us in nothing all the time we have been here;
+      and I don't know what we are going to live upon."--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Has your uncle nor your aunt no property at all left?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not a bit--except some waste lands in Michigan I believe, that were left
+      to aunt Lucy a year or two ago; but they are as good as nothing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Has he let Didenhover have the saw-mill too?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know--he didn't say--if he has there will be nothing at all left
+      for us to live upon. I expect nothing from Didenhover,--his face is
+      enough. I should have thought it might have been for uncle Rolf. O if it
+      wasn't for aunt Lucy and Hugh I shouldn't care!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What has your uncle been doing all this year past?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know, aunt Miriam,--he can't bear the business and he has left
+      the most of it to Lucas; and I think Lucas is more of a talker than a
+      doer. Almost nothing has gone right. The crops have been ill managed--I do
+      not know a great deal about it, but I know enough for that; and uncle Rolf
+      did not know anything about it but what he got from books. And the sheep
+      are dying off--Barby says it is because they were in such poor condition
+      at the beginning of winter, and I dare say she is right."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He ought to have had a thorough good man at the beginning, to get along
+      well."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O yes!--but he hadn't, you see; and so we have just been growing poorer
+      every month. And now, aunt Miriam, I really don't know from day to day
+      what to do to get dinner. You know for a good while after we came we used
+      to have our marketing brought every few days from Albany; but we have run
+      up such a bill there already at the butcher's as I don't know when in the
+      world will get paid; and aunt Lucy and I will do anything before we will
+      send for any more; and if it wasn't for her and Hugh I wouldn't care, but
+      they haven't much appetite, and I know that all this takes what little
+      they have away--this, and seeing the effect it has upon uncle Rolf----"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Does he think so much more of eating than of anything else?" said aunt
+      Miriam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh no, it is not that!" said Fleda earnestly,--"it is not that at all--he
+      is not a great eater--but he can't bear to have things different from what
+      they used to be and from what they ought to be--O no, don't think that! I
+      don't know whether I ought to have said what I have said, but I couldn't
+      help it--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's voice was lost for a little while.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is changed from what he used to be--a little thing vexes him now, and
+      I know it is because he is not happy;--he used to be so kind and pleasant,
+      and he is still, sometimes; but aunt Lucy's face--Oh aunt Miriam!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, dear?" said aunt Miriam, tenderly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is so changed from what it used to be!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Fleda covered her own, and aunt Miriam came to her side to give
+      softer and gentler expression to sympathy than words could do; till the
+      bowed face was raised again and hid in her neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can't see thee do so my child--my dear child!--Hope for brighter days,
+      dear Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I could bear it," said Fleda after a little interval, "if it wasn't for
+      aunt Lucy and Hugh--oh that is the worst!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What about Hugh?" said aunt Miriam, soothingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh he does what he ought not to do, aunt Miriam, and there is no help for
+      it,--and he did last summer--when we wanted men; and in the hot
+      haying-time, he used to work, I know, beyond his strength,--and aunt Lucy
+      and I did not know what to do with ourselves!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's head which had been raised sunk again and more heavily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where was his father?" said Mrs. Plumfield.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh he was in the house--he didn't know it--he didn't think about it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Didn't think about it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--O he didn't think Hugh was hurting himself, but he was--he shewed it
+      for weeks afterward.--I have said what I ought not now," said Fleda
+      looking up and seeming to check her tears and the spring of them at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So much security any woman has in a man without religion!" said aunt
+      Miriam, going back to her work. Fleda would have said something if she
+      could; she was silent; she stood looking into the fire while the tears
+      seemed to come as it were by stealth and ran down her face unregarded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is Hugh not well?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know,--" said Fleda faintly,--"he is not ill--but he never was
+      very strong, and he exposes himself now I know in a way he ought not.--I
+      am sorry I have just come and troubled you with all this now, aunt
+      Miriam," she said after a little pause,--"I shall feel better by and by--I
+      don't very often get such a fit."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear little Fleda!"--and there was unspeakable tenderness in the old
+      lady's voice, as she came up and drew Fleda's head again to rest upon
+      her;--"I would not let a rough wind touch thee if I had the holding of
+      it.--But we may be glad the arranging of things is not in my hand--I
+      should be a poor friend after all, for I do not know what is best. Canst
+      thou trust him who does know, my child?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do, aunt Miriam,--O I do," said Fleda, burying her face in her
+      bosom;--"I don't often feel so as I did to-day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There comes not a cloud that its shadow is not wanted," said aunt Miriam.
+      "I cannot see why,--but it is that thou mayest bloom the brighter, my dear
+      one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know it,--" Fleda's words were hardly audible,--"I will try--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Remember his own message to every one under a cloud--'cast all thy care
+      upon him, for he careth for thee;'--thou mayest keep none of it;--and then
+      the peace that passeth understanding shall keep thee. 'So he giveth his
+      beloved sleep.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda wept for a minute on the old lady's neck, and then she looked up,
+      dried her tears, and sat down with a face greatly quieted and lightened of
+      its burden; while aunt Miriam once more went back to her work. The one
+      wrought and the other looked on in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cruller were all done at last; the great bread-trough was filled and
+      set away; the remnant of the fat was carefully disposed of, and aunt
+      Miriam's handmaid was called in to "take the watch." She herself and her
+      visitor adjourned to the sitting-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well," said Fleda, in a tone again steady and clear,--"I must go home to
+      see about getting up a dinner. I am the greatest hand at making something
+      out of nothing, aunt Miriam, that ever you saw. There is nothing like
+      practice. I only wish the man uncle Orrin talks about would come along
+      once in a while."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who was that?" said aunt Miriam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A man that used to go about from house to house," said Fleda laughing,
+      "when the cottages were making soup, with a ham-bone to give it a relish,
+      and he used to charge them so much for a dip, and so much for a wallop."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come, come, I can do as much for you as that," said aunt Miriam,
+      proceeding to her store-pantry,--"see here--wouldn't this be as good as a
+      ham-bone?" said she, bringing out of it a fat fowl;--"how would a wallop
+      of this do?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Admirably!--only--the ham-bone used to come out again,--and I am
+      confident this never would."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well I guess I'll stand that," said aunt Miriam smiling,--"you wouldn't
+      mind carrying this under your cloak, would you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have no doubt I shall go home lighter with it than without it,
+      ma'am,--thank you, dear aunty!--dear aunt Miriam!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a change of tone, and of eye, as Fleda sealed each thank with a
+      kiss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But how is it?--does all the charge of the house come upon you, dear?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O, this kind of thing, because aunt Lucy doesn't understand it and can't
+      get along with it so well. She likes better to sew, and I had quite as
+      lief do this."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And don't you sew too?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O--a little. She does as much as she can," said Fleda gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is your other cousin?" said Mrs. Plumfield abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Marion?--she is in England I believe;--we don't hear from her very
+      often."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, no, I mean the one who is in the army?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Charlton!--O he is just ordered off to Mexico," said Fleda sadly, "and
+      that is another great trouble to aunt Lucy. This miserable war!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Does he never come home?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Only once since we came from Paris--while we were in New York. He has
+      been stationed away off at the West."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He has a captain's pay now, hasn't he?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, but he doesn't know at all how things are at home--he hasn't an idea
+      of it,--and he will not have. Well good-bye, dear aunt Miriam--I must run
+      home to take care of my chicken."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She ran away; and if her eyes many a time on the way down the hill filled
+      and overflowed, they were not bitter nor dark tears; they were the
+      gushings of high and pure and generous affections, weeping for fulness,
+      not for want.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That chicken was not wasted in soup; it was converted into the nicest
+      possible little fricassee, because the toast would make so much more of
+      it; and to Fleda's own dinner little went beside the toast, that a greater
+      portion of the rest might be for her aunt and Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That same evening Seth Plumfield came into the kitchen while Fleda was
+      there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Here is something belongs to you, I believe," said he with a covert
+      smile, bringing out from under his cloak the mate to Fleda's
+      fowl;--"mother said somethin' had run away with t'other one and she didn't
+      know what to do with this one alone. Your uncle at home?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next news that Fleda heard was that Seth had taken a lease of the
+      saw-mill for two years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Didenhover did not disappoint Fleda's expectations. Very little could
+      be got from him or the farm under him beyond the immediate supply wanted
+      for the use of the family; and that in kind, not in cash. Mrs. Rossitur
+      was comforted by knowing that some portion of rent had also gone to Dr.
+      Gregory--how large or how small a portion she could not find out. But this
+      left the family in increasing straits, which narrowed and narrowed during
+      the whole first summer and winter of Didenhover's administration. Very
+      straitened they would have been but for the means of relief adopted by the
+      two <i>children</i>, as they were always called. Hugh, as soon as the
+      spring opened, had a quiet hint, through Fleda, that if he had a mind to
+      take the working of the saw-mill he might, for a consideration merely
+      nominal. This offer was immediately and gratefully closed with; and Hugh's
+      earnings were thenceforward very important at home. Fleda had her own ways
+      and means. Mr. Rossitur, more low-spirited and gloomy than ever, seemed to
+      have no heart to anything. He would have worked perhaps if he could have
+      done it alone; but to join Didenhover and his men, or any other gang of
+      workmen, was too much for his magnanimity. He helped nobody but Fleda. For
+      her he would do anything, at any time; and in the garden and among her
+      flowers in the flowery courtyard he might often be seen at work with her.
+      But nowhere else.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="22"></a>Chapter XXII.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Some bring a capon, some a rurall cake,<br /> Some nuts, some apples;
+        some that thinke they make<br /> The better cheeses, bring 'hem; or else
+        send<br /> By their ripe daughters, whom they would commend<br /> This way
+        to husbands; and whose baskets beare<br /> An embleme of themselves, in
+        plum or peare.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Ben Jonson.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      So the time walked away, for this family was not now of those "whom time
+      runneth withal,"--to the second summer of Mr. Didenhover's term.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning Mrs. Rossitur was seated in the breakfast-room at her usual
+      employment, mending and patching; no sinecure now. Fleda opened the
+      kitchen door and came in folding up a calico apron she had just taken off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are tired, dear," said Mrs. Rossitur sorrowfully;--"you look pale."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do I?"--said Fleda, sitting down. "I am a little tired!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why do you do so?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O it's nothing" said Fleda cheerfully;--"I haven't hurt myself. I shall
+      be rested again in a few minutes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What have you been doing?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O I tired myself a little before breakfast in the garden, I suppose. Aunt
+      Lucy, don't you think I had almost a bushel of peas?--and there was a
+      little over a half bushel last time, so I shall call it a bushel. Isn't
+      that fine?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You didn't pick them all yourself?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hugh helped me a little while; but he had the horse to get ready, and I
+      was out before him this morning--poor fellow, he was tired from yesterday,
+      I dare say."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur looked at her, a look between remonstrance and reproach, and
+      cast her eyes down without saying a word, swallowing a whole heartful of
+      thoughts and feelings. Fleda stooped forward till her own forehead softly
+      touched Mrs. Rossitur's, as gentle a chiding of despondency as a very
+      sunbeam could have given.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now aunt Lucy!--what do you mean? Don't you know it's good for me?--And
+      do you know, Mr. Sweet will give me four shillings a bushel; and aunt
+      Lucy, I sent three dozen heads of lettuce this morning besides. Isn't that
+      doing well? and I sent two dozen day before yesterday. It is time they
+      were gone, for they are running up to seed, this set; I have got another
+      fine set almost ready."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur looked at her again, as if she had been a sort of
+      terrestrial angel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And how much will you get for them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know exactly--threepence, or sixpence perhaps,--I guess not so
+      much--they are so easily raised; though I don't believe there are so fine
+      as mine to be seen in this region.--If I only had somebody to water the
+      strawberries!--we should have a great many. Aunt Lucy, I am going to send
+      as many as I can without robbing uncle Rolf--he sha'n't miss them; but the
+      rest of us don't mind eating rather fewer than usual? I shall make a good
+      deal by them. And I think these morning rides do Hugh good; don't you
+      think so?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what have you been busy about ever since breakfast, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O--two or three things," said Fleda lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I had bread to make--and then I thought while my hands were in I would
+      make a custard for uncle Rolf."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You needn't have done that, dear! it was not necessary."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes it was, because you know we have only fried pork for dinner to-day,
+      and while we have the milk and eggs it doesn't cost much--the sugar is
+      almost nothing. He will like it better, and so will Hugh. As for you,"
+      said Fleda, gently touching her forehead again, "you know it is of no
+      consequence!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish you would think yourself of some consequence," said Mrs. Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't I think myself of consequence!" naid Fleda affectionately. "I don't
+      know how you'd all get on without me. What do you think I have a mind to
+      do now, by way of resting myself?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well?" said Mrs Rossitur, thinking of something else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is the day for making presents to the minister, you know?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The minister?"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, the new minister--they expect him to-day;--you have heard of
+      it;--the things are all to be carried to his house to-day. I have a great
+      notion to go and see the fun--if I only had anything in the world I could
+      possibly take with me--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Aren't you too tired, dear?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--it would rest me--it is early yet--if I only had something to
+      take!--I couldn't go without taking something----"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A basket of eggs?" said Mrs. Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Can't, aunt Lucy--I can't spare them; so many of the hens are setting
+      now.--A basket of strawberries!--that's the thing! I've got enough picked
+      for that and to-night too. That will do!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's preparations were soon made, and with her basket on her arm she
+      was ready to set forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If pride had not been a little put down in me," she said smiling, "I
+      suppose I should rather stay at home than go with such a petty offering.
+      And no doubt every one that sees it or hears of it will lay it to anything
+      but the right reason. So much the world knows about the people it
+      judges!--It is too bad to leave you all alone, aunt Lucy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur pulled her down for a kiss, a kiss in which how much was
+      said on both sides!--and Fleda set forth, choosing as she very commonly
+      did the old-time way through the kitchen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Off again?" said Barby, who was on her knees scrubbing the great
+      flag-stones of the hearth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, I am going up to see the donation party."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Has the minister come?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, but he is coming to-day, I understand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He ha'n't preached for 'em yet, has he?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not yet; I suppose he will next Sunday."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They are in a mighty hurry to give him a donation party!" said Barby.
+      "I'd ha' waited till he was here first. I don't believe they'd be quite so
+      spry with their donations if they had paid the last man up as they ought.
+      I'd rather give a man what belongs to him, and make him presents
+      afterwards."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, so I hope they will, Barby," said Fleda laughing. But Barby said no
+      more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The parsonage-house was about a quarter of a mile, a little more, from the
+      saw-mill, in a line at right angles with the main road. Fleda took Hugh
+      from his work to see her safe there. The road ran north, keeping near the
+      level of the mid-hill where it branched off a little below the saw-mill;
+      and as the ground continued rising towards the east and was well clothed
+      with woods, the way at this hour was still pleasantly shady. To the left
+      the same slope of ground carried down to the foot of the hill gave them an
+      uninterrupted view over a wide plain or bottom, edged in the distance with
+      a circle of gently swelling hills. Close against the hills, in the far
+      corner of the plain, lay the little village of Queechy Run, hid from sight
+      by a slight intervening rise of ground; not a chimney shewed itself in the
+      whole spread of country. A sunny landscape just now; but rich in
+      picturesque associations of hay-cocks and winnows, spotting it near and
+      far; and close by below them was a field of mowers at work; they could
+      distinctly hear the measured rush of the scythes through the grass, and
+      then the soft clink of the rifles would seem to play some old delicious
+      tune of childish days. Fleda made Hugh stand still to listen. It was a
+      warm day, but "the sweet south that breathes upon a bank of violets,"
+      could hardly be more sweet than the air which coming to them over the
+      whole breadth of the valley had been charged by the new-made hay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How good it is, Hugh," said Fleda, "that one can get out of doors and
+      forget everything that ever happened or ever will happen within four
+      walls!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you?" said Hugh, rather soberly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes I do,--even in my flower-patch, right before the house-door; but <i>here</i>--"
+      said Fleda, turning away and swinging her basket of strawberries as she
+      went, "I have no idea I ever did such a thing as make bread!--and how
+      clothes get mended I do not comprehend in the least!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And have you forgotten the peas and the asparagus too?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid you haven't, dear Hugh," said Fleda, linking her arm within
+      his. "Hugh,--I must find some way to make money."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "More money?" said Hugh smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--this garden business is all very well, but it doesn't come to any
+      very great things after all, if you are aware of it; and, Hugh, I want to
+      get aunt Lucy a new dress. I can't bear to see her in that old merino, and
+      it isn't good for her. Why, Hugh, she couldn't possibly see anybody, if
+      anybody should come to the house."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who is there to come?" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why nobody; but still, she ought not to be so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What more can you do, dear Fleda? You work a great deal too hard
+      already," said Hugh sighing. "You should have seen the way father and
+      mother looked at you last night when you were asleep on the sofa."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda stifled her sigh, and went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure there are things that might be done--things for the
+      booksellers--translating, or copying, or something,--I don't know
+      exactly--I have heard of people's doing such things. I mean to write to
+      uncle Orrin and ask him. I am sure he can manage it for me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What were you writing the other night?" said Hugh suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The other night--when you were writing by the firelight? I saw your
+      pencil scribbling away at a furious rate over the paper, and you kept your
+      hand up carefully between me and your face, but I could see it was
+      something very interesting. Ha?--" said Hugh, laughingly trying to get
+      another view of Fleda's face which was again kept from him. "Send <i>that</i>
+      to uncle Orrin, Fleda;--or shew it to me first and then I will tell you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda made no answer; and at the parsonage door Hugh left her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two or three wagons were standing there, but nobody to be seen. Fleda went
+      up the steps and crossed the broad piazza, brown and unpainted, but
+      picturesque still, and guided by the sound of tongues turned to the right
+      where she found a large low room, the very centre of the stir. But the
+      stir had not by any means reached the height yet. Not more than a dozen
+      people were gathered. Here were aunt Syra and Mrs. Douglass, appointed a
+      committee to receive and dispose the offerings as they were brought in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why there is not much to be seen yet," said Fleda. "I did not know I was
+      so early."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Time enough," said Mrs. Douglass. "They'll come the thicker when they do
+      come. Good-morning, Dr. Quackenboss!--I hope you're a going to give us
+      something else besides a bow? and I won't take none of your physic,
+      neither."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I humbly submit," said the doctor graciously, "that nothing ought to be
+      expected of gentlemen that--a--are so unhappy as to be alone; for they
+      really--a--have nothing to give,--but themselves."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a shout of merriment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And suppos'n that's a gift that nobody wants?" said Mrs, Douglass's sharp
+      eye and voice at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In that case," said the doctor, "I really--Miss Ringgan, may I--a--may I
+      relieve your hand of this fair burden?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is not a very fair burden, sir," said Fleda, laughing and
+      relinquishing her strawberries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah but, fair, you know, I mean,--we speak--in that sense----Mrs Douglass,
+      here is by far the most elegant offering that your hands will have the
+      honour of receiving this day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope so," said Mrs. Douglass, "or there won't be much to eat for the
+      minister. Did you never take notice how elegant things somehow made folks
+      grow poor?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I guess he'd as leave see something a little substantial," said aunt
+      Syra.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well now," said the doctor, "here is Miss Ringgan, who is
+      unquestionably--a--elegant!--and I am sure nobody will say that she--looks
+      poor!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In one sense, surely not! There could not be two opinions. But with all
+      the fairness of health, and the flush which two or three feelings had
+      brought to her cheeks, there was a look as if the workings of the mind had
+      refined away a little of the strength of the physical frame, and as if
+      growing poor in Mrs. Douglass's sense, that is, thin, might easily be the
+      next step.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's your uncle going to give us, Fleda?" said aunt Syra.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda was saved replying; for Mrs. Douglass, who if she was sharp
+      could be good-natured too, and had watched to see how Fleda took the
+      double fire upon elegance and poverty, could beat no more trial of that
+      sweet gentle face. Without giving her time to answer she carried her off
+      to see the things already stored in the closet, bidding the doctor over
+      her shoulder "be off after his goods, whether he had got 'em or no."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was certainly a promising beginning made for the future minister's
+      comfort. One shelf was already completely stocked with pies, and another
+      shewed a quantity of cake, and biscuits enough to last a good-sized family
+      for several meals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is always the way," said Mrs. Douglass;--"it's the strangest thing
+      that folks has no sense! Now one-half o' them pies'll be dried up afore
+      they can eat the rest;--'tain't much loss, for Mis' Prin sent 'em down,
+      and if they are worth anything it's the first time anything ever come out
+      of her house that was. Now look at them biscuit!"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How many are coming to eat them?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How large a family has the minister?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He ha'n't a bit of a family! He ain't married."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the grave way in which Mrs. Douglass faced around upon her and
+      answered, and at the idea of a single mouth devoted to all that closetful,
+      Fleda's gravity gave place to most uncontrollable merriment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Mrs. Douglass, with a curious twist of her mouth but commanding
+      herself,--"he ain't to be sure--not yet. He ha'n't any family but himself
+      and some sort of a housekeeper, I suppose; they'll divide the house
+      between 'em."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And the biscuits, I hope," said Fleda. "But what will he do with all the
+      other things, Mrs. Douglass?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sell 'em if he don't want 'em," said Mrs. Douglass quizzically. "Shut up,
+      Fleda, I forget who sent them biscuit--somebody that calculated to make a
+      shew for a little, I reckon.--My sakes! I believe it was Mis' Springer
+      herself!--she didn't hear me though," said Mrs. Douglass peeping out of
+      the half-open door. "It's a good thing the world ain't all alike;--there's
+      Mis' Plumfield--stop now, and I'll tell you all she sent;--that big jar of
+      lard, there's as good as eighteen or twenty pound,--and that basket of
+      eggs, I don't know how many there is,--and that cheese, a real fine one
+      I'll be bound, she wouldn't pick out the worst in her dairy,--and Seth
+      fetched down a hundred weight of corn meal and another of rye flour; now
+      that's what I call doing things something like; if everybody else would
+      keep up their end as well as they keep up their'n the world wouldn't be
+      quite so one-sided as it is. I never see the time yet when I couldn't tell
+      where to find Mis' Plumfield."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, nor anybody else," said Fleda looking happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's Mis' Silbert couldn't find nothing better to send than a kag of
+      soap," Mrs. Douglass went on, seeming very much amused;--"I <i>was</i>
+      beat when I saw that walk in! I should think she'd feel streaked to come
+      here by and by and see it a standing between Mis' Plumfield's lard and
+      Mis' Clavering's pork--that's a handsome kag of pork, ain't it? What's
+      that man done with your strawberries?--I'll put 'em up here afore somebody
+      takes a notion to 'em.--I'll let the minister know who he's got to thank
+      for 'em," said she, winking at Fleda. "Where's Dr. Quackenboss?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Coming, ma'am!" sounded from the hall, and forthwith at the open door
+      entered the doctor's head, simultaneously with a large cheese which he was
+      rolling before him, the rest of the doctor's person being thrown into the
+      background in consequence. A curious natural representation of a
+      wheelbarrow, the wheel being the only artificial part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh!--that's you, doctor, is it?" said Mrs. Douglass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is me, ma'am," said the doctor, rolling up to the closet
+      door,--"this has the honour to be--a--myself,--bringing my service to the
+      feet of Miss Ringgan."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Tain't very elegant," said the sharp lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda thought if his service was at her feet, her feet should be somewhere
+      else, and accordingly stepped quietly out of the way and went to one of
+      the windows, from whence she could have a view both of the comers and the
+      come; and by this time thoroughly in the spirit of the thing she used her
+      eyes upon both with great amusement. People were constantly arriving now,
+      in wagons and on foot; and stores of all kinds were most literally pouring
+      in. Bags and even barrels of meal, flour, pork, and potatoes; strings of
+      dried apples, <i>salt</i>, hams and beef; hops, pickles, vinegar, maple
+      sugar and molasses; rolls of fresh butter, cheese, and eggs; cake, bread,
+      and pies, without end. Mr. Penny, the storekeeper, sent a box of tea. Mr.
+      Winegar, the carpenter, a new ox-sled. Earl Douglass brought a handsome
+      axe-helve of his own fashioning; his wife a quantity of rolls of wool. Zan
+      Finn carted a load of wood into the wood-shed, and Squire Thornton
+      another. Home-made candles, custards, preserves, and smoked liver, came in
+      a batch from two or three miles off up on the mountain. Half a dozen
+      chairs from the factory man. Half a dozen brooms from the other
+      store-keeper at the Deepwater settlement. A carpet for the best room from
+      the ladies of the township, who had clubbed forces to furnish it; and a
+      home-made concern it was, from the shears to the loom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The room was full now, for every one after depositing his gift turned
+      aside to see what others had brought and were bringing; and men and women,
+      the young and old, had their several circles of gossip in various parts of
+      the crowd. Apart from them all Fleda sat in her window, probably voted
+      "elegant" by others than the doctor, for they vouchsafed her no more than
+      a transitory attention and sheered off to find something more congenial.
+      She sat watching the people; smiling very often as some odd figure, or
+      look, or some peculiar turn of expression or tone of voice, caught her ear
+      or her eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both ear and eye were fastened by a young countryman with a particularly
+      fresh face whom she saw approaching the house. He came up on foot,
+      carrying a single fowl slung at his back by a stick thrown across his
+      shoulder, and without stirring hat or stick he came into the room and made
+      his way through the crowd of people, looking to the one hand and the other
+      evidently in a maze of doubt to whom he should deliver himself and his
+      chicken, till brought up by Mrs. Douglass's sharp voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, Philetus! what are you looking for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do, Mis' Douglass!"--it is impossible to express the abortive attempt at
+      a bow which accompanied this salutation,--"I want to know if the minister
+      'll be in town to-day?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you want of him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't want nothin' of him. I want to know if he'll be in town to-day?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--I expect he'll be along directly--why, what then?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Cause I've got ten chickens for him here, and mother said they hadn't
+      ought to be kept no longer, and if he wa'n't to hum I were to fetch 'em
+      back, straight."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well he'll be here, so let's have 'em," said Mrs. Douglass biting her
+      lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's become o' t'other one?" said Earl, as the young man's stick was
+      brought round to the table;--"I guess you've lost it, ha'n't you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My gracious!" was all Philetus's powers were equal to. Mrs. Douglass went
+      off into fits which rendered her incapable of speaking and left the
+      unlucky chicken-bearer to tell his story his own way, but all he brought
+      forth was "Du tell!--I <i>am</i> beat!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where's t'other one?" said Mrs. Douglass between paroxysms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why I ha'n't done nothin' to it," said Philetus dismally,--there was teu
+      on 'em afore I started, and I took and tied 'em together and hitched 'em
+      onto the stick, and that one must ha' loosened itself off some way.--I
+      believe the darned thing did it o' purpose."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I guess your mother knowed that one wouldn't keep till it got here," said
+      Mrs. Douglass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The room was now all one shout, in the midst of which poor Philetus took
+      himself off as speedily as possible. Before Fleda had dried her eyes her
+      attention was taken by a lady and gentleman who had just got out of a
+      vehicle of more than the ordinary pretension and were coming up to the
+      door. The gentleman was young, the lady was not, both had a particularly
+      amiable and pleasant appearance; but about the lady there was something
+      that moved Fleda singularly and somehow touched the spring of old
+      memories, which she felt stirring at the sight of her. As they neared the
+      house she lost them--then they entered the room and came through it
+      slowly, looking about them with an air of good-humoured amusement. Fleda's
+      eye was fixed but her mind puzzled itself in vain to recover what in her
+      experience had been connected with that fair and lady-like physiognomy and
+      the bland smile that was overlooked by those acute eyes. The eyes met
+      hers, and then seemed to reflect her doubt, for they remained as fixed as
+      her own while the lady quickening her steps came up to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure," she said, holding out her hand, and with a gentle
+      graciousness that was very agreeable,--"I am sure you are somebody I know.
+      What is your name?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda Ringgan."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought so!" said the lady, now shaking her hand warmly and kissing
+      her,--"I knew nobody could have been your mother but Amy Charlton! How
+      like her you look!--Don't you know me? don't you remember Mrs. Evelyn?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mrs. Evelyn!" said Fleda, the whole coming back to her at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You remember me now?--How well I recollect you! and all that old time at
+      Montepoole. Poor little creature that you were! and dear little creature,
+      as I am sure you have been ever since. And how is your dear aunt Lucy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda answered that she was well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I used to love her very much--that was before I knew you--before she went
+      abroad. <i>We</i> have just got home--this spring; and now we are staying
+      at Montepoole for a few days. I shall come and see her to-morrow--I knew
+      you were somewhere in this region, but I did not know exactly where to
+      find you; that was one reason why I came here to-day--I thought I might
+      hear something of you. And where are your aunt Lucy's children? and how
+      are they?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hugh is at home," said Fleda, "and rather delicate--Charlton is in the
+      army.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In the army. In Mexico!"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In Mexico he has been"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Your poor aunt Lucy!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      --"In Mexico he has been, but he is just coming home now--he has been
+      wounded, and he is coming home to spend a long furlough."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Coming home. That will make you all very happy. And Hugh is delicate--and
+      how are you, love? you hardly look like a country-girl. Mr. Olmney!--"
+      said Mrs. Evelyn looking round for her companion, who was standing quietly
+      a few steps off surveying the scene,--"Mr. Olmney!--I am going to do you a
+      favour, sir, in introducing you to Miss Ringgan--a very old friend of
+      mine. Mr. Olmney,--these are not exactly the apple-cheeks and <i>robustious</i>
+      demonstrations we are taught to look for in country-land?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was said with a kind of sly funny enjoyment which took away
+      everything disagreeable from the appeal; but Fleda conceived a favourable
+      opinion of the person to whom it was made from the fact that he paid her
+      no compliment and made no answer beyond a very pleasant smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is Mrs. Evelyn's definition of a <i>very old</i> friend?" said he
+      with with another smile, as that lady moved off to take a more particular
+      view of what she had come to see. "To judge by the specimen before me I
+      should consider it very equivocal."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps Mrs. Evelyn counts friendships by inheritance," said Fleda. "I
+      think they ought to be counted so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Thine own friend and thy father's friend forsake not'?" said the young
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked up and smiled a pleased answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is something very lovely in the faithfulness of tried
+      friendship--and very uncommon."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know that it is uncommon only by hearsay," said Fleda, "I have so many
+      good friends."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent for an instant, possibly thinking there might be a reason
+      for that unknown only to Fleda herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps one must be in peculiar circumstances to realize it," he said
+      sighing;--"circumstances that leave one of no importance to any one in the
+      world.--But it is a kind lesson I--one learns to depend more on the one
+      friendship that can never disappoint."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's eyes again gave an answer of sympathy, for she thought from the
+      shade that had come upon his face that these circumstances had probably
+      been known to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is rather an amusing scene," he remarked presently in a low tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very," said Fleda. "I have never seen such a one before."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nor I," said he. "It is a pleasant scene too, it is pleasant to see so
+      many evidences of kindness and good feeling on the part of all these
+      people."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is all the more shew of it, I suppose, to-day," said Fleda,
+      "because we have a new minister coming;--they want to make a favourable
+      impression."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Does the old proverb of the 'new broom' hold good here too?" said he,
+      smiling. "What's the name of your new minister?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not certain," said Fleda,--"there were two talked of--the last I
+      heard was that it was an old Mr. Carey; but from what I hear this morning
+      I suppose it must be the other--a Mr. Ollum, or some such queer name, I
+      believe."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda thought her hearer looked very much amused, and followed his eye
+      into the room, where Mrs. Evelyn was going about in all quarters looking
+      at everything, and finding occasion to enter into conversation with at
+      least a quarter of the people who were present. Whatever she was saying it
+      seemed at that moment to have something to do with them, for sundry eyes
+      turned in their direction; and presently Dr. Quackenboss came up, with
+      even more than common suavity of manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I trust Miss Ringgan will do me the favour of making me acquainted
+      with--a--with our future pastor!" said the doctor, looking however not at
+      all at Miss Ringgan but straight at the pastor in question. "I have great
+      pleasure in giving you the first welcome, sir,--or, I should say, rather
+      the second; since no doubt Miss Ringgan has been in advance of me. It is
+      not un--a--appropriate, sir, for I may say we--a--divide the town between
+      us. You are, I am sure, a worthy representative of Peter and Paul; and I
+      am--a--a pupil of Esculapus, sir! You are the intellectual physician, and
+      I am the external."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope we shall both prove ourselves good workmen, sir," said the young
+      minister, shaking the doctor's hand heartily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is Dr. Quackenboss, Mr. Olmney," said Fleda, making a tremendous
+      effort. But though she could see corresponding indications about her
+      companion's eyes and mouth, she admired the kindness and self-command with
+      which he listened to the doctor's civilities and answered them; expressing
+      his grateful sense of the favours received not only from him but from
+      others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O--a little to begin with," said the doctor, looking round upon the room,
+      which would certainly have furnished <i>that</i> for fifty people;--"I
+      hope we ain't done yet by considerable--But here is Miss Ringgan,
+      Mr.--a--Ummin, that has brought you some of the fruits of her own garden,
+      with her own fair hands--a basket of fine strawberries--which I am
+      sure--a--will make you forget everything else!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Olmney had the good-breeding not to look at Fleda, as he answered, "I
+      am sure the spirit of kindness was the same in all, Dr. Quackenboss, and I
+      trust not to forget that readily."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Others now came up; and Mr. Olmney was walked off to be "made acquainted"
+      with all or with all the chief of his parishioners then and there
+      assembled. Fleda watched him going about, shaking hands, talking and
+      smiling, in all directions, with about as much freedom of locomotion as a
+      fly in a spider's web; till at Mrs. Evelyn's approach the others fell off
+      a little, and taking him by the arm she rescued him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Mr. Olmney!" she whispered, with an intensely amused face,--"I
+      shall have a vision of you every day for a month to come, sitting down to
+      dinner with a rueful face to a whortleberry pie; for there are so many of
+      them your conscience will not let you have anything else cooked--you
+      cannot manage more than one a day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pies!" said the young gentleman, as Mrs. Evelyn left talking to indulge
+      her feelings in ecstatic quiet laughing,--"I have a horror of pies!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, yes," said Mrs. Evelyn nodding her head delightedly as she drew him
+      towards the pantry,--"I know!--Come and see what is in store for you. You
+      are to do penance for a month to come with tin pans of blackberry jam
+      fringed with pie-crust--no, they can't be blackberries, they must be
+      raspberries--the blackberries are not ripe yet. And you may sup upon cake
+      and custards--unless you give the custards for the little pig out
+      there--he will want something."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A pig!--" said Mr. Olmney in a maze; Mrs. Evelyn again giving out in
+      distress. "A pig?" said Mr. Olmney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--a pig--a very little one," said Mrs. Evelyn convulsively. "I am sure
+      he is hungry now!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had reached the pantry, and Mr. Olmney's face was all that was
+      wanting to Mrs. Evelyn's delight. How she smothered it, so that it should
+      go no further than to distress his self-command, is a mystery known only
+      to the initiated. Mrs. Douglass was forthwith called into council.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mrs. Douglass," said Mr. Olmney, "I feel very much inclined to play the
+      host, and beg my friends to share with me some of these good things they
+      have been so bountifully providing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He would enjoy them much more than he would alone, Mrs. Douglass," said
+      Mrs. Evelyn, who still had hold of Mr. Olmney's arm, looking round to the
+      lady with a most benign face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I reckon some of 'em would be past enjoying by the time he got to 'em,
+      wouldn't they?" said the lady. "Well, they'll have to take 'em in their
+      fingers, for our crockery ha'n't come yet--I shall have to jog Mr. Flatt's
+      elbow--but hungry folks ain't curious."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In their fingers, or any way, provided you have only a knife to cut them
+      with," said Mr. Olmney, while Mrs. Evelyn squeezed his arm in secret
+      mischief;--"and pray if we can muster two knives let us cut one of these
+      cheeses, Mrs. Douglass."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And presently Fleda saw pieces of pie walking about in all directions
+      supported by pieces of cheese. And then Mrs. Evelyn and Mr. Olmney came
+      out from the pantry and came towards her, the latter bringing her with his
+      own hands a portion in a tin pan. The two ladies sat down in the window
+      together to eat and be amused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Fleda, I hope you are hungry!" said Mrs. Evelyn, biting her pie
+      Fleda could not help thinking with an air of good-humoured condescension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am, ma'am," she said laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You look just as you used to do," Mrs. Evelyn went on earnestly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do I?" said Fleda, privately thinking that the lady must have good eyes
+      for features of resemblance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Except that you have more colour in your cheeks and more sparkles in your
+      eyes. Dear little creature that you were! I want to make you know my
+      children. Do you remember that Mr. and Mrs. Carleton that took such care
+      of you at Montepoole?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly I do!--very well."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We saw them last winter--we were down at their country-place in----
+      shire. They have a magnificent place there--everything you can think of to
+      make life pleasant. We spent a week with them. My dear Fleda!--I wish I
+      could shew you that place! you never saw anything like it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda eat her pie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We have nothing like it in this country--of course--cannot have. One of
+      those superb English country-seats is beyond even the imagination of an
+      American."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nature has been as kind to us, hasn't she?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O yes, but such fortunes you know. Mr. Olmney, what do you think of those
+      overgrown fortunes? I was speaking to Miss Ringgan just now of a gentleman
+      who has forty thousand pounds a year income--sterling, sir;--forty
+      thousand pounds a year sterling. Somebody says, you know, that 'he who has
+      more than enough is a thief of the rights of his brother,'--what do you
+      think?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mr. Olmney's attention was at the moment forcibly called off by the
+      "income" of a parishioner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose," said Fleda, "his thievish character must depend entirely on
+      the use he makes of what he has."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Mrs. Evelyn shaking her head,--"I think the
+      possession of great wealth is very hardening."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To a fine nature?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Evelyn shook her head again, but did not seem to think it worth while
+      to reply; and Fleda was trying the question in her own mind whether wealth
+      or poverty might be the most hardening in its effects; when Mr. Olmney
+      having succeeded in getting free again came and took his station beside
+      them; and they had a particularly pleasant talk, which Fleda who had seen
+      nobody in a great while enjoyed very much. They had several such talks in
+      the course of the day; for though the distractions caused by Mr. Olmney's
+      other friends were many and engrossing, he generally contrived in time to
+      find his way back to their window. Meanwhile Mrs. Evelyn had a great deal
+      to say to Fleda and to hear from her; and left her at last under an
+      engagement to spend the next day at the Pool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon Mr. Olmney's departure with Mrs. Evelyn the attraction which had held
+      the company together was broken, and they scattered fast. Fleda presently
+      finding herself in the minority was glad to set out with Miss Anastasia
+      Finn and her sister Lucy, who would leave her but very little way from her
+      own door. But she had more company than she bargained for. Dr. Quackenboss
+      was pleased to attach himself to their party, though his own shortest road
+      certainly lay in another direction; and Fleda wondered what he had done
+      with his wagon, which beyond a question must have brought the cheese in
+      the morning. She edged herself out of the conversation as much as
+      possible, and hoped it would prove so agreeable that he would not think of
+      attending her home. In vain. When they made a stand at the cross-roads the
+      doctor stood on her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope, now you've made a commencement, you will come to see us again,
+      Fleda," said Miss Lucy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's the use of asking?" said her sister abruptly. "If she has a mind
+      to she will, and if she ha'n't I am sure we don't want her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They turned off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Those are excellent people," said the doctor when they were beyond
+      hearing;--"really respectable!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are they?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But your goodness does not look, I am sure, to find--a--Parisian graces
+      in so remote a circle?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly not!" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We have had a genial day!" said the doctor, quitting the Finns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Fleda, permitting a little of her inward merriment to
+      work off,--"I think it has been rather too hot."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," said the doctor, "the sun has been ardent; but I referred rather to
+      the--a--to the warming of affections, and the pleasant exchange of
+      intercourse on all sides which has taken place. How do you like
+      our--a--the stranger?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The new-comer,--this young Mr. Ummin?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda answered, but she hardly knew what, for she was musing whether the
+      doctor would go away or come in. They reached the door, and Fleda invited
+      him, with terrible effort after her voice; the doctor having just blandly
+      offered an opinion upon the decided polish of Mr. Olmney's manners!
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="23"></a>Chapter XXIII.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Labour is light, where lore (quoth I) doth pay;<br /> (Saith he) light
+        burthens heavy, if far borne.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Drayton.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Fleda pushed open the parlour door and preceded her convoy, in a kind of
+      tip-toe state of spirits. The first thing that met her eyes was her aunt
+      in one of the few handsome silks which were almost her sole relic of past
+      wardrobe prosperity, and with a face uncommonly happy and pretty; and the
+      next instant she saw the explanation of this appearance in her cousin
+      Charlton, a little palish, but looking better than she had ever seen him,
+      and another gentleman of whom her eye took in only the general outlines of
+      fashion and comfortable circumstances; now too strange to it to go
+      unnoted. In Fleda's usual mood her next movement would have been made with
+      a demureness that would have looked like bashfulness. But the amusement
+      and pleasure of the day just passed had for the moment set her spirits
+      free from the burden that generally bound them down; and they were as
+      elastic as her step as she came forward and presented to her aunt "Dr.
+      Quackenboss,--and then turned to shake her cousin's hand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Charlton!--Where did you come from? We didn't expect you so soon."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are not sorry to see me, I hope?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not at all--very glad;"--and then as her eye glanced towards the other
+      new-comer Charlton presented to her "Mr. Thorn;" and Fleda's fancy made a
+      sudden quick leap on the instant to the old hall at Montepoole and the
+      shot dog. And then Dr. Quackenboss was presented, an introduction which
+      Capt. Rossitur received coldly, and Mr. Thorn with something more than
+      frigidity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor's elasticity however defied depression, especially in the
+      presence of a silk dress and a military coat. Fleda presently saw that he
+      was agonizing her uncle. Mrs. Rossitur had drawn close to her son. Fleda
+      was left to take care of the other visitor. The young men had both seemed
+      more struck at the vision presented to them than she had been on her part.
+      She thought neither of them was very ready to speak to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I did not know," said Mr. Thorn softly, "what reason I had to thank
+      Rossitur for bringing me home with him to-night--he promised me a supper
+      and a welcome,--but I find he did not tell me the half of my
+      entertainment."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That was wise in him," said Fleda;--"the half that is not expected is
+      always worth a great deal more than the other."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In this case, most assuredly," said Thorn bowing, and Fleda was sure not
+      knowing what to make of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you been in Mexico too, Mr. Thorn?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not I!--that's an entertainment I beg to decline. I never felt inclined
+      to barter an arm for a shoulder-knot, or to abridge my usual means of
+      locomotion for the privilege of riding on parade--or selling oneself for a
+      name--Peter Schlemil's selling his shadow I can understand; but this is
+      really lessening oneself that one's shadow may grow the larger."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you were in the army?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--It wasn't my doing. There is a time, you know, when one must please
+      the old folks--I grew old enough and wise enough to cut loose from the
+      army before I had gained or lost much by it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not understand the displeased gravity of Fleda's face, and went on
+      insinuatingly;--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Unless I have lost what Charlton has gained--something I did not know
+      hung upon the decision--Perhaps you think a man is taller for having iron
+      heels to his boots?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not measure a man by his inches," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then you have no particular predilection for shooting men?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have no predilection for shooting anything, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then I am safe!" said he, with an arrogant little air of satisfaction. "I
+      was born under an indolent star, but I confess to you, privately, of the
+      two I would rather gather my harvests with the sickle than the sword. How
+      does your uncle find it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Find what, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The worship of Ceres?--I remember he used to be devoted to Apollo and the
+      Muses."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are they rival deities?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why--I have been rather of the opinion that they were too many for one
+      house to hold," said Thorn glancing at Mr. Rossitur. "But perhays the
+      Graces manage to reconcile them!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you ever hear of the Graces getting supper?" said Fleda. "Because
+      Ceres sometimes sets them at that work. Uncle Rolf," she added as she
+      passed him,--"Mr. Thorn is inquiring after Apollo--will you set him right,
+      while I do the same for the tablecloth?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her uncle looked from her sparkling eyes to the rather puzzled expression
+      of his guest's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was only asking your lovely niece," said Mr. Thorn coming down from his
+      stilts,--"how you liked this country life?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Quackenboss bowed, probably in approbation of the epithet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well sir--what information did she give you on the subject?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Left me in the dark, sir, with a vague hope that you would enlighten me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I trust Mr. Rossitur can give a favourable report?" said the doctor
+      benignly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mr. Rossitur's frowning brow looked very little like it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you say to our country life, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's a confounded life, sir," said Mr. Rossitur, taking a pamphlet from
+      the table to fold and twist as he spoke,--"it is a confounded life; for
+      the head and the hands must either live separate, or the head must do no
+      other work but wait upon the hands. It is an alternative of loss and
+      waste, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The alternative seems to be of--a--limited application," said the doctor,
+      as Fleda, having found that Hugh and Barby had been beforehand with her,
+      now came back to the company. "I am sure this lady would not give such a
+      testimony."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "About what?" said Fleda, colouring under the fire of so many eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The blighting influence of Ceres' sceptre," said Mr. Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This country life," said her uncle;--"do you like it, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You know, uncle," said she cheerfully, "I was always of the old
+      Douglasses' mind--I like better to hear the lark sing than the mouse
+      squeak."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that one of Earl Douglass's sayings?" said the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes sir," said Fleda with quivering lips,--"but not the one you know--an
+      older man."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah!" said the doctor intelligently. "Mr. Rossitur,--speaking of hands,--I
+      have employed the Irish very much of late years--they are as good as one
+      can have, if you do not want a head."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is to say,--if you have a head," said Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Exactly" said the doctor, all abroad,--"and when there are not too many
+      of them together. I had enough of that, sir, some years ago when a
+      multitude of them were employed on the public works. The Irish were in a
+      state of mutilation, sir, all through the country."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah!" said Thorn,--"had the military been at work upon them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir, but I wish they had, I am sure; it would have been for the peace
+      of the town. There were hundreds of them. We were in want of an army."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of surgeons,--I should think," said Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda saw the doctor's dubious air and her uncle's compressed lips; and
+      commanding herself, with even a look of something like displeasure she
+      quitted her seat by Mr. Thorn and called the doctor to the window to look
+      at a cluster of rose acacias just then in their glory. He admired, and she
+      expatiated, till she hoped everybody but herself had forgotten what they
+      had been talking about. But they had no sooner returned to their seats
+      than Thorn began again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The Irish in your town are not in the same mutilated state now, I
+      suppose, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir, no," said the doctor;--"there are much fewer of them to break
+      each other's bones. It was all among themselves, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The country is full of foreigners," said Mr. Rossitur with praiseworthy
+      gravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes sir," said Dr. Quackenboss thoughtfully;--"we shall have none of our
+      ancestors left in a short time, if they go on as they are doing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was beaten from the field, and rushing into the breakfast-room
+      astonished Hugh by seizing hold of him and indulging in a most prolonged
+      and unbounded laugh. She did not shew herself again till the company came
+      in to supper; but then she was found as grave as Minerva. She devoted
+      herself particularly to the care and entertainment of Dr. Quackenboss till
+      he took leave; nor could Thorn get another chance to talk to her through
+      all the evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he and Rossitur were at last in their rooms Fleda told her story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You don't know how pleasant it was, aunt Lucy--how much I enjoyed
+      it--seeing and talking to somebody again. Mrs. Evelyn was so very kind."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very glad, my darling," said Mrs. Rossitur, stroking away the hair
+      from the forehead that was bent down towards her;--"I am glad you had it
+      to-day and I am glad you will have it again to-morrow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will have it too, aunt Lucy. Mrs. Evelyn will be here in the
+      morning--she said so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shall not see her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why? Now aunt Lucy!--you will."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have nothing in the world to see her in--I cannot."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have this?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For the morning? A rich French silk?--It would be absurd. No, no,--it
+      would be better to wear my old merino than that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you will have to dress in the morning for Mr. Thorn?--he will be here
+      to breakfast."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shall not come down to breakfast.--Don't look so, love!--I can't help
+      it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why was that calico got for me and not for you?" said Fleda, bitterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A sixpenny calico," said Mrs. Rossitur smiling,--"it would be hard if you
+      could not have so much as that, love."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you will not see Mrs. Evelyn and her daughters at all!--and I was
+      thinking that it would do you so much good!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur drew her face a little nearer and kissed it, over and over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It will do you good, my darling--that is what I care for much more."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It will not do me half as much," said Fleda sighing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her spirits were in their old place again; no more a tip-toe to-night. The
+      short light of pleasure was overcast. She went to bed feeling very quiet
+      indeed; and received Mrs. Evelyn and excused her aunt the next day, almost
+      wishing the lady had not been as good as her word. But though in the same
+      mood she set off with her to drive to Montepoole, it could not stand the
+      bright influences with which she found herself surrounded. She came home
+      again at night with dancing spirits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was some days before Capt. Rossitur began at all to comprehend the
+      change which had come upon his family. One morning Fleda and Hugh having
+      finished their morning's work were in the breakfast-room waiting for the
+      rest of the family, when Charlton made his appearance, with the cloud on
+      his brow which had been lately gathering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is the paper?" said he. "I haven't seen a paper since I have been
+      here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You mustn't expect to find Mexican luxuries in Queechy, Capt. Rossitur,"
+      said Fleda pleasantly.--"Look at these roses, and don't ask me for
+      papers!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did look a minute at the dish of flowers she was arranging for the
+      breakfast table, and at the rival freshness and sweetness of the face that
+      hung over them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You don't mean to say you live without a paper?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus14.jpg"><img src="images/illus14.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="'Look at these roses, and don't ask me for papers!'"
+      title="'Look at these roses, and don't ask me for papers!'" /><br /> "Look
+      at these roses, and don't ask me for papers!"</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, it's astonishing how many things people can live without," said
+      Fleda rather dreamily, intent upon settling an uneasy rose that would
+      topple over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish you'd answer me really," said Charlton. "Don't you take a paper
+      here?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We would take one thankfully if it would be so good as to come; but
+      seriously, Charlton, we haven't any," she said changing her tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And have you done without one all through the war?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--we used to borrow one from a kind neighbour once in a while, to make
+      sure, as Mr. Thorn says, that you had not bartered an arm for a
+      shoulder-knot."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You never looked to see whether I was killed in the meanwhile, I
+      suppose?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--never," said Fleda gravely, as she took her place on a low seat in
+      the corner,--"I always knew you were safe before I touched the paper."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you mean?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not an enemy, Charlton," said Fleda laughing. "I mean that I used to
+      make aunt Miriam look over the accounts before I did."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charlton walked up and down the room for a little while in sullen silence;
+      and then brought up before Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are you doing?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked up,--a glance that as sweetly and brightly as possible half
+      asked half bade him be silent and ask no questions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What <i>are</i> you doing?" he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am putting a patch on my shoe."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His look expressed more indignation than anything else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you mean?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just what I say," said Fleda, going on with her work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What in the name of all the cobblers in the land do you do it for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because I prefer it to having a hole in my shoe; which would give me the
+      additional trouble of mending my stockings."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charlton muttered an impatient sentence, of which Fleda only understood
+      that "the devil" was in it, and then desired to know if whole shoes would
+      not answer the purpose as well as either holes or patches?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Quite--if I had them," said Fleda, giving him another glance which, with
+      all its gravity and sweetness, carried also a little gentle reproach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But do you know," said he after standing still a minute looking at her,
+      "that any cobbler in the country would do what you are doing much better
+      for sixpence?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am quite aware of that," said Fleda, stitching away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Your hands are not strong enough for that work!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda again smiled at him, in the very dint of giving a hard push to her
+      needle; a smile that would have witched him into good humour if he had not
+      been determinately in a cloud and proof against everything. It only
+      admonished him that he could not safely remain in the region of sunbeams;
+      and he walked up and down the room furiously again. The sudden ceasing of
+      his footsteps presently made her look up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What have you got there?--Oh, Charlton, don't!--please put that down!--I
+      didn't know I had left them there.--They were a little wet and I laid them
+      on the chair to dry."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you call this?" said he, not minding her request.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They are only my gardening gloves--I thought I had put them away."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Gloves!" said he, pulling at them disdainfully,--"why here are two--one
+      within the other--what's that for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's an old-fashioned way of mending matters,--two friends covering each
+      other's deficiencies. The inner pair are too thin alone, and the outer
+      ones have holes that are past cobbling."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are we going to have any breakfast to-day?" said he flinging the gloves
+      down. "You are very late!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda quietly,--"it is not time for aunt Lucy to be down yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you have breakfast before nine o'clock?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--by half-past eight generally."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Strange way of getting along on a farm!--Well I can't wait--I promised
+      Thorn I would meet him this morning--Barby!--I wish you would bring me my
+      boots!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda made two springs,--one to touch Charlton's mouth, the other to close
+      the door of communication with the kitchen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well!--what is the matter?--can't I have them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, yes, but ask me for what you want. You mustn't call upon Barby in
+      that fashion."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why not? is she too good to be spoken to? What is she in the kitchen
+      for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She wouldn't be in the kitchen long if we were to speak to her in that
+      way," said Fleda. "I suppose she would as soon put your boots on for you
+      as fetch and carry them. I'll see about it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It seems to me Fleda rules the house," remarked Capt. Rossitur when she
+      had left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well who should rule it?" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not she!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't think she does," said Hugh; "but if she did, I am sure it could
+      not be in better hands."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It shouldn't be in her hands at all. But I have noticed since I have been
+      here that she takes the arrangement of almost everything. My mother seems
+      to have nothing to do in her own family."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wonder what the family or anybody in it would do without Fleda!" said
+      Hugh, his gentle eyes quite firing with indignation. "You had better know
+      more before you speak, Charlton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is there for me to know?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda does everything."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So I say; and that is what I don't like."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How little you know what you are talking about!" said Hugh. "I can tell
+      you she is the life of the house, almost literally; we should have had
+      little enough to live upon this summer if it had not been for her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you mean?"--impatiently enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda--if it had not been for her gardening and management. She has taken
+      care of the garden these two years and sold I can't tell you how much from
+      it. Mr. Sweet, the hotel-man at the Pool, takes all we can give him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How much does her 'taking care of the garden' amount to?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It amounts to all the planting and nearly all the other work, after the
+      first digging,--by far the greater part of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charlton walked up and down a few turns in most unsatisfied silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How does she get the things to Montepoole?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I take them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You!--When?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ride with them there before breakfast. Fleda is up very early to gather
+      them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have not been there this morning?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "With what?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Peas and strawberries."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And Fleda picked them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--with some help from Barby and me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That glove of hers was wringing wet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, with the pea-vines, and strawberries too; you know they get so
+      loaded with dew. O Fleda gets more than her gloves wet. But she does not
+      mind anything she does for father and mother."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Humph!--And does she get enough when all is done to pay for the trouble?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Hugh rather sadly. "<i>She</i> thinks so. It is no
+      trifle."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Which?--the pay or the trouble?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Both. But I meant the pay. Why she made ten dollars last year from the
+      asparagus beds alone, and I don't know how much more this year."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ten dollars!--The devil!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you come to counting your dollars by the tens?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We have counted our sixpences so a good while," said Hugh quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charlton strode about the room again in much perturbation. Then came in
+      Fleda, looking as bright as if dollars had been counted by the thousand,
+      and bearing his boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What on earth did you do that for?" said he angrily. "I could have gone
+      for them myself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No harm done," said Fleda lightly,--"only I have got something else
+      instead of the thanks I expected."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can't conceive," said he, sitting down and sulkily drawing on his
+      foot-gear, "why this piece of punctiliousness should have made any more
+      difficulty about bringing me my boots than about blacking them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sly glance of intelligence, which Charlton was quick enough to detect,
+      passed between Fleda and Hugh. His eye carried its question from one to
+      the other. Fleda's gravity gave way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't look at me so, Charlton," said she laughing;--"I can't help it, you
+      are so excessively comical!--I recommend that you go out upon the
+      grass-plat before the door and turn round two or three times."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you have the goodness to explain yourself? Who <i>did</i> black
+      these boots?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never pry into the secrets of families," said Fleda. "Hugh and I have a
+      couple of convenient little fairies in our service that do things <i>unknownst</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I blacked them, Charlton," said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Capt. Rossitur gave his slippers a fling that carried them clean into the
+      corner of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will see," he said rising, "whether some other service cannot be had
+      more satisfactory than that of fairies!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now Charlton," said Fleda with a sudden change of manner, coming to him
+      and laying her hand most gently on his arm,--"please don't speak about
+      these things before uncle Rolf or your mother--Please do
+      not!--Charlton!--It would only do a great deal of harm and do no good."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked up in his face, but he would not meet her pleading eye, and
+      shook off her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't need to be instructed how to speak to my father and mother; and I
+      am not one of the household that has submitted itself to your direction."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda sat down on her bench and was quiet, but with a lip that trembled a
+      little and eyes that let fall one or two witnesses against him. Charlton
+      did not see them, and he knew better than to meet Hugh's look of reproach.
+      But for all that there was a certain consciousness that hung about the
+      neck of his purpose and kept it down in spite of him; and it was not till
+      breakfast was half over that his ill-humour could make head against this
+      gentle thwarting and cast it off. For so long the meal was excessively
+      dull. Hugh and Fleda had their own thoughts; Charlton was biting his
+      resolution into every slice of bread and butter that occupied him; and Mr.
+      Rossitur's face looked like anything but encouraging an inquiry into his
+      affairs. Since his son's arrival he had been most uncommonly gloomy; and
+      Mrs. Rossitur's face was never in sunshine when his was in shade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You'll have a warm day of it at the mill, Hugh," said Fleda, by way of
+      saying something to break the dismal monotony of knives and forks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Does that mill make much?" suddenly inquired Charlton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It has made a new bridge to the brook, literally," said Fleda gayly; "for
+      it has sawn out the boards; and you know you mustn't speak evil of what
+      carries you over the water."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Does that mill pay for the working?" said Charlton, turning with the
+      dryest disregard from her interference and addressing himself
+      determinately to his father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you mean? It does not work gratuitously," answered Mr. Rossitur,
+      with at least equal dryness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But, I mean, are the profits of it enough to pay for the loss of Hugh's
+      time?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If Hugh judges they are not, he is at liberty to let it alone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My time is not lost," said Hugh; "I don't know what I should do with it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know what we should do without the mill," said Mrs. Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That gave Charlton an unlucky opening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Has the prospect of farming disappointed you, father?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is the prospect of your company?" said Mr. Rossitur, swallowing half
+      an egg before he replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A very limited prospect!" said Charlton,--"if you mean the one that went
+      with me. Not a fifth part of them left."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What have you done with them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Shewed them where the balls were flying, sir, and did my best to shew
+      them the thickest of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it necessary to shew it to us too?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe there are not twenty living that followed me into Mexico," he
+      went on, as if he had not heard her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Was all that havoc made in one engagement?" said Mrs. Rossitur, whose
+      cheek had turned pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, mother--in the course of a few minutes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wonder what would pay for <i>that</i> loss!" said Fleda indignantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, the point was gained! and it did not signify what the cost was so we
+      did that. My poor boys were a small part of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What point do you mean?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I mean the point we had in view, which was taking the place."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what was the advantage of gaining the place."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pshaw!--The advantage of doing one's duty."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what made it duty?" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Orders."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I grant you," said Fleda,--"I understand that--but bear with me,
+      Charlton,--what was the advantage to the army or the country?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The advantage of great honour if we succeeded, and avoiding the shame of
+      failure."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that all?" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All!" said Charlton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Glory must be a precious thing when other men's lives are so cheap to buy
+      it," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We did not risk theirs without our own," said Charlton colouring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No,--but still theirs were risked for you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not at all;--why this is absurd! you are saying that the whole war was
+      for nothing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What better than nothing was the end of it? We paid Mexico for the
+      territory she yielded to us, didn't we, uncle Rolf?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How much?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Twenty millions, I believe."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what do you suppose the war has cost?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hum--I don't know,--a hundred."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A hundred million! besides--how much besides!--And don't you suppose,
+      uncle Rolf, that for half of that sum Mexico would have sold us peaceably
+      what she did in the end?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is possible--I think it is very likely."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What was the fruit of the war, Capt. Rossitur?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, a great deal of honour to the army and the nation at large."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Honour again! But granting that the army gained it, which they certainly
+      did, for one I do not feel very proud of the nation's share."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why they are one" said Charlton impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In an unjust war"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was <i>not</i> an unjust war!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's what you call a knock-downer," said Fleda laughing. "But I confess
+      myself so simple as to have agreed with Seth Plumfield, when I heard him
+      and Lucas disputing about it last winter, that it was a shame to a great
+      and strong nation like ours to display its might in crushing a weak one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But they drew it upon themselves. <i>They</i> began hostilities."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is a diversity of opinion about that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not in heads that have two grains of information."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I beg your pardon. Mrs. Evelyn and Judge Sensible were talking over that
+      very question the other day at Montepoole; and he made it quite clear to
+      my mind that we were the aggressors." "Judge Sensible is a fool!" said Mr.
+      Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very well!" said Fleda laughing;--"but as I do not wish to be
+      comprehended in the same class, will you shew me how he was wrong, uncle?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This drew on a discussion of some length, to which Fleda listened with
+      profound attention, long after her aunt had ceased to listen at all, and
+      Hugh was thoughtful, and Charlton disgusted. At the end of it Mr. Rossitur
+      left the table and the room, and Fleda subsiding turned to her cold
+      coffee-cup.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I didn't know you ever cared anything about politics before," said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Didn't you?" said Fleda smiling, "You do me injustice."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their eyes met for a second, with a most appreciating smile on his part;
+      and then he too went off to his work. There was a few minutes' silent
+      pause after that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mother," said Charlton looking up and bursting forth, "what is all this
+      about the mill and the farm?--Is not the farm doing well?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid not very well," said Mrs. Rossitur, gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is the difficulty?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, your father has let it to a man by the name of Didenhover, and I am
+      afraid he is not faithful; it does not seem to bring us in what it ought."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What did he do that for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He was wearied with the annoyances he had to endure before, and thought
+      it would be better and more profitable to have somebody else take the
+      whole charge and management. He did not know Didenhover's character at the
+      time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Engaged him without knowing him!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was the only third party present, and Charlton unwittingly allowing
+      himself to meet her eye received a look of keen displeasure that he was
+      not prepared for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is not like him," he said in a much moderated tone. "But you must be
+      changed too, mother, or you would not endure such anomalous service in
+      your kitchen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There are a great many changes, dear Charlton," said his mother, looking
+      at him with such a face of sorrowful sweetness and patience that his mouth
+      was stopped. Fleda left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And have you really nothing to depend upon but that child's strawberries
+      and Hugh's wood-saw?" he said in the tone he ought to have used from the
+      beginning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Little else."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charlton stifled two or three sentences that rose to his lips, and began
+      to walk up and down the room again. His mother sat musing by the tea-board
+      still, softly clinking her spoon against the edge of her tea-cup.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She has grown up very pretty," he remarked after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pretty!" said Mrs. Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No one that has seen much of Fleda would ever describe her by that name."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charlton had the candour to think he had seen something of her that
+      morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Poor child!" said Mrs. Rossitur sadly,--"I can't bear to think of her
+      spending her life as she is doing--wearing herself out, I know,
+      sometimes--and buried alive."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Buried!" said Charlton in his turn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--without any of the advantages and opportunities she ought to have. I
+      can't bear to think of it. And yet how should I ever live without
+      her!"--said Mrs. Rossitur, leaning her face upon her hands. "And if she
+      were known she would not be mine long. But it grieves me to have her go
+      without her music that she is so fond of, and the books she wants--she and
+      Hugh have gone from end to end of every volume there is in the house, I
+      believe, in every language, except Greek."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, she looks pretty happy and contented, mother."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know!" said Mrs. Rossitur shaking her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Isn't she happy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Mrs. Rossitur again;--"she has a spirit that is happy
+      in doing her duty, or anything for those she loves; but I see her
+      sometimes wearing a look that pains me exceedingly. I am afraid the way
+      she lives and the changes in our affairs have worn upon her more than we
+      know of--she feels doubly everything that touches me, or Hugh, or your
+      father. She is a gentle spirit!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She seems to me not to want character," said Charlton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Character! I don't know who has so much. She has at least fifty times as
+      much character as I have. And energy. She is admirable at managing
+      people--she knows how to influence them somehow so that everybody does
+      what she wants."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And who influences her?" said Charlton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who influences her? Everybody that she loves. Who has the most influence
+      over her, do you mean?--I am sure I don't know--Hugh, if anybody,--but <i>she</i>
+      is rather the moving spirit of the household."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Capt. Rossitur resolved that he would be an exception to her rule.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He forgot, however, for some reason or other, to sound his father any more
+      on the subject of mismanagement. His thoughts indeed were more pleasantly
+      taken up.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="24"></a>Chapter XXIV.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My
+        lord Sebastian,<br /> The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness<br />
+        And time to speak it in: you rub the sore.<br /> When you should bring
+        the plaster.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Tempest.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The Evelyns spent several weeks at the Pool; and both mother and daughters
+      conceiving a great affection for Fleda kept her in their company as much
+      as possible For those weeks Fleda had enough of gayety. She was constantly
+      spending the day with them at the Pool, or going on some party of
+      pleasure, or taking quiet sensible walks and rides with them along or with
+      only one or two more of the most rational and agreeable people that the
+      place could command. And even Mrs. Rossitur was persuaded, more times than
+      one, to put herself in her plainest remaining French silk and entertain
+      the whole party, with the addition of one or two of Charlton's friends, at
+      her Queechy farm-house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda enjoyed it all with the quick spring of a mind habitually bent to
+      the patient fulfilment of duty and habitually under the pressure of rather
+      sobering thoughts. It was a needed and very useful refreshment. Charlton's
+      being at home gave her the full good of the opportunity more than would
+      else have been possible. He was her constant attendant, driving her to and
+      from the Pool, and finding as much to call him there as she had; for
+      besides the Evelyns his friend Thorn abode there all this time. The only
+      drawback to Fleda's pleasure as she drove off from Queechy would be the
+      leaving Hugh plodding away at his saw-mill. She used to nod and wave to
+      him as they went by, and almost feel that she ought not to go on and enjoy
+      herself while he was tending that wearisome machinery all day long. Still
+      she went on and enjoyed herself; but the mere thought of his patient smile
+      as she passed would have kept her from too much elation of spirits, if
+      there had been any danger. There never was any.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's a lovely little cousin of yours," said Thorn one evening, when he
+      and Rossitur, on horseback, were leisurely making their way along the up
+      and down road between Montepoole and Queechy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is not particularly little," said Rossitur with a dryness that
+      somehow lacked any savour of gratification.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is of a most fair stature," said Thorn;--"I did not mean anything
+      against that,--but there are characters to which one gives instinctively a
+      softening appellative."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are there?" said Charlton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes. She is a lovely little creature."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is not to compare to one of those girls we have left behind us at
+      Montepoole," said Charlton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hum--well perhaps you are right; but which girl do you mean?--for I
+      profess I don't know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The second of Mrs. Evelyn's daughters--the auburn-haired one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Miss Constance, eh?" said Thorn. "In what isn't the other one to be
+      compared to her?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In anything! Nobody would ever think of looking at her in the same room?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why not?" said Thorn coolly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know why not," said Charlton, "except that she has not a tithe of
+      her beauty. That's a superb girl!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a matter of twenty yards Mr. Thorn went softly humming a tune to
+      himself and leisurely switching the flies off his horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well,"--said he,--"there's no accounting for tastes--
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;'I ask
+        no red and white<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To make up my
+        delight,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; No odd becoming graces,<br />
+        Black eyes, or little know-not-what in faces.'"
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      "What <i>do</i> you want then?" said Charlton, half laughing at him,
+      though his friend was perfectly grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A cool eye, and a mind in it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A cool eye!" said Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes. Those we have left behind us are arrant will-o'the-wisps--dancing
+      fires--no more."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can tell you there is fire sometimes in the other eyes," said Charlton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very likely," said his friend composedly,--"I could have guessed as much;
+      but that is a fire you may warm yourself at; no eternal
+      phosphorescence;--it is the leaping up of an internal fire, that only
+      shews itself upon occasion."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose you know what you are talking about," said Charlton, "but I
+      can't follow you into the region of volcanos. Constance Evelyn has superb
+      eyes. It is uncommon to see a light blue so brilliant."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I would rather trust a sick head to the handling of the lovely lady than
+      the superb one, at a venture."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought you never had a sick head," said Charlton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is lucky for me, as the hands do not happen to be at my service. But
+      no imagination could put Miss Constance in Desdemona's place, when Othello
+      complained of his headache,--you remember, Charlton,--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ''Faith, that's with watching--'twill away again-- Let me but bind this
+      handkerchief about it hard.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorn gave the intonation truly and admirably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda never said anything so soft as that," said Charlton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You speak--well, but <i>soft</i>!--do you know what you are talking about
+      there?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not very well," said Charlton. "I only remember there was nothing soft
+      about Othello,--what you quoted of his wife just now seemed to me to smack
+      of that quality."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I forgive your memory," said Thorn, "or else I certainly would not
+      forgive you. If there is a fair creation in all Shakespeare it is
+      Desdemona, and if there is a pretty combination on earth that nearly
+      matches it, I believe it is that one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What one?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Your pretty cousin."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charlton was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is generous in me to undertake her defence," Thorn went on, "for she
+      bestows as little of her fair countenance upon me as she can well help.
+      But try as she will, she cannot be so repellant as she is attractive."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charlton pushed his horse into a brisker pace not favourable to
+      conversation; and they rode forward in silence, till in descending the
+      hill below Deepwater they came within view of Hugh's workplace, the saw
+      mill. Charlton suddenly drew bridle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There she is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And who is with her?" said Thorn. "As I live!--our friend--what's his
+      name?--who has lost all his ancestors.--And who is the other?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My brother," said Charlton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't mean your brother, Capt. Rossitur," said Thorn throwing himself
+      off his horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He joined the party, who were just leaving the mill to go down towards the
+      house. Very much at his leisure Charlton dismounted and came after him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have brought Charlton safe home, Miss Ringgan," said Thorn, who leading
+      his horse had quietly secured a position at her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's the matter?" said Fleda laughing. "Couldn't he bring himself
+      home?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know what's the matter, but he's been uncommonly dumpish--we've
+      been as near as possible to quarrelling for half a dozen miles back."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We have been--a--more agreeably employed," said Dr. Quackenboss looking
+      round at him with a face that was a concentration of affability.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I make no doubt of it, sir; I trust we shall bring no unharmonious
+      interruption.--If I may change somebody else's words," he added more low
+      to Fleda,--"disdain itself must convert to courtesy in your presence."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sorry disdain should live to pay me a compliment," said Fleda. "Mr.
+      Thorn, may I introduce to you Mr. Olmney?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Thorn honoured the introduction with perfect civility, but then fell
+      back to his former position and slightly lowered tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you then a sworn foe to compliments?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was never so fiercely attacked by them as to give me any occasion."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should be very sorry to furnish the occasion,--but what's the harm in
+      them, Miss Ringgan?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Chiefly a want of agreeableness."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of agreeableness!--Pardon me--I hope you will be so good as to give me
+      the rationale of that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am of Miss Edgeworth's opinion, sir," said Fleda blushing, "that a lady
+      may always judge of the estimation in which she is held by the
+      conversation which is addressed to her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you judge compliments to be a doubtful indication of esteem?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure you do not need information on that point, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As to your opinion, or the matter of fact?" said he somewhat keenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As to the matter of fact," said Fleda, with a glance both simple and
+      acute in its expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will not venture to say a word," said Thorn smiling. "Protestations
+      would certainly fall flat at the gates where <i>les douces paroles</i>
+      cannot enter. But do you know this is picking a man's pocket of all his
+      silver pennies and obliging him to produce his gold."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That <i>would</i> be a hard measure upon a good many people," said Fleda
+      laughing. "But they're not driven to that. There's plenty of small change
+      left."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You certainly do not deal in the coin you condemn," said Thorn bowing.
+      "But you will remember that none call for gold but those who can exchange
+      it, and the number of them is few. In a world where cowrie passes current
+      a man may be excused for not throwing about his guineas."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish you'd throw about a few for our entertainment," said Charlton, who
+      was close behind. "I haven't seen a yellow-boy in a good while."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A proof that your eyes are not jaundiced," said his friend without
+      turning his head, "whatever may be the case with you otherwise. Is he out
+      of humour with the country life you like so well, Miss Ringgan, or has he
+      left his domestic tastes in Mexico? How do you think he likes Queechy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You might as well ask myself," said Charlton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you think he likes Queechy, Miss Ringgan?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid something after the fashion of Touchstone," said Fleda
+      laughing;--"he thinks that 'in respect of itself it is a good life; but in
+      respect that it is a shepherd's life it is naught. In respect that it is
+      solitary, he likes it very well; but in respect that it is private, it is
+      a very vile life. Now in respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth him
+      well; but in respect it is not in the court, it is tedious.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's a guinea for you, Capt. Rossitur," said his friend. "Do you know
+      out of what mint?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It doesn't bear the head of Socrates," said Charlton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Hast no philosophy in thee,' Charlton?" said Fleda laughing back at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Has not Queechy--a--the honour of your approbation, Capt. Rossitur?" said
+      the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly sir--I have no doubt of its being a very fine country."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Only he has imbibed some doubts whether happiness be an indigenous crop,"
+      said Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Undoubtedly," said the doctor blandly,--"to one who has roamed over the
+      plains of Mexico, Queechy must seem rather--a--rather flat place."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If he could lose sight of the hills," said Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Undoubtedly, sir, undoubtedly," said the doctor; "they are a marked
+      feature in the landscape, and do much to relieve--a--the charge of
+      sameness."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Luckily," said Mr. Olmney smiling, "happiness is not a thing of
+      circumstance; it depends on a man's self."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I used to think so," said Thorn;--"that is what I have always subscribed
+      to; but I am afraid I could not live in this region and find it so long."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What an evening!" said Fleda. "Queechy is doing its best to deserve our
+      regards under this light. Mr. Olmney, did you ever notice the beautiful
+      curve of the hills in that hollow where the sun sets?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do notice it now" he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is exquisite!" said the doctor. "Capt. Rossitur, do you observe,
+      sir?--in that hollow where the sun sets?--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Capt. Rossitur's eye made a very speedy transition from the hills to
+      Fleda, who had fallen back a little to take Hugh's arm and placing herself
+      between him and Mr. Olmney was giving her attention undividedly to the
+      latter. And to him she talked perseveringly, of the mountains, the
+      country, and the people, till they reached the courtyard gate. Mr. Olmney
+      then passed on. So did the doctor, though invited to tarry, averring that
+      the sun had gone down behind the firmament and he had something to attend
+      to at home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will come in, Thorn," said Charlton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why--I had intended returning,--but the sun has gone down indeed, and as
+      our friend says there is no chance of our seeing him again I may as well
+      go in and take what comfort is to be had in the circumstances. Gentle
+      Euphrosyne, doth it not become the Graces to laugh?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They always ask leave, sir," said Fleda hesitating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A most Grace-ful answer, though it does not smile upon me," said Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sorry, sir," said Fleda, smiling now, "that you have so many silver
+      pennies to dispose of we shall never get at the gold."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will do my very best," said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he did, and made himself agreeable that evening to every one of the
+      circle; though Fleda's sole reason for liking to see him come in had been
+      that she was glad of everything that served to keep Charlton's attention
+      from home subjects. She saw sometimes the threatening of a cloud that
+      troubled her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Evelyns and Thorn and everybody else whom they knew left the Pool
+      at last, before Charlton, who was sufficiently well again, had near run
+      out his furlough; and then the cloud which had only shewed itself by turns
+      during all those weeks gathered and settled determinately upon his brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had long ago supplied the want of a newspaper. One evening in September
+      the family were sitting in the room where they had had tea, for the
+      benefit of the fire, when Barby pushed open the kitchen door and came in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda will you let me have one of the last papers? I've a notion to look
+      at it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda rose and went to rummaging in the cupboards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You can have it again in a little while," said Barby considerately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The paper was found and Miss Elster went out with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What an unendurable piece of ill-manners that woman is!" said Charlton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She has no idea of being ill-mannered, I assure you," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice was like a brewing storm--hers was so clear and soft that it
+      made a lull in spite of him. But he began again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is no necessity for submitting to impertinence. I never would do
+      it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have no doubt you never will," said his father. "Unless you can't help
+      yourself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is there any good reason, sir, why you should not have proper servants in
+      the house?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A very good reason," said Mr. Rossitur. "Fleda would be in despair."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is there none beside that?" said Charlton dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "None--except a trifling one," Mr. Rossitur answered in the same tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We cannot afford it, dear Charlton," said his mother softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a silence, during which Fleda moralized on the ways people take
+      to make themselves uncomfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Does that man--to whom you let the farm--does he do his duty?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not the keeper of his conscience."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid it would be a small charge to any one," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But are you the keeper of the gains you ought to have from him? does he
+      deal fairly by you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "May I ask first what interest it is of yours?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is my interest, sir, because I come home and find the family living
+      upon the exertions of Hugh and Fleda and find them growing thin and pale
+      under it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You, at least, are free from all pains of the kind, Capt. Rossitur."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't listen to him, uncle Rolf!" said Fleda going round to her uncle,
+      and making as she passed a most warning impression upon Charlton's
+      arm,--"don't mind what he says--that young gentleman has been among the
+      Mexican ladies till he has lost an eye for a really proper complexion.
+      Look at me!--do I look pale and thin?--I was paid a most brilliant
+      compliment the other day upon my roses--Uncle, don't listen to him!--he
+      hasn't been in a decent humour since the Evelyns went away."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She knelt down before him and laid her hands upon his and looked up in his
+      face to bring all her plea; the plea of most winning sweetness of entreaty
+      in features yet flushed and trembling. His own did not unbend as he gazed
+      at her, but he gave her a silent answer in a pressure of the hands that
+      went straight from his heart to hers. Fleda's eye turned to Charlton
+      appealingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it necessary," he repeated, "that that child and this boy should spend
+      their days in labour to keep the family alive?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If it were," replied Mr. Rossitur, "I am very willing that their
+      exertions should cease. For my own part I would quite as lief be out of
+      the world as in it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Charlton!--how can you!--" said Fleda, half beside herself,--you should
+      know of what you speak or be silent!--Uncle, don't mind him! he is talking
+      wildly--my work does me good."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You do not understand yourself," said Charlton obstinately;--"it is more
+      than you ought to do, and I know my mother thinks so too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus15.jpg"><img src="images/illus15.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="She knelt down before him." title="She knelt down before him." /><br />
+      She knelt down before him.</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well!" said Mr. Rossitur,--"it seems there is an agreement in my own
+      family to bring me to the bar--get up, Fleda,--let us hear all the charges
+      to be brought against me, at once, and then pass sentence. What have your
+      mother and you agreed upon, Charlton?--go on!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur, now beyond speech, left the room, weeping even aloud. Hugh
+      followed her. Fleda wrestled with her agitation for a minute or two, and
+      then got up and put both arms round her uncle's neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't talk so, dear uncle Rolf!--you make us very unhappy--aunt Lucy did
+      not mean any such thing--it is only Charlton's nonsense. Do go and tell
+      her you don't think so,--you have broken her heart by what you said;--do
+      go, uncle Rolf!--do go and make her happy again! Forget it all!--Charlton
+      did not know what he was saying--won't you go, dear uncle Rolf?--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words were spoken between bursts of tears that utterly overcame her,
+      though they did not hinder the utmost caressingness of manner. It seemed
+      at first spent upon a rock. Mr. Rossitur stood like a man that did not
+      care what happened or what became of him; dumb and unrelenting; suffering
+      her sweet words and imploring tears, with no attempt to answer the one or
+      stay the other. But he could not hold out against her beseeching. He was
+      no match for it. He returned at last heartily the pressure of her arms,
+      and unable to give her any other answer kissed her two or three times,
+      such kisses as are charged with the heart's whole message; and disengaging
+      himself left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a minute after he was gone Fleda cried excessively; and Charlton, now
+      alone with her, felt as if he had not a particle of self-respect left to
+      stand upon. One such agony would do her more harm than whole weeks of
+      labour and weariness. He was too vexed and ashamed of himself to be able
+      to utter a word, but when she recovered a little and was leaving the room
+      he stood still by the door in an attitude that seemed to ask her to speak
+      a word to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure, Charlton," she said gently, "you will be sorry to-morrow for
+      what you have done."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sorry now," he said. But she passed out without saying anything
+      more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Capt. Rossitur passed the night in unmitigated vexation with himself. But
+      his repentance could not have been very genuine, since his most painful
+      thought was, what Fleda must think of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was somewhat reassured at breakfast to find no traces of the evening's
+      storm; indeed the moral atmosphere seemed rather clearer and purer than
+      common. His own face was the only one which had an unusual shade upon it.
+      There was no difference in anybody's manner towards himself; and there was
+      even a particularly gentle and kind pleasantness about Fleda, intended, he
+      knew, to soothe and put to rest any movings of self-reproach he might
+      feel. It somehow missed of its aim and made him feel worse; and after on
+      his part a very silent meal he quitted the house and took himself and his
+      discontent to the woods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whatever effect they had upon him, it was the middle of the morning before
+      he came back again. He found Fleda alone in the breakfast-room, sewing;
+      and for the first time noticed the look his mother had spoken of; a look
+      not of sadness, but rather of settled patient gravity; the more painful to
+      see because it could only have been wrought by long-acting causes, and
+      might be as slow to do away as it must have been to bring. Charlton's
+      displeasure with the existing state of things had revived as his remorse
+      died away, and that quiet face did not have a quieting effect upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What on earth is going on!" he began rather abruptly as soon as he
+      entered the room. "What horrible cookery is on foot?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I venture to recommend that you do not inquire," said Fleda. "It was set
+      on foot in the kitchen and it has walked in here. If you open the window
+      it will walk out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you will be cold?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never mind--in that case I will walk out too, into the kitchen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Into the thick of it!--No--I will try some other way of relief. This is
+      unendurable!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked, but made no other remonstrance, and not heeding the look Mr.
+      Charlton walked out into the kitchen, shutting the door behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Barby," said he, "you have got something cooking here that is very
+      disagreeable in the other room."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it?" said Barby. "I reckoned it would all fly up chimney I guess the
+      draught ain't so strong as I thought it was."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I tell you it fills the house!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, it'll have to a spell yet," said Barby, "'cause if it didn't, you
+      see, Capt. Rossitur, there'd be nothing to fill Fleda's chickens with."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Chickens!--where's all the corn in the land?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's some place besides in our barn," said Barby. "All last year's is
+      out, and Mr. Didenhover ha'n't fetched any of this year's home; so I made
+      a bargain with 'em they shouldn't starve as long as they'd eat boiled
+      pursley."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you give them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Most everything--they ain't particler now-a days--chunks o' cabbage, and
+      scarcity, and pun'kin and that--all the sass that ain't wanted."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And do they eat that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Eat it!" said Barby. "They don't know how to thank me for't!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But it ought to be done out of doors," said Charlton, coming back from a
+      kind of maze in which he had been listening to her. "It is unendurable!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then I guess you'll have to go some place where you won't know it," said
+      Barby;--"that's the most likely plan I can hit upon; for it'll have to
+      stay on till it's ready."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charlton went back into the other room really down-hearted, and stood
+      watching the play of Fleda's fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it come to this!" he said at length. "Is it possible that you are
+      obliged to go without such a trifle as the miserable supply of food your
+      fowls want!" "That's a small matter!" said Fleda, speaking lightly though
+      she smothered a sigh. "We have been obliged to do without more than that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is the reason?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why this man Didenhover is a rogue I suspect, and he manages to spirit
+      away all the profits that should come to uncle Rolf's hands--I don't know
+      how. We have lived almost entirely upon the mill for some time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And has my father been doing nothing all this while?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing on the farm."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what of anything else?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Fleda, speaking with evident unwillingness. "But
+      surely, Charlton, he knows his own business best. It is not our affair."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is mad!" said Charlton, violently striding up and down the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda with equal gentleness and sadness--"he is only
+      unhappy;--I understand it all--he has had no spirit to take hold of
+      anything ever since we came here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Spirit!" said Charlton;--"he ought to have worked off his fingers to
+      their joints before he let you do as you have been doing!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't say so!" said Fleda, looking even pale in her eagerness--"don't
+      think so, Charlton! it isn't right. We cannot tell what he may have had to
+      trouble him--I know he has suffered and does suffer a great deal.--Do not
+      speak again about anything as you did last night!--Oh," said Fleda, now
+      shedding bitter tears,--"this is the worst of growing poor! the difficulty
+      of keeping up the old kindness and sympathy and care for each other!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure it does not work so upon you," said Charlton in an altered
+      voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Promise me, dear Charlton," said Fleda looking up after a moment and
+      drying her eyes again, "promise me you will not say any more about these
+      things! I am sure it pains uncle Rolf more than you think. Say you will
+      not,--for your mother's sake!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will not, Fleda--for your sake. I would not give <i>you</i> any more
+      trouble to bear. Promise me; that you will be more careful of yourself in
+      future."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O there is no danger about me," said Fleda with a faint smile and taking
+      up her work again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who are you making shirts for?" said Charlton after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hugh."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You do everything for Hugh, don't you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Little enough. Not half so much as he does for me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is he up at the mill to-day?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is always there," said Fleda sighing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was another silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Charlton," said Fleda looking up with a face of the loveliest
+      insinuation.--"isn't there something <i>you</i> might do to help us a
+      little?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will help you garden, Fleda, with pleasure."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I would rather you should help somebody else," said she, still looking at
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What, Hugh?--You would have me go and work at the mill for him, I
+      suppose!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't be angry with me, Charlton, for suggesting it," said Fleda looking
+      down again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Angry!"--said he. "But is that what you would have me do?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not unless you like,--I didn't know but you might take his place once in
+      a while for a little, to give him a rest,--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And suppose some of the people from Montepoole that know me should come
+      by? What are you thinking of?" said he in a tone that certainly justified
+      Fleda's deprecation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well!"--said Fleda in a kind of choked voice,--"there is a strange rule
+      of honour in vogue in the world!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why should I help Hugh rather than anybody else?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is killing himself!--" said Fleda, letting her work fall and hardly
+      speaking the words through thick tears. Her head was down and they came
+      fast. Charlton stood abashed for a minute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You sha'n't do so, Fleda," said he gently, endeavouring to raise
+      her,--"you have tired yourself with this miserable work!--Come to the
+      window--you have got low-spirited, but I am sure without reason about
+      Hugh,--but you shall set me about what you will--You are right, I dare
+      say, and I am wrong; but don't make me think myself a brute, and I will do
+      anything you please."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had raised her up and made her lean upon him. Fleda wiped her eyes and
+      tried to smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will do anything that will please you, Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is not to please <i>me</i>,--" she answered meekly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I would not have spoken a word last night if I had known it would have
+      grieved you so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sorry you should have none but so poor a reason for doing right,"
+      said Fleda gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Upon my word, I think you are about as good reason as anybody need have,"
+      said Charlton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She put her hand upon his arm and looked up,--such a look of pure rebuke
+      as carried to his mind the full force of the words she did not
+      speak,--'Who art thou that carest for a worm which shall die, and
+      forgettest the Lord thy Maker!'--Charlton's eyes fell. Fleda turned gently
+      away and began to mend the fire. He stood watching her for a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you think of me, Fleda?" he said at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A little wrong-headed," answered Fleda, giving him a glance and a smile.
+      "I don't think you are very bad."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you will go with me, Fleda, you shall make what you please of me!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke half in jest, half in earnest, and did not himself know at the
+      moment which way he wished Fleda to take it. But she had no notion of any
+      depth in his words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A hopeless task!" she answered lightly, shaking her head, as she got down
+      on her knees to blow the fire;--"I am afraid it is too much for me. I have
+      been trying to mend you ever since you came, and I cannot see the
+      slightest change for the better!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is the bellows?" said Charlton in another tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It has expired--its last breath," said Fleda. "In other words, it has
+      lost its nose."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, look here," said he laughing and pulling her away,--"you will stand
+      a fair chance of losing your face if you put it in the fire. You sha'n't
+      do it. Come and shew me where to find the scattered parts of that old wind
+      instrument and I will see if it cannot be persuaded to play again."
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="25"></a>Chapter XXV.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        I dinna ken what I should want<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;If I could get but a
+        man.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Scotch Ballad.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Capt. Rossitur did no work at the saw-mill. But Fleda's words had not
+      fallen to the ground. He began to shew care for his fellow-creatures in
+      getting the bellows mended; his next step was to look to his gun; and from
+      that time so long as he staid the table was plentifully supplied with all
+      kinds of game the season and the country could furnish. Wild ducks and
+      partridges banished pork and bacon even from memory; and Fleda joyfully
+      declared she would not see another omelette again till she was in
+      distress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Charlton was still at home came a very urgent invitation from Mrs.
+      Evelyn that Fleda should pay them a long visit in New York, bidding her
+      care for no want of preparation but come and make it there. Fleda
+      demurred, however, on that very score. But before her answer was written,
+      another missive came from Dr. Gregory, not asking so much as demanding her
+      presence, and enclosing a fifty-dollar bill, for which he said he would
+      hold her responsible till she had paid him with,--not her own hands,--but
+      her own lips. There was no withstanding the manner of this entreaty. Fleda
+      packed up some of Mrs. Rossitur's laid-by silks, to be refreshed with an
+      air of fashion, and set off with Charlton at the end of his furlough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To her simple spirit of enjoyment the weeks ran fast; and all manner of
+      novelties and kindnesses helped them on. It was a time of cloudless
+      pleasure. But those she had left thought it long. She wrote them how
+      delightfully she kept house for the old doctor, whose wife had long been
+      dead, and how joyously she and the Evelyns made time fly. And every
+      pleasure she felt awoke almost as strong a throb in the hearts at home.
+      But they missed her, as Barby said, "dreadfully;" and she was most dearly
+      welcomed when she came back. It was just before New Year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For half an hour there was most gladsome use of eyes and tongues. Fleda
+      had a great deal to tell them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How well--how well you are looking, dear Fleda!" said her aunt for the
+      third or fourth time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's more than lean say for you and Hugh, aunt Lucy. What have you been
+      doing to yourself?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing new," they said, as her eye went from one to the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I guess you have wanted me!" said Fleda, shaking her head as she kissed
+      them both again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I guess we have," said Hugh, "but don't fancy we have grown thin upon the
+      want."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But where's uncle Rolf? you didn't tell me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is gone to look after those lands in Michigan."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In Michigan!--When did he go?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very soon after you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you didn't let me know!--O why didn't you? How lonely you must have
+      been."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let you know indeed!" said Mrs. Rossitur, wrapping her in her arms
+      again;--"Hugh and I counted every week that you staid with more and
+      pleasure each one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I understand!" said Fleda laughing under her aunt's kisses. "Well I am
+      glad I am at home again to take care of you. I see you can't get along
+      without me!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "People have been very kind, Fleda," said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have they?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--thinking we were desolate I suppose. There has been no end to aunt
+      Miriam's goodness and pleasantness."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O aunt Miriam, always!" said Fleda. "And Seth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Catherine Douglass has been up twice to ask if her mother could do
+      anything for us; and Mrs. Douglass sent us once a rabbit and once a
+      quantity of wild pigeons that Earl had shot. Mother and I lived upon
+      pigeons for I don't know how long. Barby wouldn't eat 'em--she said she
+      liked pork better; but I believe she did it on purpose."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Like enough," said Fleda, smiling, from her aunt's arms where she still
+      lay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And Seth has sent you plenty of your favourite hickory nuts, very fine
+      ones; and I gathered butternuts enough for you near home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Everything is for me," said Fleda. "Well, the first thing I do shall be
+      to make some butternut candy for you. You won't despise that, Mr. Hugh?"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh smiled at her, and went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And your friend Mr. Olmney has sent us a corn-basket full of the
+      superbest apples you ever saw. He has one tree of the finest in Queechy,
+      he says."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>My</i> friend!" said Fleda, colouring a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well I don't know whose he is if he isn't yours," said Hugh. "And even
+      the Finns sent us some fish that their brother had caught, because, they
+      said, they had more than they wanted. And Dr. Quackenboss sent us a goose
+      and a turkey. We didn't like to keep them, but we were afraid if we sent
+      them back it would not be understood."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Send them back!" said Fleda. "That would never do! All Queechy would have
+      rung with it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, we didn't," said Hugh. "But so we sent one of them to Barby's old
+      mother for Christmas."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Poor Dr. Quackenboss!" said Fleda. "That man has as near as possible
+      killed me two or three times. As for the others, they are certainly the
+      oddest of all the finny tribes. I must go out and see Barby for a minute."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a good many minutes, however, before she could get free to do any
+      such thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You ha'n't lost no flesh," said Barby shaking hands with her anew. "What
+      did they think of Queechy keep, down in York?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know--I didn't ask them," said Fleda. "How goes the world with
+      you, Barby?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm mighty glad you are come home, Fleda," said Barby lowering her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why?" said Fleda in a like tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I guess I ain't all that's glad of it," Miss Elster went on, with a
+      glance of her bright eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I guess not," said Fleda reddening a little;--"but what is the matter?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's two of our friends ha'n't made us but one visit a piece
+      since--oh, ever since some time in October!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well never mind the people," said Fleda. "Tell me what you were going to
+      say."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And Mr. Olmney," said Barby not minding her, "he's took and sent us a
+      great basket chock full of apples. Now wa'n't that smart of him, when he
+      knowed there wa'n't no one here that cared about 'em?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They are a particularly fine kind," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you hear about the goose and turkey?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," said Fleda laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The doctor thinks he has done the thing just about right this time, I
+      s'pect. He had ought to take out a patent right for his invention. He'd
+      feel spry if he knowed who eat one on 'em."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never mind the doctor, Barby. Was this what you wanted to see me for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Barby changing her tone. "I'd give something it was. I've been
+      all but at my wit's end; for you know Mis' Rossitur ain't no hand about
+      anything--I couldn't say a word to her--and ever since he went away we
+      have been just winding ourselves up. I thought I should clear out, when
+      Mis' Rossitur said maybe you wa'n't a coming till next week."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what is it Barby? what is wrong?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There ha'n't been anything right, to my notions, for a long spell," said
+      Barby, wringing out her dishcloth hard and flinging it down to give
+      herself uninterruptedly to talk;--"but now you see, Didenhover nor none of
+      the men never comes near the house to do a chore; and there ain't wood to
+      last three days; and Hugh ain't fit to cut it if it was piled up in the
+      yard; and there ain't the first stick of it out of the woods yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda sat down and looked very thoughtfully into the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He had ought to ha' seen to it afore he went away, but he ha'n't done it,
+      and there it is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why who takes care of the cows?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O never mind the cows," said Barby;--"they ain't suffering; I wish we was
+      as well off as they be;--but I guess when he went away he made a hole in
+      our pockets for to mend his'n. I don't say he hadn't ought to ha' done it,
+      but we've been pretty short ever sen, Fleda--we're in the last bushel of
+      flour, and there ain't but a handful of corn meal, and mighty little
+      sugar, white or brown.--I did say something to Mis' Rossitur, but all the
+      good it did was to spile her appetite, I s'pose; and if there's grain in
+      the floor there ain't nobody to carry it to mill,--nor to thresh it,--nor
+      a team to draw it, fur's I know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hugh cannot cut wood!" said Fleda;--"nor drive to mill either, in this
+      weather."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I could go to mill," said Barby, "now you're to hum, but that's only the
+      beginning; and it's no use to try to do everything--flesh and blood must
+      stop somewhere.--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No indeed!" said Fleda. "We must have somebody immediately."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's what I had fixed upon," said Barby. "If you could get hold o' some
+      young feller that wa'n't sot up with an idee that he was a grown man and
+      too big to be told, I'd just clap to and fix that little room up stairs
+      for him and give him his victuals here, and we'd have some good of him;
+      instead o' having him streakin' off just at the minute when he'd ought to
+      be along."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who is there we could get, Barby?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Barby; "but they say there is never a nick that there
+      ain't a jog some place; so I guess it can be made out. I asked Mis'
+      Plumfield, but she didn't know anybody that was out of work; nor Seth
+      Plumfield. I'll tell you who does,--that is, if there <i>is</i>
+      anybody,--Mis' Douglass. She keeps hold of one end of 'most everybody's
+      affairs, I tell her. Anyhow she's a good hand to go to."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll go there at once," said Fleda. "Do you know anything about making
+      maple sugar, Barby?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's the very thing!" exclaimed Barby ecstatically. "There's lots o'
+      sugar maples on the farm and it's murder to let them go to loss; and they
+      ha'n't done us a speck o' good ever since I come here. And in your
+      grandfather's time they used to make barrels and barrels. You and me and
+      Hugh, and somebody else we'll have, we could clap to and make as much
+      sugar and molasses in a week as would last us till spring come round
+      again. There's no sense into it! All we'd want would be to borrow a team
+      some place. I had all that in my head long ago. If we could see the last
+      of that man Didenhover oncet, I'd take hold of the plough myself and see
+      if I couldn't make a living out of it! I don't believe the world would go
+      now, Fleda, if it wa'n't for women. I never see three men yet that didn't
+      try me more than they were worth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Patience, Barby!" said Fleda smiling. "Let us take things quietly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well I declare I'm beat, to see how you take 'em," said Barby, looking at
+      her lovingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you know why, Barby?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I s'pose I do," said Barby her face softening still more,--"or I can
+      guess."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because I know that all these troublesome things will be managed in the
+      best way and by my best friend, and I know that he will let none of them
+      hurt me. I am sure of it--isn't that enough to keep me quiet?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's eyes were filling and Barby looked away from them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well it beats me," she said taking up her dishcloth again, "why <i>you</i>
+      should have anything to trouble you. I can understand wicked folks being
+      plagued, but I can't see the sense of the good ones."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Troubles are to make good people better, Barby."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well," said Barby with a very odd mixture of real feeling and seeming
+      want of it,--"it's a wonder I never got religion, for I will say that all
+      the decent people I ever see were of that kind!--Mis' Rossitur ain't
+      though, is she?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda, a pang crossing her at the thought that all her aunt's
+      loveliness must tell directly and heavily in this case to lighten
+      religion's testimony. It was that thought and no other which saddened her
+      brow as she went back into the other room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Troubles already!" said Mrs. Rossitur. "You will be sorry you have come
+      back to them, dear."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No indeed!" said Fleda brightly; "I am very glad I have come home. We
+      will try and manage the troubles, aunt Lucy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no doing anything that day, but the very next afternoon Fleda
+      and Hugh walked down through the snow to Mrs. Douglass's. It was a long
+      walk and a cold one and the snow was heavy; but the pleasure of being
+      together made up for it all. It was a bright walk, too, in spite of
+      everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a most thrifty-looking well-painted farm-house lived Mrs. Douglass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why 'tain't you, is it?" she said when she opened the door,--"Catharine
+      said it was, and I said I guessed it wa'n't, for I reckoned you had made
+      up your mind not to come and see me at all.--How do you do?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last sentence in the tone of hearty and earnest hospitality. Fleda
+      made her excuses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, ay,--I can understand all that just as well as if you said it. I know
+      how much it means too. Take off your hat."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda said she could not stay, and explained her business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So you ha'n't come to see me after all. Well now take off your hat,
+      'cause I won't have anything to say to you till you do. I'll give you
+      supper right away."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I have left my aunt alone, Mrs. Douglass;--and the afternoons are so
+      short now it would be dark before we could get home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Serve her right for not coming along! and you sha'n't walk home in the
+      dark, for Earl will harness the team and carry you home like a streak--the
+      horses have nothing to do--Come, you sha'n't go."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as Mrs. Douglass laid violent hands on her bonnet Fleda thought best
+      to submit. She was presently rewarded with the promise of the very person
+      she wanted--a boy, or young man, then in Earl Douglass's employ; but his
+      wife said "she guessed he'd give him up to her;" and what his wife said,
+      Fleda knew, Earl Douglass was in the habit of making good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There ain't enough to do to keep him busy," said Mrs. Douglass. "I told
+      Earl he made me more work than he saved; but he's hung on till now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What sort of a boy is he, Mrs. Douglass?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He ain't a steel trap. I tell you beforehand," said the lady, with one of
+      her sharp intelligent glances,--"he don't know which way to go till you
+      shew him; but he's a clever enough kind of a chap--he don't mean no harm.
+      I guess he'll do for what you want."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is he to be trusted?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Trust him with anything but a knife and fork," said she, with another
+      look and shake of the head. "He has no idea but what everything on the
+      supper-table is meant to be eaten straight off. I would keep two such men
+      as my husband as soon as I would Philetus."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Philetus!" said Fleda,--"the person that brought the chicken and thought
+      he had brought two?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You've hit it," said Mrs. Douglass. "Now you know him. How do you like
+      our new minister?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We are all very much pleased with him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's very good-looking, don't you think so?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A very pleasant face."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ha'n't seen him much yet except in church; but those that know say he
+      is very agreeable in the house."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Truly, I dare say," answered Fleda, for Mrs. Douglass's face looked for
+      her testimony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I think he looks as if he was beating his brains out there among his
+      books--I tell him he is getting the blues, living in that big house by
+      himself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you manage to do all your work without help, Mrs. Douglass?" said
+      Fleda, knowing that the question was "in order" and that the affirmative
+      answer was not counted a thing to be ashamed of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well I guess I'll know good reason," said Mrs. Douglass complacently,
+      "before I'll have any help to spoil <i>my</i> work. Come along, and I'll
+      let you see whether I want one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda went, very willingly, to be shewn all Mrs. Douglass's household
+      arrangements and clever contrivances, of her own or her husband's
+      devising, for lessening or facilitating labour. The lady was proud, and
+      had some reason to be, of the very superb order and neatness of each part
+      and detail. No corner or closet that might not be laid open fearlessly to
+      a visitor's inspection. Miss Catharine was then directed to open her piano
+      and amuse Fleda with it while her mother performed her promise of getting
+      an early supper; a command grateful to one or two of the party, for
+      Catharine had been carrying on all this while a most stately t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te
+      with Hugh which neither had any wish to prolong. So Fleda filled up the
+      time good-naturedly with thrumming over the two or three bits of her
+      childish music that she could recall, till Mr. Douglass came in and they
+      were summoned to sit down to supper; which Mrs. Douglass introduced by
+      telling her guests "they must take what they could get, for she had made
+      fresh bread and cake and pies for them two or three times, and she wa'n't
+      a going to do it again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her table was abundantly spread however, and with most exquisite neatness,
+      and everything was of excellent quality, saving only certain matters which
+      call for a free hand in the use of material. Fleda thought the pumpkin
+      pies must have been made from that vaunted stock which is said to want no
+      eggs nor sugar, and the cakes she told Mrs. Rossitur afterwards would have
+      been good if half the flour had been left out and the other ingredients
+      doubled. The deficiency in one kind however was made up by superabundance
+      in another; the table was stocked with such wealth of crockery that one
+      could not imagine any poverty in what was to go upon it. Fleda hardly knew
+      how to marshal the confusion of plates which grouped themselves around her
+      cup and saucer, and none of them might be dispensed with. There was one
+      set of little glass dishes for one kind of sweetmeat, another set of ditto
+      for another kind; an army of tiny plates to receive and shield the
+      tablecloth from the dislodged cups of tea, saucers being the conventional
+      drinking vessels; and there were the standard bread and butter plates,
+      which besides their proper charge of bread and butter and beef and cheese,
+      were expected, Fleda knew, to receive a portion of every kind of cake that
+      might happen to be on the table. It was a very different thing however
+      from Miss Anastasia's tea-table or that of Miss Flora Quackenboss. Fleda
+      enjoyed the whole time without difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Douglass readily agreed to the transfer of Philetus's services.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's a good boy!" said Earl,--"he's a good boy; he's as good a kind of a
+      boy as you need to have. He wants tellin'; most boys want tellin'; but
+      he'll do when he <i>is</i> told, and he means to do right."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How long do you expect your uncle will be gone?" said Mrs. Douglass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not know," said Fleda. "Have you heard from him since he left?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not since I came home," said Fleda. "Mr. Douglass, what is the first
+      thing to be done about the maple trees in the sugar season?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, you calculate to try makin' sugar in the spring?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps--at any rate I should like to know about it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well I should think you would," said Earl, "and it's easy done--there
+      ain't nothin' easier, when you know the right way to set to work about it;
+      and there's a fine lot of sugar trees on the old farm--I recollect of them
+      sugar trees as long ago as when I was a boy--I've helped to work them
+      afore now, but there's a good many years since--has made me a leetle
+      older--but the first thing you want is a man and a team, to go about and
+      empty the buckets--the buckets must be emptied every day, and then carry
+      it down to the house."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, I know," said Fleda, "but what is the first thing to be done to the
+      trees?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why la! 'tain't much to do to the trees--all you've got to do is to take
+      an axe and chip a bit out and stick a chip a leetle way into the cut for
+      to dreen the sap, and set a trough under, and then go on to the next one,
+      and so on;--you may make one or two cuts in the south side of the tree,
+      and one or two cuts in the north side, if the tree's big enough, and if it
+      ain't, only make one or two cuts in the south side of the tree; and for
+      the sap to run good it had ought to be that kind o' weather when it
+      freezes in the day and thaws by night;--I would say!--when it friz in the
+      night and thaws in the day; the sap runs more bountifully in that kind o'
+      weather."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It needed little from Fleda to keep Mr. Douglass at the maple trees till
+      supper was ended; and then as it was already sundown he went to harness
+      the sleigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a comfortable one, and the horses if not very handsome nor
+      bright-curried were well fed and had good heart to their work. A two mile
+      drive was before them, and with no troublesome tongues or eyes to claim
+      her attention Fleda enjoyed it fully. In the soft clear winter twilight
+      when heaven and earth mingle so gently, and the stars look forth brighter
+      and cheerfuller than ever at another time, they slid along over the fine
+      roads, too swiftly, towards home; and Fleda's thoughts as easily and
+      swiftly slipped away from Mr. Douglass and maple sugar and Philetus and an
+      unfilled wood-yard and an empty flour-barrel, and revelled in the pure
+      ether. A dark rising ground covered with wood sometimes rose between her
+      and the western horizon; and then a long stretch of snow, only less pure,
+      would leave free view of its unearthly white light, dimmed by no
+      exhalation, a gentle, mute, but not the less eloquent, witness to Earth of
+      what Heaven must be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the sleigh stopped at the gate, and Fleda's musings came home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good night!" said Earl, in reply to their thanks and adieus;--"'tain't
+      anything to thank a body for--let me know when you're a goin' into the
+      sugar making and I'll come and help you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How sweet a pleasant message may make an unmusical tongue," said Fleda,
+      as she and Hugh made their way up to the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We had a stupid enough afternoon," said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But the ride home was worth it all!"
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="26"></a>Chapter XXVI.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        'Tis merry, 'tis merry, in good green wood,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;So blithe
+        Lady Alice is singing;<br /> On the beech's pride, and the oak's brown
+        side,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;Lord Richard's axe is ringing.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Lady of the Lake.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Philetus came, and was inducted into office and the little room
+      immediately; and Fleda felt herself eased of a burden. Barby reported him
+      stout and willing, and he proved it by what seemed a perverted inclination
+      for bearing the most enormous logs of wood he could find into the kitchen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He will hurt himself!" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll protect him!--against anything but buckwheat batter," said Barby
+      with a grave shake of her head. "Lazy folks takes the most pains, I tell
+      him. But it would be good to have some more ground, Fleda, for Philetus
+      says he don't care for no dinner when he has griddles to breakfast, and
+      there ain't anything much cheaper than that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Aunt Lucy, have you any change in the house?" said Fleda that same day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There isn't but three and sixpence," said Mrs. Rossitur with a pained
+      conscious look. "What is wanting, dear?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Only candles--Barby has suddenly found we are out, and she won't have any
+      more made before to-morrow. Never mind!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is only that," repeated Mrs. Rossitur. "Hugh has a little money due
+      to him from last summer, but he hasn't been able to get it yet. You may
+      take that, dear."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda,--"we mustn't. We might want it more."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We can sit in the dark for once," said Hugh, "and try to make an uncommon
+      display of what Dr. Quackenboss calls 'sociality.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda, who had stood busily thinking,--"I am going to send
+      Philetus down to the post-office for the paper, and when it comes I am not
+      to be balked of reading it--I've made up my mind! We'll go right off into
+      the woods and get some pine knots, Hugh--come! They make a lovely light.
+      You get us a couple of baskets and the hatchet--I wish we had two--and
+      I'll be ready in no time. That'll do!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is to be noticed that Charlton had provided against any future
+      deficiency of news in his family. Fleda skipped away and in five minutes
+      returned arrayed for the expedition, in her usual out-of-door working
+      trim, namely,--an old dark merino cloak, almost black, the effect of which
+      was continued by the edge of an old dark mousseline below, and rendered
+      decidedly striking by the contrast of a large whitish yarn shawl worn over
+      it; the whole crowned with a little close-fitting hood made of some old
+      silver-grey silk, shaped tight to the head, without any bow or furbelow to
+      break the outline. But such a face within side of it! She came almost
+      dancing into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is Miss Ringgan!--as she appeared when she was going to see the pine
+      trees. Hugh, don't you wish you had a picture of me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have got a tolerable picture of you, somewhere," said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is somebody very different from the Miss Ringgan that went to see
+      Mrs. Evelyn, I can tell you," Fleda went on gayly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know, aunt Lucy, I have made up my mind that my visit to New York
+      was a dream, and the dream is nicely folded away with my silk dresses. Now
+      I must go tell that precious Philetus about the post-office--I am <i>so</i>
+      comforted, aunt Lucy, whenever I see that fellow staggering into the house
+      under a great log of wood! I have not heard anything in a long time so
+      pleasant as the ringing strokes of his axe in the yard. Isn't life made up
+      of little things!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why don't you put a better pair of shoes on?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Can't afford it, Mrs. Rossitur! You are extravagant!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Go and put on my India-rubbers."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No ma'am!--the rocks would cut them to pieces. I have brought my mind
+      down to--my shoes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It isn't safe, Fleda; you might see somebody."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well ma'am!--But I tell you I am not going to see anybody but the
+      chick-a-dees and the snow-birds, and there is great simplicity of manners
+      prevailing among them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shoes were changed, and Hugh and Fleda set forth, lingering awhile
+      however to give a new edge to their hatchet, Fleda turning the grindstone.
+      They mounted then the apple-orchard hill and went a little distance along
+      the edge of the table-land before striking off into the woods. They had
+      stood still a minute to look over the little white valley to the
+      snow-dressed woodland beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is better than New York, Hugh," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very glad to hear you say that," said another voice. Fleda turned
+      and started a little to see Mr. Olmney at her side, and congratulated
+      herself instantly on her shoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mrs. Rossitur told me where you had gone and gave me permission to follow
+      you, but I hardly hoped to overtake you so soon."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We stopped to sharpen our tools," said Fleda. "We are out on a foraging
+      expedition."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you let me help you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly!--if you understand the business. Do you know a pine knot when
+      you see it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed and shook his head, but avowed a wish to learn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, it would be a charity to teach you anything wholesome," said Fleda,
+      "for I heard one of Mr. Olmney's friends lately saying that he looked like
+      a person who was in danger of committing suicide."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Suicide!--One of my friends!"--he exclaimed in the utmost astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," said Fleda laughing;--"and there is nothing like the open air for
+      clearing away vapours."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You cannot have known that by experience," said he looking at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda shook her head and advising him to take nothing for granted, set off
+      into the woods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were in a beautiful state. A light snow but an inch or two deep had
+      fallen the night before; the air had been perfectly still during the day;
+      and though the sun was out, bright and mild, it had done little but
+      glitter on the earth's white capping. The light dry flakes of snow had not
+      stirred from their first resting-place. The long branches of the large
+      pines were just tipped with snow at the ends; on the smaller evergreens
+      every leaf and tuft had its separate crest. Stones and rocks were smoothly
+      rounded over, little shrubs and sprays that lay along the ground were all
+      doubled in white; and the hemlock branches, bending with their feathery
+      burthen, stooped to the foreheads of the party and gave them the freshest
+      of salutations as they brushed by. The whole wood-scene was particularly
+      fair and graceful. A light veil of purity, no more, thrown over the
+      wilderness of stones and stumps and bare ground,--like the blessing of
+      charity, covering all roughnesses and unsightlinesses--like the innocent
+      unsullied nature that places its light shield between the eye and whatever
+      is unequal, unkindly, and unlovely in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you think of this for a misanthropical man, Mr. Olmney? there's a
+      better tonic to be found in the woods than in any remedies of man's
+      devising."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Better than books?" said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly!--No comparison."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have to learn that yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So I suppose," said Fleda. "The very danger to be apprehended, as I hear,
+      sir, is from your running a tilt into some of those thick folios of yours,
+      head foremost.--There's no pitch there, Hugh--you may leave it alone. We
+      must go on--there are more yellow pines higher up."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But who could give such a strange character of me to you?" said Mr.
+      Olmney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure your wisdom would not advise me to tell you that, sir. You will
+      find nothing there, Mr. Olmney."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They went gayly on, careering about in all directions and bearing down
+      upon every promising stump or dead pine tree they saw in the distance.
+      Hugh and Mr. Olmney took turns in the labour of hewing out the fat pine
+      knots and splitting down the old stumps to get at the pitchy heart of the
+      wood; and the baskets began to grow heavy. The whole party were in
+      excellent spirits, and as happy as the birds that filled the woods and
+      whose cheery "chick-a-dee-dee-dee," was heard whenever they paused to rest
+      and let the hatchet be still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How one sees everything in the colour of one's own spectacles," said
+      Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "May I ask what colour yours are to-day?" said Mr. Olmney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Rose, I think," said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda, "they are better than that--they are no worse colour
+      than the snow's own--they shew me everything just as it is. It could not
+      be lovelier."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then we may conclude, may we not," said Mr. Olmney, "that you are not
+      sorry to find yourself in Queechy again?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not sorry to find myself in the woods again. That is not pitch, Mr.
+      Olmney."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It has the same colour,--and weight."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, it is only wet--see this and smell of it--do you see the difference?
+      Isn't it pleasant?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Everything is pleasant to-day," said he smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shall report you a cure. Come, I want to go a little higher and shew
+      you a view. Leave that, Hugh, we have got enough--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Hugh chose to finish an obstinate stump, and his companions went on
+      without him. It was not very far up the mountain and they came to a fine
+      look-out point; the same where Fleda and Mr. Carleton had paused long
+      before on their quest after nuts. The wide spread of country was a white
+      waste now; the delicate beauties of the snow were lost in the far view;
+      and the distant Catskill shewed wintrily against the fair blue sky. The
+      air was gentle enough to invite them to stand still, after the exercise
+      they had taken, and as they both looked in silence Mr. Olmney observed
+      that his companion's face settled into a gravity rather at variance with
+      the expression it had worn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should hardly think," said he softly, "that you were looking through
+      white spectacles, if you had not told us so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O--a shade may come over what one is looking at you know," said Fleda.
+      But seeing that he still watched her inquiringly she added,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not think a very wide landscape is ever gay in its effect upon the
+      mind--do you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps--I do not know," said he, his eyes turning to it again as if to
+      try what the effect was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My thoughts had gone back," said Fleda, "to a time a good while ago, when
+      I was a child and stood here in summer weather--and I was thinking that
+      the change in the landscape is something like that which years make in the
+      mind."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you have not, for a long time at least, known any very acute sorrow?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--" said Fleda, "but that is not necessary. There is a gentle kind of
+      discipline which does its work I think more surely."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thank God for <i>gentle</i> discipline!" said Mr. Olmney; "if you do not
+      know what those griefs are that break down mind and body together."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not unthankful, I hope, for anything," said Fleda gently; "but I
+      have been apt to think that after a crushing sorrow the mind may rise up
+      again, but that a long-continued though much lesser pressure in time
+      breaks the spring."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her again with a mixture of incredulous and tender interest,
+      but her face did not belie her words, strange as they sounded from so
+      young and in general so bright-seeming a creature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'There shall no evil happen to the just,'" he said presently and with
+      great sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda flashed a look of gratitude at him--it was no more, for she felt her
+      eyes watering and turned them away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have not, I trust, heard any bad news?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir--not at all!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I beg pardon for asking, but Mrs. Rossitur seemed to be in less good
+      spirits than usual."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had some reason to say so, having found her in a violent fit of
+      weeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You do not need to be told," he went on, "of the need there is that a
+      cloud should now and then come over this lower scene--the danger that if
+      it did not our eyes would look nowhere else?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is something very touching in hearing a kind voice say what one has
+      often struggled to say to oneself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know it, sir," said Fleda, her words a little choked,--"and one may not
+      wish the cloud away,--but it does not the less cast a shade upon the face.
+      I guess Hugh has worked his way into the middle of that stump by this
+      time, Mr. Olmney."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They rejoined him; and the baskets being now sufficiently heavy and arms
+      pretty well tired they left the further riches of the pine woods
+      unexplored and walked sagely homewards. At the brow of the table-land Mr.
+      Olmney left them to take a shorter cut to the high-road, having a visit to
+      make which the shortening day warned him not to defer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Put down your basket and rest a minute, Hugh," said Fleda. "I had a world
+      of things to talk to you about, and this blessed man has driven them all
+      out of my head."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you are not sorry he came along with us?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O no. We had a very good time. How lovely it is, Hugh! Look at the snow
+      down there--without a track; and the woods have been dressed by the
+      fairies. O look how the sun is glinting on the west side of that hillock!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus16.jpg"><img src="images/illus16.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="'How lovely it is, Hugh!'" title="'How lovely it is, Hugh!'" /><br />
+      "How lovely it is, Hugh!"</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is twice as bright since you have come home," said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The snow is too beautiful to-day. O I was right! one may grow morbid over
+      books--but I defy anybody in the company of those chick-a-dees. I should
+      think it would be hard to keep quite sound in the city."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are glad to be here again, aren't you?" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very! O Hugh!--it is better to be poor and have one's feet on these
+      hills, than to be rich and shut up to brick walls!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is best as it is," said Hugh quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Once," Fleda went on,--"one fair day when I was out driving in New York,
+      it did come over me with a kind of pang how pleasant it would be to have
+      plenty of money again and be at ease; and then, as I was looking off over
+      that pretty North river to the other shore, I bethought me, 'A little that
+      a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh did not answer, for the face she turned to him in its half tearful,
+      half bright submission took away his speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why you cannot have enjoyed yourself as much as we thought, Fleda, if you
+      dislike the city so much?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes I did. O I enjoyed a great many things. I enjoyed being with the
+      Evelyns. You don't know how much they made of me,--every one of
+      them,--father and mother and all the three daughters--and uncle Orrin. I
+      have been well petted, I can tell you, since I have been gone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am glad they shewed so much discrimination," said Hugh; "they would be
+      puzzled to make too much of you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I must have been in a remarkably discriminating society," said Fleda,
+      "for everybody was very kind!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you like the Evelyns on a nearer view?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very much indeed; and I believe they really love me. Nothing could
+      possibly be kinder, in all ways of shewing kindness. I shall never forget
+      it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who were you driving with that day?" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Thorn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you see much of him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Quite as much as I wished. Hugh--I took your advice."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "About what?" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I carried down some of my scribblings and sent them to a Magazine."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you!" said Hugh looking delighted. "And will they publish them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Fleda, "that's another matter. I sent them, or uncle
+      Orrin did, when I first went down; and I have heard nothing of them yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You shewed them to uncle Orrin?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Couldn't help it, you know. I had to."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what did he say to them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come!--I'm not going to be cross-questioned," said Fleda laughing. "He
+      did not prevent my sending them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And if they take them, do you expect they will give anything for
+      them?--the Magazine people?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure if they don't they shall have no more--that is my only possible
+      inducement to let them be printed. For my own pleasure, I would far rather
+      not."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you sign with your own name?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My own name!--Yes, and desired it to be printed in large capitals. What
+      are you thinking of? No--I hope you'll forgive me, but I signed myself
+      what our friend the doctor calls 'Yugh.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll forgive you if you'll do one thing for me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Shew me all you have in your portfolio--Do, Fleda--to-night, by the light
+      of the pitch-pine knots. Why shouldn't you give me that pleasure? And
+      besides, you know Moli&egrave;re had an old woman?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well," said Fleda with a face that to Hugh was extremely
+      satisfactory,--"we'll see--I suppose you might as well read my productions
+      in manuscript as in print. But they are in a terribly scratchy
+      condition--they go sometimes for weeks in my head before I find time to
+      put them down--you may guess polishing is pretty well out of the question.
+      Suppose we try to get home with these baskets."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Which they did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Has Philetus got home?" was Fleda's first question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Mrs. Rossitur, "but Dr. Quackenboss has been here and brought
+      the paper--he was at the post-office this morning, he says. Did you see
+      Mr. Olmney?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes ma'am, and I feel he has saved me from a lame arm--those pine knots
+      are so heavy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is a lovely young man!" said Mrs. Rossitur with uncommon emphasis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should have been blind to the fact, aunt Lucy, if you had not made me
+      change my shoes. At present, no disparagement to him, I feel as if a cup
+      of tea would be rather more lovely than anything else."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He sat with me some time," said Mrs. Rossitur; "I was afraid he would not
+      overtake you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tea was ready, and only waiting for Mrs. Rossitur to come down stairs,
+      when Fleda, whose eye was carelessly running along the columns of the
+      paper, uttered a sudden shout and covered her face with it. Hugh looked up
+      in astonishment, but Fleda was beyond anything but exclamations, laughing
+      and flushing to the very roots of her hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What <i>is</i> the matter, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why," said Fleda,--"how comical!--I was just looking over the list of
+      articles in the January number of the 'Excelsior'"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The 'Excelsior'?" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--the Magazine I sent my things to--I was running over their
+      advertisement here, where they give a special puff of the publication in
+      general and of several things in particular, and I saw--here they speak of
+      'A tale of thrilling interest by Mrs. Eliza Lothbury, unsurpassed,' and so
+      forth and so forth; 'another valuable communication from Mr. Charleston,
+      whose first acute and discriminating paper all our readers will remember;
+      the beginning of a new tale from the infallibly graceful pen of Miss Delia
+      Lawriston, we are sure it will be so and so; '"<i>The wind's voices," by
+      our new correspondent "Hugh," has a delicate sweetness that would do no
+      discredit to some of our most honoured names!</i>'--What do you think of
+      that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What Hugh thought he did not say, but he looked delighted; and came to
+      read the grateful words for himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I did not know but they had declined it utterly," said Fleda,--"it was so
+      long since I had sent it and they had taken no notice of it; but it seems
+      they kept it for the beginning of a new volume."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Would do no discredit to some of our most honoured names'!" said Hugh.
+      "Dear Fleda, I am very glad! But it is no more than I expected."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Expected!" said Fleda. "When you had not seen a line! Hush--My dear Hugh,
+      aren't you hungry?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tea, with this spice to their appetites, was wonderfully relished; and
+      Hugh and Fleda kept making despatches of secret pleasure and sympathy to
+      each other's eyes; though Fleda's face after the first flush had faded was
+      perhaps rather quieter than usual. Hugh's was illuminated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Skillcorn is a smart man!" said Barby coming in with a package,--"he
+      has made out to go two miles in two hours and get back again safe!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "More from the post-office!" exclaimed Fleda pouncing upon it,--"oh yes,
+      there has been another mail. A letter for you, aunt Lucy! from uncle
+      Rolf!--We'll forgive him, Barby--And here's a letter for me, from uncle
+      Orrin, and--yes--the 'Excelsior.' Hugh, uncle Orrin said he would send it.
+      Now for those blessed pine knots! Aunt Lucy, you shall be honoured with
+      the one whole candle the house contains."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The table soon cleared away, the basket of fat fuel was brought in; and
+      one or two splinters being delicately insinuated between the sticks on the
+      fire a very brilliant illumination sprang out. Fleda sent a congratulatory
+      look over to Hugh on the other side of the fireplace as she cosily
+      established herself on her little bench at one corner with her letter; he
+      had the Magazine. Mrs. Rossitur between them at the table with her one
+      candle was already insensible to all outward things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And soon the other two were as delightfully absorbed. The bright light of
+      the fire shone upon three motionless and rapt figures, and getting no
+      greeting from them went off and danced on the old cupboard doors and paper
+      hangings, in a kindly hearty joviality that would have put any number of
+      stately wax candles out of countenance. There was no poverty in the room
+      that night. But the people were too busy to know how cosy they were; till
+      Fleda was ready to look up from her note and Hugh had gone twice carefully
+      over the new poem,--when there was a sudden giving out of the pine
+      splinters. New ones were supplied in eager haste and silence, and Hugh was
+      beginning "The wind's voices" for the third time when a soft-whispered
+      "Hugh!" across the fire made him look over to Fleda's corner. She was
+      holding up with both hands a five-dollar bank note and just shewing him
+      her eyes over it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's that?" said Hugh in an energetic whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know!" said Fleda, shaking her head comically;--"I am told 'The
+      wind's voices' have blown it here, but privately I am afraid it is a
+      windfall of another kind."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What?" said Hugh laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Uncle Orrin says it is the first fruits of what I sent to the
+      'Excelsior,' and that more will come; but I do not feel at all sure that
+      it is entirely the growth of that soil."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dare say it is," said Hugh; "I am sure it is worth more than that. Dear
+      Fleda, I like it so much!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda gave him such a smile of grateful affection!--not at all as if she
+      deserved his praise but as if it was very pleasant to have.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What put it into your head? anything in particular?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--nothing--I was looking out of the window one day and seeing the
+      willow tree blow; and that looked over my shoulder; as you know Hans
+      Andersen says his stories did."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is just like you!--exactly as it can be."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Things put themselves in my head," said Fleda, tucking another splinter
+      into the fire. "Isn't this better than a chandelier?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ten times!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And so much pleasanter for having got it ourselves. What a nice time we
+      had, Hugh?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very. Now for the portfolio, Fleda--come!--mother is fast; she won't see
+      or hear anything. What does father say, mother?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In answer to this they had the letter read, which indeed contained nothing
+      remarkable beyond its strong expressions of affection to each one of the
+      little family; a cordial which Mrs. Rossitur drank and grew strong upon in
+      the very act of reading. It is pity the medicine of kind words is not more
+      used in the world--it has so much power. Then, having folded up her
+      treasure and talked a little while about it, Mrs. Rossitur caught up the
+      Magazine like a person who had been famished in that kind; and soon she
+      and it and her tallow candle formed a trio apart from all the world again.
+      Fleda and Hugh were safe to pass most mysterious-looking little papers
+      from hand to hand right before her, though they had the care to read them
+      behind newspapers, and exchanges of thought and feeling went on more
+      swiftly still, and softly, across the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Looks, and smiles, and whispers, and tears too, under cover of a Tribune
+      and an Express. And the blaze would die down just when Hugh had got to the
+      last verse of something, and then while impatiently waiting for the new
+      pine splinters to catch he would tell Fleda how much he liked it, or how
+      beautiful he thought it, and whisper enquiries and critical questions;
+      till the fire reached the fat vein and leaped up in defiant emulation of
+      gas-lights unknown, and then he would fall to again with renewed gusto.
+      And Fleda hunted out in her portfolio what bits to give him first, and
+      bade him as she gave them remember this and understand that, which was
+      necessary to be borne in mind in the reading. And through all the
+      brightening and fading blaze, and all the whispering, congratulating,
+      explaining, and rejoicing going on at her side, Mrs. Rossitur and her
+      tallow candle were devoted to each other, happily and engrossingly. At
+      last, however, she flung the Magazine from her and turning from the table
+      sat looking into the fire with a rather uncommonly careful and unsatisfied
+      brow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What did you think of the second piece of poetry there, mother?" said
+      Hugh;--"that ballad?--'The wind's voices' it is called."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'The wind's voices'?--I don't know--I didn't read it, I believe."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why mother! I liked it very much. Do read it--read it aloud."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur took up the Magazine again abstractedly, and read--
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "'Mamma, what makes your face so sad?<br /> The sound of the wind makes
+        me feel glad;<br /> But whenever it blows, as grave you look,<br /> As if
+        you were reading a sorrowful book.'
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "'A sorrowful book I am reading, dear,--<br /> A book of weeping and pain
+        and fear,--<br /> A book deep printed on my heart,<br /> Which I cannot
+        read but the tears will start.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "'That breeze to my ear was soft and mild,<br /> Just so, when I was a
+        little child;<br /> But now I hear in its freshening breath<br /> The
+        voices of those that sleep in death.'
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "'Mamma,' said the child with shaded brow,<br /> 'What is this book you
+        are reading now?<br /> And why do you read what makes you cry?'<br /> 'My
+        child, it comes up before my eye.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "'Tis the memory, love, of a far-off day<br /> When my life's best friend
+        was taken away;--<br /> Of the weeks and months that my eyes were dim<br />
+        Watching for tidings--watching for him.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "'Many a year has come and past<br /> Since a ship sailed over the ocean
+        fast,<br /> Bound for a port on England's shore,--<br /> She sailed--but
+        was never heard of more.'
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "'Mamma'--and she closer pressed her side,--<br /> 'Was that the time
+        when my father died?--<br /> Is it his ship you think you see?--<br />
+        Dearest mamma--won't you speak to me?'
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "The lady paused, but then calmly said,<br /> 'Yes, Lucy--the sea was his
+        dying bed,<br /> And now whenever I hear the blast<br /> I think again of
+        that storm long past.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "'The winds' fierce bowlings hurt not me,<br /> But I think how they beat
+        on the pathless sea,--<br /> Of the breaking mast--of the parting rope,--<br />
+        Of the anxious strife and the failing hope.'
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "'Mamma,' said the child with streaming eyes,<br /> 'My father has gone
+        above the skies;<br /> And you tell me this world is mean and base<br />
+        Compared with heaven--that blessed place.'
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "'My daughter, I know--I believe it all,--<br /> I would not his spirit
+        to earth recall.<br /> The blest one he--his storm was brief,--<br />
+        Mine, a long tempest of tears and grief.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "'I have you, my darling--I should not sigh.<br /> I have one star more
+        in my cloudy sky,--<br /> The hope that we both shall join him there,<br />
+        In that perfect rest from weeping and care.'"
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      "Well, mother,--how do you like it?" said Hugh whose eyes gave tender
+      witness to <i>his</i> liking for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is pretty--" said Mrs. Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh exclaimed, and Fleda laughing took it out of her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why mother!" said Hugh,--"it is Fleda's."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda's!" exclaimed Mrs. Rossitur, snatching the Magazine again. "My dear
+      child, I was not thinking in the least of what I was reading. Fleda's!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She read it over anew, with swimming eyes this time, and then clasped
+      Fleda in her arms and gave her, not words, but the better reward of kisses
+      and tears. They remained so a long time, even till Hugh left them; and
+      then Fleda released from her aunt's embrace still crouched by her side
+      with one arm in her lap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They both sat thoughtfully looking into the fire till it had burnt itself
+      out and nothing but a glowing bed of coals remained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is an excellent young man!" said Mrs. Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Olmney. He sat with me some time after you had gone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So you said before," said Fleda, wondering at the troubled expression of
+      her aunt's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He made me wish," said Mrs. Rossitur hesitating,--"that I could be
+      something different from what I am--I believe I should be a great deal
+      happier"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last word was hardly spoken. Fleda rose to her knees and putting both
+      arms about her aunt pressed face to face, with a clinging sympathy that
+      told how very near her spirit was; while tears from the eyes of both fell
+      without measure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear aunt Lucy--<i>dear</i> aunt Lucy--I wish you would!--I am sure you
+      would be a great deal happier--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the mixture of feelings was too much for Fleda; her head sank lower on
+      her aunt's bosom and she wept aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I don't know anything about it!" said Mrs. Rossitur, as well as she
+      could speak,--"I am as ignorant as a child!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear aunty! that is nothing--God will teach you if you ask him; he has
+      promised. Oh ask him, aunt Lucy! I know you would be happier!--I know it
+      is better--a million times!--to be a child of God than to have everything
+      in the world--If they only brought us that, I would be very glad of all
+      our troubles!--indeed I would!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I don't think I ever did anything right in my life!" said poor Mrs.
+      Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear aunt Lucy!" said Fleda, straining her closer and with her very heart
+      gushing out at these words,--"<i>dear</i> aunty--Christ came for just such
+      sinners!--for just such as you and I."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>You,</i>"--said Mrs. Rossitur, but speech failed utterly, and with a
+      muttered prayer that Fleda would help her, she sunk her head upon her
+      shoulder and sobbed herself into quietness, or into exhaustion. The glow
+      of the firelight faded away till only a faint sparkle was left in the
+      chimney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was not another word spoken, but when they rose up, with such kisses
+      as gave and took unuttered affection, counsel and sympathy, they bade each
+      other good-night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda went to her window, for the moon rode high and her childish habit
+      had never been forgotten. But surely the face that looked out that night
+      was as the face of an angel. In all the pouring moonbeams that filled the
+      air, she could see nothing but the flood of God's goodness on a dark
+      world. And her heart that night had nothing but an unbounded and
+      unqualified thanksgiving for all the "gentle discipline" they had felt;
+      for every sorrow and weariness and disappointment;--except besides the
+      prayer, almost too deep to be put into words, that its due and hoped-for
+      fruit might be brought forth unto perfection.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="27"></a>Chapter XXVII.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        I become not a cart as well as another man, a plague on my bringing up.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Shakspeare.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Every day could not be as bright as the last, even by the help of pitch
+      pine knots. They blazed indeed, many a time, but the blaze shone upon
+      faces that it could not sometimes light up. Matters drew gradually within
+      a smaller and smaller compass. Another five dollars came from uncle Orrin,
+      and the hope of more; but these were carefully laid by to pay Philetus;
+      and for all other wants of the household excepting those the farm supplied
+      the family were dependent on mere driblets of sums. None came from Mr.
+      Rossitur. Hugh managed to collect a very little. That kept them from
+      absolute distress; that, and Fleda's delicate instrumentality. Regular
+      dinners were given up, fresh meat being now unheard-of, unless when a kind
+      neighbour made them a present; and appetite would have lagged sadly but
+      for Fleda's untiring care. She thought no time nor pains ill bestowed
+      which could prevent her aunt and Hugh from feeling the want of old
+      comforts; and her nicest skill was displayed in varying the combinations
+      of their very few and simple stores. The diversity and deliciousness of
+      her bread stuffs, Barby said, was "beyond everything!" and a cup of rich
+      coffee was found to cover all deficiencies of removes and entrem&ecirc;ts;
+      and this was always served, Barby said further, as if the President of the
+      United States was expected. Fleda never permitted the least slackness in
+      the manner of doing this or anything else that she could control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Plumfield had sent down an opportune present of a fine porker. One
+      cold day in the beginning of February Fleda was busy in the kitchen making
+      something for dinner, and Hugh at another table was vigorously chopping
+      sausage meat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should like to have some cake again," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, why don't you?" said Hugh, chopping away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No eggs, Mr. Rossitur,--and can't afford 'em at two shillings a dozen. I
+      believe I am getting discontented--I have a great desire to do something
+      to distinguish myself--I would make a plum pudding if I had raisins, but
+      there is not one in the house."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You can get 'em up to Mr. Hemps's for sixpence a pound," said Barby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda shook her head at the sixpence and went on moulding out her
+      biscuits diligently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish Philetus would make his appearance with the cows--it is a very odd
+      thing they should be gone since yesterday morning and no news of them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I only hope the snow ain't so bright it'll blind his eyes," said Barby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There he is this minute," said Hugh. "It is impossible to tell from his
+      countenance whether successful or not."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well where are the cows, Mr. Skillcorn?" said Barby as he came in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have went all over town," said the person addressed, "and they ain't no
+      place."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you asked news of them, Philetus?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have asked the hull town, and I have went all over, 'till I was a'most
+      beat out with the cold,--and I ha'n't seen the first sight of 'em yet!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda and Hugh exchanged looks, while Barby and Mr. Skillcorn entered into
+      an animated discussion of probabilities and impossibilities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If we should be driven from our coffee dinners to tea with no milk in
+      it!"--said Hugh softly in mock dismay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wouldn't!" said Fleda. "We'd beat up an egg and put it in the coffee."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We couldn't afford it," said Hugh smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Could!--cheaper than to keep the cows. I'll have some sugar at any rate,
+      I'm determined. Philetus!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Marm."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish, when you have got a good pile of wood chopped, you would make
+      some troughs to put under the maple trees--you know how to make them,
+      don't you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish you would make some--you have pine logs out there large enough,
+      haven't you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They hadn't ought to want much of it--there's some gregious big ones!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know how many we shall want, but a hundred or two at any rate;
+      and the sooner the better. Do you know how much sugar they make from one
+      tree?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wall I don't," said Mr. Skillcorn, with the air of a person who was at
+      fault on no other point;--"the big trees give more than the little ones--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's eyes flashed at Hugh, who took to chopping in sheer desperation;
+      and the muscles of both gave them full occupation for five minutes.
+      Philetus stood comfortably warming himself at the fire, looking first at
+      one and then at the other, as if they were a show and he had paid for it.
+      Barby grew impatient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I guess this cold weather makes lazy people of me!" she said bustling
+      about her fire with an amount of energy that was significant. It seemed to
+      signify nothing to Philetus. He only moved a little out of the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Didenhover's cleared out," he burst forth at length abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What!" said Fleda and Barby at once, the broom and the biscuits standing
+      still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Didenhover."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What of him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He has tuk himself off out o" town."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where to?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can't tell you where teu--he ain't coming back, 'tain't likely."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you know?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Cause he's tuk all his traps and went, and he said farming didn't pay
+      and he wa'n't a going to have nothin' more to deu with it;--he telled Mis'
+      Simpson so--he lived to Mis' Simpson's; and she telled Mr. Ten Eyck."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you sure, Philetus?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sure as 'lection!--he telled Mis' Simpson so, and she telled Mr. Ten
+      Eyck; and he's cleared out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda and Hugh again looked at each other. Mr. Skillcorn having now
+      delivered himself of his news went out to the woodyard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope he ha'n't carried off our cows along with him," said Barby, as she
+      too went out to some other part of her premises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He was to have made us quite a payment on the first of March," said
+      Fleda. "Yes, and that was to have gone to uncle Orrin," said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We shall not see a cent of it. And we wanted a little of it for
+      ourselves.--I have that money from the Excelsior, but I can't touch a
+      penny of it for it must go to Philetus's wages. What Barby does without
+      hers I do not know--she has had but one five dollars in six months. Why
+      she stays I cannot imagine; unless it is for pure love."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As soon as the spring opens I can go to the mill again," said Hugh after
+      a little pause. Fleda looked at him sorrowfully and shook her head as she
+      withdrew her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish father would give up the farm," Hugh went on under his breath. "I
+      cannot bear to live upon uncle Orrin so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's answer was to clasp her hands. Her only words were, "Don't say
+      anything to aunt Lucy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is of no use to say anything to anybody," said Hugh. "But it weighs me
+      to the ground, Fleda!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If uncle Rolf doesn't come home by spring--I hope, I hope he will!--but
+      if he does not, I will take desperate measures. I will try farming myself,
+      Hugh. I have thought of it, and I certainly will. I will get Earl Douglass
+      or somebody else to play second fiddle, but I will have but one head on
+      the farm and I will try what mine is worth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You could not do it, Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One can do anything!--with a strong enough motive."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm afraid you'd soon be tired, Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not if I succeeded--not so tired as I am now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Poor Fleda! I dare say you are tired."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It wasn't <i>that</i> I meant," said Fleda, slightly drawing her
+      breath;--"I meant this feeling of everything going wrong, and uncle Orrin,
+      and all--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you <i>are</i> weary," said Hugh affectionately. "I see it in your
+      face."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not so much body as mind, after all. Oh Hugh! this is the worst part of
+      being poor!--the constant occupation of one's mind on a miserable
+      succession of trifles. I am so weary sometimes!--If I only had a nice book
+      to rest myself for a while and forget all these things--I would give so
+      much for it!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear Fleda! I wish you had!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That was one delight of being in New York--I forgot all about money from
+      one end of it to the other--I put all that away;--and not having to think
+      of meals till I came to eat them. You can't think how tired I get of
+      ringing the changes on pork and flour and Indian meal and eggs and
+      vegetables!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked tired and pale; and Hugh looked sadly conscious of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't tell aunt Lucy I have said all this!" she exclaimed after a moment
+      rousing herself,--"I don't always feel so--only once in a while I get such
+      a fit--And now I have just troubled you by speaking of it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You don't trouble any one in that way very often, dear Fleda," said Hugh
+      kissing her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ought not at all--you have enough else to think of--but it is a kind of
+      relief sometimes. I like to do these things in general,--only now and then
+      I get tired, as I was just now, I suppose, and then one sees everything
+      through a different medium."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid it would tire you more to have the charge of Earl Douglass
+      and the farm upon your mind;--and mother could be no help to you,--nor I,
+      if I am at the mill."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But there's Seth Plumfield. O I've thought of it all. You don't know what
+      I am up to, Mr. Rossitur. You shall see how I will manage--unless uncle
+      Rolf comes home, in which case I will very gladly forego all my honours
+      and responsibilities together."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope he will come!" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this hope was to be disappointed. Mr. Rossitur wrote again about the
+      first of March, saying that he hoped to make something of his lands in
+      Michigan, and that he had the prospect of being engaged in some land
+      agencies which would make it worth his while to spend the summer there. He
+      bade his wife let anybody take the farm that could manage it and would
+      pay; and to remit to Dr. Gregory whatever she should receive and could
+      spare. He hoped to do something where he was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was just then the beginning of the sugar season; and Mrs. Douglass
+      having renewed and urged Earl's offer of help, Fleda sent Philetus down to
+      ask him to come the next day with his team. Seth Plumfield's, which had
+      drawn the wood in the winter, was now busy in his own sugar business. On
+      Earl Douglass's ground there happpened to be no maple trees. His lands
+      were of moderate extent and almost entirely cultivated as a sheep farm;
+      and Mr. Douglass himself though in very comfortable circumstances was in
+      the habit of assisting, on advantageous terms, all the farmers in the
+      neighbourhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philetus came back again in a remarkably short time; and announced that he
+      had met Dr. Quackenboss in the way, who had offered to come with <i>his</i>
+      team for the desired service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then you have not been to Mr. Douglass's?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have not," said Philetus;--"I thought likely you wouldn't calculate to
+      want him teu."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How came the doctor to know what you were going for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I told him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But how came you to tell him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wall I guess he had a mind to know," said Philetus, "so I didn't keep it
+      no closer than I had teu."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well," said Fleda biting her lips, "you will have to go down to Mr.
+      Douglass's nevertheless, Philetus, and tell him the doctor is coming
+      to-morrow, but I should be very much obliged to him if he will be here
+      next day. Will you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes marm!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now dear Hugh, will you make me those little spouts for the trees!--of
+      some dry wood--you can get plenty out here. You want to split them up with
+      a hollow chisel about a quarter of an inch thick, and a little more than
+      half an inch broad. Have you got a hollow chisel?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, but I can get one up the hill. Why must it be hollow?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To make little spouts, you know,--for the sap to run in. And then, my
+      dear Hugh! they must be sharpened at one end so as to fit where the chisel
+      goes in--I am afraid I have given you a day's work of it. How sorry I am
+      you must go to-morrow to the mill!--and yet I am glad too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why need you go round yourself with these people?" said Hugh. "I don't
+      see the sense of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They don't know where the trees are," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure I do not. Do you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perfectly well. And besides," said Fleda laughing, "I should have great
+      doubts of the discreetness of Philetus's auger if it were left to his
+      simple direction. I have no notion the trees would yield their sap as
+      kindly to him as to me. But I didn't bargain for Dr. Quackenboss."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Quackenboss arrived punctually the next morning with his oxen and
+      sled; and by the time it was loaded with the sap-troughs, Fleda in her
+      black cloak, yarn shawl, and grey little hood came out of the house to the
+      wood-yard. Earl Douglass was there too, not with his team, but merely to
+      see how matters stood and give advice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Good day, Mr. Douglass!" said the doctor. "You see I'm so fortunate as to
+      have got the start of you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very good," said Earl contentedly,--"you may have it;--the start's one
+      thing and the pull's another. I'm willin' anybody should have the start,
+      but it takes a pull to know whether a man's got stuff in him or no."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you mean?" said the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't mean nothin' at all. You make a start to-day and I'll come ahint
+      and take the pull to-morrow. Ha' you got anythin' to boil down in,
+      Fleda?--there's a potash kittle somewheres, ain't there? I guess there is.
+      There is in most houses."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is a large kettle--I suppose large enough," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That'll do, I guess. Well what do you calculate to put the syrup in--ha'
+      you got a good big cask, or plenty o' tubs and that? or will you sugar off
+      the hull lot every night and fix it that way? You must do one thing or
+      t'other, and it's good to know what you're a going to do afore you come to
+      do it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know, Mr. Douglass," said Fleda;--"whichever is the best way--we
+      have no cask large enough, I am afraid."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well I tell you what I'll do--I know where there's a tub, and where they
+      ain't usin' it nother, and I reckon I can get 'em to let me have it--I
+      reckon I can--and I'll go round for't and fetch it here to-morrow mornin'
+      when I come with the team. 'Twon't be much out of my way. It's more
+      handier to leave the sugarin' off till the next day; and it had ought to
+      have a settlin' besides. Where'll you have your fire built?--in doors or
+      out?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Out--I would rather, if we can. But can we?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "La, 'tain't nothin' easier--it's as easy out as in--all you've got to do
+      is to take and roll a couple of pretty sized billets for your fireplace
+      and stick a couple o' crotched sticks for to hang the kittle over--I'd as
+      lieve have it out as in, and if anythin' a leetle liever. If you'll lend
+      me Philetus, me and him'll fix it all ready agin you come back--'tain't no
+      trouble at all--and if the sticks ain't here we'll go into the woods after
+      'em, and have it all sot up."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda represented that the services of Philetus were just then in
+      requisition, and that there would be no sap brought home till to-morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very good!" said Earl amicably,--"<i>very</i> good! it's just as easy
+      done one day as another--it don't make no difference to me, and if it
+      makes any difference to you, of course we'll leave it to-day, and there'll
+      be time enough to do it to-morrow; me and him'll knock it up in a
+      whistle.--What's them little shingles for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda explained the use and application of Hugh's mimic spouts. He turned
+      one about, whistling, while he listened to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's some o' Seth Plumfield's new jigs, ain't it. I wonder if he thinks
+      now the sap's a goin to run any sweeter out o' that 'ere than it would off
+      the end of a chip that wa'n't quite so handsome?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, Mr. Douglass," said Fleda smiling,--"he only thinks that this will
+      catch a little more."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "His sugar won't never tell where it come from," remarked Earl, throwing
+      the spout down. "Well,--you shall see more o' me to-morrow. Good-bye, Dr.
+      Quackenboss!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you contemplate the refining process?" said the doctor, as they moved
+      off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have often contemplated the want of it," said Fleda; "but it is best
+      not to try to do too much. I should like to make sure of something worth
+      refining in the first place."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Douglass and I," said the doctor,--"I hope--a--he's a very
+      good-hearted man, Miss Fleda, but, ha! ha!--he wouldn't suffer loss from a
+      little refining himself.--Haw! you rascal--where are you going! Haw! I
+      tell ye--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very sorry, Dr. Quackenboss," said Fleda when she had the power and
+      the chance to speak again,--"I am very sorry you should have to take this
+      trouble; but unfortunately the art of driving oxen is not among Mr.
+      Skillcorn's accomplishments."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Miss Ringgan!" said the doctor, "I--I--nothing I assure you could
+      give me greater pleasure than to drive my oxen to any place where you
+      would like to have them go."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Fleda wished she could have despatched them and him in one direction
+      while she took another; the art of driving oxen <i>quietly</i> was
+      certainly not among the doctor's accomplishments. She was almost deafened.
+      She tried to escape from the immediate din by running before to shew
+      Philetus about tapping the trees and fixing the little spouts, but it was
+      a longer operation than she had counted upon, and by the time they were
+      ready to leave the tree the doctor was gee-hawing alongside of it; and
+      then if the next maple was not within sight she could not in decent
+      kindness leave him alone. The oxen went slowly, and though Fleda managed
+      to have no delay longer than to throw down a trough as the sled came up
+      with each tree which she and Philetus had tapped, the business promised to
+      make a long day of it. It might have been a pleasant day in pleasant
+      company; but Fleda's spirits were down to set out with, and Dr.
+      Quackenboss was not the person to give them the needed spring; his
+      long-winded complimentary speeches had not interest enough even to divert
+      her. She felt that she was entering upon an untried and most weighty
+      undertaking; charging her time and thoughts with a burthen they could well
+      spare. Her energies did not flag, but the spirit that should have
+      sustained them was not strong enough for the task.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a blustering day of early March; with that uncompromising
+      brightness of sky and land which has no shadow of sympathy with a heart
+      overcast. The snow still lay a foot thick over the ground, thawing a
+      little in sunny spots; the trees quite bare and brown, the buds even of
+      the early maples hardly shewing colour; the blessed evergreens alone doing
+      their utmost to redeem the waste, and speaking of patience and fortitude
+      that can brave the blast and outstand the long waiting and cheerfully bide
+      the time when "the winter shall be over and gone." Poor Fleda thought they
+      were like her in their circumstances, but she feared she was not like them
+      in their strong endurance. She looked at the pines and hemlocks as she
+      passed, as if they were curious preachers to her; and when she had a
+      chance she prayed quietly that she might stand faithfully like them to
+      cheer a desolation far worse and she feared far more abiding than snows
+      could make or melt away. She thought of Hugh, alone in his mill-work that
+      rough chilly day, when the wind stalked through the woods and over the
+      country as if it had been the personification of March just come of ape
+      and taking possession of his domains. She thought of her uncle, doing
+      what?--in Michigan,--leaving them to fight with difficulties as they
+      might,--why?--why? and her gentle aunt at home sad and alone, pining for
+      the want of them all, but most of him, and fading with their fortunes. And
+      Fleda's thoughts travelled about from one to the other and dwelt with them
+      all by turns till she was heart-sick; and tears, tears, fell hot on the
+      snow many a time when her eyes had a moment's shield from the doctor and
+      his somewhat more obtuse coadjutor. She felt half superstitiously as if
+      with her taking the farm were beginning the last stage of their falling
+      prospects, which would leave them with none of hope's colouring. Not that
+      in the least she doubted her own ability and success; but her uncle did
+      not deserve to have his affairs prosper under such a system and she had no
+      faith that they would.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is most grateful," said the doctor with that sideway twist of his jaw
+      and his head at once, in harmony,--"it is a most grateful thing to see
+      such a young lady--Haw I there now I--what are you about? haw,--haw
+      then!--It is a most grateful thing to see--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda was not at his side; she had bounded away and was standing under
+      a great maple tree a little ahead, making sure that Philetus screwed his
+      auger <i>up</i> into the tree instead of <i>down</i>, which he had several
+      times shewed an unreasonable desire to do. The doctor had steered his oxen
+      by her little grey hood and black cloak all the day. He made for it now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have we arrived at the termination of our--a--adventure?" said he as he
+      came up and threw down the last trough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why no, sir," said Fleda, "for we have yet to get home again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Tain't so fur going that way as it were this'n," said Philetus. "My!
+      ain't I glad."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Glad of what?" said the doctor. "Here's Miss Ringgan's walked the whole
+      way, and she a lady--ain't you ashamed to speak of being tired?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ha'n't said the first word o' being tired!" said Philetus in an injured
+      tone of voice,--"but a man ha'n't no right to kill hisself, if he ain't a
+      gal!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll qualify to your being safe enough," said the doctor. "But Miss
+      Ringgan, my dear, you are--a--you have lost something since you came
+      out--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What?" said Fleda laughing. "Not my patience?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said the doctor, "no,--you're--a--you're an angel! but your cheeks,
+      my dear Miss Ringgan, shew that you have exceeded your--a--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not my intentions, doctor," said Fleda lightly. "I am very well satisfied
+      with our day's work, and with my share of it, and a cup of coffee will
+      make me quite up again. Don't look at my cheeks till then."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shall disobey you constantly," said the doctor;--"but, my dear Miss
+      Fleda, we must give you some felicities for reaching home, or Mrs.
+      Rossitur will be--a--distressed when she sees them. Might I propose--that
+      you should just bear your weight on this wood-sled and let my oxen and me
+      have the honour--The cup of coffee, I am confident, would be at your lips
+      considerably earlier--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The sun won't be a great haighth by the time we get there," said Philetus
+      in a cynical manner; "and I ha'n't took the first thing to-day!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well who has?" said the doctor; "you ain't the only one. Follow your nose
+      down hill, Mr. Skillcorn, and it'll smell supper directly. Now, my dear
+      Miss Ringgan!--will you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda hesitated, but her relaxed energies warned her not to despise a
+      homely mode of relief. The wood-sled was pretty clean, and the road
+      decently good over the snow. So Fleda gathered her cloak about her and sat
+      down flat on the bottom of her rustic vehicle; too grateful for the rest
+      to care if there had been a dozen people to laugh at her; but the doctor
+      was only delighted, and Philetus regarded every social phenomenon as
+      coolly and in the same business light as he would the butter to his bread,
+      or any other infallible every-day matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was very glad presently that she had taken this plan, for besides
+      the rest of body she was happily relieved from all necessity of speaking.
+      The doctor though but a few paces off was perfectly given up to the care
+      of his team, in the intense anxiety to shew his skill and gallantry in
+      saving her harmless from every ugly place in the road that threatened a
+      jar or a plunge. Why his oxen didn't go distracted was a question; but the
+      very vehemence and iteration of his cries at last drowned itself in
+      Fleda's ear and she could hear it like the wind's roaring, without
+      thinking of it. She presently subsided to that. With a weary frame, and
+      with that peculiar quietness of spirits that comes upon the ending of a
+      days work in which mind and body have both been busily engaged, and the
+      sudden ceasing of any call upon either, fancy asked no leave and dreamily
+      roved hither and thither between the material and the spirit world; the
+      will too subdued to stir. Days gone by came marshalling their scenes and
+      their actors before her; again she saw herself a little child under those
+      same trees that stretched their great black arms over her head and swaying
+      their tops in the wind seemed to beckon her back to the past. They talked
+      of their old owner, whose steps had so often passed beneath them with her
+      own light tread,--light now, but how dancing then!--by his side; and of
+      her father whose hand perhaps had long ago tapped those very trees where
+      she had noticed the old closed-up soars of the axe. At any rate his
+      boyhood had rejoiced there, and she could look back to one time at least
+      in his manhood when she had taken a pleasant walk with him in summer
+      weather among those same woods, in that very ox-track she believed.
+      Gone--two generations that she had known there; hopes and fears and
+      disappointments, akin to her own, at rest,--as hers would be; and how
+      sedately the old trees stood telling her of it, and waving their arms in
+      grave and gentle commenting on the folly of anxieties that came and went
+      with the wind. Fleda agreed to it all; she heard all they said; and her
+      own spirit was as sober and quiet as their quaint moralizing. She felt as
+      if it would never dance again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wind had greatly abated of its violence; as if satisfied with the shew
+      of strength it had given in the morning it seemed willing to make no more
+      commotion that day. The sun was far on his way to the horizon, and many a
+      broad hill-side slope was in shadow; the snow had blown or melted from off
+      the stones and rocks leaving all their roughness and bareness unveiled;
+      and the white crust of snow that lay between them looked a cheerless waste
+      in the shade of the wood and the hill. But there were other spots where
+      the sunbeams struck and bright streams of light ran between the trees,
+      smiling and making them smile. And as Fleda's eye rested there another
+      voice seemed to say, "At evening-time it shall be light,"--and "Sorrow may
+      endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." She could have cried,
+      but spirits were too absolutely at an ebb. She knew this was partly
+      physical, because she was tired and faint, but it could not the better be
+      overcome. Yet those streaks of sunlight were pleasant company, and Fleda
+      watched them, thinking how bright they used to be once; till the oxen and
+      sled came out from the woods, and she could see the evening colours on the
+      hill-tops beyond the village, lighting up the whole landscape with promise
+      of the morrow. She thought her day had seen its brightest; but she thought
+      too that if she must know sorrows it was a very great blessing to know
+      them at Queechy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The smoke of the chimney-tops came in sight, and fancy went home,--a few
+      minutes before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wonder what you'll take and do to yourself next!" said Barby in extreme
+      vexation when she saw her come in. "You're as white as the wall,--and as
+      cold, ain't you? I'd ha' let Philetus cut all the trees and drink all the
+      sap afterwards. I wonder which you think is the worst, the want o' you or
+      the want o' sugar."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A day's headache was pretty sure to visit Fleda after any over-exertion or
+      exhaustion, and the next day justified Barby's fears. She was the quiet
+      prisoner of pain. But Earl Douglass and Mr. Skillcorn could now do without
+      her in the woods; and her own part of the trouble Fleda always took with
+      speechless patience. She had the mixed comfort that love could bestow;
+      Hugh's sorrowful kiss and look before setting off for the mill, Mrs.
+      Rossitur's caressing care, and Barby's softened voice, and sympathizing
+      hand on her brow, and hearty heart-speaking kiss, and poor little King lay
+      all day with his head in her lap, casting grave wistful glances up at his
+      mistress's face and licking her hand with intense affection when even in
+      her distress it stole to his head to reward and comfort him. He never
+      would budge from her side, or her feet, till she could move herself and he
+      knew that she was well. As sure as King came trotting into the kitchen
+      Barby used to look into the other room and say, "So you're better, ain't
+      you, Fleda? I knowed it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After hours of suffering the fit was at last over; and in the evening,
+      though looking and feeling racked, Fleda would go out to see the
+      sap-boilers. Earl Douglass and Philetus had had a very good day of it, and
+      now were in full blast with the evening part of the work. The weather was
+      mild, and having the stay of Hugh's arm Fleda grew too amused to leave
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a very pretty scene. The sap-boilers had planted themselves near
+      the cellar door on the other side of the house from the kitchen door and
+      the wood-yard; the casks and tubs for syrup being under cover there; and
+      there they had made a most picturesque work-place. Two strong crotched
+      sticks were stuck in the ground some six or eight feet apart and a pole
+      laid upon them, to which by the help of some very rustic hooks two
+      enormous iron kettles were slung. Under them a fine fire of smallish split
+      sticks was doing duty, kept in order by a couple of huge logs which walled
+      it in on the one side and on the other. It was a dark night, and the fire
+      painted all this in strong lights and shadows; threw a faint fading Aurora
+      like light over the snow, beyond the shade of its log barriers; glimmered
+      by turns upon the paling of the garden fence, whenever the dark figures
+      that were passing and repassing between gave it a chance; and invested the
+      cellar-opening and the outstanding corner of the house with striking and
+      unwonted dignity, in a light that revealed nothing except to the
+      imagination. Nothing was more fancifully dignified or more quaintly
+      travestied by that light than the figures around it, busy and flitting
+      about and shewing themselves in every novel variety of grouping and
+      colouring. There was Earl Douglass, not a hair different from what he was
+      every day in reality, but with his dark skin and eyes, and a hat that like
+      its master had concluded to abjure all fashions and perhaps for the same
+      reason, he looked now like any bandit and now in a more pacific view could
+      pass for nothing less than a Spanish shepherd at least, with an iron ladle
+      in lieu of crook. There was Dr. Quackenboss, who had come too, determined
+      as Earl said, "to keep his eend up," excessively bland and busy and
+      important, the fire would throw his one-sidedness of feature into such
+      aspects of gravity or sternness that Fleda could make nothing of him but a
+      poor clergyman or a poor schoolmaster alternately. Philetus, who was kept
+      handing about a bucket of sap or trudging off for wood, defied all
+      comparison; he was Philetus still; but when Barby came once or twice and
+      peered into the kettle her strong features with the handkerchief she
+      always wore about her head were lit up into a very handsome gypsy. Fleda
+      stood some time unseen in the shadow of the house to enjoy the sight, and
+      then went forward on the same principle that a sovereign princess shews
+      herself to her army, to grace and reward the labours of her servants. The
+      doctor was profuse in enquiries after her health and Earl informed her of
+      the success of the day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We've had first rate weather," he said;--"I don't want to see no better
+      weather for sugar-makin'; it's as good kind o' weather as you need to
+      have. It friz everythin' up tight in the night, and it thew in the sun
+      this mornin' as soon as the sun was anywhere; the trees couldn't do no
+      better than they have done. I guess we ha'n't got much this side o' two
+      hundred gallon--I ain't sure about it, but that's what I think; and
+      there's nigh two hundred gallon we've fetched down; I'll qualify to better
+      than a hundred and fifty, or a hundred and sixty either. We should ha' had
+      more yet if Mr. Skillcorn hadn't managed to spill over one cask of it--I
+      reckon he wanted it for sass for his chicken."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, Mr. Douglass!"--said Philetus, in a comical tone of deprecation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is an uncommonly fine lot of sugar trees," said the doctor, "and they
+      stand so on the ground as to give great felicities to the oxen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, Fleda," Earl went on, busy all the while with his iron ladle in
+      dipping the boiling sap from one kettle into the other,--"you know how
+      this is fixed when we've done all we've got to do with it?--it must be
+      strained out o' this biler into a cask or a tub or somethin'
+      'nother,--anythin' that'll hold it,--and stand a day or so;--you may
+      strain it through a cotton cloth, or through a woollen cloth, or through
+      any kind of a cloth!--and let it stand to settle; and then when it's biled
+      down--Barby knows about bilin' down--you can tell when it's comin' to the
+      sugar when the yellow blobbers rises thick to the top and puffs off, and
+      then it's time to try it in cold water,--it's best to be a leetle the
+      right side o' the sugar and stop afore it's done too much, for the
+      molasses will dreen off afterwards--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It must be clarified in the commencement," put in the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O' course it must be clarified," said Earl,--"Barby knows about
+      clarifyin'--that's when you first put it on--you had ought to throw in a
+      teeny drop o' milk fur to clear it,--milk's as good as a'most
+      anything,--or if you can get it calf's blood's better "--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Eggs would be a more preferable ingredient on the present occasion, I
+      presume," said the doctor. "Miss Ringgan's delicacy would be--a--would
+      shrink from--a--and the albumen of eggs will answer all the same purpose."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well anyhow you like to fix it," said Earl,--"eggs or calf's blood--I
+      won't quarrel with you about the eggs, though I never heerd o' blue ones
+      afore, 'cept the robin's and bluebird's--and I've heerd say the swamp
+      black bird lays a handsome blue egg, but I never happened to see the nest
+      myself;--and there's the chippin' sparrow,--but you'd want to rob all the
+      birds' nests in creation to get enough of 'em, and they ain't here in
+      sugar time, nother; but anyhow any eggs'll do I s'pose if you can get
+      'em--or milk'll do if you ha'n't nothin' else--and after it is turned out
+      into the barrel you just let it stand still a spell till it begins to
+      grain and look clean on top"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "May I suggest an improvement?" said the doctor. "Many persons are of the
+      opinion that if you take and stir it up well from the bottom for a length
+      of time it will help the coagulation of the particles. I believe that is
+      the practice of Mr. Plumfield and others."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Tain't the practice of as good men as him and as good sugar-bilers,
+      besides," said Earl; "though I don't mean to say nothin' agin Seth
+      Plumfield nor agin his sugar, for the both is as good as you'd need to
+      have; he's a good man and he's a good farmer--there ain't no better man in
+      town than Seth Plumfield, nor no better farmer, nor no better sugar
+      nother; but I hope there's as good; and I've seen as handsome sugar that
+      wa'n't stirred as I'd want to see or eat either."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It would lame a man's arms the worst kind!" said Philetus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda stood listening to the discussion and smiling, when Hugh suddenly
+      wheeling about brought her face to face with Mr. Olmney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have been sitting some time with Mrs. Rossitur," he said, "and she
+      rewarded me with permission to come and look at you. I mean!--not that I
+      wanted a reward, for I certainly did not--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah Mr. Olmney!" said Fleda laughing, "you are served right. You see how
+      dangerous it is to meddle with such equivocal things as compliments. But
+      we are worth looking at, aren't we? I have been standing here this half
+      hour."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not say this time what he thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pretty, isn't it?" said Fleda. "Stand a little further back, Mr.
+      Olmney--isn't it quite a wild-looking scene, in that peculiar light and
+      with the snowy background? Look at Philetus now with that bundle of
+      sticks--Hugh! isn't he exactly like some of the figures in the old
+      pictures of the martyrdoms, bringing billets to feed the fire?--that old
+      martyrdom of St. Lawrence--whose was it--Spagnoletto!--at Mrs.
+      Decatur's--don't you recollect? It is fine, isn't it, Mr. Olmney?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid," said he shaking his head a little, "my eye wants training.
+      I have not been once in your company I believe without your shewing me
+      something I could not see."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That young lady, sir," said Dr. Quackenboss from the far side of the
+      fire, where he was busy giving it more wood,--"that young lady, sir, is a
+      pattron to her--a--to all young ladies."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A patron!" said Mr. Olmney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Passively, not actively, the doctor means," said Fleda softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well I won't say but she's a good girl," said Mr. Douglass in an
+      abstracted manner, busy with his iron ladle,--"she means to be a good
+      girl--she's as clever a girl as you need to have!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nobody's gravity stood this, excepting Philetus, in whom the principle of
+      fun seemed not to be developed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Miss Ringgan, sir," Dr. Quackenboss went on with a most benign expression
+      of countenance,--"Miss Ringgan, sir, Mr. Olmney, sets an example to all
+      ladies who--a--have had elegant advantages. She gives her patronage to the
+      agricultural interest in society."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not exclusively, I hope?" said Mr. Olmney smiling, and making the
+      question with his eye of Fleda. But she did not meet it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You know," she said rather quickly, and drawing back from the fire, "I am
+      of an agricultural turn perforce--in uncle Rolf's absence I am going to be
+      a farmer myself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So I have heard--so Mrs. Rossitur told me,--but I fear--pardon me--you do
+      not look fit to grapple with such a burden of care."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh sighed, and Fleda's eyes gave Mr. Olmney a hint to be silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not going to grapple with any thing, sir; I intend to take things
+      easily."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish I could take an agricultural turn too," said he smiling, "and be
+      of some service to you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O I shall have no lack of service," said Fleda gayly;--"I am not going
+      unprovided into the business. There is my cousin Seth Plumfield, who has
+      engaged himself to be my counsellor and instructor in general; I could not
+      have a better; and Mr. Douglass is to be my right hand; I occupying only
+      the quiet and unassuming post of the will, to convey the orders of the
+      head to the hand. And for the rest, sir, there is Philetus!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Olmney looked, half laughing, at Mr. Skillcorn, who was at that moment
+      standing with his hands on his sides, eying with concentrated gravity the
+      movements of Earl Douglass and the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't shake your head at him!" said Fleda. "I wish you had come an hour
+      earlier, Mr. Olmney."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was just thinking of coming out here," said Fleda, her eyes flashing
+      with hidden fun,--"and Hugh and I were both standing in the kitchen, when
+      we heard a tremendous shout from the woodyard. Don't laugh, or I can't go
+      on. We all ran out, towards the lantern which we saw standing there, and
+      so soon as we got near we heard Philetus singing out, 'Ho, Miss
+      Elster!--I'm dreadfully on't!'--Why he called upon Barby I don't know,
+      unless from some notion of her general efficiency, though to be sure he
+      was nearer her than the sap-boilers and perhaps thought her aid would come
+      quickest. And he was in a hurry, for the cries came thick--'Miss
+      Elster!--here!--I'm dreadfully on't'--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't understand--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda, whose amusement seemed to be increased by the
+      gentleman's want of understanding,--"and neither did we till we came up to
+      him. The silly fellow had been sent up for more wood, and splitting a log
+      he had put his hand in to keep the cleft, instead of a wedge, and when he
+      took out the axe the wood pinched him; and he had the fate of Milo before
+      his eyes, I suppose, and could do nothing but roar. You should have seen
+      the supreme indignation with which Barby took the axe and released him
+      with 'You're a smart man, Mr. Skillcorn!'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What was the fate of Milo?" said Mr. Olmney presently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you remember,--the famous wrestler that in his old age trying to
+      break open a tree found himself not strong enough; and the wood closing
+      upon his hands held him fast till the wild beasts came and made an end of
+      him. The figure of our unfortunate wood-cutter though, was hardly so
+      dignified as that of the old athlete in the statue.--Dr. Quackenboss, and
+      Mr. Douglass,--you will come in and see us when this troublesome business
+      is done?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It'll be a pretty spell yet," said Earl;--"but the doctor, he can go
+      in,--he ha'n't nothin' to do. It don't take more'n half a dozen men to
+      keep one pot a bilin'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ain't there ten on 'em, Mr. Douglass?" said Philetus.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="28"></a>Chapter XXVIII.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        He that has light within his own clear breast,<br /> May sit i' the
+        centre and enjoy bright day.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Milton.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The farming plan succeeded beyond Fleda's hopes; thanks not more to her
+      wisdom than to the nice tact with which the wisdom was brought into play.
+      The one was eked out with Seth Plumfield's; the other was all her own.
+      Seth was indefatigably kind and faithful. After his own day's work was
+      done he used to walk down to see Fleda, go with her often to view the
+      particular field or work just then in question, and give her the best
+      counsel dictated by great sagacity and great experience. It was given too
+      with equal frankness and intelligence, so that Fleda knew the steps she
+      took and could maintain them against the prejudice or the ignorance of her
+      subordinates. But Fleda's delicate handling stood her yet more in stead
+      than her strength. Earl Douglass was sometimes unmanageable, and held out
+      in favour of an old custom or a prevailing opinion in spite of all the
+      weight of testimony and light of discovery that could be brought to bear
+      upon him. Fleda would let the thing go. But seizing her opportunity
+      another time she would ask him to try the experiment, on a piece of the
+      ground; so pleasantly and skilfully that Earl could do nothing but shut
+      his mouth and obey, like an animal fairly stroked into good humour. And as
+      Fleda always forgot to remind him that she had been right and he wrong, he
+      forgot it too, and presently took to the new way kindly. In other matters
+      he could be depended on, and the seed-time and harvest prospered well.
+      There was hope of making a good payment to Dr. Gregory in the course of a
+      few months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the spring came forward Fleda took care that her garden should,--both
+      gardens indeed. There she and Philetus had the game in their own hands,
+      and beautifully it was managed. Hugh had full occupation at the mill. Many
+      a dollar this summer was earned by the loads of fine fruit and vegetables
+      which Philetus carried to Montepoole; and accident opened a new source of
+      revenue. When the courtyard was in the full blaze of its beauty, one day
+      an admiring passer-by modestly inquired if a few of those exquisite
+      flowers might be had for money. They were given him most cheerfully that
+      time; but the demand returned, accompanied by the offer, and Fleda obliged
+      herself not to decline it. A trial it was to cut her roses and jessamines
+      for anything but her own or her friends' pleasure, but according to custom
+      she bore it without hesitation. The place became a resort for all the
+      flower-lovers who happened to be staying at the Pool; and rose-leaves were
+      changed into silver pennies as fast as in a fairy-tale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the delicate mainspring that kept all this machinery in order suffered
+      from too severe a strain. There was too much running, too much
+      considering, too much watchfulness. In the garden pulling peas and seeing
+      that Philetus weeded the carrots right,--in the field or the woodyard
+      consulting and arranging or maybe debating with Earl Douglass, who
+      acquired by degrees an unwonted and concentrated respect for womankind in
+      her proper person; breakfast waiting for her often before she came in; in
+      the house her old housewifery concerns, her share in Barby's cares or
+      difficulties, her sweet countenancing and cheering of her aunt, her
+      dinner, her work;--then when evening came, budding her roses or tying her
+      carnations or weeding or raking the ground between them, (where Philetus
+      could do nothing,) or training her multiflora and sweet-briar
+      branches;--and then often after all, walking up to the mill to give Hugh a
+      little earlier a home smile and make his way down pleasant. No wonder if
+      the energies which owed much of their strength to love's nerving, should
+      at last give out, and Fleda's evening be passed in wearied slumbers. No
+      wonder if many a day was given up to the forced quietude of a headache,
+      the more grievous to Fleda because she knew that her aunt and Hugh always
+      found the day dark that was not lightened by her sunbeam. How brightly it
+      shone out the moment the cloud of pain was removed, winning the shadow
+      from their faces and a smile to their lips, though solitude always saw her
+      own settle into a gravity as fixed as it was soft.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have been doing too much, Fleda," said Mrs. Rossitur one morning when
+      she came in from the garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I didn't know it would take me so long," said Fleda drawing a long
+      breath;--"but I couldn't help it. I had those celery plants to prick
+      out,--and then I was helping Philetus to plant another patch of corn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He might have done that without help I should think."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But it must be put in to-day, and he had other things to do."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And then you were at your flowers?--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O well!--budding a few roses--that's only play. It was time they were
+      done. But I <i>am</i> tired; and I am going up to see Hugh--it will rest
+      me and him too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gardening frock and gloves were exchanged for those of ordinary wear,
+      and Fleda set off slowly to go up to the saw-mill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped a moment when she came upon the bridge, to look off to the
+      right where the waters of the little run came hurrying along through a
+      narrow wooded chasm in the hill, murmuring to her of the time when a
+      little child's feet had paused there and a child's heart danced to its
+      music. The freshness of its song was unchanged, the glad rush of its
+      waters was as joyous as ever, but the spirits were quieted that used to
+      answer it with sweeter freshness and lighter joyousness. Its faint echo of
+      the old-time laugh was blended now in Fleda's ear with a gentle wail for
+      the rushing days and swifter fleeing delights of human life;--gentle,
+      faint, but clear,--she could hear it very well. Taking up her walk again
+      with a step yet slower and a brow yet more quiet, she went on till she
+      came in sight of the little mill; and presently above the noise of the
+      brook could hear the saw going. To her childish ears what a signal of
+      pleasure that had always been; and now,--she sighed, and stopping at a
+      little distance looked for Hugh. He was there; she saw him in a moment
+      going forward to stop the machinery, the piece of timber in hand having
+      walked its utmost length up to the saw; she saw him throwing aside the
+      new-cut board, and adjusting what was left till it was ready for another
+      march up to headquarters. When it stopped the second time Fleda went
+      forward. Hugh must have been busy in his own thoughts, for he did not see
+      her until he had again adjusted the log and set the noisy works in motion.
+      She stood still. Several huge timbers lay close by, ready for the saw; and
+      on one of them where he had been sitting Fleda saw his Bible lying open.
+      As her eye went from it to him it struck her heart with a pang that he
+      looked tired and that there was a something of delicacy, even of
+      fragility, in the air of face and figure both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He came to meet her and welcomed her with a smile that coming upon this
+      feeling set Fleda's heart a quivering. Hugh's smile was always one of very
+      great sweetness, though never unshadowed; there was often something
+      ethereal in its pure gentleness. This time it seemed even sweeter than
+      usual, but though not sadder, perhaps less sad, Fleda could hardly command
+      herself to reply to it. She could not at the moment speak; her eye glanced
+      at his open book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, it rests me," he said, answering her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Rests you, dear Hugh!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled again. "Here is somebody else that wants resting, I am afraid,"
+      said he, placing her gently on the log; and before she had found anything
+      to say he went off again to his machinery. Fleda sat looking at him and
+      trying to clear her bosom of its thick breathing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What has brought you up here through the hot sun?" said he, coming back
+      after he had stopped the saw, and sitting down beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's lip moved nervously and her eye shunned meeting his. Softly
+      pushing back the wet hair from his temples, she said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I had one of my fits of doing nothing at home--I didn't feel very bright
+      and thought perhaps you didn't,--so on the principle that two negatives
+      make an affirmative--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I feel bright," said Hugh gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's eye came down to his, which was steady and clear as the reflection
+      of the sky in Deepwater lake,--and then hers fell lower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why don't you, dear Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe I am a little tired," Fleda said, trying but in vain to command
+      herself and look up,--"and there are states of body when anything almost
+      is enough to depress one--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what depresses you now?" said he, very steadily and quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O--I was feeling a little down about things in general," said Fleda in a
+      choked voice, trying to throw off her load with a long breath;--"it's
+      because I am tired, I suppose--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I felt so too, a little while ago," said Hugh. "But I have concluded to
+      give all that up, Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked at him. Her eyes were swimming full, but his were clear and
+      gentle as ever, only glistening a little in sympathy with hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought all was going wrong with us," he went on. "But I found it was
+      only I that was wrong; and since that I have been quite happy, Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda could not speak to him; his words made her pain worse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I told you this rested me," said he reaching across her for his book;
+      "and now I am never weary long. Shall I rest you with it? What have you
+      been troubling yourself about to-day?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not answer while he was turning over the leaves, and he then said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you remember this, Fleda?--'<i>Truly God is good to Israel, even to
+      them that are of a clean heart</i>.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda bent her head down upon her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was moody and restless the other day," said Hugh,--"desponding of
+      everything;--and I came upon this psalm; and it made me ashamed of myself.
+      I had been disbelieving it, and because I could not see how things were
+      going to work good I thought they were going to work evil. I thought we
+      were wearing out our lives alone here in a wearisome way, and I forgot
+      that it must be the very straightest way that we could get home. I am sure
+      we shall not want anything that will do us good; and the rest I am willing
+      to want--and so are you, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda squeezed his hand,--that was all. For a minute he was silent, and
+      then went on, without any change of tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I had a notion awhile ago that I should like it if it were possible for
+      me to go to college; but I am quite satisfied now. I have good time and
+      opportunity to furnish myself with a better kind of knowledge, that I
+      shall want where college learning wouldn't be of much use to me; and I can
+      do it, I dare say, better here in this mill than if we had stayed in New
+      York and I had lived in our favourite library."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But dear Hugh," said Fleda, who did not like this speech in any sense of
+      it,--"the two things do not clash. The better man the better Christian
+      always, other things being equal. The more precious kind of knowledge
+      should not make one undervalue the less?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No,"--he said; but the extreme quietness and simplicity of his reply
+      smote Fleda's fears; it answered her words and waived her thought; she
+      dared not press him further. She sat looking over the road with an aching
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You haven't taken enough of my medicine," said Hugh smiling. "Listen,
+      Fleda--'<i>All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep
+      his covenant and his testimonies</i>.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But that made Fleda cry again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'All his paths,' Fleda--then, whatever may happen to you, and whatever
+      may happen to me, or to any of us.--I can trust him. I am willing any one
+      should have the world, if I may have what Abraham had--'<i>Fear not; I am
+      thy shield and thy exceeding great reward;</i>'--and I believe I shall,
+      Fleda; for it is not the hungry that he has threatened to send empty
+      away."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda could say nothing, and Hugh just then said no more. For a little
+      while, near and busy as thoughts might be, tongues were silent. Fleda was
+      crying quietly, the utmost she could do being to keep it quiet; Hugh, more
+      quietly, was considering again the strong pillars on which he had laid his
+      hope, and trying their strength and beauty; till all other things were to
+      him as the mist rolling off from the valley is to the man planted on a
+      watch tower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His meditations were interrupted by the tramp of horse, and a party of
+      riders male and female came past them up the hill. Hugh looked on as they
+      went by; Fleda's head was not raised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There are some people enjoying themselves," said Hugh. "After all, dear
+      Fleda, we should be very sorry to change places with those gay riders. I
+      would not for a thousand worlds give my hope and treasure for all other
+      they can possibly have, in possession or prospect."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, indeed!" said Fleda energetically, and trying to rouse herself;--"and
+      besides that, Hugh, we have as it is a great deal more to enjoy than most
+      other people. We are so happy--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In each other, she was going to say, but the words choked her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Those people looked very hard at us, or at one of us," said Hugh. "It
+      must have been you, I think, Fleda"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They are welcome," said Fleda; "they couldn't have made much out of the
+      back of my sun bonnet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, dear Fleda, I must content myself with little more than looking at
+      you now, for Mr. Winegar is in a hurry for his timber to be sawn, and I
+      must set this noisy concern a going again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda sat and watched him, with rising and falling hopes and fears,
+      forcing her lips to a smile when he came near her, and hiding her tears at
+      other times; till the shadows stretching well to the east of the meridian,
+      admonished her she had been there long enough; and she left him still
+      going backward and forward tending the saw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As she went down the hill she pressed involuntarily her hands upon her
+      heart, for the dull heavy pain there. But that was no plaster for it; and
+      when she got to the bridge the soft singing of the little brook was just
+      enough to shake her spirits from the doubtful poise they had kept. Giving
+      one hasty glance along the road and up the hill to make sure that no one
+      was near she sat down on a stone in the edge of the woods, and indulged in
+      such weeping as her gentle eyes rarely knew; for the habit of patience so
+      cultivated for others' sake constantly rewarded her own life with its
+      sweet fruits. But deep and bitter in proportion was the flow of the
+      fountain once broken up. She struggled to remind herself that "Providence
+      runneth not on broken wheels," she struggled to repeat to herself, what
+      she did not doubt that "<i>all</i> the ways of the Lord are mercy and
+      truth" to his people;--in vain. The slight check for a moment to the
+      torrent of grief but gave it greater head to sweep over the barrier; and
+      the self-reproach that blamed its violence and needlessness only made the
+      flood more bitter. Nature fought against patience for awhile; but when the
+      loaded heart had partly relieved itself patience came in again and she
+      rose up to go home. It startled her exceedingly to find Mr. Olmney
+      standing before her, and looking so sorrowful that Fleda's eyes could not
+      bear it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Miss Ringgan!--forgive me--I hope you will forgive me,--but I
+      could not leave you in such distress. I knew that in <i>you</i> it could
+      only be from some very serious cause of grief."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I cannot say it is from anything new, Mr. Olmney--except to my
+      apprehensions."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are all <i>well</i>?" he said inquiringly, after they had walked a
+      few steps in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well?--yes, sir,--" said Fleda hesitatingly,--"but I do not think that
+      Hugh looks very well."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The trembling of her voice told him her thought. But he remained silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have noticed it?" she said hastily, looking up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think you have told me he always was delicate?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you have noticed him looking so lately, Mr. Olmney?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have thought so,--but you say he always was that. If you will permit me
+      to say so, I have thought the same of you, Miss Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was silent; her heart ached again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We would gladly save each other from every threatening trouble," said Mr.
+      Olmney again after a pause;--"but it ought to content us that we do not
+      know how. Hugh is in good hands, my dear Miss Ringgan."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know it, sir," said Fleda unable quite to keep back her tears,--"and I
+      know very well this thread of our life will not bear the strain
+      always,--and I know that the strands must in all probability part
+      unevenly,--and I know it is in the power of no blind fate,--but that--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Does not lessen our clinging to each other. Oh no!--it grows but the
+      tenderer and the stronger for the knowledge."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda could but cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And yet," said he very kindly,--"we who are Christians may and ought to
+      learn to take troubles hopefully; for 'tribulation worketh patience; and
+      patience,' that is, quiet waiting on God, 'works experience' of his
+      goodness and faithfulness; 'and experience worketh hope; and that hope, we
+      know, 'maketh not ashamed.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know it," said Fleda;--"but, Mr. Olmney, how easily the brunt of a new
+      affliction breaks down all that chain of reasoning!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes!--" he said sadly and thoughtfully;--"but my dear Miss Fleda, you
+      know the way to build it up again. I would be very glad to bear all need
+      for it away from you!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had reached the gate. Fleda could not look up to thank him; the hand
+      she held out was grasped, more than kindly, and he turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's tears came hot again as she went up the walk; she held her head
+      down to hide them and went round the back way.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="29"></a>Chapter XXIX.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Now, the melancholy god protect thee; and the tailor make thy doublet of
+        changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal!--Twelfth Night.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      "Well what did you come home for?" was Barby's salutation;--"here's
+      company been waiting for you till they're tired, and I am sure I be."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Company!!--" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, and it's ungrateful in you to say so," said Barby, "for she's been
+      in a wonderful hurry to see you,--or to get somethin' to eat; I don't know
+      which; a little o' both, I hope in charity."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why didn't you give her something to eat? Who is it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know who it is! It's one of your highfliers, that's all I can
+      make out. She 'a'n't a hat a bit better than a man's beaver,--one 'ud
+      think she had stole her little brother's for a spree, if the rest of her
+      was like common folks; but she's got a tail to her dress as long as from
+      here to Queechy Run; and she's been tiddling in and out here with it
+      puckered up under her arm sixty times. I guess she belongs to some company
+      of female militie, for the body of it is all thick with braid and buttons.
+      I believe she ha'n't sot still five minutes since she come into the house,
+      till I don't know whether I am on my head or my heels."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But why didn't you give her something to eat?" said Fleda, who was
+      hastily throwing off her gloves and smoothing her disordered hair with her
+      hands into something of composure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did!" said Barby;--"I give her some o' them cold biscuit and butter and
+      cheese and a pitcher of milk--sot a good enough meal for anybody--but she
+      didn't take but a crumb, and she turned up her nose at that. Come,
+      go!--you've slicked up enough--you're handsome enough to shew yourself to
+      her any time o' day, for all her jig-em-bobs."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is aunt Lucy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She's up stairs;--there's been nobody to see to her but me. She's had the
+      hull lower part of the house to herself, kitchen and all, and she's done
+      nothing but go out of one room into another ever since she come. She'll be
+      in here again directly if you ain't spry."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda went in, round to the west room, and there found herself in the arms
+      of the second Miss Evelyn, who jumped to meet her and half stifled her
+      with caresses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You wicked little creature! what have you been doing? Here have I been
+      growing melancholy over the tokens of your absence, and watching the
+      decline of the sun with distracted feelings these six hours."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Six hours!" said Fleda smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear little Fleda!--it's so delicious to see you again!" said Miss
+      Evelyn with another prolonged hug and kiss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Constance!--I am very glad--But where are the rest?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's unkind of you to ask after anybody but me, when I came here this
+      morning on purpose to talk the whole day to you. Now dear little Fleda,"
+      said Miss Constance, executing an impatient little persuasive caper round
+      her,--"won't you go out and order dinner? for I'm raging. Your woman did
+      give me something, but I found the want of you had taken away all my
+      appetite; and now the delight of seeing you has exhausted me, and I feel
+      that nature is sinking. The stimulus of gratified affection is too much
+      for me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You absurd child!" said Fleda,--"you haven't mended a bit. But I told
+      Barby to put on the tea-kettle and I will administer a composing draught
+      as soon as it can be got ready; we don't indulge in dinners here in the
+      wilderness. Meanwhile suppose that exhausted nature try the support of
+      this easy-chair?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She put her visitor gently into it, and seating herself upon the arm held
+      her hand and looked at her, with a smiling face and yet with eyes that
+      were almost too gentle in their welcoming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear little Fleda!--you're as lovely as you can be! Are you glad to
+      see me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why don't you ask after somebody else?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was afraid of overtasking your exhausted energies."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come and sit down here upon my lap!--you shall, or I won't say another
+      word to you. Fleda! you've grown thin! what have you been doing to
+      yourself?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing, with that particular purpose."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't care, you've done something. You have been insanely imagining
+      that it is necessary for you to be in three or four places at the same
+      time, and in the distracted effort after ubiquity you are in imminent
+      danger of being nowhere--there's nothing left of you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't wonder you were overcome at the sight of me," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you are looking charmingly for all that," Constance went on;--"so
+      charmingly that I feel a morbid sensation creeping all over me while I sit
+      regarding you. Really, when you come to us next winter if you persist in
+      being,--by way of shewing your superiority to ordinary human nature,--a
+      rose without a thorn, the rest of the flowers may all shut up at once. And
+      the rose reddens in my very face, to spite me!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is 'ordinary human nature' typified by a thorn? You give it rather a poor
+      character."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I never heard of a Thorn that didn't bear an excellent character!" said
+      Constance gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hush!" said Fleda laughing;--"I don't want to hear about Mr. Thorn.--Tell
+      me of somebody else."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I haven't said a word about Mr. Thorn!" said Constance ecstatically, "but
+      since you ask about him I will tell you. He has not acted like himself
+      since you disappeared from our horizon--that is, he has ceased to be at
+      all pointed in his attentions to me; his conversation has lost all the
+      acuteness for which I remember you admired it; he has walked Broadway in a
+      moody state of mind all winter, and grown as dull as is consistent with
+      the essential sharpness of his nature. I ought to except our last
+      interview, though, for his entreaties to mamma that she would bring you
+      home with her were piercing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was unable in spite of herself to keep from laughing, but entreated
+      that Constance would tell her of somebody else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My respected parents are at Montepoole, with all their offspring,--that
+      is, Florence and Edith,--I am at present anxiously enquired after, being
+      nobody knows where, and to be fetched by mamma this evening. Wasn't I
+      good, little Fleda, to run away from Mr. Carleton to come and spend a
+      whole day in social converse with you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Carleton!" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--O you don't know who <i>he</i> is! he's a new attraction--there's
+      been nothing like him this great while, and all New York is topsy-turvy
+      about him; the mothers are dying with anxiety and the daughters with
+      admiration; and it's too delightful to see the cool superiority with which
+      he takes it all;--like a new star that all the people are pointing their
+      telescopes at,--as Thorn said spitefully the other day. O he has turned <i>my</i>
+      head; I have looked till I cannot look at anything else. I can just manage
+      to see a rose, but my dazzled powers of vision are equal to nothing more."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Constance!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's perfectly true! Why as soon as we knew he was coming to Montepoole I
+      wouldn't let mamma rest till we all made a rush after him--and when we got
+      here first and I was afraid he wasn't coming, nothing can express the
+      state of my feelings!--But he appeared the next morning, and then I was
+      quite happy," said Constance, rising and falling in her chair on what must
+      have been ecstatic springs, for wire ones it had none.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Constance!--" said Fleda with a miserable attempt at rebuke,--"how can
+      you talk so!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And so we were all riding round here this morning and I had the
+      self-denial to stop to see you and leave Florence and the Marlboroughs to
+      monopolize him all the way home. You ought to love me for ever for it. My
+      dear Fleda!--" said Constance, clasping her hands and elevating her eyes
+      in mock ecstasy,--"if you had ever seen Mr. Carleton I--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dare say I have seen somebody as good," said Fleda quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Fleda!" said Constance, a little scornfully this time,--"you
+      haven't the least idea what you are talking about! I tell you he is an
+      Englishman--he's of one of the best families in England,--not such as you
+      ever see here but once in an age,--he's rich enough to count Mr. Thorn
+      over I don't know how many times."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't like anybody the better for being an Englishman," said Fleda;
+      "and it must be a small man whose purse will hold his measure."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Constance made an impatient gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I tell you it isn't! We knew him when we were abroad, and we know
+      what he is, and we know his mother very well. When we were in England we
+      were a week with them down at their beautiful place in ----shire,--the
+      loveliest time! You see she was over here with Mr. Carleton once before, a
+      good while ago; and mamma and papa were polite to them, and so they shewed
+      us a great deal of attention when we were in England. We had the loveliest
+      time down there you can possibly conceive. And my dear Fleda he wears such
+      a fur cloak!--lined with the most exquisite black fox."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But, Constance!" said Fleda, a little vexed though laughing,--"any man
+      may wear a fur cloak--the thing is, what is inside of it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is perfectly indifferent to me what is inside of it!" said Constance
+      ecstatically. "I can see nothing but the edges of the black fox,
+      especially when it is worn so very gracefully."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But in some cases there might be a white fox within?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is nothing of the fox about Mr. Carleton!" said Constance
+      impatiently. "If it had been anybody else I should have said he was a bear
+      two or three times; but he wears everything as he does his cloak, and
+      makes you take what he pleases from him; what I wouldn't take from anybody
+      else I know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "With a fox lining?" said Fleda laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then foxes haven't got their true character, that's all. Now I'll just
+      tell you an instance--it was at a party somewhere--it was at that tiresome
+      Mrs. Swinburne's, where the evenings are always so stupid, and there was
+      nothing worth going or staying for but the supper,--except Mr. Carleton!
+      and he never stays five minutes, except at two or three places; and it
+      drives me crazy, because they are places I don't go to very often--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Suppose you keep your wits and tell me your story?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well--don't interrupt me!--he was there, and he had taken me into the
+      supper-room, when mamma came along and took it into her head to tell me
+      not to take something--I forget what--punch, I believe,--because I had not
+      been well in the morning. Now you know, it was absurd! I was perfectly
+      well then, and I told her I shouldn't mind her; but do you believe Mr.
+      Carleton wouldn't give it to me?--absolutely told me he wouldn't, and told
+      me why, as coolly as possible, and gave me a glass of water and made me
+      drink it; and if it had been anybody else I do assure you I would have
+      flung it in his face and never spoken to him again; and I have been in
+      love with him ever since. Now <i>is</i> that tea going to be ready?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Presently. How long have you been here?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O a day or two--and it has poured with rain every single day since we
+      came, till this one;--and just think!"--said Constance with a ludicrously
+      scared face,--"I must make haste and be back again. You see, I came away
+      on principle, that I may strike with the effect of novelty when I appear
+      again; but if I stay <i>too</i> long, you know,--there is a point--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "On the principle of the ice-boats," said Fleda, "that back a little to
+      give a better blow to the ice, where they find it tough?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tough!" said Constance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Does Florence like this paragon of yours as well as you do?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know--she don't talk so much about him, but that proves nothing;
+      she's too happy to talk <i>to</i> him.--I expect our family concord will
+      be shattered by and by!" said Constance shaking her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You seem to take the prospect philosophically," said Fleda, looking
+      amused. "How long are you going to stay at the Pool?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Constance gave an expressive shrug, intimating that the deciding of that
+      question did not rest with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is to say, you are here to watch the transit of this star over the
+      meridian of Queechy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of Queechy!--of Montepoole."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very well--of Montepoole. I don't wonder that nature is exhausted. I will
+      go and see after this refection."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prettiest little meal in the world was presently set forth for the
+      two,--Fleda knew her aunt would not come down, and Hugh was yet at the
+      mill; so she led her visitor into the breakfast-room alone, Constance by
+      the way again fondly embracing her and repeating, "My dear little
+      Fleda!--how glad I am to see you!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady was apparently hungry, for there was a minute of silence while
+      the refection begun, and then Constance exclaimed, perhaps with a sudden
+      appreciation of the delicious bread and butter and cream and strawberries,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What a lovely old room this is!--and what lovely times you have here,
+      don't you, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--sometimes," Fleda said with a sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I shall tell mamma you are growing thin, and the first minute we get
+      home I shall send for you to come to us. Mrs. Thorn will be amazingly glad
+      to see you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Has she got back from Europe?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ages!--and she's been entertaining the world as hard as she could ever
+      since. I have no doubt Lewis has confided to the maternal bosom all his
+      distresses; and there never was anything like the rush that I expect will
+      be made to our greenhouse next winter. O Fleda, you should see Mr.
+      Carleton's greenhouses!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Should I?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear me! I hope mamma will come!" said Constance with a comical fidgety
+      shake of herself;--"when I think of those greenhouses I lose my
+      self-command. And the park!--Fleda, it's the loveliest thing you ever saw
+      in your life; and it's all that delightful man's doing; only he won't have
+      a geometric flower-garden, as I did everything I could think of to
+      persuade him. I pity the woman that will be his wife,--she won't have her
+      own way in a single thing; but then he will fascinate her into thinking
+      that his way is the best, so it will do just as well I suppose. Do you
+      know I can't conceive what he has come over here for? He has been here
+      before, you know, and he don't seem to me to know exactly what he means to
+      do; at least I can't find out, and I have tried."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How long has he been here?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O a month or two--since the beginning of April, I believe. He came over
+      with some friends of his--a Sir George Egerton and his family;--he is
+      going to Canada, to be established in some post there, I forget what; and
+      they are spending part of the summer here before they fix themselves at
+      the North. It is easy to see what <i>they</i> are here for,--they are
+      strangers and amusing themselves; but Mr. Carleton is at home, and <i>not</i>
+      amusing himself, at least he don't seem to be. He goes about with the
+      Egertons, but that is just for his friendship for them; and he puzzles me.
+      He don't snow whether he is going to Niagara,--he has been once
+      already--and 'perhaps' he may go to Canada,--and 'possibly' he will make a
+      journey to the West,--and I can't find out that he wants anything in
+      particular."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps he don't mean that you shall," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps he don't; but you see that aggravates my state of mind to a
+      distressing degree. And then I'm afraid he will go somewhere where I can't
+      keep watch of him!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda could not help laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps he was tired of home and came for mere weariness."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Weariness! it's my opinion he has no idea there is such a word in the
+      language,--I am certain if he heard it he would call for a dictionary the
+      next minute. Why at Carleton it seems to me he was half the time on
+      horseback, flying about from one end of the country to the other; and when
+      he is in the house he is always at work at something; it's a piece of
+      condescension to get him to attend to you at all; only when he does, my
+      dear Fleda!--he is so enchanting that you live in a state of delight till
+      next time. And yet I never could get him to pay me a compliment to this
+      minute,--I tried two or three times, and he rewarded me with some very
+      rude speeches."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Rude!" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes,--that is, they were the most graceful and fascinating things
+      possible, but they would have been rudeness in anybody else. Where <i>is</i>
+      mamma!" said Constance with another comic counterfeit of distress "My dear
+      Fleda, it's the most captivating thing to breakfast at Carleton!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have no idea the bread and butter is sweeter there than in some other
+      parts of the world," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know about the bread and butter," said Constance, "but those
+      exquisite little sugar dishes! My dear Fleda, every one has his own
+      sugar-dish and cream-ewer--the loveliest little things!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have heard of such things before," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't care about the bread and butter," said Constance; "eating is
+      immaterial, with those perfect little things right opposite to me. They
+      weren't like any you ever saw, Fleda--the sugar-bowl was just a little
+      plain oval box, with the lid on a hinge, and not a bit of chasing, only
+      the arms on the cover; like nothing I ever saw but an old-fashioned silver
+      tea-caddy; and the cream-jug a little straight up and down thing to match.
+      Mamma said they were clumsy, but they bewitched me!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think everything bewitched you," said Fleda smiling. "Can't your head
+      stand a sugar-dish and milk-cup?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Fleda, I never had your superiority to the ordinary weaknesses of
+      human nature--I can stand <i>one</i> sugar-bowl, but I confess myself
+      overcome by a dozen. How we have all wanted to see you, Fleda! and papa;
+      you have captivated papa; and he says--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never mind--don't tell me what he says," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There--that's your modesty, that everybody raves about--I wish I could
+      catch it. Fleda, where did you get that little Bible?--while I was waiting
+      for you I tried to soothe my restless anticipations with examining all the
+      things in all the rooms;--where did you get it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was given me a long while ago," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But it is real gold on the outside!--the clasps and all--do you know it?
+      it is not washed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know it," said Fleda smiling; "and it is better than gold inside."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wasn't that mamma's favourite Mr. Olmney that parted from you at the
+      gate?" said Constance after a minute's silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is he a favourite of yours too?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You must define what you mean by a favourite?" said Fleda gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, how do you like him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe everybody likes him," said Fleda, colouring and vexed at
+      herself that she could not help it. The bright eyes opposite her took note
+      of the fact with a sufficiently wide-awake glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's very good!" said Constance hugging herself, and taking a fresh
+      supply of butter,--"but don't let him know I have been to see you or he'll
+      tell you all sorts of evil things about me for fear you should innocently
+      be contaminated. Don't you like to be taken care of?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very much," said Fleda smiling,--"by people that know how."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can't bear it!" said Constance, apparently with great sincerity;--"I
+      think it is the most impertinent thing in the world people can do. I can't
+      endure it--except from--! Oh my dear Fleda! it is perfect luxury to have
+      him put a shawl round your shoulders!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda," said Earl Douglass putting his head in from the kitchen, and
+      before he said any more bobbing it frankly at Miss Evelyn, half in
+      acknowledgment of her presence and half as it seemed in apology for his
+      own,--"Fleda, will you let Barby pack up somethin' 'nother for the men's
+      lunch?--my wife would ha' done it, as she had ought to, if she wa'n't down
+      with the teeth-ache, and Catherine's away on a jig to Kenton, and the men
+      won't do so much work on nothin', and I can't say nothin' to 'em if they
+      don't; and I'd like to get that 'ere clover field down afore night--it's
+      goin' to be a fine spell o' weather. I was a goin' to try to get along
+      without it; but I believe we can't."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very well," said Fleda. "But, Mr. Douglass, you'll try the experiment of
+      curing it in cocks?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well I don't know," said Earl in a tone of very discontented
+      acquiescence,--"I don't see how anythin' should be as sweet as the sun for
+      dryin' hay--I know folks says it is, and I've heerd 'em say it is! and
+      they'll stand to it and you can't beat 'em off the notion it is; but
+      somehow or 'nother I can't seem to come into it. I know the sun makes
+      sweet hay, and I think the sun was meant to make hay, and I don't want to
+      see no sweeter hay than the sun makes; it's as good hay as you need to
+      have."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you wouldn't mind trying it for once, Mr. Douglass, just for me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll do just what you please," said he with a little exculpatory shake of
+      his head;--"'tain't my concern--it's no concern of mine--the gain or the
+      loss'll be your'n, and it's fair you should have the gain or the loss,
+      which ever on 'em you choose to have. I'll put it in cocks--how much heft
+      should be in 'em?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "About a hundred pounds--and you don't want to cut any more than you can
+      put up to-night, Mr. Douglass. We'll try it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very good! And you'll send along somethin' for the men--Barby knows,"
+      said Earl bobbing his head again intelligently at Fleda,--"there's four on
+      'em and it takes somethin' to feed 'em--workin' men'll put away a good
+      deal o' meat."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He withdrew his head and closed the door, happily for Constance, who went
+      off into a succession of ecstatic convulsions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What time of day do your eccentric hay-makers prefer for the rest of
+      their meals, if they lunch at three o'clock? I never heard anything so
+      original in my life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is lunch number two," said Fleda smiling; "lunch number one is about
+      ten in the morning; and dinner at twelve."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And do they gladden their families with their presence at the other
+      ordinary convivial occasions?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what do they have for lunch?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Varieties. Bread and cheese, and pies, and Quirlcakes; at every other
+      meal they have meat."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Horrid creatures!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is only during haying and harvesting."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you have to see to all this! poor little Fleda! I declare, if I was
+      you--I'd do something!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda quietly, "Mrs. Douglass and Barby manage the lunch
+      between them. I am not at all desperate."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But to have to talk to these people!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Earl Douglass is not a very polished specimen," said Fleda smiling, "but
+      I assure you in some of 'these people' there is an amount of goodness and
+      wit, and shrewd practical sense and judgment, that would utterly distance
+      many of those that would call them bears."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Constance looked a good deal more than she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear little Fleda! you're too sensible for anything; but as I don't
+      like sense from anybody but Mr. Carleton I would rather look at you in the
+      capacity of a rose, smiling a gentle rebuke upon me while I talk
+      nonsense."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she did talk, and Fleda did smile and laugh, in spite of herself, till
+      Mrs. Evelyn and her other daughters made their appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Barby said she thought they'd have talked the house down; and she
+      expected there'd be nothing left of Fleda after all the kissing she got.
+      But it was not too much for Fleda's pleasure. Mrs. Evelyn was so tenderly
+      kind, and Miss Evelyn as caressing as her sister had been, and Edith, who
+      was but a child, so joyously delighted, that Fleda's eyes were swimming in
+      happiness as she looked from one to the other, and she could hardly answer
+      kisses and questions fast enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Them is good-looking enough girls," said Barby as Fleda came back to the
+      house after seeing them to their carriage,--"if they knowed how to dress
+      themselves. I never see this fly away one 'afore--I knowed the old one as
+      soon as I clapped my eyes onto her. Be they stopping at the Pool again?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well when are you going up there to see 'em?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Fleda quietly. And then sighing as the thought of her
+      aunt came into her head she went off to find her and bring her down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's brow was sobered, and her spirits were in a flutter that was not
+      all of happiness and that threatened not to settle down quietly. But as
+      she went slowly up the stairs faith's hand was laid, even as her own
+      grasped the balusters, on the promise,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his
+      covenant and his testimonies."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She set faith's foot down on those sure stepping-stones; and she opened
+      her aunt's door and looked in with a face that was neither troubled nor
+      afraid.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="30"></a>Chapter XXX.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        <i>Ant</i>. He misses not much.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        <i>Seb</i>. No; he doth but mistake the truth totally.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Tempest.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      It was the very next morning that several ladies and gentlemen were
+      gathered on the piazza of the hotel at Montepoole, to brace minds or
+      appetites with the sweet mountain air while waiting for breakfast. As they
+      stood there a young countryman came by bearing on his hip a large basket
+      of fruit and vegetables.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O look at those lovely strawberries!" exclaimed Constance Evelyn running
+      down the steps.--"Stop if you please--where are you going with these?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Marm!" responded the somewhat startled carrier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are you going to do with them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ain't going to do nothin' with 'em."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Whose are they? Are they for sale?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, 'twon't deu no harm, as I know," said the young man making a virtue
+      of necessity, for the fingers of Constance were already hovering over the
+      dainty little leaf-strewn baskets and her eyes complacently searching for
+      the most promising;--"I ha'n't got nothin' to deu with 'em."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Constance!" said Mrs. Evelyn from the piazza,--"don't take that! I dare
+      say they are for Mr. Sweet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, mamma!--" said Constance with great equanimity,--"Mr. Sweet gets
+      them for me, and I only save him the trouble of spoiling them. My taste
+      leads me to prefer the simplicity of primitive arrangements this morning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Young man!" called out the landlady's reproving voice, "won't you never
+      recollect to bring that basket round the back way?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Tain't no handier than this way," said Philetus, with so much
+      belligerent demonstration that the landlady thought best in presence of
+      her guests to give over the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where do you get them?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How?--" said Philetus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where do they come from? Are they fresh picked?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just afore I started."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Started from where?" said a gentleman standing by Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "From Mr. Rossitur's down to Queechy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Rossitur's!" said Mrs. Evelyn;--"does he send them here?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He doos not," said Philetus;--"he doosn't keep to hum for a long spell."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who does send them then?" said Constance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who doos? It's Miss Fliddy Ringgan."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mamma!" exclaimed Constance looking up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What does she have to do with it?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There don't nobody else have nothin' to deu with it--I guess she's pretty
+      much the hull," said her coadjutor. "Her and me was a picking 'em afore
+      sunrise."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All that basketful!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Tain't all strawberries--there's garden sass up to the top."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And does she send that too?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She sends that teu," said Philetus succinctly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But hasn't she any help in taking care of the garden?" said Constance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes marm--I calculate to help considerable in the back garden--she won't
+      let no one into the front where she grows her posies."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But where is Mr. Hugh?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's to hum."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But has he nothing to do with all this? does he leave it all to his
+      cousin?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's to the mill."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And Miss Ringgan manages farm and garden and all?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She doos," said Philetus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And receiving a gratuity which he accepted without demonstration of any
+      kind whatever, the basket-bearer at length released moved off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Poor Fleda!" said Miss Evelyn as he disappeared with his load.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She's a very clever girl," said Mrs. Evelyn dismissing the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She's too lovely for anything!" said Constance. "Mr. Carleton,--if you
+      will just imagine we are in China, and introduct a pair of familiar
+      chop-sticks into this basket, I shall be repaid for the loss of a
+      strawberry by the expression of ecstasy which will immediately spread
+      itself over your features. I intend to patronize the natural mode of
+      eating in future. I find the ends of my fingers decidedly odoriferous."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled a little as he complied with the young lady's invitation, but
+      the expression of ecstasy did not come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are Mr. Rossitur's circumstances so much reduced?" he said, drawing
+      nearer to Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know them!" exclaimed both the daughters at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I knew Mrs. Rossitur very well some years ago, when she was in Paris."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They are all broken to pieces," said Mrs. Evelyn, as Mr. Carleton's eye
+      went back to her for his answer;--"Mr. Rossitur failed and lost
+      everything--bankrupt--a year or two after they came home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what has he been doing since?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know!--trying to farm it here; but I am afraid he has not
+      succeeded well--I am afraid not. They don't look like it. Mrs. Rossitur
+      will not see anybody, and I don't believe they have done any more than
+      struggle for a living since they came here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is Mr. Rossitur now?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is at the West somewhere--Fleda tells me he is engaged in some
+      agencies there; but I doubt," said Mrs. Evelyn shaking her head
+      compassionately,--"there is more in the name of it than anything else. He
+      has gone down hill sadly since his misfortunes. I am very sorry for them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And his niece takes care of his farm in the meantime?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know her?" asked both the Miss Evelyns again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can hardly say that," he replied. "I had such a pleasure formerly. Do I
+      understand that <i>she</i> is the person to fill Mr. Rossitur's place when
+      he is away?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So she says."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And so she acts," said Constance. "I wish you had heard her yesterday. It
+      was beyond everything. We were conversing very amicably, regarding each
+      other through a friendly vista formed by the sugar-bowl and tea-pot, when
+      a horrid man, that looked as if he had slept all his life in a hay-cock
+      and only waked up to turn it over, stuck his head in and immediately
+      introduced a clover-field; and Fleda and he went to tumbling about the
+      cocks till I do assure you I was deluded into a momentary belief that
+      hay-making was the principal end of human nature, and looked upon myself
+      as a burden to society; and after I had recovered my locality and ventured
+      upon a sentence of gentle commiseration for her sufferings, Fleda went off
+      into a eulogium upon the intelligence of hay-makers in general and the
+      strength of mind barbarians are universally known to possess."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The manner still more than the matter of this speech was beyond the
+      withstanding of any good-natured muscles, though the gentleman's smile was
+      a grave one and quickly lost in gravity. Mrs. Evelyn laughed and reproved
+      in a breath; but the laugh was admiring and the reproof was stimulative.
+      The bright eye of Constance danced in return with the mischievous delight
+      of a horse that has slipped his bridle and knows you can't catch him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And this has been her life ever since Mr. Rossitur lost his property?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Entirely,--sacrificed!--" said Mrs. Evelyn, with a compassionately
+      resigned air;--"education, advantages and everything given up; and set
+      down here where she has seen nobody from year's end to year's end but the
+      country people about--very good people--but not the kind of people she
+      ought to have been brought up among."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh mamma!" said the eldest Miss Evelyn in a deprecatory tone,--"you
+      shouldn't talk so--it isn't right--I am sure she is very nice--nicer now
+      than anybody else I know; and clever too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nice!" said Edith. "I wish <i>I</i> had such a sister!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is a good girl--a very good girl," said Mrs. Evelyn, in a tone which
+      would have deterred any one from wishing to make her acquaintance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And happy, mamma--Fleda don't look miserable--she seems perfectly happy
+      and contented!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"she has got accustomed to this state of
+      things--it's her life--she makes delicious bread and puddings for her
+      aunt, and raises vegetables for market, and oversees her uncle's farmers,
+      and it isn't a hardship to her; she finds her happiness in it. She is a
+      very good girl! but she might have been made something much better than a
+      farmer's wife."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You may set your mind at rest on that subject, mamma," said Constance,
+      still using her chop-sticks with great complacency;--"it's my opinion that
+      the farmer is not in existence who is blessed with such a conjugal
+      futurity. I think Fleda's strong pastoral tastes are likely to develope
+      themselves in a new direction."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Evelyn looked with a partial smile at the pretty features which the
+      business of eating the strawberries displayed in sundry novel and
+      picturesque points of view; and asked what she meant?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know,--" said Constance, intent upon her basket,--"I feel a
+      friend's distress for Mr. Thorn--it's all your doing, mamma,--you won't be
+      able to look him in the face when we have Fleda next fall--I am sure I
+      shall not want to look at his! He'll be too savage for anything."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Thorn!" said Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," said Mrs. Evelyn in an indulgent tone,--"he was very attentive to
+      her last winter when she was with us, but she went away before anything
+      was decided. I don't think he has forgotten her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shouldn't think anybody could forget her," said Edith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am confident he would be here at this moment," said Constance, "if he
+      wasn't in London."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what is 'all mamma's doing,' Constance?" inquired her sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The destruction of the peace of the whole family of Thorns--shouldn't
+      sleep sound in my bed if I were she with such a reflection. I look forward
+      to heart-rending scenes,--with a very disturbed state of mind."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what have I done, my child?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Didn't you introduce your favourite Mr. Olmney to Miss Ringgan last
+      summer? I don't know!--her native delicacy shrunk from making any
+      disclosures, and of course the tongue of friendship is silent,--but they
+      were out ages yesterday while I was waiting for her, and their parting at
+      the gate was--I feel myself unequal to the task of describing it!" said
+      Constance ecstatically;--"and she was in the most elevated tone of mind
+      during our whole interview afterwards, and took all my brilliant remarks
+      with as much coolness as if they had been drops of rain--more, I presume,
+      considering that it was hay-time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you see him?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Only at that impracticable distance, mamma; but I introduced his name
+      afterwards in my usual happy manner and I found that Miss Ringgan's cheeks
+      were by no means indifferent to it. I didn't dare go any further."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very glad of it! I hope it is so!" said Mrs. Evelyn energetically.
+      "It would be a most excellent match. He is a charming young man and would
+      make her very happy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are exciting gloomy feelings in Mr. Carleton's mind, mamma, by your
+      felicitous suggestions. Mr. Carleton, did your ears receive a faint
+      announcement of ham and eggs which went quite through and through mine
+      just now?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He bowed and handed the young lady in; but Constance declared that though
+      he sat beside her and took care of her at breakfast he had on one of his
+      intangible fits which drove her to the last extreme of impatience, and
+      captivation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun was not much more than two hours high the next morning when a
+      rider was slowly approaching Mr. Rossitur's house from the bridge, walking
+      his horse like a man who wished to look well at all he was passing. He
+      paused behind a clump of locusts and rose-acacias in the corner of the
+      courtyard as a figure bonneted and gloved came out of the house and began
+      to be busy among the rose-bushes. Another figure presently appeared at the
+      hall-door and called out,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, Barby--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This second voice was hardly raised, but it came from so much nearer that
+      the words could be distinctly heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Skillcorn wants to know if you're going to fix the flowers for him to
+      carry?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They're not ready, and it won't do for him to vait--Mr. Sweet must send
+      for them if he wants them. Philetus must make haste back, for you know Mr.
+      Douglass wants him to help in the barn meadow. Lucas won't be here and now
+      the weather is so fine I want to make haste with the hay."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, will you have the samp for breakfast?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--we'll keep that for dinner. I'll come in and poach some eggs,
+      Barby,--if you'll make me some thin pieces of toast--and call me when it's
+      time. Thin, Barby."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gentleman turned his horse and galloped back to Montepoole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some disappointment was created among a portion of Mr. Sweet's guests that
+      afternoon by the intelligence that Mr. Carleton purposed setting off the
+      next morning to join his English friends at Saratoga on their way to the
+      falls and Canada. Which purpose was duly carried into effect.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="31"></a>Chapter XXXI.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        With your leave, sir, an' there were no more men living upon the face of
+        the earth, I should not fancy him, by St. George.--Every Man Out of His
+        Humour.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      October had come; and a fair season and a fine harvest had enabled Fleda
+      to ease her mind by sending a good remittance to Dr. Gregory. The family
+      were still living upon her and Hugh's energies. Mr. Rossitur talked of
+      coming home, that was all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It sometimes happened that a pause in the urgency of business permitted
+      Hugh to take a day's holiday. One of these falling soon after the frosts
+      had opened the burrs of the chestnut trees and the shells of the
+      hickories, Fleda seized upon it for a nutting frolic. They took Philetus
+      and went up to the fine group of trees on the mountain, the most difficult
+      to reach and the best worth reaching of all their nut wood. The sport was
+      very fine; and after spoiling the trees Philetus was left to "shuck" and
+      bring home a load of the fruit; while Fleda and Hugh took their way slowly
+      down the mountain. She stopped him, as usual, on the old lookout place.
+      The leaves were just then in their richest colouring; and the October sky
+      in its strong vitality seemed to fill all inanimate nature with the breath
+      of lile. If ever, then on that day, to the fancy, "the little hills
+      rejoiced on every side." The woods stood thick with honours, and earth lay
+      smiling under the tokens of the summer's harvest and the promise for the
+      coming year; and the wind came in gusts over the lower country and up the
+      hill-side with a hearty good-will that blew away all vapours, physical and
+      mental, from its path, bidding everything follow its example and be up and
+      doing. Fleda drew a long breath or two that seemed to recognize its
+      freshening power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus17.jpg"><img src="images/illus17.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="Philetus was left to 'shuck' and bring home a load of the fruit."
+      title="Philetus was left to 'shuck' and bring home a load of the fruit." /><br />
+      Philetus was left to "shuck" and bring home a load of the fruit.</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How long it seems," she said,--"how very long--since I was here with Mr.
+      Carleton;--just nine years ago. How changed everything is! I was a little
+      child then. It seems such an age ago!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is very odd he didn't come to see us," said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He did--don't you know?--the very next day after we heard he was
+      here--when most unluckily I was up at aunt Miriam's."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should think he might have come again, considering what friends you
+      used to be."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dare say he would if he had not left Montepoole so soon. But dear Hugh!
+      I was a mere child--how could he remember me much."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You remember him," said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah but I have good reason. Besides I never forget anything. I would have
+      given a great deal to see him--if I had it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish the Evelyns had staid longer," said Hugh. "I think you have wanted
+      something to brighten you up. They did you a great deal of good last year.
+      I am afraid all this taking care of Philetus and Earl Douglass is too much
+      for you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda gave him a very bright smile, half affection, half fun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you admire my management?" said she. "Because I do. Philetus is
+      firmly persuaded that he is an invaluable assistant to me in the mystery
+      of gardening; and the origin of Earl Douglass's new ideas is so enveloped
+      in mist that he does not himself know where they come from. It was rich to
+      hear him the other day descanting to Lucas upon the evil effects of
+      earthing up corn and the advantages of curing hay in cocks, as to both
+      which matters Lucas is a thorough unbeliever, and Earl was a year ago."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But that doesn't hinder your looking pale and thin, and a great deal
+      soberer than I like to see you," said Hugh. "You want a change, I know. I
+      don't know how you are to get it. I wish they would send for you to New
+      York again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know that I should want to go if they did," said Fleda. "They
+      don't raise my spirits, Hugh. I am amused sometimes,--I can't help
+      that,--but such excessive gayety rather makes me shrink within myself; I
+      am too out of tone with it. I never feel more absolutely quiet than
+      sometimes when I am laughing at Constance Evelyn's mad sallies--and
+      sometimes I cannot laugh at them. I do not know what they must think of
+      me; it is what they can have no means of understanding."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish you didn't understand it either, Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you shouldn't say that. I am happier than they are, now, Hugh,--now
+      that you are better,--with all their means of happiness. They know nothing
+      of our quiet enjoyments, they must live in a whirl or they would think
+      they are not living at all, and I do not believe that all New York can
+      give them the real pleasure that I have in such a day as this. They would
+      see almost nothing in all this beauty that my eyes 'drink in,' as Cowper
+      says; and they would be certain to quarrel with the wind, that to me is
+      like the shake of an old friend's hand. Delicious!--" said Fleda, at the
+      wind rewarded this eulogium with a very hearty shake indeed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe you would make friends with everything, Fleda," said Hugh
+      laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The wind is always that to me," said Fleda,--"not always in such a
+      cheerful mood as to-day, though. It talks to me often of a thousand
+      old-time things and sighs over them with me--a most sympathizing
+      friend!--but to day he invites me to a waltz--Come!----"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And pulling Hugh after her away she went down the rocky path, with a step
+      too light to care for the stones; the little feet capering down the
+      mountain with a disdain of the ground that made Hugh smile to see her; and
+      eyes dancing for company; till they reached the lower woodland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A most, spirited waltz!" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And a most slack partner. Why didn't you keep me company?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I never was made for waltzing," said Hugh shaking his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not to the tune of the North wind? That has done me good, Hugh."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So I should judge, by your cheeks."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Poverty need not always make people poor," said Fleda taking breath and
+      his arm together. "You and I are rich, Hugh."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And our riches cannot take to themselves wings and flyaway," said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, but besides those riches--there are the pleasures of the eye and the
+      mind that one may enjoy everywhere--everywhere in the country at
+      least--unless poverty bear one down very hard; and they are some of the
+      purest and most satisfying of any. O the blessing of a good education! how
+      it makes one independent of circumstances."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And circumstances are education too," said Hugh smiling. "I dare say we
+      should not appreciate our mountains and woods so well if we had had our
+      old plenty of everything else."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I always loved them," said Fleda. "But what good company they have been
+      to us for years past, Hugh;--to me especially; I have more reason to love
+      them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They walked on quietly and soberly to the brow of the tableland, where
+      they parted; Hugh being obliged to go home, and Fleda wishing to pay a
+      visit to her aunt Miriam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned off alone to take the way to the high road and went softly on,
+      no longer certainly in the momentary spirits with which she had shaken
+      hands with the wind and skipped down the mountain; but feeling, and
+      thankful that she felt, a cheerful patience to tread the dusty highway of
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old lady had been rather ailing, and from one or two expressions she
+      had let fall Fleda could not help thinking that she looked upon her
+      ailments with a much more serious eye than anybody else thought was called
+      for. It did not, however, appear to-day. She was not worse, and Fleda's
+      slight anxious feeling could find nothing to justify it, if it were not
+      the very calm and quietly happy face and manner of the old lady; and that
+      if it had something to alarm, did much more to sooth. Fleda had sat with
+      her a long time, patience and cheerfulness all the while unconsciously
+      growing in her company; when catching up her bonnet with a sudden haste
+      very unlike her usual collectedness of manner Fleda kissed her aunt and
+      was rushing away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But stop!--where are you going, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Home, aunt Miriam--I must--don't keep me!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what are you going that way for? you can't go home that way?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes I can."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can cross the blackberry hill behind the barn and then over the east
+      hill, and then there's nothing but the water-cress meadow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I sha'n't let you go that way alone--sit down and tell me what you
+      mean,--what is this desperate hurry?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But with equal precipitation Fleda had cast her bonnet out of sight behind
+      the table, and the next moment turned with the utmost possible quietness
+      to shake hands with Mr. Olmney. Aunt Miriam had presence of mind enough to
+      make no remark and receive the young gentleman with her usual dignity and
+      kindness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He staid some time, but Fleda's hurry seemed to have forsaken her. She had
+      seized upon an interminable long grey stocking her aunt was knitting, and
+      sat in the corner working at it most diligently, without raising her eyes
+      unless spoken to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you give yourself no rest at home or abroad, Miss Fleda?" said the
+      gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Put that stocking down, Fleda," said her aunt, "it is in no hurry."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I like to do it, aunt Miriam."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she felt with warming cheeks that she did not like to do it with two
+      people sitting still and looking at her. The gentleman presently rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't go till we have had tea, Mr. Olmney," said Mrs. Plumfield.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thank you, ma'am,--I cannot stay, I believe,--unless Miss Fleda will let
+      me take care of her down the hill by and by."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thank you, Mr. Olmney," said Fleda, "but I am not going home before
+      night, unless they send for me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid," said he looking at her, "that the agricultural turn has
+      proved an over-match for your energies."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The farm don't complain of me, does it?" said Fleda, looking up at him
+      with a comic grave expression of countenance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said he laughing,--"certainly not; but--if you will forgive me for
+      saying so--I think you complain of it,--tacitly,--and that will raise a
+      good many complaints in other quarters--if you do not take care of
+      yourself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook hands and left them; and Mrs. Plumfield sat silently looking at
+      Fleda, who on her part looked at nothing but the grey stocking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is all this, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is what, aunt Miriam?" said Fleda, picking up a stitch with
+      desperate diligence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why did you want to run away from Mr. Olmney?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I didn't wish to be delayed--I wanted to get home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then why wouldn't you let him go home with you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I liked better to go alone, aunt Miriam."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you like him, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly, aunt Miriam--very much.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think he likes you, Fleda," said her aunt smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very sorry for it," said Fleda with great gravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Plumfield looked at her for a few minutes in silence and then said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda, love, come over here and sit by me and tell me what you mean. Why
+      are you sorry? It has given me a great deal of pleasure to think of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda did not budge from her seat or her stocking and seemed
+      tongue-tied. Mrs. Plumfield pressed for an answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because, aunt Miriam," said Fleda, with the prettiest red cheeks in the
+      world but speaking very clearly and steadily,--"my liking only goes to a
+      point which I am afraid will not satisfy either him or you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But why?--it will go further."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No ma'am."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why not? why do you say so?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because I must if you ask me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what can be more excellent and estimable, Fleda?--who could be more
+      worth liking? I should have thought he would just please you. He is one of
+      the most lovely young men I have ever seen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear aunt Miriam!" said Fleda looking up beseechingly,--"why should we
+      talk about it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because I want to understand you, Fleda, and to be sure that you
+      understand yourself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do," said Fleda, quietly and with a quivering lip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is there that you dislike about Mr. Olmney?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing in the world, aunt Miriam."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then what is the reason you cannot like him enough?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because, aunt Miriam," said Fleda speaking in desperation,--"there isn't
+      enough of him. He is <i>very</i> good and excellent in every way--nobody
+      feels that more than I do--I don't want to say a word against him--but I
+      do not think he has a very strong mind; and he isn't cultivated enough."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you cannot have everything, Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No ma'am--I don't expect it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid you have set up too high a standard for yourself," said Mrs.
+      Plumfield, looking rather troubled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't think that is possible, aunt Miriam."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I am afraid it will prevent your ever liking anybody?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It will not prevent my liking the friends I have already--it may prevent
+      my leaving them for somebody else," said Fleda, with a gravity that was
+      touching in its expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But Mr. Olmney is sensible,--and well educated."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, but his tastes are not. He could not at all enter into a great many
+      things that give me the most pleasure. I do not think he quite understands
+      above half of what I say to him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you sure? I know he admires you, Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah, but that is only half enough, you see, aunt Miriam, unless I could
+      admire him too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Plumfield looked at her in some difficulty;--Mr. Olmney was not the
+      only one, clearly, whose powers of comprehension were not equal to the
+      subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda," said her aunt inquiringly,--"is there anybody else that has put
+      Mr. Olmney out of your head?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nobody in the world!" exclaimed Fleda with a frank look and tone of
+      astonishment at the question, and cheeks colouring as promptly. "How could
+      you ask?--But he never was in my head, aunt Miriam."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Thorn?" said Mrs. Plumfield.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Thorn!" said Fleda indignantly. "Don't you know me better than that,
+      aunt Miriam? But you do not know him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe I know you, dear Fleda, but I heard he had paid you a great
+      deal of attention last year; and you would not have been the first
+      unsuspecting nature that has been mistaken."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was silent, flushed and disturbed; and Mrs. Plumfield was silent and
+      meditating; when Hugh came in. He came to fetch Fleda home. Dr. Gregory
+      had arrived. In haste again Fleda sought her bonnet, and exchanging a more
+      than usually wistful and affectionate kiss and embrace with her aunt, set
+      off with Hugh down the hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh had a great deal to say to her all the way home, of which Fleda's
+      ears alone took the benefit, for her understanding received none of it;
+      and when she at last came into the breakfast room where the doctor was
+      sitting, the fact of his being there was the only one which had entered
+      her mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Here she is!--I declare!" said the doctor, holding her back to look at
+      her after the first greetings had passed,--"I'll be hanged if you ain't
+      handsome!--Now what's the use of pinking your cheeks any more at that, as
+      if you didn't know it before?--eh?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will always do my best to deserve your good opinion, sir," said Fleda
+      laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well sit down now," said he shaking his head, "and pour me out a cup of
+      tea--your mother can't make it right."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And sipping his tea, for some time the old doctor sat listening to Mrs.
+      Rossitur and eating bread and butter; saying little, but casting a very
+      frequent glance at the figure opposite him behind the tea-board.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid," said he after a while, "that your care for my good opinion
+      won't outlast an occasion. Is <i>that</i> the way you look for every day?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The colour came with the smile; but the old doctor looked at her in a way
+      that made the tears come too. He turned his eyes to Mrs. Rossitur for an
+      explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is well," said Mrs. Rossitur fondly,--"she has been very well--except
+      her old headaches now and then;--I think she has grown rather thin
+      lately."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thin!" said the old doctor,--"etherealized to a mere abstract of herself;
+      only that is a very bad figure, for an abstract should have all the bone
+      and muscle of the subject; and I should say you had little left but pure
+      spirit. You are the best proof I ever saw of the principle of the
+      homoeopaths--I see now that though a little corn may fatten a man, a great
+      deal may be the death of him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I have tried it both ways, uncle Orrin," said Fleda laughing. "I
+      ought to be a happy medium between plethora and starvation. I am pretty
+      substantial, what there is of me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Substantial!" said the doctor; "you look as substantial a personage as
+      your old friend the 'faire Una,' just about. Well prepare yourself, gentle
+      Saxon, to ride home with me the day after to-morrow. I'll try a little
+      humanizing regimen with you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't think that is possible, uncle Orrin," said Fleda gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We'll talk about the possibility afterwards--at present all you have to
+      do is to get ready. If you raise difficulties you will find me a very
+      Hercules to clear them away--I'm substantial enough I can tell you--so
+      it's just as well to spare yourself and me the trouble."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There are no difficulties," Mrs. Rossitur and Hugh said both at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I knew there weren't. Put a pair or two of clean stockings in your
+      trunk--that's all you want--Mrs. Pritchard and I will find the rest.
+      There's the people in Fourteenth street wants you the first of November
+      and I want you all the time till then, and longer too.--Stop--I've got a
+      missive of some sort here for you--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He foisted out of his breast-pocket a little package of notes; one from
+      Mrs. Evelyn and one from Florence begging Fleda to come to them at the
+      time the doctor had named; the third from Constance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My darling little Fleda,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am dying to see you--so pack up and come down with Dr. Gregory if the
+      least spark of regard for me is slumbering in your breast--Mamma and
+      Florence are writing to beg you,--but though an insignificant member of
+      the family, considering that instead of being 'next to head' only little
+      Edith prevents my being at the less dignified end of this branch of the
+      social system,--I could not prevail upon myself to let the representations
+      of my respected elders go unsupported by mine--especially as I felt
+      persuaded of the superior efficacy of the motives I had it in my power to
+      present to your truly philanthropical mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am in a state of mind that baffles description--Mr. Carleton is going
+      home!!----
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have not worn earrings in my ears for a fortnight--my personal
+      appearance is become a matter of indifference to me--any description of
+      mental exertion is excruciating--I sit constantly listening for the
+      ringing of the door-bell, and when it sounds I rush frantically to the
+      head of the staircase and look over to see who it is--the mere sight of
+      pen and ink excites delirious ideas--judge what I suffer in writing to
+      you--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To make the matter worse (if it could be) I have been informed privately
+      that he is going home to crown at the altar of Hymen an old attachment to
+      one of the loveliest of all England's daughters. Conceive the complication
+      of my feelings!----
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing is left me but the resources of friendship--so come darling
+      Fleda, before a barrier of ice interposes itself between my chilled heart
+      and your sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Thorn's state would move my pity if I were capable of being moved by
+      anything--by this you will comprehend he is returned. He has been informed
+      by somebody that there is a wolf in sheep's clothing prowling about
+      Queechy, and his head is filled with the idea that you have fallen a
+      victim, of which in my calmer moments I have in vain endeavoured to
+      dispossess him--Every morning we are wakened up at an unseasonable hour by
+      a furious ringing at the door-bell--Joe Manton pulls off his nightcap and
+      slowly descending the stairs opens the door and finds Mr. Thorn, who
+      enquires distractedly whether Miss Ringgan has arrived; and being answered
+      in the negative gloomily walks off towards the East river--The state of
+      anxiety in which his mother is thereby kept is rapidly depriving her of
+      all her flesh--but we have directed Joe lately to reply 'no sir, but she
+      is expected,'--upon which Mr. Thorn regularly smiles faintly and rewards
+      the 'fowling piece' with a quarter dollar--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So make haste, dear Fleda, or I shall feel that we are acting the part of
+      innocent swindlers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "C.E."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was but one voice at home on the point whether Fleda should go. So
+      she went.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="32"></a>Chapter XXXII.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        <i>Host.</i> Now, my young guest! methinks you're allycholy; I pray you,
+        why is it?
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        <i>Jul</i>. Marry, mine host, because I cannot be merry.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Two Gentlemen of Verona.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Some nights after their arrival the doctor and Fleda were seated at tea in
+      the little snug old-fashioned back parlour, where the doctor's nicest of
+      housekeepers, Mrs. Pritchard, had made it ready for them. In general Mrs.
+      Pritchard herself poured it out for the doctor, but she descended most
+      cheerfully from her post of elevation whenever Fleda was there to fill it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor and Fleda sat cosily looking at each other across the toast and
+      chipped beef, their glances grazing the tea-urn which was just on one side
+      of their range of vision. A comfortable Liverpool-coal fire in a state of
+      repletion burned away indolently and gave everything else in the room
+      somewhat of its own look of sousy independence. Except perhaps the
+      delicate creature at whom the doctor between sips of his tea took rather
+      wistful observations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When are you going to Mrs. Evelyn?" he said breaking the silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They say next week, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shall be glad of it!" said the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Glad of it?" said Fleda smiling. "Do you want to get rid of me, uncle
+      Orrin?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes!" said he. "This isn't the right place for you. You are too much
+      alone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No indeed, sir. I have been reading voraciously, and enjoying myself as
+      much as possible. I would quite as lieve be here as there, putting you out
+      of the question."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wouldn't as lieve have you," said he shaking his head. "What were you
+      musing about before tea? your face gave me the heart-ache."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My face!" said Fleda, smiling, while an instant flush of the eyes
+      answered him,--"what was the matter with my face?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is the very thing I want to know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Before tea?--I was only thinking,--" said Fleda, her look going back to
+      the fire from association,--"thinking of different things--not
+      disagreeably--taking a kind of bird's-eye view of things, as one does
+      sometimes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't believe you ever take other than a bird's-eye view of anything,"
+      said her uncle. "But what were you viewing just then, my little Saxon?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was thinking of them at home," said Fleda smiling thoughtfully,--"and I
+      somehow had perched myself on a point of observation and was taking one of
+      those wider views which are always rather sobering."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Views of what?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of life, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As how?" said the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How near the end is to the beginning, and how short the space between,
+      and how little the ups and downs of it will matter if we take the right
+      road and get home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pshaw!" said the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda knew him too well to take his interjection otherwise than most
+      kindly. And indeed though he whirled round and eat his toast at the fire
+      discontentedly, his look came back to her after a little with even more
+      than its usual gentle appreciation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you suppose you have come to New York for?" said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To see you, sir, in the first place, and the Evelyns in the second."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And who in the third?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid the third place is vacant," said Fleda smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are, eh? Well--I don't know--but I know that I have been inquired of
+      by two several and distinct people as to your coming. Ah, you needn't open
+      your bright eyes at me, because I shall not tell you. Only let me
+      ask,--you have no notion of fencing off my Queechy rose with a hedge of
+      blackthorn,--or anything of that kind, have you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have no notion of any fences at all, except invisible ones, sir," said
+      Fleda, laughing and colouring very prettily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well those are not American fences," said the doctor, "so I suppose I am
+      safe enough. Whom did I see you out riding with yesterday?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was with Mrs. Evelyn," said Fleda,--"I didn't want to go, but I
+      couldn't very well help myself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mrs. Evelyn.--Mrs. Evelyn wasn't driving, was she?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir; Mr. Thorn was driving."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought so. Have you seen your old friend Mr. Carleton yet?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know him uncle Orrin?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why shouldn't I? What's the difficulty of knowing people? Have you seen
+      him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But how did you know that he was an old friend of mine?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Question?--" said the doctor. "Hum--well, I won't tell you--so there's
+      the answer. Now will you answer me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have not seen him, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Haven't met him in all the times you have been to Mrs. Evelyn's?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir. I have been there but once in the evening, uncle Orrin. He is
+      just about sailing for England."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, you're going there to-night, aren't you? Run and bundle yourself up
+      and I'll take you there before I begin my work."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a small party that evening at Mrs. Evelyn's. Fleda was very
+      early. She ran up to the first floor,--rooms lighted and open, but nobody
+      there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda Ringgan," called out the voice of Constance from over the
+      stairs,--"is that you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well just wait till I come down to you.--My darling little Fleda, it's
+      delicious of you to come so early. Now just tell me,--am I captivating?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well,--I retain self-possession," said Fleda. "I cannot tell about the
+      strength of head of other people."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You wretched little creature!--Fleda, don't you admire my hair?--it's new
+      style, my dear,--just come out,--the Delancys brought it out with
+      them--Eloise Delancy taught it us--isn't it graceful? Nobody in New York
+      has it yet, except the Delancys and we."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you know but they have taught somebody else?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I won't talk to you!--Don't you like it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not sure that I do not like you in your ordinary way better."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Constance made a gesture of impatience, and then pulled Fleda after her
+      into the drawing-rooms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come in here--I won't waste the elegancies of my toilet upon your dull
+      perceptions--come here and let me shew you some flowers--aren't those
+      lovely? This bunch came to-day, 'for Miss Evelyn,' so Florence will have
+      it it is hers, and it's very mean of her, for I am perfectly certain it is
+      mine--it's come from somebody who wasn't enlightened on the subject of my
+      family circle and has innocently imagined that <i>two</i> Miss Evelyns
+      could not belong to the same one! I know the floral representatives of all
+      Florence's dear friends and admirers, and this isn't from any of them--I
+      have been distractedly endeavouring all day to find who it came from, for
+      if I don't I can't take the least comfort in it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you might enjoy the flowers for their own sake, I should think," said
+      Fleda, breathing the sweetness of myrtle and heliotrope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No I can't, for I have all the time the association of some horrid
+      creature they might have come from, you know; but it will do just as well
+      to humbug people--I shall make Cornelia Schenck believe that this came
+      from my dear Mr. Carleton!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No you won't, Constance," said Fleda gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear little Fleda, I shock you, don't I? but I sha'n't tell any
+      lies--I shall merely expressively indicate a particular specimen and say,
+      'My dear Cornelia, do you perceive that this is an English rose?'--and
+      then it's none of my business, you know, what she believes--and she will
+      be dying with curiosity and despair all the rest of the evening."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shouldn't think there would be much pleasure in that, I confess," said
+      Fleda gravely. "How very ungracefully and stiffly those are made up!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear little Queechy rose?" said Constance impatiently, "you are,
+      pardon me, as fresh as possible. They can't cut the flowers with long
+      stems, you know,--the gardeners would be ruined. That is perfectly
+      elegant--it must have cost at least ten dollars. My dear little Fleda!"
+      said Constance capering off before the long pier-glass,--"I am afraid I am
+      not captivating!--Do you think it would be an improvement if I put drops
+      in my ears?--or one curl behind them? I don't know which Mr. Carleton
+      likes best!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And with her head first on one side and then on the other she stood before
+      the glass looking at herself and Fleda by turns with such a comic
+      expression of mock doubt and anxiety that no gravity but her own could
+      stand it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is a silly girl, Fleda, isn't she?" said Mrs. Evelyn coming up behind
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mamma!--am I captivating?" cried Constance wheeling round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mother's smile said "Very!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda is wishing she were out of the sphere of my influence,
+      mamma.--Wasn't Mr. Olmney afraid of my corrupting you?" she said with a
+      sudden pull-up in front of Fleda.--"My blessed stars!--there's somebody's
+      voice I know.--Well I believe it is true that a rose without thorns is a
+      desideratum.--Mamma, is Mrs. Thorn's turban to be an invariable <i>pendant</i>
+      to your coiffure all the while Miss Ringgan is here?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hush!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the entrance of company came Constance's return from extravaganzas to
+      a sufficiently graceful every-day manner, only enough touched with high
+      spirits and lawlessness to free it from the charge of commonplace. But the
+      contrast of these high spirits with her own rather made Fleda's mood more
+      quiet, and it needed no quieting. Of the sundry people that she knew among
+      those presently assembled there were none that she wanted to talk to; the
+      rooms were hot and she felt nervous and fluttered, partly from encounters
+      already sustained and partly from a little anxious expecting of Mr.
+      Carleton's appearance. The Evelyns had not said he was to be there but she
+      had rather gathered it; and the remembrance of old times was strong enough
+      to make her very earnestly wish to see him and dread to be disappointed.
+      She swung clear of Mr. Thorn, with some difficulty, and ensconced herself
+      under the shadow of a large cabinet, between that and a young lady who was
+      very good society for she wanted no help in carrying on the business of
+      it. All Fleda had to do was to sit still and listen, or not listen, which
+      she generally preferred. Miss Tomlinson discoursed upon varieties, with
+      great sociableness and satisfaction; while poor Fleda's mind, letting all
+      her sense and nonsense go, was again taking a somewhat bird's-eye view of
+      things, and from the little centre of her post in Mrs. Evelyn's
+      drawing-room casting curious glances over the panorama of her
+      life--England, France, New York, and Queechy!--half coming to the
+      conclusion that her place henceforth was only at the last and that the
+      world and she had nothing to do with each other. The tide of life and
+      gayety seemed to have thrown her on one side, as something that could not
+      swim with it; and to be rushing past too strongly and swiftly for her
+      slight bark ever to launch upon it again. Perhaps the shore might be the
+      safest and happiest place; but it was sober in the comparison; and as a
+      stranded bark might look upon the white sails flying by, Fleda saw the gay
+      faces and heard the light tones with which her own could so little keep
+      company. But as little they with her. Their enjoyment was not more foreign
+      to her than the causes which moved it were strange. Merry?--she might like
+      to be merry; but she could sooner laugh with the North wind than with one
+      of those vapid faces, or with any face that she could not trust.
+      Conversation might be pleasant,--but it must be something different from
+      the noisy cross-fire of nonsense that was going on in one quarter, or the
+      profitless barter of nothings that was kept up on the other side of her.
+      Rather Queechy and silence, by far, than New York and <i>this!</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And through it all Miss Tomlinson talked on and was happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Fleda!--what are you back here for?" said Florence coming up to
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was glad to be at a safe distance from the fire."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Take a screen--here! Miss Tomlinson, your conversation is too exciting
+      for Miss Ringgan--look at her cheeks--I must carry you off--I want to shew
+      you a delightful contrivance for transparencies, that I learned the other
+      day--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The seat beside her was vacated, and not casting so much as a look towards
+      any quarter whence a possible successor to Miss Tomlinson might be
+      arriving, Fleda sprang up and took a place in the far corner of the room
+      by Mrs. Thorn, happily not another vacant chair in the neighbourhood. Mrs.
+      Thorn had shewn a very great fancy for her and was almost as good company
+      as Miss Tomlinson; not quite, for it was necessary sometimes to answer and
+      therefore necessary always to hear. But Fleda liked her; she was
+      thoroughly amiable, sensible, and good-hearted. And Mrs. Thorn, very much
+      gratified at Fleda's choice of a seat, talked to her with a benignity
+      which Fleda could not help answering with grateful pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Little Queechy, what has driven you into the corner?" said Constance
+      pausing a moment before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It must have been a retiring spirit," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mrs. Thorn, isn't she lovely?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Thorn's smile at Fleda might almost have been called that, it was so
+      full of benevolent pleasure. But she spoiled it by her answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't believe I am the first one to find it out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what are you looking so sober for?" Constance went on, taking Fleda's
+      screen from her hand and fanning her diligently with it,--"you don't talk!
+      The gravity of Miss Ringgan's face casts a gloom over the brightness of
+      the evening. I couldn't conceive what made me feel chilly in the other
+      room, till I looked about and found that the shade came from this corner;
+      and Mr. Thorn's teeth, I saw, were chattering."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Constance!" said Fleda laughing and vexed, and making the reproof more
+      strongly with her eyes,--"how can you talk so!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mrs. Thorn, isn't it true?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Thorn's look at Fleda was the essence of good-humour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you let Lewis come and take you a good long ride to-morrow?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, Mrs. Thorn, I believe not--I intend to stay perseveringly at home
+      to-morrow and see if it is possible to be quiet a day in New York."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you will go with me to the concert to-morrow night?--both of you--and
+      hear Truffi;--come to my house and take tea and go from there? will you,
+      Constance?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Mrs. Thorn!" said Constance,--"I shall be in ecstacies, and Miss
+      Ringgan was privately imploring me last night to find some way of getting
+      her to it. We regard such material pleasures as tea and muffins with great
+      indifference, but when you look up after swallowing your last cup you will
+      see Miss Ringgan and Miss Evelyn, cloaked and hooded, anxiously awaiting
+      your next movement. My dear Fleda!--there is a ring!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And giving her the benefit of a most comic and expressive arching of her
+      eyebrows, Constance flung back the screen into Fleda's lap and skimmed
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was too vexed for a few minutes to understand more of Mrs. Thorn's
+      talk than that she was first enlarging upon the concert, and afterwards
+      detailing to her a long shopping expedition in search of something which
+      had been a morning's annoyance. She almost thought Constance was unkind,
+      because she wanted to go to the concert herself to lug her in so
+      unceremoniously; and wished herself back in her uncle's snug little quiet
+      parlour,--unless Mr. Carleton would come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there he is!--said a quick beat of her heart, as his entrance
+      explained Constance's "ring."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a rush of associations came over Fleda that she was in imminent
+      danger of losing Mrs. Thorn altogether. She managed however by some sort
+      of instinct to disprove the assertion that the mind cannot attend to two
+      things at once, and carried on a double conversation, with herself and
+      with Mrs. Thorn, for some time very vigorously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just the same!--he has not altered a jot," she said to herself as he came
+      forward to Mrs. Evelyn;--"it is himself!--his very self--he doesn't look a
+      day older--I'm very glad!--(Yes, ma'am--it's extremely tiresome--) How
+      exactly as when he left me in Paris,--and how much pleasanter than anybody
+      else!--more pleasant than ever, it seems to me, but that is because I have
+      not seen him in so long; he only wanted one thing. That same grave eye--
+      but quieter, isn't it,--than it used to be?--I think so--(It's the best
+      store in town, I think, Mrs. Thorn, by far,--yes, ma'am--) Those eyes are
+      certainly the finest I ever saw--How I have seen him stand and look just
+      so when he was talking to his workmen--without that air of consciousness
+      that all these people have, comparatively--what a difference! (I know very
+      little about it, ma'am;--I am not learned in laces--I never bought any--)
+      I wish he would look this way--I wonder if Mrs. Evelyn does not mean to
+      bring him to see me--she must remember;--now there is that curious old
+      smile and looking down! how much better I know what it means than Mrs.
+      Evelyn does--(Yes, ma'am, I understand--I mean!--it is very convenient--I
+      never go anywhere else to get anything,--at least I should not if I lived
+      here--) She does not know whom she is talking to.--She is going to walk
+      him off into the other room! How very much more gracefully he does
+      everything than anybody else--it comes from that entire high-mindedness
+      and frankness, I think,--not altogether, a fine person must aid the
+      effect, and that complete independence of other people.----I wonder if
+      Mrs. Evelyn has forgotten my existence!--he has not, I am sure--I think
+      she is a little odd--(Yes, ma'am, my face is flushed--the room is very
+      warm--)"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But the fire has gone down--it will be cooler now," said Mrs. Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Which were the first words that fairly entered Fleda's understanding. She
+      was glad to use the screen to hide her face now, not the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Apparently the gentleman and lady found nothing to detain them in the
+      other room, for after sauntering off to it they sauntered back again and
+      placed themselves to talk just opposite her. Fleda had an additional
+      screen now in the person of Miss Tomlinson, who had sought her corner and
+      was earnestly talking across her to Mrs. Thorn; so that she was sure even
+      if Mr. Carleton's eyes should chance to wander that way they would see
+      nothing but the unremarkable skirt of her green silk dress, most unlikely
+      to detain them. The trade in nothings going on over the said green silk
+      was very brisk indeed; but disregarding the buzz of tongues near at hand
+      Fleda's quick ears were able to free the barrier and catch every one of
+      the quiet tones beyond.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you leave us the day after to-morrow?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, Mrs. Evelyn,--I shall wait another steamer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady's brow instantly revealed to Fleda a trap setting beneath to
+      catch his reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm very glad!" exclaimed little Edith who in defiance of
+      conventionalities and proprieties made good her claim to be in the drawing
+      room on all occasions;--"then you will take me another ride, won't you,
+      Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You do not flatter us with a very long stay," pursued Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Quite as long as I expected--longer than I meant it to be," he answered
+      rather thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton," said Constance sidling up in front of him,--"I have been
+      in distress to ask you a question, and I am afraid----"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of what are you afraid, Miss Constance?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That you would reward me with one of your severe looks,--which would
+      petrify me,--and then I am afraid I should feel uncomfortable--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope he will!" said Mrs. Evelyn, settling herself back in the corner of
+      the sofa, and with a look at her daughter which was complacency
+      itself,--"I hope Mr. Carleton will, if you are guilty of any
+      impertinence."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is the question, Miss Constance?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I want to know what brought you out here?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fie, Constance!" said her mother. "I am ashamed of you. Do not answer
+      her, Mr. Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton will answer me, mamma,--he looks benevolently upon my
+      faults, which are entirely those of education! What was it, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose," said he smiling, "it might be traced more or less remotely to
+      the restlessness incident to human nature."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But <i>you</i> are not restless, Mr. Carleton," said Florence, with a
+      glance which might be taken as complimentary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And knowing that I am," said Constance in comic impatience,--"you are
+      maliciously prolonging my agonies. It is not what I expected of you, Mr.
+      Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear," said her father, "Mr. Carleton, I am sure, will fulfil all
+      reasonable expectations. What is the matter?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I asked him where a certain tribe of Indians was to be found, papa, and
+      he told me they were supposed originally to have come across Behring's
+      Straits one cold winter!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Evelyn looked a little doubtfully and Constance with so unhesitating
+      gravity that the gravity of nobody else was worth talking about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But it is so uncommon," said Mrs. Evelyn when they had done laughing, "to
+      see an Englishman of your class here at all, that when he comes a second
+      time we may be forgiven for wondering what has procured us such an
+      honour."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Women may always be forgiven for wondering, my dear," said Mr.
+      Evelyn,--"or the rest of mankind must live at odds with them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Your principal object was to visit our western prairies, wasn't it, Mr.
+      Carleton?" said Florence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," he replied quietly,--"I cannot say that. I should choose to give a
+      less romantic explanation of my movements. From some knowledge growing out
+      of my former visit to this country I thought there were certain
+      negotiations I might enter into here with advantage; and it was for the
+      purpose of attending to these, Miss Constance, that I came."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And have you succeeded?" said Mrs. Evelyn with an expression of
+      benevolent interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, ma'am--my information had not been sufficient."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very likely!" said Mr. Evelyn. "There isn't one man in a hundred whose
+      representations on such a matter are to be trusted at a distance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'On such a matter'!" repeated his wife funnily,--"you don't know what the
+      matter was, Mr. Evelyn--you don't know what you are talking about."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Business, my dear,--business--I take only what Mr. Carleton said;--it
+      doesn't signify a straw what business. A man must always see with his own
+      eyes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether Mr. Carleton had seen or had not seen, or whether even he had his
+      faculty of hearing in present exercise, a glance at his face was
+      incompetent to discover.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I never should have imagined," said Constance eying him keenly, "that Mr.
+      Carleton's errand to this country was one of business and not of romance,
+      <i>I</i> believe it's a humbug!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For an instant this was answered by one of those looks of absolute
+      composure in every muscle and feature which put an effectual bar to all
+      further attempts from without or revelations from within; a look Fleda
+      remembered well, and felt even in her corner. But it presently relaxed,
+      and he said with his usual manner,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You cannot understand then, Miss Constance, that there should be any
+      romance about business?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I cannot understand," said Mrs. Evelyn, "why romance should not come
+      after business. Mr. Carleton, sir, you have seen American scenery this
+      summer--isn't American beauty worth staying a little while longer for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear," said Mr. Evelyn, "Mr. Carleton is too much of a philosopher to
+      care about beauty--every man of sense is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure he is not," said Mrs. Evelyn smoothly. "Mr. Carleton,--you are
+      an admirer of beauty, are you not, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope so, Mrs. Evelyn," he said smiling,--"but perhaps I shall shock you
+      by adding,--not of <i>beauties</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That sounds very odd," said Florence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But let us understand," said Mrs. Evelyn with the air of a person solving
+      a problem,--"I suppose we are to infer that your taste in beauty is of a
+      peculiar kind?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That may be a fair inference," he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is it then?" said Constance eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--what is it you look for in a face?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let us hear whether America has any chance," said Mr. Thorn, who had
+      joined the group and placed himself precisely so as to hinder Fleda's
+      view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My fancy has no stamp of nationality, in this, at least," he said
+      pleasantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now for instance, the Miss Delancys--don't you call them handsome, Mr.
+      Carleton?" said Florence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," he said, half smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But not beautiful?--Now what is it they want?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not wish, if I could, to make the want visible to other eyes than my
+      own."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, Cornelia Schenck,--how do you like her face?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is very pretty-featured."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pretty-featured!--Why she is called beautiful. She has a beautiful smile,
+      Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She has only one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Only one! and how many smiles ought the same person to have?" cried
+      Florence impatiently. But that which instantly answered her said forcibly
+      that a plurality of them was possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have seen one face," he said gravely, and his eye seeking the
+      floor,--"that had I think a thousand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Different smiles?" said Mrs. Evelyn in a constrained voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If they were not all absolutely that, they had so much of freshness and
+      variety that they all seemed new."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Was the mouth so beautiful?" said Florence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps it would not have been remarked for beauty when it was perfectly
+      at rest; but it could not move with the least play of feeling, grave or
+      gay, that it did not become so in a very high degree. I think there was no
+      touch or shade of sentiment in the mind that the lips did not give with
+      singular nicety; and the mind was one of the most finely wrought I have
+      ever known."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what other features went with this mouth?" said Florence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The usual complement, I suppose," said Thorn. "'Item, two lips
+      indifferent red; item, two grey eyes with lids to them; item, one neck,
+      one chin, and so forth.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton, sir," said Mrs. Evelyn blandly--"as Mr. Evelyn says women
+      may be forgiven for wondering, won't you answer Florence's question?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Thorn has done it, Mrs. Evelyn, for me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I have great doubts of the correctness of Mr. Thorn's description,
+      sir--won't you indulge us with yours?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Word-painting is a difficult matter, Mrs. Evelyn, in some instances;--if
+      I must do it I will borrow my colours. In general, 'that which made her
+      fairness much the fairer was that it was but an ambassador of a most fair
+      mind.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A most exquisite picture!" said Thorn, "and the original don't stand so
+      thick that one is in any danger of mistaking them. Is the painter
+      Shakspeare?--I don't recollect--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think Sidney, sir--I am not sure."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But still, Mr. Carleton," said Mrs Evelyn, "this is only in general--I
+      want very much to know the particulars;--what style of features belonged
+      to this face?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The fairest, I think, I have ever known," said Mr. Carleton. "You asked
+      me, Miss Evelyn, what was my notion of beauty;--this face was a good
+      illustration of it. Not perfection of outline, though it had that too in
+      very uncommon degree;--but the loveliness of mind and character to which
+      these features were only an index; the thoughts were invariably
+      telegraphed through eye and mouth more faithfully than words could give
+      them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What kind of eyes?" said Florence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His own grew dark as he answered,--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Clear and pure as one might imagine an angel's--through which I am sure
+      my good angel many a time looked at me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Good angels were at a premium among the eyes that were exchanging glances
+      just then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And Mr. Carleton," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"is it fair to ask--this
+      paragon--is she living still?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope so," he answered, with his old light smile, dismissing the
+      subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You spoke so much in the past tense," said Mrs. Evelyn apologetically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, I have not seen it since it was a child's."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A child's face!--Oh," said Florence, "I think you see a great many
+      children's faces with that kind of look."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I never saw but the one," said Mr. Carleton dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So far Fleda listened, with cheeks that would certainly have excited Mrs.
+      Thorn's alarm if she had not been happily engrossed with Miss Tomlinson's
+      affairs; though up to the last two minutes the idea of herself had not
+      entered Fleda's head in connection with the subject of conversation. But
+      then feeling it impossible to make her appearance in public that evening,
+      she quietly slipped out of the open window close by, which led into a
+      little greenhouse on the piazza, and by another door gained the hall and
+      the dressing-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Dr. Gregory came to Mrs. Evelyn's an hour or two after, a figure all
+      cloaked and hooded ran down the stairs and met him in the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ready!" said the doctor in surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have been ready some time, sir," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well," said he, "then we'll go straight home, for I've not done my work
+      yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear uncle Orrin!" said Fleda, "if I had known you had work to do I
+      wouldn't have come."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes you would!" said he decidedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She clasped her uncle's arm and walked with him briskly home through the
+      frosty air, looking at the silent lights and shadows on the walls of the
+      street and feeling a great desire to cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you have a pleasant evening?" said the doctor when they were about
+      half way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not particularly, sir," said Fleda hesitating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said not another word till they got home and Fleda went up to her room.
+      But the habit of patience overcame the wish to cry; and though the outside
+      of her little gold-clasped Bible awoke it again, a few words of the inside
+      were enough to lay it quietly to sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well," said the doctor as they sat at breakfast the next morning,--"where
+      are you going next?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To the concert, I must, to-night," said Fleda. "I couldn't help myself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why should you want to help yourself?" said the doctor. "And to Mrs.
+      Thorn's to-morrow night?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir, I believe not."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe you will," said he looking at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure I should enjoy myself more at home, uncle Orrin. There is very
+      little rational pleasure to be had in these assemblages."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Rational pleasure!" said he. "Didn't you have any rational pleasure last
+      night?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I didn't hear a single word spoken, sir, that was worth listening to,--at
+      least that was spoken to me; and the hollow kind of rattle that one hears
+      from every tongue makes me more tired than anything else, I believe;--I am
+      out of tune with it, somehow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Out of tune!" said the old doctor, giving her a look made up of humourous
+      vexation and real sadness,--"I wish I knew the right tuning-key to take
+      hold of you!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I become harmonious rapidly, uncle Orrin, when I am in this pleasant
+      little room alone with you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That won't do!" said he, shaking his head at the smile with which this
+      was said,--"there is too much tension upon the strings. So that was the
+      reason you were all ready waiting for me last night?--Well, you must tune
+      up, my little piece of discordance, and go with me to Mrs. Thorn's
+      to-morrow night--I won't let you off."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "With you, sir!" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," he said. "I'll go along and take care of you lest you get drawn
+      into something else you don't like."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But, dear uncle Orrin, there is another difficulty--it is to be a large
+      party and I have not a dress exactly fit."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What have you got?" said he with a comic kind of fierceness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have silks, but they are none of them proper for this occasion--they
+      are ever so little old-fashioned."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you want?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing, sir," said Fleda; "for I don't want to go."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You mend a pair of stockings to put on," said he nodding at her, "and
+      I'll see to the rest."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Apparently you place great importance in stockings," said Fleda laughing,
+      "for you always mention them first. But please don't get anything for me,
+      uncle Orrin--please don't! I have plenty for common occasions, and I don't
+      care to go to Mrs. Thorn's."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't care either," said the doctor, working himself into his great
+      coat. "By the by, do you want to invoke the aid of St. Crispin?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went off, and Fleda did not know whether to cry or to laugh at the
+      vigorous way in which he trod through the hall and slammed the front door
+      after him. Her spirits just kept the medium and did neither. But they were
+      in the same doubtful mood still an hour after when he came back with a
+      paper parcel he had brought home under his arm, and unrolled a fine
+      embroidered muslin; her eyes were very unsteady in carrying their brief
+      messages of thankfulness, as if they feared saying too much. The doctor,
+      however, was in the mood for doing, not talking, by looks or otherwise.
+      Mrs. Pritchard was called into consultation, and with great pride and
+      delight engaged to have the dress and all things else in due order by the
+      following night; <i>her</i> eyes saying all manner of gratulatory things
+      as they went from the muslin to Fleda and from Fleda to Dr. Gregory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rest of the day was, not books, but needlefuls of thread; and from the
+      confusion of laces and draperies Fleda was almost glad to escape and go to
+      the concert,--but for one item; that spoiled it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were in their seats early. Fleda managed successfully to place the
+      two Evelyns between her and Mr. Thorn, and then prepared herself to wear
+      out the evening with patience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Fleda!" whispered Constance, after some time spent in restless
+      reconnoitring of everybody and everything,--"I don't see my English rose
+      anywhere!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hush!" said Fleda smiling. "That happened not to be an English rose,
+      Constance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What was it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "American, unfortunately; it was a Noisette; the variety I think that they
+      call 'Conque de Venus.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear little Fleda, you're too wise for anything!" said Constance with
+      a rather significant arching of her eyebrows. "You mustn't expect other
+      people to be as rural in their acquirements as yourself. I don't pretend
+      to know any rose by sight but the Queechy," she said, with a change of
+      expression meant to cover the former one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's face, however, did not call for any apology. It was perfectly
+      quiet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what has become of him?" said Constance with her comic
+      impatience.--"My dear Fleda! if my eyes cannot rest upon that development
+      of elegance the parterre is become a wilderness to me!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hush, Constance!" Fleda whispered earnestly,--"you are not safe--he may
+      be near you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Safe!--" ejaculated Constance; but a half backward hasty glance of her
+      eye brought home so strong an impression that the person in question was
+      seated a little behind her that she dared not venture another look, and
+      became straightway extremely well-behaved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was there; and being presently convinced that he was in the
+      neighbourhood of his little friend of former days he resolved with his own
+      excellent eyes to test the truth of the opinion he had formed as to the
+      natural and inevitable effect of circumstances upon her character; whether
+      it could by possibility have retained its great delicacy and refinement
+      under the rough handling and unkindly bearing of things seemingly foreign
+      to both. He had thought not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Truffi did not sing, and the entertainment was of a very secondary
+      quality. This seemed to give no uneasiness to the Miss Evelyns, for if
+      they pouted they laughed and talked in the same breath, and that
+      incessantly. It was nothing to Mr. Carleton, for his mind was bent on
+      something else. And with a little surprise he saw that it was nothing to
+      the subject of his thoughts,--either because her own were elsewhere too,
+      or because they were in league with a nice taste that permitted them to
+      take no interest in what was going on. Even her eyes, trained as they had
+      been to recluse habits, were far less busy than those of her companions;
+      indeed they were not busy at all; for the greater part of the time one
+      hand was upon the brow, shielding them from the glare of the gas-lights.
+      Ostensibly,--but the very quiet air of the face led him to guess that the
+      mind was glad of a shield too. It relaxed sometimes. Constance and
+      Florence and Mr. Thorn and Mr. Thorn's mother were every now and then
+      making demands upon her, and they were met always with an intelligent
+      well-bred eye, and often with a smile of equal gentleness and character;
+      but her observer noticed that though the smile came readily, it went as
+      readily, and the lines of the face quickly settled again into what seemed
+      to be an habitual composure. There were the same outlines, the same
+      characters, he remembered very well; yet there was a difference; not grief
+      had changed them, but life had. The brow had all its fine chiselling and
+      high purity of expression; but now there sat there a hopelessness, or
+      rather a want of hopefulness, that a child's face never knows. The mouth
+      was sweet and pliable as ever, but now often patience and endurance did
+      not quit their seat upon the lip even when it smiled. The eye with all its
+      old clearness and truthfulness had a shade upon it that nine years ago
+      only fell at the bidding of sorrow; and in every line of the face there
+      was a quiet gravity that went to the heart of the person who was studying
+      it. Whatever causes had been at work he was very sure had done no harm to
+      the character; its old simplicity had suffered no change, as every look
+      and movement proved; the very unstudied careless position of the fingers
+      over the eyes shewed that the thoughts had nothing to do there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On one half of his doubt Mr. Carleton's mind was entirely made up;--but
+      education? the training and storing of the mind?--how had that fared? He
+      would know!--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps he would have made some attempt that very evening towards
+      satisfying himself; but noticing that in coming out Thorn permitted the
+      Evelyns to pass him and attached himself determinately to Fleda, he drew
+      back, and resolved to make his observations indirectly and on more than
+      one point before he should seem to make them at all.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="33"></a>Chapter XXXIII
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Hark! I hear the sound of coaches,<br /> The hour of attack approaches.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Gay.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Pritchard had arrayed Fleda in the white muslin, with an amount of
+      satisfaction and admiration that all the lines of her face were
+      insufficient to express.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now," she said, "you must just run down and let the doctor see you--afore
+      you take the shine off--or he won't be able to look at anything else when
+      you get to the place."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That would be unfortunate!" said Fleda, and she ran down laughing into
+      the room where the doctor was waiting for her; but her astonished eyes
+      encountering the figure of Dr. Quackenboss she stopped short, with an air
+      that no woman of the world could have bettered. The physician of Queechy
+      on his part was at least equally taken aback.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dr. Quackenboss!" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I--I was going to say, Miss Ringgan!" said the doctor with a most
+      unaffected obeisance,--"but--a--I am afraid, sir, it is a deceptive
+      influence!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope not," said Dr. Gregory smiling, one corner of his mouth for his
+      guest and the other for his niece. "Real enough to do real execution, or I
+      am mistaken, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Upon my word, sir," said Dr. Quackenboss bowing again,--"I hope--a--Miss
+      Ringgan!--will remember the acts of her executive power at home, and
+      return in time to prevent an unfortunate termination!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Gregory laughed heartily now, while Fleda's cheeks relieved her dress
+      to admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who will complain of her if she don't?" said the doctor. "Who will
+      complain of her if she don't?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda put in her question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How are you all at home, Dr. Quackenboss?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All Queechy, sir," answered the doctor politely, on the principle of
+      'first come, first served,'--"and individuals,--I shouldn't like to
+      specify--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How are you all in Queechy, Dr. Quackenboss!" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I--have the pleasure to say--we are coming along as usual," replied the
+      doctor, who seemed to have lost his power of standing up straight;--"My
+      sister Flora enjoys but poor health lately,--they are all holding their
+      heads up at your house. Mr. Rossitur has come home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Uncle Rolf! Has he!" exclaimed Fleda, the colour of joy quite supplanting
+      the other. "O I'm very glad!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," said the doctor,--"he's been home now,--I guess, going on four
+      days."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very glad!" repeated Fleda. "But won't you come and see me another
+      time, Dr. Quackenboss?--I am obliged to go out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor professed his great willingness, adding that he had only come
+      down to the city to do two or three chores and thought she might perhaps
+      like to take the opportunity--which would afford him such very great
+      gratification.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No indeed, faire Una," said Dr. Gregory, when they were on their way to
+      Mrs. Thorn's,--"they've got your uncle at home now and we've got you; and
+      I mean to keep you till I'm satisfied. So you may bring home that eye that
+      has been squinting at Queechy ever since you have been here and make up
+      your mind to enjoy yourself; I sha'n't let you go till you do."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ought to enjoy myself, uncle Orrin," said Fleda, squeezing his arm
+      gratefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "See you do," said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pleasant news from home had given Fleda's spirits the needed spur
+      which the quick walk to Mrs. Thorn's did not take off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you ever see Fleda look so well, mamma?" said Florence, as the former
+      entered the drawing-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is the loveliest and best face in the room," said Mr. Evelyn; "and
+      she looks like herself to-night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is a matchless simplicity about her," said a gentleman standing by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Her dress is becoming," said Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why where did you ever see her, Mr. Stackpole, except at our house?" said
+      Constance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "At Mrs. Decatur's--I have had that pleasure--and once at her uncle's."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I didn't know you ever noticed ladies' faces, Mr. Stackpole," said
+      Florence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How Mrs. Thorn does look at her!" said Constance, under her breath. "It
+      is too much!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was almost too much for Fleda's equanimity, for the colour began to
+      come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And there goes Mr. Carleton!" said Constance. "I expect momentarily to
+      hear the company strike up 'Sparkling and Bright.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus18.jpg"><img src="images/illus18.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="'And there goes Mr. Carleton!' said Constance."
+      title="'And there goes Mr. Carleton!' said Constance." /><br /> "And there
+      goes Mr. Carleton!" said Constance.</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They should have done that some time ago, Miss Constance," said the
+      gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Which compliment, however, Constance received with hardly disguised scorn,
+      and turned her attention again to Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I trust I do not need presentation," said his voice and his smile at
+      once, as he presented himself to Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How little he needed it the flash of feeling which met his eyes said
+      sufficiently well. But apparently the feeling was a little too deep, for
+      the colour mounted and the eyes fell, and the smile suddenly died on the
+      lips. Mr. Thorn came up to them, and releasing her hand Mr. Carleton
+      stepped back and permitted him to lead her away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do think of <i>that</i> face?" said Constance finding herself a few
+      minutes after at his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'That' must define itself," said he, "or I can hardly give a safe
+      answer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What face? Why I mean of course the one Mr. Thorn carried off just now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are her friend, Miss Constance," he said coolly. "May I ask for your
+      judgment upon it before I give mine?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mine? why I expected every minute that Mr. Thorn would make the musicians
+      play 'Sparkling and Bright,' and tell Miss Ringgan that to save trouble he
+      had directed them to express what he was sure were the sentiments of the
+      whole company in one burst."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled a little, but in a way that Constance could not understand and
+      did not like.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Those are common epithets," he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Must I use uncommon?" said Constance significantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--but these may say one thing or another."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have said one thing," said Constance; "and now you may say the other."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pardon me--you have said nothing. These epithets are deserved by a great
+      many faces, but on very different grounds; and the praise is a different
+      thing accordingly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well what is the difference?" said Constance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "On what do you think this lady's title to it rests?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "On what?--why on that bewitching little air of the eyes and mouth, I
+      suppose."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bewitching is a very vague term," said he smiling again more quietly.
+      "But you have had an opportunity of knowing it much better of late than
+      I--to which class of bright faces would you refer this one? Where does the
+      light come from?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I never studied faces in a class," said Constance a little scornfully.
+      "Come from?--a region of mist and clouds I should say, for it is sometimes
+      pretty well covered up."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There are some eyes whose sparkling is nothing more than the play of
+      light upon a bright bead of glass."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is not that," said Constance, answering in spite of herself after
+      delaying as long as she dared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is the brightness that is only the reflection of outward
+      circumstances, and passes away with them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It isn't that in Fleda Ringgan," said Constance, "for her outward
+      circumstances have no brightness, I should think, that reflection would
+      not utterly absorb."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She would fain have turned the conversation, but the questions were put so
+      lightly and quietly that it could not be gracefully done. She longed to
+      cut it short, but her hand was upon Mr. Carleton's arm and they were
+      slowly sauntering down the rooms,--too pleasant a state of things to be
+      relinquished for a trifle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is the broad day-light of mere animal spirits," he went on, seeming
+      rather to be suggesting these things for her consideration than eager to
+      set forth any opinions of his own;--"there is the sparkling of mischief,
+      and the fire of hidden passions,--there is the passing brilliance of wit,
+      as satisfactory and resting as these gas-lights,--and there is now and
+      then the light of refined affections out of a heart unspotted from the
+      world, as pure and abiding as the stars, and like them throwing its soft
+      ray especially upon the shadows of life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have always understood," said Constance, "that cats' eyes are brightest
+      in the dark."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They do not love the light, I believe," said Mr. Carleton calmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well," said Constance, not relishing the expression of her companion's
+      eye, which from glowing had suddenly become cool and bright,--"where would
+      you put me, Mr. Carleton, among all these illuminators of the social
+      system?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You may put yourself--where you please, Miss Constance," he said, again
+      turning upon her an eye so deep and full in its meaning that her own and
+      her humour fell before it; for a moment she looked most unlike the gay
+      scene around her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is not that the best brightness," he said speaking low, "that will last
+      forever?--and is not that lightness of heart best worth having which does
+      not depend on circumstances, and will find its perfection just when all
+      other kinds of happiness fail utterly?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can't conceive," said Constance presently, rallying or trying to rally
+      herself,--"what you and I have to do in a place where people are enjoying
+      themselves at this moment, Mr. Carleton!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled at that and led her out of it into the conservatory, close to
+      which they found themselves. It was a large and fine one, terminating the
+      suite of rooms in this direction. Few people were there; but at the far
+      end stood a group among whom Fleda and Mr. Thorn were conspicuous. He was
+      busying himself in putting together a quantity of flowers for her; and
+      Mrs. Evelyn and old Mr. Thorn stood looking on; with Mr. Stackpole. Mr.
+      Stackpole was an Englishman, of certainly not very prepossessing exterior
+      but somewhat noted as an author and a good deal sought after in
+      consequence. At present he was engaged by Mrs. Evelyn. Mr. Carleton and
+      Constance sauntered up towards them and paused at a little distance to
+      look at some curious plants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't try for that, Mr. Thorn," said Fleda, as the gentleman was making
+      rather ticklish efforts to reach a superb Fuchsia that hung high,--"You
+      are endangering sundry things besides yourself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have learned, Miss Fleda," said Thorn as with much ado he grasped the
+      beautiful cluster,--"that what we take the most pains for is apt to be
+      reckoned the best prize,--a truth I should never think of putting into a
+      lady's head if I believed it possible that a single one of them was
+      ignorant of its practical value."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have this same rose in my garden at home," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are a great gardener, Miss Fleda, I hear," said the old gentleman.
+      "My son says you are an adept in it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very fond of it, sir," said Fleda, answering <i>him</i> with an
+      entirely different face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought the delicacy of American ladies was beyond such a masculine
+      employment as gardening," said Mr. Stackpole, edging away from Mrs.
+      Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I guess this young lady is an exception to the rule," said old Mr. Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I guess she is an exception to most rules that you have got in your
+      note-book, Mr. Stackpole," said the younger man. "But there is no guessing
+      about the garden, for I have with my own eyes seen these gentle hands at
+      one end of a spade and her foot at the other;--a sight that--I declare I
+      don't know whether I was most filled with astonishment or admiration!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," said Fleda half laughing and colouring,--"and he ingenuously
+      confessed in his surprise that he didn't know whether politeness ought to
+      oblige him to stop and shake hands or to pass by without seeing me;
+      evidently shewing that he thought I was about something equivocal."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The laugh was now turned against Mr. Thorn, but he went on cutting his
+      geraniums with a grave face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well," said he at length, "I think it <i>is</i> something of very
+      equivocal utility. Why should such gentle hands and feet spend their
+      strength in clod-breaking, when rough ones are at command?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing equivocal about Fleda's merriment this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have learned, Mr. Thorn, by sad experience, that the rough hands break
+      more than the clods. One day I set Philetus to work among my flowers; and
+      the first thing I knew he had pulled up a fine passion-flower which didn't
+      make much shew above ground and was displaying it to me with the grave
+      commentary, 'Well! that root did grow to a great haigth!'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Some mental clod-breaking to be done up there, isn't there?" said Thorn
+      in a kind of aside. "I cannot express my admiration at the idea of your
+      dealing with those boors, as it has been described to me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They do not deserve the name, Mr. Thorn," said Fleda. "They are many of
+      them most sensible and excellent people, and friends that I value very
+      highly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah, your goodness would made friends of everything."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not of boors, I hope," said Fleda coolly. "Besides, what do you mean by
+      the name?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Anybody incapable of appreciating that of which you alone should be
+      unconscious," he said softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda stood impatiently tapping her flowers against her left hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I doubt their power of appreciation reaches a point that would surprise
+      you, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It does indeed--if I am mistaken in my supposition," he said with a
+      glance which Fleda refused to acknowledge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What proportion do you suppose," she went on, "of all these roomfuls of
+      people behind us,--without saying anything uncharitable,--what proportion
+      of them, if compelled to amuse themselves for two hours at a bookcase,
+      would pitch upon Macaulay's Essays, or anything like them, to spend the
+      time?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hum--really, Miss Fleda," said Thorn, "I should want to brush up my
+      Algebra considerably before I could hope to find x, y, and z in such a
+      confusion of the alphabet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Or extract the small sensible root of such a quantity of light matter,"
+      said Mr. Stackpole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you bear with my vindication of my country friends?--Hugh and I sent
+      for a carpenter to make some new arrangement of shelves in a cupboard
+      where we kept our books; he was one of these boors, Mr. Thorn, in no
+      respect above the rest. The right stuff for his work was wanting, and
+      while it was sent for he took up one of the volumes that were lying about
+      and read perseveringly until the messenger returned. It was a volume of
+      Macaulay's Miscellanies; and afterwards he borrowed the book of me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you lent it to him?" said Constance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Most assuredly! and with a great deal of pleasure."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And is this no more than a common instance, Miss Ringgan?" said Mr.
+      Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, I think not," said Fleda; the quick blood in her cheeks again
+      answering the familiar voice and old associations;--"I know several of the
+      farmers' daughters around us that have studied Latin and Greek; and
+      philosophy is a common thing; and I am sure there is more sense"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She suddenly checked herself, and her eye which had been sparkling grew
+      quiet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is very absurd!" said Mr. Stackpole
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O--these people have nothing to do with such things--do them nothing but
+      harm!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "May I ask again, what harm?" said Fleda gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Unfit them for the duties of their station and make them discontented
+      with it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By making it pleasanter?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, no--not by making it pleasanter."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By what then, Mr. Stackpole?" said Thorn, to draw him on and to draw her
+      out, Fleda was sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By lifting them out of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what objection to lifting them out of it?" said Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You can't lift everybody out of it," said the gentleman with a little
+      irritation in his manner,--"that station must be filled--there must always
+      be poor people."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what degree of poverty ought to debar a man from the pleasures of
+      education and a cultivated taste? such as he can attain?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, no, not that," said Mr. Stackpole;--"but it all goes to fill them
+      with absurd notions about their place in society, inconsistent with proper
+      subordination."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked at him, but shook her head slightly and was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Things are in very different order on our side the water," said Mr.
+      Stackpole hugging himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are they?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--we understand how to keep things in their places a little better."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I did not know," said Fleda quietly, "that it was by <i>design</i> of the
+      rulers of England that so many of her lower class are in the intellectual
+      condition of our slaves."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton," said Mrs. Evelyn laughing,--"what do you say to that,
+      sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's face turned suddenly to him with a quick look of apology, which
+      she immediately knew was not needed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But this kind of thing don't make the people any happier," pursued Mr.
+      Stackpole;--"only serves to give them uppish and dissatisfied longings
+      that cannot be gratified."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Somebody says," observed Thorn, "that 'under a despotism all are
+      contented because none can get on, and in a republic none are contented
+      because all can get on.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Precisely," said Mr. Stackpole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That might do very well if the world were in a state of perfection," said
+      Fleda. "As it is, commend me to discontent and getting on. And the
+      uppishness I am afraid is a national fault, sir; you know our state motto
+      is 'Excelsior.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We are at liberty to suppose," said Thorn, "that Miss Ringgan has
+      followed the example of her friends the farmers' daughters?--or led them
+      in it?--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is dangerous to make surmises," said Fleda colouring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is a pleasant way of running into danger," said Mr. Thorn, who was
+      leisurely pruning the prickles from the stem of a rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was talking to a gentleman once," said Fleda, "about the birds and
+      flowers we find in our wilds; and he told me afterwards gravely that he
+      was afraid I was studying too many things at once!--when I was innocent of
+      all ornithology but what my eyes and ears had picked up in the woods;
+      except some childish reminiscences of Audubon."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is just the right sort of learning for a lady," said Mr. Stackpole,
+      smiling at her, however;--"women have nothing to do with books."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you say to that, Miss Fleda?" said Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing, sir; it is one of those positions that are unanswerable."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But Mr. Stackpole," said Mrs. Evelyn, "I don't like that doctrine, sir. I
+      do not believe in it at all."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is unfortunate--for my doctrine," said the gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I do not believe it is yours. Why must women have nothing to do with
+      books? what harm do they do, Mr. Stackpole?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not needed, ma'am,--a woman, as somebody says, knows intuitively all that
+      is really worth knowing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of what use is a mine that is never worked?" said Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It <i>is</i> worked," said Mr. Stackpole. "Domestic life is the true
+      training for the female mind. One woman will learn more wisdom from the
+      child on her breast than another will learn from ten thousand volumes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is very doubtful how much wisdom the child will ever learn from her,"
+      said Mr. Carleton smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A woman who never saw a book," pursued Mr. Stackpole, unconsciously
+      quoting his author, "may be infinitely superior, even in all those matters
+      of which books treat, to the woman who has read, and read intelligently, a
+      whole library."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Unquestionably--and it is likewise beyond question that a silver sixpence
+      may be worth more than a washed guinea."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But a woman's true sphere is in her family--in her home duties, which
+      furnish the best and most appropriate training for her faculties--pointed
+      out by nature itself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes!" said Mr. Carleton,--"and for those duties, some of the very highest
+      and noblest that are entrusted to human agency, the fine machinery that is
+      to perform them should be wrought to its last point of perfectness. The
+      wealth of a woman's mind, instead of lying in the rough, should be richly
+      brought out and fashioned for its various ends, while yet those ends are
+      in the future, or it will never meet the demand. And for her own
+      happiness, all the more because her sphere is at home, her home stores
+      should be exhaustless--the stores she cannot go abroad to seek. I would
+      add to strength beauty, and to beauty grace, in the intellectual
+      proportions, so far as possible. It were ungenerous, in man to condemn the
+      <i>best</i> half of human intellect to insignificance merely because it is
+      not his own."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Evelyn wore a smile of admiration that nobody saw, but Fleda's face
+      was a study while Mr. Carleton was saying this. Her look was fixed upon
+      him with such intent satisfaction and eagerness that it was not till he
+      had finished that she became aware that those dark eyes were going very
+      deep into hers, and suddenly put a stop to the inquisition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very pleasant doctrine to the ears that have an interest in it!" said Mr.
+      Stackpole rather discontentedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The man knows little of his own interest," said Mr. Carleton, "who would
+      leave that ground waste, or would cultivate it only in the narrow spirit
+      of a utilitarian. He needs an influence in his family not more refreshing
+      than rectifying; and no man will seek that in one greatly his inferior. He
+      is to be pitied who cannot fall back upon his home with the assurance that
+      he has there something better than himself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, Mr. Carleton, sir--" said Mrs. Evelyn, with every line of her mouth
+      saying funny things,--"I am afraid you have sadly neglected your own
+      interest--have you anything at Carleton better than yourself?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly cool again, he laughed and said, "You were there, Mrs. Evelyn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But Mr. Carleton,--" pursued the lady with a mixture of insinuation and
+      fun,--"why were you never married?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Circumstances have always forbade it," he answered with a smile which
+      Constance declared was the most fascinating thing she ever saw in her
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was arranging her flowers, with the help of some very unnecessary
+      suggestions from the donor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Lewis," said Constance with a kind of insinuation very different from
+      her mother's, made up of fun and daring,--"Mr. Carleton has been giving me
+      a long lecture on botany; while my attention was distracted by listening
+      to your <i>spirituel</i> conversation."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, Miss Constance?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I am morally certain I sha'n't recollect a word of it if I don't
+      carry away some specimens to refresh my memory--and in that case he would
+      never give me another!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was impossible to help laughing at the distressful position of the
+      young lady's eyebrows, and with at least some measure of outward grace Mr.
+      Thorn set about complying with her request. Fleda again stood tapping her
+      left hand with her flowers, wondering a little that somebody else did not
+      come and speak to her; but he was talking to Mrs. Evelyn and Mr.
+      Stackpole. Fleda did not wish to join them, and nothing better occurred to
+      her than to arrange her flowers over again; so throwing them all down
+      before her on a marble slab, she began to pick them up one by one and put
+      them together, with it must be confessed a very indistinct realization of
+      the difference between myrtle and lemon blossoms, and as she seemed to be
+      laying acacia to rose, and disposing some sprigs of beautiful heath behind
+      them, in reality she was laying kindness alongside of kindness and looking
+      at the years beyond years where their place had been. It was with a little
+      start that she suddenly found the person of her thoughts standing at her
+      elbow and talking to her in bodily presence. But while he spoke with all
+      the ease and simplicity of old times, almost making Fleda think it was but
+      last week they had been strolling through the Place de la Concorde
+      together, there was a constraint upon her that she could not get rid of
+      and that bound eye and tongue. It might have worn off, but his attention
+      was presently claimed again by Mrs. Evelyn; and Fleda thought best while
+      yet Constance's bouquet was unfinished, to join another party and make her
+      escape into the drawing-rooms.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="34"></a>Chapter XXXIV.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Have you observed a sitting hare,<br /> List'ning, and fearful of the
+        storm<br /> Of horns and hounds, clap back her ear,<br /> Afraid to keep
+        or leave her form?
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Prior.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      By the Evelyns' own desire Fleda's going to them was delayed for a week,
+      because, they said, a furnace was to be brought into the house and they
+      would be all topsy-turvy till that fuss was over. Fleda kept herself very
+      quiet in the mean time, seeing almost nobody but the person whom it was
+      her especial object to shun. Do her best she could not quite escape him,
+      and was even drawn into two or three walks and rides; in spite of denying
+      herself utterly to gentlemen at home, and losing in consequence a visit
+      from her old friend. She was glad at last to go to the Evelyns and see
+      company again, hoping that Mr. Thorn would be merged in a crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she could not merge him; and sometimes was almost inclined to suspect
+      that his constant prominence in the picture must be owing to some
+      mysterious and wilful conjuration going on in the background. She was at a
+      loss to conceive how else it happened that despite her utmost endeavours
+      to the contrary she was so often thrown upon his care and obliged to take
+      up with his company. It was very disagreeable. Mr. Carleton she saw almost
+      as constantly, but though frequently near she had never much to do with
+      him. There seemed to be a dividing atmosphere always in the way; and
+      whenever he did speak to her she felt miserably constrained and unable to
+      appear like herself. Why was it?--she asked herself in a very vexed state
+      of mind. No doubt partly from the remembrance of that overheard
+      conversation which she could not help applying, but much more from an
+      indefinable sense that at these times there were always eyes upon her. She
+      tried to charge the feeling upon her consciousness of their having heard
+      that same talk, but it would not the more go off. And it had no chance to
+      wear off, for somehow the occasions never lasted long; something was sure
+      to break them up; while an unfortunate combination of circumstances, or of
+      connivers, seemed to give Mr. Thorn unlimited facilities in the same kind.
+      Fleda was quick witted and skilful enough to work herself out of them once
+      in a while; more often the combination was too much for her simplicity and
+      straight-forwardness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was a little disappointed and a little surprised at Mr. Carleton's
+      coolness. He was quite equal to withstand or out-general the schemes of
+      any set of manoeuvrers; therefore it was plain he did not care for the
+      society of his little friend and companion of old time. Fleda felt it,
+      especially as she now and then heard him in delightful talk with somebody
+      else; making himself so interesting that when Fleda could get a chance to
+      listen she was quite ready to forgive his not talking to her for the
+      pleasure of hearing him talk at all. But at other times she said
+      sorrowfully to herself, "He will be going home presently, and I shall not
+      have seen him!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One day she had successfully defended herself against taking a drive which
+      Mr. Thorn came to propose, though the proposition had been laughingly
+      backed by Mrs. Evelyn. Raillery was much harder to withstand than
+      persuasion; but Fleda's quiet resolution had proved a match for both. The
+      better to cover her ground, she declined to go out at all, and remained at
+      home the only one of the family that fine day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the afternoon Mr. Carleton was there. Fleda sat a little apart from the
+      rest, industriously bending over a complicated piece of embroidery
+      belonging to Constance and in which that young lady had made a great
+      blunder which she declared her patience unequal to the task of rectifying.
+      The conversation went gayly forward among the others; Fleda taking no part
+      in it beyond an involuntary one. Mr. Carleton's part was rather reserved
+      and grave; according to his manner in ordinary society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you keep bothering yourself with that for?" said Edith coming to
+      Fleda's side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One must be doing something, you know," said Fleda lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No you mustn't--not when you're tired--and I know you are. I'd let
+      Constance pick out her own work."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I promised her I would do it," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, you didn't promise her when. Come!--everybody's been out but you,
+      and you have sat here over this the whole day. Why don't you come over
+      there and talk with the rest?--I know you want to, for I've watched your
+      mouth going."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Going!--how?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Going--off at the corners. I've seen it! Come."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda said she could listen and work at once, and would not budge.
+      Edith stood looking at her a little while in a kind of admiring sympathy,
+      and then went back to the group.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton," said the young lady, who was treading with laudable
+      success in the steps of her sister Constance,--"what has become of that
+      ride you promised to give me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not know, Miss Edith," said Mr. Carleton smiling, "for my conscience
+      never had the keeping of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hush, Edith!" said her mother; "do you think Mr. Carleton has nothing to
+      do but to take you riding?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't believe he has much to do," said Edith securely. "But Mr.
+      Carleton, you did promise, for I asked you and you said nothing; and I
+      always have been told that silence gives consent; so what is to become of
+      it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you go now, Miss Edith?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now?--O yes! And will you go out to Manhattanville, Mr. Carleton!--along
+      by the river?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you like. But Miss Edith, the carriage will hold another--cannot you
+      persuade one of these ladies to go with us?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda!" said Edith, springing off to her with extravagant capers of
+      joy,--"Fleda, you shall go! you haven't been out to-day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I cannot go out to-day," said Fleda gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The air is very fine," said Mr. Carleton approaching her table, with no
+      want of alacrity in step or tone, her ears knew;--"and this weather makes
+      everything beautiful--has that piece of canvas any claims upon you that
+      cannot be put aside for a little?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir," said Fleda,--"but--I am sorry I have a stronger reason that must
+      keep me at home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She knows how the weather looks," said Edith,--"Mr. Thorn takes her out
+      every other day. It's no use to talk to her, Mr. Carleton,--when she says
+      she won't, she won't."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Every other day!" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, no," said Mrs. Evelyn coming up, and with that smile which Fleda had
+      never liked so little as at that minute,--"not <i>every other day</i>,
+      Edith, what are you talking of? Go and don't keep Mr. Carleton waiting."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda worked on, feeling a little aggrieved. Mr. Carleton stood still by
+      her table, watching her, while his companions were getting themselves
+      ready; but he said no more, and Fleda did not raise her head till the
+      party were off. Florence had taken her resigned place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dare say the weather will be quite as fine to-morrow, dear Fleda," said
+      Mrs. Evelyn softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope it will," said Fleda in a tone of resolute simplicity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I only hope it will not bring too great a throng of carriages to the
+      door," Mrs. Evelyn went on in a tone of great internal amusement;--"I
+      never used to mind it, but I have lately a nervous fear of collisions."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To-morrow is not your reception-day," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, not mine," said Mrs. Evelyn softly,--"but that doesn't signify--it
+      may be one of my neighbours'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda pulled away at her threads of worsted and wouldn't know anything
+      else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have read of the servants of Lot and the servants of Abraham
+      quarrelling," Mrs. Evelyn went on in the same undertone of
+      delight,--"because the land was too strait for them--I should be very
+      sorry to have anything of the sort happen again, for I cannot imagine
+      where Lot would go to find a plain that would suit him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Lot and Abraham, mamma!" said Constance from the sofa,--"what on earth
+      are you talking about?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "None of your business," said Mrs. Evelyn;--"I was talking of some country
+      friends of mine that you don't know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Constance knew her mother's laugh very well; but Mrs. Evelyn was
+      impenetrable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day Fleda ran away and spent a good part of the morning with her
+      uncle in the library, looking over new books; among which she found
+      herself quite a stranger, so many had made their appearance since the time
+      when she had much to do with libraries or bookstores. Living friends, male
+      and female, were happily forgotten in the delighted acquaintance-making
+      with those quiet companions which, whatever their deficiencies in other
+      respects, are at least never importunate nor unfaithful. Fleda had come
+      home rather late and was dressing for dinner with Constance's company and
+      help, when Mrs. Evelyn came into her room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Fleda," said the lady, her face and voice as full as possible of
+      fun,--"Mr. Carleton wants to know if you will ride with him this
+      afternoon.--I told him I believed you were in general shy of gentlemen
+      that drove their own horses--that I thought I had noticed you were,--but I
+      would come up and see."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mrs. Evelyn!--you did not tell him that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He said he was sorry to see you looked pale yesterday when he was asking
+      you; and he was afraid that embroidery is not good for you. He thinks you
+      are a very charming girl!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Mrs. Evelyn went off into little fits of laughter which unstrung all
+      Fleda's nerves. She stood absolutely trembling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mamma!--don't plague her!" said Constance. "He didn't say so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He did!--upon my word!--" said Mrs. Evelyn, speaking with great
+      difficulty;--"he said she was very charming, and it might be dangerous to
+      see too much of her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You made him say that, Mrs. Evelyn!" said Fleda, reproachfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well I did ask him if you were not very charming, but he
+      answered--without hesitation--" said the lady,--"I am only so afraid that
+      Lot will make his appearance!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda turned round to the glass, and went on arranging her hair, with a
+      quivering lip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Lot, mamma!" said Constance somewhat indignantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," said Mrs. Evelyn in ecstacies,--"because the land will not bear
+      both of them.--But Mr. Carleton is very much in earnest for his answer,
+      Fleda my dear--what shall I tell him?--You need be under no apprehensions
+      about going--he will perhaps tell you that you are charming, but I don't
+      think he will say anything more. You know he is a kind of patriarch!--And
+      when I asked him if he didn't think it might be dangerous to see too much
+      of you, he said he thought it might to some people--so you see you are
+      safe."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mrs. Evelyn, how could you use my name so!" said Fleda with a voice that
+      carried a good deal of reproach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Fleda, shall I tell him you will go?--You need not be afraid to
+      go riding, only you must not let yourself be seen walking with him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shall not go, ma'am," said Fleda quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wanted to send Edith with you, thinking it would be pleasanter; but I
+      knew Mr. Carleton's carriage would hold but two to-day. So what shall I
+      tell him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not going, ma'am," repeated Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what shall I tell him? I must give him some reason. Shall I say that
+      you think a sea-breeze is blowing, and you don't like it?--or shall I say
+      that prospects are a matter of indifference to you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was quite silent, and went on dressing herself with trembling
+      fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Fleda," said the lady bringing her face a little into
+      order,--"won't you go?--I am very sorry--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So am I sorry," said Fleda. "I can't go, Mrs. Evelyn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will tell Mr. Carleton you are very sorry," said Mrs. Evelyn, every
+      line of her face drawing again,--"that will console him; and let him hope
+      that you will not mind sea-breezes by and by, after you have been a little
+      longer in the neighbourhood of them. I will tell him you are a good
+      republican, and have an objection at present to an English equipage, but I
+      have no doubt that it is a prejudice which will wear off."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped to laugh, while Fleda had the greatest difficulty not to cry.
+      The lady did not seem to see her disturbed brow; but recovering herself
+      after a little, though not readily, she bent forward and touched her lips
+      to it in kind fashion. Fleda did not look up; and saying again, "I will
+      tell him, dear Fleda!"--Mrs. Evelyn left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Constance after a little laughing and condoling, neither of which Fleda
+      attempted to answer, ran off too, to dress herself; and Fleda after
+      finishing her own toilette locked her door, sat down and cried heartily.
+      She thought Mrs. Evelyn had been, perhaps unconsciously, very unkind; and
+      to say that unkindness has not been meant is but to shift the charge from
+      one to another vital point in the character of a friend, and one perhaps
+      sometimes not less grave. A moment's passionate wrong may consist with the
+      endurance of a friendship worth having, better than the thoughtlessness of
+      obtuse wits that can never know how to be kind. Fleda's whole frame was
+      still in a tremor from disagreeable excitement; and she had serious causes
+      of sorrow to cry for. She was sorry she had lost what would have been a
+      great pleasure in the ride,--and her great pleasures were not often,--but
+      nothing would have been more impossible than for her to go after what Mrs.
+      Evelyn had said;--she was sorry Mr. Carleton should have asked her twice
+      in vain; what must he think?--she was exceeding sorry that a thought
+      should have been put into her head that never before had visited the most
+      distant dreams of her imagination,--so needlessly, so gratuitously;--she
+      was very sorry, for she could not be free of it again, and she felt it
+      would make her miserably hampered and constrained in mind and manner both,
+      in any future intercourse with the person in question. And then again what
+      would he think of that? Poor Fleda came to the conclusion that her best
+      place was at home; and made up her mind to take the first good opportunity
+      of getting there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went down to dinner with no traces of either tears or unkindness on
+      her sweet face, but her nerves were quivering all the afternoon; she could
+      not tell whether Mrs. Evelyn and her daughters found it out. And it was
+      impossible for her to get back even her old degree of freedom of manner
+      before either Mr. Carleton or Mr Thorn. All the more because Mrs. Evelyn
+      was every now and then bringing out some sly allusion which afforded
+      herself intense delight and wrought Fleda to the last degree of quietness.
+      Unkind.--Fleda thought now it was but half from ignorance of the mischief
+      she was doing, and the other half from the mere desire of selfish
+      gratification. The times and ways in which Lot and Abraham were walked
+      into the conversation were incalculable,--and unintelligible except to the
+      person who understood it only too well. On one occasion Mrs. Evelyn went
+      on with a long rigmarole to Mr. Thorn about sea-breezes, with a face of
+      most exquisite delight at his mystification and her own hidden fun; till
+      Fleda was absolutely trembling. Fleda shunned both the gentlemen at length
+      with a kind of nervous horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One steamer had left New York, and another, and still Mr. Carleton did not
+      leave it. Why he staid, Constance was as much in a puzzle as ever, for no
+      mortal could guess. Clearly, she said, he did not delight in New York
+      society, for he honoured it as slightly and partially as might be, and it
+      was equally clear if he had a particular reason for staying he didn't mean
+      anybody should know it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If he don't mean it, you won't find it out, Constance," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But it is that very consideration, you see, which inflames my impatience
+      to a most dreadful degree. I think our house is distinguished with his
+      regards, though I am sure I can't imagine why, for he never condescends to
+      anything beyond general benevolence when he is here, and not always to
+      that. He has no taste for embroidery, or Miss Ringgan's crewels would
+      receive more of his notice--he listens to my spirited conversation with a
+      self-possession which invariably deprives me of mine!--and his ear is
+      evidently dull to musical sensibilities, or Florence's harp would have
+      greater charms. I hope there is a web weaving somewhere that will catch
+      him--at present he stands in an attitude of provoking independence of all
+      the rest of the world. It is curious!" said Constance with an
+      indescribable face,--"I feel that the independence of another is rapidly
+      making a slave of me!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you mean, Constance?" said Edith indignantly. But the others
+      could do nothing but laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda did not wonder that Mr. Carleton made no more efforts to get her to
+      ride, for the very next day after his last failure he had met her driving
+      with Mr. Thorn. Fleda had been asked by Mr. Thorn's mother in such a way
+      as made it impossible to get off; but it caused her to set a fresh seal of
+      unkindness to Mrs. Evelyn's behaviour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening when there was no other company at Mrs. Evelyn's, Mr.
+      Stackpole was entertaining himself with a long dissertation upon the
+      affairs of America, past, present, and future. It was a favourite subject;
+      Mr. Stackpole always seemed to have more complacent enjoyment of his easy
+      chair when he could succeed in making every American in the room sit
+      uncomfortably. And this time, without any one to thwart him, he went on to
+      his heart's content, disposing of the subject as one would strip a rose of
+      its petals, with as much seeming nonchalance and ease, and with precisely
+      the same design, to make a rose no rose. Leaf after leaf fell under Mr.
+      Stackpole's touch, as if it had been a black frost. The American
+      government was a rickety experiment; go to pieces presently,--American
+      institutions an alternative between fallacy and absurdity, the fruit of
+      raw minds and precocious theories;--American liberty a contradiction;--
+      American character a compound of quackery and pretension;--American
+      society (except at Mrs. Evelyn's) an anomaly;--American destiny the same
+      with that of a Cactus or a volcano; a period of rest followed by a period
+      of excitement; not however like the former making successive shoots
+      towards perfection, but like the latter grounding every new face of things
+      upon the demolition of that which went before. Smoothly and pleasantly Mr.
+      Stackpole went on compounding this cup of entertainment for himself and
+      his hearers, smacking his lips over it, and all the more, Fleda thought,
+      when they made wry faces; throwing in a little truth, a good deal of
+      fallacy, a great deal of perversion and misrepresentation; while Mrs.
+      Evelyn listened and smiled, and half parried and half assented to his
+      positions; and Fleda sat impatiently drumming upon her elbow with the
+      fingers of her other hand, in the sheer necessity of giving some
+      expression to her feelings. Mr. Stackpole at last got his finger upon the
+      sore spot of American slavery, and pressed it hard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is the land of the stars and the stripes!" said the gentleman in a
+      little fit of virtuous indignation;--"This is the land where all are
+      brothers!--where 'All men are born free and equal.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Stackpole," said Fleda in a tone that called his attention,--"are you
+      well acquainted with the popular proverbs of your country?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not particularly," he said,--"he had never made it a branch of study."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am a great admirer of them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He bowed, and begged to be excused for remarking that he didn't see the
+      point yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you remember this one, sir," said Fleda colouring a little,--"'Those
+      that live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones?'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have heard it; but pardon me,--though your remark seems to imply the
+      contrary I am in the dark yet. What unfortunate points of vitrification
+      have I laid open to your fire?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought they were probably forgotten by you, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shall be exceedingly obliged to you if you will put me in condition to
+      defend myself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think nothing could do that, Mr. Stackpole. Under whose auspices and
+      fostering care was this curse of slavery laid upon America?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why--of course,--but you will observe, Miss Ringgan, that at that day the
+      world was unenlightened on a great many points;--since then <i>we</i> have
+      cast off the wrong which we then shared with the rest of mankind."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay sir, but not until we had first repudiated it and Englishmen had
+      desired to force it back upon us at the point of the sword. Four times"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But my dear Fleda," interrupted Mrs. Evelyn, "the English nation have no
+      slaves nor slave-trade--they have put an end to slavery entirely
+      everywhere under their flag."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They were very slow about it," said Fleda. "Four times the government of
+      Massachusetts abolished the slave-trade under their control, and four
+      times the English government thrust it back upon them. Do you remember
+      what Burke says about that?--in his speech on Conciliation with America?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It don't signify what Burke says about it," said Mr. Stackpole rubbing
+      his chin,--"Burke is not the first authority--but Miss Ringgan, it is
+      undeniable that slavery and the slave-trade, too, does at this moment
+      exist in the interior of your own country."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will never excuse what is wrong, sir; but I think it becomes an
+      Englishman to be very moderate in putting forth that charge."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why?" said he hastily;--"we have done away with it entirely in our own
+      dominions;--wiped that stain clean off. Not a slave can touch British
+      ground but he breathes free air from that minute."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir, but candour will allow that we are not in a condition in this
+      country to decide the question by a <i>tour de force</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is to decide it then?" said he a little arrogantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The progress of truth in public opinion."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And why not the government--as well as our government?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It has not the power, you know, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not the power! well, that speaks for itself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing against us, on a fair construction," said Fleda patiently. "It is
+      well known to those who understand the subject"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where did you learn so much about it, Fleda?" said Mrs. Evelyn
+      humourously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As the birds pick up their supplies, ma'am--here and there.--It is well
+      known, Mr. Stackpole, that our constitution never could have been agreed
+      upon if that question of slavery had not been by common consent left where
+      it was--with the separate state governments."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The separate state governments--well, why do not <i>they</i> put an end
+      to it? The disgrace is only shifted."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of course they must first have the consent of the public mind of those
+      states."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah!--their consent!--and why is their consent wanting?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We cannot defend ourselves there," said Mrs. Evelyn;--"I wish we could."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The disgrace at least is shifted from the whole to a part. But will you
+      permit me," said Fleda, "to give another quotation from my despised
+      authority, and remind you of an Englishman's testimony, that beyond a
+      doubt that point of emancipation would never have been carried in
+      parliament had the interests of even a part of the electors been concerned
+      in it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was done, however,--and done at the expense of twenty millions of
+      money."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I am sure that was very noble," said Florence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was what no nation but the English would ever have done," said Mrs.
+      Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not wish to dispute it," said Fleda; "but still it was doing what
+      did not touch the sensitive point of their own well-being."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>We</i> think there is a little national honour concerned in it," said
+      Mr. Stackpole dryly, stroking his chin again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So does every right-minded person," said Mrs. Evelyn; "I am sure I do."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I am sure so do I," said Fleda; "but I think the honour of a piece of
+      generosity is considerably lessened by the fact that it is done at the
+      expense of another."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Generosity!" said Mr. Stackpole,--"it was not generosity, it was
+      justice;--there was no generosity about it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then it deserves no honour at all," said Fleda, "if it was merely
+      that--the tardy execution of justice is but the removal of a reproach."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We Englishmen are of opinion, however," said Mr. Stackpole contentedly,
+      "that the removers of a reproach are entitled to some honour which those
+      who persist in retaining it cannot claim."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," said Fleda, drawing rather a long breath,--"I acknowledge that; but
+      I think that while some of these same Englishmen have shewn themselves so
+      unwilling to have the condition of their own factory slaves ameliorated,
+      they should be very gentle in speaking of wrongs which we have far less
+      ability to rectify."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah!--I like consistency," said Mr. Stackpole. "America shouldn't dress up
+      poles with liberty caps till all who walk under are free to wear them. She
+      cannot boast that the breath of her air and the breath of freedom are
+      one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Can England?" said Fleda gently,--"when her own citizens are not free
+      from the horrors of impressment?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pshaw!" said Mr. Stackpole, half in a pet and half laughing,--"why, where
+      did you get such a fury against England?--you are the first <i>fair</i>
+      antagonist I have met on this side of the water."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish I was a better one, sir," said Fleda laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Miss Ringgan has been prejudiced by an acquaintance with one or two
+      unfortunate specimens," said Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay!" said Mr. Stackpole a little bitterly,--"America is the natural
+      birthplace of prejudice,--always was."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Displayed, first, in maintaining the rights against the swords of
+      Englishmen;--latterly, how, Mr. Stackpole?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It isn't necessary to enlighten <i>you</i> on any part of the subject,"
+      said he a little pointedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda, my dear, you are answered!" said Mrs. Evelyn, apparently with
+      great internal amusement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yet you will indulge me so far as to indicate what part of the subject
+      you are upon?" said Fleda quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You must grant so much as that to so gentle a requisition, Mr.
+      Stackpole," said the older lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I venture to assume that you do not say that on your own account, Mrs.
+      Evelyn?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not at all--I agree with you, that Americans are prejudiced; but I think
+      it will pass off, Mr. Stackpole, as they learn to know themselves and
+      other countries better."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But how do they deserve such a charge and such a defence? or how have
+      they deserved it?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tell her, Mr. Stackpole," said Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why," said Mr. Stackpole,--"in their absurd opposition to all the old and
+      tried forms of things, and rancorous dislike of those who uphold them; and
+      in their pertinacity on every point where they might be set right, and
+      impatience of hearing the truth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are they singular in that last item?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now," said Mr. Stackpole, not heeding her,--"there's your treatment of
+      the aborigines of this country--what do you call that, for a <i>free</i>
+      people?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A powder magazine, communicating with a great one of your own somewhere
+      else; so if you are a good subject, sir, you will not carry a lighted
+      candle into it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One of our own--where?" said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In India," said Fleda with a glance,--"and there are I don't know how
+      many trains leading to it,--so better hands off, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where did you pick up such a spite against us?" said Mr. Stackpole,
+      drawing a little back and eying her as one would a belligerent mouse or
+      cricket. "Will you tell me now that Americans are not prejudiced?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you call prejudice?" said Fleda smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O there is a great deal of it, no doubt, here, Mr. Stackpole," said Mrs.
+      Evelyn blandly;--"but we shall grow out of it in time;--it is only the
+      premature wisdom of a young people."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And young people never like to hear their wisdom rebuked," said Mr
+      Stackpole bowing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda, my dear, what for is that little significant shake of your head?"
+      said Mrs. Evelyn in her amused voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A trifle, ma'am."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Covers a hidden rebuke, Mrs. Evelyn, I have no doubt, for both our last
+      remarks. What is it, Miss Fleda?--I dare say we can bear it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was thinking, sir, that none would trouble themselves much about our
+      foolscap if we had not once made them wear it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Stackpole, you are worsted!--I only wish Mr. Carleton had been here!"
+      said Mrs. Evelyn, with a face of excessive delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish he had," said Fleda, "for then I need not have spoken a word."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why," said Mr. Stackpole a little irritated, "you suppose he would have
+      fought for you against me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose he would have fought for truth against anybody, sir," said
+      Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Even against his own interests?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If I am not mistaken in him," said Fleda, "he reckons his own and those
+      of truth identical."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shout that was raised at this by all the ladies of the family, made
+      her look up in wonderment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton,"--said Mrs. Evelyn,--"what do you say to that, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The direction of the lady's eye made Fleda spring up and face about. The
+      gentleman in question was standing quietly at the back of her chair, too
+      quietly, she saw, to leave any doubt of his having been there some time.
+      Mr. Stackpole uttered an ejaculation, but Fleda stood absolutely
+      motionless, and nothing could be prettier than her colour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you say to what you have heard, Mr. Carleton?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's eyes were on the floor, but she thoroughly appreciated the tone of
+      the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hardly know whether I have listened with most pleasure or pain, Mrs.
+      Evelyn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pleasure!" said Constance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pain!" said Mr. Stackpole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am certain Miss Ringgan was pure from any intention of giving pain,"
+      said Mrs. Evelyn with her voice of contained fun. "She has no national
+      antipathies, I am sure,--unless in the case of the Jews,--she is too
+      charming a girl for that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Miss Ringgan cannot regret less than I a word that she has spoken," said
+      Mr. Carleton looking keenly at her as she drew back and took a seat a
+      little off from the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then why was the pain?" said Mr. Stackpole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That there should have been any occasion for them, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well I wasn't sensible of the occasion, so I didn't feel the pain," said
+      Mr. Stackpole dryly, for the other gentleman's tone was almost haughtily
+      significant. "But if I had, the pleasure of such sparkling eyes would have
+      made me forget it. Good-evening, Mrs. Evelyn--good-evening, my gentle
+      antagonist,--it seems to me you have learned, if it is permissible to
+      alter one of your favorite proverbs, that it is possible to <i>break two
+      windows</i> with one stone. However, I don't feel that I go away with any
+      of mine shattered."--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda, my dear," said Mrs. Evelyn laughing,--"what do you say to that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As he is not here I will say nothing to it, Mrs. Evelyn," said Fleda,
+      quietly drawing off to the table with her work, and again in a tremor from
+      head to foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, didn't you see Mr. Carleton come in?" said Edith following her;--"I
+      did--he came in long before you had done talking, and mamma held up her
+      finger and made him stop; and he stood at the back of your chair the whole
+      time listening. Mr. Stackpole didn't know he was there, either. But what's
+      the matter with you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing--" said Fleda,--but she made her escape out of the room the next
+      instant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mamma," said Edith, "what ails Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know, my love," said Mrs. Evelyn. "Nothing, I hope."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There does, though," said Edith decidedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come here, Edith," said Constance, "and don't meddle with matters above
+      your comprehension. Miss Ringgan has probably hurt her hand with throwing
+      stones."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hurt her hand!" said Edith. But she was taken possession of by her eldest
+      sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is a lovely girl, Mr. Carleton," said Mrs. Evelyn with an
+      indescribable look--outwardly benign, but beneath that most keen in its
+      scrutiny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He bowed rather abstractedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She will make a charming little farmer's wife, don't you think so?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that her lot, Mrs. Evelyn?" he said with a somewhat incredulous smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why no--not precisely,--" said the lady,--"you know in the country, or
+      you do not know, the ministers are half farmers, but I suppose not more
+      than half; just such a mixture as will suit Fleda, I should think. She has
+      not told me in so many words, but it is easy to read so ingenuous a nature
+      as hers, and I have discovered that there is a most deserving young friend
+      of mine settled at Queechy that she is by no means indifferent to. I take
+      it for granted that will be the end of it," said Mrs. Evelyn, pinching her
+      sofa cushion in a great many successive places with a most composed and
+      satisfied air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mr. Carleton did not seem at all interested in the subject, and
+      presently introduced another.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="35"></a>Chapter XXXV.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        It is a hard matter for friends to meet; but mountains may be removed
+        with earthquakes, and so encounter.--As You Like It.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      "What have we to do to-night?" said Florence at breakfast the next
+      morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have no engagement, have you?" said her mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No mamma," said Constance arching her eyebrows,--"we are to taste the
+      sweets of domestic life--you as head of the family will go to sleep in the
+      dormeuse, and Florence and I shall take turns in yawning by your side."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what will Fleda do?" said Mrs. Evelyn laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda, mamma, will be wrapped in remorseful recollections of having
+      enacted a mob last evening and have enough occupation in considering how
+      she shall repair damages."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda, my dear, she is very saucy," said Mrs. Evelyn, sipping her tea
+      with great comfort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why should we yawn to-night any more than last night?" said Fleda; a
+      question which Edith would certainly have asked if she had not been away
+      at school. The breakfast was too late for both her and her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Last night, my dear, your fractious disposition kept us upon half breath;
+      there wasn't time to yawn. I meant to have eased my breast by laughing
+      afterwards, but that expectation was stifled."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What stifled it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was afraid!--" said Constance with a little flutter of her person up
+      and down in her chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Afraid of what?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And besides you know we can't have our drawing-rooms filled with
+      distinguished foreigners <i>every</i> evening we are not at home. I shall
+      direct the fowling-piece to be severe in his execution of orders to-night
+      and let nobody in. I forgot!"--exclaimed Constance with another
+      flutter,--"it is Mr. Thorn's night!--My dearest mamma, will you consent to
+      have the dormeuse wheeled round with its back to the fire?--and Florence
+      and I will take the opportunity to hear little Edith's lessons in the next
+      room--unless Mr Decatur comes. I must endeavour to make the Manton
+      comprehend what he has to do."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what is to become of Mr. Evelyn?" said Fleda; "you make Mrs. Evelyn
+      the head of the family very unceremoniously."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Evelyn, my dear," said Constance gravely,--"makes a futile attempt
+      semi-weekly to beat his brains out with a club; and every successive
+      failure encourages him to try again; the only effect being a temporary
+      decapitation of his family; and I believe this is the night on which he
+      periodically turns a frigid eye upon their destitution."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are too absurd!" said Florence, reaching over for a sausage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear Constance!" said Fleda, half laughing, "why do you talk so?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Constance, behave yourself," said her mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mamma!" said the young lady,--"I am actuated by a benevolent desire to
+      effect a diversion of Miss Ringgan's mind from its gloomy meditations, by
+      presenting to her some more real subjects of distress."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wonder if you ever looked at such a thing," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What 'such a thing'?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As a real subject of distress."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--I have one incessantly before me in your serious countenance. Why in
+      the world, Fleda, don't you look like other people?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose, because I don't feel like them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And why don't you? I am sure you ought to be as happy as most people."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think I am a great deal happier," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Than I am?" said the young lady, with arched eyebrows. But they went down
+      and her look softened in spite of herself at the eye and smile which
+      answered her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should be very glad, dear Constance, to know you were as happy as I."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why do you think I am not?" said the young lady a little tartly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because no happiness would satisfy me that cannot last"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And why can't it last?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is not built upon lasting things."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pshaw!" said Constance, "I wouldn't have such a dismal kind of happiness
+      as yours, Fleda, for anything."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dismal!" said Fleda smiling,--"because it can never disappoint me?--or
+      because it isn't noisy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear little Fleda!" said Constance in her usual manner,--"you have
+      lived up there among the solitudes till you have got morbid ideas of
+      life--which it makes me melancholy to observe. I am very much afraid they
+      verge towards stagnation."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No indeed!" said Fleda laughing; "but, if you please, with me the stream
+      of life has flowed so quietly that I have looked quite to the bottom, and
+      know how shallow it is, and growing shallower;--I could not venture my
+      bark of happiness there; but with you it is like a spring torrent,--the
+      foam and the roar hinder your looking deep into it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Constance gave her a significant glance, a strong contrast to the earnest
+      simplicity of Fleda's face, and presently inquired if she ever wrote
+      poetry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Shall I have the pleasure some day of discovering your uncommon signature
+      in the secular corner of some religious newspaper?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope not," said Fleda quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joe Manton just then brought in a bouquet for Miss Evelyn, a very common
+      enlivener of the breakfast-table, all the more when, as in the present
+      case, the sisters could not divine where it came from. It moved Fleda's
+      wonder to see how very little the flowers were valued for their own sake;
+      the probable cost, the probable giver, the probable &eacute;clat, were
+      points enthusiastically discussed and thoroughly appreciated; but the
+      sweet messengers themselves were carelessly set by for other eyes and
+      seemed to have no attraction for those they were destined to. Fleda
+      enjoyed them at a distance and could not help thinking that "Heaven sends
+      almonds to those that have no teeth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This Camellia will just do for my hair to-morrow night!" said
+      Florence;--"just what I want with my white muslin."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think I will go with you to-morrow, Florence," said Fleda;--"Mrs.
+      Decatur has asked me so often."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, my dear, I shall be made happy by your company," said Florence
+      abstractedly, examining her bouquet,--"I am afraid it hasn't stem enough,
+      Constance!--never mind--I'll fix it--where <i>is </i> the end of this
+      myrtle?--I shall be very glad, of course, Fleda my dear, but--" picking
+      her bouquet to pieces,--"I think it right to tell you, privately, I am
+      afraid you will find it very stupid--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O I dare say she will not," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"she can go and try at any
+      rate--she would find it very stupid with me here alone and Constance at
+      the concert--I dare say she will find some there whom she knows."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But the thing is, mamma, you see, at these conversaziones they never talk
+      anything but French and German--I don't know--of <i>course</i> I should be
+      delighted to have Fleda with me, and I have no doubt Mrs. Decatur would be
+      very glad to have her--but I am afraid she won't enjoy herself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not want to go where I shall not enjoy myself," said Fleda
+      quietly;--"that is certain."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of course, you know, dear, I would a great deal rather have you than
+      not--I only speak for what I think would be for your pleasure."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I would do just as I felt inclined, Fleda," said Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shall let her encounter the dullness alone, ma'am," said Fleda lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was not in a light mood that she put on her bonnet after dinner and
+      set out to pay a visit to her uncle at the library; she had resolved that
+      she would not be near the dormeuse in whatsoever relative position that
+      evening. Very, very quiet she was; her grave little face walked through
+      the crowd of busy, bustling, anxious people, as if she had nothing in
+      common with them; and Fleda felt that she had very little. Half
+      unconsciously as she passed along the streets her eye scanned the
+      countenances of that moving panorama; and the report it brought back made
+      her draw closer within herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She wondered that her feet had ever tripped lightly up those library
+      stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ha! my fair Saxon," said the doctor;--"what has brought you down here
+      to-day?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I felt in want of something fresh, uncle Orrin, so I thought I would come
+      and see you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fresh!" said he. "Ah you are pining for green fields, I know. But you
+      little piece of simplicity, there are no green fields now at Queechy--they
+      are two feet deep with snow by this time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well I am sure <i>that</i> is fresh," said Fleda smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor was turning over great volumes one after another in a
+      delightful confusion of business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When do you think you shall go north, uncle Orrin?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "North?" said he--"what do you want to know about the north?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You said, you know, sir, that you would go a little out of your way to
+      leave me at home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I won't go out of my way for anybody. If I leave you there, it will be in
+      my way. Why you are not getting homesick?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir, not exactly,--but I think I will go with you when you go."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That won't be yet awhile--I thought those people wanted you to stay till
+      January."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, but suppose I want to do something else?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at her with a comical kind of indecision, and said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You don't know what you want!--I thought when you came in you needn't go
+      further than the glass to see something fresh; but I believe the
+      sea-breezes haven't had enough of you yet. Which part of you wants
+      freshening?" he said in his mock-fierce way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda laughed and said she didn't know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Out of humour, I guess," said the doctor. "I'll talk to you!--Take this
+      and amuse yourself awhile, with something that <i>isn't</i> fresh, till I
+      get through, and then you shall go home with me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda carried the large volume into one of the reading rooms, where there
+      was nobody, and sat down at the baize-covered table. But the book was not
+      of the right kind--or her mood was notfor it failed to interest her. She
+      sat nonchalantly turning over the leaves; but mentally she was busy
+      turning over other leaves which had by far the most of her attention. The
+      pages that memory read--the record of the old times passed in that very
+      room, and the old childish light-hearted feelings that were, she thought,
+      as much beyond recall. Those pleasant times, when the world was all bright
+      and friends all fair, and the light heart had never been borne down by the
+      pressure of care, nor sobered by disappointment, nor chilled by
+      experience. The spirit will not spring elastic again from under that
+      weight; and the flower that has closed upon its own sweetness will not
+      open a second time to the world's breath. Thoughtfully, softly, she was
+      touching and feeling of the bands that years had fastened about her
+      heart--they would not be undone,--though so quietly and almost stealthily
+      they had been bound there. She was remembering the shadows that one after
+      another had been cast upon her life, till now one soft veil of a cloud
+      covered the whole; no storm cloud certainly, but also there was nothing
+      left of the glad sunlight that her young eyes rejoiced in. At Queechy the
+      first shadow had fallen;--it was a good while before the next one, but
+      then they came thick. There was the loss of some old comforts and
+      advantages,--that could have been borne;--then consequent upon that, the
+      annoyances and difficulties that had wrought such a change in her uncle,
+      till Fleda could hardly look back and believe that he was the same person.
+      Once manly, frank, busy, happy and making his family so;--now reserved,
+      gloomy, irritable, unfaithful to his duty and selfishly throwing down the
+      burden they must take up, but were far less able to bear. And so Hugh was
+      changed too; not in loveliness of character and demeanour, nor even much
+      in the always gentle and tender expression of countenance; but the animal
+      spirits and frame, that should have had all the strong cherishing and
+      bracing that affection and wisdom together could have applied, had been
+      left to wear themselves out under trials his father had shrunk from and
+      other trials his father had made. And Mrs. Rossitur,--it was hard for
+      Fleda to remember the face she wore at Paris,--the bright eye and joyous
+      corners of the mouth, that now were so utterly changed. All by his
+      fault--that made it so hard to bear. Fleda had thought all this a hundred
+      times; she went over it now as one looks at a thing one is well accustomed
+      to; not with new sorrow, only in a subdued mood of mind just fit to make
+      the most of it. The familiar place took her back to the time when it
+      became familiar; she compared herself sitting there and feeling the whole
+      world a blank, except for the two or three at home, with the child who had
+      sat there years before in that happy time "when the feelings were young
+      and the world was new."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Evelyns--why should they trouble one so inoffensive and so easily
+      troubled as her poor little self? They did not know all they were
+      doing,--but if they had eyes they <i>must</i> see a little of it. Why
+      could she not have been allowed to keep her old free simple feeling with
+      everybody, instead of being hampered and constrained and miserable from
+      this pertinacious putting of thoughts in her head that ought not to be
+      there? It had made her unlike herself, she knew, in the company of several
+      people. And perhaps <i>they</i> might be sharp-sighted enough to read
+      it!--but even if not, how it had hindered her enjoyment. She had taken so
+      much pleasure in the Evelyns last year, and in her visit,--well, she would
+      go home and forget it, and maybe they would come to their right minds by
+      the next time she saw them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus19.jpg"><img src="images/illus19.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="Fleda saw with a start that it was Mr. Carleton."
+      title="Fleda saw with a start that it was Mr. Carleton." /><br /> Fleda saw
+      with a start that it was Mr. Carleton.</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What pleasant times we used to have here once, uncle Orrin!" she said
+      with half a sigh, the other half quite made up by the tone in which she
+      spoke. But it was not, as she thought, uncle Orrin that was standing by
+      her side, and looking up as she finished speaking Fleda saw with a start
+      that it was Mr. Carleton. There was such a degree of life and pleasantness
+      in his eyes that, in spite of the start, her own quite brightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is a pleasure one may always command," he said, answering part of
+      her speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, provided one has one's mind always under command," said Fleda. "It is
+      possible to sit down to a feast with a want of appetite."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In such a case, what is the best tonic?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His manner, even in those two minutes, had put Fleda perfectly at her
+      ease, ill-bred eyes and ears being absent. She looked up and answered,
+      with such entire trust in him as made her forget that she had ever had any
+      cause to distrust herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For me," she said,--"as a general rule, nothing is better than to go out
+      of doors--into the woods or the garden--they are the best fresheners I
+      know of. I can do myself good there at times when books are a nuisance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are not changed from your old self," he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wish was strong upon Fleda to know whether <i>he</i> was, but it was
+      not till she saw the answer in his face that she knew how plainly hers had
+      asked the question. And then she was so confused that she did not know
+      what the answer had been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I find it so too," he said. "The influences of pure nature are the best
+      thing I know for some moods--after the company of a good horse."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you on his back, I suppose?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That was my meaning. What is the doubt thereupon?" said he laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did I express any doubt?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Or my eyes were mistaken."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I remember they never used to be that," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What was it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why," said Fleda, thinking that Mr. Carleton had probably retained more
+      than one of his old habits, for she was answering with her old
+      obedience,--"I was doubting what the influence is in that case--worth
+      analyzing, I think. I am afraid the good horse's company has little to do
+      with it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What then do you suppose?" said he smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why," said Fleda,--"it might be--but I beg your pardon, Mr. Carleton! I
+      am astonished at my own presumption."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Go on, and let me know why?" he said, with that happiness of manner which
+      was never resisted. Fleda went on, reassuring her courage now and then
+      with a glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The relief <i>might</i> spring, sir, from the gratification of a proud
+      feeling of independence,--or from a dignified sense of isolation,--or an
+      imaginary riding down of opposition--or the consciousness of being master
+      of what you have in hand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She would have added to the general category, "the running away from
+      oneself;" but the eye and bearing of the person before her forbade even
+      such a thought as connected with him. He laughed, but shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps then," said Fleda, "it may be nothing worse than the working off
+      of a surplus of energy or impatience, that leaves behind no more than can
+      be managed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have learned something of human nature since I had the pleasure of
+      knowing you," he said with a look at once amused and penetrating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish I hadn't," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her countenance absolutely fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I sometimes think," said he turning over the leaves of her book, "that
+      these are the best companionship one can have--the world at large is very
+      unsatisfactory."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O how much!" said Fleda with a long breath. "The only pleasant thing that
+      my eyes rested upon as I came through the streets this afternoon, was a
+      huge bunch of violets that somebody was carrying. I walked behind them as
+      long as I could."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is your old love for Queechy in full force?" said Mr. Carleton, still
+      turning over the leaves, and smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe so--I should be very sorry to live here long--at home I can
+      always go out and find society that refreshes me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have set yourself a high standard," he said, with no displeased
+      expression of the lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have been charged with that," said Fleda;--"but is it possible to set
+      too high a standard, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One may leave oneself almost alone in the world."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, even then," said Fleda, "I would rather have only the image of
+      excellence than be contented with inferiority."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Isn't it possible to do both?" said he, smiling again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Fleda,--"perhaps I am too easily dissatisfied--I
+      believe I have grown fastidious living alone--I have sometimes almost a
+      disgust at the world and everything in it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have often felt so," he said;--"but I am not sure that it is a mood to
+      be indulged in--likely to further our own good or that of others."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure it is not," said Fleda;--"I often feel vexed with myself for
+      it; but what can one do, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't your friends the flowers help you in this?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not a bit," said Fleda,--"they draw the other way; their society is so
+      very pure and satisfying that one is all the less inclined to take up with
+      the other."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She could not quite tell what to make of the smile with which he began to
+      speak; it half abashed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When I spoke a little while ago," said he, "of the best cure for an ill
+      mood, I was speaking of secondary means simply--the only really
+      humanizing, rectifying, peace-giving thing I ever tried was looking at
+      time in the light of eternity, and shaming or melting my coldness away in
+      the rays of the Sun of righteousness."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's eyes, which had fallen on her book, were raised again with such a
+      flash of feeling that it quite prevented her seeing what was in his. But
+      the feeling was a little too strong--the eyes went down, lower than ever,
+      and the features shewed that the utmost efforts of self-command were
+      needed to control them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is no other cure," he went on in the same tone;--"but disgust and
+      weariness and selfishness shrink away and hide themselves before a word or
+      a look of the Redeemer of men. When we hear him say, 'I have bought
+      thee--thou art mine,' it is like one of those old words of healing, 'Thou
+      art loosed from thine infirmity,'--'Be thou clean,'--and the mind takes
+      sweetly the grace and the command together, 'That he who loveth God love
+      his brother also.'--Only the preparation of the gospel of peace can make
+      our feet go softly over the roughness of the way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda did not move, unless her twinkling eyelashes might seem to
+      contradict that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>I</i> need not tell you," Mr. Carleton went on a little lower, "where
+      this medicine is to be sought."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is strange," said Fleda presently, "how well one may know and how well
+      one may forget.--But I think the body has a great deal to do with it
+      sometimes--these states of feeling, I mean."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No doubt it has; and in these cases the cure is a more complicated
+      matter. I should think the roses would be useful there?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's mind was crossed by an indistinct vision of peas, asparagus, and
+      sweet corn; she said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "An indirect remedy is sometimes the very best that can be employed.
+      However it is always true that the more our eyes are fixed upon the source
+      of light the less we notice the shadows that things we are passing fling
+      across our way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda did not know how to talk for a little while; she was too happy.
+      Whatever kept Mr. Carleton from talking, he was silent also. Perhaps it
+      was the understanding of her mood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton," said Fleda after a little time, "did you ever carry out
+      that plan of a rose-garden that you were talking of a long while ago?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You remember it?" said he with a pleased look.--"Yes--that was one of the
+      first things I set about after I went home--but I did not follow the
+      regular fashion of arrangement that one of your friends is so fond of."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should not like that for anything," said Fleda,--"and least of all for
+      roses."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you remember the little shrubbery path that opened just in front of
+      the library windows?--leading at the distance of half a mile to a long
+      narrow winding glen?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perfectly well!" said Fleda,--"through the wood of evergreens--I remember
+      the glen very well."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "About half way from the house," said he smiling at her eyes, "a glade
+      opens which merges at last in the head of the glen--I planted my roses
+      there--the circumstances of the ground were very happy for disposing them
+      according to my wish."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And how far?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The roses?--O all the way, and some distance down the glen. Not a
+      continuous thicket of them," he added smiling again,--"I wished each kind
+      to stand so that its peculiar beauty should be fully relieved and
+      appreciated; and that would have been lost in a crowd."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, I know it," said Fleda;--"one's eye rests upon the chief objects of
+      attraction and the others are hardly seen,--they do not even serve as
+      foils. And they must shew beautifully against that dark background of firs
+      and larches!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--and the windings of the ground gave me every sort of situation and
+      exposure. I wanted room too for the different effects of masses of the
+      same kind growing together and of fine individuals or groups standing
+      alone where they could shew the full graceful development of their
+      nature."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What a pleasure!--What a beauty it must be!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The ground is very happy--many varieties of soil and exposure were needed
+      for the plants of different habits, and I found or made them all. The
+      rocky beginnings of the glen even furnished me with south walls for the
+      little tea-roses, and the Macartneys and Musk roses,--the Banksias I kept
+      nearer home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know them all, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not quite," said he smiling at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have seen one Banksia--the Macartney is a name that tells me nothing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They are evergreens--with large white flowers--very abundant and late in
+      the season, but they need the shelter of a wall with us."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should think you would say 'with <i>me</i>'," said Fleda. "I cannot
+      conceive that the head-quarters of the Rose tribe should be anywhere
+      else."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One of the queens of the tribe is there, in the neighbourhood of the
+      Macartneys--the difficult Rosa sulphurea--it finds itself so well
+      accommodated that it condescends to play its part to perfection. Do you
+      know that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not at all."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is one of the most beautiful of all, though not my favourite--it has
+      large double yellow flowers shaped like the Provence--very superb, but as
+      wilful as any queen of them all."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Which is your favourite, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not that which shews itself most splendid to the eye, but which offers
+      fairest indications to the fancy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked a little wistfully, for there was a smile rather of the eye
+      than of the lips which said there was a hidden thought beneath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you assign characters to your flowers?" said he gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Always!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That Rosa sulphurea is a haughty high-bred beauty that disdains even to
+      shew herself beautiful unless she is pleased;--I love better what comes
+      nearer home to the charities and wants of everyday life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not answered her, Fleda knew; she thought of what he had said to
+      Mrs. Evelyn about liking beauty but not <i>beauties</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then," said he smiling again in that hidden way, "the head of the glen
+      gave me the soil I needed for the Bourbons and French roses."--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bourbons?"--said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Those are exceeding fine--a hybrid between the Chinese and the Rose-&agrave;-quatre-saisons--I
+      have not confined them all to the head of the glen; many of them are in
+      richer soil, grafted on standards."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I like standard roses," said Fleda, "better than any."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not better than climbers?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Better than any climbers I ever saw--except the Banksia."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is hardly a more elegant variety than that, though it is not
+      strictly a climber; and indeed when I spoke I was thinking as much of the
+      training roses. Many of the Noisettes are very fine. But I have the
+      climbers all over--in some parts nothing else, where the wood closes in
+      upon the path--there the evergreen roses or the Ayrshire cover the ground
+      under the trees, or are trained up the trunks and allowed to find their
+      own way through the branches down again--the Multiflora in the same
+      manner. I have made the Boursault cover some unsightly rocks that were in
+      my way.--Then in wider parts of the glade nearer home are your favourite
+      standards--the Damask, and Provence, and Moss, which you know are
+      varieties of the Centifolia, and the Noisette standards, some of them are
+      very fine, and the Chinese roses, and countless hybrids and varieties of
+      all these, with many Bourbons;--and your beautiful American yellow rose,
+      and the Austrian briar and Eglantine, and the Scotch and white and Dog
+      roses in their innumerable varieties change admirably well with the
+      others, and relieve the eye very happily."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Relieve the eye!" said Fleda,--"my imagination wants relieving! Isn't
+      there--I have a fancy that there is--a view of the sea from some parts of
+      that walk, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes,--you have a good memory," said he smiling. "On one side the wood is
+      rather dense, and in some parts of the other side; but elsewhere the trees
+      are thinned off towards the south-west, and in one or two points the
+      descent of the ground and some cutting have given free access to the air
+      and free range to the eye, bounded only by the sea line in the
+      distance--if indeed that can be said to bound anything."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I haven't seen it since I was a child," said Fleda. "And for how long a
+      time in the year is this literally a garden of roses, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The perpetual roses are in bloom for eight months,--the Damask and the
+      Chinese, and some of their varieties--the Provence roses are in blossom
+      all the summer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah we can do nothing like that in this country," said Fleda shaking her
+      head;--"our winters are unmanageable."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was silent a minute, turning over the leaves of her book in an
+      abstracted manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have struck out upon a grave path of reflection," said Mr. Carleton
+      gently,--"and left me bewildered among the roses."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was thinking," said Fleda, looking up and laughing--"I was moralizing
+      to myself upon the curious equalization of happiness in the world--I just
+      sheered off from a feeling of envy, and comfortably reflected that one
+      measures happiness by what one knows--not by what one does not know; and
+      so that in all probability I have had near as much enjoyment in the little
+      number of plants that I have brought up and cherished and know intimately,
+      as you, sir, in your superb walk through fairyland."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you suppose," said he laughing, "that I leave the whole care of
+      fairyland to my gardener? No, you are mistaken--when the roses are to act
+      as my correctors I find I must become theirs. I seldom go among them
+      without a pruning knife and never without wishing for one. And you are
+      certainly right so far,--that the plants on which I bestow most pains give
+      me the most pleasure. There are some that no hand but mine ever touches,
+      and those are by far the best loved of my eye."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A discussion followed, partly natural, partly moral,--on the manner of
+      pruning various roses, and on the curious connection between care and
+      complacency, and the philosophy of the same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The rules of the library are to shut up at sundown, sir," said one of the
+      bookmen who had come into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sundown!" exclaimed Fleda jumping up;--"is my uncle not here, Mr. Frost?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He has been gone half an hour, ma'am."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I was to have gone home with him--I have forgotten myself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If that is at all the fault of my roses,", said Mr. Carleton smiling, "I
+      will do my best to repair it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not disposed to call it a fault," said Fleda tying her
+      bonnet-strings,--"it is rather an agreeable thing once in a while. I shall
+      dream of those roses, Mr. Carleton!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That would be doing them too much honour."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very happily she had forgotten herself; and during all the walk home her
+      mind was too full of one great piece of joy and indeed too much engaged
+      with conversation to take up her own subject again. Her only wish was that
+      they might not meet any of the Evelyns;--Mr. Thorn, whom they did meet,
+      was a matter of entire indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door was opened by Dr. Gregory himself. To Fleda's utter astonishment
+      Mr. Carleton accepted his invitation to come in. She went up stairs to
+      take off her things in a kind of maze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought he would go away without my seeing him, and now what a nice
+      time I have had!--in spite of Mrs. Evelyn--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That thought slipped in without Fleda's knowledge, but she could not get
+      it out again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know how much it has been her fault either, but one thing is
+      certain--I never could have had it at her house.--How very glad I am!--How
+      <i>very</i> glad I am!--that I have seen him and heard all this from his
+      own lips.--But how very funny that he will be here to tea--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well!" said the doctor when she came down,--"you <i>do</i> look freshened
+      up, I declare. Here is this girl, sir, was coming to me a little while
+      ago, complaining that she wanted something <i>fresh</i>, and begging me to
+      take her back to Queechy, forsooth, to find it, with two feet of snow on
+      the ground. Who wants to see you at Queechy?" he said, facing round upon
+      her with a look half fierce, half quizzical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda laughed, but was vexed to feel that she could not help colouring and
+      colouring exceedingly; partly from the consciousness of his meaning, and
+      partly from a vague notion that somebody else was conscious of it too. Dr.
+      Gregory, however, dashed right off into the thick of conversation with his
+      guest, and kept him busily engaged till tea-time. Fleda sat still on the
+      sofa, looking and listening with simple pleasure; memory served her up a
+      rich entertainment enough. Yet she thought her uncle was the most heartily
+      interested of the two in the conversation; there was a shade more upon Mr.
+      Carleton, not than he often wore, but than he had worn a little while ago.
+      Dr. Gregory was a great bibliopole, and in the course of the hour hauled
+      out and made his guest overhaul no less than several musty old folios; and
+      Fleda could not help fancying that he did it with an access of gravity
+      greater even than the occasion called for. The grace of his manner,
+      however, was unaltered; and at tea she did not know whether she had been
+      right or not. Demurely as she sat there behind the tea-urn, for Dr.
+      Gregory still engrossed all the attention of his guest as far as talking
+      was concerned, Fleda was again inwardly smiling to herself at the oddity
+      and the pleasantness of the chance that had brought those three together
+      in such a quiet way, after all the weeks she had been seeing Mr. Carleton
+      at a distance. And she enjoyed the conversation too; for though Dr.
+      Gregory was a little fond of his hobby it was still conversation worthy
+      the name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have been so unfortunate in the matter of the drives," Mr. Carleton
+      said, when he was about to take leave and standing before Fleda,--"that I
+      am half afraid to mention it again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I could not help it, both those time, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda
+      earnestly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Both the last?--or both the first?" said he smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The last?--" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have had the honour of making such an attempt twice within the last ten
+      days----to my disappointment."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was not by my fault then either, sir," Fleda said quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he knew very well from the expression of her face a moment before
+      where to put the emphasis her tongue would not make.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dare I ask you to go with me to-morrow?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Fleda with the old childish sparkle of her eye,--"but
+      if you ask me, sir, I will go."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down beside her immediately, and Fleda knew by his change of eye
+      that her former thought had been right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Shall I see you at Mrs. Decatur's to-morrow?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought I understood," said he in an explanatory tone, "from your
+      friends the Miss Evelyns, that they were going."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe they are, and I did think of it; but I have changed my mind,
+      and shall stay at home with Mrs. Evelyn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After some further conversation the hour for the drive was appointed, and
+      Mr. Carleton took leave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come for me twice and Mrs. Evelyn refused without consulting me!" thought
+      Fleda. "What could make her do so?--How very rude he must have thought me!
+      And how glad I am I have had an opportunity of setting that right."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So quitting Mrs. Evelyn her thoughts went off upon a long train of
+      wandering over the afternoon's talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wake up!" said the doctor, laying his hand kindly upon her
+      shoulder,--"you'll want something fresh again presently. What mine of
+      profundity are you digging into now?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked up and came back from her profundity with a glance and smile
+      as simple as a child's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear uncle Orrin, how came you to leave me alone in the library?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Was that what you were trying to discover?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh no, sir! But why did you, uncle Orrin? I might have been left utterly
+      alone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why," said the doctor, "I was going out, and a friend that I thought I
+      could confide in promised to take care of you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A friend!--Nobody came near me," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then I'll never trust anybody again," said the doctor. "But what were you
+      hammering at, mentally, just now?--come, you shall tell me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O nothing, uncle Orrin," said Fleda, looking grave again however;--"I was
+      thinking that I had been talking too much to-day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Talking too much?--why whom have you been talking to?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O, nobody but Mr. Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton! why you didn't say six and a quarter words while he was
+      here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, but I mean in the library, and walking home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Talking too much! I guess you did," said the doctor;--"your tongue is
+      like
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'the music of the spheres, So loud it deafens human ears.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How came you to talk too much? I thought you were too shy to talk at all
+      in company."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir, I am not;--I am not at all shy unless people frighten me. It
+      takes almost nothing to do that; but I am very bold if I am not
+      frightened."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Were you frightened this afternoon?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, if you weren't frightened, I guess nobody else was," said the
+      doctor.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="36"></a>Chapter XXXVI.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Whence came this?<br /> This is some token from a newer friend.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Shakspeare.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The snow-flakes were falling softly and thick when Fleda got up the next
+      morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No ride for me to-day--but how very glad I am that I had a chance of
+      setting that matter right. What could Mrs. Evelyn have been thinking
+      of?--Very false kindness!--if I had disliked to go ever so much she ought
+      to have made me, for my own sake, rather than let me seem so rude--it is
+      true she didn't know <i>how</i> rude. O snow-flakes--how much purer and
+      prettier you are than most things in this place!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one was in the breakfast parlour when Fleda came down, so she took her
+      book and the dormeuse and had an hour of luxurious quiet before anybody
+      appeared. Not a foot-fall in the house; nor even one outside to be heard,
+      for the soft carpeting of snow which was laid over the streets. The gentle
+      breathing of the fire the only sound in the room; while the very light
+      came subdued through the falling snow and the thin muslin curtains, and
+      gave an air of softer luxury to the apartment. "Money is pleasant,"
+      thought Fleda, as she took a little complacent review of all this before
+      opening her book.--"And yet how unspeakably happier one may be without it
+      than another with it. Happiness never was locked up in a purse yet. I am
+      sure Hugh and I,--They must want me at home!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little sober consideration of the lumps of coal and the
+      contented looking blaze in the grate, a most essentially home-like
+      thing,--and then Fleda went to her book and for the space of an hour
+      turned over her pages without interruption. At the end of the hour "the
+      fowling piece," certainly the noiseliest of his kind, put his head in, but
+      seeing none of his ladies took it and himself away again and left Fleda in
+      peace for another half hour. Then appeared Mrs. Evelyn in her morning
+      wrapper, and only stopping at the bell-handle, came up to the dormeuse and
+      stooping down kissed Fleda's forehead, with so much tenderness that it won
+      a look of most affectionate gratitude in reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda my dear, we set you a sad example. But you won't copy it. Joe,
+      breakfast. Has Mr. Evelyn gone down town?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, ma'am, two hours ago."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did it ever occur to you, Fleda my dear," said Mrs. Evelyn, breaking the
+      lumps of coal with the poker in a very leisurely satisfied kind of a
+      way,--"Did it ever occur to you to rejoice that you were not born a
+      business man? What a life!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wonder how it compares with that of a business woman," said Fleda
+      laughing. "There is an uncompromising old proverb which says
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      'Man's work is from sun to sun-- But a woman's work is never done.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A saying which she instantly reflected was entirely beyond the
+      comprehension of the person to whose consideration she had offered it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then came in Florence, rubbing her hands and knitting her eyebrows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why don't you look as bright as the rest of the world, this morning,"
+      said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What a wretched storm!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wretched! This beautiful snow! Here have I been enjoying it for this
+      hour."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Florence rubbed her hands and looked as if Fleda were no rule for
+      other people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How horrid it will make the going out to-night, if it snows all day!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then you can stay at home," said her mother composedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Indeed I shall not, mamma!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mamma!" said Constance now coming in with Edith,--"isn't breakfast ready?
+      It strikes me that the fowling-piece wants polishing up. I have an
+      indistinct impression that the sun would be upon the meridian if he was
+      anywhere."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not quite so bad as that," said Fleda smiling;--"it is only an hour and a
+      half since I came down stairs."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You horrid little creature!--Mamma, I consider it an act of inhospitality
+      to permit studious habits on the part of your guests. And I am surprised
+      your ordinary sagacity has not discovered that it is the greatest impolicy
+      towards the objects of your maternal care. We are labouring under growing
+      disadvantages; for when we have brought the enemy to at long shot there is
+      a mean little craft that comes in and unmans him in a close fight before
+      we can get our speaking-trumpets up."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Constance!--Do hush!" said her sister. "You are too absurd."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fact," said Constance gravely. "Capt. Lewiston was telling me the other
+      night how the thing is managed; and I recognized it immediately and told
+      him I had often seen it done!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hold your tongue, Constance," said her mother smiling,--"and come to
+      breakfast."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half and but half of the mandate the young lady had any idea of obeying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can't imagine what you are talking about, Constance!" said Edith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And then being a friend, you see," pursued Constance, "we can do nothing
+      but fire a salute, instead of demolishing her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Can't you?" said Fleda. "I am sure many a time I have felt as if you had
+      left me nothing but my colours."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Except your prizes, my dear. I am sure I don't know about your being a
+      friend either, for I have observed that you engage English and American
+      alike."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is getting up her colours now," said Mrs. Evelyn in mock
+      gravity,--"you can tell what she is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Blood-red!" said Constance. "A pirate!--I thought so,"--she exclaimed,
+      with an ecstatic gesture. "I shall make it my business to warn everybody!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh Constance!" said Fleda, burying her face in her hands. But they all
+      laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda my dear, I would box her ears," said Mrs. Evelyn commanding
+      herself. "It is a mere envious insinuation,--I have always understood
+      those were the most successful colours carried."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear Mrs. Evelyn!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Fleda, that is not a hot roll--you sha'n't eat it--Take this.
+      Florence give her a piece of the bacon--Fleda my dear, it is good for the
+      digestion--you must try it. Constance was quite mistaken in supposing
+      yours were those obnoxious colours--there is too much white with the
+      red--it is more like a very different flag."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Like what then, mamma?" said Constance;--"a good American would have blue
+      in it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You may keep the American yourself," said her mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Only," said Fleda trying to recover herself, "there is a slight
+      irregularity--with you the stars are blue and the ground white."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear little Fleda!" exclaimed Constance jumping up and capering round
+      the table to kiss her, "you are too delicious for anything; and in future
+      I will be blind to your colours; which is a piece of self-denial I am sure
+      nobody else will practise."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mamma," said Edith, "what <i>are</i> you all talking about? Can't
+      Constance sit down and let Fleda eat her breakfast?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sit down, Constance, and eat your breakfast!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will do it, mamma, out of consideration for the bacon.--Nothing else
+      would move me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you going to Mrs. Decatur's to-night, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, Edith, I believe not"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm very glad; then there'll be somebody at home. But why don't you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think on the whole I had rather not."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mamma," said Constance, "you have done very wrong in permitting such a
+      thing. I know just how it will be. Mr. Thorn and Mr. Stackpole will make
+      indefinite voyages of discovery round Mrs. Decatur's rooms, and then
+      having a glimmering perception that the light of Miss Ringgan's eyes is in
+      another direction they will sheer off; and you will presently see them
+      come sailing blandly in, one after the other, and cast anchor for the
+      evening; when to your extreme delight Mr. Stackpole and Miss Ringgan will
+      immediately commence fighting. I shall stay at home to see!" exclaimed
+      Constance, with little bounds of delight up and down upon her chair which
+      this time afforded her the additional elasticity of springs,--"I will not
+      go. I am persuaded how it will be, and I would not miss it for anything."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear Constance!" said Fleda, unable to help laughing through all her
+      vexation,--"please do not talk so! You know very well Mr. Stackpole only
+      comes to see your mother."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He was here last night," said Constance in an extreme state of
+      delight,--"with all the rest of your admirers--ranged in the hall, with
+      their hats in a pile at the foot of the staircase as a token of their
+      determination not to go till you came home; and as they could not be
+      induced to come up to the drawing-room Mr. Evelyn was obliged to go down,
+      and with some difficulty persuaded them to disperse."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was by this time in a state of indecision betwixt crying and
+      laughing, assiduously attentive to her breakfast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton asked me if you would go to ride with him again the other
+      day, Fleda," said Mrs. Evelyn, with her face of delighted mischief,--"and
+      I excused you; for I thought you would thank me for it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mamma," said Constance, "the mention of that name rouses all the bitter
+      feelings I am capable of! My dear Fleda--we have been friends--but if I
+      see you abstracting my English rose"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look at those roses behind you!" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young lady turned and sprang at the word, followed by both her
+      sisters; and for some moments nothing but a hubbub of exclamations filled
+      the air,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Joe, you are enchanting!--But did you ever <i>see</i> such flowers?--Oh
+      those rose-buds!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And these Camellias," said Edith,--"look, Florence, how they are
+      cut--with such splendid long stems."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And the roses too--all of them--see mamma, just cut from the bushes with
+      the buds all left on, and immensely long stems--Mamma, these must have
+      cost an immensity!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is what I call a bouquet," said Fleda, fain to leave the table too
+      and draw near the tempting shew in Florence's hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is the handsomest you have had all winter, Florence," said Edith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Handsomest!--I never saw anything like it. I shall wear some of these
+      to-night, mamma."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are in a great hurry to appropriate it," said Constance,--"how do you
+      know but it is mine?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Which of us is it for, Joe?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Say it is mine, Joe, and I will vote you--the best article of your kind!"
+      said Constance, with an inexpressible glance at Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who brought it, Joe?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, Joe, who brought it? where did it come from, Joe?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joe had hardly a chance to answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I really couldn't say, Miss Florence,--the man wasn't known to me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But did he say it was for Florence or for me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No ma'am--he"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Which</i> did he say it was for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He didn't say it was either for Miss Florence or for you, Miss Constance;
+      he--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But didn't he say who sent it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No ma'am. It's"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mamma here is a white moss that is beyond everything! with two of the
+      most lovely buds--Oh!" said Constance clasping her hands and whirling
+      about the room in comic ecstasy--"I sha'n't survive if I cannot find out
+      where it is from!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How delicious the scent of these tea-roses is!" said Fleda. "You ought
+      not to mind the snow storm to-day after this, Florence. I should think you
+      would be perfectly happy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shall be, if I can contrive to keep them fresh to wear to-night. Mamma
+      how sweetly they would dress me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They're a great deal too good to be wasted so," said Mrs. Evelyn; "I
+      sha'n't let you do it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mamma!--it wouldn't take any of them at all for my hair and the bouquet
+      de corsage too--there'd be thousands left--Well Joe,--what are you waiting
+      for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I didn't say," said Joe, looking a good deal blank and a little
+      afraid,--"I should have said--that the bouquet--is--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is--I believe, ma'am,--the man said it was for Miss Ringgan."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For me!" exclaimed Fleda, her cheeks forming instantly the most exquisite
+      commentary on the gift that the giver could have desired. She took in her
+      hand the superb bunch of flowers from which the fingers of Florence
+      unclosed as if it had been an icicle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why didn't you say so before?" she inquired sharply; but the
+      "fowling-piece" had wisely disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very glad!" exclaimed Edith. "They have had plenty all winter, and
+      you haven't had one--I am very glad it is yours, Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But such a shadow had come upon every other face that Fleda's pleasure was
+      completely overclouded. She smelled at her roses, just ready to burst into
+      tears, and wishing sincerely that they had never come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid, my dear Fleda," said Mrs. Evelyn quietly going on with her
+      breakfast,--"that there is a thorn somewhere among those flowers."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was too sure of it. But not by any means the one Mrs. Evelyn
+      intended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He never could have got half those from his own greenhouse, mamma," said
+      Florence,--"if he had cut every rose that was in it; and he isn't very
+      free with his knife either."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I said nothing about anybody's greenhouse," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"though I
+      don't suppose there is more than one Lot in the city they could have come
+      from."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well," said Constance settling herself back in her chair and closing her
+      eyes,--"I feel extinguished!----Mamma, do you suppose it possible that a
+      hot cup of tea might revive me? I am suffering from a universal sense of
+      unappreciated merit!--and nobody can tell what the pain is that hasn't
+      felt it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think you are extremely foolish, Constance," said Edith. "Fleda hasn't
+      had a single flower sent her since she has been here and you have had them
+      every other day. I think Florence is the only one that has a right to be
+      disappointed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear Florence," said Fleda earnestly,--"you shall have as many of them as
+      you please to dress yourself,--and welcome!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh no--of course not!--" Florence said,--"it's of no sort of
+      consequence--I don't want them in the least, my dear. I wonder what
+      somebody would think to see his flowers in my head!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda secretly had mooted the same question and was very well pleased not
+      to have it put to the proof. She took the flowers up stairs after
+      breakfast, resolving that they should not be an eye-sore to her friends;
+      placed them in water and sat down to enjoy and muse over them in a very
+      sorrowful mood. She again thought she would take the first opportunity of
+      going home. How strange--out of their abundance of tributary flowers to
+      grudge her this one bunch! To be sure it was a magnificent one. The
+      flowers were mostly roses, of the rarer kinds, with a very few fine
+      Camellias; all of them cut with a freedom that evidently had known no
+      constraint but that of taste, and put together with an exquisite skill
+      that Fleda felt sure was never possessed by any gardener. She knew that
+      only one hand had had anything to do with them, and that the hand that had
+      bought, not the one that had sold; and "How very kind!"--presently quite
+      supplanted "How very strange!"--"How exactly like him,--and how singular
+      that Mrs. Evelyn and her daughters should have supposed they could have
+      come from Mr. Thorn." It was a moral impossibility that <i>he</i> should
+      have put such a bunch of flowers together; while to Fleda's eye they so
+      bore the impress of another person's character that she had absolutely
+      been glad to get them out of sight for fear they might betray him. She
+      hung over their varied loveliness, tasted and studied it, till the soft
+      breath of the roses had wafted away every cloud of disagreeable feeling
+      and she was drinking in pure and strong pleasure from each leaf and bud.
+      What a very apt emblem of kindness and friendship she thought them; when
+      their gentle preaching and silent sympathy could alone so nearly do
+      friendship's work; for to Fleda there was both counsel and consolation in
+      flowers. So she found it this morning. An hour's talk with them had done
+      her a great deal of good, and when she dressed herself and went down to
+      the drawing-room her grave little face was not less placid than the roses
+      she had left; she would not wear even one of them down to be a
+      disagreeable reminder. And she thought that still snowy day was one of the
+      very pleasantest she had had in New York.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Florence went to Mrs. Decatur's; but Constance according to her avowed
+      determination remained at home to see the fun. Fleda hoped most sincerely
+      there would be none for her to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But a good deal to her astonishment, early in the evening Mr. Carleton
+      walked in, followed very soon by Mr. Thorn. Constance and Mrs. Evelyn were
+      forthwith in a perfect effervescence of delight, which as they could not
+      very well give it full play promised to last the evening; and Fleda, all
+      her nervous trembling awakened again, took her work to the table and
+      endeavoured to bury herself in it. But ears could not be fastened as well
+      as eyes; and the mere sound of Mrs. Evelyn's voice sometimes sent a thrill
+      over her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Thorn," said the lady in her smoothest manner,--"are you a lover of
+      floriculture, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Can't say that I am, Mrs. Evelyn,--except as practised by others."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then you are not a connoisseur in roses?--Miss Ringgan's happy lot--sent
+      her a most exquisite collection this morning, and she has been wanting to
+      apply to somebody who could tell her what they are--I thought you might
+      know.--O they are not here," said Mrs. Evelyn as she noticed the
+      gentleman's look round the room;--"Miss Ringgan judges them too precious
+      for any eyes but her own. Fleda, my dear, won't you bring down your roses
+      to let Mr. Thorn tell us their names?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure Mr. Thorn will excuse me, Mrs. Evelyn--I believe he would find
+      it a puzzling task."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The surest way, Mrs. Evelyn, would be to apply at the fountain head for
+      information," said Thorn dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If I could get at it," said Mrs. Evelyn, (Fleda knew with quivering
+      lips,)--"but it seems to me I might as well try to find the Dead Sea!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps Mr. Carleton might serve your purpose," said Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That gentleman was at the moment talking to Constance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton--" said Mrs. Evelyn,--"are you a judge, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of what, Mrs. Evelyn?--I beg your pardon."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady's tone somewhat lowered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you a judge of roses, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So far as to know a rose when I see it," he answered smiling, and with an
+      imperturbable coolness that it quieted Fleda to hear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus20.jpg"><img src="images/illus20.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="'I am sure Mr. Thorn will excuse me.'"
+      title="'I am sure Mr. Thorn will excuse me.'" /><br /> "I am sure Mr. Thorn
+      will excuse me."</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay, but the thing is," said Constance, "do you know twenty roses when you
+      see them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Miss Ringgan, Mr. Carleton," said Mrs. Evelyn, "has received a most
+      beautiful supply this morning; but like a true woman she is not satisfied
+      to enjoy unless she can enjoy intelligently--they are strangers to us all,
+      and she would like to know what name to give them--Mr. Thorn suggested
+      that perhaps you might help us out of our difficulty."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "With great pleasure, so far as I am able,--if my judgment may be
+      exercised by daylight. I cannot answer for shades of green in the night
+      time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he spoke with an ease and simplicity that left no mortal able to guess
+      whether he had ever heard of a particular bunch of roses in his life
+      before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You give me more of Eve in my character, Mrs. Evelyn, than I think
+      belongs to me," said Fleda from her work at the far centre-table, which
+      certainly did not get its name from its place in the room. "My enjoyment
+      to-day has not been in the least troubled by curiosity."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Which none of the rest of the family could have affirmed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you mean to say, Mr. Carleton," said Constance, "that it is necessary
+      to distinguish between shades of green in judging of roses?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is necessary to make shades of distinction in judging of almost
+      anything, Miss Constance. The difference between varieties of the same
+      flower is often extremely nice."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have read of magicians," said Thorn softly, bending down towards
+      Fleda's work,--"who did not need to see things to answer questions
+      respecting them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda thought that was a kind of magic remarkably common in the world; but
+      even her displeasure could not give her courage to speak. It gave her
+      courage to be silent, however; and Mr. Thorn's best efforts in a
+      conversation of some length could gain nothing but very uninterested
+      rejoinders. A sudden pinch from Constance then made her look up and almost
+      destroyed her self-possession as she saw Mr. Stackpole make his way into
+      the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope I find my fair enemy in a mollified humour," he said approaching
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose you have repaired damages, Mr. Stackpole," said
+      Constance,--"since you venture into the region of broken windows again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Stackpole declared there were none to repair," said Mrs. Evelyn from
+      the sofa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "More than I knew of," said the gentleman laughing--"there were more than
+      I knew of; but you see I court the danger, having rashly concluded that I
+      might as well know all my weak points at once."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Miss Ringgan will break nothing to-night, Mr. Stackpole--she promised me
+      she would not."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not even her silence?" said the gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is she always so desperately industrious?" said Mr. Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Miss Ringgan, Mr. Stackpole," said Constance, "is subject to occasional
+      fits of misanthropy, in which cases her retreating with her work to the
+      solitude of the centre-table is significant of her desire to avoid
+      conversation,--as Mr. Thorn has been experiencing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am happy to see that the malady is not catching, Miss Constance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Stackpole!" said Constance,--"I am in a morose state of mind!--Miss
+      Ringgan this morning received a magnificent bouquet of roses which in the
+      first place I rashly appropriated to myself; and ever since I discovered
+      my mistake I have been meditating the renouncing of society--it has
+      excited more bad feelings than I thought had existence in my nature."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Stackpole," said Mrs. Evelyn, "would you ever have supposed that
+      roses could be a cause of discord?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Stackpole looked as if he did not exactly know what the ladies were
+      driving at.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There have five thousand emigrants arrived at this port within a week!"
+      said he, as if that were something worth talking about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Poor creatures! where will they all go?" said Mrs. Evelyn comfortably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Country's large enough," said Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, but such a stream of immigration will reach the Pacific and come
+      back again before long: and then there will be a meeting of the waters!
+      This tide of German and Irish will sweep over everything."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose if the land will not bear both, one party will have to seek
+      other quarters," said Mrs. Evelyn with an exquisite satisfaction which
+      Fleda could hear in her voice. "You remember the story of Lot and Abraham,
+      Mr. Stackpole,--when a quarrel arose between them?--not about roses."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Stackpole looked as if women were--to say the least--incomprehensible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Five thousand a week!" he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish there was a Dead Sea for them all to sheer off into!" said Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you had seen the look of grave rebuke that speech called forth, Mr.
+      Thorn," said Constance, "your feelings would have been penetrated--if you
+      have any."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I had forgotten," he said, looking round with a bland change of
+      manner,--"what gentle charities were so near me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mamma!" said Constance with a most comic shew of indignation,--"Mr. Thorn
+      thought that with Miss Ringgan he had forgotten all the gentle charities
+      in the room!--I am of no further use to society!--I will trouble you to
+      ring that bell, Mr. Thorn, if you please. I shall request candles and
+      retire to the privacy of my own apartment!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not till you have permitted me to expiate my fault!" said Mr. Thorn
+      laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It cannot be expiated!--My worth will be known at some future day.--Mr.
+      Carleton, <i>will</i> you have the goodness to summon our domestic
+      attendant?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you will permit me to give the order," he said smiling, with his hand
+      on the bell. "I am afraid you are hardly fit to be trusted alone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "May I delay obeying you long enough to give my reasons?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because," said he coming up to her, "when people turn away from the world
+      in disgust they generally find worse company in themselves."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton!--I would not sit still another minute, if curiosity didn't
+      keep me. I thought solitude was said to be such a corrector?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Like a clear atmosphere--an excellent medium if your object is to take an
+      observation of your position--worse than lost if you mean to shut up the
+      windows and burn sickly lights of your own."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then according to that one shouldn't seek solitude unless one doesn't
+      want it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Mr. Carleton, with that eye of deep meaning to which Constance
+      always rendered involuntary homage,--"every one wants it;--if we do not
+      daily take an observation to find where we are, we are sailing about
+      wildly and do not know whither we are going."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "An observation?" said Constance, understanding part and impatient of not
+      catching the whole of his meaning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," he said with a smile of singular fascination,--"I mean, consulting
+      the unerring guides of the way to know where we are and if we are sailing
+      safely and happily in the right direction--otherwise we are in danger of
+      striking upon some rock or of never making the harbour; and in either
+      case, all is lost."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The power of eye and smile was too much for Constance, as it had happened
+      more than once before; her own eyes fell and for a moment she wore a look
+      of unwonted sadness and sweetness, at what from any other person would
+      have roused her mockery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton," said she, trying to rally herself but still not daring to
+      look up, knowing that would put it out of her power,--"I can't understand
+      how you ever came to be such a grave person."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is your idea of gravity?" said he smiling. "To have a mind so at
+      rest about the future as to be able to enjoy thoroughly all that is worth
+      enjoying in the present?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I can't imagine how <i>you</i> ever came to take up such notions."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "May I ask again, why not I?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O you know--you have so much to make you otherwise."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What degree of present contentment ought to make one satisfied to leave
+      that of the limitless future an uncertain thing?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you think it can be made certain?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Undoubtedly!--why not? the tickets are free--the only thing is to make
+      sure that ours has the true signature. Do you think the possession of that
+      ticket makes life a sadder thing? The very handwriting of it is more
+      precious to me, by far, Miss Constance, than everything else I have."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you are a very uncommon instance," said Constance, still unable to
+      look up, and speaking without any of her usual attempt at jocularity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, I hope not," he said quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I mean," said Constance, "that it is very uncommon language to hear from
+      a person like you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose I know your meaning," he said after a minute's pause;--"but,
+      Miss Constance, there is hardly a graver thought to me than that power and
+      responsibility go hand in hand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It don't generally work so," said Constance rather uneasily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are you talking about, Constance?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton, mamma,--has been making me melancholy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton," said Mrs. Evelyn, "I am going to petition that you will
+      turn your efforts in another direction--I have felt oppressed all the
+      afternoon from the effects of that funeral service I was attending--I am
+      only just getting over it. The preacher seemed to delight in putting
+      together all the gloomy thoughts he could think of."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes!" said Mr. Stackpole, putting his hands in his pockets,--"it is the
+      particular enjoyment of some of them, I believe, to do their best to make
+      other people miserable."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Thorn said nothing, being warned by the impatient little hammering of
+      Fleda's worsted needle upon the marble, while her eye was no longer
+      considering her work, and her face rested anxiously upon her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There wasn't a thing," the lady went on,--"in anything he said, in his
+      prayer or his speech,--there wasn't a single cheering or elevating
+      consideration,--all he talked and prayed for was that the people there
+      might be filled with a sense of their wickedness--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's their trade, ma'am," said Mr. Stackpole,--"it's their trade! I
+      wonder if it ever occurs to them to include themselves in that petition."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There wasn't the slightest effort made in anything he said or prayed
+      for,--and one would have thought that would have been so natural!--there
+      was not the least endeavour to do away with that superstitious fear of
+      death which is so common--and one would think it was the very occasion to
+      do it;--he never once asked that we might be led to look upon it
+      rationally and calmly.--It's so unreasonable, Mr. Stackpole--it is so
+      dissonant with our views of a benevolent Supreme Being--as if it could be
+      according to <i>his</i> will that his creatures should live lives of
+      tormenting themselves--it so shews a want of trust in his goodness!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's a relic of barbarism, ma'am," said Mr. Stackpole;--"it's a popular
+      delusion--and it is like to be, till you can get men to embrace wider and
+      more liberal views of things."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you suppose it proceeds from?" said Mr. Carleton, as if the
+      question had just occurred to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose, from false notions received from education, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hardly," said Mr. Carleton;--"it is too universal. You find it
+      everywhere; and to ascribe it everywhere to education would be but
+      shifting the question back one generation."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is a root of barbarous ages," said Mr. Stackpole,--"a piece of
+      superstition handed down from father to son--a set of false ideas which
+      men are bred up and almost born with, and that they can hardly get rid
+      of."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How can that be a root of barbarism, which the utmost degree of
+      intelligence and cultivation has no power to do away, nor even to lessen,
+      however it may afford motive to control? Men may often put a brave face
+      upon it and shew none of their thoughts to the world; but I think no one
+      capable of reflection has not at times felt the influence of that dread."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Men have often sought death, of purpose and choice," said Mr. Stackpole
+      dryly and rubbing his chin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not from the absence of this feeling, but from the greater momentary
+      pressure of some other."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of course," said Mr. Stackpole, rubbing his chin still,--there is a
+      natural love of life--the world could not get on if there was not."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If the love of life is natural, the fear of death must be so, by the same
+      reason."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Undoubtedly," said Mrs. Evelyn, "it is natural--it is part of the
+      constitution of our nature."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," said Mr. Stackpole, settling himself again in his chair with his
+      hands in his pockets--"it is not unnatural, I suppose,--but then that is
+      the first view of the subject--it is the business of reason to correct
+      many impressions and prejudices that are, as we say, natural."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And there was where my clergyman of to-day failed utterly," said Mrs.
+      Evelyn;--"he aimed at strengthening that feeling and driving it down as
+      hard as he could into everybody's mind--not a single lisp of anything to
+      do it away or lessen the gloom with which we are, naturally as you say,
+      disposed to invest the subject."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dare say he has held it up as a bugbear till it has become one to
+      himself," said Mr. Stackpole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is nothing more than the mere natural dread of dissolution," said Mr.
+      Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think it is that," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"I think that is the principal
+      thing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is there not besides an undefined fear of what lies beyond--an uneasy
+      misgiving that there may be issues which the spirit is not prepared to
+      meet?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose there is," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"but sir--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why that is the very thing," said Mr. Stackpole,--"that is the mischief
+      of education I was speaking of--men are brought up to it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You cannot dispose of it so, sir, for this feeling is quite as universal
+      as the other; and so strong that men have not only been willing to render
+      life miserable but even to endure death itself, with all the aggravation
+      of torture, to smooth their way in that unknown region beyond."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is one of the maladies of human nature," said Mr. Stackpole,--"that it
+      remains for the progress of enlightened reason to dispel."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is the cure for the malady?" said Mr. Carleton quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why sir!--the looking upon death as a necessary step in the course of our
+      existence which simply introduces us from a lower to a higher
+      sphere,--from a comparatively narrow to a wider and nobler range of
+      feeling and intellect."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay--but how shall we be sure that it is so?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why Mr. Carleton, sir," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"do you doubt that? Do you
+      suppose it possible for a moment that a benevolent being would make
+      creatures to be anything but happy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You believe the Bible, Mrs. Evelyn?" he said smiling slightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly, sir; but Mr. Carleton, the Bible I am sure holds out the same
+      views of the goodness and glory of the Creator; you cannot open it but you
+      find them on every page. If I could take such views of things as some
+      people have," said Mrs. Evelyn, getting up to punch the fire in her
+      extremity,--"I don't know what I should do!--Mr. Carleton, I think I would
+      rather never have been born, sir!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Every one runs to the Bible!" said Mr. Stackpole. "It is the general
+      armoury, and all parties draw from it to fight each other."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "True," said Mr. Carleton,--"but only while they draw partially. No man
+      can fight the battle of truth but in the whole panoply; and no man so
+      armed can fight any other."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you mean, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I mean that the Bible is not a riddle, neither inconsistent with itself;
+      but if you take off one leg of a pair of compasses the measuring power is
+      gone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But Mr. Carleton, sir," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"do you think that reading the
+      Bible is calculated to give one gloomy ideas of the future?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By no means," he said with one of those meaning-fraught smiles,--"but is
+      it safe, Mrs. Evelyn, in such a matter, to venture a single grasp of hope
+      without the direct warrant of God's word?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, ma'am,--that says, 'the soul that sinneth, it shall die.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That disposes of the whole matter comfortably at once," said Mr.
+      Stackpole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But, sir," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"that doesn't stand alone--the Bible
+      everywhere speaks of the fulness and freeness of Christ's salvation?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Full and free as it can possibly be," he answered with something of a sad
+      expression of countenance;--"but, Mrs. Evelyn, <i>never offered but with
+      conditions</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What conditions?" said Mr. Stackpole hastily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I recommend you to look for them, sir," answered Mr. Carleton,
+      gravely;--"they should not be unknown to a wise man."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then you would leave mankind ridden by this nightmare of fear?--or what
+      is your remedy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is a remedy, sir," said Mr. Carleton, with that dilating and
+      darkening eye which shewed him deeply engaged in what he was thinking
+      about;--"it is not mine. When men feel themselves lost and are willing to
+      be saved in God's way, then the breach is made up--then hope can look
+      across the gap and see its best home and its best friend on the other
+      side--then faith lays hold on forgiveness and trembling is done--then, sin
+      being pardoned, the sting of death is taken away and the fear of death is
+      no more, for it is swallowed up in victory. But men will not apply to a
+      physician while they think themselves well; and people will not seek the
+      sweet way of safety by Christ till they know there is no other; and so, do
+      you see, Mrs. Evelyn, that when the gentleman you were speaking of sought
+      to-day to persuade his hearers that they were poorer than they thought
+      they were, he was but taking the surest way to bring them to be made
+      richer than they ever dreamed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a power of gentle earnestness in his eye that Mrs Evelyn could
+      not answer; her look fell as that of Constance had done, and there was a
+      moment's silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorn had kept quiet, for two reasons--that he might not displease Fleda,
+      and that he might watch her. She had left her work, and turning half round
+      from the table had listened intently to the conversation, towards the last
+      very forgetful that there might be anybody to observe her,--with eyes
+      fixed, and cheeks flushing, and the corners of the mouth just indicating
+      delight,--till the silence fell; and then she turned round to the table
+      and took up her worsted-work. But the lips were quite grave now, and
+      Thorn's keen eyes discerned that upon one or two of the artificial roses
+      there lay two or three very natural drops.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton," said Edith, "what makes you talk such sober things?--you
+      have set Miss Ringgan to crying."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton could not be better pleased than at such a tribute to his
+      eloquence," said Mr. Thorn with a saturnine expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Smiles are common things," said Mr. Stackpole a little maliciously; "but
+      any man may be flattered to find his words drop diamonds."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda my dear," said Mrs. Evelyn, with that trembling tone of concealed
+      ecstasy which always set every one of Fleda's nerves a jarring,--"you may
+      tell the gentlemen that they do not always know when they are making an
+      unfelicitous compliment--I never read what poets say about 'briny drops'
+      and 'salt tears' without imagining the heroine immediately to be something
+      like Lot's wife."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nobody said anything about briny drops, mamma," said Edith. "Why there's
+      Florence!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her entrance made a little bustle, which Fleda was very glad of.
+      Unkind!--She was trembling again in every finger. She bent down over her
+      canvas and worked away as hard as she could. That did not hinder her
+      becoming aware presently that Mr. Carleton was standing close beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you not trying your eyes?" said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words were nothing, but the tone was a great deal, there was a kind of
+      quiet intelligence in it. Fleda looked up, and something in the clear
+      steady self-reliant eye she met wrought an instant change in her feeling.
+      She met it a moment and then looked at her work again with nerves quieted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Cannot I persuade them to be of my mind?" said Mr. Carleton, bending down
+      a little nearer to their sphere of action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton is unreasonable, to require more testimony of that this
+      evening," said Mr. Thorn;--"his own must have been ill employed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda did not look up, but the absolute quietness of Mr. Carleton's manner
+      could be felt; she felt it, almost with sympathetic pain. Thorn
+      immediately left them and took leave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are you searching for in the papers, Mr. Carleton?" said Mrs. Evelyn
+      presently coming up to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was looking for the steamers, Mrs. Evelyn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How soon do you think of bidding us good-bye?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not know, ma'am," he answered coolly--"I expect my mother."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Evelyn walked back to her sofa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in the space of two minutes she came over to the centre-table again,
+      with an open magazine in her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton," said the lady, "you must read this for me and tell me what
+      you think of it, will you sir? I have been shewing it to Mr. Stackpole and
+      he can't see any beauty in it, and I tell him it is his fault and there is
+      some serious want in his composition. Now I want to know what you will say
+      to it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "An arbiter, Mrs. Evelyn, should be chosen by both parties."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Read it and tell me what you think!" repeated the lady, walking away to
+      leave him opportunity. Mr. Carleton looked it over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is something pretty," he said putting it before Fleda. Mrs. Evelyn
+      was still at a distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you think of that print for trying the eyes?" said Fleda laughing
+      as she took it. But he noticed that her colour rose a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you like it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I like it,--pretty well," said Fleda rather hesitatingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have seen it before?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why?" Fleda said, with a look up at him at once a little startled and a
+      little curious;--"what makes you say so?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because--pardon me--you did not read it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh," said Fleda laughing, but colouring at the same time very frankly, "I
+      can tell how I like some things without reading them very carefully."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton looked at her, and then took the magazine again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What have you there, Mr. Carleton?" said Florence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A piece of English on which I was asking this lady's opinion, Miss
+      Evelyn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now, Mr. Carleton!" exclaimed Constance jumping up,--"I am going to ask
+      you to decide a quarrel between Fleda and me about a point of English"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hush, Constance!" said her mother,--"I want to speak to Mr. Carleton--Mr.
+      Carleton, how do you like it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Like what, mamma?" said Florence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A piece I gave Mr. Carleton to read. Mr. Carleton, tell how you like it,
+      sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what is it, mamma?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A piece of poetry in an old Excelsior--'The Spirit of the Fireside.' Mr.
+      Carleton, won't you read it aloud, and let us all hear--but tell me first
+      what you think of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It has pleased me particularly, Mrs. Evelyn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Stackpole says he does not understand it, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fanciful," said Mr. Stackpole,--"it's a little fanciful--and I can't
+      quite make out what the fancy is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It has been the misfortune of many good things before not to be prized,
+      Mr. Stackpole," said the lady funnily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "True, ma'am," said that gentleman rubbing his chin--"and the converse is
+      also true unfortunately,--and with a much wider application."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is a peculiarity of mental development or training," said Mr.
+      Carleton, "which must fail of pleasing many minds because of their wanting
+      the corresponding key of nature or experience. Some literature has a
+      hidden freemasonry of its own."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very hidden indeed!" said Mr. Stackpole;--"the cloud is so thick that I
+      can't see the electricity!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton," said Mrs. Evelyn laughing, "I take that remark as a
+      compliment, sir. I have always appreciated that writer's pieces--I enjoy
+      them very much."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, won't you please read it, Mr. Carleton?" said Florence, "and let us
+      know what we are talking about."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton obeyed, standing where he was by the centre-table.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "By the old hearthstone a Spirit dwells,<br /> The child of bygone
+        years,--<br /> He lieth hid the stones amid,<br /> And liveth on smiles
+        and tears.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "But when the night is drawing on,<br /> And the fire burns clear and
+        bright,<br /> He Cometh out and walketh about,<br /> In the pleasant grave
+        twilight.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "He goeth round on tiptoe soft,<br /> And scanneth close each face;<br />
+        If one in the room be sunk in gloom,<br /> By him he taketh his place.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "And then with fingers cool and soft,<br /> (Their touch who does not
+        know)<br /> With water brought from the well of Thought,<br /> That was
+        dug long years ago,
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "He layeth his hand on the weary eyes--<br /> They are closed and quiet
+        now;--<br /> And he wipeth away the dust of the day<br /> Which had
+        settled on the brow.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "And gently then he walketh away<br /> And sits in the corner chair;<br />
+        And the closed eyes swim--it seemeth to <i>him</i><br /> The form that
+        once sat there.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "And whispered words of comfort and love<br /> Fall sweet on the ear of
+        sorrow;--<br /> 'Why weepest thou?--thou art troubled now,<br /> But there
+        cometh a bright to-morrow.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "'We too have passed over life's wild stream<br /> In a frail and
+        shattered boat,<br /> But the pilot was sure--and we sailed secure<br />
+        When we seemed but scarce afloat.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "'Though tossed by the rage of waves and wind,<br /> The bark held
+        together still,--<br /> One arm was strong--it bore us along,<br /> And
+        has saved from every ill.'
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "The Spirit returns to his hiding-place,<br /> But his words have been
+        like balm.<br /> The big tears start--but the fluttering heart<br /> Is
+        soothed and softened and calm."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      "I remember that," said Florence;--"it is beautiful."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who's the writer?" said Mr. Stackpole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"it is signed 'Hugh'--there have been a
+      good many of his pieces in the Excelsior for a year past--and all of them
+      pretty."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hugh!" exclaimed Edith springing forward,--"that's the one that wrote the
+      Chestnuts!--Fleda, won't you read Mr. Carleton the Chestnuts?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why no, Edith, I think not."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah do! I like it so much, and I want him to hear it,--and you know mamma
+      says they're all pretty. Won't you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Edith, you have heard it once already to day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I want you to read it for me again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let me have it, Miss Edith," said Mr. Carleton smiling,--"I will read it
+      for you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah but it would be twice as good if you could hear her read it," said
+      Edith, fluttering over the leaves of the magazine,--"she reads it so well.
+      It's so funny--about the coffee and buckwheat cakes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is that, Edith?" said her mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Something Mr. Carleton is going to read for me, mamma."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you trouble Mr. Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It won't trouble him, mamma--he promised of his own accord."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let us all have the benefit of it, Mr. Carleton," said the lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is worthy of remark that Fleda's politeness utterly deserted her during
+      the reading of both this piece and the last. She as near as possible
+      turned her back upon the reader.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Merrily sang the crickets forth<br /> One fair October night;--<br /> And
+        the stars looked down, and the northern crown<br /> Gave its strange
+        fantastic light.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "A nipping frost was in the air,<br /> On flowers and grass it fell;<br />
+        And the leaves were still on the eastern hill<br /> As if touched by a
+        fairy spell.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "To the very top of the tall nut-trees<br /> The frost-king seemed to
+        ride;<br /> With his wand he stirs the chestnut burs,<br /> And straight
+        they are opened wide.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "And squirrels and children together dream<br /> Of the coming winter's
+        hoard;<br /> And many, I ween, are the chestnuts seen<br /> In hole or in
+        garret stored.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "The children are sleeping in feather-beds--<br /> Poor Bun in his mossy
+        nest,--<br /> <i>He</i> courts repose with his tail on his nose.<br /> On
+        the others warm blankets rest.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Late in the morning the sun gets up<br /> From behind the village spire;<br />
+        And the children dream, that the first red gleam<br /> Is the chestnut
+        trees on fire!
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "The squirrel had on when he first awoke<br /> All the clothing he could
+        command;<br /> And his breakfast was light--he just took a bite<br /> Of
+        an acorn that lay at hand;
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "And then he was off to the trees to work;--<br /> While the children
+        some time it takes<br /> To dress and to eat what <i>they</i> think meet<br />
+        Of coffee and buckwheat cakes.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "The sparkling frost when they first go out,<br /> Lies thick upon all
+        around;<br /> And earth and grass, as they onward pass,<br /> Give a
+        pleasant crackling sound.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "O there is a heap of chestnuts, see!'<br /> Cried the youngest of the
+        train;<br /> For they came to a stone where the squirrel had thrown<br />
+        What he meant to pick up again.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "And two bright eyes from the tree o'erhead,<br /> Looked down at the
+        open bag<br /> Where the nuts went in--and so to begin,<br /> Almost made
+        his courage flag.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Away on the hill, outside the wood,<br /> Three giant trees there stand;<br />
+        And the chestnuts bright that hang in sight,<br /> Are eyed by the
+        youthful band.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "And one of their number climbs the tree,<br /> And passes from bough to
+        bough,--<br /> And the children run--for with pelting fun<br /> The nuts
+        fall thickly now.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Some of the burs are still shut tight,--<br /> Some open with chestnuts
+        three,--<br /> And some nuts fall with no burs at all--<br /> Smooth,
+        shiny, as nuts should be.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "O who can tell what fun it was<br /> To see the prickly shower!<br /> To
+        feel what a whack on head or back.<br /> Was within a chestnut's power!--
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "To run beneath the shaking tree,<br /> And then to scamper away;<br />
+        And with laughing shout to dance about<br /> The grass where the
+        chestnuts lay.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "With flowing dresses, and blowing hair,<br /> And eyes that no shadow
+        knew,--<br /> Like the growing light of a morning bright---<br /> The dawn
+        of the summer blue!
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "The work was ended--the trees were stripped--<br /> The children were
+        'tired of play.'<br /> And they forgot (but the squirrel did not)<br />
+        The wrong they had done that day."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Whether it was from the reader's enjoyment or good giving of these lines,
+      or from Edith's delight in them, he was frequently interrupted with bursts
+      of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can understand <i>that</i>" said Mr. Stackpole, "without any
+      difficulty."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are not lost in the mysteries of chestnuting in open daylight," said
+      Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton," said Edith, "wouldn't you have taken the squirrel's
+      chestnuts?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe I should, Miss Edith,--if I had not been hindered."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what would have hindered you? don't you think it was right?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ask your friend Miss Ringgan what she thinks of it," said he smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now Mr. Carleton," said Constance as he threw down the magazine, "will
+      you decide that point of English between Miss Ringgan and me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should like to hear the pleadings on both sides, Miss Constance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, Fleda, will you agree to submit it to Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I must know by what standards Mr. Carleton will be guided before I agree
+      to any such thing," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Standards! but aren't you going to trust anybody in anything without
+      knowing what standards they go by?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Would that be a safe rule to follow in general?" said Fleda smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You won't be a true woman if you don't follow it, sooner or later, my
+      dear Fleda," said Mrs. Evelyn. "Every woman must."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The later the better, ma'am, I cannot help thinking."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will change your mind," said Mrs. Evelyn complacently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mamma's notions, Mr. Stackpole, would satisfy any man's pride, when she
+      is expatiating upon the subject of woman's dependence," said Florence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The dependence of affection," said Mrs. Evelyn. "Of course! It's their
+      lot. Affection always leads a true woman to merge her separate judgment,
+      on anything, in the judgment of the beloved object."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ay," said Fleda laughing,--"suppose her affection is wasted on an object
+      that has none?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Fleda!" said Mrs. Evelyn with a funny expression,--"that can
+      never be, you know--don't you remember what your favourite Longfellow
+      says--'affection never is wasted'?--Florence, my love, just hand me
+      'Evangeline' there--I want you to listen to it, Mr. Stackpole--here it
+      is--
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        'Talk not of wasted affection; affection never was wasted;<br /> If it
+        enrich not the heart of another, its waters returning<br /> Back to their
+        springs shall fill them full of refreshment.<br /> That which the
+        fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.'"
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      "How very plain it is that was written by a man!" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why?" said Mr. Carleton laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I always thought it was so exquisite!" said Florence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>I</i> was so struck with it," said Constance, "that I have been
+      looking ever since for an object to waste <i>my</i> affections upon."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hush, Constance!" said her mother. "Don't you like it, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should like to hear Miss Ringgan's commentary," said Mr. Stackpole;--"
+      I can't anticipate it. I should have said the sentiment was quite soft and
+      tender enough for a woman."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you agree with it, Mr. Carleton," repeated Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I beg leave to second Mr. Stackpole's motion," he said smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda my dear, you must explain yourself,--the gentlemen are at a stand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe, Mrs. Evelyn," said Fleda smiling and blushing,--I am of the
+      mind of the old woman who couldn't bear to see anything wasted."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But the assertion is that it <i>isn't</i> wasted," said Mr. Stackpole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain,'"
+      said Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, to flood and lay waste the fair growth of nature," said Fleda with a
+      little energy, though her colour rose and rose higher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did it never occur to you, Mrs. Evelyn, that the streams which fertilize
+      as they flow do but desolate if their course be checked?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But your objection lies only against the author's figure," said Mr.
+      Stackpole;--"come to the fact."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was speaking as he did, sir, of the fact under the figure--I did not
+      mean to separate them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both the gentlemen were smiling, though with very different expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps," said Mr. Carleton, "the writer was thinking of a gentler and
+      more diffusive flow of kind feeling, which however it may meet with barren
+      ground and raise no fruit there, is sure in due time to come back,
+      heaven-refined, to refresh and replenish its source."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps so," said Fleda with a very pleased answering look,--"I do not
+      recollect how it is brought in--I may have answered rather Mrs. Evelyn
+      than Mr. Longfellow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But granting that it is an error," said Mr. Stackpole, "as you understood
+      it,--what shews it to have been made by a man?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Its utter ignorance of the subject, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You think <i>they</i> never waste their affections?" said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By no means! but I think they rarely waste so much in any one direction
+      as to leave them quite impoverished."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton, how do you bear that, sir?" said Mrs. Evelyn. "Will you let
+      such an assertion pass unchecked?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I would not if I could help it, Mrs. Evelyn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That isn't saying much for yourself," said Constance;--"but Fleda my
+      dear, where did you get such an experience of waste and desolation?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, 'man is a microcosm,' you know," said Fleda lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you make it out that only one-half of mankind can appropriate that
+      axiom," said Mr. Stackpole. "How can a woman know <i>men's</i> hearts so
+      well?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "On the principle that the whole is greater than a part?" said Mr.
+      Carleton smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll sleep upon that before I give my opinion," said Mr. Stackpole. "Mrs.
+      Evelyn, good-evening!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well Mr. Carleton!" said Constance, "you have said a great deal for
+      women's minds."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Some women's minds," he said with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And some men's minds," said Fleda. "I was speaking only in the general."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eye half unconsciously reiterated her meaning as she shook hands with
+      Mr. Carleton. And without speaking a word for other people to hear, his
+      look and smile in return were more than an answer. Fleda sat for some time
+      after he was gone trying to think what it was in eye and lip which had
+      given her so much pleasure. She could not make out anything but
+      approbation,--the look of loving approbation that one gives to a good
+      child; but she thought it had also something of that quiet intelligence--a
+      silent communication of sympathy which the others in company could not
+      share.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was roused from her reverie by Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda my dear, I am writing to your aunt Lucy--have you any message to
+      send?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No Mrs. Evelyn--I wrote myself to-day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she went back to her musings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am writing about you, Fleda," said Mrs. Evelyn, again in a few minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Giving a good account, I hope, ma'am," said Fleda smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shall tell her I think sea-breezes have an unfavourable effect upon
+      you," said Mrs. Evelyn;--"that I am afraid you are growing pale; and that
+      you have clearly expressed yourself in favour of a garden at Queechy
+      rather than any lot in the city--or anywhere else;--so she had better send
+      for you home immediately."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda tried to find out what the lady really meant; but Mrs. Evelyn's
+      delighted amusement did not consist with making the matter very plain.
+      Fleda's questions did nothing but aggravate the cause of them, to her own
+      annoyance; so she was fain at last to take her light and go to her own
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at her flowers again with a renewal of the first pleasure and
+      of the quieting influence the giver of them had exercised over her that
+      evening; thought again how very kind it was of him to send them, and to
+      choose them so; how strikingly he differed from other people; how glad she
+      was to have seen him again, and how more than glad that he was so happily
+      changed from his old self. And then from that change and the cause of it,
+      to those higher, more tranquilizing, and sweetening influences that own no
+      kindred with earth's dust and descend like the dew of heaven to lay and
+      fertilize it. And when she laid herself down to sleep it was with a spirit
+      grave but simply happy; every annoyance and unkindness as unfelt now as
+      ever the parching heat of a few hours before when the stars are abroad.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="37"></a>Chapter XXXVII.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        A snake bedded himself under the threshold of a country house.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        L'Estrange.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      To Fleda's very great satisfaction Mr. Thorn was not seen again for
+      several days. It would have been to her very great comfort too if he could
+      have been permitted to die out of mind as well as out of sight; but he was
+      brought up before her "lots of times," till poor Fleda almost felt as if
+      she was really in the moral neighbourhood of the Dead Sea, every natural
+      growth of pleasure was so withered under the barren spirit of raillery.
+      Sea-breezes were never so disagreeable since winds blew; and nervous and
+      fidgety again whenever Mr. Carleton was present, Fleda retreated to her
+      work and the table and withdrew herself as much as she could from notice
+      and conversation; feeling humbled,--feeling sorry and vexed and ashamed,
+      that such ideas should have been put into her head, the absurdity of
+      which, she thought, was only equalled by their needlessness. "As much as
+      she could" she withdrew; but that was not entirely; now and then interest
+      made her forget herself, and quitting her needle she would give eyes and
+      attention to the principal speaker as frankly as he could have desired.
+      Bad weather and bad roads for those days put riding out of the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning she was called down to see a gentleman, and came eschewing in
+      advance the expected image of Mr. Thorn. It was a very different person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Charlton Rossitur! My dear Charlton, how do you do? Where did you come
+      from?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You had better ask me what I have come for," he said laughing as he shook
+      hands with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What have you come for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To carry you home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Home!" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am going up there for a day or two, and mamma wrote me I had better act
+      as your escort, which of course I am most willing to do. See what mamma
+      says to you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When are you going, Charlton?" said Fleda as she broke the seal of the
+      note he gave her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To-morrow morning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is too sudden a notice, Capt. Rossitur," said Mrs. Evelyn. "Fleda
+      will hurry herself out of her colour, and then your mother will say there
+      is something in sea-breezes that isn't good for her; and then she will
+      never trust her within reach of them again,--which I am sure Miss Ringgan
+      would be sorry for."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda took her note to the window, half angry with herself that a kind of
+      banter in which certainly there was very little wit should have power
+      enough to disturb her. But though the shaft might be a slight one it was
+      winged with a will; the intensity of Mrs. Evelyn's enjoyment in her own
+      mischief gave it all the force that was wanting. Fleda's head was in
+      confusion; she read her aunt's note three times over before she had made
+      up her mind on any point respecting it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My Dearest Fleda,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charlton is coming home for a day or two--hadn't you better take the
+      opportunity to return with him? I feel as if you had been long away, my
+      dear child--don't you feel so too? Your uncle is very desirous of seeing
+      you; and as for Hugh and me we are but half ourselves. I would not still
+      say a word about your coming home if it were for your good to stay; but I
+      fancy from something in Mrs. Evelyn's letter that Queechy air will by this
+      time do you good again; and opportunities of making the journey are very
+      uncertain. My heart has grown lighter since I gave it leave to expect you.
+      Yours, my darling,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      L. R.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "P.S. I will write to Mrs. E. soon."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What string has pulled these wires that are twitching me home?" thought
+      Fleda, as her eyes went over and over the words which the feeling of the
+      lines of her face would alone have told her were unwelcome. And why
+      unwelcome?--"One likes to be moved by fair means and not by foul," was the
+      immediate answer. "And besides, it is very disagreeable to be taken by
+      surprise. Whenever, in any matter of my staying or going, did aunt Lucy
+      have any wish but my pleasure?" Fleda mused a little while; and then with
+      a perfect understanding of the machinery that had been at work, though an
+      extremely vague and repulsed notion of the spring that had moved it, she
+      came quietly out from her window and told Charlton she would go with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But not to-morrow?" said Mrs. Evelyn composedly. "You will not hurry her
+      off so soon as that, Capt. Rossitur?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Furloughs are the stubbornest things in the world, Mrs. Evelyn; there is
+      no spirit of accommodation about them. Mine lies between to-morrow morning
+      and one other morning some two days thereafter; and you might as soon
+      persuade Atlas to change his place. Will you be ready, coz?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will be ready," said Fleda; and her cousin departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now my dear Fleda" said Mrs. Evelyn, but it was with that funny face, as
+      she saw Fleda standing thoughtfully before the fire,--you must be very
+      careful in getting your things together--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, Mrs. Evelyn?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid you will leave something behind you, my love."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will take care of that, ma'am, and that I may I will go and see about
+      it at once."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very busy till dinner-time; she would not let herself stop to think about
+      anything. At dinner Mr. Evelyn openly expressed his regrets for her going
+      and his earnest wishes that she would at least stay till the holidays were
+      over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you know Fleda better, papa," said Florence, "than to try to make
+      her alter her mind? When she says a thing is determined upon, I know there
+      is nothing to do but to submit, with as good a grace as you can."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I tried to make Capt. Rossitur leave her a little longer," said Mrs.
+      Evelyn; "but he says furloughs are immovable, and his begins to-morrow
+      morning--so he was immovable too. I should keep her notwithstanding,
+      though, if her aunt Lucy hadn't sent for her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well see what she wants, and come back again," said Mr. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thank you, sir," said Fleda smiling gratefully,--"I think not this
+      winter."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There are two or three of my friends that will be confoundedly taken
+      aback," said Mr. Evelyn, carefully helping himself to gravy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I expect that an immediate depopulation of New York will commence," said
+      Constance,--"and go on till the heights about Queechy are all thickly
+      settled with elegant country-seats,--which is the conventional term for a
+      species of mouse trap!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hush, you baggage!" said her father. "Fleda, I wish you could spare her a
+      little of your common-sense, to go through the world with."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Papa thinks, you see, my dear, that you have <i>more than enough</i>--which
+      is not perhaps precisely the compliment he intended."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I take the full benefit of his and yours," said Fleda smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After dinner she had just time to run down to the library to bid Dr.
+      Gregory good-bye; her last walk in the city. It wasn't a walk she enjoyed
+      much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Going to-morrow," said he. "Why I am going to Boston in a week--you had
+      better stay and go with me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can't now, uncle Orrin--I am dislodged--and you know there is nothing
+      to do then but to go."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come and stay with me till next week."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda said it was best not, and went home to finish her preparations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had no chance till late, for several gentlemen spent the evening with
+      them. Mr. Carleton was there part of the time, but he was one of the first
+      to go; and Fleda could not find an opportunity to say that she should not
+      see him again. Her timidity would not allow her to make one. But it
+      grieved her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last she escaped to her own room, where most of her packing was still
+      to do. By the time half the floor and all the bed was strewn with
+      neat-looking piles of things, the varieties of her modest wardrobe,
+      Florence and Constance came in to see and talk with her, and sat down on
+      the floor too; partly perhaps because the chairs were all bespoken in the
+      service of boxes and baskets, and partly to follow what seemed to be the
+      prevailing style of things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you suppose has become of Mr. Thorn?" said Constance. "I have a
+      presentiment that you will find him cracking nuts sociably with Mr.
+      Rossitur or drinking one of aunt Lucy's excellent cups of coffee--in
+      comfortable expectation of your return."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If I thought that I should stay here," said Fleda. "My dear, those were
+      <i>my</i> cups of coffee!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish I could make you think it then," said Constance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you are glad to go home, aren't you, Fleda?" said Florence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She isn't!" said her sister. "She knows mamma contemplates making a grand
+      entertainment of all the Jews as soon as she is gone. What <i>does</i>
+      mamma mean by that, Fleda?--I observe you comprehend her with most
+      invariable quickness."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should be puzzled to explain all that your mother means," said Fleda
+      gently, as she went on bestowing her things in the trunk. "No--I am not
+      particularly glad to go home--but I fancy it is time. I am afraid I have
+      grown too accustomed to your luxury of life, and want knocking about to
+      harden me a little."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Harden you!" said Constance. "My dear Fleda, you are under a delusion.
+      Why should any one go through an indurating process?--will you inform me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't say that every one should," said Fleda,--"but isn't it well for
+      those whose lot does not lie among soft things?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was extreme sweetness and a touching insinuation in her manner, and
+      both the young ladies were silent for sometime thereafter watching
+      somewhat wistfully the gentle hands and face that were so quietly busy;
+      till the room was cleared again and looked remarkably empty with Fleda's
+      trunk standing in the middle of it. And then reminding them that she
+      wanted some sleep to fit her for the hardening process and must therefore
+      send them away, she was left alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One thing Fleda had put off till then--the care of her bunch of flowers.
+      They were beautiful still. They had given her a very great deal of
+      pleasure; and she was determined they should be left to no servant's hands
+      to be flung into the street. If it had been summer she was sure she could
+      have got buds from them; as it was, perhaps she might strike some
+      cuttings; at all events they should go home with her. So carefully taking
+      them out of the water and wrapping the ends in some fresh earth she had
+      got that very afternoon from her uncle's garden, Fleda bestowed them in
+      the corner of her trunk that she had left for them, and went to bed,
+      feeling weary in body, and in mind to the last degree quiet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the same mind and mood she reached Queechy the next afternoon. It was a
+      little before January--just the same time that she had come home last
+      year. As then, it was a bright day, and the country was again covered
+      thick with the unspotted snow; but Fleda forgot to think how bright and
+      fresh it was. Somehow she did not feel this time quite so glad to find
+      herself there. It had never occurred to her so strongly before that
+      Queechy could want anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This feeling flew away before the first glimpse of her aunt's smile, and
+      for half an hour after Fleda would have certified that Queechy wanted
+      nothing. At the end of that time came in Mr. Rossitur. His greeting of
+      Charlton was sufficiently unmarked; but eye and lip wakened when he turned
+      to Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear child," he said, holding her face in both his hands,--how lovely
+      you have grown!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's only because you have forgotten her, father," said Hugh laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus21.jpg"><img src="images/illus21.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="'My dear child,' he said, holding her face in both his hands."
+      title="'My dear child,' he said, holding her face in both his hands." /><br />
+      "My dear child," he said, holding her face in both his hands.</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a very lovely face just then. Mr. Rossitur gazed into it a moment
+      and again kissed first one cheek and then the other, and then suddenly
+      withdrew his hands and turned away, with an air--Fleda could not tell what
+      to make of it--an air that struck her with an immediate feeling of pain;
+      somewhat as if for some cause or other he had nothing to do with her or
+      her loveliness. And she needed not to see him walk the room for three
+      minutes to know that Michigan agencies had done nothing to lighten his
+      brow or uncloud his character. If this had wanted confirmation Fleda would
+      have found it in her aunt's face. She soon discovered, even in the course
+      of the pleasant talkative hours before supper, that it was not brightened
+      as she had expected to find it by her uncle's coming home; and her ears
+      now caught painfully the occasional long breath, but half smothered, which
+      told of a burden upon the heart but half concealed. Fleda supposed that
+      Mr. Rossitur's business affairs at the West must have disappointed him;
+      and resolved not to remember that Michigan was in the map of North
+      America.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still they talked on, through the afternoon and evening, all of them
+      except him; he was moody and silent. Fleda felt the cloud overshadow sadly
+      her own gayety; but Mrs. Rossitur and Hugh were accustomed to it, and
+      Charlton was much too tall a light to come under any external obscuration
+      whatever. He was descanting brilliantly upon the doings and prospects at
+      Fort Hamilton where he was stationed, much to the entertainment of his
+      mother and brother. Fleda could not listen to him while his father was
+      sitting lost in something not half so pleasant as sleep in the corner of
+      the sofa. Her eyes watched him stealthily till she could not bear it any
+      longer. She resolved to bring the power of her sunbeam to bear, and going
+      round seated herself on the sofa close by him and laid her hand on his
+      arm. He felt it immediately. The arm was instantly drawn away to be put
+      around her and Fleda was pressed nearer to his side, while the other hand
+      took hers; and his lips were again on her forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And how do you like me for a farmer, uncle Rolf?" she said looking up at
+      him laughingly, and then fearing immediately that she had chosen her
+      subject ill. Not from any change in his countenance however,--that
+      decidedly brightened up. He did not answer at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My child--you make me ashamed of mankind!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of the dominant half of them, sir, do you mean?" said Charlton,--"or is
+      your observation a sweeping one?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It would sweep the greatest part of the world into the background, sir,"
+      answered his father dryly, "if its sense were the general rule."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what has Fleda done to be such a besom of desolation?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's laugh set everybody else a going, and there was immediately more
+      life and common feeling in the society than had been all day. They all
+      seemed willing to shake off a weight, and even Fleda, in the endeavour to
+      chase the gloom that hung over others, as it had often happened, lost half
+      of her own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But still I am not answered," said Charlton when they were grave again.
+      "What has Fleda done to put such a libel upon mankind?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You should call it a <i>label</i>, as Dr. Quackenboss does," said Fleda
+      in a fresh burst,--"he says he never would stand being labelled!"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But come back to the point," said Charlton,--"I want to know what is the
+      <i>label</i> in this case, that Fleda's doings put upon those of other
+      people?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Insignificance," said his father dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should like to know how bestowed," said Charlton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't enlighten him, uncle Rolf," said Fleda laughing,--"let my doings
+      remain in safe obscurity,--please!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I stand as a representative of mankind," said Charlton, "and I demand an
+      explanation."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Look at what this slight frame and delicate nerves have been found equal
+      to, and then tell me if the broad shoulders of all your mess would have
+      borne half the burden or their united heads accomplished a quarter the
+      results."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke with sufficient depth of meaning, though now with no unpleasant
+      expression. But Charlton notwithstanding rather gathered himself up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O uncle Rolf," said Fleda gently,--"nerves and muscles haven't much to do
+      with it--after all you know I have just served the place of a mouth-piece.
+      Seth was the head, and good Earl Douglass the hand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am ashamed of myself and of mankind," Mr. Rossitur repeated, "when I
+      see what mere weakness can do, and how proudly valueless strength is
+      contended to be. You are looking, Capt. Rossitur,--but after all a cap and
+      plume really makes a man taller only to the eye."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When I have flung my plume in anybody's face, sir," said Charlton rather
+      hotly, "it will be time enough to throw it back again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur put her hand on his arm and looked her remonstrance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you glad to be home again, dear Fleda?" she said turning to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda was making some smiling communications to her uncle and did not
+      seem to hear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda does it seem pleasant to be here again?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very pleasant, dear aunt Lucy--though I have had a very pleasant visit
+      too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "On the whole you do not wish you were at this moment driving out of town
+      in Mr. Thorn's cabriolet?" said her cousin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not in the least," said Fleda coolly. "How did you know I ever did such a
+      thing?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wonder what should bring Mr. Thorn to Queechy at this time of year,"
+      said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda started at this confirmation of Constance's words; and what was very
+      odd, she could not get rid of the impression that Mr. Rossitur had started
+      too. Perhaps it was only her own nerves, but he had certainly taken away
+      the arm that was round her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose he has followed Miss Ringgan," said Charlton gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Hugh, "he has been here some little time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then he preceded her, I suppose, to see and get the sleighs in order."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He did not know I was coming," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Didn't!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--I have not seen him for several days."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear little cousin," said Charlton laughing,--"you are not a witch in
+      your own affairs, whatever you may be in those of other people."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, Charlton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are no adept in the art of concealment."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have nothing to conceal," said Fleda. "How do you know he is here,
+      Hugh?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was anxiously asked the other day," said Hugh with a slight smile,
+      "whether you had come home; and then told that Mr. Thorn was in Queechy.
+      There is no mistake about it, for my imformant had actually seen him, and
+      given him the direction to Mr. Plumfield's, for which he was inquiring."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The direction to Mr. Plumfield's!" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's your old friend Mr. Carleton doing in New York?" said Charlton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is he there still?" said Mrs. Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As large as life," answered her son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Which, though you might not suppose it, aunt Lucy, is about the height of
+      Capt. Rossitur, with--I should judge--a trifle less weight."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Your eyes are observant!" said Charlton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of a good many things," said Fleda lightly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is <i>not</i> my height by half an inch," said Charlton;--"I am just
+      six feet without my boots."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "An excellent height!" said Fleda,--"'your six feet was ever the only
+      height.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who said that?" said Charlton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Isn't it enough that I say it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's he staying here for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know really," said Fleda. "It's very difficult to tell what
+      people do things for."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you seen much of him?" said Mrs. Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes ma'am--a good deal--he was often at Mrs. Evelyn's."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is he going to marry one of her daughters?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh no!" said Fleda smiling,--"he isn't thinking of such a thing;--not in
+      America--I don't know what he may do in England."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No!" said Charlton.--"I suppose he would think himself contaminated by
+      matching with any blood in this hemisphere."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You do him injustice," said Fleda, colouring;--"you do not know him,
+      Charlton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You do?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Much better than that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And he is not one of the most touch-me-not pieces of English birth and
+      wealth that ever stood upon their own dignity?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not at all!" said Fleda;--"how people may be misunderstood!--he is one of
+      the most gentle and kind persons I ever saw."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To you!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To everybody that deserves it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Humph!--And not proud?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, not as you understand it,"--and she felt it was very difficult to
+      make him understand it, as the discovery involved a very offensive
+      implication;--"he is too fine a character to be proud."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That <i>is</i> arguing in a circle with a vengeance!" said Charlton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know what you are thinking of," said Fleda, "and I suppose it passes
+      for pride with a great many people who cannot comprehend it--he has a
+      singular power of quietly rebuking wrong, and keeping impertinence at a
+      distance--where Capt. Rossitur, for instance, I suppose, would throw his
+      cap in a man's face, Mr. Carleton's mere silence would make the offender
+      doff his and ask pardon."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The manner in which this was said precluded all taking offence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well," said Charlton shrugging his shoulders,--"then I don't know what
+      pride is--that's all!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Take care, Capt. Rossitur," said Fleda laughing,--"I have heard of such a
+      thing as American pride before now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly!" said Charlton, "and I'm quite willing--but it never reaches
+      quite such a towering height on our side the water."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure I don't know how that may be," said Fleda, "but I know I have
+      heard a lady, an enlightened, gentle-tempered American lady, so called,--I
+      have heard her talk to a poor Irish woman with whom she had nothing in the
+      world to do, in a style that moved my indignation--it stirred my
+      blood!--and there was nothing whatever to call it out. 'All the blood of
+      all the Howards,' I hope would not have disgraced itself so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What business have you to 'hope' anything about it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "None--except from the natural desire to find what one has a right to look
+      for. But indeed I wouldn't take the blood of all the Howards for any
+      security--pride as well as high-breeding is a thing of natural not
+      adventitious growth--it belongs to character, not circumstance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know that your favourite Mr. Carleton is nearly connected with
+      those same Howards, and quarters their arms with his own?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have a very vague idea of the dignity implied in that expression of
+      'quartering arms,' which comes so roundly out of your mouth, Charlton,"
+      said Fleda laughing. "No, I didn't know it. But in general I am apt to
+      think that pride is a thing which reverses the usual rules of
+      architecture, and builds highest on the narrowest foundations."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you mean?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never mind," said Fleda,--"if a meaning isn't plain it isn't worth
+      looking after. But it will not do to measure pride by its supposed
+      materials. It does not depend on them but on the individual. You
+      everywhere see people assert that most of which they feel least sure, and
+      then it is easy for them to conclude that where there is so much more of
+      the reality there must be proportionably more of the assertion. I wish
+      some of our gentlemen, and ladies, who talk of pride where they see and
+      can see nothing but the habit of wealth--I wish they could see the
+      universal politeness with which Mr. Carleton returns the salutes of his
+      inferiors. Not more respectfully they lift their hats to him than he lifts
+      his to them--unless when he speaks."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have seen it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Often."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In England--at his own place--among his own servants and dependents. I
+      remember very well--it struck even my childish eyes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, after all, that is nothing still but a refined kind of
+      haughtiness."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is a kind that I wish some of our Americans would copy," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But dear Fleda," said Mrs. Rossitur, "all Americans are not like that
+      lady you were talking of--it would be very unfair to make her a sample. I
+      don't think I ever heard any one speak so in my life--you never heard me
+      speak so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear aunt Lucy!--no,--I was only giving instance for instance. I have no
+      idea that Mr. Carleton is a type of Englishmen in general--I wish he were.
+      But I think it is the very people that cry out against superiority, who
+      are the most happy to assert their own where they can; the same jealous
+      feeling that repines on the one hand, revenges itself on the other."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Superiority of what kind?" said Charlton stiffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of any kind--superiority of wealth, or refinement, or name, or standing.
+      Now it does not follow that an Englishman is proud because he keeps
+      liveried servants, and it by no means follows that an American lacks the
+      essence of haughtiness because he finds fault with him for doing so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dare say some of our neighbours think we are proud," said Hugh,
+      "Because we use silver forks instead of steel."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because we're <i>too good for steel forks</i>, you ought to say," said
+      Fleda. "I am sure they think so. I have been given to understand as much.
+      Barby, I believe, has a good opinion of us and charitably concludes that
+      we mean right; but some other of our country friends would think I was far
+      gone in uppishness if they knew that I never touch fish with a steel
+      knife; and it wouldn't mend the matter much to tell them that the
+      combination of flavours is disagreeable to me--it hardly suits the
+      doctrine of liberty and equality that my palate should be so much nicer
+      than theirs."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Absurd!" said Charlton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very," said Fleda; "but on which side, in all probability, is the pride?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It wasn't for liveried servants that I charged Mr. Carleton," said her
+      cousin. "How do the Evelyns like this paragon of yours?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O everybody likes him," said Fleda smiling,--"except you and your friend
+      Mr. Thorn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thorn don't like him, eh?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think not."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you suppose is the reason?" said Charlton gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't think Mr. Thorn is particularly apt to like anybody," said Fleda,
+      who knew very well the original cause of both exceptions but did not like
+      to advert to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Apparently you don't like Mr. Thorn?" said Mr. Rossitur, speaking for the
+      first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know who does, sir, much,--except his mother."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is he?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A man not wanting in parts, sir, and with considerable force of
+      character,--but I am afraid more for ill than for good. I should be very
+      sorry to trust him with anything dear to me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How long were you in forming that opinion?" said Charlton looking at her
+      curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was formed, substantially, the first evening I saw him, and I hare
+      never seen cause to alter it since."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The several members of the family therewith fell into a general muse, with
+      the single exception of Hugh, whose eyes and thoughts seemed to be
+      occupied with Fleda's living presence. Mr. Rossitur then requested that
+      breakfast might be ready very early--at six o'clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Six o'clock!" exclaimed Mrs. Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have to take a long ride, on business, which must be done early in the
+      day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When will you be back?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not before night-fall."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But going on <i>another</i> business journey!" said Mrs. Rossitur. "You
+      have but just these few hours come home from one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Cannot breakfast be ready?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, uncle Rolf," said Fleda bringing her bright face before him,--"ready
+      at half-past five if you like--now that <i>I</i> am to the fore, you
+      know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He clasped her to his breast and kissed her again; but with a face so very
+      grave that Fleda was glad nobody else saw it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Charlton went, averring that he wanted at least a night and a half of
+      sleep between two such journeys as the one of that day and the one before
+      him on the next,--especially as he must resign himself to going without
+      anything to eat. Him also Fleda laughingly promised that precisely half an
+      hour before the stage time a cup of coffee and a roll should be smoking on
+      the table, with whatever substantial appendages might be within the bounds
+      of possibility, or the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will pay you for that beforehand with a kiss," said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will do nothing of the kind," said Fleda stepping back;--"a kiss is a
+      favour taken, not given; and I am entirely ignorant what you have done to
+      deserve it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You make a curious difference between me and Hugh," said Charlton, half
+      in jest, half in earnest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hugh is my brother, Capt. Rossitur," said Fleda smiling,--and that is an
+      honour you never made any pretensions to."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come, you shall not say that any more," said he, taking the kiss that
+      Fleda had no mind to give him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half laughing, but with eyes that were all too ready for something else,
+      she turned again to Hugh when his brother had left the room and looked
+      wistfully in his face, stroking back the hair from his temples with a
+      caressing hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are just as you were when I left you!--" she said, with lips that
+      seemed too unsteady to say more, and remained parted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid so are you," he replied;--"not a bit fatter. I hoped you
+      would be."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What have you been smiling at so this evening?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was thinking how well you talked."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why Hugh!--You should have helped me--I talked too much."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I would much rather listen," said Hugh. "Dear Fleda, what a different
+      thing the house is with you in it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda said nothing, except an inexplicable little shake of her head which
+      said a great many things; and then she and her aunt were left alone. Mrs.
+      Rossitur drew her to her bosom with a look so exceeding fond that its
+      sadness was hardly discernible. It was mingled however with an expression
+      of some doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What has made you keep so thin?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have been very well, aunt Lucy,--thinness agrees with me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you glad to be home again, dear Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very glad to be with you, dear aunt Lucy!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But not glad to be home?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes I am," said Fleda,--"but somehow--I don't know--I believe I have got
+      a little spoiled--it is time I was at home I am sure.--I shall be quite
+      glad after a day or two, when I have got into the works again. I am glad
+      now, aunt Lucy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur seemed unsatisfied, and stroked the hair from Fleda's
+      forehead with an absent look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What was there in New York that you were so sorry to leave?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing ma'am, in particular,"--said Fleda brightly,--"and I am not
+      sorry, aunt Lucy--I tell you I am a little spoiled with company and easy
+      living--I am glad to be with you again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you get up to uncle Rolf's breakfast to-morrow, aunt Lucy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nor you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I sha'n't unless I want to--but there'll be nothing for you to do, and
+      you must just lie still. We will all have our breakfast together when
+      Charlton has his."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are the veriest sunbeam that ever came into a house," said her aunt
+      kissing her.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="38"></a>Chapter XXXVIII.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        My flagging soul flies under her own pitch.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Dryden.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Fleda mused as she went up stairs whether the sun were a luminous body to
+      himself or no, feeling herself at that moment dull enough. Bright, was
+      she, to others? nothing seemed bright to her. Every old shadow was darker
+      than ever. Her uncle's unchanged gloom,--her aunt's unrested face,--Hugh's
+      unaltered delicate sweet look, which always to her fancy seemed to write
+      upon his face, "Passing away!"--and the thickening prospects whence sprang
+      the miasm that infected the whole moral atmosphere--alas, yes!--"Money is
+      a good thing," thought Fleda;--"and poverty need not be a bad thing, if
+      people can take it right;--but if they take it wrong!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a very drooping heart indeed she went to the window. Her old childish
+      habit had never been forgotten; whenever the moon or the stars were abroad
+      Fleda rarely failed to have a talk with them from her window. She stood
+      there now, looking out into the cold still night, with eyes just dimmed
+      with tears--not that she lacked sadness enough, but she did lack spirit
+      enough to cry. It was very still;--after the rattle and confusion of the
+      city streets, that extent of snow-covered country where the very shadows
+      were motionless--the entire absence of soil and of disturbance--the rest
+      of nature--the breathlessness of the very wind--all preached a quaint kind
+      of sermon to Fleda. By the force of contrast they told her what should
+      be;--and there was more yet,--she thought that by the force of example
+      they shewed what might be. Her eyes had not long travelled over the
+      familiar old fields and fences before she came to the conclusion that she
+      was home in good time,--she thought she had been growing selfish, or in
+      danger of it; and she made up her mind she was glad to be back again among
+      the rough things of life, where she could do so much to smooth them for
+      others and her own spirit might grow to a polish it would never gain in
+      the regions of ease and pleasure. "To do life's work!"--thought Fleda
+      clasping her hands,--"no matter where--and mine is here. I am glad I am in
+      my place again--I was forgetting I had one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a face of strange purity and gravity that the moon shone upon, with
+      no power to brighten as in past days; the shadows of life were upon the
+      child's brow. But nothing to brighten it from within? One sweet strong ray
+      of other light suddenly found its way through the shadows and entered her
+      heart. "The Lord reigneth! let the earth be glad!"--and then the moonbeams
+      pouring down with equal ray upon all the unevennesses of this little world
+      seemed to say the same thing over and over. Even so! Not less equally his
+      providence touches all,--not less impartially his faithfulness guides.
+      "The Lord reigneth! let the earth be glad!" There was brightness in the
+      moonbeams now that Fleda could read this in them; she went to sleep, a
+      very child again, with these words for her pillow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not six, and darkness yet filled the world, when Mr. Rossitur came
+      down stairs and softly opened the sitting-room door. But the home fairy
+      had been at work; he was greeted with such a blaze of cheerfulness as
+      seemed to say what a dark place the world was everywhere but at home; his
+      breakfast-table was standing ready, well set and well supplied; and even
+      as he entered by one door Fleda pushed open the other and came in from the
+      kitchen, looking as if she had some strange spirit-like kindred with the
+      cheery hearty glow which filled both rooms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda!--you up at this hour!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, uncle Rolf," she said coming forward to put her hands upon
+      his,--"you are not sorry to see me, I hope."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he did not say he was glad; and he did not speak at all; he busied
+      himself gravely with some little matters of preparation for his journey.
+      Evidently the gloom of last night was upon him yet. But Fleda had not
+      wrought for praise, and could work without encouragement; neither step nor
+      hand slackened, till all she and Barby had made ready was in nice order on
+      the table and she was pouring out a cup of smoking coffee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are not fit to be up," said Mr. Rossitur, looking at her,---"you are
+      pale now, Put yourself in that arm chair, Fleda, and go to sleep--I will
+      do this for myself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No indeed, uncle Rolf," she answered brightly,--"I have enjoyed getting
+      breakfast very much at this out-of-the-way hour, and now I am going to
+      have the pleasure of seeing you eat it. Suppose you were to take a cup of
+      coffee instead of my shoulder."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took it and sat down, but Fleda found that the pleasure of seeing him
+      was to be a very qualified thing. He ate like a business man, in unbroken
+      silence and gravity; and her cheerful words and looks got no return. It
+      became an effort at length to keep either bright. Mr. Rossitur's sole
+      remarks during breakfast were to ask if Charlton was going back that day,
+      and if Philetus was getting the horse ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Skillcorn had been called in good time by Barby at Fleda's suggestion,
+      and coming down stairs had opined discontentedly that "a man hadn't no
+      right to be took out of bed in the morning afore he could see himself."
+      But this, and Barby's spirited reply, that "there was no chance of his
+      doing <i>that</i> at any time of day, so it was no use to wait,"--Fleda
+      did not repeat. Her uncle was in no humour to be amused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She expected almost that he would go off without speaking to her. But he
+      came up kindly to where she stood watching him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You must bid me good-bye for all the family, uncle Rolf, as I am the only
+      one here," she said laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she was sure that the embrace and kiss which followed were very
+      exclusively for her. They made her face almost as sober as his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There will be a blessing for you," said he,--"if there is a blessing
+      anywhere!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If, uncle Rolf?" said Fleda, her heart swelling to her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned away without answering her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda sat down in the easy chair then and cried. But that lasted very few
+      minutes; she soon left crying for herself to pray for him, that he might
+      have the blessing he did not know. That did not stop tears. She remembered
+      the poor man sick of the palsy who was brought in by friends to be healed,
+      and that "Jesus seeing <i>their</i> faith, said unto the sick of the
+      palsy, 'Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.'" It was a handle that faith took
+      hold of and held fast while love made its petition. It was all she could
+      do, she thought; <i>she</i> never could venture to speak to her uncle on
+      the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Weary and tired, tears and longing at length lost themselves in sleep.
+      When she awaked she found the daylight broadly come, little King in her
+      lap, the fire, instead of being burnt out, in perfect preservation, and
+      Barby standing before it and looking at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You ha'n't got one speck o' good by <i>this</i> journey to New York," was
+      Miss Elster's vexed salutation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you think so?" said Fleda rousing herself. "<i>I</i> wouldn't venture
+      to say as much as that, Barby."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you have, 'tain't in your cheeks," said Barby decidedly. "You look
+      just as if you was made of anything that wouldn't stand wear, and that
+      isn't the way you used to look."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have been up a good while without breakfast--my cheeks will be a better
+      colour when I have had that, Barby--they feel pale."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second breakfast was a cheerfuller thing. But when the second
+      traveller was despatched, and the rest fell back upon their old numbers,
+      Fleda was very quiet again. It vexed her to be so, but she could not
+      change her mood. She felt as if she had been whirled along in a dream and
+      was now just opening her eyes to daylight and reality. And reality--she
+      could not help it--looked rather dull after dreamland. She thought it was
+      very well she was waked up; but it cost her some effort to appear so. And
+      then she charged herself with ingratitude, her aunt and Hugh were so
+      exceedingly happy in her company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Earl Douglass is quite delighted with the clover hay, Fleda," said Hugh,
+      as the three sat at an early dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is he?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes,--you know he was very unwilling to cure it in your way--and he
+      thinks there never was anything like it now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you ever see finer ham, Fleda?" inquired her aunt. "Mr. Plumfield
+      says it could not be better."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very good!" said Fleda, whose thoughts had somehow got upon Mr.
+      Carleton's notions about female education and were very busy with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I expected you would have remarked upon our potatoes, before now," said
+      Hugh. "These are the Elephants--have you seen anything like them in New
+      York?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There cannot be more beautiful potatoes," said Mrs. Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We had not tried any of them before you went away, Fleda, had we?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know, aunt Lucy!--no, I think not."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You needn't talk to Fleda, mother," said Hugh laughing,--"she is quite
+      beyond attending to all such ordinary matters--her thoughts have learned
+      to take a higher flight since she has been in New York."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is time they were brought down then," said Fleda smiling; "but they
+      have not learned to fly out of sight of home, Hugh."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where were they, dear Fleda?" said her aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was thinking a minute ago of something I heard talked about in New
+      York, aunt Lucy; and afterwards I was trying to find out by what possible
+      or imaginable road I had got round to it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Could you tell?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda said no, and tried to bear her part in the conversation. But she did
+      not know whether to blame the subjects which had been brought forward, or
+      herself, for her utter want of interest in them. She went into the kitchen
+      feeling dissatisfied with both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you ever see potatoes that would beat them Elephants?" said Barby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never, certainly," said Fleda with a most involuntary smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I never did," said Barby. "They beat all, for bigness and goodness both.
+      I can't keep 'em together. There's thousands of 'em, and I mean to make
+      Philetus eat 'em for supper--such potatoes and milk is good enough for
+      him, or anybody. The cow has gained on her milk wonderful, Fleda, since
+      she begun to have them roots fed out to her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Which cow?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Which cow?--why--the blue cow--there ain't none of the others that's
+      giving any, to speak of," said Barby looking at her. "Don't you know,--the
+      cow you said them carrots should be kept for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda half laughed, as there began to rise up before her the various
+      magazines of vegetables, grain, hay, and fodder, that for many weeks had
+      been deliciously distant from her imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I made butter for four weeks, I guess, after you went away," Barby went
+      on;--"just come in here and see--and the carrots makes it as yellow and
+      sweet as June--I churned as long as I had anything to churn, and longer;
+      and now we live on cream--you can make some cheesecakes just as soon as
+      you're a mind to,--see! ain't that doing pretty well?--and fine it
+      is,--put your nose down to it--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bravely, Barby--and it is very sweet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You ha'n't left nothing behind you in New York, have you?" said Barby
+      when they returned to the kitchen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Left anything! no,--what do you think I have left?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I didn't know but you might have forgotten to pack up your memory," said
+      Barby dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda laughed; and then in walked Mr. Douglass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How d'ye do?" said he. "Got back again. I heerd you was hum, and so I
+      thought I'd just step up and see. Been getting along pretty well?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda answered, smiling internally at the wide distance between her
+      "getting along" and his idea of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well the hay's first-rate!" said Earl, taking off his hat and sitting
+      down in the nearest chair;--"I've been feedin' it out, now, for a good
+      spell, and I know what to think about it. We've been feedin' it out ever
+      since some time this side o' the middle o' November;--I never see nothin'
+      sweeter, and I don't want to see nothin' sweeter than it is! and the
+      cattle eats it like May roses--they don't know how to thank you enough for
+      it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To thank <i>you</i>, Mr. Douglass," said Fleda smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said he in a decided manner,--"I don't want no thanks for it, and I
+      don't deserve none! 'Twa'n't thanks to none of <i>my</i> fore-sightedness
+      that the clover wa'n't served the old way. I didn't like new notions--and
+      I never did like new notions! and I never see much good of 'em;--but I
+      suppose there's some on 'em that ain't moon-shine--my woman says there is,
+      and I suppose there is, and after this clover hay I'm willin' to allow
+      that there is! It's as sweet as a posie if you smell to it,--and all of
+      it's cured alike; and I think, Fleda, there's a quarter more weight of it.
+      I ha'n't proved it nor weighed it, but I've an eye and a hand as good as
+      most folks', and I'll qualify to there being a fourth part more weight of
+      it;--and it's a beautiful colour. The critters is as fond of it as you and
+      I be of strawberries."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well that is satisfactory, Mr. Douglass," said Fleda. "How is Mrs.
+      Douglass? and Catherine?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ha'n't heerd 'em sayin' nothin' about it," he said,--"and if there was
+      anythin' the matter I suppose they'd let me know. There don't much go
+      wrong in a man's house without his hearin' tell of it. So I think. Maybe
+      'tain't the same in other men's houses. That's the way it is in mine."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mrs. Douglass would not thank you," said Fleda, wholly unable to keep
+      from laughing. Earl's mouth gave way a very little, and then he went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How be you?" he said. "You ha'n't gained much, as I see. I don't see but
+      you're as poor as when you went away."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very well, Mr. Douglass."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I guess New York ain't the place to grow fat. Well, Fleda, there ha'n't
+      been seen in the whole country, or by any man in it, the like of the crop
+      of corn we took off that 'ere twenty-acre lot--they're all beat to hear
+      tell of it--they won't believe me--Seth Plumfield ha'n't shewed as much
+      himself--he says you're the best farmer in the state."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope he gives you part of the credit, Mr. Douglass;--how much was
+      there?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll take my share of credit whenever I can get it," said Earl, "and I
+      think it's right to take it, as long as you ha'n't nothing to be ashamed
+      of; but I won't take no more than my share; and I will say I thought we
+      was a goin' to choke the corn to death when we seeded the field in that
+      way.--Well, there's better than two thousand bushel--more or less--and as
+      handsome corn as I want to see;--there never was handsomer corn. Would you
+      let it go for five shillings?--there's a man I've heerd of wants the hull
+      of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that a good price, Mr. Douglass? Why don't you ask Mr. Rossitur?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you s'pose Mr. Rossitur knows much about it?" inquired Earl with a
+      curious turn of feature, between sly and contemptuous. "The less he has to
+      do with that heap of corn the bigger it'll be--that's my idee, <i>I</i>
+      ain't agoin' to ask him nothin'--you may ask him what you like to ask
+      him--but I don't think he'll tell you much that'll make you and me wiser
+      in the matter o' farmin'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But now that he is at home, Mr. Douglass, I certainly cannot decide
+      without speaking to him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very good!" said Earl uneasily,--"'tain't no affair of mine--as you like
+      to have it so you'll have it--just as you please!--But now, Fleda, there's
+      another thing I want to speak to you about--I want you to let me take hold
+      of that 'ere piece of swamp land and bring it in. I knew a man that fixed
+      a piece of land like that and cleared nigh a thousand dollars off it the
+      first year."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Which piece?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why you know which 'tis--just the other side of the trees over
+      there--between them two little hills. There's six or seven acres of
+      it--nothin' in the world but mud and briars--will you let me take hold of
+      it? I'll do the hull job if you'll give me half the profits for one
+      year.--Come over and look at it, and I'll tell you--come! the walk won't
+      hurt you, and it ain't fur."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All Fleda's inclinations said no, but she thought it was not best to
+      indulge them. She put on her hood and went off with him; and was treated
+      to a long and most implicated detail of ways and means, from which she at
+      length disentangled the rationale of the matter and gave Mr. Douglass the
+      consent he asked for, promising to gain that of her uncle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day was fair and mild, and in spite of weariness of body a certain
+      weariness of mind prompted Fleda when she had got rid of Earl Douglass, to
+      go and see her aunt Miriam. She went questioning with herself all the way
+      for her want of good-will to these matters. True, they were not pleasant
+      mind-work; but she tried to school herself into taking them patiently as
+      good life-work. She had had too much pleasant company and enjoyed too much
+      conversation, she said. It had unfitted her for home duties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Plumfield, she knew, was no better. But her eye found no change for
+      the worse. The old lady was very glad to see her, and very cheerful and
+      kind as usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well are you glad to be home again?" said aunt Miriam after a pause in
+      the conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Everybody asks me that question," said Fleda smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps for the same reason I did--because they thought you didn't look
+      very glad."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am glad--" said Fleda,--"but I believe not so glad as I was last year."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why not
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose I had a pleasanter time, I have got a little spoiled, I
+      believe, aunt Miriam," Fleda said with glistening eyes and an altering
+      voice,--"I don't take up my old cares and duties kindly at first--I shall
+      be myself again in a few days."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aunt Miriam looked at her with that fond, wistful, benevolent look which
+      made Fleda turn away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What has spoiled you, love?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh!--easy living and pleasure, I suppose--" Fleda said, but said with
+      difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pleasure?"--said aunt Miriam, putting one arm gently round her. Fleda
+      struggled with herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is so pleasant, aunt Miriam, to forget these money cares!--to lift
+      one's eyes from the ground and feel free to stretch out one's hand--not to
+      be obliged to think about spending sixpences, and to have one's mind at
+      liberty for a great many things that I haven't time for here. And
+      Hugh--and aunt Lucy--somehow things seem sad to me--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing could be more sympathizingly kind than the way in which aunt
+      Miriam brought Fleda closer to her side and wrapped her in her arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very foolish--" Fleda whispered,--"I am very wrong--I shall get over
+      it--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid, dear Fleda," Mrs. Plumfield said after a pause,--"it isn't
+      best for us always to be without sad things--though I cannot bear to see
+      your dear little face look sad--but it wouldn't fit us for the work we
+      have to do--it wouldn't fit us to stand where I stand now and look forward
+      happily."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where you stand?" said Fleda raising her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, and I would not be without a sorrow I have ever known. They are
+      bitter now, when they are present,--but the sweet fruit comes after."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what do you mean by 'where you stand'?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "On the edge of life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You do not think so, aunt Miriam!" Fleda said with a terrified look. "You
+      are not worse?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't expect ever to be better," said Mrs. Plumfield with a smile.
+      "Nay, my love," she said, as Fleda's head went down on her bosom
+      again,--"not so! I do not wish it either, Fleda. I do not expect to leave
+      you soon, but I would not prolong the time by a day. I would not have
+      spoken of it now if I had recollected myself,--but I am so accustomed to
+      think and speak of it that it came out before I knew it.--My darling
+      child, it is nothing to cry for."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know it, aunt Miriam."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then don't cry," whispered aunt Miriam, when she had stroked Fleda's head
+      for five minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am crying for myself, aunt Miriam," said Fleda. "I shall be left
+      alone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Alone, my dear child?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--there is nobody but you that I feel I can talk to." She would have
+      added that she dared not say a word to Hugh for fear of troubling him. But
+      that pain at her heart stopped her, and pressing her hands together she
+      burst into bitter weeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nobody to talk to but me?" said Mrs. Plumfield after again soothing her
+      for some time,--"what do you mean, dear?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O--I can't say anything to them at home," said Fleda with a forced effort
+      after voice;--"and you are the only one I can look to for help--Hugh never
+      says anything--almost never--anything of that kind;--he would rather
+      others should counsel him--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is one friend to whom you may always tell everything, with no fear
+      of wearying him,--of whom you may at all times ask counsel without any
+      danger of being denied,--more dear, more precious, more rejoiced in, the
+      more he is sought unto. Thou mayest lose friend after friend, and gain
+      more than thou losest,--in that one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know it," said Fleda;--"but dear aunt Miriam, don't you think human
+      nature longs for some human sympathy and help too?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My sweet blossom!--yes--" said Mrs. Plumfield caressingly stroking her
+      bowed head,--"but let him do what he will;--he hath said, 'I will never
+      leave thee nor forsake thee.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know that too," said Fleda weeping. "How do people bear life that do
+      not know it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Or that cannot take the comfort of it. Thou art not poor nor alone while
+      thou hast him to go to, little Fleda.--And you are not losing me yet, my
+      child; you will have time, I think, to grow as well satisfied as I with
+      the prospect."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that possible,--for <i>others</i>?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mother sighed, as her son entered the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked uncommonly grave, Fleda thought. That did not surprise her, but
+      it seemed that it did his mother, for she asked an explanation. Which
+      however he did not give.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So you've got back from New York," said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Just got back, yesterday," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why didn't you stay longer?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought my friends at home would be glad to see me," said Fleda. "Was I
+      mistaken?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made no answer for a minute, and then said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is your uncle at home?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda, "he went away this morning on business, and we do not
+      expect him home before night-fall. Do you want to see him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Seth very decidedly. "I wish he had staid in Michigan, or gone
+      further west,--anywhere that Queechy'd never have heard of him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why what has he done?" said Fleda, looking up half laughing and half
+      amazed at her cousin. But his face was disagreeably dark, though she could
+      not make out that the expression was one of displeasure. It did not
+      encourage her to talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know a man in New York of the name of Thorn?" he said after
+      standing still a minute or two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know two men of that name," said Fleda, colouring and wondering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is either on 'em a friend of your'n?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He ain't?" said Mr. Plumfield, giving the forestick on the fire an
+      energetic kick which Fleda could not help thinking was mentally aimed at
+      the said New Yorker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No certainly. What makes you ask?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O," said Seth dryly, "folks' tongues will find work to do;--I heerd say
+      something like that--I thought you must take to him more than I do."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why what do you know of him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's been here a spell lately," said Seth,--"poking round; more for ill
+      than for good, I reckon."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned and quitted the room abruptly; and Fleda bethought her that she
+      must go home while she had light enough.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="39"></a>Chapter XXXIX.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Nothing could be more obliging and respectful than the lion's letter
+        was, in appearance; but there was death in the true intent.--L'Estrange.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The landscape had grown more dark since Fleda came up the hill,--or else
+      the eyes that looked at it. Both probably. It was just after sundown, and
+      that is a very sober time of day in winter, especially in some states of
+      the weather. The sun had left no largesses behind him; the scenery was
+      deserted to all the coming poverty of night and looked grim and threadbare
+      already. Not one of the colours of prosperity left. The land was in
+      mourning dress; all the ground and even the ice on the little mill-ponds a
+      uniform spread of white, while the hills were draperied with black stems,
+      here just veiling the snow, and there on a side view making a thick fold
+      of black. Every little unpainted workshop or mill shewed uncompromisingly
+      all its forbidding sharpness of angle and outline darkening against the
+      twilight. In better days perhaps some friendly tree had hung over it,
+      shielding part of its faults and redeeming the rest. Now nothing but the
+      gaunt skeleton of a friend stood there,--doubtless to bud forth again as
+      fairly as ever should the season smile. Still and quiet all was, as
+      Fleda's spirit, and in too good harmony with it; she resolved to choose
+      the morning to go out in future. There was as little of the light of
+      spring or summer in her own mind as on the hills, and it was desirable to
+      catch at least a cheering reflection. She could rouse herself to no bright
+      thoughts, try as she would; the happy voices of nature that used to speak
+      to her were all hushed,--or her ear was deaf; and her eye met nothing that
+      did not immediately fall in with the train of sad images that were passing
+      through her mind and swell the procession. She was fain to fall back and
+      stay herself upon these words, the only stand-by she could lay hold of;--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory, and
+      honour, and immortality, eternal life!"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They toned with the scene and with her spirit exactly; they suited the
+      darkening sky and the coming night; for "glory, honour, and immortality"
+      are not now. They filled Fleda's mind, after they had once entered, and
+      then nature's sympathy was again as readily given; each barren
+      stern-looking hill in its guise of present desolation and calm expectancy
+      seemed to echo softly, "patient continuance in well-doing." And the tears
+      trembled then in Fleda's eyes; she had set her face, as the old Scotchman
+      says, "in the right airth. [Footnote: quarter, direction]" "How sweet is
+      the wind that bloweth out of the airth where Christ is!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well," said Hugh, who entered the kitchen with her, "you have been late
+      enough. Did you have a pleasant walk? You are pale, Fleda!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, it was pleasant," said Fleda with one of her winning smiles,--"a
+      kind of pleasant. But have you looked at the hills? They are exactly as if
+      they had put on mourning--nothing but white and black--a crape-like
+      dressing of black tree-stems upon the snowy face of the ground, and on
+      every slope and edge of the hills the crape lies in folds. Do look at it
+      when you go out! It has a most curious effect."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not pleasant, I should think," said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You'll see it is just as I have described it. No--not pleasant
+      exactly--the landscape wants the sun to light it up just now--it is cold
+      and wilderness looking. I think I'll take the morning in future. Whither
+      are you bound?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I must go over to Queechy Run for a minute, on business--I'll be home
+      before supper--I should have been back by this time but Philetus has gone
+      to bed with a headache and I had to take care of the cows."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Three times and out," said Barby. "I won't try again. I didn't know as
+      anything would be too powerful for his head; but I find as sure as he has
+      apple dumplin' for dinner he goes to bed for his supper and leaves the
+      cows without none. And then Hugh has to take it. It has saved so many
+      Elephants--that's one thing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh went out by one door and Fleda by another entered the breakfast-room;
+      the one generally used in winter for all purposes. Mrs. Rossitur sat there
+      alone in an easy-chair; and Fleda no sooner caught the outline of her
+      figure than her heart sank at once to an unknown depth,--unknown before
+      and unfathomable now. She was <i>cowering</i> over the fire,--her head
+      sunk in her hands, so crouching, that the line of neck and shoulders
+      instantly conveyed to Fleda the idea of fancied or felt degradation--there
+      was no escaping it--how, whence, what, was all wild confusion. But the
+      language of mere attitude was so unmistakable,--the expression of crushing
+      pain was so strong, that after Fleda had fearfully made her way up beside
+      her she could do no more. She stood there tongue-tied, spell-bound,
+      present to nothing but a nameless chill of fear and heart-sinking. She was
+      afraid to speak--afraid to touch her aunt, and abode motionless in the
+      grasp of that dread for minutes. But Mrs. Rossitur did not stir a hair,
+      and the terror of that stillness grew to be less endurable than any other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus22.jpg"><img src="images/illus22.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="Mrs. Rossitur sat there alone." title="Mrs. Rossitur sat there alone." /><br />
+      Mrs. Rossitur sat there alone.</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda spoke to her,--it did not win the shadow of a reply,--again and
+      again. She laid her hand then upon Mrs. Rossitur's shoulder, but the very
+      significant answer to that was a shrinking gesture of the shoulder and
+      neck, away from the hand. Fleda growing desperate then implored an answer
+      in words--prayed for an explanation--with an intensity of distress in
+      voice and manner, that no one whose ears were not stopped with a stronger
+      feeling could have been deaf to; but Mrs. Rossitur would not raise her
+      head, nor slacken in the least the clasp of the fingers that supported it,
+      that of themselves in their relentless tension spoke what no words could.
+      Fleda's trembling prayers were in vain, in vain. Poor nature at last
+      sought a woman's relief in tears--but they were heart-breaking, not
+      heart-relieving tears--racking both mind and body more than they ought to
+      bear, but bringing no cure. Mrs. Rossitur seemed as unconscious of her
+      niece's mute agony as she had been of her agony of words; and it was from
+      Fleda's own self-recollection alone that she fought off pain and roused
+      herself above weakness to do what the time called for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Aunt Lucy," she said laying her hand upon her shoulder, and this time the
+      voice was steady and the hand would not be shaken off,--"Aunt Lucy,--Hugh
+      will be in presently--hadn't you better rouse yourself and go up
+      stairs--for awhile?--till you are better?--and not let him see you so?--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How the voice was broken and quivering before it got through!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer this time was a low long-drawn moan, so exceeding plaintive and
+      full of pain that it made Fleda shake like an aspen. But after a moment
+      she spoke again, bearing more heavily with her hand to mark her words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid he will be in presently--he ought not to see you now--Aunt
+      Lucy, I am afraid it might do him an injury he might not get over--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She spoke with the strength of desperation; her nerves were unstrung by
+      fear, and every joint weakened so that she could hardly support herself.
+      She had not however spoken in vain; one or two convulsive shudders passed
+      over her aunt, and then Mrs. Rossitur suddenly rose turning her face from
+      Fleda; neither would she permit her to follow her. But Fleda thought she
+      had seen that one or two unfolded letters or papers of some kind, they
+      looked like letters, were in her lap when she raised her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Left alone, Fleda sat down on the floor by the easy-chair and rested her
+      head there; waiting,--she could do nothing else,--till her extreme
+      excitement of body and mind should have quieted itself. She had a kind of
+      vague hope that time would do something for her before Hugh came in.
+      Perhaps it did; for though she lay in a kind of stupor, and was conscious
+      of no change whatever, she was able when she heard him coming to get up
+      and sit in the chair in an ordinary attitude. But she looked like the
+      wraith of herself an hour ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda!" Hugh exclaimed as soon as he looked from the fire to her
+      face,--"what is the matter?--what is the matter with you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not very well--I don't feel very well," said Fleda speaking almost
+      mechanically,--"I shall have a headache to-morrow--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Headache! But you look shockingly! what has happened to you? what is the
+      matter, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not ill--I shall be better by and by. There is nothing the matter
+      with me that need trouble you, dear Hugh."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing the matter with you!" said he,--and Fleda might see how she
+      looked in the reflection of his face,--"where's mother?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is up-stairs--you mustn't go to her, Hugh!" said Fleda laying a
+      detaining hand upon him with more strength than she thought she had,--"I
+      don't want anything."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why mustn't I go to her?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't think she wants to be disturbed--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I must disturb her--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You musn't!--I know she don't--she isn't well--something has happened to
+      trouble her--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And is that what has troubled you too?" said Hugh, his countenance
+      changing as he gained more light on the subject;--"what is it, dear
+      Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," repeated Fleda, bursting into tears. Hugh was quiet enough
+      now, and sat down beside her, subdued and still, without even desiring to
+      ask a question. Fleda's tears flowed violently, for a minute,--then she
+      checked them, for his sake; and they sat motionless, without speaking to
+      one another, looking into the fire and letting it die out before them into
+      embers and ashes, neither stirring to put a hand to it. As the fire died
+      the moonlight streamed in,--how very dismal the room looked!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you think about having tea?" said Barby opening the door of the
+      kitchen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither felt it possible to answer her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Rossitur ain't come home, is he?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda shuddering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So I thought, and so I told Seth Plumfield just now--he was asking for
+      him--My stars! ha'n't you no fire here? what did you let it go out for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barby came in and began to build it up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's growing cold I can tell you, so you may as well have something in
+      the chimney to look at. You'll want it shortly if you don't now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Was Mr. Plumfield here, did you say, Barby?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why didn't he come in?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I s'pose he hadn't a mind to," said Barby. "Twa'n't for want of being
+      asked. I did the civil thing by him if he didn't by me;--but he said he
+      didn't want to see anybody but Mr. Rossitur."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Did not wank to see anybody but Mr. Rossitur, when he had distinctly said
+      he did not wish to see him? Fleda felt sick, merely from the mysterious
+      dread which could fasten upon nothing and therefore took in everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well what about tea?" concluded Barby, when the fire was going according
+      to her wishes. "Will you have it, or will you wait longer?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--we won't wait--we will have it now, Barby," said Fleda, forcing
+      herself to make the exertion; and she went to the window to put down the
+      hangings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moonlight was very bright, and Fleda's eye was caught in the very act
+      of letting down the curtain, by a figure in the road slowly passing before
+      the courtyard fence. It paused a moment by the horse-gate, and turning
+      paced slowly back till it was hid behind the rose acacias. There was a
+      clump of shrubbery in that corner thick enough even in winter to serve for
+      a screen. Fleda stood with the curtain in her hand, half let down, unable
+      to move, and feeling almost as if the very currents of life within her
+      were standing still too. She thought, she was almost sure, she knew the
+      figure; it was on her tongue to ask Hugh to come and look, but she checked
+      that. The form appeared again from behind the acacias, moving with the
+      same leisurely pace the other way towards the horse-gate. Fleda let down
+      the curtain, then the other two quietly, and then left the room and stole
+      noiselessly out at the front door, leaving it open that the sound of it
+      might not warn Hugh what she was about, and stepping like a cat down the
+      steps ran breathlessly over the snow to the courtyard gate. There waited,
+      shivering in the cold but not feeling it for the cold within,--while the
+      person she was watching stood still a lew moments by the horse-gate and
+      came again with leisurely steps towards her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Seth Plumfield!"--said Fleda, almost as much frightened at the sound of
+      her own voice as he was. He stopped immediately, with a start, and came up
+      to the little gate behind which she was standing. But said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are you doing here?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You oughtn't to be out without anything on," said he,--"you're fixing to
+      take your death."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had good reason to say so. But she gave him no more heed than the wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are you waiting here for? What do you want?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have nothing better to do with my time," said he;--"I thought I'd walk
+      up and down here a little. You go in!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you waiting to see uncle Rolf?" she said, with teeth chattering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You mustn't stay out here," said he earnestly--"you're like nothing but a
+      spook this minute--I'd rather see one, or a hull army of 'em. Go in, go
+      in!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tell me if you want to see him, Seth."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No I don't--I told you I didn't."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then why are you waiting for him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought I'd see if he was coming home to-night--I had a word to say if
+      I could catch him before he got into the house."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Is</i> he coming home to-night?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know!" said he looking at her. "Do you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda burst open the gate between them and putting her hands on his
+      implored him to tell her what was the matter. He looked singularly
+      disturbed; his fine eye twinkled with compassion; but his face, never a
+      weak one, shewed no signs of yielding now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The matter is," said he pressing hard both her hands, "that you are
+      fixing to be down sick in your bed by to-morrow. You mustn't stay another
+      second."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come in then."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--not to-night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You won't tell me!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is nothing I can tell you--Maybe there'll be nothing to tell--Run
+      in, run in, and keep quiet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda hurried back to the house, feeling that she had gone to the limit of
+      risk already. Not daring to show herself to Hugh in her chilled state of
+      body and mind she went into the kitchen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why what on earth's come over you?" was Barby's terrified ejaculation
+      when she saw her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have been out and got myself cold--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Cold!" said Barby,--"you're looking dreadful! What on earth ails you,
+      Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't ask me, Barby," said Fleda hiding her face in her hands and
+      shivering,--"I made myself very cold just now--Aunt Lucy doesn't feel very
+      well and I got frightened," she added presently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's the matter with her?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know--if you'll make me a cup of tea I'll take it up to her,
+      Barby."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You put yourself down there," said Barby placing her with gentle force in
+      a chair,--"you'll do no such a thing till I see you look as if there was
+      some blood in you. I'll take it up myself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda held her, though with a hand much too feeble indeed for any but
+      moral suasion. It was enough. Barby stood silently and very anxiously
+      watching her, till the fire had removed the outward chill at least. But
+      even that took long to do, and before it was well done Fleda again asked
+      for the cup of tea. Barby made it without a word, and Fleda went to her
+      aunt with it, taking her strength from the sheer emergency. Her knees
+      trembled under her as she mounted the stairs, and once a glimpse of those
+      words flitted across her mind,--"patient continuance in well-doing." It
+      was like a lightning flash in a dark night shewing the way one must go.
+      She could lay hold of no other stay. Her mind was full of one intense
+      purpose--to end the suspense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She gently tried the door of her aunt's room; it was unfastened, and she
+      went in. Mrs. Rossitur was lying on the bed; but her first mood had
+      changed, for at Fleda's soft word and touch she half rose up and putting
+      both arms round her waist laid her face against her. There were no tears
+      still, only a succession of low moans, so inexpressibly weak and plaintive
+      that Fleda's nature could hardly bear them without giving way. A more
+      fragile support was never clung to. Yet her trembling fingers, in their
+      agony moved caressingly among her aunt's hair and over her brow as she
+      begged her--when she could, she was not able at first--to let her know the
+      cause that was grieving her. The straightened clasp of Mrs. Rossitur's
+      arms and her increased moaning gave only an answer of pain. But Fleda
+      repeated the question. Mrs. Rossitur still neglecting it, then made her
+      sit down upon the bed, so that she could lay her head higher, on Fleda's
+      bosom; where she hid it, with a mingling of fondness given and asked, a
+      poor seeking for comfort and rest, that wrung her niece's heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sat so for a little time; Fleda hoping that her aunt would by degrees
+      come to the point herself. The tea stood cooling on the table, not even
+      offered; not wanted there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wouldn't you feel better if you told me, dear aunt Lucy?" said Fleda,
+      when they had been for a little while perfectly still. Even the moaning
+      had ceased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is your uncle come home?" whispered Mrs. Rossitur, but so low that Fleda
+      could but half catch the words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What o'clock is it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know--not early--it must be near eight.--Why?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have not heard anything of him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--nothing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was silence again for a little, and then Mrs. Rossitur said in a low
+      fearful whisper,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you seen anybody round the house?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's thoughts flew to Seth, with that nameless fear to which she could
+      give neither shape nor direction, and after a moment's hesitation she
+      said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you mean?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you?" said Mrs. Rossitur with more energy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Seth Plumfield was here a little while ago."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her aunt had the clew that she had not, for with a half scream, half
+      exclamation, she quitted Fleda's arms and fell back upon the pillows,
+      turning from her and hiding her face there. Fleda prayed again for her
+      confidence, as well as the weakness and the strength of fear could do; and
+      Mrs. Rossitur presently grasping a paper that lay on the bed held it out
+      to her, saying only as Fleda was about quitting the room, "Bring me a
+      light."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda left the letter there and went down to fetch one. She commanded
+      herself under the excitement and necessity of the moment,--all but her
+      face; that terrified Barby exceedingly. But she spoke with a strange
+      degree of calmness; told her Mrs. Rossitur was not alarmingly ill; that
+      she did not need Barby's services and wished to see nobody but herself and
+      didn't want a fire. As she was passing through the hall again Hugh came
+      out of the sitting-room to ask after his mother. Fleda kept the light from
+      her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She does not want to be disturbed--I hope she will be better to-morrow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is the matter, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you are ill yourself, Fleda!--you are ill!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--I shall do very well--never mind me. Hugh, take some tea--I will be
+      down by and by."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went back, and Fieda went up stairs. Mrs. Rossitur had not moved. Fleda
+      set down the light and herself beside it, with the paper her aunt had
+      given her. It was a letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Queechy, <i>Thursday</i>--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It gives me great concern, my dear madam, to be the means of bringing to
+      you a piece of painful information--but it cannot be long kept from your
+      knowledge and you may perhaps learn it better from me than by any other
+      channel. May I entreat you not to be too much alarmed, since I am
+      confident the cause will be of short duration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pardon me for what I am about to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There are proceedings entered into against Mr. Rossitur--there are writs
+      out against him--on the charge of having, some years ago, endorsed my
+      father's name upon a note of his own giving.--Why it has lain so long I
+      cannot explain. There is unhappily no doubt of the fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was in Queechy some days ago, on business of my own, when I became
+      aware that this was going on--my father had made no mention of it to me. I
+      immediately took strict measures--I am happy to say I believe with
+      complete success,--to have the matter kept a profound secret. I then made
+      my way as fast as possible to New York to confer on the subject with the
+      original mover of it--unfortunately I was disappointed. My father had left
+      for a neighbouring city, to be absent several days. Finding myself too
+      late to prevent, as I had hoped to do, any open steps from being taken at
+      Queechy, I returned hither immediately to enforce secrecy of proceedings
+      and to assure you, madam, that my utmost exertions shall not be wanting to
+      bring the whole matter to a speedy and satisfactory termination. I
+      entertain no doubt of being able to succeed entirely--even to the point of
+      having the whole transaction remain unknown and unsuspected by the world.
+      It is so entirely as yet, with the exception of one or two law-officers
+      whose silence I have means of procuring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "May I confess that I am not entirely disinterested? May the selfishness
+      of human nature ask its reward, and own its moving spring? May I own that
+      my zeal in this cause is quickened by the unspeakable excellencies of Mr.
+      Rossitur's lovely niece--which I have learned to appreciate with my whole
+      <i>heart</i>--and be forgiven?--And may I hope for the kind offices and
+      intercession of the lady I have the honour of addressing, with her niece
+      Miss Ringgan, that my reward,--the single word of encouragement I ask
+      for,--may be given me?--Having that, I will promise anything--I will
+      guaranty the success of any enterprise, however difficult, to which she
+      may impel me,--and I will undertake that the matter which furnishes the
+      painful theme of this letter shall never more be spoken or thought of, by
+      the world, or my father, or by Mrs. Rossitur's
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      obliged, grateful, and faithful servant, Lewis Thorn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda felt as she read as if icicles were gathering about her heart. The
+      whirlwind of fear and distress of a little while ago which could take no
+      definite direction, seemed to have died away and given place to a dead
+      frost--the steady bearing down of disgrace and misery, inevitable,
+      unmitigable, unchangeable; no lessening, no softening of that blasting
+      power, no, nor ever any rising up from under it; the landscape could never
+      be made to smile again. It was the fall of a bright star from their home
+      constellation; but alas! the star was fallen long ago, and the failure of
+      light which they had deplored was all too easily accounted for; yet now
+      they knew that no restoration was to be hoped. And the mother and
+      son--what would become of them? And the father--what would become of him?
+      what further distress was in store?--<i>Public</i> disgrace?--and Fleda
+      bowed her head forward on her clasped hands with the mechanical, vain
+      endeavour to seek rest or shelter from thought. She made nothing of Mr.
+      Thorn's professions; she took only the facts of his letter; the rest her
+      eye had glanced over as if she had no concern with it, and it hardly
+      occurred to her that she had any. But the sense of his words she had taken
+      in, and knew, better perhaps than her aunt, that there was nothing to look
+      for from his kind offices. The weight on her heart was too great just then
+      for her to suspect as she did afterwards that he was the sole mover of the
+      whole affair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the first confusion of thought cleared away, two images of distress
+      loomed up and filled the view,--her aunt, broken under the news, and Hugh
+      still unknowing to them; her own separate existence Fleda was hardly
+      conscious of. Hugh especially,--how was he to be told, and how could he
+      bear to hear? with his most sensitive conformation of both physical and
+      moral nature. And if an arrest should take place there that night!--Fleda
+      shuddered, and unable to go on thinking rose up and went to her aunt's
+      bedside. It had not entered her mind till the moment she read Mr. Thorn's
+      letter that Seth Plumfield was sheriff for the county. She was shaking
+      again from head to foot with fear. She could not say anything--the touch
+      of her lips to the throbbing temples, soft and tender as sympathy itself,
+      was all she ventured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you heard anything of him?" Mrs. Rossitur whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--I doubt if we do at all to-night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a half breathed "Oh!--" of indescribable pain and longing; and
+      with a restless change of position Mrs. Rossitur gathered herself up on
+      the bed and sat with her head leaning on her knees. Fleda brought a large
+      cloak and put it round her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am in no danger," she said,--"I wish I were!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Fleda's lips softly, tremblingly, touched her cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur put her arm round her and drew her down to her side, upon
+      the bed; and wrapped half of the big cloak about her; and they sat there
+      still in each other's arms, without speaking or weeping, while quarter
+      after quarter of an hour passed away,--nobody knew how many. And the cold
+      bright moonlight streamed in on the floor, mocking them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Go!" whispered Mrs. Rossitur at last,--"go down stairs and take care of
+      yourself--and Hugh."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Won't you come?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mayn't I bring you something?--do let me!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mrs. Rossitur's shake of the head was decisive. Fleda crawled off the
+      bed, feeling as if a month's illness had been making its ravages upon her
+      frame and strength. She stood a moment to collect her thoughts; but alas,
+      thinking was impossible; there was a palsy upon her mind. She went into
+      her own room and for a minute kneeled down,--not to form a petition in
+      words, she was as much beyond that; it was only the mute attitude of
+      appeal, the pitiful outward token of the mind's bearing, that could not be
+      forborne, a silent uttering of the plea she had made her own in happy
+      days. There was something of comfort in the mere feeling of doing it; and
+      there was more in one or two words that even in that blank came to her
+      mind;--"<i>Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them
+      that fear him</i>;" and she again recollected that "Providence runneth not
+      upon broken wheels." Nothing could be darker than the prospect before her,
+      and these things did not bring light; but they gave her a sure stay to
+      hold on by and keep her feet; a bit of strength to preserve from utterly
+      fainting. Ah! the storehouse must be filled and the mind well familiarized
+      with what is stored in it while yet the days are bright, or it will never
+      be able to find what it wants in the dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda first went into the kitchen to tell Barby to fasten the doors and
+      not sit up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't believe uncle Rolf will be home to-night; but if he comes I will
+      let him in."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barby looked at her with absolutely a face of distress; but not daring to
+      ask and not knowing how to propose anything, she looked in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It must be nine o'clock now," Fleda went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And how long be you going to sit up?" said Barby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know--a while yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You look proper for it!" said Barby half sorrowfully and half
+      indignantly;--"you look as if a straw would knock you down this minute.
+      There's sense into everything. You catch me a going to bed and leaving you
+      up! It won't do me no hurt to sit here the hull night; and I'm the only
+      one in the house that's fit for it, with the exception of Philetus, and
+      the little wit he has by day seems to forsake him at night. All the light
+      that ever gets into his head, <i>I</i> believe, comes from the outside; as
+      soon as ever that's gone he shuts up his shutters. He's been snoozing
+      a'ready now this hour and a half. Go yourself off to bed, Fleda," she
+      added with a mixture of reproach and kindness, "and leave me alone to take
+      care of myself and the house too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda did not remonstrate, for Barby was as determined in her way as it
+      was possible for anything to be. She went into the other room without a
+      particle of notion what she should say or do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh was walking up and down the floor--a most unusual sign of
+      perturbation with him. He met and stopped her as she came in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda, I cannot bear it. What is the matter?--Do you know?'" he said as
+      her eyes fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes.----"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was silent and tried to pass on to the fire. But he stayed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is it?" he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh I wish I could keep it from you!" said Fleda bursting into tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was still a moment, and then bringing her to the arm-chair made her sit
+      down, and stood himself before her, silently waiting, perhaps because he
+      could not speak, perhaps from the accustomed gentle endurance of his
+      nature. But Fleda was speechless too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are keeping me in distress," he said at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I cannot end the distress, dear Hugh," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw him change colour and he stood motionless still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you remember," said Fleda, trembling even to her voice,--"what
+      Rutherford says about Providence 'not running on broken wheels'?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave her no answer but the intent look of expectation. Its intentness
+      paralyzed Fleda. She did not know how to go on. She rose from her chair
+      and hung upon his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Believe it now, if you can--for oh, dear Hugh!--we have something to try
+      it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is strange my father don't come home," said he, supporting her with
+      tenderness which had very little strength to help it,--"we want him very
+      much."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether or not any unacknowledged feeling prompted this remark, some
+      slight involuntary movement of Fleda's made him ask suddenly,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it about him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had grown deadly pale and Fleda answered eagerly,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing that has happened to-day--it is not anything that has happened
+      to-day--he is perfectly well, I trust and believe."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But it is about him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's head sank, and she burst into such an agony of tears that Hugh's
+      distress was for a time divided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When did it happen, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Years ago."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda hesitated still, and then said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was something he did, Hugh."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He put another person's name on the back of a note he gave."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not look up, and Hugh was silent for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you know?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Thorn wrote it to aunt Lucy--it was Mr. Thorn's father."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh sat down and leaned his head on the table. A long, long, time
+      passed,--unmeasured by the wild coursing of thought to and fro. Then Fleda
+      came and knelt down at the table beside him, and put her arm round his
+      neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear Hugh," she said--and if ever love and tenderness and sympathy could
+      be distilled in tones, such drops were those that fell upon the mind's
+      ear,--"can't you look up at me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did then, but he did not give her a chance to look at him. He locked
+      his arms about her, bringing her close to his breast; and for a few
+      minutes, in utter silence, they knew what strange sweetness pure affection
+      can mingle even in the communion of sorrow. There were tears shed in those
+      minutes that, bitter as they seemed at the time, Memory knew had been
+      largely qualified with another admixture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear Hugh," said Fleda,--"let us keep what we can--won't you go to bed
+      and rest?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked dreadfully as if he needed it. But the usual calmness and
+      sweetness of his face was not altered;--it was only deepened to very great
+      sadness. Mentally, Fleda thought, he had borne the shock better than his
+      mother; for the bodily frame she trembled. He had not answered and she
+      spoke again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You need it worse than I, poor Fleda"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will go too presently--I do not think anybody will be here tonight."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is--Are there--Is this what has taken him away?" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her silence and her look told him, and then laying her cheek again
+      alongside of his she whispered, how unsteadily, "We have only one help,
+      dear Hugh."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were still and quiet again for minutes, counting the pulses of pain;
+      till Fleda came back to her poor wish "to keep what they could." She mixed
+      a restorative of wine and water, which however little desired, she felt
+      was necessary for both of them, and Hugh went up stairs. She staid a few
+      minutes to prepare another glass with particular care for her aunt. It was
+      just finished, and taking her candle she had bid Barby good-night, when
+      there came a loud rap at the front door. Fleda set down candle and glass,
+      from the quick inability to hold them as well as for other reasons; and
+      she and Barby stood and looked at each other, in such a confusion of doubt
+      and dread that some little time had passed before either stirred even her
+      eyes. Barby then threw down the tongs with which she had begun to make
+      preparations for covering up the fire and set off to the front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You mustn't open the door, Barby," cried Fleda, following her. "Come in
+      here and let us look out of one of the windows."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before this could be reached however, there was another prolonged
+      repetition of the first thundering burst. It went through Fleda's heart,
+      because of the two up stairs who must hear it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barby threw up the sash.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who's there?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is this Mr. Rossitur's place?" enquired a gruff voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, it is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well will you come round and open the door?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who wants it open?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A lady wants it open?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A lady!--what lady?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Down yonder in the carriage."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What lady? who is she?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know who she is--she wanted to come to Mr. Rossitur's place--will
+      you open the door for her?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barby and Fleda both now saw a carriage standing in the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We must see who it is first," whispered Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When the lady comes I'll open the door," was Barby's ultimatum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man withdrew to the carriage; and after a few moments of intense
+      watching Fleda and Barby certainly saw something in female apparel enter
+      the little gate of the court-yard and come up over the bright moonlit snow
+      towards the house, accompanied by a child; while the man with whom they
+      had had the interview came behind transformed into an unmistakeable
+      baggage-carrier.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="40"></a>Chapter XL.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Zeal was the spring whence flowed her hardiment.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Fairfax.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Barby undid bolt and lock and Fleda met the traveller in the hall. She was
+      a lady; her air and dress shewed that, though the latter was very plain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Does Mr. Rossitur live here?" was her first word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda answered it, and brought her visitor into the sitting room. But the
+      light falling upon a form and face that had seen more wear and tear than
+      time, gave her no clue as to the who or what of the person before her. The
+      stranger's hurried look round the room seemed to expect something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are they all gone to bed?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All but me," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We have been delayed--we took a wrong road--we've been riding for hours
+      to find the place--hadn't the right direction."--Then looking keenly at
+      Fleda, from whose vision an electric spark of intelligence had scattered
+      the clouds, she said;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am Marion Rossitur."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I knew it!" said Fleda, with lips and eyes that gave her already a
+      sister's welcome; and they were folded in each other's arms almost as
+      tenderly and affectionately, on the part of one at least, as if there had
+      really been the relationship between them. But more than surprise and
+      affection struck Fleda's heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And where are they all, Fleda? Can't I see them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You must wait till I have prepared them--Hugh and aunt Lucy are not very
+      well. I don't know that it will do for you to see them at all to-night,
+      Marion."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not to-night! They are not ill?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--only enough to be taken care of--not ill. But it would be better to
+      wait"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And my father?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is not at home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marion exclaimed in sorrow, and Fleda to hide the look that she felt was
+      on her face stooped down to kiss the child. He was a remarkably
+      fine-looking manly boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is your cousin Fleda," said his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--<i>aunt</i> Fleda," said the person thus introduced--"don't put me
+      off into cousindom, Marion. I am uncle Hugh's sister--and so I am your
+      aunt Fleda. Who are you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Rolf Rossitur Schwiden."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alas how wide are the ramifications of evil! How was what might have been
+      very pure pleasure utterly poisoned and turned into bitterness. It went
+      through Fleda's heart with a keen pang when she heard that name and looked
+      on the very fair brow that owned it, and thought of the ineffaceable stain
+      that had come upon both. She dared look at nobody but the child. He
+      already understood the melting eyes that were making acquaintance with
+      his, and half felt the pain that gave so much tenderness to her kiss, and
+      looked at her with a grave face of awakening wonder and sympathy. Fleda
+      was glad to have business to call her into the kitchen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who is it?" was Barby's immediate question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Aunt Lucy's daughter."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She don't look much like her!" said Barby intelligently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They will want something to eat, Barby."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll put the kettle on. It'll boil directly. I'll go in there and fix up
+      the fire."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A word or two more, and then Fleda ran up to speak to her aunt and Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her aunt she found in a state of agitation that was frightful. Even
+      Fleda's assurances, with all the soothing arts she could bring to bear
+      were some minutes before they could in any measure tranquillize her.
+      Fleda's own nerves were in no condition to stand another shock when she
+      left her and went to Hugh's door. But she could get no answer from him
+      though she spoke repeatedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She did not return to her aunt's room. She went down stairs and brought up
+      Barby and a light from thence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh was lying senseless and white; not whiter than his adopted sister as
+      she stood by his side. Her eye went to her companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not a bit of it!" said Barby--"he's in nothing but a faint--just run down
+      stairs and get the vinegar bottle, Fleda--the pepper vinegar.--Is there
+      any water here?--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda obeyed; and watched, she could do little more, the efforts of Barby,
+      who indeed needed no help, with the cold water, the vinegar, and rubbing
+      of the limbs. They were for sometime unsuccessful; the fit was a severe
+      one; and Fleda was exceedingly terrified before any signs of returning
+      life came to reassure her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now you go down stairs and keep quiet!" said Barby, when Hugh was fairly
+      restored and had smiled a faint answer to Fleda's kiss and
+      explanations,--"Go, Fleda! you ain't fit to stand. Go and sit down some
+      place, and I'll be along directly and see how the fire burns. Don't you
+      s'pose Mis' Rossitur could come in and sit in this easy-chair a spell
+      without hurting herself?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It occurred to Fleda immediately that it might do more good than harm to
+      her aunt if her attention were diverted even by another cause of anxiety.
+      She gently summoned her, telling her no more than was necessary to fit her
+      for being Hugh's nurse; and in a very few minutes she and Barby were at
+      liberty to attend to other claims upon them. But it sank into her heart,
+      "Hugh will not get over this!"--and when she entered the sitting-room,
+      what Mr. Carleton years before had said of the wood-flower was come true
+      in its fullest extent--"a storm-wind had beaten it to the ground."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was able literally to do no more than Barby had said, sit down and
+      keep herself quiet. Miss Elster was in her briskest mood; flew in and out;
+      made up the fire in the sitting-room and put on the kettle in the kitchen,
+      which she had been just about doing when called to see Hugh. The
+      much-needed supper of the travellers must be still waited for; but the
+      fire was burning now, the room was cosily warm and bright, and Marion drew
+      up her chair with a look of thoughtful contentment. Fleda felt as if some
+      conjuror had been at work here for the last few hours--the room looked so
+      like and felt so unlike itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you going to be ill too, Fleda?" said Marion suddenly. "You are
+      looking--very far from well!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shall have a headache to-morrow," said Fleda quietly. "I generally know
+      the day beforehand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Does it always make you look so?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not always--I am somewhat tired."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is my father gone?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know.--Rolf, dear," said Fleda bending forward to the little
+      fellow who was giving expression to some very fidgety impatience,--"what
+      is the matter? what do you want?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child's voice fell a little from its querulousness towards the sweet
+      key in which the questions had been put, but he gave utterance to a very
+      decided wish for "bread and butter."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come here," said Fleda, reaching out a hand and drawing him, certainly
+      with no force but that of attraction, towards her easy-chair,--"come here
+      and rest yourself in this nice place by me--see, there is plenty of room
+      for you;--and you shall have bread and butter and tea, and something else
+      too, I guess, just as soon as Barby can get it ready."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who is Barby?" was the next question, in a most uncompromising tone of
+      voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You saw the woman that came in to put wood on the fire--that was
+      Barby--she is very good and kind and will do anything for you if you
+      behave yourself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child muttered, but so low as to shew some unwillingness that his
+      words should reach the ears that were nearest him, that "he wasn't going
+      to behave himself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda did not choose to hear; and went on with composing observations till
+      the fair little face she had drawn to her side was as bright as the sun
+      and returned her smile with interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have an admirable talent at moral suasion, Fleda," said the mother
+      half smiling;--"I wish I had it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You don't need it so much here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why not?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It may do very well for me, but I think not so well for you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why?--what do you mean? I think it is the only way in the world to bring
+      up children--the only way fit for rational beings to be guided."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda smiled, though the faintest indication that lips could give, and
+      shook her head,--ever so little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why do you do that?--tell me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because in my limited experience," said Fleda as she passed her fingers
+      through the boy's dark locks of hair,--"in every household where 'moral
+      suasion' has been the law, the children have been the administrators of
+      it. Where is your husband?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have lost him--years ago--" said Marion with a quick expressive glance
+      towards the child. "I never lost what I at first thought I had, for I
+      never had it. Do you understand?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's eyes gave a sufficient answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am a widow--these five years--in all but what the law would require,"
+      Marion went on. "I have been alone since then--except my child. He was two
+      years old then; and since then I have lived such a life, Fleda!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why didn't you come home?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Couldn't--the most absolute reason in the world. Think of it!--Come home!
+      It was as much as I could do to stay there!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those sympathizing eyes were enough to make her go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have wanted everything--except trouble. I have done everything--except
+      ask alms. I have learned, Fleda, that death is not the worst form in which
+      distress can come."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda felt stung, and bent down her head to touch her lips to the brow of
+      little Rolf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Death would have been a trifle!" said Marion. "I mean,--not that <i>I</i>
+      should have wished to leave Rolf alone in the world; but if I had been
+      left--I mean I would rather wear outside than inside mourning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked up again, and at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O I was so mistaken, Fleda!" she said clasping her hands,--"so
+      mistaken!--in everything;--so disappointed,--in all my hopes. And the loss
+      of my fortune was the cause of it all."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nay verily! thought Fleda; but she said nothing; she hung her head again;
+      and Marion after a pause went on to question her about an endless string
+      of matters concerning themselves and other people, past doings and present
+      prospects, till little Rolf soothed by the uninteresting soft murmur of
+      voices fairly forgot bread and butter and himself in a sound sleep, his
+      head resting upon Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Here is one comfort for you, Marion," she said looking down at the dark
+      eyelashes which lay on a cheek rosy and healthy as ever seven years old
+      knew;--"he is a beautiful child, and I am sure, a fine one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is thanks to his beauty that I have ever seen home again," said his
+      mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda had no heart this evening to speak words that were not necessary;
+      her eyes asked Marion to explain herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He was in Hyde Park one day--I had a miserable lodging not far from it,
+      and I used to let him go in there, because he must go somewhere, you
+      know,--I couldn't go with him--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why not?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Couldn't!--Oh Fleda!--I have seen changes!--He was there one afternoon,
+      alone, and had got into difficulty with some bigger boys--a little fellow,
+      you know,--he stood his ground man-fully, but his strength wasn't equal to
+      his spirit, and they were tyrannizing over him after the fashion of boys,
+      who are I do think the ugliest creatures in creation!" said Mme. Schwiden,
+      not apparently reckoning her own to be of the same gender,--"and a
+      gentleman who was riding by stopped and interfered and took him out of
+      their hands, and then asked him his name,--struck I suppose with his
+      appearance. Very kind, wasn't it? men so seldom bother themselves about
+      what becomes of children, I suppose there were thousands of others riding
+      by at the same time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very kind," Fleda said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When he heard what his name was he gave his horse to his servant and
+      walked home with Rolf; and the next day he sent me a note, speaking of
+      having known my father and mother and asking permission to call upon
+      me.--I never was so mortified, I think, in my life," said Marion after a
+      moment's hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why?" said Fleda, not a little at a loss to follow out the chain of her
+      cousin's reasoning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why I was in such a sort of a place--you don't know, Fleda; I was working
+      then for a fancy store-keeper, to support myself--living in a miserable
+      little two rooms.--If it had been a stranger I wouldn't have cared so
+      much, but somebody that had known us in different times--I hadn't a thing
+      in the world to answer the note upon but a half sheet of letter paper."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's lips sought Rolf's forehead again, with a curious rush of tears
+      and smiles at once. Perhaps Marion had caught the expression of her
+      countenance, for she added with a little energy,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is nothing to be surprised at--you would have felt just the same; for
+      I knew by his note, the whole style of it, what sort of a person it must
+      be."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My pride has been a good deal chastened," Fleda said gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I never want <i>mine</i> to be, beyond minding everything," said Marion;
+      "and I don't believe yours is. I don't know why in the world I did not
+      refuse to see him--I had fifty minds to--but he had won Rolf's heart, and
+      I was a little curious, and it was something strange to see the face of a
+      friend, any better one than my old landlady, so I let him come."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Was <i>she</i> a friend?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If she hadn't been I should not have lived to be here--the best soul that
+      ever was; but still, you know, she could do nothing for me but be as kind
+      as she could live;--this was something different. So I let him come, and
+      he came the next day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was silent, a little wondering that Marion should be so frank with
+      her, beyond what she had ever been in former years; but as she guessed,
+      Mme. Schwiden's heart was a little opened by the joy of finding herself at
+      home and the absolute necessity of talking to somebody; and there was a
+      further reason which Fleda could not judge of, in her own face and manner.
+      Marion needed no questions and went on again after stopping a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was so glad in five minutes,--I can't tell you, Fleda,--that I had let
+      him come. I forget entirely about how I looked and the wretched place I
+      was in. He was all that I had supposed, and a great deal more, but somehow
+      he hadn't been in the room three minutes before I didn't care at all for
+      all the things I had thought would trouble me. Isn't it strange what a
+      witchery some people have to make you forget everything but themselves!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The reason is, I think, because that is the only thing they forget," said
+      Fleda, whose imagination however was entirely busy with the <i>singular</i>
+      number.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shall never forget him," said Marion. "He was very kind to me--I cannot
+      tell how kind--though I never realized it till afterwards; at the time it
+      always seemed only a sort of elegant politeness which he could not help. I
+      never saw so elegant a person. He came two or three times to see me and he
+      took Rolf out with him I don't know how often, to drive; and he sent me
+      fruit--such fruit!--and game, and flowers; and I had not had anything of
+      the kind, not even seen it, for so long--I can't tell you what it was to
+      me. He said he had known my father and mother well when they were abroad."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What, was his name?" said Fleda quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know--he never told me--and I never could ask him. Don't you know
+      there are some people you can't do anything with but just what they
+      please? There wasn't the least thing like stiffness--you never saw anybody
+      less stiff,--but I never dreamed of asking him questions except when he
+      was out of sight. Why, do you know him?" she said suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When you tell me who he was I'll tell you," said Fleda smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you ever heard this story before?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly not!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is somebody that knows us very well," said Marion, "for he asked after
+      every one of the family in particular."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what had all this to do with your getting home?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't wonder you ask. The day after his last visit came a note saying
+      that he owed a debt in my family which it had never been in his power to
+      repay; that he could not give the enclosure to my father, who would not
+      recognize the obligation; and that if I would permit him to place it in my
+      hands I should confer a singular favour upon him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what was the enclosure?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Five hundred pounds."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's head went down again and tears dropped fast upon little Rolf's
+      shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose my pride has been a little broken too," Marion went on, "or I
+      shouldn't have kept it. But then if you saw the person, and the whole
+      manner of it--I don't know how I could ever have sent it back. Literally I
+      couldn't, though, for I hadn't the least clue. I never saw or heard from
+      him afterwards."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When was this, Marion?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Last spring."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Last spring!--then what kept you so long?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because of the arrival of eyes that I was afraid of. I dared not make the
+      least move that would show I could move. I came off the very first packet
+      after I was free."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How glad you must be!" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Glad!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Glad of what, mamma?" said Rolf, whose dreams the entrance of Barby had
+      probably disturbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Glad of bread and butter," said his mother; "wake up--here it is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young gentleman declared, rubbing his eyes, that he did not want it
+      now; but however Fleda contrived to dispel that illusion, and bread and
+      butter was found to have the same dulcifying properties at Queechy that it
+      owns in all the rest of the world. Little Rolf was completely mollified
+      after a hearty meal and was put with his mother to enjoy most unbroken
+      slumbers in Fleda's room. Fleda herself, after a look at Hugh, crept to
+      her aunt's bed; whither Barby very soon despatched Mrs. Rossitur, taking
+      in her place the arm-chair and the watch with most invincible good-will
+      and determination; and sleep at last took the joys and sorrows of that
+      disturbed household into its kind custody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was the first one awake, and was thinking how she should break the
+      last news to her aunt, when Mrs. Rossitur put her arms round her and after
+      a most affectionate look and kiss, spoke to what she supposed had been her
+      niece's purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You want taking care of more than I do, poor Fleda!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was not for that I came," said Fleda;--"I had to give up my room to
+      the travellers."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Travellers!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A very few words more brought out the whole, and Mrs. Rossitur sprang out
+      of bed and rushed to her daughter's room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda hid her face in the bed to cry--for a moment's passionate indulgence
+      in weeping while no one could see. But a moment was all. There was work to
+      do and she must not disable herself. She slowly got up, feeling thankful
+      that her headache did not announce itself with the dawn, and that she
+      would be able to attend to the morning affairs and the breakfast, which
+      was something more of a circumstance now with the new additions to the
+      family. More than that she knew from sure signs she would not be able to
+      accomplish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was all done and done well, though with what secret flagging of mind
+      and body nobody knew or suspected. The business of the day was arranged,
+      Barby's course made clear, Hugh visited and smiled upon; and then Fleda
+      set herself down in the breakfast-room to wear out the rest of the day in
+      patient suffering. Her little spaniel, who seemed to understand her
+      languid step and faint tones and know what was coming, crept into her lap
+      and looked up at her with a face of equal truth and affection; and after a
+      few gentle acknowledging touches from the loved hand, laid his head on her
+      knees, and silently avowed his determination of abiding her fortunes for
+      the remainder of the day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had been there for some hours. Mrs. Rossitur and her daughter were
+      gathered in Hugh's room; whither Rolf also after sundry expressions of
+      sympathy for Fleda's headache, finding it a dull companion, had departed.
+      Pain of body rising above pain of mind had obliged as far as possible even
+      thought to be still; when a loud rap at the front door brought the blood
+      in a sudden flush of pain to Fleda's face. She knew instinctively what it
+      meant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She heard Barby's distinct accents saying that somebody was "not well."
+      The other voice was more smothered. But in a moment the door of the
+      breakfast-room opened and Mr. Thorn walked in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The intensity of the pain she was suffering effectually precluded Fleda
+      from discovering emotion of any kind. She could not move. Only King lifted
+      up his head and looked at the intruder, who seemed shocked, and well he
+      might. Fleda was in her old headache position; bolt upright on the sofa,
+      her feet on the rung of a chair while her hands supported her by their
+      grasp upon the back of it. The flush had passed away leaving the deadly
+      paleness of pain, which the dark rings under her eyes shewed to be well
+      seated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Miss Ringgan!" said the gentleman, coming up softly as to something that
+      frightened him,--"my dear Miss Fleda!--I am distressed!--You are very
+      ill--can nothing be done to relieve you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's lips rather than her voice said, "Nothing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I would not have come in on any account to disturb you if I had known--I
+      did not understand you were more than a trifle ill--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda wished he would mend his mistake, as his understanding certainly by
+      this time was mended. But that did not seem to be his conclusion of the
+      best thing to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Since I am here,--can you bear to hear me say three words? without too
+      much pain?--I do not ask you to speak"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A faint whispered "yes" gave him leave to go on. She had never looked at
+      him. She sat like a statue; to answer by a motion of her head was more
+      than could be risked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew up a chair and sat down, while King looked at him with eyes of
+      suspicious indignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not surprised," he said gently, "to find you suffering. I knew how
+      your sensibilities must feel the shock of yesterday--I would fain have
+      spared it you--I will spare you all further pain on the same score if
+      possible--Dear Miss Ringgan, since I am here and time is precious may I
+      say one word before I cease troubling you--take it for granted that you
+      were made acquainted with the contents of my letter to Mrs.
+      Rossitur?--with <i>all</i> the contents?--were you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Fleda's lips almost voicelessly gave the answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you give me what I ventured to ask for?" said he gently,--"the
+      permission to work <i>for you?</i> Do not trouble those precious lips to
+      speak--the answer of these fingers will be as sure a warrant to me as all
+      words that could be spoken that you do not deny my request."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had taken one of her hands in his own. But the fingers lay with
+      unanswering coldness and lifelessness for a second in his clasp and then
+      were drawn away and took determinate hold of the chair-back. Again the
+      flush came to Fleda's cheeks, brought by a sharp pain,--oh, bodily and
+      mental too!--and after a moment's pause, with a distinctness of utterance
+      that let him know every word, she said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A generous man would not ask it, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorn sprang up, and several times paced the length of the room, up and
+      down, before he said anything more. He looked at Fleda, but the flush was
+      gone again, and nothing could seem less conscious of his presence. Pain
+      and patience were in every line of her face, but he could read nothing
+      more, except a calmness as unmistakably written. Thorn gave that face
+      repeated glances as he walked, then stood still and read it at leisure.
+      Then he came to her side again and spoke in a different voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are so unlike anybody else," he said, "that you shall make me unlike
+      myself. I will do freely what I hoped to do with the light of your smile
+      before me. You shall hear no more of this affair, neither you nor the
+      world--I have the matter perfectly in my own hands--it shall never raise a
+      whisper again. I will move heaven and earth rather than fail--but there is
+      no danger of my failing. I will try to prove myself worthy of your esteem
+      even where a man is most excusable for being selfish."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus23.jpg"><img src="images/illus23.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="Barby's energies and fainting remedies were again put in use."
+      title="Barby's energies and fainting remedies were again put in use." /><br />
+      Barby's energies and fainting remedies were again put in use.</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took one of her cold hands again,--Fleda could not help it without more
+      force than she cared to use, and indeed pain would by this time almost
+      have swallowed up other sensation if every word and touch had not sent it
+      in a stronger throb to her very finger ends. Thorn bent his lips to her
+      hand, twice kissed it fervently, and then left her; much to King's
+      satisfaction, who thereupon resigned himself to quiet slumbers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His mistress knew no such relief. Excitement had dreadfully aggravated her
+      disorder, at a time when it was needful to banish even thought as far as
+      possible. Pain effectually banished it now, and Barby coming in a little
+      after Mr. Thorn had gone found her quite unable to speak and scarce able
+      to breathe, from agony. Barby's energies and fainting remedies were again
+      put in use; but pain reigned triumphant for hours, and when its hard rule
+      was at last abated Fleda was able to do nothing but sleep like a child for
+      hours more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Towards a late tea-time she was at last awake, and carrying on a very
+      one-sided conversation with Rolf, her own lips being called upon for
+      little more than a smile now and then. King, not able to be in her lap,
+      had curled himself up upon a piece of his mistress's dress and as close
+      within the circle of her arms as possible, where Fleda's hand and his head
+      were on terms of mutual satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought you wouldn't permit a dog to lie in your lap," said Marion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you remember that?" said Fleda with a smile. "Ah I have grown
+      tender-hearted, Marion, since I have known what it was to want comfort
+      myself. I have come to the conclusion that it is best to let everything
+      have all the enjoyment it can in the circumstances. King crawled into my
+      lap one day when I had not spirits enough to turn him out, and he has kept
+      the place ever since.--Little King!"--In answer to which word of
+      intelligence King looked in her face and wagged his tail, and then
+      earnestly endeavoured to lick all her fingers. Which however was a piece
+      of comfort she would not give him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda," said Barby putting her head in, "I wish you'd just step out here
+      and tell me which cheese you'd like to have cut."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What a fool!" said Marion. "Let her cut them all if she likes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is no fool," said Fleda. She thought Barby's punctiliousness however
+      a little ill-timed, as she rose from her sofa and went into the kitchen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well you <i>do</i> look as if you wa'n't good for nothing but to be taken
+      care of!" said Barby. "I wouldn't have riz you up if it hadn't been just
+      tea-time, and I knowed you couldn't stay quiet much longer;"--and with a
+      look which explained her tactics she put into Fleda's hand a letter
+      directed to her aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Philetus gave it to me," she said, without a glance at Fleda's face,--"he
+      said it was give to him by a spry little shaver who wa'n't a mind to tell
+      nothin' about himself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thank you, Barby!" was Fleda's most grateful return; and summoning her
+      aunt up-stairs she took her into her own room and locked the door before
+      she gave her the letter which Barby's shrewdness and delicacy had taken
+      such care should not reach its owner in a wrong way. Fleda watched her as
+      her eye ran over the paper and caught it as it fell from her fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My Dear Wife,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That villain Thorn has got a handle of me which he will not fail to
+      use--you know it all I suppose, by this time--It is true that in an evil
+      hour, long ago, when greatly pressed, I did what I thought I should surely
+      undo in a few days--The time never came--I don't know why he has let it
+      lie so long, but he has taken it up now, and he will push it to the
+      extreme--There is but one thing left for me--I shall not see you again.
+      The rascal would never let me rest, I know, in any spot that calls itself
+      American ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will do better without me than with me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "R. R."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda mused over the letter for several minutes, and then touched her aunt
+      who had fallen on a chair with her head sunk in her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What does he mean?" said Mrs. Rossitur, looking up with a perfectly
+      colourless face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To leave the country."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you sure? is that it?" said Mrs. Rossitur, rising and looking over
+      the words again;--"He would do anything, Fleda--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is what he means, aunt Lucy;--don't you see he says he could not be
+      safe anywhere in America?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur stood eying with intense eagerness for a minute or two the
+      note in her niece's hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then he is gone! now that it is all settled!--And we don't know
+      where--and we can't get word to him--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her cheek which had a little brightened became perfectly white again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He isn't gone yet--he can't be--he cannot have left Queechy till
+      to-day--he will be in New York for several days yet probably."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "New York!--it may be Boston?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, he would be more likely to go to New York--I am sure he would--he is
+      accustomed to it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We might write to both places," said poor Mrs. Rossitur. "I will do it
+      and send them off at once."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But he might not get the letters," said Fleda thoughtfully,--"he might
+      not dare to ask at the post-office."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His wife looked at that possibility, and then wrung her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh why didn't he give us a clew!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda put an arm round her affectionately and stood thinking; stood
+      trembling might as well be said, for she was too weak to be standing at
+      all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What can we do, dear Fleda?" said Mrs. Rossitur in great distress. "Once
+      out of New York and we can get nothing to him! If he only knew that there
+      is no need, and that it is all over!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We must do everything, aunt Lucy," said Fleda thoughtfully, "and I hope
+      we shall succeed yet. We will write, but I think the most hopeful other
+      thing we could do would be to put advertisements in the newspapers--he
+      would be very likely to see them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Advertisements!--But you couldn't--what would you put in?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Something that would catch his eye and nobody's else--<i>that</i> is
+      easy, aunt Lucy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But there is nobody to put them in, Fleda,--you said uncle Orrin was
+      going to Boston--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He wasn't going there till next week, but he was to be in Philadelphia a
+      few days before that--the letter might miss him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Plumfield!--Couldn't he?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wouldn't do, aunt Lucy--he would do all he could, but he don't know New
+      York nor the papers--he wouldn't know how to manage it--he don't know
+      uncle Rolf--shouldn't like to trust it to him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who then?--there isn't a creature we could ask--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda laid her cheek to her poor aunt's and said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll do it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you must be in New York to do it, dear Fleda,--you can't do it here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will go to New York."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To-morrow morning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But dear Fleda, you can't go alone! I can't let you, and you're not fit
+      to go at all, my poor child!--" and between conflicting feelings Mrs.
+      Rossitur sat down and wept without measure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Listen, aunt Lucy," said Fleda, pressing a hand on her
+      shoulder,--"listen, and don't cry so!--I'll go and make all right, if
+      efforts can do it. I am not going alone--I'll get Seth to go with me; and
+      I can sleep in the cars and rest nicely in the steamboat--I shall feel
+      happy and well when I know that I am leaving you easier and doing all that
+      can be done to bring uncle Rolf home. Leave me to manage, and don't say
+      anything to Marion,--it is one blessed thing that she need not know
+      anything about all this. I shall feel better than if I were at home and
+      had trusted this business to any other hands."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>You</i> are the blessing of my life," said Mrs. Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Cheer up, and come down and let us have some tea," said Fleda, kissing
+      her; "I feel as if that would make me up a little; and then I'll write the
+      letters. I sha'n't want but very little baggage; there'll be nothing to
+      pack up."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Philetus was sent up the hill with a note to Seth Plumfield, and brought
+      home a favorable answer. Fleda thought as she went to rest that it was
+      well the mind's strength could sometimes act independently of its servant
+      the body, hers felt so very shattered and unsubstantial.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="41"></a>Chapter XLI.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        I thank you for your company; but good faith, I had as lief have been
+        myself alone.--As You Like It.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The first thing next morning Seth Plumfield came down to say that he had
+      seen Dr. Quackenboss the night before and had chanced to find out that he
+      was going to New York too, this very day; and knowing that the doctor
+      would be just as safe an escort as himself, Seth had made over the charge
+      of his cousin to him; "calculating," he said, "that it would make no
+      difference to Fleda and that he had better stay at home with his mother."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda said nothing and looked as little as possible of her disappointment,
+      and her cousin went away wholly unsuspecting of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Seth Plumfield ha'n't done a smarter thing than that in a good while,"
+      Barby remarked satirically as he was shutting the door. "I should think
+      he'd ha' hurt himself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dare say the doctor will take good care of me," said Fleda;--"as good
+      as he knows how."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Men beat all!" said Barby impatiently.--"The little sense there is into
+      them!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's sinking heart was almost ready to echo the sentiment; but nobody
+      knew it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coffee was swallowed, her little travelling bag and bonnet on the sofa;
+      all ready. Then came the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Miss Ringgan!--I am most happy of this delightful opportunity--I
+      had supposed you were located at home for the winter. This is a sudden
+      start."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it sudden to you, Dr. Quackenboss?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why--a--not disagreeably so," said the doctor smiling;--"nothing could be
+      that in the present circumstances,--but I--a--I hadn't calculated upon it
+      for much of a spell beforehand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was vexed, and looked,--only unconversable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose," said the doctor after a pause,--"that we have not much time
+      to waste--a--in idle moments. Which route do you intend to travel?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was thinking to go by the North River, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But the ice has collected,--I am afraid,--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "At Albany, I know; but when I came up there was a boat every other day,
+      and we could get there in time by the stage--this is her day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But we have had some pretty tight weather since, if you remember," said
+      the doctor; "and the boats have ceased to connect with the stage. We shall
+      have to go to Greenfield to take the Housatonic which will land us at
+      Bridgeport on the Sound"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have we time to reach Greenfield this morning?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oceans of time?" said the doctor delightedly; "I've got my team here and
+      they're jumping out of their skins with having nothing to do and the
+      weather--they'll carry us there as spry as grasshoppers--now, if you're
+      ready, my dear Miss Ringgan!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing more but to give and receive those speechless
+      lip-messages that are out of the reach of words, and Mrs. Rossitur's
+      half-spoken last charge, to take care of <i>herself</i>; and with these
+      seals upon her mission Fleda set forth and joined the doctor; thankful for
+      one foil to curiosity in the shape of a veil and only wishing that there
+      were any invented screen that she could place between her and hearing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope your attire is of a very warm description," said the doctor as he
+      helped her into the wagon;--"it friz pretty hard last night and I don't
+      think it has got out of the notion yet. If I had been consulted in any
+      other--a--form, than that of a friend, I should have disapprobated, if
+      you'll excuse me, Miss Ringgan's travelling again before her 'Rose of
+      Cassius' there was in blow. I hope you have heard no evil tidings?
+      Dr.--a--Gregory, I hope, is not taken ill?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope not, sir," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He didn't look like it. A very hearty old gentleman. Not very old either,
+      I should judge. Was he the brother of your mother or your father?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Neither, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah!--I misunderstood--I thought, but of course I was mistaken,--I thought
+      I heard you speak to him under the title of uncle. But that is a title we
+      sometimes give to elderly people as a term of familiarity--there is an old
+      fellow that works for me,--he has been a long time in our family, and we
+      always call him 'uncle Jenk.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was ready to laugh, cry, and be angry, in a breath. She looked
+      straight before her and was mum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That 'Rose of Cassius' is a most exquisite thing!" said the doctor,
+      recurring to the cluster of bare bushy stems in the corner of the garden.
+      "Did Mr. Rossitur bring it with him when he came to his present
+      residence?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is Mr. Rossitur now?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda replied, with a jump of her heart, that business affairs had obliged
+      him to be away for a few days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And when does he expect to return?" said the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope he will be home as soon as I am," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then you do not expect to remain long in the city this time?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shall not have much of a winter at home if I do," said Fleda. "We are
+      almost at January."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because," said the doctor, "in that case I should have no higher
+      gratification than in attending upon your motions. I--a--beg you to
+      believe, my dear Miss Ringgan, that it would afford me the--a--most
+      particular--it would be most particularly grateful to me to wait upon you
+      to--a--the confines of the world."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda hastened to assure her officious friend that the time of her return
+      was altogether uncertain; resolving rather to abide a guest with Mrs.
+      Pritchard than to have Dr. Quackenboss hanging upon her motions every day
+      of her being there. But in the mean time the doctor got upon Capt.
+      Rossitur's subject; then came to Mr. Thorn; and then wanted to know the
+      exact nature of Mr. Rossitur's business affairs in Michigan; through all
+      which matters poor Fleda had to run the gauntlet of questions,
+      interspersed with gracious speeches which she could bear even less well.
+      She was extremely glad to reach the cars and take refuge in seeming sleep
+      from the mongrel attentions, which if for the most part prompted by
+      admiration owned so large a share of curiosity. Her weary head and heart
+      would fain have courted the reality of sleep, as a refuge from more
+      painful thoughts and a feeling of exhaustion that could scarcely support
+      itself; but the restless roar and jumble of the rail-cars put it beyond
+      her power. How long the hours were--how hard to wear out, with no
+      possibility of a change of position that would give rest; Fleda would not
+      even raise her head when they stopped, for fear of being talked to; how
+      trying that endless noise to her racked nerves. It came to an end at last,
+      though Fleda would not move for fear they might be only taking in wood and
+      water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Miss Ringgan!" said the doctor in her ear,--"my dear Miss Ringgan!--we
+      are here!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are we?" said Fleda, looking up;--"what other name has the place,
+      doctor?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why Bridgeport," said the doctor,--"we're at Bridgeport--now we have
+      leave to exchange conveyances. A man feels constrained after a prolonged
+      length of time in a place. How have you enjoyed the ride?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not very well--it has seemed long. I am glad we are at the end of it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as she rose and threw back her veil the doctor looked startled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Miss Ringgan!--are you faint?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are not well, indeed!--I am very sorry--the ride has been--Take my
+      arm!--Ma'am," said the doctor touching a black satin cloak which filled
+      the passage-way,--"will you have the goodness to give this lady a
+      passport?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the black satin cloak preferred a straightforward manner of doing
+      this, so their egress was somewhat delayed. Happily faintness was not the
+      matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Miss Ringgan!" said the doctor as they reached the ground and the
+      outer air,--"what was it?--the stove too powerful? You are looking--you
+      are of a dreadfully delicate appearance!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I had a headache yesterday," said Fleda; "it always leaves me with a
+      disagreeable reminder the next day. I am not ill."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he looked frightened, and hurried her, as fast as he dared, to the
+      steamboat; and there proposed half a dozen restoratives; the simplest of
+      which Fleda took, and then sought delicious rest from him and from herself
+      on the cushions of a settee. Delicious!--though she was alone, in the
+      cabin of a steamboat, with strange forms and noisy tongues around her, the
+      closed eyelids shut it out all; and she had time but for one resting
+      thought of "patient continuance in well-doing," and one happy heart-look
+      up to him who has said that he cares for his children, a look that laid
+      her anxieties down there,--when past misery and future difficulty faded
+      away before a sleep that lasted till the vessel reached her moorings and
+      was made fast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was too weary and faint even to think during the long drive up to
+      Bleecker-st. She was fain to let it all go--the work she had to do and the
+      way she must set about it, and rest in the assurance that nothing could be
+      done that night. She did not so much as hear Dr. Quackenboss's
+      observations, though she answered a few of them, till, at the door, she
+      was conscious of his promising to see her to-morrow and of her instant
+      conclusion to take measures to see nobody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How strange everything seemed. She walked through the familiar hall,
+      feeling as if her acquaintance with every old thing was broken. There was
+      no light in the back parlour, but a comfortable fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is my--is Dr. Gregory at home?" she asked of the girl who had let her in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No ma'am; he hasn't got back from Philadelphia."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tell Mrs. Pritchard a lady wants to see her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Good Mrs. Pritchard was much more frightened than Dr. Quackenboss had been
+      when she came into the back parlour to see "a lady" and found Fleda in the
+      great arm-chair taking off her things. She poured out questions,
+      wonderings and lamentings, not "in a breath" but in a great many; quite
+      forgot to be glad to see her, she looked so dreadfully; and "what <i>had</i>
+      been the matter?" Fleda answered her,--told of yesterday's illness and
+      to-day's journey; and met all her shocked enquiries with so composed a
+      face and such a calm smile and bearing, that Mrs. Pritchard was almost
+      persuaded not to believe her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My uncle is not at home?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O no, Miss Fleda! I suppose he's in Philadelphy--but his motions is so
+      little to be depended on that I never know when I have him; maybe he'll
+      stop going through to Boston, and maybe no, and I don't know when; so
+      anyhow I had to have a fire made and this room all ready; and ain't it
+      lucky it was ready for you to-night!--and now he ain't here you can have
+      the great chair all to yourself and make yourself comfortable--we can keep
+      warmer here, I guess, than you can in the country," said the good
+      housekeeper, giving some skilful admonishing touches to the fire;--"and
+      you must just sit there and read and rest, and see if you can't get back
+      your old looks again. If I thought it was <i>that</i> you came for I'd be
+      happy. I never <i>did</i> see such a change in any one in five days!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood looking down at her guest with a face of very serious concern,
+      evidently thinking much more than she chose to give utterance to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am tired, Mrs. Pritchard," said Fleda, smiling up at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish you had somebody to take care of you, Miss Fleda, that wouldn't
+      let you tire yourself. It's a sin to throw your strength away so--and you
+      don't care for looks nor nothing else when it's for other people. You're
+      looking just as handsome, too, for all," she said, her mouth giving way a
+      little, as she stooped down to take off Fleda's overshoes, "but that's
+      only because you can't help it. Now what is there you'd like to have for
+      supper!--just say and you shall have it--whatever would seem best--because
+      I mightn't hit the right thing?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda declared her indifference to everything but a cup of tea, and her
+      hostess bustled away to get that and tax her own ingenuity and kindness
+      for the rest. And leaning her weary head back in the lounge Fleda tried to
+      think,--but it was not time yet; she could only feel; feel what a sad
+      change had come over her since she had sat there last; shut her eyes and
+      wish she could sleep again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mrs. Pritchard's hospitality must be gone through with first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The nicest of suppers was served in the bright little parlour and her
+      hostess was a compound of care and good will; nothing was wanting to the
+      feast but a merry heart. Fleda could not bring that, so her performance
+      was unsatisfactory and Mrs. Pritchard was distressed. Fleda went to her
+      own room promising better doings to-morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She awoke in the morning to the full burden of care and sorrow which sheer
+      weakness and weariness the day before had in part laid down; to a quicker
+      sense of the state of things than she had had yet. The blasting evil that
+      had fallen upon them,--Fleda writhed on her bed when she thought of it.
+      The sternest, cruellest, most inflexible, grasp of distress. Poverty may
+      be borne, death may be sweetened, even to the survivors; but <i>disgrace</i>--Fleda
+      hid her head, as if she would shut the idea out with the light. And the
+      ruin it had wrought. Affection killed at the root,--her aunt's happiness
+      withered, for this world,--Hugh's life threatened,--the fair name of his
+      family gone,--the wear and weariness of her own spirit,--but that had
+      hardly a thought. Himself?--oh no one could tell what a possible wreck,
+      now that self-respect and the esteem of others, those two safe-guards of
+      character, were lost to him. "So much security has any woman in a man
+      without religion;" she remembered those words of her aunt Miriam now; and
+      she thought if Mr. Thorn had sought an ill wind to blow upon his
+      pretensions he could not have pitched them better. What fairer promise,
+      without religion, could be than her uncle had given? Reproach had never
+      breathed against his name, and no one less than those who knew him best
+      could fancy that he had ever given it occasion. And who could have more at
+      stake?--and the stake was lost--that was the summing up thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, it was not,--for Fleda's mind presently sprang beyond,--to the remedy;
+      and after a little swift and earnest flitting about of thought over
+      feasibilities and contingencies, she jumped up and dressed herself with a
+      prompt energy which shewed a mind made up to its course. And yet when she
+      came down to the parlour, though bending herself with nervous intentness
+      to the work she had to do, her fingers and her heart were only stayed in
+      their trembling by some of the happy assurances she had been fleeing to;--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Commit thy works unto the Lord, and all thy thoughts shall be
+      established."--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In all thy ways acknowledge Him: He shall direct they paths."--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      --Assurances, not indeed that her plans should meet with success, but that
+      they should have the issue best for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was early, but the room was warm and in order and the servant had left
+      it. Fleda sought out paper and pencil and sat down to fashion the form of
+      an advertisement,--the first thing to be done. She had no notion how
+      difficult a thing till she came to do it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>R. R. is entreated to communicate with his niece at the old place in
+      Bleecker-street, on business of the greatest importance</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It will not do," said Fleda to herself as she sat and looked at
+      it,--"there is not enough to catch his eye; and there is <i>too much</i>
+      if it caught anybody else's eye;--'R. R.', and 'his niece,' and
+      'Bleecker-street,'--that would tell plain enough."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Dear uncle, F. has followed you here on business of the greatest
+      importance. Pray let her see you--she is at the old place</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It will not do," thought Fleda again,--"there is still less to catch his
+      eye--I cannot trust it. And if I were to put 'Queechy' over it, that would
+      give the clue to the Evelyns and everybody. But I had better risk anything
+      rather than his seeing it--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The miserable needlessness of the whole thing, the pitiful weighing of
+      sorrow against sorrow, and shame against shame overcame her for a little;
+      and then dashing away the tears she had no time for and locking up the
+      strong box of her heart, she took her pencil again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Queechy</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Let me see you at the old place. I have come here on urgent business</i>
+      for you. <i>Do not deny me, for H---'s sake</i>!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a trifle of alteration she thought this would do; and went on to make
+      a number of fair copies of it for so many papers, This was done and all
+      traces of it out of the way before Mrs. Pritchard came in and the
+      breakfast; and after bracing herself with coffee, though the good
+      housekeeper was still sadly dissatisfied with her indifference to some
+      more substantial brace in the shape of chickens and ham, Fleda prepared
+      herself inwardly and outwardly to brave the wind and the newspaper
+      offices, and set forth. It was a bright keen day; she was sorry; she would
+      it had been cloudy. It seemed as if she could not hope to escape some eyes
+      in such an atmosphere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to the library first, and there requested the librarian, whom she
+      knew, to bring her from the reading-room the files of morning and evening
+      papers. They were many more than she had supposed; she had not near
+      advertisements enough. Paper and ink were at hand however, and making
+      carefully her list of the various offices, morning and evening separate,
+      she wrote out a copy of the notice for each of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The morning was well on by the time she could leave the library. It was
+      yet far from the fashionable hour, however, and sedulously shunning the
+      recognition of anybody, in hopes that it would be one step towards her
+      escaping theirs, she made her way down the bright thoroughfare as far as
+      the City Hall, and then crossed over the Park and plunged into a region
+      where it was very little likely she would see a face that she knew. She
+      saw nothing else either that she knew; in spite of having studied the map
+      of the city in the library she was forced several times to ask her way, as
+      she visited office after office, of the evening papers first, till she had
+      placed her notice with each one of them. Her courage almost failed her,
+      her heart did quite, after two or three. It was a trial from which her
+      whole nature shrank, to go among the people, to face the eyes, to exchange
+      talk with the lips, that were at home in those purlieus; look at them she
+      did not. Making her slow way through the choked narrow streets, where the
+      mere confusion of business was bewildering,--very, to any one come from
+      Queechy; among crowds, of what mixed and doubtful character, hurrying
+      along and brushing with little ceremony past her; edging by loitering
+      groups that filled the whole sidewalk, or perhaps edging through them,
+      groups whose general type of character was sufficiently plain and unmixed;
+      entering into parley with clerk after clerk who looked at such a visiter
+      as an anomaly,--poor Fleda almost thought so too, and shrank within
+      herself; venturing hardly her eyes beyond her thick veil, and shutting her
+      ears resolutely as far as possible to all the dissonant rough voices that
+      helped to assure her she was where she ought not to be. Sometimes she felt
+      that it was <i>impossible</i> to go on and finish her task; but a thought
+      or two nerved her again to plunge into another untried quarter or make
+      good her entrance to some new office through a host of loungers and
+      waiting news-boys collected round the door. Sometimes in utter
+      discouragement she went on and walked to a distance and came back, in the
+      hope of a better opportunity. It was a long business; and she often had to
+      wait. The end of her list was reached at last, and the paper was thrown
+      away; but she did not draw free breath till she had got to the west side
+      of Broadway again, and turned her back upon them all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was late then, and the street was thinned of a part of its gay throng.
+      Completely worn, in body as well as mind, with slow faltering steps, Fleda
+      moved on among those still left; looking upon them with a curious eye as
+      if they and she belonged to different classes of beings; so very far her
+      sobered and saddened spirit seemed to herself from their stir of business
+      and gayety; if they had been a train of lady-flies or black ants Fleda
+      would hardly have felt that she had less in common with them. It was a
+      weary long way up to Bleecker-street, as she was forced to travel it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The relief was unspeakable to find herself within her uncle's door with
+      the sense that her dreaded duty was done, and well and thoroughly. Now her
+      part was to be still and wait. But with the relief came also a reaction
+      from the strain of the morning. Before her weary feet had well mounted the
+      stairs her heart gave up its control; and she locked herself in her room
+      to yield to a helpless outpouring of tears which she was utterly unable to
+      restrain, though conscious that long time could not pass before she would
+      be called to dinner. Dinner had to wait.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Miss Fleda," said the housekeeper in a vexed tone when the meal was half
+      over,--"I didn't know you ever did any thing wrong."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are sadly mistaken, Mrs. Pritchard," said Fleda half lightly, half
+      sadly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're looking not a bit better than last night, and if anything rather
+      worse," Mrs. Pritchard went on. "It isn't right, Miss Fleda. You oughtn't
+      to ha' set the first step out of doors, I know you oughtn't, this blessed
+      day; and you've been on your feet these seven hours,--and you shew it!
+      You're just ready to drop."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will rest to-morrow," said Fleda,--"or try to."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are fit for nothing but bed," said the housekeeper,--"and you've been
+      using yourself, Miss Fleda, as if you had the strength of an elephant. Now
+      do you think you've been doing right?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda would have made some cheerful answer, but she was not equal to it;
+      she had lost all command of herself, and she dropped knife and fork to
+      burst into a flood of exceeding tears. Mrs. Pritchard equally astonished
+      and mystified, hurried questions, apologies, and consolations, one upon
+      another; and made up her mind that there was something mysterious on foot
+      about which she had better ask no questions. Neither did she, from that
+      time. She sealed up her mouth, and contented herself with taking the best
+      care of her guest that she possibly could. Needed enough, but all of
+      little avail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reaction did not cease with that day. The next, Sunday, was spent on
+      the sofa, in a state of utter prostration. With the necessity for exertion
+      the power had died. Fleda could only lie upon the cushions, and sleep
+      helplessly, while Mrs. Pritchard sat by, anxiously watching her; curiosity
+      really swallowed up in kind feeling. Monday was little better, but towards
+      the after part of the day the stimulant of anxiety began to work again,
+      and Fleda sat up to watch for a word from her uncle, But none came, and
+      Tuesday morning distressed Mrs. Pritchard with its want of amendment. It
+      was not to be hoped for, Fleda knew, while this fearful watching lasted.
+      Her uncle might not have seen the advertisement--he might not have got her
+      letter--he might be even then setting sail to quit home forever. And she
+      could do nothing but wait. Her nerves were alive to every stir; every
+      touch of the bell made her tremble; it was impossible to read, to lie
+      down, to be quiet or still anywhere. She had set the glass of expectancy
+      for one thing in the distance; and all things else were a blur or a blank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had sat down to dinner that Tuesday, when a ring at the door which
+      had made her heart jump was followed--yes, it was,--by the entrance of the
+      maid-servant holding a folded bit of paper in her hand. Fleda did not wait
+      to ask whose it was; she seized it and saw; and sprang away up stairs. It
+      was a sealed scrap of paper, that had been the back of a letter,
+      containing two lines without signature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will meet you <i>at Dinah's</i>--if you come there alone about
+      sundown."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Enough! Dinah was an old black woman who once had been a very attached
+      servant in Mr. Rossitur's family, and having married and become a widow
+      years ago, had set up for herself in the trade of a washerwoman, occupying
+      an obscure little tenement out towards Chelsea. Fleda had rather a shadowy
+      idea of the locality, though remembering very well sundry journeys of
+      kindness she and Hugh had made to it in days gone by. But she recollected
+      it was in Sloman-street and she knew she could find it; and dropping upon
+      her knees poured out thanks too deep to be uttered and too strong to be
+      even thought without a convulsion of tears. Her dinner after that was but
+      a mental thanksgiving; she was hardly conscious of anything beside; and a
+      thankful rejoicing for all her weary labours. Their weariness was sweet to
+      her now. Let her but see him;--the rest was sure.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="42"></a>Chapter XLII.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        How well appaid she was her bird to find.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Sidney.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Fleda counted the minutes till it wanted an hour of sundown; and then
+      avoiding Mrs. Pritchard made her escape out of the house. A long walk was
+      before her and the latter part of it through a region which she wished to
+      pass while the light was good. And she was utterly unable to travel at any
+      but a very gentle rate. So she gave herself plenty of time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a very bright afternoon and all the world was astir. Fleda shielded
+      herself with a thick veil and went up one of the narrow streets, not
+      daring to venture into Broadway; and passing Waverly Place which was
+      almost as bright, turned down Eighth-street. A few blocks now and she
+      would be out of all danger of meeting any one that knew her. She drew her
+      veil close and hurried on. But the proverb saith "a miss is as good as a
+      mile," and with reason; for if fate wills the chances make nothing. As
+      Fleda set her foot down to cross Fifth Avenue she saw Mr. Carleton on the
+      other side coming up from Waverly Place. She went as slowly as she dared,
+      hoping that he would pass without looking her way, or be unable to
+      recognize her through her thick wrapper. In vain,--she soon saw that she
+      was known; he was waiting for her, and she must put up her veil and speak
+      to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why I thought you had left New York," said he;--"I was told so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I had left it--I have left it, sir," said Fleda;--"I have only come back
+      for a day or two--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you been ill?" he said with a sudden change of tone, the light in
+      his eye and smile giving place to a very marked gravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda would have answered with a half smile, but such a sickness of heart
+      came over her that speech failed and she was very near bursting into
+      tears. Mr. Carleton looked at her earnestly a moment, and then put the
+      hand which Fleda had forgotten he still held, upon his arm and began to
+      walk forward gently with her. Something in the grave tenderness with which
+      this was done reminded Fleda irresistibly of the times when she had been a
+      child under his care; and somehow her thoughts went off on a tangent back
+      to the further days of her mother and father and grandfather, the other
+      friends from whom she had had the same gentle protection, which now there
+      was no one in the world to give her. And their images did never seem more
+      winning fair than just then,--when their place was left most especially
+      empty. Her uncle she had never looked up to in the same way, and whatever
+      stay he had been was cut down. Her aunt leaned upon <i>her</i>; and Hugh
+      had always been more of a younger than an elder brother. The quick
+      contrast of those old happy childish days was too strong; the glance back
+      at what she had had, made her feel the want. Fleda blamed herself,
+      reasoned and fought with herself;--but she was weak in mind and body, her
+      nerves were unsteady yet, her spirits unprepared for any encounter or
+      reminder of pleasure; and though vexed and ashamed she <i>could</i> not
+      hold her head up, and she could not prevent tear after tear from falling
+      as they went along; she could only hope that nobody saw them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nobody spoke of them. But then nobody said anything; and the silence at
+      last frightened her into rousing herself She checked her tears and raised
+      her head; she ventured no more; she dared not turn her face towards her
+      companion. He looked at her once or twice, as if in doubt whether to speak
+      or not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you not going beyond your strength?" he said at length gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda said no, although in a tone that half confessed his suspicion. He
+      was silent again, however, and she cast about in vain for something to
+      speak of; it seemed to her that all subjects of conversation in general
+      had been packed up for exportation, neither eye nor memory could light
+      upon a single one. Block after block was passed, the pace at which he
+      walked, and the manner of his care for her, alone shewing that he knew
+      what a very light hand was resting upon his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How pretty the curl of blue smoke is from that chimney," he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was said with a tone so carelessly easy that Fleda's heart jumped for
+      one instant in the persuasion that he had seen and noticed nothing
+      peculiar about her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know it," she said eagerly,--"I have often thought of it--especially
+      here in the city--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why is it? what is it?--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's eye gave one of its exploratory looks at his, such as he
+      remembered from years ago, before she spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Isn't it contrast?--or at least I think that helps the effect here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you make the contrast?" he said quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Isn't it," said Fleda with another glance, "the contrast of something
+      pure and free and upward-tending, with what is below it. I did not mean
+      the mere painter's contrast. In the country smoke is more picturesque, but
+      in the city I think it has more character."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To how many people do you suppose it ever occurred that smoke had a
+      character?" said he smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are laughing at me, Mr. Carleton? perhaps I deserve it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You do not think that," said he with a look that forbade her to think it.
+      "But I see you are of Lavater's mind, that everything has a physiognomy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think he was perfectly right," said Fleda. "Don't you, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To some people, yes!--But the expression is so subtle that only very nice
+      sensibilities, with fine training, can hope to catch it; therefore to the
+      mass of the world Lavater would talk nonsense."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is a gentle hint to me. But if I talk nonsense I wish you would set
+      me right, Mr. Carleton;--I am very apt to amuse myself with tracing out
+      fancied analogies in almost everything, and I may carry it too far--too
+      far--to be spoken of wisely. I think it enlarges one's field of pleasure
+      very much. Where one eye is stopped, another is but invited on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So," said Mr. Carleton, "while that puff of smoke would lead one person's
+      imagination only down the chimney to the kitchen fire, it would take
+      another's----where did yours go?" said he suddenly turning round upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda met his eye again, without speaking; but her look had perhaps more
+      than half revealed her thought, for she was answered with a smile so
+      intelligent and sympathetic that she was abashed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How very much religion heightens the enjoyments of life," Mr. Carleton
+      said after a while.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fieda's heart throbbed an answer; she did not speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Both in its direct and indirect action. The mind is set free from
+      influences that narrowed its range and dimmed its vision; and refined to a
+      keener sensibility, a juster perception, a higher power of appreciation,
+      by far, than it had before. And then, to say nothing of religion's own
+      peculiar sphere of enjoyment, technically religious,--what a field of
+      pleasure it opens to its possessor in the world of moral beauty, most
+      partially known to any other,--and the fine but exquisite analogies of
+      things material with things spiritual,--those <i>harmonies of Nature</i>,
+      to which, talk as they will, all other ears are deaf!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You know," said Fleda with full eyes that she dared not shew, "how Henry
+      Martyn said that he found he enjoyed painting and music so much more after
+      he became a Christian."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I remember. It is the substituting a just medium for a false one--it is
+      putting nature within and nature without in tune with each other, so that
+      the chords are perfect now which were jarring before."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And yet how far people would be from believing you, Mr. Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--they are possessed with the contrary notion. But in all the creation
+      nothing has a one-sided usefulness;--what a reflection it would be upon
+      the wisdom of its author if godliness alone were the exception--if it were
+      not 'profitable for the life that now is, as well as for that which is to
+      come'!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They make that work the other way, don't they?" said Fleda.--"Not being
+      able to see how thorough religion should be for anybody's happiness, they
+      make use of your argument to conclude that it is not what the Bible
+      requires. How I have heard that urged--that God intended his creatures to
+      be happy--as a reason why they should disobey him. They lay hold on the
+      wrong end of the argument and work backwards."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Precisely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'God intended his creatures to be happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Strict obedience would make them unhappy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Therefore, he does not intend them to obey.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They never put it before them quite so clearly," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They would startle at it a little. But so they would at the right stating
+      of the case."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And how would that be, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It might be somewhat after this fashion--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'God requires nothing that is not for the happiness of his people--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'He requires perfect obedience--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Therefore perfect obedience is for their happiness'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But unbelief will not understand that. Did it ever strike you how much
+      there is in those words 'Come and see'?--All that argument can do, after
+      all, is but to persuade to that. Only faith will submit to terms and enter
+      the narrrow gate; and only obedience knows what the prospect is on the
+      other side."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But isn't it true, Mr. Carleton, that the world have some cause for their
+      opinion?--judging as they do by the outside? The peculiar pleasures of
+      religion, as you say, are out of sight, and they do not always find in
+      religious people that enlargement and refinement of which you were
+      speaking."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because they make unequal comparisons. Recollect that, as God has
+      declared, the ranks of religion are not for the most part filled from the
+      wise and the great. In making your estimate you must measure things equal
+      in other respects. Compare the same man with himself before he was a
+      Christian or with his unchristianized fellows--and you will find
+      invariably the refining, dignifying, ennobling, influence of true
+      religion; the enlarged intelligence and the greater power of enjoyment."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And besides those causes of pleasure-giving that you mentioned," said
+      Fleda,--"there is a mind at ease; and how much that is alone. If I may
+      judge others by myself,--the mere fact of being unpoised--unresting--
+      disables the mind from a thousand things that are joyfully relished by one
+      entirely at ease."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," said he,--"do you remember that word--'The stones of the field
+      shall be at peace with thee'?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid people would understand you as little as they would me, Mr.
+      Carleton," said Fleda laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled, rather a prolonged smile, the expression of which Fleda could
+      not make out; she felt that <i>she</i> did not quite understand him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have thought," said he after a pause, "that much of the beauty we find
+      in many things is owing to a hidden analogy--the harmony they make with
+      some unknown string of the mind's harp which they have set a vibrating.
+      But the music of that is so low and soft that one must listen very closely
+      to find out what it is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why that is the very theory of which I gave you a smoky illustration a
+      little while ago," said Fleda. "I thought I was on safe ground, after what
+      you said about the characters of flowers, for that was a little--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fanciful?" said he smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What you please," said Fleda colouring a little,--"I am sure it is true.
+      The theory, I mean. I have many a time felt it, though I never put it in
+      words. I shall think of that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you ever happen to see the very early dawn of a winter's morning?"
+      said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he laughed the next instant at the comical expression of Fleda's face
+      as it was turned to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Forgive me for supposing you as ignorant as myself. I have seen
+      it--once."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Appreciated it, I hope, that time?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shall never forget it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And it never wrought in you a desire to see it again?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I might see many a dawn," said he smiling, "without what I saw then. It
+      was very early--and a cloudy morning, so that night had still almost
+      undisturbed possession of earth and sky; but in the south-eastern quarter,
+      between two clouds, there was a space of fair white promise, hardly making
+      any impression upon the darkness but only set off by it. And upon this one
+      bright spot in earth or heaven, rode the planet of the morning--the sun's
+      forerunner--bright upon the brightness. All else was dusky--except where
+      overhead the clouds had parted again and shewed a faint old moon,
+      glimmering down upon the night it could no longer be said to 'rule'."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Beautiful!" said Fleda. "There is hardly any time I like so well as the
+      dawn of a winter morning with an old moon in the sky. Summer weather has
+      no beauty like it--in some things."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Once," continued Mr, Carleton, "I should have seen no more than I have
+      told you--the beauty that every cultivated eye must take in. But now,
+      methought I saw the dayspring that has come upon a longer night--and from
+      out of the midst of it there was the fair face of the morning star looking
+      at me with its sweet reminder and invitation--looking over the world with
+      its aspect of triumphant expectancy;--there was its calm assurance of the
+      coming day,--its promise that the star of hope which now there were only a
+      few watching eyes to see, should presently be followed by the full beams
+      of the Sun of righteousness making the kingdoms of the world his
+      own.--Your memory may bring to you the words that came to mine,--the
+      promise 'to him that overcometh', and the beauty of the lips that made
+      it--the encouragement to 'patient continuance in well-doing', 'till the
+      day break and the shadows flee away.'--And there on the other hand was the
+      substituted light of earth's wisdom and inventions, dominant yet, but
+      waning and soon to be put out for ever."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was crying again, and perhaps that was the reason why Mr. Carleton
+      was silent for some time. She was very sorry to shew herself so weak, but
+      she could not help it; part of his words had come too close. And when she
+      had recovered again she was absolutely silent too, for they were nearing
+      Sloman-street and she could not take him there with her. She did not know
+      what to say, nor what he would think; and she said not another word till
+      they came to the corner. There she must stop and speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Carleton," she said drawing her hand
+      from his arm, "for taking care of me all this disagreeable way--I will not
+      give you any more trouble."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are not going to dismiss me?" said he looking at her with a
+      countenance of serious anxiety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I must," said Fleda ingenuously,--"I have business to attend to here--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you will let me have the pleasure of waiting for you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O no," said Fleda hesitating and flushing,--"thank you, Mr.
+      Carleton,--but pray do not--I don't know at all how long I may be
+      detained."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He bowed, she thought gravely, and turned away, and she entered the little
+      wretched street; with a strange feeling of pain that she could not
+      analyze. She did not know where it came from, but she thought if there
+      only had been a hiding-place for her she could have sat down and wept a
+      whole heartful. The feeling must be kept back now, and it was soon
+      forgotten in the throbbing of her heart at another thought which took
+      entire possession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun was not down, there was time enough, but it was with a step and
+      eye of hurried anxiety that Fleda passed along the little street, for fear
+      of missing her quest or lest Dinah should have changed her domicil. Yet
+      would her uncle have named it for their meeting if he had not been sure of
+      it? It was very odd he should have appointed that place at all, and Fleda
+      was inclined to think he must have seen Dinah by some chance, or it never
+      would have come into his head. Still her eye passed unheeding over all the
+      varieties of dinginess and misery in her way, intent only upon finding
+      that particular dingy cellar-way which used to admit her to Dinah's
+      premises. It was found at last, and she went in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old woman, herself most unchanged, did not know the young lady, but
+      well remembered the little girl whom Fleda brought to her mind. And then
+      she was overjoyed to see her, and asked a multitude of questions, and told
+      a long story of her having met Mr. Rossitur in the street the other day
+      "in the last place where she'd have looked to see him;" and how old he had
+      grown, and how surprised she had been to see the grey hairs in his head.
+      Fleda at last gave her to understand that she expected him to meet her
+      there and would like to see him alone; and the good woman immediately took
+      her work into another apartment, made up the fire and set up the chairs,
+      and leaving her assured Fleda she would lock up the doors "and not let no
+      one come through."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was sundown, and later, Fleda thought, and she felt as if every pulse
+      was doing double duty. No matter--if she were shattered and the work done.
+      But what work!--Oh the needlessness, the cruelty, the folly of it! And how
+      much of the ill consequences she might be unable after all to ward off.
+      She took off her hat, to relieve a nervous smothered feeling; and walked,
+      and sat down; and then sat still, from trembling inability to do anything
+      else. Dinah's poor little room, clean though it was, looked to her the
+      most dismal place in the world from its association with her errand; she
+      hid her face on her knees that she might have no disagreeableness to
+      contend with but that which could not be shut out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had lain there some time, till a sudden felling of terror at the
+      growing lateness made her raise it to look at the window. Mr. Rossitur was
+      standing still before her, he must have come in very softly,--and
+      looking,--oh Fleda had not imagined him looking so changed. All was
+      forgotten,--the wrong, and the needlessness, and the indignation with
+      which she had sometimes thought of it; Fleda remembered nothing but love
+      and pity, and threw herself upon his neck with such tears of tenderness
+      and sympathy, such kisses of forgiveness and comfort-speaking, as might
+      have broken a stouter heart than Mr. Rossitur's. He held her in his arms
+      for a few minutes, passively suffering her caresses, and then gently
+      unloosing her hold placed her on a seat; sat down a little way off,
+      covered his face and groaned aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda could not recover herself at once. Then shaking off her agitation
+      she came and knelt down by his side and putting one arm over his shoulder
+      laid her cheek against his forehead. Words were beyond reach, but his
+      forehead was wet with her tears; and kisses, of soft entreaty, of winning
+      assurance, said all she could say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What did you come here for, Fleda?" said Mr. Rossitur at length, without
+      changing his position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To bring you home, uncle Rolf."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Home!" said he, with an accent between bitterness and despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, for it's all over, it's all forgotten--there is no more to be said
+      about it at all," said Fleda, getting her words out she didn't know how.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is forgotten?" said he harshly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All that you would wish, sir," replied Fleda softly and gently;--"there
+      is no more to be done about it; and I came to tell you if possible before
+      it was too late. Oh I'm so glad!--" and her arms and her cheek pressed
+      closer as fresh tears stopped her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you know, Fleda?" said Mr. Rossitur raising his head and bringing
+      hers to his shoulder, while his arms in turn enclosed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda whispered, "He told me so himself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Thorn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words were but just spoken above her breath. Mr. Rossitur was silent
+      for some time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you sure you understood him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir; it could not have been spoken plainer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you quite sure he meant what he said, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perfectly sure, uncle Rolf! I know he did."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What stipulation did he make beforehand?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He did it without any stipulation, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What was his inducement then? If I know him he is not a man to act
+      without any."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's cheek was dyed, but except that she gave no other answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why has it been left so long?" said her uncle presently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know, sir--he said nothing about that. He promised that neither
+      we nor the world should hear anything more of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The world?" said Mr. Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir, he said that only one or two persons had any notion of it and
+      that their secrecy he had the means of securing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did he tell you anything more?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Only that he had the matter entirely under his control and that never a
+      whisper of it should be heard again, No promise could be given more fully
+      and absolutely."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur drew a long breath, speaking to Fleda's ear very great
+      relief, and was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what reward is he to have for this, Fleda?" he said after some
+      musing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All that my hearty thanks and gratitude can give, as far as I am
+      concerned, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that what he expects, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I cannot help what he expects," said Fleda, in some distress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What have you engaged yourself to, my child?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing in the world, uncle Rolf!" said Fleda earnestly--"nothing in the
+      world. I haven't engaged myself to anything. The promise was made freely,
+      without any sort of stipulation."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur looked thoughtful and disquieted. Fleda's tears were pouring
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will not trust him," he said,--"I will not stay in the country!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you will come home, uncle?" said Fleda, terrified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes my dear child--yes my dear child!" he said tenderly, putting his arms
+      round Fleda again and kissing, with an earnestness of acknowledgment that
+      went to her heart, her lips and brow,--"you shall do what you will with
+      me; and when I go, we will all go together."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Queechy! From America!--But she had no time for that thought now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You said 'for Hugh's sake,'" Mr. Rossitur observed after a pause, and
+      with some apparent difficulty;--"what of him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is not well, uncle Rolf," said Fleda,--"and I think the best medicine
+      will be the sight of you again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur looked pale and was silent a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And my wife?" he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His face, and the thought of those faces at home, were too much for Fleda;
+      she could not help it; "Oh, uncle Rolf," she said, hiding her face, "they
+      only want to see you again now!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur leaned his head in his hands and groaned; and Fleda could but
+      cry; she felt there was nothing to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was for Marion," he said at length;--"it was when I was hard pressed
+      and I was fearful if it were known that it might ruin her prospects.--I
+      wanted that miserable sum--only four thousand dollars--that fellow
+      Schwiden asked to borrow it of me for a few days, and to refuse would have
+      been to confess all. I dared not try my credit, and I just madly took that
+      step that proved irretrievable--I counted at the moment upon funds that
+      were coming to me only the next week, sure, I thought, as possible,--but
+      the man cheated me, and our embarrassments thickened from that time; that
+      thing has been a weight--oh a weight of deadening power!--round my neck
+      ever since. I have died a living death these six years!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know it, dear uncle--I know it all!" said Fleda, bringing the
+      sympathizing touch of her cheek to his again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The good that it did has been unspeakably overbalanced by the evil--even
+      long ago I knew that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The good that it did"! It was no time <i>then</i> to moralize, but he
+      must know that Marion was at home, or he might incautiously reveal to her
+      what happily there was no necessity for her ever knowing. And the story
+      must give him great and fresh pain----
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear uncle Rolf!" said Fleda pressing closer to him, "we may be happier
+      than we have been in a long time, if you will only take it so. The cloud
+      upon you has been a cloud upon us."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know it!" he exclaimed,--"a cloud that served to shew me that my jewels
+      were diamonds!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have an accession to your jewels, uncle Rolf."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you mean?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I mean," said Fleda trembling, "that there are two more at home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He held her back to look at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Can't you guess who?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No!" said he. "What do you mean?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I must tell you, because they know nothing, and needn't know, of all this
+      matter."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are you talking about?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Marion is there----"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Marion!" exclaimed Mr. Rossitur, with quick changes of expression,--"
+      Marion!--At Queechy!--and her husband?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir,--a dear little child."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Marion!--and her husband--where is he?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know--I don't know whether she knows--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is he dead?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur put her away and got up and walked, or strode, up and down,
+      up and down, the little apartment. Fleda dared not look at him, even by
+      the faint glimmer that came from the chimney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But abroad it was perfectly dark--the stars were shining, the only lamps
+      that illumined the poor little street, and for a long time there had been
+      no light in the room but that of the tiny wood fire. Dinah never could be
+      persuaded of the superior cheapness of coal. Fleda came at last to her
+      uncle's side and putting her arm within his said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How soon will you set off for home, uncle Rolf?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To-morrow morning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You must take the boat to Bridgeport now--you know the river is fast."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes I know----"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then I will meet you at the wharf, uncle Rolf,--at what o'clock?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear child," said he, stopping and passing his hand tenderly over her
+      cheek, "are you fit for it to-morrow? You had better stay where you are
+      quietly for a few days--you want rest."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, I will go home with you," said Fleda, "and rest there. But hadn't we
+      better let Dinah in and bid her good bye? for I ought to be somewhere else
+      to get ready."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dinah was called, and a few kind words spoken, and with a more substantial
+      remembrance, or reward, from Fleda's hand, they left her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda had the support of her uncle's arm till they came within sight of
+      the house, and then he stood and watched her while she went the rest of
+      the way alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus24.jpg"><img src="images/illus24.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="Then he stood and watched her." title="Then he stood and watched her." /><br />
+      Then he stood and watched her.</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anything more white and spirit-looking, and more spirit-like in its purity
+      and peacefulness, surely did not walk that night. There was music in her
+      ear, and abroad in the star-light, more ethereal than Ariel's, but she
+      knew where it came from; it was the chimes of her heart that were ringing;
+      and never a happier peal, nor never had the mental atmosphere been more
+      clear for their sounding. Thankfulness,--that was the oftenest
+      note,--swelling thankfulness for her success,--joy for herself and for the
+      dear ones at home,--generous delight at having been the instrument of
+      their relief,--the harmonies of pure affections, without any grating
+      now,--the hope well grounded she thought, of improvement in her uncle and
+      better times for them all,--a childlike peace that was at rest with itself
+      and the world,--these were mingling and interchanging their music, and
+      again and again in the midst of it all, faith rang the last chime in
+      heaven.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="43"></a>Chapter XLIII.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        As some lone bird at day's departing hour<br /> Sings in the sunbeam of
+        the transient shower,<br /> Forgetful though its wings are wet the while.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Bowles.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Happily possessed with the notion that there was some hidden mystery in
+      Fleda's movements, Mrs. Pritchard said not a word about her having gone
+      out, and only spoke in looks her pain at the imprudence of which she had
+      been guilty. But when Fleda asked to have a carriage ordered to take her
+      to the boat in the morning, the good housekeeper could not hold any
+      longer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Miss Fleda," said she with a look of very serious remonstrance,--"I don't
+      know what you're thinking of, but <i>I</i> know you're fixing to kill
+      yourself. You are no more fit to go to Queechy to-morrow than you were to
+      be out till seven o'clock this evening; and if you saw yourself you
+      wouldn't want me to say any more. There is not the least morsel of colour
+      in your face, and you look as if you had a mind to get rid of your body
+      altogether as fast as you can! You want to be in bed for two days running,
+      now this minute."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thank you, dear Mrs. Pritchard," said Fleda smiling; "you are very
+      careful of me; but I must go home to-morrow, and go to bed afterwards."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The housekeeper looked at her a minute in silence, and then said, "Don't,
+      dear Miss Fleda!"--with an energy of entreaty which brought the tears into
+      Fleda's eyes. But she persisted in desiring the carriage; and Mrs.
+      Pritchard was silenced, observing however that she shouldn't wonder if she
+      wasn't able to go after all. Fleda herself was not without a doubt on the
+      subject before the evening was over. The reaction, complete now, began to
+      make itself felt; and morning settled the question. She was not able even
+      to rise from her bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The housekeeper was, in a sort, delighted; and Fleda was in too passive a
+      mood of body and mind to have any care on the subject. The agitation of
+      the past days had given way to an absolute quiet that seemed as if nothing
+      could ever ruffle it again, and this feeling was seconded by the extreme
+      prostration of body. She was a mere child in the hands of her nurse, and
+      had, Mrs. Pritchard said, "if she wouldn't mind her telling,--the sweetest
+      baby-face that ever had so much sense belonging to it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The morning was half spent in dozing slumbers, when Fleda heard a rush of
+      footsteps, much lighter and sprightlier than good Mrs. Pritchard's, coming
+      up the stairs and pattering along the entry to her room; and with little
+      ceremony in rushed Florence and Constance Evelyn. They almost smothered
+      Fleda with their delighted caresses, and ran so hard their questions about
+      her looks and her illness, that she was well nigh spared the trouble of
+      answering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You horrid little creature!" said Constance,--"why didn't you come
+      straight to our house? just think of the injurious suspicions you have
+      exposed us to!--to say nothing of the extent of fiction we have found
+      ourselves obliged to execute. I didn't expect it of you, little Queechy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda kept her pale face quiet on the pillow, and only smiled her
+      incredulous curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But when did you come back, Fleda?" said Miss Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We should never have known a breath about your being here," Constance
+      went on. "We were sitting last night in peaceful unconsciousness of there
+      being any neglected calls upon our friendship in the vicinity, when Mr.
+      Carleton came in and asked for you. Imagine our horror!--we said you had
+      gone out early in the afternoon and had not returned."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You didn't say that!" said Fleda colouring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And he remarked at some length," said Constance, "upon the importance of
+      young ladies having some attendance when they are out late in the evening,
+      and that you in particular were one of those persons--he didn't say, but
+      he intimated, of a slightly volatile disposition,--whom their friends
+      ought not to lose sight of."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what brought you to town again, Fleda?" said the elder sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What makes you talk so, Constance?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I haven't told you the half!" said Constance demurely. "And then mamma
+      excused herself as well as she could, and Mr. Carleton said very seriously
+      that he knew there was a great element of head-strongness in your
+      character--he had remarked it, he said, when you were arguing with Mr.
+      Stackpole."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Constance, be quiet!" said her sister. "<i>Will</i> you tell me, Fleda,
+      what you have come to town for? I am dying with curiosity."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then it's inordinate curiosity, and ought to be checked, my dear," said
+      Fleda smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tell me!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I came to take care of some business that could not very well be attended
+      to at a distance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who did you come with?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One of our Queechy neighbours that I heard was coming to New York."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Wasn't your uncle at home?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of course not. If he had been, there would have been no need of my
+      stirring."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But was there nobody else to do it but you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Uncle Orrin away, you know; and Charlton down at his post--Fort Hamilton,
+      is it?--I forget which fort--he is fast there."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is not so very fast," said Constance, "for I see him every now and
+      then in Broadway shouldering Mr. Thorn instead of a musket; and he has
+      taken up the distressing idea that it is part of his duty to oversee the
+      progress of Florence's worsted-work--(I've made over that horrid thing to
+      her, Fleda)--or else his precision has been struck with the anomaly of
+      blue stars on a white ground, and he is studying that,--I don't know
+      which,--and so every few nights he rushes over from Governor's Island, or
+      somewhere, to prosecute enquiries. Mamma is quite concerned about him--she
+      says he is wearing himself out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mixture of amusement, admiration, and affection, with which the other
+      sister looked at her and laughed with her was a pretty thing to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But where is your other cousin,--Hugh?" said Florence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He was not well."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is your uncle?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He will be at home to-day I expect; and so should I have been--I meant to
+      be there as soon as he was,--but I found this morning that I was not well
+      enough,--to my sorrow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You were not going alone!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O no--a friend of ours was going to-day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I never saw anybody with so many friends!" said Florence. "But you are
+      coming to us now, Fleda. How soon are you going to get up?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O by to-morrow," said Fleda smiling;--"but I had better stay where I am
+      the little while I shall be here--I must go home the first minute I can
+      find an opportunity."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you sha'n't find an opportunity till we've had you," said Constance.
+      "I'm going to bring a carriage for you this afternoon. I could bear the
+      loss of your friendship, my dear, but not the peril of my own reputation.
+      Mr. Carleton is under the impression that you are suffering from a
+      momentary succession of fainting fits, and if we were to leave you here in
+      an empty house to come out of them at your leisure, what would he think of
+      us?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What would he think!--Oh world! Is this it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda was not able to be moved in the afternoon; and it soon appeared
+      that nature would take more revenge than a day's sleep for the rough
+      handling she had had the past week. Fleda could not rise from her bed the
+      next morning; and instead of that a kind of nondescript nervous fever set
+      in; nowise dangerous, but very wearying. She was nevertheless extremely
+      glad of it, for it would serve to explain to all her friends the change of
+      look which had astonished them. They would make it now the token of
+      coming, not of past, evil. The rest she took with her accustomed patience
+      and quietness, thankful for everything after the anxiety and the relief
+      she had just before known.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Gregory came home from Philadelphia in the height of her attack, and
+      aggravated it for a day or two with the fear of his questioning. But Fleda
+      was surprised at his want of curiosity. He asked her indeed what she had
+      come to town for, but her whispered answer of "Business," seemed to
+      satisfy him, for he did not inquire what the business was. He did ask her
+      furthermore what had made her get sick; but this time he was satisfied
+      more easily still, with a very curious sweet smile which was the utmost
+      reply Fleda's wits at the moment could frame. "Well, get well," said he
+      kissing her heartily once or twice, "and I won't quarrel with you about
+      it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The getting well however promised to be a leisurely affair. Dr. Gregory
+      staid two or three days, and then went on to Boston, leaving Fleda in no
+      want of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Pritchard was the tenderest and carefullest of nurres. The Evelyns
+      did everything <i>but</i> nurse her. They sat by her, talked to her, made
+      her laugh, and not seldom made her look sober too, with their wild tales
+      of the world and the world's doings. But they were indeed very
+      affectionate and kind, and Fleda loved them for it. If they wearied her
+      sometimes with their talk, it was a change from the weariness of fever and
+      silence that on the whole was useful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was quieting herself one morning, as well as she could, in the midst
+      of both, lying with shut eyes against her pillow, and trying to fix her
+      mind on pleasant things, when she heard Mrs. Pritchard open the door and
+      come in. She knew it was Mrs. Pritchard, so she didn't move nor look. But
+      in a moment, the knowledge that Mrs. Pritchard's feet had stopped just by
+      the bed, and a strange sensation of something delicious saluting her made
+      her open her eyes; when they lighted upon a huge bunch of violets, just
+      before them and in most friendly neighbourhood to her nose. Fleda started
+      up, and her "Oh!" fairly made the housekeeper laugh; it was the very
+      quintessence of gratification.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where did you get them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I didn't get them indeed, Miss Fleda," said the housekeeper gravely, with
+      an immense amount of delighted satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Delicious!--Where did they come from?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well they must have come from a greenhouse, or hot-house, or something of
+      that kind, Miss Fleda,--these things don't grow nowhere out o' doors at
+      this time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Pritchard guessed Fleda had got the clue, from her quick change of
+      colour and falling eye. There was a quick little smile too; and "How
+      kind!" was upon the end of Fleda's tongue, but it never got any further.
+      Her energies, so far as expression was concerned, seemed to be
+      concentrated in the act of smelling. Mrs. Pritchard stood by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They must be put in water," said Fleda,--"I must have a dish for
+      them--Dear Mrs. Pritchard, will you get me one?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The housekeeper went smiling to herself. The dish was brought, the violets
+      placed in it, and a little table at Fleda's request was set by the side of
+      the bed close to her pillow, for them to stand upon. And Fleda lay on her
+      pillow and looked at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There never were purer-breathed flowers than those. All the pleasant
+      associations of Fleda's life seemed to hang about them, from the time when
+      her childish eyes had first made acquaintance with violets, to the
+      conversation in the library a few days ago; and painful things stood
+      aloof; they had no part. The freshness of youth, and the sweetness of
+      spring-time, and all the kindly influences which had ever joined with both
+      to bless her, came back with their blessing in the violets' reminding
+      breath. Fleda shut her eyes and she felt it; she opened her eyes, and the
+      little double blue things smiled at her good humouredly and said, "Here we
+      are--you may shut them again." And it was curious how often Fleda gave
+      them a smile back as she did so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Pritchard thought Fleda lived upon the violets that day rather than
+      upon food and medicine; or at least, she said, they agreed remarkably well
+      together. And the next day it was much the same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What will you do when they are withered?" she said that evening. "I shall
+      have to see and get some more for you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh they will last a great while," said Fleda smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the next morning Mrs. Pritchard came into her room with a great bunch
+      of roses, the very like of the one Fleda had had at the Evelyns'. She
+      delivered them with a sort of silent triumph, and then as before stood by
+      to enjoy Fleda and the flowers together. But the degree of Fleda's
+      wonderment, pleasure, and gratitude, made her reception of them, outwardly
+      at least, this time rather grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You may throw the others away now, Miss Fleda," said the housekeeper
+      smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Indeed I shall not!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The violets, I suppose, is all gone," Mrs. Pritchard went on;--but I
+      never <i>did</i> see such a bunch of roses as that since I lived
+      anywhere.--They have made a rose of you, Miss Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How beautiful!--" was Fleda's answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Somebody--he didn't say who--desired to know particularly how Miss
+      Ringgan was to-day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Somebody is <i>very</i> kind!" said Fleda from the bottom of her heart.
+      "But dear Mrs. Pritchard, I shall want another dish."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somebody was kind, she thought more and more; for there came every day or
+      two the most delicious bouquets, every day different. They were <i>at
+      least</i> equal in their soothing and refreshing influences to all the
+      efforts of all the Evelyns and Mrs. Pritchard put together. There never
+      came any name with them, and there never was any need. Those bunches of
+      flowers certainly had a physiognomy; and to Fleda were (not the flowers
+      but the choosing, cutting, and putting of them together) the embodiment of
+      an amount of grace, refined feeling, generosity, and kindness, that her
+      imagination never thought of in connection with but one person. And his
+      kindness was answered, perhaps Mrs. Pritchard better than Fleda guessed
+      how well, from the delighted colour and sparkle of the eye with which
+      every fresh arrival was greeted as it walked into her room. By Fleda's
+      order the bouquets were invariably put out of sight before the Evelyns
+      made their first visit in the morning, and not brought out again till all
+      danger of seeing them any more for the day was past. The regular coming of
+      these floral messengers confirmed Mrs. Pritchard in her mysterious
+      surmises about Fleda, which were still further strengthened by this
+      incomprehensible order; and at last she got so into the spirit of the
+      thing that if she heard an untimely ring at the door she would catch up a
+      glass of flowers and run as if they had been contraband, without a word
+      from anybody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Evelyns wrote to Mrs. Rossitur, by Fleda's desire, so as not to alarm
+      her; merely saying that Fleda was not quite well, and that they meant to
+      keep her a little while to recruit herself; and that Mrs. Rossitur must
+      send her some clothes. This last clause was tha particular addition of
+      Constance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fever lasted a fortnight, and then went off by degrees, leaving her
+      with a very small portion of her ordinary strength. Fleda was to go to the
+      Evelyns as soon as she could bear it; at present she was only able to come
+      down to the little back parlour and sit in the doctor's arm chair, and eat
+      jelly, and sleep, and look at Constance, and when Constance was not there
+      look at her flowers. She could hardly bear a book as yet. She hadn't a bit
+      of colour in her face, Mrs. Pritchard said, but she looked better than
+      when she came to town; and to herself the good housekeeper added, that she
+      looked happier too. No doubt that was true. Fleda's principal feeling,
+      ever since she lay down in her bed, had been thankfulness; and now that
+      the ease of returning health was joined to this feeling, her face with all
+      its subdued gravity was as untroubled in its expression as the faces of
+      her flowers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was disagreeably surprised one day, after she had been two or three
+      days down stairs, by a visit from Mrs. Thorn. In her well-grounded dread
+      of seeing one person Fleda had given strict orders that no <i>gentleman</i>
+      should be admitted; she had not counted upon this invasion. Mrs. Thorn had
+      always been extremely kind to her, but though Fleda gave her credit for
+      thorough good-heartedness, and a true liking for herself, she could not
+      disconnect her attentions from another thought, and therefore always
+      wished them away; and never had her kind face been more thoroughly
+      disagreeable to Fleda than when it made its appearance in the doctor's
+      little back parlour on this occasion. With even more than her usual
+      fondness, or Pleda's excited imagination fancied so, Mrs. Thorn lavished
+      caresses upon her, and finally besought her to go out and take the air in
+      her carriage. Fleda tried most earnestly to get rid of this invitation,
+      and was gently unpersuadable, till the lady at last was brought to promise
+      that she should see no creature during the drive but herself. An ominous
+      promise! but Fleda did not know any longer how, to refuse without hurting
+      a person for whom she had really a grateful regard. So she went. And
+      doubted afterwards exceedingly whether she had done well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took special good care to see nobody again till she went to the
+      Evelyns. But then precautions were at an end. It was no longer possible to
+      keep herself shut up. She had cause, poor child, the very first night of
+      her coming, to wish herself back again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This first evening she would fain have pleaded weakness as her excuse and
+      gone to her room, but Constance laid violent hands on her and insisted
+      that she should stay at least a little while with them. And she seemed
+      fated to see all her friends in a bevy. First came Charlton; then followed
+      the Decaturs, whom she knew and liked very well, and engrossed her,
+      happily before her cousin had time to make any enquiries; then came Mr.
+      Carleton; then Mr. Stackpole. Then Mr. Thorn, in expectation of whom
+      Fleda's breath had been coming and going painfully all the evening. She
+      could not meet him without a strange mixture of embarrassment and
+      confusion with the gratitude she wished to express, an embarrassment not
+      at all lessened by the air of happy confidence with which he came forward
+      to her. It carried an intimation that almost took away the little strength
+      she had. And if anything could have made his presence more intolerable, it
+      was the feeling she could not get rid of that it was the cause why Mr.
+      Carleton did not come near her again; though she prolonged her stay in the
+      drawing-room in the hope that he would. It proved to be for Mr. Thorn's
+      benefit alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well you staid all the evening after all," said Constance as they were
+      going up stairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--I wish I hadn't," said Fleda. "I wonder when I shall be likely to
+      find a chance of getting back to Queechy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're not fit yet, so you needn't trouble yourself about it," said
+      Constance. "We'll find you plenty of chances."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda could not think of Mr. Thorn without trembling. His manner meant--so
+      much more than it had any right, or than she had counted upon. He
+      seemed--she pressed her hands upon her face to get rid of the
+      impression--he seemed to take for granted precisely that which she had
+      refused to admit; he seemed to reckon as paid for that which she had
+      declined to set a price upon. Her uncle's words and manner came up in her
+      memory. She could see nothing best to do but to get home as fast as
+      possible. She had no one here to fall back upon. Again that vision of
+      father and mother and grandfather flitted across her fancy; and though
+      Fleda's heart ended by resting down on that foundation to which it always
+      recurred, it rested with a great many tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For several days she denied herself absolutely to morning visitors of
+      every kind. But she could not entirely absent herself from the
+      drawing-room in the evening; and whenever the family were at home there
+      was a regular levee. Mr. Thorn could not be avoided then. He was always
+      there, and always with that same look and manner of satisfied confidence.
+      Fleda was as grave, as silent, as reserved, as she could possibly be and
+      not be rude; but he seemed to take it in excellent good part, as being
+      half indisposition and half timidity. Fleda set her face earnestly towards
+      home, and pressed Mrs. Evelyn to find her an opportunity, weak or strong,
+      of going there; but for those days as yet none presented itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton was at the house almost as often as Mr. Thorn, seldom staying
+      so long however, and never having any more to do with Fleda than he had
+      that first evening. Whenever he did come in contact with her, he was, she
+      thought, as grave as he was graceful. That was to be sure his common
+      manner in company, yet she could not help thinking there was some
+      difference since the walk they had taken together, and it grieved her.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="44"></a>Chapter XLIV.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        The beat-laid schemes o' mice and men<br /> Gang aft agley.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Burns.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      After a few days Charlton verified what Constance had said about his not
+      being very <i>fast</i> at Fort Hamilton, by coming again to see them one
+      morning. Fleda asked him if he could not get another furlough to go with
+      her home, but he declared he was just spending one which was near out; and
+      he could not hope for a third in some time; he must be back at his post by
+      the day after to-morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When do you want to go, coz?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I would to-morrow, if I had anybody to go with me," said Fleda sighing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No you wouldn't," said Constance,--"you are well enough to go out now,
+      and you forget we are all to make Mrs. Thorn happy to-morrow night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not? you can't help yourself; you must; you said you would."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I did not indeed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well then I said it for you, and that will do just as well. Why my dear,
+      if you don't--just think!--the Thorns will be in a state--I should prefer
+      to go through a hedge of any description rather than meet the trying
+      demonstrations which will encounter me on every side."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am going to Mrs. Decatur's," said Fleda;--"she invited me first, and I
+      owe it to her, she has asked me so often and so kindly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shouldn't think you'd enjoy yourself there," said Florence; "they don't
+      talk a bit of English these nights. If I was going, my dear, I would act
+      as your interpreter, but my destiny lies in another direction."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If I cannot make anybody understand my French I will get somebody to
+      condescend to my English," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why do you talk French?" was the instant question from both mouths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Unless she has forgotten herself strangely," said Charlton. "Talk! she
+      will talk to anybody's satisfaction--that happens to differ from her; and
+      I think her tongue cares very little which language it wags in. There is
+      no danger about Fleda's enjoying herself, where people are talking."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda laughed at him, and the Evelyns rather stared at them both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But we are all going to Mrs. Thorn's? you can't go alone?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will make Charlton take me," said Fleda,--"or rather I will take him,
+      if he will let me. Will you, Charlton? will you take care of me to Mrs.
+      Decatur's to-morrow night?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "With the greatest pleasure, my dear coz, but I have another engagement in
+      the course of the evening."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh that is nothing," said Fleda;--"if you will only go with me, that is
+      all I care for. You needn't stay but ten minutes. And you can call for
+      me," she added, turning to the Evelyns,--"as you come back from Mrs.
+      Thorn's."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To this no objection could be made, and the ensuing raillery Fleda bore
+      with steadiness at least if not with coolness; for Charlton heard it, and
+      she was distressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to Mrs. Decatur's the next evening in greater elation of spirits
+      than she had known since she left her uncle's; delighted to be missing
+      from the party at Mrs. Thorn's, and hoping that Mr. Lewis would be
+      satisfied with this very plain hint of her mind. A little pleased too to
+      feel quite free, alone from too friendly eyes, and ears that had too
+      lively a concern in her sayings and doings. She did not in the least care
+      about going to Mrs. Decatur's; her joy was that she was not at the other
+      place. But there never was elation so outwardly quiet. Nobody would have
+      suspected its existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evening was near half over when Mr. Carleton came in. Fleda had half
+      hoped he would be there, and now immediately hoped she might have a chance
+      to see him alone and to thank him for his flowers; she had not been able
+      to do that yet. He presently came up to speak to her just as Charlton, who
+      had found attraction enough to keep him so long, came to tell he was
+      going.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are looking better," said the former, as gravely as ever, but with an
+      eye of serious interest that made the word something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am better," said Fleda gratefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So much better that she is in a hurry to make herself worse," said her
+      cousin. "Mr. Carleton, you are a professor of medicine, I believe,--I have
+      an indistinct impression of your having once prescribed a ride on
+      horseback for somebody;--wouldn't you recommend some measure of prudence
+      to her consideration?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In general," Mr. Carleton answered gravely; "but in the present case I
+      could not venture upon any special prescription, Capt. Rossitur."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As for instance, that she should remain in New York till she is fit to
+      leave it?--By the way, what brought you here again in such a hurry, Fleda?
+      I haven't heard that yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The question was rather sudden. Fleda was a little taken by surprise; her
+      face shewed some pain and confusion both. Mr. Carleton prevented her
+      answer, she could not tell whether with design.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What imprudence do you charge your cousin with, Capt. Rossitur?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why she is in a great hurry to get back to Queechy, before she is able to
+      go anywhere--begging me to find an escort for her. It is lucky I can't. I
+      didn't know I ever should be glad to be 'posted up' in this fashion, but I
+      am."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have not sought very far, Capt. Rossitur," said the voice of Thorn
+      behind him. "Here is one that will be very happy to attend Miss Fleda,
+      whenever she pleases."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's shocked start and change of countenance was seen by more eyes than
+      one pair. Thorn's fell, and a shade crossed his countenance too, for an
+      instant, that Fleda's vision was too dazzled to see. Mr. Carleton moved
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why are <i>you</i> going to Queechy?" said Charlton astonished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His friend was silent a moment, perhaps for want of power to speak. Fleda
+      dared not look at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is not impossible,--unless this lady forbid me. I am not a fixture."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what brought you here, man, to offer your services?" said
+      Charlton;--"most ungallantly leaving so many pairs of bright eyes to shine
+      upon your absence."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Thorn will not find himself in darkness here, Capt. Rossitur," said
+      Mrs. Decatur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's my opinion he ought, ma'am," said Charlton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is my opinion every man ought, who makes his dependance on gleams of
+      sunshine," said Mr. Thorn rather cynically. "I cannot say I was thinking
+      of brightness before or behind me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should think not," said Charlton;--"you don't look as if you had seen
+      any in a good while."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A light goes out every now and then," said Thorn, "and it takes one's
+      eyes some time to get accustomed to it. What a singular world we live in,
+      Mrs. Decatur!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is so new an idea," said the lady laughing, "that I must request an
+      explanation."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What new experience of its singularity has your wisdom made?" sid his
+      friend. "I thought you and the world knew each other's faces pretty well
+      before."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then you have not heard the news?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What news?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hum--I suppose it is not about yet," said Thorn composedly. "No--you
+      haven't heard it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But what, man?" said Charlton,--"let's hear your news, for I must be
+      off."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why--but it is no more than rumour yet--but it is said that strange
+      things are coming to light about a name that used to be held in very high
+      respect."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In this city?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In this city?--yes--it is said proceedings are afoot against one of our
+      oldest citizens, on charge of a very grave offence."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who?--and what offence? what do you mean?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it a secret, Mr. Thorn?" said Mrs. Decatur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you have not heard, perhaps it is as well not to mention names too
+      soon;--if it comes out it will be all over directly; possibly the family
+      may hush it up, and in that case the less said the better; but those have
+      it in hand that will not let it slip through their fingers."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Decatur turned away, saying "how shocking such things were;" and
+      Thorn, with a smile which did not however light up his face, said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You may be off, Charlton, with no concern for the bright eyes you leave
+      behind you--I will endeavour to atone for my negligence elsewhere, by my
+      mindfulness of them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't excuse you," said Charlton;--but his eye catching at the moment
+      another attraction opposite in the form of man or woman, instead of
+      quitting the room he leisurely crossed it to speak to the new-comer; and
+      Thorn with an entire change of look and manner pressed forward and offered
+      his arm to Fleda, who was looking perfectly white. If his words had needed
+      any commentary it was given by his eye as it met hers in speaking the last
+      sentence to Mrs. Decatur. No one was near whom she knew and Mr. Thorn led
+      her out to a little back room where the gentlemen had thrown off their
+      cloaks, where the air was fresher, and placing her on a seat stood waiting
+      before her till she could speak to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you mean, Mr. Thorn?" Fleda looked as much as said, when she
+      could meet his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I may rather ask you what <i>you</i> mean, Miss Fleda," he answered
+      gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda drew breath painfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I mean nothing," she said lowering her head again,--"I have done
+      nothing--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you think I meant nothing when I agreed to do all you wished?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought you said you would do it freely," she said, with a tone of
+      voice that might have touched anybody, there was such a sinking of heart
+      in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Didn't you understand me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And is it all over now?" said Fleda after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not yet--but it soon may be. A weak hand may stop it now,--it will soon
+      be beyond the power of the strongest."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what becomes of your promise that it should no more be heard of?"
+      said Fleda, looking up at him with a colourless face but eyes that put the
+      question forcibly nevertheless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is any promise bound to stand without its conditions?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I made no conditions," said Fleda quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Forgive me,--but did you not permit me to understand them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No!--or if I did I could not help it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you say that you wished to help it?" said he gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I must say so now, then, Mr. Thorn," said Fleda withdrawing the hand he
+      had taken;--"I did not mean or wish you to think so, but I was too ill to
+      speak--almost to know what I did--It was not my fault--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You do not make it mine, that I chose such a time, selfishly, I grant, to
+      draw from your lips the words that are more to me than life?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Cannot you be generous?"--<i>for once</i>, she was very near saying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where you are concerned, I do not know how."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was silent a moment, and then bowed her face in her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "May I not ask that question of you?" said he, bending down and
+      endeavouring to remove them;--"will you not say--or look--that word that
+      will make others happy beside me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I cannot, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not for their sakes?" he said calmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Can you ask me to do for theirs what I would not for my own?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--for mine," he said, with a meaning deliberateness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was silent, with a face of white determination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It will be beyond <i>eluding</i>, as beyond recall, the second time. I
+      may seem selfish--I am selfish--but dear Miss Ringgan you do not see
+      all,--you who make me so can make me anything else with a touch of your
+      hand--it is selfishness that would be bound to your happiness, if you did
+      but entrust it to me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda neither spoke nor looked at him and rose up from her chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is this <i>your</i> generosity?" he said, pointedly though gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is not the question now, sir," said Fleda, who was trembling
+      painfully. "I cannot do evil that good may come."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But <i>evil</i>?" said he detaining her,--"what evil do I ask of you?--to
+      <i>remove</i> evil, I do."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda clasped her hands, but answered calmly,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I cannot make any pretences, sir;--I cannot promise to give what is not
+      in my power."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In whose power then?" said he quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A feeling of indignation came to Fleda's aid, and she turned away. But he
+      stopped her still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you think I do not understand?" he said with a covert sneer that had
+      the keenness and hardness, and the brightness, of steel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>I</i> do not, sir," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you think I do not know whom you came here to meet?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's glance of reproach was a most innocent one, but it did not check
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Has that fellow renewed his old admiration of you?" he went on in the
+      same tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do not make me desire his old protection," said Fleda, her gentle face
+      roused to a flush of displeasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Protection!" said Charlton coming in,--"who wants protection? here it
+      is--protection from what? my old friend Lewis? what the deuce does this
+      lady want of protection, Mr. Thorn?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was plain enough that Fleda wanted it, from the way she was drooping
+      upon his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You may ask the lady herself," said Thorn, in the same tone he had before
+      used,--"I have not the honour to be her spokesman."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She don't need one," said Charlton,--"I addressed myself to you--speak
+      for yourself, man."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not sure that it would be her pleasure I should," said Thorn. "Shall
+      I tell this gentleman, Miss Ringgan, who needs protection, and from
+      what?--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda raised her head, and putting her hand on his arm looked a
+      concentration of entreaty--lips were sealed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you give me," said he gently taking the hand in his own, "your sign
+      manual for Capt. Rossitur's security? It is not too late.--Ask it of her,
+      sir!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What does this mean?" said Charlton looking from his cousin to his
+      friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You shall have the pleasure of knowing, sir, just so soon as I find it
+      convenient."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will have a few words with you on this subject, my fine fellow," said
+      Capt. Rossitur, as the other was preparing to leave the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You had better speak to somebody else," said Thorn. "But I am ready."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charlton muttered an imprecation upon his absurdity, and turned his
+      attention to Fleda, who needed it. And yet desired anything else. For a
+      moment she had an excuse for not answering his questions in her inability;
+      and then opportunely Mrs. Decatur came in to look after her; and she was
+      followed by her daughter. Fleda roused all her powers to conceal and
+      command her feelings; rallied herself; said she had been a little weak and
+      faint; drank water, and declared herself able to go back into the
+      drawing-room. To go home would have been her utmost desire, but at the
+      instant her energies were all bent to the one point of putting back
+      thought and keeping off suspicion. And in the first hurry and bewilderment
+      of distress the dread of finding herself alone with Charlton till she had
+      had time to collect her thoughts would of itself have been enough to
+      prevent her accepting the proposal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She entered the drawing-room again on Mrs. Decatur's arm, and had stood a
+      few minutes talking or listening, with that same concentration of all her
+      faculties upon the effort to bear up outwardly, when Charlton came up to
+      ask if he should leave her. Fleda made no objection, and he was out of her
+      sight, far enough to be beyond reach or recall, when it suddenly struck
+      her that she ought not to have let him go without speaking to
+      him,--without entreating him to see her in the morning before he saw
+      Thorn. The sickness of this new apprehension was too much for poor Fleda's
+      power of keeping up. She quietly drew her arm from Mrs. Decatur's, saying
+      that she would sit down; and sought out a place for herself apart from the
+      rest by an engraving stand; where for a little while, not to seem
+      unoccupied, she turned over print after print that she did not see. Even
+      that effort failed at last; and she sat gazing at one of Sir Thomas
+      Lawrence's bright-faced children, and feeling as if in herself the tides
+      of life were setting back upon their fountain preparatory to being still
+      forever. She became sensible that some one was standing beside the
+      engravings, and looked up at Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you ill?" he said, very gently and tenderly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer was a quick motion of Fleda's hand to her head, speaking sudden
+      pain, and perhaps sudden difficulty of self-command. She did not speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you have anything?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A whispered "no."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Would you like to return to Mrs. Evelyn's?--I have a carriage here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a look of relief that seemed to welcome him as her good angel, Pleda
+      instantly rose up, and took the arm he offered her. She would have
+      hastened from the room then, but he gently checked her pace; and Fleda was
+      immediately grateful for the quiet and perfect shielding from observation
+      that his manner secured her. He went with her up the stairs, and to the
+      very door of the dressing-room. There Fleda hurried on her shoes and
+      mufflers in trembling fear that some one might come and find her, gained
+      Mr. Carleton's arm again, and was placed in the carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The drive was in perfect silence, and Fleda's agony deepened and
+      strengthened with every minute. She had freedom to think, and thought did
+      but carry a torch into chamber after chamber of misery. There seemed
+      nothing to be done. She could not get hold of Charlton; and if she
+      could?--Nothing could be less amenable than his passions to her gentle
+      restraints. Mr. Thorn was still less approachable or manageable, except in
+      one way, that she did not even think of. His insinuations about Mr.
+      Carleton did not leave even a tinge of embarrassment upon her mind; they
+      were cast from her as insulting absurdities, which she could not think of
+      a second time without shame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The carriage rolled on with them a long time without a word being said.
+      Mr. Carleton knew that she was not weeping nor faint. But as the light of
+      the lamps was now and then cast within the carriage he saw that her face
+      looked ghastly; and he saw too that its expression was not of a quiet
+      sinking under sorrow, nor of an endeavour to bear up against it, but a
+      wild searching gaze into the darkness of <i>possibilities</i>. They had
+      near reached Mrs. Evelyn's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I cannot see you so," he said, gently touching the hand which lay
+      listlessly beside him. "You are ill!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the same motion of the other hand to her face, the quick token of
+      great pain suddenly stirred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For the sake of old times, let me ask," said he, "can nothing be done?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those very gentle and delicate tones of sympathy and kindness Were too
+      much to bear. The hand was snatched away to be pressed to her face. Oh
+      that those old times were back again, and she a child that could ask his
+      protection!--No one to give it now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent a moment. Fleda's head bowed beneath the mental pressure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Has Dr. Gregory returned?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The negative answer was followed by a half-uttered exclamation of
+      longing,--checked midway, but sufficiently expressive of her want.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you trust me?" he said after another second of pausing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perfectly!" said Fleda amidst her tears, too much excited to know what
+      she was saying, and in her simplicity half forgetting that she was not a
+      child still;--"more than any one in the world!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The few words he had spoken, and the manner of them, had curiously borne
+      her back years in a minute; she seemed to be under his care more than for
+      the drive home. He did not speak again for a minute; when he did his tone
+      was very quiet and lower than before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Give me what a friend <i>can</i> have in charge to do for you, and it
+      shall be done."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda raised her head and looked out of the window in a silence of doubt.
+      The carriage stopped at Mrs. Evelyn's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not now," said Mr. Carleton, as the servant was about to open the
+      door;--"drive round the square--till I speak to you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was motionless and almost breathless with uncertainty. If Charlton
+      could be hindered from meeting Mr. Thorn--But how, could Mr. Carleton
+      effect it?--But there was that in him or in his manner which invariably
+      created confidence in his ability, or fear of it, even in strangers; and
+      how much more in her who had a childish but very clear recollection of
+      several points in his character which confirmed the feeling. And might not
+      something be done, through his means, to facilitate her uncle's escape? of
+      whom she seemed to herself now the betrayer.--But to tell him the story
+      I--a person of his high nice notions of character--what a distance it
+      would put even between his friendship and her,--but that thought was
+      banished instantly, with one glance at Mr. Thorn's imputation of
+      ungenerousness. To sacrifice herself to <i>him</i> would not have been
+      generosity,--to lower herself in the esteem of a different character, she
+      felt, called for it. There was time even then too for one swift thought of
+      the needlessness and bitter fruits of wrong-doing. But here they
+      were;--should she make them known?--and trouble Mr. Carleton, friend
+      though he were, with these miserable matters in which he had no
+      concern?--She sat with a beating heart and a very troubled brow, but a
+      brow as easy to read as a child's. It was the trouble of anxious
+      questioning. Mr. Carleton watched it for a little while,--undecided as
+      ever, and more pained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You said you trusted me," he said quietly, taking her hand again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But--I don't know what you could do, Mr. Carleton," Fleda said with a
+      trembling voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you let me be the judge of that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I cannot bear to trouble you with these miserable things--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You cannot," said he with that same quiet tone, "but by thinking and
+      saying so. I can have no greater pleasure than to take pains for you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda heard these words precisely and with the same simplicity as a child
+      would have heard them, and answered with a very frank burst of
+      tears,--soon, as soon as possible, according to her custom, driven back;
+      though even in the act of quieting herself they broke forth again as
+      uncontrollably as at first. But Mr. Carleton had not long to wait. She
+      raised her head again after a short struggle, with the wonted look of
+      patience sitting upon her brow, and wiping away her tears paused merely
+      for breath and voice. He was perfectly silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton, I will tell you," she began;--"I hardly know whether I
+      ought or ought not,--" and her hand went to her forehead for a
+      moment,--"but I cannot think to-night--and I have not a friend to apply
+      to--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She hesitated; and then went on, with a voice that trembled and quavered
+      sadly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Thorn has a secret--of my uncle's--in his power--which he
+      promised--without conditions--to keep faithfully; and now insists that he
+      will not--but upon conditions--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And cannot the conditions be met?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--and--O I may as well tell you at once?" said Fleda in bitter
+      sorrow,--"it is a crime that he committed--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Thorn?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--oh no!" said Fleda weeping bitterly,--"not he--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her agitation was excessive for a moment; then she threw it off, and spoke
+      more collectedly, though with exceeding depression of manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was long ago--when he was in trouble--he put Mr. Thorn's name to a
+      note, and never was able to take it up;--and nothing was ever heard about
+      it till lately; and last week he was going to leave the country, and Mr.
+      Thorn promised that the proceedings should be entirely given up; and that
+      was why I came to town, to find uncle Rolf and bring him home; and I did,
+      and he is gone; and now Mr. Thorn says it is all going on again and that
+      he will not escape this time;--and I have done it!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda writhed again in distress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thorn promised without conditions?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly--he promised freely--and now he insists upon them; and you see
+      uncle Rolf would have been safe out of the country now, if it hadn't been
+      for me--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think I can undo this snarl," said Mr. Carleton calmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But that is not all," said Fleda, a little quieted;--"Charlton came in
+      this evening when we were talking, and he was surprised to find me so, and
+      Mr. Thorn was in a very ill humour, and some words passed between them;
+      and Charlton threatened to see him again; and Oh if he does!" said poor
+      Fleda,--"that will finish our difficulties!--for Charlton is very hot, and
+      I know how it will end--how it must end--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is your cousin to be found?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know where he lodges when he is in town."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You did not leave him at Mrs. Decatur's. Do you know where he is this
+      evening?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes!" said Fleda, wondering that she should have heard and
+      remembered,--"he said he was going to meet a party of his brother officers
+      at Mme. Fouch&eacute;'s--a sister-in-law of his Colonel, I believe."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know her. This note--was it the name of the young Mr. Thorn, or of his
+      father that was used?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of his father!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Has <i>he</i> appeared at all in this business?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda, feeling for the first time that there was something
+      notable about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What sort of person do you take him to be?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very kind--very pleasant, always, he has been to me, and I should think
+      to everybody,--very unlike the son"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton had ordered the coachman back to Mrs. Evelyn's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know the amount of the note? It may be desirable that I should not
+      appear uninformed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was for four thousand dollars" Fleda said in the low voice of shame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And when given?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know exactly--but six years ago--some time in the winter of '43,
+      it must have been."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He said no more till the carriage stopped; and then before handing her out
+      of it, lifted her hand to his lips. That carried all the promise Fleda
+      wanted from him. How oddly, how curiously, her hand kept the feeling of
+      that kiss upon it all night.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="45"></a>Chapter XLV.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Heat not a furnace for your friend so hot<br /> That it may singe
+        yourself.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Shakspeare.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton went to Mme. Fouch&eacute;'s, who received most graciously,
+      as any lady would, his apology for introducing himself unlooked-for, and
+      begged that he would commit the same fault often. As soon as practicable
+      he made his way to Charlton, and invited him to breakfast with him the
+      next morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Carleton always said it never was known that Guy was refused anything
+      he had a mind to ask. Charlton, though taken by surprise, and certainly
+      not too much prepossessed in his favour, was won by an influence that
+      where its owner chose to exert it was generally found irresistible; and
+      not only accepted the invitation, but was conscious to himself of doing it
+      with a good deal of pleasure. Even when Mr. Carleton made the further
+      request that Capt. Rossitur would in the mean time see no one on business,
+      of any kind, intimating that the reason would then be given, Charlton
+      though startling a little at this restraint upon his freedom of motion
+      could do no other than give the desired promise, and with the utmost
+      readiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Guy then went to Mr. Thorn's.--It was by this time not early.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Lewis Thorn--is he at home?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is, sir," said the servant admitting him rather hesitatingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish to see him a few moments on business."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is no hour for business," said the voice of Mr. Lewis from over the
+      balusters;--"I can't see anybody to-night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ask but a few minutes," said Mr. Carleton. "It is important."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It may be any thing!" said Thorn. "I won't do business after twelve
+      o'clock."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton desired the servant to carry his card, with the same request,
+      to Mr, Thorn the elder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's that?" said Thorn as the man came up stairs,--"my father?--Pshaw!
+      <i>he</i> can't attend to it--Well, walk up, sir, if you please!--may as
+      well have it over and done with it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton mounted the stairs and followed the young gentleman into an
+      apartment to which he rapidly led the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You've no objections to this, <i>I</i> suppose?" Thorn remarked as he
+      locked the door behind them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly not," said Mr. Carleton coolly, taking out the key and putting
+      it in his pocket;--"my business is private--it needs no witnesses."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Especially as it so nearly concerns yourself," said Thorn sneeringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Which part of it, sir?" said Mr. Carleton with admirable breeding. It
+      vexed at the same time that it constrained Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll let you know presently!" he said, hurriedly proceeding to the lower
+      end of the room where some cabinets stood, and unlocking door after door
+      in mad haste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The place had somewhat the air of a study, perhaps Thorn's private room. A
+      long table stood in the middle of the floor, with materials for writing,
+      and a good many books were about the room, in cases and on the tables,
+      with maps and engravings and portfolios, and a nameless collection of
+      articles, the miscellaneous gathering of a man of leisure and some
+      literary taste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their owner presently came back from the cabinets with tokens of a very
+      different kind about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There, sir!" he said, offering to his guest a brace of most
+      inhospitable-looking pistols,--"take one and take your stand, as soon as
+      you please--nothing like coming to the point at once!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was heated and excited even more than his manner indicated. Mr.
+      Carleton glanced at him and stood quietly examining the pistol he had
+      taken. It was all ready loaded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is a business that comes upon me by surprise," he said calmly,--"I
+      don't know what I have to do with this, Mr. Thorn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well I do," said Thorn, "and that's enough. Take your place, sir! You
+      escaped me once, but"--and he gave his words dreadful emphasis,--"you
+      won't do it the second time!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You do not mean," said the other, "that your recollection of such an
+      offence has lived out so many years?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir! no sir!" said Thorn,--"it is not that. I despise it, as I do the
+      offender. You have touched me more nearly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let me know in what," said Mr. Carleton turning his pistol's mouth down
+      upon the table and leaning on it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You know already,--what do you ask me for?" said Thorn who was
+      foaming,--"if you say you don't you lie heartily. I'll tell you nothing
+      but out of <i>this</i>--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have not knowingly injured you, sir,--in a whit."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then a Carleton may be a liar," said Thorn, "and you are one--dare say
+      not the first. Put yourself there, sir, will you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well," said Guy carelessly,--"if it is decreed that I am to fight of
+      course there's no help for it; but as I have business on hand that might
+      not be so well done afterwards I must beg your attention to that in the
+      first place."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, sir," said Thorn,--"I'll attend to nothing--I'll hear nothing from
+      you. I know you!--I'll not hear a word. I'll see to the business!--Take
+      your stand."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will not have anything to do with pistols," said Mr. Carleton coolly,
+      laying his out of his hand;--"they make too much noise."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who cares for the noise?" said Thorn. "It won't hurt you; and the door is
+      locked."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But people's ears are not," said Guy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither tone nor attitude nor look had changed in the least its calm
+      gracefulness. It began to act upon Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, in the devil's name, have your own way," said he, throwing down his
+      pistol too, and going back to the cabinets at the lower end of the
+      room,--"there are rapiers here, if you like them better--<i>I</i>
+      don't,--the shortest the best for me,--but here they are--take your
+      choice."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Guy examined them carefully for a few minutes, and then laid them both,
+      with a firm hand upon them, on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will choose neither, Mr. Thorn, till you have heard me. I came here to
+      see you on the part of others--I should be a recreant to my charge if I
+      allowed you or myself to draw me into anything that might prevent my
+      fulfilling it. That must be done first."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorn looked with a lowering brow on the indications of his opponent's eye
+      and attitude; they left him plainly but one course to take.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well speak and have done," he said as in spite of himself;--but I know it
+      already."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am here as a friend of Mr. Rossitur."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why don't you say a friend of somebody else, and come nearer the truth?"
+      said Thorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an intensity of expression in his sneer, but pain was there as
+      well as anger; and it was with even a feeling of pity that Mr. Carleton
+      answered,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The truth will be best reached, sir, if I am allowed to choose my own
+      words."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no haughtiness in the steady gravity of this speech, whatever
+      there was in the quiet silence he permitted to follow. Thorn did not break
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am informed of the particulars concerning this prosecution of Mr.
+      Rossitur--I am come here to know if no terms can be obtained."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No!" said Thorn,--"no terms--I won't speak of terms. The matter will be
+      followed up now till the fellow is lodged in jail, where he deserves to
+      be."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you aware, sir, that this, if done, will be the cause of very great
+      distress to a family who have <i>not</i> deserved it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That can't be helped," said Thorn. "Of course!--it must cause distress,
+      but you can't act upon that. Of course when a man turns rogue he ruins his
+      family--that's part of his punishment--and a just one."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The law is just," said Mr. Carleton,--"but a friend may be merciful."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't pretend to be a friend," said Thorn viciously,--"and I have no
+      cause to be merciful. I like to bring a man to public shame when he has
+      forfeited his title to anything else; and I intend that Mr. Rossitur shall
+      become intimately acquainted with the interior of the State's Prison."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did it ever occur to you that public shame <i>might</i> fall upon other
+      than Mr. Rossitur? and without the State Prison?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorn fixed a somewhat startled look upon the steady powerful eye of his
+      opponent, and did not like its meaning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You must explain yourself, sir," he said haughtily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am acquainted with <i>all</i> the particulars of this proceeding, Mr.
+      Thorn. If it goes abroad, so surely will they."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She told you, did she?" said Thorn in a sudden flash of fury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton was silent, with his air of imperturbable reserve, telling
+      and expressing nothing but a cool independence that put the world at a
+      distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ha!" said Thorn,--"it is easy to see why our brave Englishman comes here
+      to solicit 'terms' for his honest friend Rossitur--he would not like the
+      scandal of franking letters to Sing Sing. Come, sir," he said snatching up
+      the pistol,--"our business is ended--come, I say! or I won't wait for
+      you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the pistol was struck from his baud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not yet," said Mr. Carleton calmly,--"you shall have your turn at
+      these,--mind, I promise you;--but my business must be done first--till
+      then, let them alone!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well what is it?" said Thorn impatiently. "Rossitur will be a convict, I
+      tell you; so you'll have to give up all thoughts of his niece, or pocket
+      her shame along with her. What more have you got to say? that's all your
+      business, I take it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are mistaken, Mr. Thorn," said Mr. Carleton gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Am I? In what?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In every position of your last speech."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It don't affect your plans and views, I suppose, personally, whether this
+      prosecution is continued or not?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It does not in the least."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is indifferent to you, I suppose, what sort of a Queen consort you
+      carry to your little throne of a provinciality down yonder?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will reply to you, sir, when you come back to the subject," said Mr.
+      Carleton coldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You mean to say that your pretensions have not been in the way of mine?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have made none, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Doesn't she like you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have never asked her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then what possessed her to tell you all this to-night?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Simply because I was an old friend and the only one at hand, I presume."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you do not look for any reward of your services, of course?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish for none, sir, but her relief."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, it don't signify," said Thorn with a mixture of expressions in his
+      face,--"if I believed you, which I don't,--it don't signify a hair what
+      you do, when once this matter is known. I should never think of advancing
+      <i>my</i> pretensions into a felon's family."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You know that the lady in whose welfare you take so much interest will in
+      that case suffer aggravated distress as having been the means of hindering
+      Mr. Rossitur's escape,"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Can't help it," said Thorn, beating the table with a ruler;--"so she has;
+      she must suffer for it. It isn't my fault."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are willing then to abide the consequences of a full disclosure of
+      all the circumstances?--for part will not come out without the whole?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is happily nobody to tell them," said Thorn with a sneer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pardon me--they will not only be told, but known thoroughly in all the
+      circles in this country that know Mr. Thorn's name."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>The lady</i>" said Thorn in the same tone, "would hardly relish such a
+      publication of <i>her</i> name--<i>her welfare</i> would be scantily
+      advantaged by it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will take the risk of that upon myself," said Mr. Carleton quietly;
+      "and the charge of the other."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You dare not!" said Thorn. "You shall not go alive out of this room to do
+      it! Let me have it, sir! you said you would--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His passion was at a fearful height, for the family pride which had been
+      appealed to felt a touch of fear, and his other thoughts were confirmed
+      again, besides the dim vision of a possible thwarting of all his plans.
+      Desire almost concentrated itself upon revenge against the object that
+      threatened them. He had thrown himself again towards the weapons which lay
+      beyond his reach, but was met and forcibly withheld from them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Stand back!" said Mr. Carleton. "I said I would, but I am not
+      ready;--finish this business first."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is there to finish?" said Thorn furiously;--"you will never live to
+      do anything out of these doors again--you are mocking yourself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My life is not in your hands, sir, and I will settle this matter before I
+      put it in peril. If not with you, with Mr. Thorn your father, to whom it
+      more properly belongs."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You cannot leave the room to see him," said Thorn sneeringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is at my pleasure," said the other,--"unless hindered by means I do
+      not think you will use."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorn was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you yield anything of justice, once more, in favour of this
+      distressed family?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is, yield the whole, and let the guilty go free."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When the punishment of the offender would involve that of so many
+      unoffending, who in this case would feel it with peculiar severity."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He deserves it, if it was only for the money he has kept me out of--he
+      ought to be made to refund what he has stolen, if it took the skin off his
+      back!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That part of his obligation," said Mr. Carleton, "I am authorized to
+      discharge, on condition of having the note given up. I have a cheque with
+      me which I am commissioned to fill up, from one of the best names here. I
+      need only the date of the note, which the giver of the cheque did not
+      know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorn hesitated, again tapping the table with the ruler in a troubled
+      manner. He knew by the calm erect figure before him and the steady eye he
+      did not care to meet that the threat of disclosure would be kept. He was
+      not prepared to brave it,--in case his revenge should fail;--and if it did
+      not----
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is deuced folly," he said at length with a half laugh,--"for I shall
+      have it back again in five minutes, if my eye don't play me a
+      trick,--however, if you will have it so--I don't care. There are chances
+      in all things--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went again to the cabinets, and presently brought the endorsed note.
+      Mr. Carleton gave it a cool and careful examination, to satisfy himself of
+      its being the true one; and then delivered him the cheque; the blank duly
+      filled up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There are chances in nothing, sir," he said, as he proceeded to burn the
+      note effectually in the candle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you mean?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I mean that there is a Supreme Disposer of all things, who among the rest
+      has our lives in his hand. And now, sir, I will give you that chance at my
+      life for which you have been so eagerly wishing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus25.jpg"><img src="images/illus25.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="'Well, take your place,' said Thorn."
+      title="'Well, take your place,' said Thorn." /><br /> "Well, take your
+      place," said Thorn.</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well take your place," said Thorn seizing his pistol,--"and take your
+      arms--put yourself at the end of the table----!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shall stand here," said Mr. Carleton, quietly folding his arms;--"you
+      may take your place where you please."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you are not armed!" said Thorn impatiently,--"why don't you get
+      ready? what are you waiting for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have nothing to do with arms," said Mr. Carleton smiling; "I have no
+      wish to hurt you, Mr. Thorn; I bear you no ill-will. But you may do what
+      you please with me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you promised!" said Thorn in desperation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I abide by my promise, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorn's pistol hand fell; he looked <i>dreadfully</i>. There was a silence
+      of several minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well?"--said Mr. Carleton looking up and smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can do nothing unless you will," said Thorn hoarsely, and looking
+      hurriedly away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am at your pleasure, sir! But on my own part I have none to gratify."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was silence again, during which Thorn's face was pitiable in its
+      darkness. He did not stir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I did not come here in enmity, Mr. Thorn," said Guy after a little
+      approaching him;--"I have none now. If you believe me you will throw away
+      the remains of yours and take my hand in pledge of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorn was ashamed and confounded, in the midst of passions that made him
+      at the moment a mere wreck of himself. He inwardly drew back exceedingly
+      from the proposal. But the grace with which the words were said wrought
+      upon all the gentlemanly character that belonged to him, and made it
+      impossible not to comply. The pistol was exchanged for Mr. Carleton's
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I need not assure you," said the latter, "that nothing of what we have
+      talked of to-night shall ever be known or suspected, in any quarter,
+      unless by your means."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thorn's answer was merely a bow, and Mr. Carleton withdrew, his quondam
+      antagonist lighting him ceremoniously to the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was easy for Mr. Carleton the next morning to deal with his guest at
+      the break fast-table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The appointments of the service were such as of themselves to put Charlton
+      in a good humour, if he had not come already provided with that happy
+      qualification; and the powers of manner and conversation which his
+      entertainer brought into play not only put them into the background of
+      Capt. Rossitur's perceptions but even made him merge certain other things
+      in fascination, and lose all thought of what probably had called him
+      there. Once before, he had known Mr. Carleton come out in a like manner,
+      but this time he forgot to be surprised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The meal was two thirds over before the business that had drawn them
+      together was alluded to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I made an odd request of you last night, Capt. Rossitur," said his
+      host;--"you haven't asked for an explanation."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I had forgotten all about it," said Rossitur candidly. "I am <i>incons&eacute;quent</i>
+      enough myself not to think everything odd that requires an explanation."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then I hope you will pardon me if mine seem to touch upon what is not my
+      concern. You had some cause to be displeased with Mr. Thorn's behaviour
+      last night?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Who told you as much?--was in Rossitur's open eyes, and upon his tongue;
+      but few ever asked naughty questions of Mr Carleton. Charlton's eyes came
+      back, not indeed to their former dimensions, but to his plate, in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He was incomprehensible," he said after a minute,--"and didn't act like
+      himself--I don't know what was the matter. I shall call him to account for
+      it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Capt. Rossitur, I am going to ask you a favour."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will grant it with the greatest pleasure," said Charlton,--"if it lie
+      within my power."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A wise man's addition," said Mr. Carleton,--"but I trust you will not
+      think me extravagant. I will hold myself much obliged to you if you will
+      let Mr. Thorn's folly, or impertinence, go this time without notice."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charlton absolutely laid down his knife in astonishment; while at the same
+      moment this slight let to the assertion of his dignity roused it to
+      uncommon pugnaciousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sir--Mr. Carleton--" he stammered,--"I would be very happy to grant
+      anything in my power,--but this, sir,--really goes beyond it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Permit me to say," said Mr. Carleton, "that I have myself seen Thorn upon
+      the business that occasioned his discomposure, and that it has been
+      satisfactorily arranged; so that nothing more is to be gained or desired
+      from a second interview."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Who gave you authority to do any such thing?--was again in Charlton's
+      eyes, and an odd twinge crossed his mind; but as before his thoughts were
+      silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>My</i> part of the business cannot have been arranged," he said,--"for
+      it lies in a question or two that I must put to the gentleman myself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What will that question or two probably end in?" said Mr. Carleton
+      significantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can't tell!" said Rossitur,--"depends on himself--it will end according
+      to his answers."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is his offence so great that it cannot be forgiven upon my entreaty?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton!" said Rossitur,--"I would gladly pleasure you, sir, but you
+      see, this is a thing a man owes to himself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What thing, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, not to suffer impertinence to be offered him with impunity."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Even though the punishment extend to hearts at home that must feel it far
+      more heavily than the offender?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Would you suffer yourself to be insulted, Mr. Carleton?" said Rossitur,
+      by way of a mouth stopper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not if I could help it," said Mr. Carleton smiling;--"but if such a
+      misfortune happened, I don't know how it would be repaired by being made a
+      matter of life and death."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But honour might," said Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Honour is not reached, Capt. Rossitur. Honour dwells in a strong citadel,
+      and a squib against the walls does in no wise affect their security."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But also it is not consistent with honour to sit still and suffer it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Question. The firing of a cracker, I think, hardly warrants a sally."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It calls for chastisement though," said Rossitur a little shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know that," said Mr. Carleton gravely. "We have it on the highest
+      authority that it is the glory of man to <i>pass by</i> a transgression."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you can't go by that," said Charlton a little fidgeted;--"the world
+      wouldn't get along so;--men must take care of themselves."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly. But what part of themselves is cared for in this resenting of
+      injuries?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, their good name!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As how affected?--pardon me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By the world's opinion," said Rossitur,--"which stamps every man with
+      something worse than infamy who cannot protect his own standing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is to say," said Mr. Carleton seriously,--"that Capt. Rossitur will
+      punish a fool's words with death, or visit the last extremity of distress
+      upon those who are dearest to him, rather than leave the world in any
+      doubt of his prowess."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton!" said Rossitur colouring. "What do you mean by speaking so,
+      sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not to displease you, Capt. Rossitur."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then you count the world's opinion for nothing?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For less than nothing--compared with the regards I have named."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You would brave it without scruple?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not call him a brave man who would not, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I remember," said Charlton half laughing,--"you did it yourself once; and
+      I must confess I believe nobody thought you lost anything by it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But forgive me for asking," said Mr. Carleton,--"is this terrible world a
+      party to <i>this</i> matter? In the request which I made,--and which I
+      have not given up, sir,--do I presume upon any more than the sacrifice of
+      a little private feeling?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, yes,--" said Charlton looking somewhat puzzled, "for I promised the
+      fellow I would see to it, and I must keep my word."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you know how that will of necessity issue."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can't consider that, sir; that is a secondary matter. I must do what I
+      told him I would."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "At all hazards?" said Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What hazards?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not hazard, but certainty,--of incurring a reckoning far less easy to
+      deal with."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What, do you mean with yourself?" said Rossitur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir," said Mr. Carleton, a shade of even sorrowful expression crossing
+      his face;--"I mean with one whose displeasure is a more weighty
+      matter;--one who has declared very distinctly, 'Thou shalt not kill.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sorry for it," said Rossitur after a disturbed pause of some
+      minutes,--"I wish you had asked me anything else; but we can't take this
+      thing in the light you do, sir. I wish Thorn had been in any spot of the
+      world but at Mrs. Decatur's last night, or that Fleda hadn't taken me
+      there; but since he was, there is no help for it,--I must make him account
+      for his behaviour, to her as well as to me. I really don't know how to
+      help it, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Let me beg you to reconsider that," Mr. Carleton said with a smile which
+      disarmed offence,--"for if you will not help it, I must."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charlton looked in doubt for a moment and then asked "how he would help
+      it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In that case, I shall think it my duty to have you bound over to keep the
+      peace."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke gravely now, and with that quiet tone which always carries
+      conviction. Charlton stared unmistakably and in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are not in earnest?" he then said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I trust you will permit me to leave you forever in doubt on that point,"
+      said Mr. Carleton, with again a slight giving way of the muscles of his
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I cannot indeed," said Rossitur. "Do you mean what you said just now?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Entirely."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But Mr. Carleton," said Rossitur, flushing and not knowing exactly how to
+      take him up,--"is this the manner of one gentleman towards another?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not chosen right, for he received no answer but an absolute
+      quietness which needed no interpretation. Charlton was vexed and confused,
+      but somehow it did not come into his head to pick a quarrel with his host,
+      in spite of his irritation. That was perhaps because he felt it to be
+      impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I beg your pardon," he said, most unconsciously verifying Fleda's words
+      in his own person,--"but Mr. Carleton, do me the favour to say that I have
+      misunderstood your words. They are incomprehensible to me, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I must abide by them nevertheless, Capt. Rossitur," Mr. Carleton answered
+      with a smile. "I will not permit this thing to be done, while, as I
+      believe, I have the power to prevent it. You see," he said, smiling
+      again,--"I put in practice my own theory."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charlton looked exceedingly disturbed, and maintained a vexed and
+      irresolute silence for several minutes, realizing the extreme
+      disagreeableness of having more than his match to deal with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come, Capt. Kossitur," said the other turning suddenly round upon
+      him,--"say that you forgive me what you know was meant in no disrespect to
+      you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I certainly should not," said Rossitur, yielding however with a half
+      laugh, "if it were not for the truth of the proverb that it takes two to
+      make a quarrel."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Give me your hand upon that. And now that the question of honour is taken
+      out of your hands, grant not to me but to those for whom I ask it, your
+      promise to forgive this man."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Charlton hesitated, but it was difficult to resist the request, backed as
+      it was with weight of character and grace of manner, along with its
+      intrinsic reasonableness; and he saw no other way so expedient of getting
+      out of his dilemma.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I ought to be angry with somebody," he said, half laughing and a little
+      ashamed;--"if you will point out any substitute for Thorn I will let him
+      go--since I cannot help myself--with pleasure."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will bear it," said Mr. Carleton lightly. "Give me your promise for
+      Thorn and hold me your debtor in what amount you please."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very well--I forgive him," said Rossitur;--"and now Mr. Carleton I shall
+      have a reckoning with you some day for this."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will meet it. When you are next in England you shall come down to----
+      shire, and I will give you any satisfaction you please."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They parted in high good-humour; but Charlton looked grave as he went down
+      the staircase; and very oddly all the way down to Whitehall his head was
+      running upon the various excellencies and perfections of his cousin Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="46"></a>Chapter XLVI
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;There
+        is a fortune coming<br /> Towards you, dainty, that will take thee thus,<br />
+        And set thee aloft.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Ben Jonson.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      That day was spent by Fleda in the never-failing headache which was sure
+      to visit her after any extraordinary nervous agitation or too great mental
+      or bodily trial. It was severe this time, not only from the anxiety of the
+      preceding night but from the uncertainty that weighed upon her all day
+      long. The person who could have removed the uncertainty came indeed to the
+      house, but she was too ill to see anybody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The extremity of pain wore itself off with the day, and at evening she was
+      able to leave her room and come down stairs. But she was ill yet, and
+      could do nothing but sit in the corner of the sofa, with her hair unbound,
+      and Florence gently bathing her head with cologne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anxiety as well as pain had in some measure given place to exhaustion, and
+      she looked a white embodiment of endurance which gave a shock to her
+      friends' sympathy. Visitors were denied,--and Constance and Edith devoted
+      their eyes and tongues at least to her service, if they could do no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It happened that Joe Manton was out of the way, holding an important
+      conference with a brother usher next door, a conference that he had no
+      notion would be so important when he began it; when a ring on his own
+      premises summoned one of the maid-servants to the door. She knew nothing
+      about "not at home," and unceremoniously desired the gentleman to "walk
+      up,"--"the ladies were in the drawing-room."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door had been set wide open for the heat, and Fleda was close in the
+      corner behind it; gratefully permitting Florence's efforts with the
+      cologne, which yet she knew could avail nothing but the kind feelings of
+      the operator; for herself patiently waiting her enemy's time. Constance
+      was sitting on the floor looking at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can't conceive how you can bear so much," she said at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda thought, how little she knew what was borne!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why you could bear it I suppose if you had to," said Edith
+      philosophically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She knows she looks most beautiful," said Florence, softly passing her
+      cologned hands down over the smooth hair;--"she knows
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Il faut souffrir pour &ecirc;tre belle.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "La migraine ne se gu&eacute;rit avec les douceurs," said Mr. Carleton
+      entering;--"try something sharp, Miss Evelyn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where are we to get it?" said Constance springing up, and adding in a
+      most lack-a-daisical aside to her mother, "(Mamma!--the fowling
+      piece!)--Our last vinegar hardly comes under the appellation; and you
+      don't expect to find anything volatile in this house, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you none for grave occasions, Miss Constance?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I won't retort the question about 'something sharp,'" said Constance
+      arching her eyebrows, "because it is against my principles to make people
+      uncomfortable; but you have certainly brought in some medicine with you,
+      for Miss Ringgan's cheeks a little while ago were as pure as her
+      mind--from a tinge of any sort--and now, you see--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Constance," said her mother, "Miss Ringgan's cheeks will stand a
+      much better chance if you come away and leave her in peace. How can she
+      get well with such a chatter in her ears."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton and I, mamma, are conferring upon measures of relief,--and
+      Miss Ringgan gives token of improvement already."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For which I am very little to be thanked," said Mr. Carleton. "But I am
+      not a bringer of bad news, that she should look pale at the sight of me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you a bringer of any news?" said Constance, "O do let us have them,
+      Mr. Carleton!--I am dying for news--I haven't heard a bit to-day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is the news, Mr. Carleton?" said her mother's voice, from the more
+      distant region of the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe there are no general news, Mrs. Evelyn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are there any particular news?" said Constance.--"I like particular news
+      infinitely the best!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sorry, Miss Constance, I have none for you. But--will this headache
+      yield to nothing?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda prophesied that it would to time," said Florence;--"she Would not
+      let us try much beside."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And I must confess there has been no volatile agency employed at all,"
+      said Constance;--"I never knew time have less of it; and Fleda seemed to
+      prefer him for her physician."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He hasn't been a good one to-day," said Edith nestling affectionately to
+      her side. "Isn't it better, Fleda?"--for she had covered her eyes with her
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not just now," said Fleda softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is fair to change physicians if the first fails," said Mr. Carleton.
+      "I have had a slight experience in headache-curing,--if you will permit
+      me, Miss Constance, I will supersede time and try a different
+      prescription."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went out to seek it; and Fleda leaned her head in her hand and tried to
+      quiet the throbbing heart every pulsation of which was felt so keenly at
+      the seat of pain. She knew from Mr. Carleton's voice and manner,--she <i>thought</i>
+      she knew,--that he had exceeding good tidings for her; once assured of
+      that she would soon be better; but she was worse now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is Mr. Carleton gone?" said Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I haven't the least idea, mamma--he has ventured upon an extraordinary
+      undertaking and has gone off to qualify himself, I suppose. I can't
+      conceive why he didn't ask Miss Ringgan's permission to change her
+      physician, instead of mine."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose he knew there was no doubt about that." said Edith, hitting the
+      precise answer of Fleda's thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what should make him think there was any doubt about mine?" said
+      Constance tartly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O you know," said her sister, "you are so odd nobody can tell what you
+      will take a fancy to."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are--extremely liberal in your expressions, at least, Miss Evelyn,--I
+      must say," said Constance, with a glance of no doubtful
+      meaning.--"Joe--did you let Mr. Carleton in?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, ma'am."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well let him in next time; and don't let in anybody else."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whereafter the party relapsed into silent expectation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not many minutes before Mr. Carleton returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Tell your friend, Miss Constance," he said putting an exquisite little
+      vinaigrette into her hand,--"that I have nothing worse for her than that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Worse than this!" said Constance examining it. "Mr. Carleton--I doubt
+      exceedingly whether smelling this will afford Miss Ringgan any benefit."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, Miss Constance?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because--it has made me sick only to look at it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There will be no danger for her," be said smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Won't there?--Well, Fleda my dear--here, take it," said the young
+      lady;--"I hope you are differently constituted from me, for I feel a
+      sudden pain since I saw it;--but as you keep your eyes shut and so escape
+      the sight of this lovely gold chasing, perhaps it will do you no
+      mischief."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It will do her all the more good for that," said Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only ears that took the benefit of this speech were Edith's and Mr.
+      Carleton's; Fleda's were deafened by the rush of feeling. She very little
+      knew what she was holding. Mr. Carleton stood with rather significant
+      gravity watching the effect of his prescription, while Edith beset her
+      mother to know why the outside of the vinaigrette being of gold should
+      make it do Fleda any more good; the disposing of which question
+      effectually occupied Mrs. Evelyn's attention for some time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And pray how long is it since you took up the trade of a physician, Mr.
+      Carleton?" said Constance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is--just about nine years, Miss Constance," he answered gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But that little reminder, slight as it was, overcame the small remnant of
+      Fleda's self-command; the vinaigrette fell from her hands and her face was
+      hid in them; whatever became of pain, tears must flow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Forgive me," said Mr. Carleton gently, bending down towards her, "for
+      speaking when I should have been silent.--Miss Evelyn, and Miss Constance,
+      will you permit me to order that my patient be left in quiet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he took them away to Mrs. Evelyn's quarter, and kept them all three
+      engaged in conversation, too busily to trouble Fleda with any attention;
+      till she had had ample time to try the effect of the quiet and of the
+      vinegar both. Then he went himself to look after her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you better?" said he, bending down and speaking low.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda opened her eyes and gave him, what a look!--of grateful feeling. She
+      did not know the half that was in it; but he did. That she was better was
+      a very small item.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ready for the coffee?" said he smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O no," whispered Fleda,--"it don't matter about that--never mind the
+      coffee!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he went back with his usual calmness to Mrs. Evelyn and begged that
+      she would have the goodness to order a cup of rather strong coffee to be
+      made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But Mr. Carleton, sir," said that lady,--"I am not at all sure that it
+      would be the best thing for Miss Ringgan--if she is better,--I think it
+      would do her far more good to go to rest and let sleep finish her cure,
+      before taking something that will make sleep impossible."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did you ever hear of a physician, Mrs. Evelyn," he said smiling, "that
+      allowed his prescriptions to be interfered with? I must beg you will do me
+      this favour."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I doubt very much whether it will be a favour to Miss Ringgan," said Mrs.
+      Evelyn,--"however--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And she rang the bell and gave the desired order, with a somewhat
+      disconcerted face. But Mr. Carleton again left Fleda to herself and
+      devoted his attention to the other ladies, with so much success, though
+      with his usual absence of effort, that good humour was served long before
+      the coffee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then indeed he played the physician's part again; made the coffee himself
+      and saw it taken, according to his own pleasure; skilfully however seeming
+      all the while, except to Fleda, to be occupied with everything else. The
+      group gathered round her anew; she was well enough to bear their talk by
+      this time; by the time the coffee was drunk quite well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it quite gone?" asked Edith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The headache?--yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will owe your physician a great many thanks, my dear Fleda," said
+      Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's only answer to this, however, was by a very slight smile; and she
+      presently left the room to go up stairs and arrange her yet disarranged
+      hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is a very fine girl," remarked Mrs. Evelyn, preparing half a cup of
+      coffee for herself in a kind of amused abstraction,--"my friend Mr. Thorn
+      will have an excellent wife of her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Provided she marries him," said Constance somewhat shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure I hope she won't," said Edith,--"and I don't believe she will."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you think of his chances of success, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Your manner of speech would seem to imply that they are very good, Mrs.
+      Evelyn," he answered coolly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well don't you think so?" said Mrs. Evelyn, coming back to her seat with
+      her coffee-cup, and apparently dividing her attention between it and her
+      subject,--"It's a great chance for her--most girls in her circumstances
+      would not refuse it--<i>I</i> think he's pretty sure of his ground."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So I think," said Florence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It don't prove anything, if he is," said Constance dryly. "I hate people
+      who are always sure of their ground!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you think, Mr. Carleton?" said Mrs. Evelyn, taking little
+      satisfied sips of her coffee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "May I ask, first, what is meant by the 'chance' and what by the
+      'circumstances.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why Mr. Thorn has a fine fortune, you know, and he is of an excellent
+      family--there is not a better family in the city--and very few young men
+      of such pretensions would think of a girl that has no name nor standing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Unless she had qualities that would command them," said Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But Mr. Carleton, sir," said the lady,--"do you think that can be? do you
+      think a woman can fill gracefully a high place in society if she has had
+      disadvantages in early life to contend with that were calculated to unfit
+      her for it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But mamma," said Constance,--"Fleda don't shew any such thing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, she don't shew it," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"but I am not talking of
+      Fleda--I am talking of the effect of early disadvantages. What do you
+      think, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Disadvantages of what kind, Mrs. Evelyn?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, for instance--the strange habits of intercourse, on familiar terms,
+      with rough and uncultivated people,--such intercourse for years--in all
+      sorts of ways,--in the field and in the house,--mingling with them as one
+      of them--it seems to me it must leave its traces on the mind and on the
+      habits of acting and thinking?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is no doubt it does," he answered with an extremely unconcerned
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And then there's the actual want of cultivation," said Mrs. Evelyn,
+      warming;--"time taken up with other things, you know,--usefully and
+      properly, but still taken up,--so as to make much intellectual acquirement
+      and accomplishments impossible; it can't be otherwise, you know,--neither
+      opportunity nor instructors; and I don't think anything can supply the
+      want in after life--it isn't the mere things themselves which may be
+      acquired--the mind should grow up in the atmosphere of them--don't you
+      think so, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He bowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Music, for instance, and languages, and converse with society, and a
+      great many things, are put completely beyond reach;--Edith, my dear, you
+      are not to touch the coffee,--nor Constance either,--no I will not let
+      you,--And there could not be even much reading, for want of books if for
+      nothing else. Perhaps I am wrong, but I confess I don't see how it is
+      possible in such a case"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She checked herself suddenly, for Fleda with the slow noiseless step that
+      weakness imposed had come in again and stood by the centre-table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We are discussing a knotty question, Miss Ringgan," said Mr. Carleton
+      with a smile, as he brought a berg&egrave;re for her; "I should like to
+      have your voice on it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no seconding of his motion. He waited till she had seated
+      herself and then went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What in your opinion is the best preparation for wearing prosperity
+      well?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A glance at Mrs. Evelyn's face which was opposite her, and at one or two
+      others which had undeniably the air of being <i>arrested</i>, was enough
+      for Fleda's quick apprehension. She knew they had been talking of her. Her
+      eyes stopped short of Mr. Carleton's and she coloured and hesitated. No
+      one spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By prosperity you mean--?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Rank and fortune," said Florence, without looking up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Marrying a rich man, for instance," said Edith, "and having one's hands
+      full."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This peculiar statement of the case occasioned a laugh all round, but the
+      silence which followed seemed still to wait upon Fleda's reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Am I expected to give a serious answer to that question?" she said a
+      little doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Expectations are not stringent things," said her first questioner
+      smiling. "That waits upon your choice."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They are horridly stringent, <i>I</i> think," said Constance. "We shall
+      all be disappointed if you don't, Fleda my dear."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By wearing it 'well' you mean, making a good use of it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And gracefully," said Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think I should say then," said Fleda after some little hesitation and
+      speaking with evident difficulty,--"Such an experience as might teach one
+      both the worth and the worthlessness of money."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton's smile was a sufficiently satisfied one; but Mrs. Evelyn
+      retorted,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The <i>worth</i> and the <i>worthlessness!</i>--Fleda my dear, I don't
+      understand--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what experience teaches one the worth and what the worthlessness of
+      money?" said Constance;--"Mamma is morbidly persuaded that I do not
+      understand the first--of the second I have an indefinite idea from never
+      being able to do more than half that I want with it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda smiled and hesitated again, in a way that shewed she would willingly
+      be excused, but the silence left her no choice but to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think," she said modestly, "that a person can hardly understand the
+      true worth of money,--the ends it can best subserve,--that has not been
+      taught it by his own experience of the want; and--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What follows?" said Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was going to say, sir, that there is danger, especially when people
+      have not been accustomed to it, that they will greatly overvalue and
+      misplace the real worth of prosperity; unless the mind has been steadied
+      by another kind of experience, and has learnt to measure things by a
+      higher scale."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And how when they <i>have</i> been accustomed to it?" said Florence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The same danger, without the 'especially'," said Fleda, with a look that
+      disclaimed any assuming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One thing is certain," said Constance,--"you hardly ever see <i>les
+      nouveaux riches</i> make a graceful use of anything.--Fleda my dear, I am
+      seconding all of your last speech that I understand. Mamma, I perceive, is
+      at work upon the rest."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think we ought all to be at work upon it," said Mrs. Evelyn, "for Miss
+      Ringgan has made it out that there is hardly anybody here that is
+      qualified to wear prosperity well."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was just thinking so," said Florence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda said nothing, and perhaps her colour rose a little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will take lessons of her," said Constance, with eyebrows just raised
+      enough to neutralize the composed gravity of the other features,--"as soon
+      as I have an amount of prosperity that will make it worth while."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I don't think," said Florence, "that a graceful use of things is
+      consistent with such a careful valuation and considering of the exact
+      worth of everything--it's not my idea of grace."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yet <i>propriety</i> is an essential element of gracefulness, Miss
+      Evelyn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well," said Florence,--"certainly; but what then?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it attainable, in the use of means, without a nice knowledge of their
+      true value?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But, Mr. Carleton, I am sure I have seen improper things--things improper
+      in a way--gracefully done?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No doubt; but, Miss Evelyn," said he smiling "the impropriety did not in
+      those cases, I presume, attach itself to the other quality. The graceful
+      <i>manner</i> was strictly proper to its ends, was it not, however the
+      ends might be false?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Florence;--"you have gone too deep for me. But do you
+      think that close calculation, and all that sort of thing, is likely to
+      make people use money, or anything else, gracefully? I never thought it
+      did."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not close calculation alone," said Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But do you think it is <i>consistent</i> with gracefulness?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The largest and grandest views of material things that man has ever
+      taken, Miss Evelyn, stand upon a basis of the closest calculation."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Florence worked at her worsted and looked very dissatisfied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O Mr. Carleton," said Constance as he was going,--"don't leave your
+      vinaigrette--there it is on the table."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made no motion to take it up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you know, Miss Constance, that physicians seldom like to have
+      anything to do with their own prescriptions?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's very suspicious of them," said Constance;--"but you must take it,
+      Mr. Carleton, if you please, for I shouldn't like the responsibility of
+      its being left here; and I am afraid it would be dangerous to our peace of
+      mind, besides."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shall risk that," he said laughing. "Its work is not done."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And then, Mr. Carleton," said Mrs. Evelyn, and Fleda knew with what a
+      look,--"you know physicians are accustomed to be paid when their
+      prescriptions are taken."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the answer to this was only a bow, so expressive in its air of haughty
+      coldness that any further efforts of Mrs. Evelyn's wit were chilled for
+      some minutes after he had gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda had not seen this. She had taken up the vinaigrette, and was
+      thinking with acute pleasure that Mr. Carleton's manner last night and
+      to-night had returned to all the familiar kindness of old times. Not as it
+      had been during the rest of her stay in the city. She could be quite
+      contented now to have him go back to England, with this pleasant
+      remembrance left her. She sat turning over the vinaigrette, which to her
+      fancy was covered with hieroglyphics that no one else could read; of her
+      uncle's affair, of Charlton's danger, of her own distress, and the
+      kindness which had wrought its relief, more penetrating and pleasant than
+      even the fine aromatic scent which fairly typified it,--Constance's voice
+      broke in upon her musings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Isn't it awkward?" she said as she saw Fleda handling and looking at the
+      pretty toy,--"Isn't it awkward? I sha'n't have a bit of rest now for fear
+      something will happen to that. I hate to have people do such things!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda my dear," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"I wouldn't handle it, my love; you
+      may depend there is some charm in it--some mischievous hidden
+      influence,--and if you have much to do with it I am afraid you will find a
+      gradual coldness stealing over you, and a strange forgetfulness of
+      Queechy, and you will perhaps lose your desire ever to go back there any
+      more."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The vinaigrette dropped from Fleda's fingers, but beyond a heightened
+      colour and a little tremulous gravity about the lip, she gave no other
+      sign of emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mamma," said Florence laughing,--"you are too bad!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mamma," said Constance, "I wonder how any tender sentiment for you can
+      continue to exist in Fleda's breast!--By the way, Fleda, my dear, do you
+      know that we have heard of two escorts for you? but I only tell you
+      because I know you'll not be fit to travel this age."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should not be able to travel to-morrow," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They are not going to-morrow," said Mrs. Evelyn quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who are they?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Excellent ones," said Mrs. Evelyn. "One of them is your old friend Mr.
+      Olmney,"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Olmney!" said Fleda. "What has brought him to New York?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Really," said Mrs. Evelyn laughing,--"I do not know. What should keep him
+      away? I was very glad to see him, for my part. Maybe he has come to take
+      you home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who is the other?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's another old friend of yours--Mrs. Renney."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mrs. Renney?--who is she?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why don't you know? Mrs. Renney--she used to live with your aunt Lucy in
+      some capacity--years ago,--when she was in New York,--housekeeper, I
+      think; don't you remember her?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perfectly, now," said Fleda. "Mrs. Renney!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She has been housekeeper for Mrs. Schenck these several years, and she is
+      going somewhere out West to some relation, her brother, I believe, to take
+      care of his family; and her road leads her your way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When do they go, Mrs. Evelyn?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Both the same day, and both the day after to-morrow. Mr. Olmney takes the
+      morning train, he says, unless you would prefer some other,--I told him
+      you were very anxious to go,--and Mrs. Renney goes in the afternoon. So
+      there's a choice for you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mamma," said Constance, "Fleda is not fit to go at all, either time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't think she is," said Mrs. Evelyn. "But she knows best what she
+      likes to do."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thoughts and resolutions came swiftly one after another into Fleda's mind
+      and were decided upon in as quick succession. First, that she must go the
+      day after to-morrow, at all events. Second, that it should not be with Mr.
+      Olmney. Third, that to prevent that, she must not see him in the mean
+      time, and therefore--yes, no help for it,--must refuse to see any one that
+      called the next day; there was to be a party in the evening, so then she
+      would be safe. No doubt Mr. Carleton would come, to give her a more
+      particular account of what he had done, and she wished unspeakably to hear
+      it; but it was not possible that she should make an exception in his
+      favour and admit him alone. That could not be. If friends would only be
+      simple and straightforward and kind,--one could afford to be
+      straightforward too;--but as it was she must not do what she longed to do
+      and they would be sure to misunderstand. There was indeed the morning of
+      the day following left her if Mr. Olmney did not take it into his head to
+      stay. And it might issue in her not seeing Mr. Carleton at all, to bid
+      good-bye and thank him? He would not think her ungrateful, he knew better
+      than that, but still--Well! so much for kindness!--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What <i>are</i> you looking so grave about?" said Constance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Considering ways and means," Fleda said with a slight smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ways and means of what?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Going."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You don't mean to go the day after to-morrow?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's too absurd for anything! You sha'n't do it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I must indeed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mamma," said Constance, "if you permit such a thing, I shall hope that
+      memory will be a fingerboard of remorse to you, pointing to Miss Ringgan's
+      pale cheeks."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shall charge it entirely upon Miss Ringgan's own fingerboard," said
+      Mrs. Evelyn, with her complacently amused face. "Fleda, my dear,--shall I
+      request Mr. Olmney to delay his journey for a day or two, my love, till
+      you are stronger?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not at all, Mrs. Evelyn! I shall go then;--if I am not ready in the
+      morning I will take Mrs. Renney in the afternoon--I would quite as lief go
+      with her."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then I will make Mr. Olmney keep to his first purpose," said Mrs. Evelyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Fleda, though with a very sorrowful heart, kept her resolutions, and
+      for very forlornness and weariness slept away a great part of the next
+      day. Neither would she appear in the evening, for fear of more people than
+      one. It was impossible to tell whether Mrs. Evelyn's love of mischief
+      would not bring Mr. Olmney there, and the Thorns, she knew, were invited.
+      Mr. Lewis would probably absent himself, but Fleda could not endure even
+      the chance of seeing his mother. She wanted to know, but dared not ask,
+      whether Mr. Carleton had been to see her. What if to-morrow morning should
+      pass without her seeing him? Fleda pondered this uncertainty a little, and
+      then jumped out of bed and wrote him the heartiest little note of thanks
+      and remembrance that tears would let her write; sealed it, and carried it
+      herself to the nearest branch of the despatch post the first thing next
+      morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took a long look that same morning at the little vinaigrette which
+      still lay on the centre-table, wishing very much to take it up stairs and
+      pack it away among her things. It was meant for her she knew, and she
+      wanted it as a very pleasant relic from the kind hands that had given it;
+      and besides, he might think it odd if she should slight his intention. But
+      how odd it would seem to him if he knew that the Evelyns had half
+      appropriated it. And appropriate it anew, in another direction, she could
+      not. She could not without their knowledge, and they would put their own
+      absurd construction on what was a simple matter of kindness; she could not
+      brave it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus26.jpg"><img src="images/illus26.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="'I told him, 'O you were not gone yet!''"
+      title="'I told him, 'O you were not gone yet!''" /><br /> "I told him, 'O
+      you were not gone yet!'"</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The morning, a long one it was, had passed away; Fleda had just finished
+      packing her trunk, and was sitting with a faint-hearted feeling of body
+      and mind, trying to rest before being called to her early dinner, when
+      Florence came to tell her it was ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton was here awhile ago," she said, "and he asked for you; but
+      mamma said you were busy; she knew you had enough to tire you without
+      coming down stairs to see him. He asked when you thought of going."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What did you tell him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I told him, 'O you were not gone yet!'--it's such a plague to be bidding
+      people good-bye--<i>I</i> always want to get rid of it. Was I right?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda said nothing, but in her heart she wondered what possible concern it
+      could be of her friends if Mr. Carleton wanted to see her before she went
+      away. She felt it was unkind--they did not know how unkind, for they did
+      not understand that he was a very particular friend and an old
+      friend--they could not tell what reason there was for her wishing to bid
+      him good-bye. She thought she should have liked to do it, very much.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="47"></a>Chapter XLVII.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Methought I was--there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and
+        methought I had,--But man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say
+        what methought I had.--Midsummer Night's Dream.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Evelyn drove down to the boat with Fleda and did not leave her till
+      she was safely put in charge of Mrs. Renney. Fleda immediately retreated
+      to the innermost depths of the ladies' cabin, hoping to find some rest for
+      the body at least if not forgetfulness for the mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The latter was not to be. Mrs. Renney was exceeding glad to see her and
+      bent upon knowing what had become of her since those days when they used
+      to know each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You're just the same, Miss Fleda, that you used to be--you're very little
+      altered--I can see that--though you're looking a good deal more thin and
+      pale--you had very pretty roses in your cheeks in those times.--Yes, I
+      know, I understood Mrs. Evelyn to say you had not been well; but allowing
+      for that I can see you are just yourself still--I'm glad of it. Do you
+      recollect, Miss Fleda, what a little thing you was then?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I recollect, very well," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'm sure of another thing--you're just as good as you used to be," said
+      the housekeeper looking at her complacently. "Do you remember how you used
+      to come into my room to see me make jelly? I see it as well as if it was
+      yesterday;--and you used to beg me to let you squeeze the lemons; and I
+      never could refuse you, because you never did anything I didn't want you
+      to; and do you mind how I used to tie you up in a big towel for fear you
+      would stain your dress with the acid, and I'd stand and watch to see you
+      putting all your strength to squeeze 'em clean, and be afraid that Mrs.
+      Rossitur would be angry with me for letting you spoil your hands, but you
+      used to look up and smile at me so, I couldn't help myself but let you do
+      just whatever you had a mind. You don't look quite so light and bright as
+      you did in those times; but to be sure, you ain't feeling well! See
+      here--just let me pull some of these things onto this settee, and you put
+      yourself down there and rest--pillows--let's have another pillow,--there,
+      how's that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh if Fleda might have silenced her! She thought it was rather hard that
+      she should have two talkative companions on this journey of all others.
+      The housekeeper paused no longer than to arrange her couch and see her
+      comfortably laid down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And then Mr. Hugh would come in to find you and carry you away--he never
+      could bear to be long from you. How is Mr. Hugh, Miss Fleda? he used to be
+      always a very delicate looking child. I remember you and him used to be
+      always together--he was a very sweet boy! I have often said I never saw
+      such another pair of children. How does Mr. Hugh have his health, Miss
+      Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not very well, just now," said Fleda gently, and shutting her eyes that
+      they might reveal less.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was need; for the housekeeper went on to ask particularly after
+      every member of the family, and where they had been living, and as much as
+      she conveniently could about how they had been living. She was very kind
+      through it all, or she tried to be; but Fleda felt there was a difference
+      since the time when her aunt kept house in State street and Mrs. Renney
+      made jellies for her. When her neighbours' affairs were exhausted Mrs.
+      Renney fell back upon her own, and gave Fleda a very circumstantial
+      account of the occurrences that were drawing her westward; how so many
+      years ago her brother had married and removed thither; how lately his wife
+      had died; what in general was the character of his wife, and what, in
+      particular, the story of her decease; how many children were left without
+      care, and the state of her brother's business which demanded a great deal;
+      and how finally, she, Mrs. Renney, had received and accepted an invitation
+      to go on to Belle Rivi&egrave;re and be housekeeper de son chef. And as
+      Fleda's pale worn face had for some time given her no sign of attention
+      the housekeeper then hoped she was asleep, and placed herself so as to
+      screen her and have herself a good view of everything that was going on in
+      the cabin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But poor Fleda was not asleep, much as she rejoiced in being thought so.
+      Mind and body could get no repose, sadly as the condition of both called
+      for it. Too worn to sleep, perhaps;--too down-hearted to rest. She blamed
+      herself for it, and told over to herself the causes, the recent causes,
+      she had of joy and gratitude; but it would not do. Grateful she could be
+      and was; but tears that were not the distillation of joy came with her
+      gratitude; came from under the closed eyelid in spite of her; the pillow
+      was wet with them. She excused herself, or tried to, with thinking that
+      she was weak and not very well, and that her nerves had gone through so
+      much for a few days past it was no wonder if a reaction left her without
+      her usual strength of mind. And she could not help thinking there had been
+      a want of kindness in the Evelyns to let her come away to-day to make such
+      a journey, at such a season, under such guardianship. But it was not all
+      that; she knew it was not. The journey was a small matter; only a little
+      piece of disagreeableness that was well in keeping with her other
+      meditations. She was going home and home had lost all its fair-seeming;
+      its honours were withered. It would be pleasant indeed to be there again
+      to nurse Hugh; but nurse him for what?--life or death?--she did not like
+      to think; and beyond that she could fix upon nothing at all that looked
+      bright in the prospect; she almost thought herself wicked, but she could
+      not. If she might hope that her uncle would take hold of his farm like a
+      man, and redeem his character and his family's happiness on the old
+      place,--that would have been something; but he had declared a different
+      purpose, and Fleda knew him too well to hope that he would be better than
+      his word. Then they must leave the old homestead, where at least the
+      associations of happiness clung, and go to a strange land. It looked
+      desolate to Fleda, wherever it might be. Leave Queechy!--that she loved
+      unspeakably beyond any other place in the world; where the very hills had
+      been the friends of her childhood, and where she had seen the maples grow
+      green and grow red through as many-coloured changes of her own fortunes;
+      the woods where the shade of her grandfather walked with her and where the
+      presence even of her father could be brought back by memory; where the air
+      was sweeter and the sunlight brighter, by far, than in any other place,
+      for both had some strange kindred with the sunny days of long ago. Poor
+      Fleda turned her face from Mrs. Renney, and leaving doubtful prospects and
+      withering comforts for a while as it were out of sight, she wept the fair
+      outlines and the red maples of Queechy as if they had been all she had to
+      regret. They had never disappointed her. Their countenance had comforted
+      her many a time, under many a sorrow. After all, it was only fancy
+      choosing at which shrine the whole offering of sorrow should be made. She
+      knew that many of the tears that fell were due to some other. It was in
+      vain to tell herself they were selfish; mind and body were in no condition
+      to struggle with anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had fallen dark some time, and she had wept and sorrowed herself into a
+      half-dozing state, when a few words spoken near aroused her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is snowing,"--was said by several voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Going very slow, ain't we?" said Fleda's friend in a suppressed voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, 'cause it's so dark, you see; the Captain dursn't let her run."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some poor witticism followed from a third party about the 'Butterfly's'
+      having run herself off her legs the first time she ever ran at all; and
+      then Mrs. Renney went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is the storm so bad, Hannah?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pretty thick--can't see far ahead--I hope we'll make out to find our way
+      in--that's all <i>I</i> care for."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How far are we?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not half way yet--I don't know--depends on what headway we make, you
+      know;--there ain't much wind yet, that's a good thing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There ain't any danger, is there?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This of course the chambermaid denied, and a whispered colloquy followed
+      which Fleda did not try to catch. A new feeling came upon her weary
+      heart,--a feeling of fear. There was a sad twinge of a wish that she were
+      out of the boat and safe back again with the Evelyns, and a fresh sense of
+      the unkindness of letting her come away that afternoon so attended. And
+      then with that sickness of heart the forlorn feeling of being alone, of
+      wanting some one at hand to depend upon, to look to. It is true that in
+      case of real danger none such could be a real protection,--and yet not so
+      neither, for strength and decision can live and make live where a moment's
+      faltering will kill, and weakness must often falter of necessity. "All the
+      ways of the Lord are mercy and truth" to his people; she thought of that,
+      and yet she feared, for his ways are often what we do not like. A few
+      moments of sick-heartedness and trembling,--and then Fleda mentally folded
+      her arms about a few other words of the Bible and laid her head down in
+      quiet again.--"<i>The Lord is my refuge and my fortress; my God; in him
+      will I trust</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then what comes after,--"<i>He shall cover thee with his feathers, and
+      under his wings shalt thou trust; his truth shall be thy shield and
+      buckler</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda lay quiet till she was called to tea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Bless me, how pale you are!" said the housekeeper, as Fleda raised
+      herself up at this summons,--"do you feel very bad, Miss Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda said no.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you frighted?" said the housekeeper;--"there's no need of
+      that--Hannah says there's no need--we'll be in by and by."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, Mrs. Renney," said Fleda smiling. "I believe I am not very strong
+      yet."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The housekeeper and Hannah both looked at her with strangely touched
+      faces, and again begged her to try the refreshment of tea. But Fleda would
+      not go down, so they served her up there with great zeal and tenderness.
+      And then she waited patiently and watched the people in the cabin, as they
+      sat gossiping in groups or stupefying in solitude; and thought how
+      miserable a thing is existence where religion and refinement have not
+      taught the mind to live in somewhat beyond and above its every-day
+      concern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Late at night the boat arrived safe at Bridgeport. Mrs. Renney and Fleda
+      had resolved to stay on board till morning, when the former promised to
+      take her to the house of a sister she had living in the town; as the cars
+      would not leave the place till near eleven o'clock. Kest was not to be
+      hoped for meantime in the boat, on the miserable couch which was the best
+      the cabin could furnish; but Fleda was so thankful to have finished the
+      voyage in safety that she took thankfully everything else, even lying
+      awake. It was a wild night. The wind rose soon after they reached
+      Bridgeport, and swept furiously over the boat, rattling the tiller chains
+      and making Fleda so nervously alive to possibilities that she got up two
+      or three times to see if the boat were fast to her moorings. It was very
+      dark, and only by a fortunately placed lantern she could see a bit of the
+      dark wharf and one of the posts belonging to it, from which the lantern
+      never budged; so at last, quieted or tired out, nature had her rights, and
+      she slept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not refreshing rest after all, and Fleda was very glad that Mrs.
+      Renney's impatience for something comfortable made her willing to be astir
+      as early as there was any chance of finding people up in the town. Few
+      were abroad when they left the boat, they two. Not a foot had printed the
+      deep layer of snow that covered the wharf. It had fallen thick during the
+      night. Just then it was not snowing; the clouds seemed to have taken a
+      recess, for they hung threatening yet; one uniform leaden canopy was over
+      the whole horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The snow ain't done yet," said Mrs. Renney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, but the worst of our journey is over," said Fleda. "I am glad to be
+      on the land."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope we'll get something to eat here," said Mrs. Renney as they stepped
+      along over the wharf. "They ought to be ashamed to give people such a
+      mess, when it's just as easy to have things decent. My! how it has snowed.
+      I declare, if I'd ha' known I'd ha' waited till somebody had tracked a
+      path for us. But I guess it's just as well we didn't,--you look as like a
+      ghost as you can, Miss Fleda. You'll be better when you get some
+      breakfast. You'd better catch on to my arm--I'll waken up the seven
+      sleepers but what I'll have something to put life into you directly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda thanked her but declined the proffered accommodation, and followed
+      her companion in the narrow beaten path a few travellers had made in the
+      street, feeling enough like a ghost, if want of flesh and blood reality
+      were enough. It seemed a dream that she was walking through the grey light
+      and the empty streets of the little town; everything looked and felt so
+      wild and strange.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If it was a dream she was soon waked out of it. In the house where they
+      were presently received and established in sufficient comfort, there was
+      such a little specimen of masculine humanity as never shewed his face in
+      dream land yet; a little bit of reality enough to bring any dreamer to his
+      senses. He seemed to have been brought up on stove heat, for he was ail
+      glowing yet from a very warm bed he had just tumbled out of somewhere, and
+      he looked at the pale thin stranger by his mother's fireplace as if she
+      were an anomaly in the comfortable world. If he could have contented
+      himself with looking!--but he planted himself firmly on the rug just two
+      feet from Fleda, and with a laudable and most persistent desire to examine
+      into the causes of what he could not understand he commenced inquiring,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you cold?--say! Are you cold?--say!"--in a tone most provokingly made
+      up of wonder and dulness. In vain Fleda answered him, that she was not
+      very cold and would soon not be cold at all by that good fire;--the
+      question came again, apparently in all its freshness, from the
+      interrogator's mind,--"Are you cold?--say!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And silence and words, looking grave and laughing, were alike thrown away.
+      Fleda shut her eyes at length and used the small remnant of her patience
+      to keep herself quiet till she was called to breakfast. After breakfast
+      she accepted the offer of her hostess to go up stairs and lie down till
+      the cars were ready; and there got some real and much needed refreshment
+      of sleep and rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It lasted longer than she bad counted upon. For the cars were not ready at
+      eleven o'clock; the snow last night had occasioned some perplexing delays.
+      It was not till near three o'clock that the often-despatched messenger to
+      the d&eacute;p&ocirc;t brought back word that they might go as soon as
+      they pleased. It pleased Mrs. Renney to be in a great hurry, for her
+      baggage was in the cars she said, and it would be dreadful if she and it
+      went different ways; so Fleda and her companion hastened down to the
+      station house and choose their places some time before anybody else
+      thought of coming. They had a long, very tiresome waiting to go through,
+      and room for some uneasy speculations about being belated and a night
+      journey. But Fleda was stronger now, and bore it all with her usual
+      patient submission. At length, by degrees the people dropped in and filled
+      the cars, and they get off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How early do you suppose we shall reach Greenfield?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why we ought to get there between nine and ten o'clock, I should think,"
+      said her companion. "I hope the snow will hold up till we get there,"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda thought it a hope very unlikely to be fulfilled. There were as yet
+      no snow-flakes to be seen near by, but at a little distance the low clouds
+      seemed already to enshroud every clump of trees and put a mist about every
+      hill. They surely would descend more palpably soon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was pleasant to be moving swiftly on again towards the end of their
+      journey, if Fleda could have rid herself of some qualms about the possible
+      storm and the certain darkness; they might not reach Greenfield by ten
+      o'clock; and she disliked travelling in the night at any time. But she
+      could do nothing, and she resigned herself anew to the comfort and trust
+      she had built upon last night. She had the seat next the window, and with
+      a very sober kind of pleasure watched the pretty landscape they were
+      flitting by--misty as her own prospects,--darkening as they?--no, she
+      would not allow that thought. "'Surely I know that it shall be well with
+      them that fear God;' and I can trust him." And she found a strange
+      sweetness in that naked trust and clinging of faith, that faith never
+      tried never knows. But the breath of daylight was already gone, though the
+      universal spread of snow gave the eye a fair range yet, white, white, as
+      far as the view could reach, with that light misty drapery round
+      everything in the distance and merging into the soft grey sky; and every
+      now and then as the wind served, a thick wreath of white vapour came by
+      from the engine and hid all, eddying past the windows and then skimming
+      off away over the snowy ground from which it would not lift; a more
+      palpable veil for a moment of the distant things,--and then broken,
+      scattered, fragmentary, lovely in its frailty and evanishing. It was a
+      pretty afternoon, but a sober; and the bare black solitary trees near hand
+      which the cars flew by, looked to Fleda constantly like finger-posts of
+      the past; and back at their bidding her thoughts and her spirits went,
+      back and forward, comparing, in her own mental view, what had once been so
+      gay and genial with its present bleak and chill condition. And from this,
+      in sudden contrast, came a strangely fair and bright image of Heaven--its
+      exchange of peace for all this turmoil,--of rest for all this weary
+      bearing up of mind and body against the ills that beset both,--of its
+      quiet home for this unstable strange world where nothing is at a
+      stand-still--of perfect and pure society for the unsatisfactory and
+      wearying friendships that the most are here. The thought came to Fleda
+      like one of those unearthly clear Northwestern skies from which a storm
+      cloud has rolled away, that seem almost to mock Earth with their distance
+      from its defilement and agitations. "Truly I know that it shall be well
+      with them that fear God!"--She could remember Hugh,--she could not think
+      of the words without him,--and yet say them with the full bounding
+      assurance. And in that weary and uneasy afternoon her mind rested and
+      delighted itself with two lines of George Herbert, that only a Christian
+      can well understand,--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thy power and love,--my love and trust, Make one place everywhere."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the night fell, and Fleda at last could see nothing but the dim rail
+      fences they were flying by, and the reflection from some stationary
+      lantern on the engine or one of the forward cars, that always threw a
+      bright spot of light on the snow. Still she kept her eyes fastened out of
+      the window; anything but the view <i>inboard</i>. They were going slowly
+      now, and frequently stopping; for they were out of time, and some other
+      trains were to be looked out for. Nervous work; and whenever they stopped
+      the voices which at other times were happily drowned in the rolling of the
+      car-wheels, rose and jarred in discords far less endurable. Fleda shut her
+      ears to the words, but it was easy enough without words to understand the
+      indications of coarse and disagreeable natures in whose neighbourhood she
+      disliked to find herself; of whose neighbourhood she exceedingly disliked
+      to be reminded. The muttered oath, the more than muttered jest, the
+      various laughs that tell so much of head or heart emptiness,--the shadowy
+      but sure tokens of that in human nature which one would not realize and
+      which one strives to forget;--Fleda shrank within herself and would gladly
+      have stopped her ears; did sometimes covertly. Oh if home could be but
+      reached, and she out of this atmosphere! how well she resolved that never
+      another time, by any motive, of delicacy or otherwise, she would be
+      tempted to trust herself in the like again without more than womanly
+      protection. The hours rolled wearily on; they heard nothing of Greenfield
+      yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They came at length to a more obstinate stop than usual. Fleda took her
+      hands from her ears to ask what was the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Mrs. Renney. "I hope they won't keep us a great while
+      waiting here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The door swung open and the red comforter and tarpaulin hat of one of the
+      brakemen shewed itself a moment. Presently after "Can't get on"--was
+      repeated by several voices in the various tones of assertion,
+      interrogation, and impatience. The women folks, having nobody to ask
+      questions of, had nothing for it but to be quiet and use their ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Can't get on!" said another man coming in,--"there's nothing but snow out
+      o' doors--track's all foul."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A number of people instantly rushed out to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Can't get on any further to-night?" asked a quiet old gentleman of the
+      news-bringer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not another inch, sir;--worse off than old Dobbs was in the
+      mill-pond,--we've got half way but we can't turn and go back."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what are we going to do?" said an unhappy wight not quick in drawing
+      conclusions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I s'pose we'll all be stiff by the morning," answered the other
+      gravely,--"unless the wood holds out, which ain't likely."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How much there is in even a cheery tone of voice, Fleda was sorry when
+      this man took his away with him. There was a most uncheering confusion of
+      tongues for a few minutes among the people he had left, and then the car
+      was near deserted; everybody went out to bring his own wits to bear upon
+      the obstacles in the way of their progress. Mrs. Renney observed that she
+      might as well warm her feet while she could, and went to the stove for the
+      purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Fleda felt as if she had no heart left. She sat still in her place
+      and leaned her head upon the back of the deserted chair before her, in
+      utter inability to keep it up. The night journey was bad enough, but <i>this</i>
+      was more than she had counted upon. Danger, to be sure, there might be
+      none in standing still there all night, unless perhaps the danger of death
+      from the cold;--she had heard of such things;--but to sit there till
+      morning among all those people and obliged to hear their unloosed
+      tongues,--Fleda felt almost that she could not bear it,--a most forlorn
+      feeling, with which came anew a keen reflection upon the Evelyns for
+      having permitted her to run even the hazard of such trouble. And in the
+      morning, if well it came, who would take care of them in all the
+      subsequent annoyance and difficulty of getting out of the snow?--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must have taken very little time for these thoughts to run through her
+      head, for half a minute had not flown when the vacant seat beside her was
+      occupied and a hand softly touched one of hers which lay in her lap. Fleda
+      started up in terror,--to have the hand taken and her eye met by Mr.
+      Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton!--O sir, how glad I am to see you!"--was said by eye and
+      cheek as unmistakably as by word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you come from the clouds?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I might rather ask that question of you," said he smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have been invisible ever since the night when I had the honour of
+      playing the part of your physician."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I could not help it, sir,--I was sure you would believe it. I wanted
+      exceedingly to see you and to thank you--as well as I could--but I was
+      obliged to leave it--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She could hardly say so much. Her swimming eye gave him more thanks than
+      he wanted. But she scolded herself vigorously and after a few minutes was
+      able to look and speak again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hoped you would not think me ungrateful, sir, but in case you might, I
+      wrote to let you know that you were mistaken."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You wrote to me!" said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, sir--yesterday morning--at least it was put in the post yesterday
+      morning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was more unnecessary than you are aware off," he said with a smile and
+      turning one of his deep looks away from her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are we fast here for all night, Mr. Carleton?" she said presently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid so--I believe so--I have been out to examine and the storm is
+      very thick."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You need not look so about it for me," said Fleda;--"I don't care for it
+      at all now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And a long-drawn breath half told how much she had cared for it, and what
+      a burden was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You look very little like breasting hardships," said Mr. Carleton,
+      bending on her so exactly the look of affectionate care that she had often
+      had from him when she was a child, that Fleda was very near overcome
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O you know," she said, speaking by dint of great force upon
+      herself,--"You know the will is everything, and mine is very good--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he looked extremely unconvinced and unsatisfied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am so comforted to see you sitting there, sir," Fleda went on
+      gratefully,--"that I am sure I can bear patiently all the rest."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His eye turned away and she did not know what to make of his gravity. But
+      a moment after he looked again and spoke with his usual manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That business you entrusted to me," he said in a lower tone,--"I believe
+      you will have no more trouble with it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So I thought!--so I gathered--the other night,--" said Fleda, her heart
+      and her face suddenly full of many things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The note was given up--I saw it burned."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's two hands clasped each other mutely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And will he be silent?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think he will choose to be so--for his own sake."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only sake that would avail in that quarter, Fleda knew. How had Mr.
+      Carleton ever managed it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And Charlton?" she said after a few minutes' tearful musing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I had the pleasure of Capt. Rossitur's company to breakfast, the next
+      morning,--and I am happy to report that there is no danger of any trouble
+      arising there."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How shall I ever thank you, sir!" said Fleda with trembling lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His smile was so peculiar she almost thought he was going to tell her. But
+      just then Mrs. Renney having accomplished the desirable temperature of her
+      feet, came back to warm her ears, and placed herself on the next seat;
+      happily not the one behind but the one before them, where her eyes were
+      thrown away; and the lines of Mr. Carleton's mouth came back to their
+      usual quiet expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You were in particular haste to reach home?" he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda said no, not in the abstract; it made no difference whether to-day
+      or to-morrow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You had heard no ill news of your cousin?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not at all, but it is difficult to find an opportunity of making the
+      journey, and I thought I ought to come yesterday."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent again; and the baffled seekers after ways and means who had
+      gone out to try arguments upon the storm, began to come pouring back into
+      the car. And bringing with them not only their loud and coarse voices with
+      every shade of disagreeableness aggravated by ill-humour, but also an
+      average amount of snow upon their hats and shoulders, the place was soon
+      full of a reeking atmosphere of great coats. Fleda was trying to put up
+      her window, but Mr. Carleton gently stopped her and began bargaining with
+      a neighbouring fellow-traveller for the opening of his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, sir, I'll open it if you wish it," said the man civilly, "but they
+      say we sha'n't have nothing to make fires with more than an hour or two
+      longer;--so maybe you'll think we can't afford to let any too much cold
+      in."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gentleman however persisting in his wish and the wish being moreover
+      backed with those arguments to which every grade of human reason is
+      accessible, the window was opened. At first the rush of fresh air was a
+      great relief; but it was not very long before the raw snowy atmosphere
+      which made its way in was felt to be more dangerous, if it was more
+      endurable, than the close pent-up one it displaced. Mr. Carleton ordered
+      the window closed again; and Fleda's glance of meek grateful patience was
+      enough to pay any reasonable man for his share of the suffering. <i>Her</i>
+      share of it was another matter. Perhaps Mr. Carleton thought so, for he
+      immediately bent himself to reward her and to avert the evil, and for that
+      purpose brought into play every talent of manner and conversation that
+      could beguile the time and make her forget what she was among. If success
+      were his reward he had it. He withdrew her attention completely from all
+      that was around her, and without tasking it; she could not have borne
+      that. He did not seem to task himself; but without making any exertion he
+      held her eye and ear and guarded both from communication with things
+      disagreeable. He knew it. There was not a change in her eye's happy
+      interest, till in the course of the conversation Fleda happened to mention
+      Hugh, and he noticed the saddening of the eye immediately afterwards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is he ill?" said Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Fleda faltering a little,--"he was not--very,--but a
+      few weeks ago--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eye explained the broken sentences which there in the neighbourhood of
+      other ears she dared not finish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He will be better after he has seen you," said Mr. Carleton gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A very sorrowful and uncertain "yes," with an "if" in the speaker's mind
+      which she did not bring out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Can you sing your old song yet,--" said Mr. Carleton softly,--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Yet one thing secures us. Whatever betide?'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda burst into tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Forgive me," he whispered earnestly,--"for reminding you of that,--you
+      did not need it, and I have only troubled you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir, you have not," said Fleda,--"it did not trouble me--and Hugh
+      knows it better than I do. I cannot bear anything to-night, I believe--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So you have remembered that, Mr. Carleton?" she said a minute after.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you remember that?" said he, putting her old little Bible into her
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda seized it, but she could hardly bear the throng of images that
+      started up around it. The smooth worn cover brought so back the childish
+      happy days when it had been her constant companion--the shadows of the
+      Queechy of old, and Cynthia and her grandfather; and the very atmosphere
+      of those times when she had led a light-hearted strange wild life all
+      alone with them, reading the Encyclop&aelig;dia and hunting out the
+      wood-springs. She opened the book and slowly turned over the leaves where
+      her father's hand had drawn those lines, of remark and affection, round
+      many a passage,--the very look of them she knew; but she could not see it
+      now, for her eyes were dim and tears were dropping fast into her lap,--she
+      hoped Mr. Carleton did not see them, but she could not help it; she could
+      only keep the book out of the way of being blotted. And there were other
+      and later associations she had with it too,--how dear!--how tender!--how
+      grateful!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton was quite silent for a good while--till the tears had ceased;
+      then he bent towards her so as to be heard no further off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It has been for many years my best friend and companion," he said in a
+      low tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda could make no answer, even by look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "At first," he went on softly, "I had a strong association of you with it;
+      but the time came when I lost that entirely, and itself quite swallowed up
+      the thought of the giver."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A quick glance and smile told how well Fleda understood, how heartily she
+      was pleased with that. But she instantly looked away again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And now," said Mr. Carleton after a pause,--"for some time past, I have
+      got the association again; and I do not choose to have it so. I have come
+      to the resolution to put the book back into your hands and not receive it
+      again, unless the giver go with the gift."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked up, a startled look of wonder, into his face, but the dark
+      eye left no doubt of the meaning of his words; and in unbounded confusion
+      she turned her own and her attention, ostensibly, to the book in her hand,
+      though sight and sense were almost equally out of her power. For a few
+      minutes poor Fleda felt as if all sensation had retreated to her
+      finger-ends. She turned the leaves over and over, as if willing to cheat
+      herself or her companion into the belief that she had something to think
+      of there, while associations and images of the past were gone with a
+      vengeance, swallowed up in a tremendous reality of the present; and the
+      book, which a minute ago was her father's Bible, was now--what was
+      it?--something of Mr. Carleton's which she must give back to him. But
+      still she held it and looked at it--conscious of no one distinct idea but
+      that, and a faint one besides that he might like to be repossessed of his
+      property in some reasonable time--time like everything else was in a
+      whirl; the only steady thing in creation seemed to be that perfectly still
+      and moveless figure by her side--till her trembling fingers admonished her
+      they would not be able to hold anything much longer; and gently and
+      slowly, without looking, her hand put the book back towards Mr. Carleton.
+      That both were detained together she knew but hardly felt;--the thing was
+      that she had given it!--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no other answer; and there was no further need that Mr. Carleton
+      should make any efforts for diverting her from the scene and the
+      circumstances where they were. Probably he knew that, for he made none. He
+      was perfectly silent for a long time, and Fleda was deaf to any other
+      voice that could be raised, near or far. She could not even think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Renney was happily snoring, and most of the other people had
+      descended into their coat collars, or figuratively speaking had lowered
+      their blinds, by tilting over their hats in some uncomfortable position
+      that signified sleep; and comparative quiet had blessed the place for some
+      time; as little noticed indeed by Fleda as noise would have been. The sole
+      thing that she clearly recognized in connection with the exterior world
+      was that clasp in which one of her hands lay. She did not know that the
+      car had grown quiet, and that only an occasional grunt of ill-humour, or
+      waking-up colloquy, testified that it was the unwonted domicile of a
+      number of human beings who were harbouring there in a disturbed state of
+      mind. But this state of things could not last. The time came that had been
+      threatened, when their last supply of extrinsic warmth was at an end.
+      Despite shut windows, the darkening of the stove was presently followed by
+      a very sensible and fast-increasing change of temperature; and this
+      addition to their causes of discomfort roused every one of the company
+      from his temporary lethargy. The growl of dissatisfied voices awoke again,
+      more gruff than before; the spirit of jesting had long languished and now
+      died outright, and in its stead came some low and deep and bitter-spoken
+      curses. Poor Mrs. Renney shook off her somnolency and shook her shoulders,
+      a little business shake, admonitory to herself to keep cool; and Fleda
+      came to the consciousness that some very disagreeable chills were making
+      their way over her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you warm enough?" said Mr. Carleton suddenly, turning to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not quite," said Fleda hesitating,--"I feel the cold a little. Please
+      don't, Mr. Carleton!--" she added earnestly as she saw him preparing to
+      throw off his cloak, the identical black fox which Constance had described
+      with so much vivacity;--"pray do not! I am not very cold--I can bear a
+      little--I am not so tender as you think me; I do not need it, and you
+      would feel the want very much after wearing it.--I won't put it on."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he smilingly bade her "stand up," stooping down and taking one of her
+      hands to enforce his words, and giving her at the same time the benefit of
+      one of those looks of good humoured wilfulness to which his mother always
+      yielded, and to which Fleda yielded instantly, though with a colour
+      considerably heightened at the slight touch of peremptoriness in his tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are not offended with me, Elfie?" he said in another manner, when she
+      had sat down again and he was arranging the heavy folds of the cloak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Offended!--A glance answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You shall have everything your own way," he whispered gently, as he
+      stooped down to bring the cloak under her feet,--"<i>except yourself</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What good care should be taken of that exception was said in the dark eye
+      at which Fleda hardly ventured half a glance. She had much ado to command
+      herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was shielded again from all the sights and sounds within reach. She
+      was in a maze. The comfort of the fur cloak was curiously mixed with the
+      feeling of something else, of which that was an emblem,--a surrounding of
+      care and strength which would effectually be exerted for her
+      protection,--somewhat that Fleda had not known for many a long day,--the
+      making up of the old want. Fleda had it in her heart to cry like a baby.
+      Such a dash of sunlight had fallen at her feet that she hardly dared look
+      at it for fear of being dazzled; but she could not look anywhere that she
+      did not see the reflection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the mean time the earful of people settled again into sullen quietude.
+      The cold was not found propitious to quarrelling. Those who could subsided
+      anew into lethargy, those who could not gathered in their outposts to make
+      the best defence they might of the citadel. Most happily it was not an
+      extreme night; cold enough to be very disagreeable and even (without a fur
+      cloak) dangerous; but not enough to put even noses and ears in immediate
+      jeopardy. Mr. Carleton had contrived to procure a comfortable wrapper for
+      Mrs. Renney from a Yankee who for the sake of being "a warm man" as to his
+      pockets was willing to be cold otherwise for a time. The rest of the great
+      coats and cloaks which were so alert and erect a little while ago were
+      doubled up on every side in all sorts of despondent attitudes. A dull
+      quiet brooded over the assembly; and Mr. Carleton walked up and down the
+      vacant space. Once he caught an anxious glance from Fleda, and came
+      immediately to her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You need not be troubled about me," be said with a most genial smile;--"I
+      am not suffering--never was further from it in my life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda could neither answer nor look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There are not many hours of the night to wear out," he said. "Can't you
+      follow your neighbour's example?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This watching is too hard for you. You will have another headache
+      to-morrow."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--perhaps not," she said with a grateful look up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You do not feel the cold now, Elfie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not at all--not in the least--I am perfectly comfortable--I am doing very
+      well--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood still, and the changing lights and shades on Fleda's cheek grew
+      deeper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know where we are, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Somewhere between a town the name of which I have forgotten and a place
+      called Quarrenton, I think; and Quarrenton, they tell me, is but a few
+      miles from Greenfield. Our difficulties will vanish, I hope, with the
+      darkness."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked again, and Fleda mused, and wondered at herself in the black
+      fox. She did not venture another look, though her eye took in nothing very
+      distinctly but the outlines of that figure passing up and down through the
+      car. He walked perseveringly; and weariness at last prevailed over
+      everything else with Fleda; she lost herself with her head leaning against
+      the bit of wood between the windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rousing of the great coats, and the growing gray light, roused her
+      before her uneasy sleep had lasted an hour. The lamps were out, the car
+      was again spotted with two long rows of window-panes, through which the
+      light as yet came but dimly. The morning had dawned at last, and seemed to
+      have brought with it a fresh accession of cold, for everybody was on the
+      stir. Fleda put up her window to get a breath of fresh air and see how the
+      day looked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A change of weather had come with the dawn. It was not fine yet. The
+      snowing had ceased, but the clouds hung overhead still, though not with
+      the leaden uniformity of yesterday; they were higher and broken into many
+      a soft grey fold, that promised to roll away from the sky by and by. The
+      snow was deep on the ground; every visible thing lapped in a thick white
+      covering; a still, very grave, very pretty winter landscape, but somewhat
+      dreary in its aspect to a trainful of people fixed in the midst of it out
+      of sight of human habitation. Fleda felt that, but only in the abstract;
+      to her it did not seem dreary; she enjoyed the wild solitary beauty of the
+      scene very much, with many a grateful thought of what might have been. As
+      it was, she left difficulties entirely to others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as it was light the various inmates of the strange dormitory
+      gathered themselves up and set out on foot for Quarrenton. By one of them
+      Mr. Carleton sent an order for a sleigh, which in as short a time as
+      possible arrived, and transported him and Fleda and Mrs. Renney, and one
+      other ill-bestead woman, safely to the little town of Quarrenton.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="48"></a>Chapter XLVIII.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Welcome the sour cup of prosperity! Affliction may one day smile again,
+        and till then, Sit thee down, sorrow!--Love's Labour Lost.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      It had been a wild night, and the morning looked scared. Perhaps it was
+      only the particular locality, for if ever a place shewed bleak and winter
+      stricken the little town of Quarrenton was in that condition that morning.
+      The snow overlaid and enveloped everything, except where the wind had been
+      at work; and the wind and the grey clouds seemed the only agencies abroad.
+      Nor a ray of sunlight to relieve the uniform sober tints, the universal
+      grey and white, only varied where a black house-roof, partially cleared,
+      or a blacker bare-branched tree, gave it a sharp interruption. There was
+      not a solitary thing that bore an indication of comfortable life, unless
+      the curls of smoke that went up from the chimneys; and Fleda was in no
+      condition to study their physiognomy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little square hotel, perched alone on a rising ground, looked the
+      especial bleak and unpromising spot of the place. It bore however the
+      imposing title of the Pocahontas; and there the sleigh set them down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were ushered up-stairs into a little parlour furnished in the usual
+      style, with one or two articles a great deal too showy for the place and a
+      general dearth as to the rest. A lumbering mahogany sofa, that shewed as
+      much wood and as little promise as possible; a marble-topped centre-table;
+      chairs in the minority and curtains minus; and the hearth-rug providently
+      turned bottom upwards. On the centre-table lay a pile of Penny Magazines,
+      a volume of selections of poetry from various good authors, and a
+      sufficient complement of newspapers. The room was rather cold, but of that
+      the waiter gave a reasonable explanation in the fact that the fire had not
+      been burning long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Furs however might be dispensed with, or Fleda thought so; and taking off
+      her bonnet she endeavoured to rest her weary head against the sharp-cut
+      top of the sofa-back, which seemed contrived expressly to punish and
+      forbid all attempts at ease-seeking. The mere change of position was still
+      comparative ease. But the black fox had not done duty yet. Its ample folds
+      were laid over the sofa, cushion-back and all, so as at once to serve for
+      pillow and mattress, and Fleda being gently placed upon it laid her face
+      down again upon the soft fur, which gave a very kindly welcome not more to
+      the body than to the mind. Fleda almost smiled as she felt that. The furs
+      were something more than a pillow for her cheek--they were the soft image
+      of somewhat for her mind to rest on. But entirely exhausted, too much for
+      smiles or tears, though both were near, she resigned herself as helplessly
+      as an infant to the feeling of rest; and in five minutes was in a state of
+      dreamy unconsciousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Renney, who had slept a great part of the night, courted sleep anew
+      in the rocking-chair, till breakfast should be ready; the other woman had
+      found quarters in the lower part of the house; and Mr. Carleton stood
+      still with folded arms to read at his leisure the fair face that rested so
+      confidingly upon the black fur of his cloak, looking so very fair in the
+      contrast. It was the same face he had known in time past,--the same, with
+      only an alteration that had added new graces but had taken away none of
+      the old. Not one of the soft outlines had grown hard under Time's
+      discipline; not a curve had lost its grace or its sweet mobility; and yet
+      the hand of Time had been there; for on brow and lip and cheek and eyelid
+      there was that nameless grave composure which said touchingly that hope
+      had long ago clasped hands with submission. And perhaps, that if hope's
+      anchor had not been well placed, ay, even where it could not be moved, the
+      storms of life might have beaten even hope from her ground and made a
+      clean sweep of desolation over all she had left. Not the storms of the
+      last few weeks. Mr. Carleton saw and understood their work in the
+      perfectly colourless and thin cheek. But these other finer drawn
+      characters had taken longer to write. He did not know the instrument, but
+      he read the hand-writing, and came to his own resolutions therefrom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet if not untroubled she had remained unspotted by the world; that was as
+      clear as the other. The slight eyebrow sat with its wonted calm purity of
+      outline just where it used; the eyelid fell as quietly; the forehead above
+      it was as unruffled; and if the mouth had a subdued gravity that it had
+      taken years to teach, it had neither lost any of the sweetness nor any of
+      the simplicity of childhood. It was a strange picture that Mr. Carleton
+      was looking at,--strange for its rareness. In this very matter of
+      simplicity, that the world will never leave those who belong to it. Half
+      sitting and half reclining, she had given herself to rest with the
+      abandonment and self-forgetfulness of a child; her attitude had the very
+      grace of a child's unconsciousness; and her face shewed that even in
+      placing herself there she had lost all thought of any other presence or
+      any other eyes than her own; even of what her hand and cheek lay upon, and
+      what it betokened. It meant something to Mr. Carleton too; and if Fleda
+      could have opened her eyes she would have seen in those that were fixed
+      upon her a happy promise for her future life. She was beyond making any
+      such observations; and Mrs. Renney gave no interruption to his till the
+      breakfast bell rang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton had desired the meal to be served in a private room. But he
+      was met with a speech in which such a confusion of arguments endeavoured
+      to persuade him to be of another mind, that he had at last given way. It
+      was asserted that the ladies would have their breakfast a great deal
+      quicker and a great deal hotter with the rest of the company; and in the
+      same breath that it would be a very great favour to the house if the
+      gentleman would not put them to the inconvenience of setting a separate
+      table; the reasons of which inconvenience were set forth in detail, or
+      would have been if the gentleman would have heard them; and desirous
+      especially of haste, on Fleda's account, Mr. Carleton signified his
+      willingness to let the house accommodate itself. Following the bell a
+      waiter now came to announce and conduct them to their breakfast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down the stairs, through sundry narrow turning passages, they went to a
+      long low room at one corner of the house; where a table was spread for a
+      very nondescript company, as it soon proved, many of their last night's
+      companions having found their way thither. The two <i>ladies</i>, however,
+      were given the chief posts at the head, as near as possible to a fiery hot
+      stove, and served with tea and coffee from a neighbouring table by a young
+      lady in long ringlets who was there probably for their express honour. But
+      alas for the breakfast! They might as good have had the comfort of a
+      private room, for there was none other to be had. Of the tea and coffee it
+      might be said as once it was said of two bad roads--"whichever one you
+      take you will wish you had taken the other;" the beefsteak was a problem
+      of impracticability; and the chickens--Fleda could not help thinking that
+      a well-to-do rooster which she saw flapping his wings in the yard, must in
+      all probability be at that very moment endeavouring to account for a
+      sudden breach in his social circle; and if the oysters had been some very
+      fine ladies they could hardly have retained less recollection of their
+      original circumstances. It was in vain to try to eat or to drink; and
+      Fleda returned to her sofa with even an increased appetite for rest, the
+      more that her head began to take its revenge for the trials to which it
+      had been put the past day and night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had closed her eyes again in her old position. Mrs. Renney was tying
+      her bonnet-strings. Mr. Carleton was pacing up and down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Aren't you going to get ready, Miss Ringgan?" said the former.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How soon will the cars be here?" exclaimed Fleda starting up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Presently," said Mr. Carleton; "but," said he, coming up to her and
+      taking her hands,--"I am going to prescribe for you again--will you let
+      me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's face gave small promise of opposition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are not fit to travel now. You need some hours of quiet rest before
+      we go any further."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But when shall we get home?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In good time--not by the railroad--there is a nearer way that will take
+      us to Queechy without going through Greenfield. I have ordered a room to
+      be made ready for you--will you try if it be habitable?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda submitted; and indeed there was in his manner a sort of gentle
+      determination to which few women would have opposed themselves; besides
+      that her head threatened to make a journey a miserable business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are ill now," said Mr. Carleton. "Cannot you induce your companion to
+      stay and attend you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't want her," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton however mooted the question himself with Mrs. Renney, but she
+      represented to him, though with much deference, that the care of her
+      property must oblige her to go where and when it went. He rang and ordered
+      the housekeeper to be sent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently after a young lady in ringlets entered the room, and first
+      taking a somewhat leisurely survey of the company, walked to the window
+      and stood there looking out. A dim recollection of her figure and air made
+      Fleda query whether she were not the person sent for; but it was several
+      minutes before it came into Mr. Carleton's head to ask if she belonged to
+      the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do, sir," was the dignified answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you shew this lady the room prepared for her? And take care that she
+      wants nothing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The owner of the ringlets answered not, but turning the front view of them
+      full upon Fleda seemed to intimate that she was ready to act as her guide.
+      She hinted however that the rooms were very <i>airy</i> in winter and that
+      Fleda would stand a better chance of comfort where she was. But this Fleda
+      would not listen to, and followed her adviser to the half warmed and
+      certainly very airy apartment which had been got ready for her. It was
+      probably more owing to something in her own appearance than to Mr.
+      Carleton's word of admonition on the subject that her attendant was really
+      assiduous and kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Be you of this country?" she said abruptly, after her good offices as
+      Fleda thought were ended, and she had just closed her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She opened them again and said "yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, that ain't in the parlour, is he?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One of our folks?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "An American, you mean?--No."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought he wa'n't--What is he?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is English."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is he your brother?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young lady gave her a good look out of her large dark eyes, and
+      remarking that "she thought they didn't look much like," left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day was spent by poor Fleda between pain and stupor, each of which
+      acted in some measure to check the other; too much exhausted for nervous
+      pain to reach the height it sometimes did, while yet that was sufficient
+      to prevent stupor from sinking into sleep. Beyond any power of thought or
+      even fancy, with only a dreamy succession of images flitting across her
+      mind, the hours passed she knew not how; that they did pass she knew from
+      her handmaid in the long curls who was every now and then coming in to
+      look at her and give her fresh water; it needed no ice. Her handmaid told
+      her that the cars were gone by--that it was near noon--then that it was
+      past noon. There was no help for it; she could only lie still and wait; it
+      was long past noon before she was able to move; and she was looking ill
+      enough yet when she at last opened the door of the parlour and slowly
+      presented herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton was there alone, Mrs. Renney having long since accompanied
+      her baggage. He came forward instantly and led Fleda to the sofa, with
+      such gentle grave kindness that she could hardly bear it; her nerves had
+      been in an unsteady state all day. A table was set and partially spread
+      with evidently much more care than the one of the morning; and Fleda sat
+      looking at it afraid to trust herself to look anywhere else. For years she
+      had been taking care of others; and now there was something so strange in
+      this feeling of being cared for, that her heart was full. Whatever Mr.
+      Carleton saw or suspected of this, it did not appear. On the contrary his
+      manner and his talk on different matters was as cool, as quiet, as
+      graceful, as if neither he nor Fleda had anything particular to think of;
+      avoiding even an allusion to whatever might in the least distress her.
+      Fleda thought she had a great many reasons to be grateful to him, but she
+      never thanked him for anything more than at that moment she thanked him
+      for the delicacy which so regarded her delicacy and put her in a few
+      minutes completely at her ease as she could be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The refreshments were presently brought, and Fleda was served with them in
+      a way that went as far as possible towards making them satisfactory; but
+      though a great improvement upon the morning they furnished still but the
+      substitute for a meal. There was a little pause then after the horses were
+      ordered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid you have wanted my former prescription to-day," said Mr.
+      Carleton, after considering the little-improved colour of Fleda's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have indeed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda hesitated, and then in a little confusion said she supposed it was
+      lying on Mrs. Evelyn's centre-table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How happens that?" said he smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because--I could not help it, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda with no little
+      difficulty;--"I was foolish--I could not bring it away."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He understood and was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you fit to bear a long ride in the cold?" he said compassionately a
+      few minutes after.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh yes!--It will do me good."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have had a miserable day, have you not?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My head has been pretty bad,--" said Fleda a little evasively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, what would you have?" said he lightly;--"doesn't that make a
+      miserable day of it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda hesitated and coloured,--and then conscious that her cheeks were
+      answering for her, coloured so exceedingly that she was fain to put both
+      her hands up to hide what they only served the more plainly to shew. No
+      advantage was taken. Mr. Carleton said nothing; she could not see what
+      answer might be in his face. It was only by a peculiar quietness in his
+      tone whenever he spoke to her afterwards that Fleda knew she had been
+      thoroughly understood. She dared not lift her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had soon employment enough around her. A sleigh and horses better
+      than anything else Quarrenton had been known to furnish, were carrying her
+      rapidly towards home; the weather had perfectly cleared off, and in full
+      brightness and fairness the sun was shining upon a brilliant world. It was
+      cold indeed, though the only wind was that made by their progress; but
+      Fleda had been again unresistingly wrapped in the furs and was for the
+      time beyond the reach of that or any other annoyance. She eat silently and
+      quietly enjoying; so quietly that a stranger might have questioned there
+      being any enjoyment in the case. It was a very picturesque broken country,
+      fresh-covered with snow; and at that hour, late in the day, the lights and
+      shadows were a constantly varying charm to the eye. Clumps of evergreens
+      stood out in full disclosure against the white ground; the bare branches
+      of neighbouring trees, in all their barrenness, had a wild prospective or
+      retrospective beauty peculiar to themselves. On the wavy white surface of
+      the meadow-land, or the steep hill-sides, lay every variety of shadow in
+      blue and neutral tint; where they lay not the snow was too brilliant to be
+      borne. And afar off, through a heaven bright and cold enough to hold the
+      canopy over Winter's head, the ruler of the day was gently preparing to
+      say good-bye to the world. Fleda's eye seemed to be new set for all forms
+      of beauty, and roved from one to the other, as grave and bright as nature
+      itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a little way Mr. Carleton left her to her musings and was as silent as
+      she. But then he gently drew her into a conversation that broke up the
+      settled gravity of her face and obliged her to divide her attention
+      between nature and him, and his part of it he knew how to manage. But
+      though eye and smile constantly answered him he could win neither to a
+      straightforward bearing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were about a mile from Queechy when Pleda suddenly exclaimed,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O Mr. Carleton, please stop the sleigh I--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The horses were stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is only Earl Douglass--our farmer," Fleda said in explanation,--"I
+      want to ask how they are at home."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In answer to her nod of recognition Mr. Douglass came to the side of the
+      vehicle; but till he was there, close, gave her no other answer by word or
+      sign; when there, broke forth his accustomed guttural,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How d'ye do!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How d'ye do, Mr. Douglass," said Fleda. "How are they all at home?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, there ain't nothin' new among 'em, as I've heerd on," said Earl,
+      diligently though stealthily at the same time qualifying himself to make a
+      report of Mr. Carleton,--"I guess they'll be glad to see you. <i>I</i>
+      be."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thank you, Mr. Douglass. How is Hugh?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He ain't nothin' different from what he's been for a spell back--at least
+      I ain't heerd that he was.--Maybe he is, but if he is I han't heerd speak
+      of it, and if he was, I think I should ha' heerd speak of it. He <i>was</i>
+      pretty bad a spell ago--about when you went away--but he's been better
+      sen. So they say. I ha'n't seen him.--Well Flidda," he added with somewhat
+      of a sly gleam in his eye,--"do you think you're going to make up your
+      mind to stay to hum this time?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have no immediate intention of running away, Mr. Douglass," said Fleda,
+      her pale cheeks turning rose as she saw him looking curiously up and down
+      the edges of the black fox. His eye came back to hers with a good-humoured
+      intelligence that she could hardly stand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's time you was back," said he. "Your uncle's to hum,--but he don't do
+      me much good, whatever he does to other folks--nor himself nother, as far
+      as the farm goes; there's that corn"--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very well, Mr. Douglass," said Fleda,--"I shall be at home now and I'll
+      see about it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Very</i> good!" said Earl as he stepped back,--"Queechy can't get
+      along without you, that's no mistake."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They drove on a few minutes in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Aren't you thinking, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda, "that my countrymen are a
+      strange mixture?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was not thinking of them at all at this moment. I believe such a notion
+      has crossed my mind."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It has crossed mine very often," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you read them? what is the basis of it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus27.jpg"><img src="images/illus27.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="'How are they all at home?'" title="'How are they all at home?'" /><br />
+      "How are they all at home?"</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think,--the strong self-respect which springs from the security and
+      importance that republican institutions give every man. But," she added
+      colouring, "I have seen very little of the world and ought not to judge."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have no doubt you are quite right," said Mr. Carleton smiling. "But
+      don't you think an equal degree of self-respect may consist with giving
+      honour where honour is due?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--" said Fleda a little doubtfully,--"where religion and not
+      republicanism is the spring of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Humility and not pride," said he. "Yes--you are right."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My countrymen do yield honour where they think it is due," said Fleda;
+      "especially where it is not claimed. They must give it to reality, not to
+      pretension. And I confess I would rather see them a little rude in their
+      independence than cringing before mere advantages of external
+      position;--even for my own personal pleasure."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I agree with you, Elfie,--putting perhaps the last clause out of the
+      question."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now that man," said Fleda, smiling at his look,--"I suppose his address
+      must have struck you as very strange; and yet there was no want of respect
+      under it. I am sure he has a true thorough respect and even regard for me,
+      and would prove it on any occasion."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have no doubt of that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But it does not satisfy you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not quite. I confess I should require more from any one under my
+      control."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh nobody is under control here," said Fleda. "That is, I mean,
+      individual control. Unless so far as self-interest comes in. I suppose
+      that is all-powerful here as elsewhere."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And the reason it gives less power to individuals is that the greater
+      freedom of resources makes no man's interest depend so absolutely on one
+      other man. That is a reason you cannot regret. No--your countrymen have
+      the best of it, Elfie. But do you suppose that this is a fair sample of
+      the whole country?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I dare not say that," said Fleda. "I am afraid there is not so much
+      intelligence and cultivation everywhere. But I am sure there are many
+      parts of the land that will bear a fair comparison with it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is more than I would dare say for my own land."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should think--" Fleda suddenly stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What?--" said Mr. Carleton gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I beg your pardon, sir,--I was going to say something very presumptuous."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You cannot," he said in the same tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was going to say," said Fleda blushing, "that I should think there
+      might be a great deal of pleasure in raising the tone of mind and
+      character among the people,--as one could who had influence over a large
+      neighbourhood."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His smile was very bright in answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have been trying that, Elfie, for the last eight years."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's eye looked now eagerly in pleasure and in curiosity for more. But
+      he was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was thinking a little while ago," he said, "of the time once before
+      when I rode here with you--when you were beginning to lead me to the
+      problem I have been trying to work out ever since.--When I left you in
+      Paris I went to resolve with myself the question, What I had to do in the
+      world?--Your little Bible was my invaluable help. I had read very little
+      of it when I threw aside all other books; and my problem was soon solved.
+      I saw that the life has no honour nor value which is not spent to the
+      glory of God. I saw the end I was made for--the happiness I was fitted
+      for--the dignity to which even a fallen creature may rise, through his
+      dear Redeemer and surety."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's eyes were down now. Mr. Carleton was silent a moment, watching one
+      or two bright witnesses that fell from them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The next conclusion was easy,--that my work was at home.--I have wanted
+      my good fairy," Mr. Carleton went on smiling. "But I hope she will be
+      contented to carry the standard of Christianity, without that of
+      republicanism."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But Christianity tends directly to republicanism, Mr. Carleton," said
+      Fleda, trying to laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know that," said he smiling, "and I am willing to know it. But the
+      leaven of truth is one thing, and the powder train of the innovator is
+      another."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda sat thinking that she had very little in common with the layers of
+      powder trains. She did not know the sleigh was passing Deepwater Lake,
+      till Mr. Carleton said,--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am glad, my dear Elfie, for your sake, that we are almost at the end of
+      your journey."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should think you might be glad for your own sake, Mr. Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--my journey is not ended--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--it will not be ended till I get back to New York, or rather till I
+      find myself here again--I shall make very little delay there--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you will not go any further to-night?" said Fleda, her eye this time
+      meeting his fully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--I must take the first train to New York. I have some reason to
+      expect my mother by this steamer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Back to New York!" said Fleda. "Then taking care of me has just hindered
+      you in your business."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But even as she spoke she read the truth in his eye and her own fell in
+      confusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My business?" said he smiling;--"you know it now, Elfie. I arrived at
+      Mrs. Evelyn's just after you had quitted it, intending to ask you to take
+      the long talked of drive; and learned to my astonishment that you had left
+      the city, and as Edith kindly informed me, under no better guardianship
+      than that in which I found you. I was just in time to reach the boat."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you were in the boat night before last?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should have felt a great deal easier if I had known that," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So should I," said he, "but you were invisible, till I discerned you in
+      the midst of a crowd of people before me in the car."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was silent till the sleigh stopped and Mr. Carleton had handed her
+      out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's going to be done
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will send somebody down to help you with it," said Fleda. "It is too
+      heavy for one alone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well I reckon it is," said he. "I guess you didn't know I was a cousin,
+      did you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe I be."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who are you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am Pierson Barnes. I live to Quarrenton for a year back. Squire Joshua
+      Springer's your uncle, ain't he?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, my father's uncle."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well he's mine too. His sister's my mother."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll send somebody to help you, Mr. Barnes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took Mr. Carleton's arm and walked half the way up to the house
+      without daring to look at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Another specimen of your countrymen," he said smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing but quiet amusement in the tone, and there was not the
+      shadow of anything else in his face. Fleda looked, and thanked him
+      mentally, and drew breath easier. At the house door he made a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are coming in, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is a long drive to Greenfield, Mr. Carleton;--you must not turn away
+      from a country house till we have shewn ourselves unworthy to live in it.
+      You will come in and let us give you something more substantial than those
+      Quarrenton oysters. Do not say no," she said earnestly as she saw a
+      refusal in his eye,--"I know what you are thinking of, but they do not
+      know that you have been told anything--it makes no difference."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She laid her gentle detaining hand, as irresistible in its way as most
+      things, upon his arm, and he followed her in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only Hugh was in the sitting-room, and he was in a great easy-chair by the
+      fire. It struck to Fleda's heart; but there was no time but for a flash of
+      thought. He had turned his face and saw her. Fleda meant to have
+      controlled herself and presented Mr. Carleton properly, but Hugh started
+      up, he saw nothing but herself, and one view of the ethereal delicacy of
+      his face made Fleda for a moment forget everything but him. They were in
+      each other's arms, and then still as death. Hugh was unconscious that a
+      stranger was there, and though Fleda was very conscious that one was there
+      who was no stranger,--there was so much in both hearts, so much of sorrow
+      and joy, and gratitude and tenderness, on the one part and on the other,
+      so much that even if they had been alone lips could only have said
+      silently,--that for a little while they kissed each other and wept in a
+      passionate attempt to speak what their hearts were too full of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda at last whispered to Hugh that somebody else was there and turned to
+      make as well as she might the introduction. But Mr. Carleton did not need
+      it, and made his own with that singular talent which in all circumstances,
+      wherever he chose to exert it, had absolute power. Fleda saw Hugh's
+      countenance change, with a kind of pleased surprise, and herself stood
+      still under the charm for a minute; then she recollected she might be
+      dispensed with. She took up her little spaniel who was in an agony of
+      gratulation at her feet, and went out into the kitchen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well do you mean to say you are here at last?" said Barby, her grey eyes
+      flashing pleasure as she came forward to take the half hand which, owing
+      to King's monopoly, was all Fleda had to give her. "Have you come home to
+      stay, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am tired enough to be quiet," said Fleda. "But dear Barby, what have
+      you got in the house?--I want supper as quickly as it can be had."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well you do look dreadful bad," said Barby eying her. "Why there ain't
+      much particular, Fleda; nobody's had any heart to eat lately; I thought I
+      might a'most as well save myself the fuss of getting victuals. Hugh lives
+      like a bird, and Mis' Rossitur ain't much better, and I think all of 'em
+      have been keeping their appetites till you came back; 'cept Philetus and
+      me; we keep it up pretty well. Why you're come home hungry, ain't you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, not I," said Fleda, "but there's a gentleman here that came with me
+      that must have something before he goes away again. What have you Barby?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who is he?" said Barby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A friend that took care of me on the way--I'll tell you about it,--but in
+      the mean time, supper, Barby."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is he a New Yorker, that one must be curious for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As curious as you like," said Fleda, "but he is not a New Yorker."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where <i>is</i> he from, then?" said Barby, who was busily putting on the
+      tea-kettle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "England."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "England!" said Barby facing about. "Oh if he's an Englishman I don't care
+      for him, Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you care for me," said Fleda laughing; "and for my sake don't let our
+      hospitality fail to somebody who has been very kind to me, if he is an
+      Englishman; and he is in haste to be off."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well I don't know what we're a going to give him," said Barby looking at
+      her. "There ain't much in the pantry besides cold pork and beans that
+      Philetus and me made our dinner on--they wouldn't have it in there, and
+      eat nothing but some pickerel the doctor sent down--and cold fish ain't
+      good for much."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "None of them left uncooked?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, there's a couple--he sent a great lot--I guess he thought there was
+      more in the family--but two ain't enough to go round; they're little
+      ones."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, but put them down and I'll make an omelette. Just get the things
+      ready for me, Barby, will you, while I run up to see aunt Lucy. The hens
+      have begun to lay?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "La yes--Philetus fetches in lots of eggs--he loves 'em, I reckon--but you
+      ain't fit this minute to do a thing but rest, Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll rest afterwards. Just get the things ready for me, Barby, and an
+      apron; and the table--I'll be down in a minute. And Barby, grind some
+      coffee, will you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as she turned to run up stairs, her uncle stood in her way, and the
+      supper vanished from Fleda's head. His arms were open and she was silently
+      clasped in them, with so much feeling on both sides that thought and well
+      nigh strength for anything else on her part was gone. His smothered words
+      of deep blessing overcame her. Fleda could do nothing but sob, in
+      distress, till she recollected Barby. Putting her arms round his neck then
+      she whispered to him that Mr. Carleton was in the other room and shortly
+      explained how he came to be there, and begged her uncle would go in and
+      see him till supper should be ready. Enforcing this request with a parting
+      kiss on his cheek, she ran off up stairs. Mr. Rossitur looked extremely
+      moody and cloudy for a few minutes, and then went in and joined his guest.
+      Mrs. Rossitur and her daughter could not be induced to shew themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Rolf, however, had no scruples of any kind. He presently edged
+      himself into the room to see the stranger whom he no sooner saw than with
+      a joyous exclamation he bounded forward to claim an old friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, Mr. Carleton," exclaimed Mr. Rossitur in surprise, "I was not aware
+      that this young gentleman had the honour of your acquaintance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I have!" said Rolf.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In London, sir, I had that pleasure," said Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think it was <i>I</i> had the pleasure," said Rolf, pounding one hand
+      upon Mr. Carleton's knee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is your mother?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She wouldn't come down," said Rolf,--"but I guess she will when she knows
+      who is here--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he was darting away to tell her, when Mr. Carleton, within whose arms
+      he stood, quietly restrained him, and told him he was going away
+      presently, but would come again and see his mother another time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you going back to England, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By and by."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you will come here again first?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--if Mr. Rossitur will let me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton knows he commands his own welcome," said that gentleman
+      somewhat stately. "Go and tell your aunt Fleda that tea is ready, Rolf."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She knows," said Rolf. "She was making an omelette--I guess it was for
+      this gentleman!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whose name he was not clear of yet. Mr. Rossitur looked vexed, but Hugh
+      laughed and asked if his aunt gave him leave to tell that. Rolf entered
+      forthwith into discussion on this subject, while Mr. Carleton who had not
+      seemed to hear it engaged Mr. Rossitur busily in another; till the
+      omelette and Fleda came in. Rolf's mind however was ill at ease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Aunt Fleda," said he, as soon as she had fairly taken her place at the
+      head of the table, "would you mind my telling that you made the omelette
+      for this gentleman?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda cast a confused glance first at the person in question and then
+      round the table, but Mr. Carleton without looking at her answered
+      instantly,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you understand, Rolf, that the same kindness which will do a favour
+      for a friend will keep him in ignorance of it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rolf pondered a moment and then burst forth,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why, sir, wouldn't you like it as well for knowing she made it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was hardly in human gravity to stand this. Fleda herself laughed, but
+      Mr. Carleton as unmoved as possible answered him, "Certainly not!"--and
+      Rolf was nonplussed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The supper was over. Hugh had left the room, and Mr. Rossitur had before
+      that gone out to give directions about Mr. Carleton's horses. He and Fleda
+      were left alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have something against you, fairy," said he lightly, taking her hand
+      and putting it to his lips. "You shall not again do me such honour as you
+      have done me to-day--I did not deserve it, Elfie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last words were spoken half reproachfully. Fleda stood a moment
+      motionless, and then by some curious revulsion of feeling put both her
+      hands to her face and burst into tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She struggled against them, and spoke almost immediately,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will think me very foolish, Mr. Carleton,--I am ashamed of
+      myself--but I have lived here so long in this way,--my spirits have grown
+      so quieted by different things,--that it seems sometimes as if I could not
+      bear anything.--I am afraid--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of what, my dear Elfie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she did not answer, and her tears came again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are weary and spent," he said gently, repossessing himself of one of
+      her hands. "I will ask you another time what you are afraid of, and rebuke
+      all your fears."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I deserve nothing but rebuke now," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But her hand knew, by the gentle and quiet clasp in which it lay, that
+      there was no disposition to give it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do not speak to me for a minute," she said hastily as she heard some one
+      coming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She went to the window and stood there looking out till Mr. Carleton came
+      to bid her good-bye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you permit me to say to Mrs. Evelyn," he said in a low tone, "that
+      you left a piece of your property in her house and have commissioned me to
+      bring it you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--" said Fleda, hesitating and looking a little confused,--"but--will
+      you let me write a note instead, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Certainly!--but what are you thinking of, Elfie? what grave doubt is
+      lying under your brow?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All Fleda's shadows rolled away before that clear bright eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have found by experience," she said, smiling a little but looking
+      down,--"that whenever I tell my secret thoughts to anybody I have some
+      reason afterwards to be sorry for it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You shall make me an exception to your rule, however, Elfie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked up, one of her looks half questioning, half fearing, and then
+      answered, a little hesitating,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was afraid, sir, that if you went to Mrs. Evelyn's on that errand--I
+      was afraid you would shew them you were displeased."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what then?" said he quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Only--that I wanted to spare them what always gives me a cold chill."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Gives you!" said Mr. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir--only by sympathy--I thought my agency would be the gentlest."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I see I was right," she said, looking up as he did not answer,--"they
+      don't deserve it,--not half so much as you think. They talk--they don't
+      know what. I am sure they never meant half they said--never meant to annoy
+      me with it, I mean,--and I am sure they have a true love for me; they have
+      shewn it in a great many ways. Constance especially never shewed me
+      anything else. They have been very kind to me; and as to letting me come
+      away as they did, I suppose they thought I was in a greater hurry to get
+      home than I really was--and they would very likely not have minded
+      travelling so themselves; I am so different from them that they might in
+      many things judge me by themselves and yet judge far wrong."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was going on, but she suddenly became aware that the eye to which
+      she was speaking had ceased to look at the Evelyns, even in imagination,
+      and she stopped short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you trust me, after this, to see Mrs. Evelyn without the note?" said
+      he smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda gave him her hand very demurely without raising her eyes again,
+      and he went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barby who had come in to clear away the table took her stand at the window
+      to watch Mr. Carleton drive off. Fleda had retreated to the fire. Barby
+      looked in silence till the sleigh was out of sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is he going back to England now?" she said coming back to the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barby gathered a pile of plates together and then enquired,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is he going to settle in America?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why no, Barby! What makes you ask such a thing?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought he looked as if he had dressed himself for a cold climate,"
+      said Barby dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda sat down by Hugh's easy-chair and laid her head on his breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I like your Mr. Carleton very much," Hugh whispered after awhile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you?" said Fleda, a little wondering at Hugh's choice of that
+      particular pronominal adjective.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very much indeed. But he has changed, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--in some things--some great things."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He says he is coming again," said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's heart beat. She was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very glad," repeated Hugh, "I like him very much. But you won't
+      leave me, Fleda,--will you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Leave you?" said Fleda looking at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," said Hugh smiling, and drawing her head down again;--I always
+      thought what he came over here for. But you will stay with me while I want
+      you, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "While you want me!" said Fleda again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes.--It won't be long."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What won't be long?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I," said Hugh quietly. "Not long. I am very glad I shall not leave you
+      alone, dear Fleda--very glad!--promise me you will not leave me any more."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't talk so, dear Hugh!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But it is true, Fleda," said Hugh gently. "I know it. I sha'n't be here
+      but a little while. I am so glad you are come home, dear Fleda!--You will
+      not let anybody take you away till I am gone first?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda drew her arm close around Hugh's neck and was still,--still even to
+      his ear,--for a good while. A hard battle must be fought, and she must not
+      be weak, for his sake and for everybody's sake. Others of the family had
+      come or were coming into the room. Hugh waited till a short breath, but
+      freer drawn, told him he might speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda--" he whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very happy.--I only want your promise about that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I can't talk to you, Hugh."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, but promise me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That you will not let anybody take you away while I want you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure he would not ask it," said Fleda, hiding her cheeks and eyes at
+      once in his breast.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="49"></a>Chapter XLIX.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Do you think I shall not love a sad Pamela as well as a joyful?
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Sidney.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton came back without his mother; she had chosen to put off her
+      voyage till spring. He took up his quarters at Montepoole, which, far
+      though it was, was yet the nearest point where his notions of ease could
+      have freedom enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One would have thought that saw him,--those most nearly concerned almost
+      did think,--that in his daily coming to Queechy Mr. Carleton sought
+      everybody's pleasure rather than his own. He was Fleda's most gentle and
+      kind assistant in taking care of Hugh, soon dearly valued by the sick one,
+      who watched for and welcomed his coming as a bright spot in the day; and
+      loved particularly to have Mr. Carleton's hand do anything for him. Rather
+      than almost any other. His mother's was too feeling; Fleda's Hugh often
+      feared was weary; and his father's, though gentle to him as to an infant,
+      yet lacked the mind's training. And though Marion was his sister in blood,
+      Guy was his brother in better bonds. The deep blue eye that little Fleda
+      had admired Hugh learned to love and rest on singularly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the rest of the family Mr. Carleton's influence was more soothing and
+      cheering than any cause beside. To all but the head of it. Even Mrs.
+      Rossitur, after she had once made up her mind to see him, could not bear
+      to be absent when he was in the house. The dreaded contrast with old times
+      gave no pain, either to her or Marion. Mr. Carleton forgot so completely
+      that there was any difference that they were charmed into forgetting it
+      too. But Mr. Rossitur's pride lay deeper, or had been less humbled by
+      sorrow; the recollections that his family let slip never failed to gall
+      him when Mr. Carleton was present; and if now and then for a moment these
+      were banished by his guest's graces of mind and manner, the next breath
+      was a sigh for the circles and the pleasures they served to recall, now
+      seeming for ever lost to him. Mr. Carleton perceived that his company gave
+      pain and not pleasure to his host and for that reason was the less in the
+      house, and made his visits to Hugh at times when Mr. Rossitur was not in
+      the way. Fleda he took out of the house and away with him, for her good
+      and his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Fleda the old childish feeling came back, that she was in somebody's
+      hands who had a marvellous happy way of managing things about her and even
+      of managing herself. A kind of genial atmosphere, that was always doing
+      her good, yet so quietly and so skilfully that she could only now and then
+      get a chance even to look her thanks. Quietly and efficiently he was
+      exerting himself to raise the tone of her mind, to brighten her spirits,
+      to reach those sober lines that years of patience had drawn round her eye
+      and mouth, and charm them away. So gently, so indirectly, by efforts so
+      wisely and gracefully aimed, he set about it, that Fleda did not know what
+      he was doing; but <i>he</i> knew. He knew when he saw her brow unbend and
+      her eye catch its old light sparkle, that his conversation and the
+      thoughts and interests with which he was rousing her mind or fancy, were
+      working, and would work all he pleased. And though the next day he might
+      find the old look of patient gravity again, he hardly wished it not there,
+      for the pleasure of doing it away. Hugh's anxious question to Fleda had
+      been very uncalled for, and Fleda's assurance was well-grounded; that
+      subject was never touched upon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's manner with Mr. Carleton was peculiar and characteristic. In the
+      house, before others, she was as demure and reserved as though he had been
+      a stranger; she never placed herself near him, nor entered into
+      conversation with him, unless when he obliged her; but when they were
+      alone there was a frank confidence and simplicity in her manner that most
+      happily answered the high-bred delicacy that had called it out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One afternoon of a pleasant day in March Fleda and Hugh were sitting alone
+      together in the sick room. Hugh was weaker than usual, but not confined to
+      his bed; he was in his great easy-chair which had been moved up-stairs for
+      him again. Fleda had been repeating hymns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are tired," Hugh said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There's something about you that isn't strong," said Hugh fondly. "I
+      wonder where is Mr. Carleton to-day. It is very pleasant, isn't it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very pleasant, and warm; it is like April; the snow all went off
+      yesterday, and the ground is dry except in spots."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish he would come and give you a good walk. I have noticed how you
+      always come back looking so much brighter after one of your walks or rides
+      with him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What makes you think so, dear Hugh?" said Fleda a little troubled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Only my eyes," said Hugh smiling. "It does me as much good as you,
+      Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I <i>never</i> want to go and leave you, Hugh."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very glad there is somebody to take you. I wish he would come. You
+      want it this minute."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't think I shall let him take me if he comes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Whither? and whom?" said another voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I didn't know you were there, sir," said Fleda suddenly rising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am but just here--Rolf admitted me as he passed out."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coming in between them and still holding the hand of one Mr. Carleton bent
+      down towards the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How is Hugh, to-day?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was pleasant to see, that meeting of eyes,--the grave kindliness on the
+      one side, the confident affection on the other. But the wasted features
+      said as plainly as the tone of Hugh's gentle reply, that he was passing
+      away,--fast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What shall I do for you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Take Fleda out and give her a good walk. She wants it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will, presently. You are weary--what shall I do to rest you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing--" said Hugh, closing his eyes with a very placid look;--"unless
+      you will put me in mind of something about heaven, Mr. Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Shall I read to you?--Baxter,--or something else?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--just give me something to think of while you're gone,--as you have
+      done before, Mr. Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will give you two or three of the Bible bits on that subject; they are
+      but hints and indications you know--rather rays of light that stream out
+      from the place than any description of it; but you have only to follow one
+      of these indications and see whither it will lead you. The first I
+      recollect is that one spoken to Abraham, 'Fear not--I am thy shield, and
+      thy exceeding great reward.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't go any further, Mr. Carleton," said Hugh with a smile. "Fleda--do
+      you remember?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They sat all silent, quite silent, all three, for nobody knew how long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You were going to walk," said Hugh without looking at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda however did not move till a word or two from Mr. Carleton had backed
+      Hugh's request; then she went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is she gone?" said Hugh. "Mr. Carleton, will you hand me that little
+      desk."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was his own. Mr. Carleton brought it. Hugh opened it and took out a
+      folded paper which he gave to Mr. Carleton, saying that he thought he
+      ought to have it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know the handwriting, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ah she has scratched it so. It is Fleda's."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh shut his eyes again and Mr. Carleton seeing that he had settled
+      himself to sleep went to the window with the paper. It hardly told him
+      anything he did not know before, though set in a fresh light.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Cold blew the east wind<br /> And thick fell the rain,<br /> I looked for
+        the tops<br /> Of the mountains in vain;<br /> Twilight was gathering<br />
+        And dark grew the west,<br /> And the woodfire's crackling<br /> Toned
+        well with the rest.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Speak fire and tell me--<br /> Thy flickering flame<br /> Fell on me in
+        years past--<br /> Say, am I the same?<br /> Has my face the same
+        brightness<br /> In those days it wore?--<br /> My foot the same lightness<br />
+        As it crosses the floor?
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Methinks there are changes--<br /> Am weary to-night,--<br /> I once was
+        as tireless<br /> As the bird on her flight;<br /> My bark in full measure<br />
+        Threw foam from the prow;--<br /> Not even for pleasure<br /> Would I care
+        to move now.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Tis not the foot only<br /> That lieth thus still,--<br /> I am weary in
+        spirit,<br /> I am listless in will.<br /> My eye vainly peereth<br />
+        Through the darkness, to find<br /> Some object that cheereth--<br /> Some
+        light for the mind.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "What shadows come o'er me--<br /> What things of the past,--<br /> Bright
+        things of my childhood<br /> That fled all too fast,<br /> The scenes
+        where light roaming<br /> My foot wandered free,<br /> Come back through
+        the gloamin'--<br /> Come all back to me.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "The cool autumn evening,<br /> The fair summer morn,--<br /> The dress
+        and the aspect<br /> Some dear ones have worn,--<br /> The sunshiny
+        places--<br /> The shady hill-side--<br /> The words and the faces<br />
+        That might not abide.--
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Die out little fire--<br /> Ay, blacken and pine!--<br /> So have paled
+        many lights<br /> That were brighter than thine.<br /> I can quicken thy
+        embers<br /> Again with a breath,<br /> But the others lie cold<br /> In
+        the ashes of death."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton had read near through the paper before Fleda came in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have kept you a long time, Mr. Carleton," she said coming up to the
+      window; "I found aunt Lucy wanted me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she saw with a little surprise the deepening eye which met her, and
+      which shewed, she knew, the working of strong feeling. Her own eye went to
+      the paper in search of explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What have you there?--Oh, Mr. Carleton," she said, putting her hand over
+      it,--"Please to give it to me!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's face was very much in earnest. He took the hand but did not give
+      her the paper, and looked his refusal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am ashamed you should see that!--who gave it to you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You shall wreak your displeasure on no one but me," he said smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But have you read it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very sorry!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very glad, my dear Elfie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will think--you will think what wasn't true,--it was just a mood I
+      used to get into once in a while--I used to be angry with myself for it,
+      but I could not help it--one of those listless fits would take me now and
+      then--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I understand it, Elfie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very sorry you should know I ever felt or wrote so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was very foolish and wrong--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that a reason for my not knowing it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--not a good one--But you have read it now,--won't you let me have it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--I shall ask for all the rest of the portfolio, Elfie," he said as he
+      put it in a place of security.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Pray do not!" said Fleda most unaffectedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because I remember Mrs. Carleton says you always have what you ask for."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Give me permission to put on your bonnet, then," said he laughingly,
+      taking it from her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The air was very sweet, the footing pleasant. The first few steps of the
+      walk were made by Fleda in silence, with eager breath and a foot that grew
+      lighter as it trod.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't think it was a right mood of mind I had when I wrote that," she
+      said. "It was morbid. But I couldn't help it.--Yet if one could keep
+      possession of those words you quoted just now, I suppose one never would
+      have morbid feelings, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps not; but human nature has a weak hold of anything, and many
+      things may make it weaker."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mine is weak," said Fleda. "But it is possible to keep firm hold of those
+      words, Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--by strength that is not human nature's--And after all the firm hold
+      is rather that in which we are held, or ours would soon fail. The very
+      hand that makes the promise its own must be nerved to grasp it. And so it
+      is best, for it keeps us looking off always to the Author and Finisher of
+      our faith."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I love those words," said Fleda. "But Mr. Carleton, how shall one be <i>sure</i>
+      that one has a right to those other words--those I mean that you told to
+      Hugh? One cannot take the comfort of them unless one is <i>sure</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her voice trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Elfie, the promises have many of them their <i>double</i>--stamped
+      with the very same signet--and if that sealed counterpart is your own, it
+      is the sure earnest and title to the whole value of the promise."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well--in this case?" said Fleda eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In this case,--God says, 'I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great
+      reward.' Now see if your own heart can give the countersign,--'<i>Thou art
+      my portion, O Lord</i>!'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's head sank instantly and almost lay upon his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you have the one, my dear Elfie, the other is yours--it is the note of
+      hand of the maker of the promise--sure to be honoured. And if you want
+      proof here it is,--and a threefold cord is not soon broken.--'Because he
+      hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on
+      high, because he hath known my name. He shall call upon me, and I will
+      answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour
+      him. With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause of some length. Fleda had lifted up her head, but walked
+      along very quietly, not seeming to care to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you the countersign, Elfie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda flashed a look at him, and only restrained herself from weeping
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes.--But so I had then, Mr. Carleton--only sometimes I got those fits of
+      feeling--I forgot it, I suppose."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When were these verses written?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Last fall;--uncle Rolf was away, and aunt Lucy unhappy,--and I believe I
+      was tired--I suppose it was that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a matter of several rods each was busy with his own musings. But Mr.
+      Carleton bethought himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where are you, Elfie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where am I?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--Not at Queechy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No indeed," said Fleda laughing. "Far enough away."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "At Paris--at the March&eacute; des Innocens."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How did you get to Paris?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know--by a bridge of associations, I suppose, resting one end on
+      last year, and the other on the time when I was eleven years old."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very intelligible," said Mr. Carleton smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you remember that morning, Mr. Carleton?--when you took Hugh and me to
+      the March&eacute; des Innocens?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perfectly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have thanked you a great many times since for getting up so early that
+      morning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think I was well paid at the time. I remember I thought I had seen one
+      of the prettiest sights I had even seen in Paris."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So I thought!" said Fleda. "It has been a pleasant picture in my
+      imagination ever since."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a curious curl in the corners of Mr. Carleton's mouth which made
+      Fleda look an inquiry--a look so innocently wistful that his gravity gave
+      way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Elfie!" said he, "you are the very child you were then."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Am I?" said Fleda. "I dare say I am, for I feel so. I have the very same
+      feeling I used to have then, that I am a child, and you taking the care of
+      me into your own hands."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One half of that is true, and the other half nearly so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How good you always were to me!" Fleda said with a sigh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not necessary to balance the debtor and creditor items on both sides," he
+      said with a smile, "as the account bids fair to run a good while."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A silence again, during which Fleda is clearly <i>not</i> enjoying the
+      landscape nor the fine weather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Elfie,--what are you meditating?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She came back from her meditations with a very frank look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was thinking,--Mr. Carleton,--of your notions about female education."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well?--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had paused upon a rising ground. Fleda hesitated, and then looked up
+      in his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid you will find me wanting, and when you do, will you put me in
+      the way of being all you wish me to be?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her look was ingenuous and tender, equally. He gave her no answer, except
+      by the eye of grave intentness that fixed hers till she could meet it no
+      longer and her own fell. Mr. Carleton recollected himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Elfie," said he, and whatever the look had meant Elfie was at no
+      loss for the tone now,--"what do you consider yourself deficient in?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda spoke with a little difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid in a good many things--in general reading,--and in what are
+      called accomplishments--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You shall read as much as you please by and by," said he, "provided you
+      will let me read with you; and as for the other want, Elfie, it is rather
+      a source of gratification to me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Elfie very naturally asked why?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because as soon as I have the power I shall immediately constitute myself
+      your master in the arts of riding and drawing, and in any other art or
+      acquisition you may take a fancy to, and give you lessons diligently."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And will there be gratification in that?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His answer was by a smile. But he somewhat mischievously asked her, "Will
+      there not?"--and Fleda was quiet.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="50"></a>Chapter L.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Friends, I sorrow not to leave ye;<br /> If this life an exile be,<br />
+        We who leave it do but journey<br /> Homeward to our family.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Spanish Ballad.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      The first of April came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur had made up his mind not to abide at Queechy, which only held
+      him now by the frail thread of Hugh's life. Mr. Carleton knew this, and
+      had even taken some steps towards securing for him a situation in the West
+      Indies. But it was unknown to Fleda; she had not heard her uncle say
+      anything on the subject since she came home; and though aware that their
+      stay was a doubtful matter, she still thought it might be as well to have
+      the garden in order. Philetus could not be trusted to do everything wisely
+      of his own head, and even some delicate jobs of hand could not be safely
+      left to his skill; if the garden was to make any headway Fleda's head and
+      hand must both be there, she knew. So as the spring opened she used to
+      steal away from the house every morning for an hour or two, hardly letting
+      her friends know what she was about, to make sure that peas and potatoes
+      and radishes and lettuce were in the right places at the right times, and
+      to see that the later and more delicate vegetables were preparing for. She
+      took care to have this business well over before the time that Mr.
+      Carleton ever arrived from the Pool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One morning she was busy in dressing the strawberry beds, forking up the
+      ground between the plants and filling the vacancies that the severe winter
+      or some irregularities of fall dressing had made. Mr. Skillcorn was
+      rendering a somewhat inefficient help, or perhaps amusing himself with
+      seeing how she worked. The little old silver-grey hood was bending down
+      over the strawberries, and the fork was going at a very energetic rate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Philetus--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Marm!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you bring me that bunch of strawberry plants that lies at the corner
+      of the beds, in the walk?--and my trowel?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will!--" said Mr. Skillcorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was another hand however that brought them and laid them beside her;
+      but Fleda very intent upon her work and hidden under her close hood did
+      not find it out. She went on busily putting in the plants as she found
+      room for them, and just conscious, as she thought, that Philetus was still
+      standing at her side she called upon him from time to time, or merely
+      stretched out her hand, for a fresh plant as she had occasion for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Philetus," she said at length, raising her voice a little that it might
+      win to him round the edge of her hood without turning her face,--"I wish
+      you would get the ground ready for that other planting of potatoes--you
+      needn't stay to help me any longer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Tain't me, I guess," said the voice of Philetus on the other side of
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked in astonishment to make sure that it really was Mr. Skillcorn
+      proceeding along the garden path in that quarter, and turning jumped up
+      and dropped her trowel and fork, to have her hands otherwise occupied. Mr.
+      Skillcorn walked off leisurely towards the potato ground, singing to
+      himself in a kind of consolatory aside,--
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "I cocked up my beaver, and who but I!--<br /> The lace in my hat was so
+        gallant and so gay,<br /> That I flourished like a king in his own coun<i>tray</i>."
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      "There is one of your countrymen that is an odd variety, certainly," said
+      Mr. Carleton, looking after him with a very comic expression of eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is he not!" said Fleda. "And hardly a common one. There never was a line
+      more mathematically straight than the course of Philetus's ideas; they
+      never diverge, I think, to the right hand or the left, a jot from his own
+      self-interest."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will be an invaluable help to me, Elfie, if you can read my English
+      friends as closely."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid you will not let me come as close to them," said Fleda
+      laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps not. I shouldn't like to pay too high a premium for the
+      knowledge. How is Hugh, to-day?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda answered with a quick change of look and voice that he was much as
+      usual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My mother has written me that she will be here by the Europa, which is
+      due to-morrow--I must set off for New York this afternoon; therefore I
+      came so early to Queechy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was instinctively pulling off her gardening gloves, as they walked
+      towards the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Aunt Miriam wants to see you, Mr. Carleton--she begged I would ask you to
+      come there some time--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "With great pleasure--shall we go there now, Elfie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will be ready in five minutes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur was alone in the breakfast-room when they went in. Hugh she
+      reported was asleep, and would be just ready to see Mr. Carleton by the
+      time they got back. They stood a few minutes talking, and then Fleda went
+      to get ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both pair of eyes followed her as she left the room and then met with
+      perfect understanding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you give your child to me, Mrs. Rossitur?" said the gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "With all my heart!" exclaimed Mrs. Rossitur bursting into tears,--"even
+      if I were left alone entirely--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her agitation was uncontrolled for a minute, and then she said, with
+      feeling seemingly too strong to be kept in,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If I were only sure of meeting her in heaven, I could be content to be
+      without her till then!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is in the way, my dear madam?" said Mr. Carleton, with a gentle
+      sympathy that touched the very spring he meant it should. Mrs. Rossitur
+      waited a minute, but it was only till tears would let her speak, and then
+      said like a child,--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh, it is all darkness!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Except this," said he, gently and clearly, "that Jesus Christ is a sun
+      and a shield; and those that put themselves at his feet are safe from all
+      fear, and they who go to him for light shall complain of darkness no
+      more."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I do not know how--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ask him and he will tell you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But I am unworthy even to look up towards him," said Mrs. Rossitur,
+      struggling, it seemed, between doubts and wishes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He knows that, and yet he has bid you come to him. He knows that,--and
+      knowing it, he has taken your responsibility and paid your debt, and
+      offers you now a clean discharge, if you will take it at his hand;--and
+      for the other part of this unworthiness, that blood cannot do away, blood
+      has brought the remedy--'Shall we who are evil give good things to our
+      children, and shall not our Father which is in heaven give his Holy Spirit
+      to them that ask him?'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But must I do nothing?" said Mrs. Rossitur, when she had remained quiet
+      with her face in her hands for a minute or two after he had done speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nothing but be willing--be willing to have Christ in all his offices, as
+      your Teacher, your King, and your Redeemer--give yourself to him, dear
+      Mrs. Rossitur, and he will take care of the rest."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am willing!" she exclaimed. Fresh tears came, and came freely. Mr.
+      Carleton said no more, till hearing some noise of opening and shutting
+      doors above stairs Mrs. Rossitur hurriedly left the room, and Fleda came
+      in by the other entrance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "May I take you a little out of the way, Mr. Carleton?" she said when they
+      had passed through the Deepwater settlement.--"I have a message to carry
+      to Mrs. Elster--a poor woman out here beyond the lake. It is not a
+      disagreeable place."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what if it were?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should not perhaps have asked you to go with me," said Fleda a little
+      doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You may take me where you will, Elfie," he said gently. "I hope to do as
+      much by you some day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked up at the piece of elegance beside her, and thought what a
+      change must have come over him if <i>he</i> would visit poor places. He
+      was silent and grave however, and so was she, till they arrived at the
+      house they were going to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certainly it was not a disagreeable place. Barby's much less strong minded
+      sister had at least a good share of her practical nicety. The little board
+      path to the door was clean and white still, with possibly a trifle less
+      brilliant effect. The room and its old inhabitants were very comfortable
+      and tidy; the patchwork counterpane as gay as ever. Mrs. Elster was alone,
+      keeping company with a snug little wood fire, which was near as much
+      needed in that early spring weather as it had been during the winter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton had come back from his abstraction, and stood taking half
+      unconscious note of these things, while Fleda was delivering her message
+      to the old woman. Mrs. Elster listened to her implicitly with every now
+      and then an acquiescing nod or ejaculation, but so soon as Fleda had said
+      her say she burst out, with a voice that had never known the mufflings of
+      delicacy and was now pitched entirely beyond its owner's ken. Looking hard
+      at Mr. Carleton,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda!--Is <i>this</i> the gentleman that's to be your--<i>husband?</i>"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last word elevated and brought out with emphatic distinctness of
+      utterance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the demand had been whether the gentleman in question was a follower of
+      Mahomet, it would hardly have been more impossible for Fleda to give an
+      affirmative answer; but Mr. Carleton laughed and bringing his face a
+      little nearer the old crone, answered,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So she has promised, ma'am."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus28.jpg"><img src="images/illus28.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="Is this the gentleman that's to be your husband?'"
+      title="'Is this the gentleman that's to be your husband?'" /><br /> "Is this
+      the gentleman that's to be your husband?"</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was curious to see the lines of the old woman's face relax as she
+      looked at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's--worthy of you!--as far as looks goes," she said in the same key as
+      before, apostrophizing Fleda who had drawn back, but not stirring her eyes
+      from Mr. Carleton all the time. And then she added to him with a little
+      satisfied nod, and in a very decided tone of information,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She will make you a good wife!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Because she has made a good friend?" said Mr. Carleton quietly. "Will you
+      let me be a friend too?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had turned the old lady's thoughts into a golden channel, whence, as
+      she was an American, they had no immediate issue in words; and Fleda and
+      Mr. Carleton left the house without anything more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda felt nervous. But Mr. Carleton's first words were as coolly and as
+      gravely spoken as if they had just come out from a philosophical lecture;
+      and with an immediate spring of relief she enjoyed every step of the way
+      and every word of the conversation which was kept up with great life, till
+      they reached Mrs. Plumfield's door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one was in the sitting-room. Fleda left Mr. Carleton there and passed
+      gently into the inner apartment, the door of which was standing ajar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But her heart absolutely leaped into her mouth, for Dr. Quackenboss and
+      Mr. Olmney were there on either side of her aunt's bed. Fleda came forward
+      and shook hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is quite a meeting of friends," said the doctor blandly, yet with a
+      perceptible shading of the whilome broad sunshine of his
+      face.--"Your--a--aunt, my dear Miss Ringgan,--is in a most extraordinary
+      state of mind!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was glad to hide her face against her aunt's and asked her how she
+      did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dr. Quackenboss thinks it extraordinary, Fleda," said the old lady with
+      her usual cheerful sedateness,--"that one who has trusted God and had
+      constant experience of his goodness and faithfulness for forty years
+      should not doubt him at the end of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have no doubt--of any kind, Mrs. Plumfield?" said the clergyman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not the shadow of a doubt!" was the hearty, steady reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You mistake, my dear madam," said Dr. Quackenboss,--"pardon me--it is not
+      that--I would be understood to say, merely, that I do not comprehend how
+      such--a--such security--can be attained respecting what seems
+      so--a--elevated--and difficult to know."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Only by believing," said Mrs. Plumfield with a very calm smile. "'He that
+      believeth on him shall not be ashamed;'--'shall <i>not</i> be ashamed!'"
+      she repeated slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Quackenboss looked at Fleda, who kept her eyes fixed upon her aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But it seems to me--I beg pardon--perhaps I am arrogant--" he said with a
+      little bow,--"but it appears to me almost--in a manner--almost
+      presumptuous, not to be a little doubtful in such a matter until the time
+      comes. Am I--do you disapprove of me, Mr. Olmney?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Olmney silently referred him for his answer to the person he had first
+      addressed, who had closed her eyes while he was speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sir," she said, opening them,--"it can't be presumption to obey God, and
+      he tells me to rejoice. And I do--I do!--'Let all those that love thee
+      rejoice in thee and be glad in thee!'--But mind!" she added energetically,
+      fixing her strong grey eye upon him--"he does not tell <i>you</i> to
+      rejoice--do not think it--not while you stand aloof from his terms of
+      peace. Take God at his word, and be happy;--but if not, you have nothing
+      to do with the song that I sing!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor stared at her till she had done speaking, and then slunk out of
+      her range of vision behind the curtains of the bed-post. Not silenced
+      however.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But--a--Mr. Olmney," said he hesitating--"don't you think that there is
+      in general--a--a becoming modesty, in--a--in people that have done wrong,
+      as we all have,--putting off being sure until they are so? It seems so to
+      me!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come here, Dr. Quackenboss," said aunt Miriam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She waited till he came to her side, and then taking his hand and looking
+      at him very kindly, she said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sir, forty years ago I found in the Bible, as you say, that I was a
+      sinner, and that drove me to look for something else. I found then God's
+      promise that if I would give my dependence entirely to the substitute he
+      had provided for me and yield my heart to his service, he would for
+      Christ's sake hold me quit of all my debts and be my father, and make me
+      his child. And, sir, I did it. I abhor every other dependence--the things
+      you count good in me I reckon but filthy rags. At the same time, I know
+      that ever since that day, forty years ago, I have lived in his service and
+      tried to live to his glory. And now, sir, shall I disbelieve his promise?
+      do you think he would be pleased if I did?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor's mouth was stopped, for once. He drew back as soon as he could
+      and said not another word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before anybody had broken the silence Seth came in; and after shaking
+      hands with Fleda, startled her by asking whether that was not Mr. Carleton
+      in the other room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," Fleda said,--"he came to see aunt Miriam."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Ain't you well enough to see him, mother?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Quite--and very happy," said she.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seth immediately went back and invited him in. Fleda dared not look up
+      while the introductions were passing,--of "the Rev. Mr. Olmney," and of
+      "Dr. Quackenboss,"--the former of whom Mr. Carleton took cordially by the
+      hand, while Dr. Quackenboss conceiving that his hand must be as
+      acceptable, made his salutation with an indescribable air at once of
+      attempted gracefulness and ingratiation. Fleda saw the whole in the
+      advancing line of the doctor's person, a vision of which crossed her
+      downcast eye. She drew back then, for Mr. Carleton came where she was
+      standing to take her aunt's hand; Seth had absolutely stayed his way
+      before to make the said introductions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Plumfield was little changed by years or disease since he had seen
+      her. There was somewhat more of a look of bodily weakness than there used
+      to be; but the dignified, strong-minded expression of the face was even
+      heightened; eye and brow were more pure and unclouded in their
+      steadfastness. She looked very earnestly at her visiter and then with
+      evident pleasure from the manner of his look and greeting. Fleda watched
+      her eye softening with a gratified expression and fixed upon him as he was
+      gently talking to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Olmney presently came round to take leave, promising to see her
+      another time, and passing Fleda with a frank grave pressure of the hand
+      which gave her some pain. He and Seth left the room. Fleda was hardly
+      conscious that Dr. Quackenboss was still standing at the foot of the bed
+      making the utmost use of his powers of observation. He could use little
+      else, for Mr. Carleton and Mrs. Plumfield after a few words on each side,
+      had as it were by common consent come to a pause. The doctor, when a
+      sufficient time had made him fully sensible of this, walked up to Fleda,
+      who wished heartily at the moment that she could have presented the
+      reverse end of the magnet to him. Perhaps however it was that very thing
+      which by a perverse sort of attraction drew him towards her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose--a--we may conclude," said he with a somewhat saturnine
+      expression of mischief,--that Miss Ringgan contemplates forsaking the
+      agricultural line before a great while."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have not given up my old habits, sir," said Fleda, a good deal vexed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--I suppose not--but Queechy air is not so well suited for them--other
+      skies will prove more genial," he said; she could not help thinking,
+      pleased at her displeasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is the fault of Queechy air, sir?" said Mr. Carleton, approaching
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sir!" said the doctor, exceedingly taken aback, though the words had been
+      spoken in the quietest manner possible,--'it--a--it has no fault,
+      sir,--that I am particularly aware of--it is perfectly salubrious. Mrs.
+      Plumfield, I will bid you good-day;--I--a--I <i>hope</i> you will get well
+      again!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope not, sir!" said aunt Miriam, in the same clear hearty tones which
+      had answered him before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor took his departure and made capital of his interview with Mr.
+      Carleton; who he affirmed he could tell by what he had seen of him was a
+      very deciduous character, and not always conciliating in his manners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda waited with a little anxiety for what was to follow the doctor's
+      leave-taking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was with a very softened eye that aunt Miriam looked at the two who
+      were left, clasping Fleda's hand again; and it was with a very softened
+      voice that she next spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you remember our last meeting, sir?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I remember it well," he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda tells me you are a changed man since that time?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He answered only by a slight and grave bow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton," said the old lady,--"I am a dying woman--and this child is
+      the dearest thing in the world to me after my own,--and hardly after
+      him.--Will you pardon me--will you bear with me, if that I may die in
+      peace, I say, sir, what else it would not become me to say?--and it is for
+      her sake."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Speak to me freely as you would to her," he said with a look that gave
+      her full permission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda had drawn close and hid her face in her aunt's neck. Aunt Miriam's
+      hand moved fondly over her cheek and brow for a minute or two in silence;
+      her eye resting there too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton, this child is to belong to you--how will you guide her?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By the gentlest paths," he said with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A whispered remonstrance from Fleda to her aunt had no effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will her best interests be safe in your hands?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How shall I resolve you of that, Mrs. Plumfield?" he said gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you help her to mind her mother's prayer and keep herself unspotted
+      from the world?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As I trust she will help me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A rogue may answer questions, but an eye that has never known the shadow
+      of double-dealing makes no doubtful discoveries of itself. Mrs. Plumfield
+      read it and gave it her very thorough respect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton--pardon me, sir,--I do not doubt you--but I remember hearing
+      long ago that you were rich and great in the world--it is dangerous for a
+      Christian to be so--Can she keep in your grandeur the simplicity of heart
+      and life she has had at Queechy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "May I remind you of your own words, my dear madam? By the blessing of God
+      all things are possible. These things you speak of are not in themselves
+      evil; if the mind be set on somewhat else, they are little beside a larger
+      storehouse of material to work with--an increased stewardship to account
+      for."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She has been taking care of others all her life," said aunt Miriam
+      tenderly;--"it is time she was taken care of; and these feet are very
+      unfit for rough paths; but I would rather she should go on struggling as
+      she has done with difficulties and live and die in poverty, than that the
+      lustre of her heavenly inheritance should be tarnished even a little.--I
+      would, my darling!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But the alternative is not, so," said Mr. Carleton with gentle grace,
+      touching Fleda's hand who he saw was a good deal disturbed. "Do not make
+      her afraid of me, Mrs. Plumfield."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not believe I need," said aunt Miriam, "and I am sure I could
+      not,--but sir, you will forgive me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No madam--that is not possible."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One cannot stand where I do," said the old lady, "without learning a
+      little the comparative value of things; and I seek my child's good,--that
+      is my excuse. I could not be satisfied to take her testimony--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Take mine, madam," said Mr. Carleton. "I have learned the comparative
+      value of things too; and I will guard her highest interests as carefully
+      as I will every other--as earnestly as you can desire."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thank you, sir," said the old lady gratefully. "I am sure of it. I
+      shall leave her in good hands. I wanted this assurance. And if ever there
+      was a tender plant that was not fitted to grow on the rough side of the
+      world--I think this is one," said she, kissing earnestly the face that yet
+      Fleda did not dare to lift up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton did not say what he thought. He presently took kind leave of
+      the old lady and went into the next room, where Fleda soon rejoined him
+      and they set off homewards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was quietly crying all the way down the hill. At the foot of the
+      hill Mr. Carleton resolutely slackened his pace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have one consolation," he said, "my dear Elfie--you will have the less
+      to leave for me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She put her hand with a quick motion upon his, and roused her self.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is a beautiful rebuke to unbelief. But she is hardly to be mourned
+      for, Elfie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh I was not crying for aunt Miriam," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For what then?" he said gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Myself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That needs explanation," he said in the same tone. "Let me have it,
+      Elfie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O--I was thinking of several things," said Fleda, not exactly wishing to
+      give the explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Too vague," said Mr. Carleton smiling. "Trust me with a little more of
+      your mind, Elfie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda glanced up at him, half smiling, and yet with filling eyes, and then
+      as usual, yielded to the winning power of the look that met her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was thinking," she said, keeping her head carefully down,--"of some of
+      the things you and aunt Miriam were saying just now,--and--how good for
+      nothing I am."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In what respect?" said Mr. Carleton with praiseworthy gravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda hesitated, and he pressed the matter no further; but more unwilling
+      to displease him than herself she presently went on, with some difficulty;
+      wording what she had to say with as much care as she could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was thinking--how gratitude--or not gratitude alone--but how one can be
+      full of the desire to please another,--a fellow-creature,--and find it
+      constantly easy to do or bear anything for that purpose; and how slowly
+      and coldly duty has to move alone in the direction where it should be the
+      swiftest and warmest."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She knew he would take her words as simply as she said them; she was not
+      disappointed. He was silent a minute and then said gravely,--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is this a late discovery, Elfie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--only I was realizing it strongly just now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is a complaint we may all make. The remedy is, not to love less what
+      we know, but to know better that of which we are in ignorance. We will be
+      helps and not hindrances to each other, Elfie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have said that before," said Fleda still keeping her head down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "About my being a help to you!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It will not be the first time," said he smiling,--"nor the second. Your
+      little hand first held up a glass to gather the scattered rays of truth
+      that could not warm me into a centre where they must burn."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very innocently," said Fleda with a little unsteady feeling of voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very innocently," said Mr. Carleton smiling. "A veritable lens could
+      hardly have been more unconscious of its work or more pure of design."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not think that was quite so either, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was so, my dear Elfie, and your present speech is nothing against it.
+      This power of example is always unconsciously wielded; the medium ceases
+      to be clear so soon as it is made anything but a medium. The bits of truth
+      you aimed at me wittingly would have been nothing if they had not come
+      through that medium."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then apparently one's prime efforts ought to be directed to oneself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One's first efforts, certainly. Your silent example was the first thing
+      that moved me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Silent example!" said Fleda catching her breath a little. "Mine ought to
+      be very good, for I can never do good in any other way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You used to talk pretty freely to me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It wasn't my fault, I am certain," said Fleda half laughing. "Besides, I
+      was sure of my ground. But in general I never can speak to people about
+      what will do them any good."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yet whatever be the power of silent example there are often times when a
+      word is of incalculable importance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know it," said Fleda earnestly,--"I have felt it very often, and
+      grieved that I could not say it, even at the very moment when I knew it
+      was wanting."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is that right, Elfie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda, with quick watering eyes,--"It is not right at all;--but
+      it is constitutional with me. I never can talk to other people of what
+      concerns my own thoughts and feelings."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But this concerns other people's thoughts and feelings."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes, but there is an implied revelation of my own."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you expect to include me in the denomination of 'other people'?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know," said Fleda laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you wish it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked down and up, and coloured, and said she didn't know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will teach you," said he smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rest of the day by both was given to Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="51"></a>Chapter LI.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        O what is life but a sum of love,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;And death but to lose
+        it all?<br /> Weeds be for those that are left behind,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;And
+        not for those that fall!
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Milnes.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      "Here's something come, Fleda," said Barby walking into the sick room one
+      morning a few days afterwards,--"a great bag of something--more than you
+      can eat up in a fortnight--it's for Hugh."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It's extraordinary that anybody should send <i>me</i> a great bag of
+      anything eatable," said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where did it come from?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Philetus fetched it--he found it down to Mr. Sampion's when he went with
+      the sheep-skins."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How do you know it's for me?" said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Cause it's written on, as plain as a pikestaff. I guess it's a mistake
+      though."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why?" said Fleda; "and what is it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O I don't much think 'twas meant for him," said Barby. "It's oysters."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oysters!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--come out and look at 'em--you never see such fine fellows. I've
+      heerd say," said Barby abstractedly as Fleda followed her out and she
+      displayed to view some magnificent Ostraceans,--"I've heerd say that an
+      English shilling was worth two American ones, but I never understood it
+      rightly till now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To all intents and purposes those were English oysters, and worth twice as
+      much as any others Fleda secretly confessed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That evening, up in the sick room,--it was quite evening, and all the
+      others of the family were taking rest or keeping Mr. Rossitur company down
+      stairs,--Fleda was carefully roasting some of the same oysters for Hugh's
+      supper. She had spread out a glowing bed of coals on the hearth, and there
+      lay four or five of the big bivalves, snapping and sputtering in
+      approbation of their quarters in a most comfortable manner; and Fleda
+      standing before the fire tended them with a double kind of pleasure. From
+      one friend, and for another, those were most odorous oysters. Hugh sat
+      watching them and her, the same in happy simplicity that he had been at
+      eleven years old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How pleasant those oysters smell," said he. "Fleda, they remind me so of
+      the time when you and I used to roast oysters in Mrs. Renney's room for
+      lunch--do you recollect?--and sometimes in the evening when everybody was
+      gone out, you know; and what an airing we used to have to give the
+      dining-room afterwards. How we used to enjoy them, Fleda--you and I all
+      alone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes," said Fleda in a tone of doubtful enjoyment. She was shielding her
+      face with a paper and making self-sacrificing efforts to persuade a large
+      oyster-shell to stand so on the coals as to keep the juice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't!" said Hugh;--"I would rather the oysters should burn than you. Mr.
+      Carleton wouldn't thank me for letting you do so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never mind!" said Fleda arranging the oysters to her satisfaction,--"he
+      isn't here to see. Now Hugh, my dear--these are ready as soon as I am."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am ready," said Hugh. "How long it is since we had a roast oyster,
+      Fleda!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They look good, don't they?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little stand was brought up between them with the bread and butter and
+      the cups; and Fleda opened oysters and prepared tea for Hugh, with her
+      nicest, gentlest, busiest of hands; making every bit to be twice as sweet,
+      for her sympathizing eyes and loving smile and pleasant word commenting.
+      She shared the meal with him, but her own part was as slender as his and
+      much less thought of. His enjoyment was what she enjoyed, though it was
+      with a sad twinge of alloy which changed her face whenever it was where he
+      could not see it; when turned upon him it was only bright and
+      affectionate, and sometimes a little too tender; but Fleda was too good a
+      nurse to let that often appear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton did not bargain for your opening his oysters, Fleda. How
+      kind it was of him to send them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How long will he be gone, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know--he didn't say. I don't believe many days."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh was silent a little while she was putting away the stand and the
+      oyster-shells. Then she came and sat down by him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have burnt yourself over those things," said he sorrowfully;--"you
+      -shouldn't have done it. It is not right."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear Hugh," said Fleda lightly, laying her head on his shoulder,--"I like
+      to burn myself for you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's just the way you have been doing all your life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hush!" she said softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is true,--for me and for everybody else. It is time you were taken
+      better care of, dear Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't, dear Hugh!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am right though," said he. "You are pale and worn now with waiting upon
+      me and thinking of me. It is time you were gone. But I think it is well I
+      am going too, for what should I do in the world without you, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was crying now, intensely though quietly; but Hugh went on with
+      feeling as calm as it was deep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What should I have done all these years?--or any of us? How you have
+      tired yourself for everybody--in the garden and in the kitchen and with
+      Earl Douglass--how we could let you I don't know, but I believe we could
+      not help it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda put her hand upon his mouth. But he took it away and went on--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How often I have seen you sleeping all the evening on the sofa with a
+      pale face, tired out--Dear Fleda," said he kissing her cheek, "I am glad
+      there's to be an end put to it. And all the day you went about with such a
+      bright face that it made mother and me happy to look at you; and I knew
+      then, many a time, it was for our sakes--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why do you cry so, Fleda? I like to think of it, and to talk of it, now
+      that I know you won't do so any more. I knew the whole truth, and it went
+      to the bottom of my heart; but I could do nothing but love you--I did
+      that!--Don't cry so, Fleda!--you ought not.--You have been the sunshine of
+      the house. My spirit never was so strong as yours; I should have been
+      borne to the ground, I know, in all these years, if it had not been for
+      you; and mother--you have been her life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You have been tired too," Fleda whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes at the saw-mill. And then you would come up there through the sun to
+      look at me, and your smile would make me forget everything sorrowful for
+      the rest of the day--except that I couldn't help you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh you did--you did--you helped me always, Hugh."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not much. I couldn't help you when you were sewing for me and father till
+      your fingers and eyes were aching, and you never would own that you were
+      anything but 'a little' tired--it made my heart ache. Oh I knew it all,
+      dear Fleda.--I am very, very glad that you will have somebody to take care
+      of you now that will not let you burn your fingers for him or anybody
+      else. It makes me happy!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You make me very unhappy, dear Hugh."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't mean it," said Hugh tenderly. "I don't believe there is anybody
+      else in the world that I could be so satisfied to leave you with."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda made no answer to that. She sat up and tried to recover herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope he will come back in time," said Hugh, settling himself back in
+      the easy-chair with a weary look, and closing his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In time for what?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To see me again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Hugh!--he will to be sure, I hope."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He must make haste," said Hugh. "But I want to see him again very much,
+      Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For anything in particular?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--only because I love him. I want to see him once more."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh slumbered; and Fleda by his side wept tears of mixed feeling till she
+      was tired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh was right. But nobody else knew it, and his brother was not sent for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was about a week after this, when one night a horse and wagon came up
+      to the back of the house from the road, the gentleman who had been driving
+      leading the horse. It was late, long past Mr. Skillcorn's usual hour of
+      retiring, but some errand of business had kept him abroad and he stood
+      there looking on. The stars gave light enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Can you fasten my horse where he may stand a little while, sir? without
+      taking him out?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I guess I can," replied Philetus, with reasonable confidence,--"if
+      there's a rope's end some place--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And forthwith he went back into the house to seek it. The gentleman
+      patiently holding his horse meanwhile, till he came out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How is Mr. Hugh to-night?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well--he ain't just so smart, they say," responded Philetus, insinuating
+      the rope's end as awkwardly as possible among the horse's head-gear,--"I
+      believe he's dying."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead of going round now to the front of the house, Mr. Carleton knocked
+      gently at the kitchen door and asked the question anew of Barby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's--Come in, sir, if you please," she said, opening wide the door for
+      him to enter,--"I'll tell 'em you're here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do not disturb any one for me," said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I won't disturb 'em!" said Barby, in a tone a little though unconsciously
+      significant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton neglected the chair she had placed for him, and remained
+      standing by the mantelpiece, thinking of the scenes of his early
+      introduction to that kitchen. It wore the same look it had done then;
+      under Barby's rule it was precisely the same thing it had been under
+      Cynthia's.--The passing years seemed a dream, and the passing generations
+      of men a vanity, before the old house more abiding than they. He stood
+      thinking of the people he had seen gathered by that fireplace and the
+      little household fairy whose childish ministrations had given such a
+      beauty to the scene,--when a very light step crossed the painted floor and
+      she was there again before him. She did not speak a word; she stood still
+      a moment trying for words, and then put her hand upon Mr. Carleton's arm
+      and gently drew him out of the room with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The family were all gathered in the room to which she brought him. Mr.
+      Rossitur, as soon as he saw Mr. Carleton come in, shrunk back where he
+      could be a little shielded by the bed-post. Marion's face was hid on the
+      foot of the bed. Mrs. Rossitur did not move. Leaving Mr. Carleton on the
+      near side of the bed Fleda went round to the place she seemed to have
+      occupied before, at Hugh's right hand; and they were all still, for he was
+      in a little doze, lying with his eyes closed, and the face as gently and
+      placidly sweet as it had been in his boyhood. Perhaps Mr. Rossitur looked
+      at it; but no other did just then, except Mr. Carleton. His eye rested
+      nowhere else. The breathing of an infant could not be more gentle; the
+      face of an angel not more peacefully at rest. "So he giveth his beloved
+      sleep,"--thought the gentleman, as he gazed on the brow from which all
+      care, if care there had ever been, seemed to have taken flight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not yet--not quite yet; for Hugh suddenly opened his eyes and without
+      seeing anybody else, said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Father--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur left the bed-post and came close to where Fleda was standing,
+      and leaning forward, touched his son's head, but did not speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Father--" said Hugh, in a voice so gentle that it seemed as if strength
+      must be failing,--"what will you do when you come to lie here?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur put his hands to his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Father--I must speak now if I never did before--once I must speak to
+      you,--what will you do when you come to lie where I do?--what will you
+      trust to?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The person addressed was as motionless as a statue. Hugh did not move his
+      eyes from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Father, I will be a living warning and example to you, for I know that I
+      shall live in your memory--you shall remember what I say to you--that
+      Jesus Christ is a dear friend to those that trust in him, and if he is not
+      yours it will be because you will not let him. You shall remember my
+      testimony, that he can make death sweeter than life--in his presence is
+      fulness of joy--at his right hand there are pleasures for evermore. He is
+      better,--he is more to me,--even than you all, and he will be to you a
+      better friend than the poor child you are losing, though you do not know
+      it now. It is he that has made my life in this world happy--only he--and I
+      have nothing to look to but him in the world I am going to. But what will
+      you do in the hour of death, as I am, if he isn't your friend, father?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur's frame swayed, like a tree that one sees shaken by a distant
+      wind, but he said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you remember me happily, father, if you come to die without having
+      done as I begged you? Will you think of me in heaven and not try to come
+      there too? Father, will you be a Christian?--will you not?--for my
+      sake--for <i>little Hugh's</i> sake, as you used to call him?--Father?--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur knelt down and hid his face in the coverings; but he did not
+      utter a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh's eye dwelt on him for a moment with unspeakable expression, and his
+      lip trembled. He said no more; he closed his eyes; and for a little time
+      there was nothing to be heard but the sobs which could not be restrained,
+      from all but the two gentlemen. It probably oppressed Hugh, for after a
+      while he said with a weary sigh and without opening his eyes,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish somebody would sing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nobody answered at first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sing what, dear Hugh?" said Fleda, putting aside her tears and leaning
+      her face towards him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Something that speaks of my want," said Hugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you want, dear Hugh?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Only Jesus Christ," he said with a half smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But they were silent as death. Fleda's face was in her hands and her
+      utmost efforts after self-control wrought nothing but tears. The stillness
+      had lasted a little while, when very softly and sweetly the notes of a
+      hymn floated to their ears, and though they floated on and filled the
+      room, the voice was so nicely modulated that its waves of sweetness broke
+      gently upon the nearest ear.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Jesus, the sinner's friend, to Thee,<br /> Lost and undone, for aid I
+        flee;<br /> Weary of earth, myself, and sin,<br /> Open thine arms and
+        take me in.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "Pity and save my sin-sick soul,--<br /> 'Tis thou alone canst make me
+        whole;<br /> Dark, till in me thine image shine,<br /> And lost I am, till
+        thou art mine.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "At length I own it cannot be,<br /> That I should fit myself for thee,<br />
+        Here now to thee I all resign,--<br /> Thine is the work, and only thine.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        "What shall I say thy grace to move?--<br /> Lord, I am sin, but thou art
+        love!<br /> I give up every plea beside,--<br /> Lord, I am lost,--but
+        thou hast died!"
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      They were still again after the voice had ceased; almost perfectly still;
+      though tears might be pouring, as indeed they were from every eye, there
+      was no break to the silence, other than a half-caught sob now and then
+      from a kneeling figure whose head was in Marion's lap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Who was that?" said Hugh, when the singer had been silent a minute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nobody answered immediately; and then Mr. Carleton bending over him, said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you know me, dear Hugh?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is it Mr. Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh looked pleased, and clasped both of his hands upon Guy's which he
+      laid upon his breast. For a second he closed his eyes and was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Was it you sang?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You never sang for me before," he remarked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you going to take Fleda away?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By and by," said Mr. Carleton gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you take good care of her?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton hesitated, and then said, so low that it could reach but one
+      other person's ear,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What hand and life can."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know it," said Hugh. "I am very glad you will have her. You will not
+      let her tire herself any more."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whatever became of Fleda's tears she had driven them away and leaning
+      forward she touched her cheek to his, saying with a clearness and
+      sweetness of voice that only intensity of feeling could have given her at
+      the moment,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am not tired, dear Hugh."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hugh clasped one arm round her neck and kissed her--again and again,
+      seeming unable to say anything to her in any other way; still keeping his
+      hold of Mr. Carleton's hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I give all my part of her to you," he said at length. "Mr. Carleton, I
+      shall see both of you in heaven?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope so," was the answer, in those very calm and clear tones that have
+      a singular effect in quieting emotion, while they indicate anything but
+      the want of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am the best off of you all," Hugh said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lay still for awhile with shut eyes. Fleda had withdrawn herself from
+      his arms and stood at his side, with a bowed head, but perfectly quiet. He
+      still held Mr. Carleton's hand, as something he did not want to part with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Fleda," said he, "who is that crying?--Mother--come here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton gave place to her. Hugh pulled her down to him till her face
+      lay upon his, and folded both his arms around her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mother," he said softly, "will you meet me in heaven?--say yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How can I, dear Hugh?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You can, dear mother," said he kissing her with exceeding tenderness of
+      expression,--"my Saviour will be yours and take you there. Say you will
+      give yourself to Christ--dear mother!--sweet mother! promise me I shall
+      see you again!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur's weeping it was difficult to hear. But Hugh hardly shedding
+      a tear still kissed her, repeating, "Promise me, dear mother--promise me
+      that you will;"--till Mrs. Rossitur in an agony sobbed out the word he
+      wanted,--and Hugh hid his face then in her neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton left the room and went down stairs. He found the sitting-room
+      desolate, untenanted and cold for hours; and he went again into the
+      kitchen. Barby was there for some time, and then she left him alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had passed a long while in thinking and walking up and down, and he was
+      standing musing by the fire, when Fleda again came in. She came in
+      silently, to his side, and putting her arm within his laid her face upon
+      it with a simplicity of trust and reliance that went to his heart; and she
+      wept there for a long hour. They hardly changed their position in all that
+      time; and her tears flowed silently though incessantly, the only tokens of
+      sympathy on his part being such a gentle caressing smoothing of her hair
+      or putting it from her brow as he had used when she was a child. The
+      bearing of her hand and head upon his arm in time shewed her increasingly
+      weary. Nothing shewed him so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Elfie--my dear Elfie," he said at last very tenderly, in the same way
+      that he would have spoken nine years before--"Hugh gave his part of you to
+      me--I must take care of it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda tried to rouse herself immediately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is poor entertainment for you, Mr. Carleton," she said, raising her
+      head and wiping away the tears from her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are mistaken," he said gently. "You never gave me such pleasure but
+      twice before, Elfie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's head went down again instantly, and this time there was something
+      almost caressing in the motion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Next to the happiness of having friends on earth," he said soothingly,
+      "is the happiness of having friends in heaven. Don't weep any more
+      to-night, my dear Elfie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He told me to thank you--" said Fleda. But stopping short and clasping
+      with convulsive energy the arm she held, she shed more violent tears than
+      she had done that night before. The most gentle soothing, the most tender
+      reproof, availed at last to quiet her; and she stood clinging to his arm
+      still and looking down into the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I did not think it would be so soon," she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was not soon to him, Elfie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He told me to thank you for singing. How little while it seems since we
+      were children together--how little while since before that--when I was a
+      little child here--how different!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, the very same," said he, touching his lips to her forehead,--"you are
+      the very same child you were then; but it is time you were my child, for I
+      see you would make yourself ill. No--" said he softly taking the hand
+      Fleda raised to her face,--"no more tonight--tell me how early I may see
+      you in the morning--for, Elfie, I must leave you after breakfast."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked up inquiringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My mother has brought news that determines me to return to England
+      immediately."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To England!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have been too long from home--I am wanted there."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked down again and did her best not to shew what she felt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not know how to leave you--and now--but I must. There are
+      disturbances among the people, and my own are infected. I <i>must</i> be
+      there without delay."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Political disturbances?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Somewhat of that nature--but partly local. How early may I come to you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But you are not going away tonight? It is very late."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is nothing--my horse is here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda would have begged in vain, if Barby had not come in and added her
+      word, to the effect that it would be a mess of work to look for lodgings
+      at that time of night, and that she had made the west room ready for Mr.
+      Carleton. She rejected with great sincerity any claim to the thanks with
+      which Fleda as well as Mr. Carleton repaid her; "there wa'n't no trouble
+      about it," she said. Mr. Carleton however found his room prepared for him
+      with all the care that Barby's utmost ideas of refinement and exactness
+      could suggest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was still very early the next morning; when he left it and came into
+      the sitting-room, but he was not the first there. The firelight glimmered
+      on the silver and china of the breakfast table, all set; everything was in
+      absolute order, from the fire to the two cups and saucers which were alone
+      on the board. A still silent figure was standing by one of the windows
+      looking out. Not crying; but that Mr. Carleton knew from the unmistakable
+      lines of the face was only because tears were waiting another time; quiet
+      now, it would not be by and by. He came and stood at the window with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know," he said, after a little, "that Mr. Rossitur purposes to
+      leave Queechy?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Does he?" said Fleda rather starting, but she added not another word,
+      simply because she felt she could not safely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He has accepted, I believe, a consulship at Jamaica."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Jamaica!" said Fleda. "I have heard him speak of the West Indies--I am
+      not surprised--I know it was likely he would not stay here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How tightly her fingers that were free grasped the edge of the
+      window-frame. Mr. Carleton saw it and softly removed them into his own
+      keeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He may go before I can be here again. But I shall leave my mother to take
+      care of you, Elfie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thank you," said Fleda faintly. "You are very kind--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Kind to myself," he said smiling. "I am only taking care of my own. I
+      need not say that you will see me again as early as my duty can make it
+      possible;--but I may be detained, and your friends may be
+      gone--Elfie--give me the right to send if I cannot come for you. Let me
+      leave my wife in my mother's care."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked down, and coloured, and hesitated; but the expression in her
+      face was not that of doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Am I asking too much?" he said gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir," said Fleda,--"and--but--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is in the way?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it seemed impossible for Fleda to tell him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "May I not know?" he said, gently putting away the hair from Fleda's face,
+      which looked distressed. "Is it only your feeling?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir," said Fleda,--"at least--not the feeling you think it is--but--I
+      could not do it without giving great pain."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not to anybody you know, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda, suddenly fearing a
+      wrong interpretation of her words,--"I don't mean that--I mean somebody
+      else--the person--the only person you could apply to--" she said, covering
+      her face in utter confusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do I understand you?" said he smiling. "Has this gentleman any reason to
+      dislike the sight of me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No sir," said Fleda,--"but he thinks he has."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That only I meant," said he. "You are quite right, my dear Elfie; I of
+      all men ought to understand that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The subject was dropped, and in a few minutes his gentle skill had well
+      nigh made Fleda forget what they had been talking about. Himself and his
+      wishes seemed to be put quite out of his own view, and out of hers as far
+      as possible; except that the very fact made Fleda recognize with
+      unspeakable gratitude and admiration the kindness and grace that were
+      always exerted for her pleasure. If her good-will could have been put into
+      the cups of coffee she poured out for him, he might have gone in the
+      strength of them all the way to England. There was strength of another
+      kind to be gained from her face of quiet sorrow and quiet self-command
+      which were her very childhood's own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will see me at the earliest possible moment," he said when at last
+      taking leave.--"I hope to be free in a short time; but it may not be.
+      Elfie--if I should be detained longer than I hope--if I should not be able
+      to return in a reasonable time, will you let my mother bring you out?--if
+      I cannot come to you will you come to me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda coloured a good deal, and said, scarce intelligibly, that she hoped
+      he would be able to come. He did not press the matter. He parted from her
+      and was leaving the room. Fleda suddenly sprang after him, before he had
+      reached the door, and laid her hand on his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I did not answer your question, Mr. Carleton," she said with cheeks that
+      were dyed now,--"I will do whatever you please--whatever you think best."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His thanks were most gratefully though silently spoken, and he went away.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="52"></a>Chapter LII.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Daughter, they seem to say,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;Peace to thy heart!<br /> We
+        too, yes, daughter,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;Have been as thou art.<br />
+        Hope-lifted, doubt-depressed,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;Seeing in part,--<br />
+        Tried, troubled, tempted,--<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;Sustained,--as thou art.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Unknown.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rossitur was disposed for no further delay now in leaving Queechy. The
+      office at Jamaica, which Mr. Carleton and Dr. Gregory had secured for him,
+      was immediately accepted; and every arrangement pressed to hasten his
+      going. On every account he was impatient to be out of America, and
+      especially since his son's death. Marion was of his mind. Mrs. Rossitur
+      had more of a home feeling, even for the place where home had not been to
+      her as happy as it might.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were sad weeks of bustle and weariness that followed Hugh's death;
+      less sad perhaps for the weariness and the bustle. There was little time
+      for musing, no time for lingering regrets. If thought and feeling played
+      their Eolian measures on Fleda's harpstrings, they were listened to only
+      by snatches, and she rarely sat down and cried to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A very kind note had been received from Mrs. Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      April gave place to May. One afternoon Fleda had taken an hour or two to
+      go and look at some of the old places on the farm, that she loved and that
+      were not too far to reach. A last look she guessed it might be, for it was
+      weeks since she had had a spare afternoon, and another she might not he
+      able to find. It was a doubtful pleasure she sought too, but she must have
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She visited the long meadow and the height that stretched along it, and
+      even went so far as the extremity of the valley, at the foot of the
+      twenty-acre lot, and then stood still to gather up the ends of memory.
+      There she had gone chestnutting with Mr. Ringgan--thither she had guided
+      Mr. Carleton and her cousin Rossitur that day when they were going after
+      wood-cock--there she had directed and overseen Earl Douglass's huge crop
+      of corn. How many pieces of her life were connected with it. She stood for
+      a little while looking at the old chestnut trees, looking and thinking,
+      and turned away soberly with the recollection, "The world passeth
+      away,--but the word of our God shall stand forever." And though there was
+      one thought that was a continual well of happiness in the depth of Fleda's
+      heart, her mind passed it now, and echoed with great joy the countersign
+      of Abraham's privilege,--"Thou art my portion, O Lord!"--And in that
+      assurance every past and every hoped-for good was sweet with added
+      sweetness. She walked home without thinking much of the long meadow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a chill spring afternoon and Fleda was in her old trim, the black
+      cloak, the white shawl over it, and the hood of grey silk. And in that
+      trim she walked into the sitting-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A lady was there, in a travelling dress, a stranger. Fleda's eye took in
+      her outline and feature one moment with a kind of bewilderment, the next
+      with perfect intelligence. If the lady had been in any doubt, Fleda's
+      cheeks alone would have announced her identity. But she came forward
+      without hesitation after the first moment, pulling off her hood, and stood
+      before her visiter, blushing in a way that perhaps Mrs. Carleton looked at
+      as a novelty in her world. Fleda did not know how she looked at it, but
+      she had nevertheless an instinctive feeling, even at the moment, that the
+      lady wondered how her son should have fancied particularly anything that
+      went about under such a hood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whatever Mrs. Carleton thought, her son's fancies she knew were
+      unmanageable; and she had far too much good breeding to let her thoughts
+      be known; unless to one of those curious spirit thermometers that can tell
+      a variation of temperature through every sort of medium. There might have
+      been the slightest want of forwardness to do it, but she embraced Fleda
+      with great cordiality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is for the old time--not for the new, dear Fleda," she said. "Do you
+      remember me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perfectly!--very well," said Fleda, giving Mrs. Carleton for a moment a
+      glimpse of her eyes.--"I do not easily forget."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Your look promises me an advantage from that, which I do not deserve, but
+      which I may as well use as another. I want all I can have, Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a half look at the speaker that seemed to deny the truth of
+      that, but Fleda did not otherwise answer. She begged her visiter to sit
+      down, and throwing off the white shawl and black cloak, took tongs in hand
+      and began to mend the fire. Mrs. Carleton sat considering a moment the
+      figure of the fire-maker, not much regardful of the skill she was bringing
+      to bear upon the sticks of wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda turned from the fire to remove her visitor's bonnet and wrappings,
+      but the former was all Mrs. Carleton would give her; she threw off shawl
+      and tippet on the nearest chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the same Mrs. Carleton of old,--Fleda saw while this was
+      doing,--unaltered almost entirely. The fine figure and bearing were the
+      same; time had made no difference; even the face had paid little tribute
+      to the years that had passed by it; and the hair held its own without a
+      change. Bodily and mentally she was the same. Apparently she was thinking
+      the like of Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I remember you very well," she said with kindly accent when Fleda sat
+      down by her. "I have never forgotten you. A dear little creature you were.
+      I always knew that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda hoped privately the lady would see no occasion to change her mind;
+      but for the present she was bankrupt in words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was in the same room this morning at Montepoole where we used to dine,
+      and it brought back the whole thing to me--the time when you were sick
+      there with us. I could think of nothing else. But I don't think I was your
+      favourite, Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a rush of blood again answered her as moved Mrs. Carleton in common
+      kindness to speak of common things. She entered into a long story of her
+      journey--of her passage from England--of the steamer that brought her--of
+      her stay in New York;--all which Fleda heard very indifferently well. She
+      was more distinctly conscious of the handsome travelling dress which
+      seemed all the while to look as its wearer had done, with some want of
+      affinity upon the little grey hood which lay on the chair in the corner.
+      Still she listened and responded as became her, though for the most part
+      with eyes that did not venture from home. The little hood itself could
+      never have kept its place with less presumption, nor with less flutter of
+      self-distrust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Carleton came at last to a general account of the circumstances that
+      had determined Guy to return home so suddenly, where she was more
+      interesting. She hoped he would not be detained, but it was impossible to
+      tell. It was just as it might happen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you acquainted with the commission I have been charged with?" she
+      said, when her narrations had at last lapsed into silence and Fleda's eyes
+      had returned to the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose so, ma'am," said Fleda with a little smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is a very pleasant charge," said Mrs. Carleton softly kissing her
+      cheek. Something in the face itself must have called forth that kiss, for
+      this time there were no requisitions of politeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you recognize my commission, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda did not answer. Mrs. Carleton sat a few minutes thoughtfully drawing
+      back the curls from her forehead, Mr. Carleton's very gesture, but not by
+      any means with his fingers; and musing perhaps on the possibility of a
+      hood's having very little to do with what it covered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know," she said, "I have felt as if I were nearer to Guy since I
+      have seen you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The quick smile and colour that answered this, both very bright, wrought
+      in Mrs Carleton an instant recollection that her son was very apt to be
+      right in his judgments and that probably the present case might prove him
+      so. The hand which had played with Fleda's hair was put round her waist,
+      very affectionately, and Mrs. Carleton drew near her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure we shall love each other, Fleda," she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was said like Fleda, not like Mrs. Carleton, and answered as simply.
+      Fleda had gained her place. Her head was in Mrs. Carleton's neck, and
+      welcomed there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "At least I am sure I shall love you," said the lady kissing her,--"and I
+      don't despair on my own account,--for somebody else's sake."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--" said Fleda,--but she was not fluent to-day. She sat up and
+      repeated, "I have not forgotten old times either, Mrs. Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't want to think of the old time--I want to think of the new,"--she
+      seemed to have a great fancy for stroking back those curls of hair;--"I
+      want to tell you how happy I am, dear Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda did not say whether she was happy or unhappy, and her look might
+      have been taken for dubious. She kept her eyes on the ground, while Mrs.
+      Carleton drew the hair off from her flushing cheeks, and considered the
+      face laid bare to her view; and thought it was a fair face--a very
+      presentable face--delicate and lovely--a face that she would have no
+      reason to be ashamed of, even by her son's side. Her speech was not
+      precisely to that effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You know now why I have come upon you at such a time. I need not ask
+      pardon?--I felt that I should be hardly discharging my commission if I did
+      not see you till you arrived in New York. My wishes I could have made to
+      wait, but not my trust. So I came."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very glad you did!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She could fain have persuaded the lady to disregard circumstances and stay
+      with her, at least till the next day, but Mrs. Carleton was unpersuadable.
+      She would return immediately to Montepoole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And how long shall you be here now?" she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A few days--it will not be more than a week."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you know how soon Mr. Rossitur intends to sail for Jamaica?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As soon as possible--he will make his stay in New York very short--not
+      more than a fortnight perhaps,--as short as he can."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And then, my dear Fleda, I am to have the charge of you--for a little
+      while--am I not?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda hesitated and began to say, "Thank you," but it was finished with a
+      burst of very hearty tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Carleton knew immediately the tender spot she had touched. She put
+      her arms about Fleda and caressed her as gently as her own mother might
+      have done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Forgive me, dear Fleda!--I forgot that so much that is sad to you must
+      come before what is so much pleasure to me.--Look up and tell me that you
+      forgive me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda soon looked up, but she looked very sorrowful, and said nothing.
+      Mrs. Carleton watched her face for a little while, really pained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you heard from Guy since he went away?" she whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, ma'am."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And therewith she put into Fleda's hand a letter,--not Mrs. Carleton's
+      letter, as Fleda's first thought was. It had her own name and the seal was
+      unbroken. But it moved Mrs. Carleton's wonder to see Fleda cry again, and
+      longer than before. She did not understand it. She tried soothing, but she
+      ventured no attempt at consoling, for she did not know what was the
+      matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will let me go now, I know," she said smilingly, when Fleda was again
+      recovered and standing before the fire with a face <i>not</i> so
+      sorrowful, Mrs. Carleton saw. "But I must say something--I shall not hurt
+      you again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh no, you did not hurt me at all--it was not what you said."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will come to me, dear Fleda? I feel that I want you very much."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Thank you--but there is my uncle Orrin, Mrs. Carleton,--Dr. Gregory."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dr. Gregory? He is just on the eve of sailing for Europe--I thought you
+      knew it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "On the <i>eve?</i>--so soon?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very soon, he told me. Dear Fleda--shall I remind you of my commission,
+      and who gave it to me?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda hesitated still; at least she stood looking into the fire and did
+      not answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You do not own his authority yet," Mrs. Carleton went on,--"but I am sure
+      his wishes do not weigh for nothing with you, and I can plead them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Probably it was a source of some gratification to Mrs. Carleton to see
+      those deep spots on Fleda's cheeks. They were a silent tribute to an
+      invisible presence that flattered the lady's affection,--or her pride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you say, dear Fleda--to him and to me?" she said smiling and
+      kissing her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will come, Mrs. Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady was quite satisfied and departed on the instant, having got, she
+      said, all she wanted; and Fleda--cried till her eyes were sore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The days were few that remained to them in their old home; not more than a
+      week, as Fleda had said. It was the first week in May.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evening before they were to leave Queechy, Fleda and Mrs. Rossitur
+      went together to pay their farewell visit to Hugh's grave. It was some
+      distance off. They walked there arm in arm without a word by the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little country grave-yard lay alone on a hill-side, a good way from
+      any house, and out of sight even of any but a very distant one. A sober
+      and quiet place, no tokens of busy life immediately near, the fields
+      around it being used for pasturing sheep, except an instance or two of
+      winter grain now nearing its maturity. A by-road not much travelled led to
+      the grave-yard, and led off from it over the broken country, following the
+      ups and downs of the ground to a long distance away, without a moving
+      thing upon it in sight near or far. No sound of stirring and active
+      humanity. Nothing to touch the perfect repose. But every lesson of the
+      place could be heard more distinctly amid that silence of all other
+      voices. Except indeed nature's voice; that was not silent; and neither did
+      it jar with the other. The very light of the evening fell more tenderly
+      upon the old grey stones and the thick grass in that place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda and Mrs. Rossitur went softly to one spot where the grass was not
+      grown and where the bright white marble caught the eye and spoke of grief
+      fresh too. Oh that that were grey and moss-grown like the others! The
+      mother placed herself where the staring black letters of Hugh's name could
+      not remind her so harshly that it no more belonged to the living; and
+      sitting down on the ground hid her face; to struggle through the parting
+      agony once more with added bitterness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda stood awhile sharing it, for with her too it was the last time, in
+      all likelihood. If she had been alone, her grief might have witnessed
+      itself bitterly and uncontrolled; but the selfish relief was foregone, for
+      the sake of another, that it might be in her power by and by to minister
+      to a heart yet sorer and weaker than hers. The tears that fell so quietly
+      and so fast upon the foot of Hugh's grave were all the deeper-drawn and
+      richer-fraught.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Awhile she stood there; and then passed round to a group a little way off,
+      that had as dear and strong claims upon her love and memory. These were
+      not fresh, not very; oblivion had not come there yet; only Time's
+      softening hand. Was it softening?--for Fleda's head was bent down further
+      here, and tears rained faster. It was hard to leave these! The cherished
+      names that from early years had lived in her child's heart,--from this
+      their last earthly abiding-place she was to part company. Her mother's and
+      her father's graves were there, side by side; and never had Fleda's heart
+      so clung to the old grey stones, never had the faded lettering seemed so
+      dear,--of the dear names and of the words of faith and hope that were
+      their dying or living testimony. And next to them was her grandfather's
+      resting-place; and with that sunshiny green mound came a throng of
+      strangely tender and sweet associations, more even than with the other
+      two. His gentle, venerable, dignified figure rose before her, and her
+      heart yearned towards it. In imagination Fleda pressed again to her breast
+      the withered hand that had led her childhood so kindly; and overcome here
+      for a little she kneeled down upon the sod and bent her head till the long
+      grass almost touched it, in an agony of human sorrow. Could she leave
+      them?--and for ever in this world? and be content to see no more these
+      dear memorials till others like them should be raised for herself, far
+      away?--But then stole in consolations not human, nor of man's
+      devising,--the words that were written upon her mother's tombstone,--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "<i>Them that sleep in Jesus will God bring with him</i>."--It was like
+      the march of angel's feet over the turf. And her mother had been a meek
+      child of faith, and her father and grandfather, though strong men, had
+      bowed like little children to the same rule.--Fleda's head bent lower yet,
+      and she wept, even aloud, but it was one half in pure thankfulness and a
+      joy that the world knows nothing of. Doubtless they and she were one;
+      doubtless though the grass now covered their graves, the heavenly bond in
+      which they were held would bring them together again in light, to a new
+      and more beautiful life that should know no severing. Asleep in
+      Jesus;--and even as he had risen so should they,--they and others that she
+      loved,--all whom she loved best. She could leave their graves; and with an
+      unspeakable look of thanks to Him who had brought life and immortality to
+      light, she did; but not till she had there once again remembered her
+      mother's prayer, and her aunt Miriam's words, and prayed that rather
+      anything might happen to her than that prosperity and the world's favour
+      should draw her from the simplicity and humility of a life above the
+      world. Rather than not meet them in joy at the last,--oh let her want what
+      she most wished for in this world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If riches have their poisonous snares, Fleda carried away from this place
+      a strong antidote. With a spirit strangely simple, pure, and calm she went
+      back to her aunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Mrs. Rossitur was not quieted, but at Fleda's touch and voice, gentle
+      and loving as the spirit of love and gentleness could make them, she tried
+      to rouse herself; lifted up her weary head and clasped her arms about her
+      niece. The manner of it went to Fleda's heart, for there was in it both a
+      looking to her for support and a clinging to her as another dear thing she
+      was about to lose. Fleda could not speak for the heart-ache.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is harder to leave this place than all the rest," Mrs. Rossitur
+      murmured, after some little time had passed on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is not here," said Fleda's soothing voice. It set her aunt to crying
+      again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No--I know it--" she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We shall see him again. Think of that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will," said Mrs. Rossitur very sadly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And so will you, dear aunt Lucy,--<i>dear</i> aunt Lucy--you promised
+      him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--" sobbed Mrs. Rossitur,--"I promised him--but I am such a poor
+      creature--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So poor that Jesus cannot save you?--or will not?--No, dear aunt
+      Lucy--you do not think that;--only trust him--you do trust him now, do you
+      not?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A fresh gush of tears came with the answer, but it was in the affirmative;
+      and after a few minutes Mrs. Rossitur grew more quiet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish something were done to this," she said, looking at the fresh earth
+      beside her;--"if we could have planted something--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have thought of it a thousand times," said Fleda sighing;--I would have
+      done it long ago if I could have got here;--but it doesn't matter, aunt
+      Lucy,--I wish I could have done it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You?" said Mrs. Rossitur;--"my poor child! you have been wearing yourself
+      out working for me,--I never was worth anything!"--she said, hiding her
+      face again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When you have been the dearest and best mother to me? Now that is not
+      right, aunt Lucy--look up and kiss me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pleading sweet tone of voice was not to be resisted. Mrs. Rossitur
+      looked up and kissed her earnestly enough but with unabated self reproach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't deserve to kiss you, for I have let you try yourself beyond your
+      strength.--How you look!--Oh how you look!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never mind how I look," said Fleda bringing her face so close that her
+      aunt could not see it. "You helped me all you could, aunt Lucy--don't talk
+      so--and I shall look well enough by and by. I am not so very tired."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You always were so!" exclaimed Mrs. Rossitur clapping her in her arms
+      again;--"and now I am going to lose you too--My dear Fleda!--that gives me
+      more pleasure than anything else in the world!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was a pleasure well cried over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We shall all meet again, I hope,--I will hope,--" said Mrs. Rossitur
+      meekly when Fleda had risen from her arms;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear aunty!--but before that--in England--you will come to see me--Uncle
+      Rolf will bring you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even then Fleda could not say even that without the blood mounting to her
+      face. Mrs. Rossitur shook her head and sighed; but smiled a little too, as
+      if that delightful chink of possibility let some light in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I shouldn't like to see Mr. Carleton now," she said, "for I could not
+      look him in the face; and I am afraid he wouldn't want to look in mine, he
+      would be so angry with me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a href="images/illus29.jpg"><img src="images/illus29.jpg" height="250"
+      alt="Slowly and lingeringly they moved away."
+      title="Slowly and lingeringly they moved away." /><br /> Slowly and
+      lingeringly they moved away.</a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun was sinking low on that fair May afternoon and they had two miles
+      to walk to get home. Slowly and lingeringly they moved away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The talk with her aunt had shaken Fleda's calmness and she could have
+      cried now with all her heart; but she constrained herself. They stopped a
+      moment at the fence to look the last before turning their backs upon the
+      place. They lingered, and still Mrs. Rossitur did not move, and Fleda
+      could not take away her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was that prettiest time of nature which while it shows indeed the shade
+      side of everything, makes it the occasion of a fair contrast The
+      grave-stones cast long shadows over the ground, foretokens of night where
+      another night was resting already; the longest stretched away from the
+      head of Hugh's grave. But the rays of the setting sun softly touching the
+      grass and the face of the white tombstone seemed to say, "Thy brother
+      shall rise again." Light upon the grave! The promise kissing the record of
+      death!--It was impossible to look in calmness. Fleda bowed her head upon
+      the paling and cried with a straitened heart, for grief and gratitude
+      together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Rossitur had not moved when Fleda looked up again. The sun was yet
+      lower; the sunbeams, more slant, touched not only that bright white
+      stone--they passed on beyond, and carried the promise to those other grey
+      ones, a little further off; that she had left--yes, for the last time; and
+      Fleda's thoughts went forward swiftly to the time of the promise.--"<i>Then</i>
+      shall be brought to pass the saying which is written, Death is swallowed
+      up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
+      The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks
+      be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus
+      Christ."--And then as she looked, the sunbeams might have been a choir of
+      angels in light singing, ever so softly, "Glory to God in the highest, and
+      on earth peace, good will towards men."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a full heart Fleda clasped her aunt's arm, and they went gently down
+      the lane without saying one word to each other, till they had left the
+      graveyard far behind them and were in the high road again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda internally thanked Mr. Carleton for what he had said to her on a
+      former occasion, for the thought of his words had given her courage, or
+      strength, to go beyond her usual reserve in speaking to her aunt; and she
+      thought her words had done good.
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="53"></a>Chapter LIII.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Use your pleasure: If your love do not persuade you to come, let not my
+        letter.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Merchant of Venice.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      On the way home Mrs. Rossitur and Fleda went a trifle out of their road to
+      say good-bye to Mrs. Douglass's family. Fleda had seen her aunt Miriam in
+      the morning, and bid her a conditional farewell; for, as after Mrs.
+      Rossitur's sailing she would be with Mrs. Carleton, she judged it little
+      likely that she should see Queechy again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had time for but a minute at Mrs. Douglass's. Mrs. Rossitur had
+      shaken hands and was leaving the house when Mrs. Douglass pulled Fleda
+      back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Be you going to the West Indies too, Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, Mrs. Douglass."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then why don't you stay here?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I want to be with my aunt while I can," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And then do you calculate to stop in New York?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For awhile," said Fleda colouring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O go 'long!" said Mrs. Douglass, "I know all about it. Now do you s'pose
+      you're agoing to be any happier among all those great folks than you would
+      be if you staid among little folks?" she added tartly; while Catherine
+      looked with a kind of incredulous admiration at the future lady of
+      Carleton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't suppose that greatness has anything to do with happiness, Mrs.
+      Douglass," said Fleda gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So gently,--and so calmly sweet the face was that said it that Mrs.
+      Douglass's mood was overcome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well you ain't agoing to forget Queechy?" she said, shaking Fleda's hand
+      with a hearty grasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Never--never!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'll tell you what I think," said Mrs. Douglass, the tears in her eyes
+      answering those in Fleda's.--"It'll be a happy house that gets you into
+      it, wherever 'tis! I only wish it wa'n't out o' Queechy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda thought on the whole as she walked home that she did not wish any
+      such thing. Queechy seemed dismantled, and she thought she would rather go
+      to a new place now that she had taken such a leave of every thing here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two things remained however to be taken leave of; the house and Barby.
+      Happily Fleda had little time for the former. It was a busy evening, and
+      the morning would be more busy; she contrived that all the family should
+      go to rest before her, meaning then to have one quiet look at the old
+      rooms by herself; a leave-taking that no other eyes should interfere with.
+      She sat down before the kitchen fire-place, but she had hardly realized
+      that she was alone when one of the many doors opened and Barby's tall
+      figure walked in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Here you be," she half whispered. "I knowed there wouldn't be a minute's
+      peace to-morrow; so I thought I'd bid you good-bye to-night."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda gave her a smile and a hand, but did not speak. Barby drew up a
+      chair beside her, and they sat silent for some time, while quiet tears
+      from the eyes of each said a great many things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I hope you'll be as happy as you deserve to be,"--were Barby's
+      first words, in a voice very altered from its accustomed firm and spirited
+      accent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Make some better wish for me than that, dear Barby."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wouldn't want any better for myself," said Barby determinately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I would for you," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She thought of Mr. Carleton's words again, and went on in spite of
+      herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is a mistake, Barby. The best of us do not deserve anything good; and
+      if we have the sight of a friend's face, or the very sweet air we breathe,
+      it is because Christ has bought it for us. Don't let us forget that, and
+      forget him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do, always," said Barby crying,--"forget everything. Fleda, I wish
+      you'd pray for me when you are far away, for I ain't as good as you be."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear Barby," said Fleda, touching her shoulder affectionately, "I haven't
+      waited to be far away to do that."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barby sobbed for a few minutes with the strength of a strong nature that
+      rarely gave way in that manner; and then dashed her tears right and left,
+      not at all as if she were ashamed of them, but with a resolution not to be
+      overcome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There won't be nothing good left in Queechy, when you're gone, you and
+      Mis' Plumfield--without I go and look at the place where Hugh lies--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear Barby," said Fleda with softening eyes, "won't you be something good
+      yourself?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barby put up her hand to shield her face. Fleda was silent for she saw
+      that strong feeling was at work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish I could," Barby broke forth at last, "if it was only for your
+      sake."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Dear Barby," said Fleda, "you can do this for me--you can go to church
+      and hear what Mr. Olmney says. I should go away happier if I thought you
+      would, and if I thought you would follow what he says; for dear Barby
+      there is a time coming when you will wish you were a Christian more than
+      you do now; and not for my sake."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe there is, Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then will you?--won't you give me so much pleasure?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'd do a'most anything to do you a pleasure."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then do it, Barby."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, I'll go," said Barby. "But now just think of that, Fleda, how you
+      might have stayed in Queechy all your days and done what you liked with
+      everybody. I'm glad you ain't, though; I guess you'll be better off."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was silent upon that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I'd like amazingly to see how you'll be fixed," said Barby after a trifle
+      of ruminating. "If 'twa'n't for my old mother I'd be 'most a mind to pull
+      up sticks and go after you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I wish you could, Barby; only I am afraid you would not like it so well
+      there as here."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Maybe I wouldn't. I s'pect them English folks has ways of their own, from
+      what I've heerd tell; they set up dreadful, don't they?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not all of them," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, I don't believe but what I could get along with Mr. Carleton well
+      enough--I never see any one that knowed how to behave himself better."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda gave her a smiling acknowledgment of this compliment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He's plenty of money, ha'n't he?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I believe so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You'll be sot up like a princess, and never have anything to do no more."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "O no," said Fleda laughing,--"I expect to have a great deal to do; if I
+      don't find it, I shall make it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I guess it'll be pleasant work," said Barby. "Well, I don't care! you've
+      done work enough since you've lived here that wa'n't pleasant, to play for
+      the rest of your days; and I'm glad on't. I guess he don't hurt himself.
+      You wouldn't stand it much longer to do as you have been doing lately."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That couldn't be helped," said Fleda; "but that I may stand it to-morrow
+      I am afraid we must go to bed, Barby."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barby bade her good-night and left her. But Fleda's musing mood was gone.
+      She had no longer the desire to call back the reminiscences of the old
+      walls. All that page of her life, she felt, was turned over; and after a
+      few minutes' quiet survey of the familiar things, without the power of
+      moralizing over them as she could have done half an hour before, she left
+      them--for the next day had no eyes but for business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a trying week or two before Mr. Rossitur and his family were fairly
+      on shipboard. Fleda as usual, and more than usual,--with the eagerness of
+      affection that felt its opportunities numbered and would gladly have
+      concentrated the services of years into days,--wrought, watched, and
+      toiled, at what expense to her own flesh and blood Mrs. Rossitur never
+      knew, and the others were too busy to guess. But Mrs. Carleton saw the
+      signs of it, and was heartily rejoiced when they were fairly gone and
+      Fleda was committed to her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For days, almost for weeks, after her aunt was gone Fleda could do little
+      but rest and sleep; so great was the weariness of mind and body, and the
+      exhaustion of the animal spirits, which had been kept upon a strain to
+      hide her feelings and support those of others. To the very last moment
+      affection's sweet work had been done; the eye, the voice, the smile, to
+      say nothing of the hands, had been tasked and kept in play to put away
+      recollections, to cheer hopes, to soften the present, to lighten the
+      future; and hardest of all, to do the whole by her own living example. As
+      soon as the last look and wave of the hand were exchanged and there was no
+      longer anybody to lean upon her for strength and support, Fleda shewed how
+      weak she was, and sank into a state of prostration as gentle and deep
+      almost as an infant's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As sweet and lovely as a child too, Mrs. Carleton declared her to be;
+      sweet and lovely as <i>she</i> was when a child; and there was no going
+      beyond that. As neither this lady nor Fleda had changed essentially since
+      the days of their former acquaintanceship, it followed that there was
+      still as little in common between them, except indeed now the strong
+      ground of affection. Whatever concerned her son concerned Mrs. Carleton in
+      almost equal degree; anything that he valued she valued; and to have a
+      thorough appreciation of him was a sure title to her esteem. The
+      consequence of all this was that Fleda was now the most precious thing in
+      the world to her after himself; especially since her eyes, sharpened as
+      well as opened by affection, could find in her nothing that she thought
+      unworthy of him. In her personally, country and blood Mrs. Carleton might
+      have wished changed; but her desire that her son should marry, the
+      strongest wish she had known for years, had grown so despairing that her
+      only feeling now on the subject was joy; she was not in the least inclined
+      to quarrel with his choice. Fleda had from her the tenderest care, as well
+      as the utmost delicacy that affection and good-breeding could teach. And
+      Fleda needed both, for she was slow in going back to her old health and
+      strength; and stripped on a sudden of all her old friends, on this
+      turning-point of her life, her spirits were in that quiet mood that would
+      have felt any jarring most keenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The weeks of her first languor and weariness were over, and she was
+      beginning again to feel and look like herself. The weather was hot and the
+      city disagreeable now, for it was the end of June; but they had pleasant
+      rooms upon the Battery, and Fleda's windows looked out upon the waving
+      tops of green trees and the bright waters of the bay. She used to lie
+      gazing out at the coming and going vessels with a curious fantastic
+      interest in them; they seemed oddly to belong to that piece of her life,
+      and to be weaving the threads of her future fate as they flitted about in
+      all directions before her. In a very quiet, placid mood, not as if she
+      wished to touch one of the threads, she lay watching the bright sails that
+      seemed to carry the shuttle of life to and fro; letting Mrs. Carleton
+      arrange and dispose of everything and of her as she pleased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was on her couch as usual, looking out one fair morning, when Mrs.
+      Carleton came in to kiss her and ask how she did. Fleda said better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Better! you always say 'better'," said Mrs. Carleton; "but I don't see
+      that you get better very fast. And sober;--this cheek is too sober," she
+      added, passing her hand fondly over it;--"I don't like to see it so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is just the way I have been feeling, ma'am--unable to rouse myself.
+      I should be ashamed of it, if I could help it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mrs. Evelyn has been here begging that we would join her in a party to
+      the Springs--Saratoga--how would you like that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should like anything that you would like, ma'am," said Fleda, with a
+      thought how she would like to read Montepoole for Saratoga.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The city is very hot and dusty just now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very, and I am sorry to keep you in it, Mrs. Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Keep me, love?" said Mrs. Carleton bending down her face to her again;--"
+      it's a pleasure to be kept anywhere by you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda shut her eyes, for she could hardly bear a little word now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't like to keep <i>you</i> here--it is not myself I am thinking of.
+      I fancy a change would do you good."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are very kind, ma'am."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very interested kindness," said Mrs. Carleton. "I want to see you looking
+      a little better before Guy comes--I am afraid he will look grave at both
+      of us." But as she paused and stroked Fleda's cheek it came into her mind
+      to doubt the truth of the last assertion, and she ended off with, "I wish
+      he would come!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Fleda wished truly; for now, cut off as she was from her old
+      associations, she longed for the presence of the one friend that was to
+      take place of them all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope we shall hear soon that there is some prospect of his getting
+      free," Mrs. Carleton went on. "He has been gone now,--how many weeks?--I
+      am looking for a letter to-day. And there it is!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The maid at this moment entered with the steamer despatches. Mrs. Carleton
+      pounced upon the one she knew and broke it open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Here it is!--and there is yours, Fleda."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With kind politeness she went off to read her own and left Fleda to study
+      hers at her leisure. An hour after she came in again. Fleda's face was
+      turned from her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well what does he say?" she asked in a lively tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I suppose the same he has said to you, ma'am," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't suppose it indeed," said Mrs. Carleton laughing, "He has given me
+      sundry charges, which if he has given you it is morally certain we shall
+      never come to an understanding."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have received no charges." said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am directed to be very careful to find out your exact wish in the
+      matter and to let you follow no other. So what is it, my sweet Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I promised--" said Fleda colouring and turning her letter over. But there
+      she stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Whom and what?" said Mrs. Carleton after she had waited a reasonable
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What did you promise, my dear Fleda?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That--I would do as he said."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But he wishes you to do as you please."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda brought her eyes quick out of Mrs. Carleton's view, and was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you say, dear Fleda?" said the lady, taking her hand and bending
+      over her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure we shall be expected," said Fleda. "I will go."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are a darling girl!" said Mrs. Carleton kissing her again and again.
+      "I will love you forever for that. And I am sure it will be the best thing
+      for you--the sea will do you good--and ne vous en d&eacute;plaise, our own
+      home is pleasanter just now than this dusty town. I will write by this
+      steamer and tell Guy we will be there by the next. He will have everything
+      in readiness, I know, at all events; and in half an hour after you get
+      there, my dear Fleda, you will be established in all your rights--as well
+      as if it had been done six months before. Guy will know how to thank you.
+      But after all, Fleda, you might do him this grace--considering how long he
+      has been waiting upon you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Something in Fleda's eyes induced Mrs. Carleton to say, laughing,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What's the matter?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He never waited for me," said Fleda simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Didn't he?--But my dear Fleda I--" said Mrs. Carleton in amused
+      extremity,--"how long is it since you knew what he came out here for?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know now, ma'am," said Fleda. But she became angelically rosy the
+      next minute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He never told you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No."--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you never asked him?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why no, ma'am!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He will be well suited in a wife," said Mrs. Carleton laughing. "But he
+      can have no objection to your knowing now, I suppose. He never told me but
+      at the latest. You must know, Fleda, that it has been my wish for a great
+      many years that Guy would marry--and I almost despaired, he was so
+      difficult to please--his taste in everything is so fastidious; but I am
+      glad of it now," she added, kissing Fleda's cheek. "Last spring--not this
+      last, but a year ago--one evening at home I was talking to him on this
+      subject; but he met everything I said lightly--you know his way--and I saw
+      my words took no hold. I asked him at last in a kind of desperation if he
+      supposed there was a woman in the world that could please him; and he
+      laughed, and said if there was he was afraid she was not in that
+      hemisphere. And a day or two after he told me he was going to America."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Did he say for what?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No,--but I guessed as soon as I found he was prolonging his stay, and I
+      was sure when he wrote me to come out to him. But I never knew till I
+      landed, Fleda my dear, any more than that. The first question I asked him
+      was who he was going to introduce to me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The interval was short to the next steamer, but also the preparations were
+      few. A day or two after the foregoing conversation, Constance Evelyn
+      coming into Fleda's room found her busy with some light packing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear little creature!" she exclaimed ecstatically,--"are you going
+      with us?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where are you going then?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To England."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "England!--Has--I mean, is there any addition to my list of acquaintances
+      in the city?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not that I know of," said Fleda, going on with her work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And you are going to England!--Greenhouses will be a desolation to me!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope not," said Fleda smiling;--"you will recover yourself, and your
+      sense of sweetness, in time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It will have nothing to act upon!--And you are going to England!--I think
+      it is very mean of you not to ask me to go too and be your bridesmaid."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't expect to have such a thing," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not?--Horrid! I wouldn't be married so, Fleda. You don't know the world,
+      little Queechy; the art <i>de vous faire valoir</i> I am afraid is unknown
+      to you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "So it may remain with my good will," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why?" said Constance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have never felt the want of it," said Fleda simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When are you going?" said Constance after a minute's pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By the Europa."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But this is a very sudden move!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--very sudden."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should think you would want a little time to make preparations."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is all happily taken off my hands," said Fleda. "Mrs. Carleton has
+      written to her sister in England to take care of it for me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I didn't know that Mrs. Carleton had a sister.--What's her name?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Lady Peterborough."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Constance was silent again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What are you going to do about mourning, Fleda? wear white, I suppose. As
+      nobody there knows anything about you, you won't care."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not care in the least," said Fleda calmly; "my feeling would quite
+      as soon choose white as black. Mourning so often goes alone, that I should
+      think grief might be excused for shunning its company."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And as you have not put it on yet," said Constance, "you won't feel the
+      change. And then in reality after all he was only a cousin."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's quiet mood, sober and tender as it was, could go to a certain
+      length of endurance, but this asked too much. Dropping the things from her
+      hands, she turned from the trunk beside which she was kneeling and hiding
+      her face on a chair wept such tears as cousins never shed for each other.
+      Constance was startled and distressed; and Fleda's quick sympathy knew
+      that she must be, before she could see it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You needn't mind it at all, dear Constance," she said as soon as she
+      could speak,--"it's no matter--I am in such a mood sometimes that I cannot
+      bear anything. Don't think of it," she said kissing her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Constance however could not for the remainder of her visit get back her
+      wonted light mood, which indeed had been singularly wanting to her during
+      the whole interview.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Carleton counted the days to the steamer, and her spirits rose with
+      each one. Fleda's spirits were quiet to the last degree, and passive, too
+      passive, Mrs. Carleton thought. She did not know the course of the years
+      that had gone, and could not understand how strangely Fleda seemed to
+      herself now to stand alone, broken off from her old friends and her former
+      life, on a little piece of time that was like an isthmus joining two
+      continents. Fleda felt it all exceedingly; felt that she was changing from
+      one sphere of life to another; never forgot the graves she had left at
+      Queechy, and as little the thoughts and prayers that had sprung up beside
+      them. She felt, with all Mrs. Carleton's kindness, that she was completely
+      alone, with no one on her side the ocean to look to; and glad to be
+      relieved from taking active part in anything she made her little Bible her
+      companion for the greater part of the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are you going to carry that sober face all the way to Carleton?" said
+      Mrs. Carleton one day pleasantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know, ma'am."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What do you suppose Guy will think of it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the thought of what he would think of it, and what he would say to it,
+      and how fast he would brighten it, made Fleda burst into tears. Mrs.
+      Carleton resolved to talk to her no more, but to get her home as fast as
+      possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have one consolation," said Charlton Rossitur as he shook hands with
+      her on board the steamer;--"I have received permission, from
+      head-quarters, to come and see you in England; and to that I shall look
+      forward constantly from this time."
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      <a name="54"></a>Chapter LIV.
+    </h1>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        The full sum of me<br /> Is sum of something; which to term in gross,<br />
+        Is an unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractis'd;<br /> Happy in this, she
+        is not yet so old<br /> But she may learn; and happier than this,<br />
+        She is not bred so dull but she can learn;<br /> Happiest of all, is that
+        her gentle spirit<br /> Commits itself to yours to be directed,<br /> As
+        from her lord, her governor, her king.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Merchant of Venice.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      They had a very speedy passage to the other side, and partly in
+      consequence of that Mr. Carleton was <i>not</i> found waiting for them in
+      Liverpool. Mrs. Carleton would not tarry there but hastened down at once
+      to the country, thinking to be at home before the news of their arrival.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was early morning of one fair day in July when they were at last
+      drawing near the end of their journey. They would have reached it the
+      evening before but for a storm which had constrained them to stop and wait
+      over the night at a small town about eight miles off. For fear then of
+      passing Guy on the road his mother sent a servant before, and making an
+      extraordinary exertion was actually herself in the carriage by seven
+      o'clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing could be fairer than that early drive, if Fleda might have enjoyed
+      it in peace. The sweet morning air was exceeding sweet, and the summer
+      light fell upon a perfect luxuriance of green things. Out of the carriage
+      Fleda's spirits were at home, but not within it; and it was sadly irksome
+      to be obliged to hear and respond to Mrs. Carleton's talk, which was kept
+      up, she knew, in the charitable intent to divert her. She was just in a
+      state to listen to nature's talk; to the other she attended and replied
+      with a patient longing to be left free that she might steady and quiet
+      herself. Perhaps Mrs. Carleton's tact discovered this in the
+      matter-of-course and uninterested manner of her rejoinders; for as they
+      entered the park gates she became silent, and the long drive from them to
+      the house was made without a word on either side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a length of way the road was through a forest of trees of noble
+      growth, which in some places closed their arms overhead and in all
+      sentinelled the path in stately array. The eye had no scope beyond the
+      ranks of this magnificent body; Carleton park was celebrated for its
+      trees; but magnificent though they were and dearly as Fleda loved every
+      form of forest beauty, she felt oppressed. The eye forbidden to range, so
+      was the mind, shut in to itself; and she only felt under the gloom and
+      shadow of those great trees the shadow of the responsibilities and of the
+      change that were coming upon her. But after a while the ranks began to be
+      thinned and the ground to be broken; the little touches of beauty with
+      which the sun had enlivened the woodland began to grow broader and
+      cheerfuller; and then as the forest scattered away to the right and left,
+      gay streams of light came through the glades and touched the surface of
+      the rolling ground, where in the hollows, on the heights, on the sloping
+      sides of the dingles, knots of trees of yet more luxuriant and picturesque
+      growth, planted or left by the cultivator's hand long ago and trained by
+      no hand but nature's, stood so as to distract a painter's eye; and just
+      now, in the fresh gilding of the morning and with all the witchery of the
+      long shadows upon the uneven ground certainly charmed Fleda's eye and mind
+      both. Fancy was dancing again, albeit with one hand upon gravity's
+      shoulder, and the dancing was a little nervous too. But she looked and
+      caught her breath as she looked, while the road led along the very edge of
+      a dingle, and then was lost in a kind of enchanted open woodland--it
+      seemed so--and then passing through a thicket came out upon a broad sweep
+      of green turf that wiled the eye by its smooth facility to the distant
+      screen of oaks and beeches and firs on its far border. It was all new.
+      Fleda's memory had retained only an indistinct vision of beauty, like the
+      face of an angel in a cloud as painters have drawn it; now came out the
+      beautiful features one after another, as if she had never seen them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So far nature had seemed to stand alone. But now another hand appeared,
+      not interfering with nature but adding to her. The road came upon a belt
+      of the shrubbery where the old tenants of the soil were mingled with
+      lighter and gayer companionship and in some instances gave it place;
+      though in general the mingling was very graceful. There was never any
+      crowding of effects; it seemed all nature still, only as if several climes
+      had joined together to grace one. Then that was past; and over smooth
+      undulating ground, bearing a lighter growth of foreign wood with here and
+      there a stately elm or ash that disdained their rivalry, the carriage came
+      under the brown walls and turrets of the house. Fleda's mood had changed
+      again; and as the grave outlines rose above her, half remembered and all
+      the more for that imposing, she trembled at the thought of what she had
+      come there to do and to be. She felt very nervous and strange and out of
+      place, and longed for the familiar free and voice that would bid her be at
+      home. Mrs. Carleton, now, was not enough of a stand-by. With all that,
+      Fleda descended from the carriage with her usual quiet demureness; no one
+      that did not know her well would have seen in her any other token of
+      emotion than a somewhat undue and wavering colour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were welcomed, at least one of them was, with every appearance of
+      sincerity by the most respectable-looking personage who opened to them and
+      whom Fleda remembered instantly. The array of servants in the hall would
+      almost have startled her if she had not recollected the same thing on her
+      first coming to Carleton. She stepped in with a curious sense of that
+      first time, when she had come there a little child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Where is your master?' was Mrs. Carleton's immediate demand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Mr. Carleton set off this morning for Liverpool."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Carleton gave a quick glance at Fleda, who kept her eyes at home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We did not meet him--we have not passed him--how long ago?" were her next
+      rapid words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My master left Carleton as early as five o'clock--he gave orders to drive
+      as fast as possible."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then he had gone through Hollonby an hour before we left it," said Mrs.
+      Carleton looking again to her companion;--"but he will hear of us at
+      Carstairs--we stopped there yesterday afternoon--he will be back again in
+      a few hours I am sure. Then we have been expected?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes ma'am--my master gave orders that you should be expected."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is all well, Popham?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All is well, madam!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Is Lady Peterborough here?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "His lordship and Lady Peterborough arrived the day before yesterday," was
+      the succint reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Drawing Fleda's arm within hers and giving kind recognition to the rest
+      who stood around, Mrs. Carleton led her to the stairs and mounted them,
+      repeating in a whisper, "He will be here presently again." They went to
+      Mrs. Carleton's dressing room, Fleda wondering in an interval fever
+      whether "orders had been given" to expect her also; from the old butler's
+      benign look at her as he said "All is well!" she could not help thinking
+      it. If she maintained her outward quiet it was the merest external crust
+      of seeming; there was nothing like quiet beneath it; and Mrs. Carleton's
+      kiss and fond words of welcome were hardly composing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Carleton made her sit down, and with very gentle hands was busy
+      arranging her hair, when the housekeeper came in; to pay her more
+      particular respects and to offer her services. Fleda hardly ventured a
+      glance to see whether <i>she</i> looked benign. She was a dignified
+      elderly person, as stately and near as handsome as Mrs. Carleton herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Fleda," said the latter when she had finished the hair,--"I am
+      going to see my sister--will you let Mrs. Fothergill help you in anything
+      you want, and take you then to the library--you will find no one, and I
+      will come to you there. Mrs. Fothergill, I recommend you to the particular
+      care of this lady."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The recommendation was not needed, Fleda thought, or was very effectual;
+      the housekeeper served her with most assiduous care, and in absolute
+      silence. Fleda hurried the finishing of her toilet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Are the people quiet in the country?" she forced herself to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perfectly quiet, ma'am. It needed only that my master should be at home
+      to make them so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How is that?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He has their love and their ear, ma'am, and so it is that he can just do
+      his pleasure with them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "How is it in the neighbouring country?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They're quiet, ma'am, I believe,--mostly--there's been some little
+      disturbance in one place and another, and more fear of it, as well as I
+      can make out, but it's well got over, as it appears. The noblemen and
+      gentlemen in the country around were very glad, all of them I am told, of
+      Mr. Carleton's return. Is there nothing more I can do for you, ma'am?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last question was put with an indefinable touch of kindliness which
+      had not softened the respect of her first words. Fleda begged her to show
+      the way to the library, which Mrs. Fothergill immediately did, remarking
+      as she ushered her in that "those were Mr. Carleton's favourite rooms."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda did not need to be told that; she put the remark and the benignity
+      together, and drew a nervous inference. But Mrs. Fothergill was gone and
+      she was alone. Nobody was there, as Mrs. Carleton had said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda stood still in the middle of the floor, looking around her, in a
+      bewildered effort to realize the past and the present; with all the mind
+      in the world to cry, but there was too great a pressure of excitement and
+      too much strangeness of feeling at work. Nothing before her in the dimly
+      familiar place served at all to lessen this feeling, and recovering from
+      her maze she went to one of the glazed doors, which stood open, and turned
+      her back upon the room with its oppressive recollections. Her eye lighted
+      upon nothing that was not quiet now. A secluded piece of smooth green,
+      partially bordered with evergreens and set with light shrubbery of rare
+      kinds, exquisitely kept; over against her a sweetbriar that seemed to have
+      run wild, indicating, Fleda was sure, the entrance of the path to the rose
+      garden, that her memory alone would hardly have helped her to find. All
+      this in the bright early summer morning, and the sweet aromatic smell of
+      firs and flowers coming with every breath. There were draughts of
+      refreshment in the air. It composed her, and drinking it in delightedly
+      Fleda stood with folded arms in the doorway, half forgetting herself and
+      her position, and going in fancy from the firs and the roses over a very
+      wide field of meditation indeed. So lost, that she started fearfully on
+      suddenly becoming aware that a figure had come just beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was an elderly and most gentlemanly-looking man, as a glance made her
+      know. Fleda was reassured and ashamed in a breath. The gentleman did not
+      notice her confusion, however, otherwise than by a very pleasant and
+      well-bred smile, and immediately entered into some light remarks on the
+      morning, the place, and the improvements Mr. Carleton had made in the
+      latter. Though he said the place was one of those which could bear very
+      well to want improvement; but Carleton was always finding something to do
+      which excited his admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Landscape gardening is one of the pleasantest of amusements," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have just knowledge enough in the matter to admire;--to originate any
+      ideas is beyond me; I have to depend for them upon my gardener,--and my
+      wife--and so I lose a pleasure, I suppose; but every man has his own
+      particular hobby. Carleton, however, has more than his share--he has half
+      a dozen, I think."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Half a dozen hobbies!" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps I should not call them hobbies, for he manages to ride them all
+      skilfully; and a hobby-horse, I believe, always runs away with the man?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda could hardly return his smile. She thought people were possessed
+      with an unhappy choice of subjects in talking to her that morning. But
+      fancying that she had very ill kept up her part in the conversation and
+      must have looked like a simpleton, she forced herself to break the silence
+      which followed the last remark, and asked the same question she had asked
+      Mrs. Fothergill,--if the country was quiet?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Outwardly quiet," he said;--"O yes--there is no more difficulty--that is,
+      none which cannot easily be handled. There was some danger a few months
+      ago, but it is blown over; all was quiet on Carleton's estates so soon as
+      he was at home, and that of course had great influence on the
+      neighbourhood. No, there is nothing to be apprehended. He has the hearts
+      of his people completely, and one who has their hearts can do what he
+      pleases with their heads, you know. Well he deserves it--he has done a
+      great deal for them."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was afraid to ask in what way,--but perhaps he read the question in
+      her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That's one of his hobbies--ameliorating the condition of the poorer
+      classes on his estates. He has given himself to it for some years back; he
+      has accomplished a great deal for them--a vast deal indeed! He has changed
+      the face of things, mentally and morally, in several places, with his
+      adult schools, and agricultural systems, and I know not what; but the most
+      powerful means I think after all has been the weight of his personal
+      influence, by which he can introduce and carry through any measure;
+      neither ignorance nor prejudice nor obstinacy seem to make head against
+      him. It requires a peculiar combination of qualities, I think,--very
+      peculiar and rare,--to deal successfully with the mind of the masses."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I should think so indeed," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He has it--I don't comprehend it--and I have not studied his machinery
+      enough to understand that; but I have seen the effects. Never should have
+      thought he was the kind of man either--but there it is!--I don't
+      comprehend him. There is only one fault to be found with him though."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is that?" said Fleda smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He has built a fine dissenting chapel down here towards Hollonby," he
+      said gravely, looking her in the face,--"and what is yet worse, his uncle
+      tells me, he goes there half the time himself!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda could not help laughing, nor colouring, at his manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thought it was always considered a meritorious action to build a
+      church," she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Indubitably.--But you see, this was a chapel."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The laugh and the colour both grew more unequivocal--Fleda could not help
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I beg your pardon, sir--I have not learned such nice
+      distinctions--Perhaps a chapel was wanted just in that place."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That is presumable. But <i>he</i> might be wanted somewhere else.
+      However," said the gentleman with a good-humoured smile,--"his uncle
+      forgives him; and if his mother cannot influence him,--I am afraid nobody
+      else will. There is no help for it. And I should be very sorry to stand
+      ill with him. I have given you the dark side of his character."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is the other side in the contrast?" said Fleda, wondering at herself
+      for her daring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is not for me to say," he answered with a slight shrug of the
+      shoulders and an amused glance at her;--"I suppose it depends upon
+      people's vision,--but if you will permit me, I will instance a bright spot
+      that was shewn to me the other day, that I confess, when I look at it,
+      dazzles my eyes a little."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda only bowed; she dared not speak again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There was a poor fellow--the son of one of Mr. Carleton's old tenants
+      down here at Enchapel,--who was under sentence of death, lying in prison
+      at Carstairs. The father, I am told, is an excellent man and a good
+      tenant; the son had been a miserable scapegrace, and now for some crime--I
+      forget what--had at last been brought to justice. The evidence against him
+      was perfect and the offence was not trifling--there was not the most
+      remote chance of a pardon, but it seemed the poor wretch had been building
+      up his dependence upon that hope and was resting on it; and consequently
+      was altogether indisposed and unfit to give his attention to the subjects
+      that his situation rendered proper for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The gentleman who gave me this story was requested by a brother clergyman
+      to go with him to visit the prisoner. They found him quite
+      stupid--unmovable by all that could be urged, or rather perhaps the style
+      of the address, as it was described to me, was fitted to confound and
+      bewilder the man rather than enlighten him. In the midst of all this Mr.
+      Carleton came in--he was just then on the wing for America, and he had
+      heard of the poor creature's condition in a visit to his father. He
+      came,--my informant said,--like a being of a different planet. He took the
+      man's hand,--he was chained foot and wrist,--'My poor friend,' he said, 'I
+      have been thinking of you here, shut out from the light of the sun, and I
+      thought you might like to see the face of a friend';--with that singular
+      charm of manner which he knows how to adapt to everybody and every
+      occasion. The man was melted at once--at his feet, as it were;--he could
+      do anything with him. Carleton began then, quietly, to set before him the
+      links in the chain of evidence which had condemned him--one by one--in
+      such a way as to prove to him, by degrees but irresistibly, that he had no
+      hope in this world. The man was perfectly subdued--sat listening and
+      looking into those powerful eyes that perhaps you know,--taking in all his
+      words and completely in his hand. And then Carleton went on to bring
+      before him the considerations that he thought should affect him in such a
+      case, in a way that this gentleman said was indescribably effective and
+      winning; till that hardened creature was broken down,--sobbing like a
+      child,--actually sobbing!--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda did her best, but she was obliged to hide her face in her hands, let
+      what would be thought of her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was the finest exhibition of eloquence, this gentleman said, he had
+      ever listened to.--For me it was an exhibition of another kind. I would
+      have believed such an account of few men, but of all the men I know I
+      would least have believed it of Guy Carleton a few years ago; even now I
+      can hardly believe it. But it is a thing that would do honour to any
+      man."--
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda felt that the tears were making their way between her fingers, but
+      she could not help it; and she presently knew that her companion had gone
+      and she was left alone again. Who was this gentleman? and how much did he
+      know about her? More than that she was a stranger, Fleda was sure; and
+      dreading his return, or that somebody else might come and find her with
+      tokens of tears upon her face, she stepped out upon the greensward and
+      made for the flaunting sweet-briar that seemed to beckon her to visit its
+      relations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The entrance of a green path was there, or a grassy glade, more or less
+      wide, leading through a beautiful growth of firs and larches. No roses,
+      nor any other ornamental shrubs; only the soft, well-kept footway through
+      the woodland. Fleda went gently on and on, admiring, where the trees
+      sometimes swept back, leaving an opening, and at other places stretched
+      their graceful branches over her head. The perfect condition of everything
+      to the eye, the rich coloured vegetation,--of varying colour above and
+      below,--the absolute retirement, and the strong pleasant smell of the
+      evergreens, had a kind of charmed effect upon senses and mind too. It was
+      a fairyland sort of place. The presence of its master seemed everywhere;
+      it was like him; and Fleda pressed on to see yet livelier marks of his
+      character and fancy beyond. By degrees the wood began to thin on one side;
+      then at once the glade opened into a bright little lawn rich with roses in
+      full bloom. Fleda was stopped short at the sudden vision of loveliness.
+      There was the least possible appearance of design; no dry beds were to be
+      seen; the luxuriant clumps of Provence and white roses, with the varieties
+      of the latter, seemed to have chosen their own places; only to have chosen
+      them very happily. One hardly imagined that they had submitted to
+      dictation, if it were not that Queen Flora never was known to make so
+      effective a disposition of her forces without help. The screen of trees
+      was very thin on the border of this opening, so thin that the light from
+      beyond came through. On a slight rocky elevation which formed the further
+      side of it sat an exquisite little Moorish temple, about which and the
+      face of the rock below some Noisette and Multiflora climbers were vying
+      with each other; and just at the entrance of the further path a white
+      dog-rose had thrown itself over the way, covering the lower branches of
+      the trees with its blossoms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda stood spell bound a good while, with a breath oppressed with
+      pleasure. But what she had seen excited her to see more, and a dim
+      recollection of the sea-view from somewhere in the walk drew her on. Roses
+      met her now frequently. Now and then a climber, all alone, seemed to have
+      sought protection in a tree by the path-side, and to have displayed itself
+      thence in the very wantonness of security, hanging out its flowery
+      wreaths, fearless of hand or knife. Clusters of Noisettes, or of French or
+      Damask roses, where the ground was open enough, stood without a rival and
+      needing no foil, other than the beautiful surrounding of dark evergreen
+      foliage. But the distance was not long before she came out upon a wider
+      opening and found what she was seeking--the sight of the sea. The glade,
+      here, was upon the brow of high ground, and the wood disappearing entirely
+      for a space left the eye free to go over the lower tree-tops and the
+      country beyond to the distant shore and sea-line. Roses were here too; the
+      air was full of the sweetness of Damask and Bourbon varieties; and a few
+      beautiful Banksias, happily placed, contrasted without interfering with
+      them. It was very still;--it was very perfect;--the distant country was
+      fresh-coloured with the yet early light which streamed between the trees
+      and laid lines of enchantment upon the green turf; and the air came up
+      from the sea-board and bore the breath of the roses to Fleda every now and
+      then with a gentle puff of sweetness. Such light--she had seen none such
+      light since she was a child. Was it the burst of mental sunshine that had
+      made it so bright?--or was she going to be really a happy child again?
+      No--no,--not that; and yet something very like it. So like it that she
+      almost startled at herself. She went no further. She could not have borne,
+      just then, to see any more; and feeling her heart too full she stood even
+      there, with hands crossed upon her bosom, looking away from the roses to
+      the distant sea-line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That said something very different. That was very sobering; if she had
+      needed sobering, which she did not. But it helped her to arrange the
+      scattered thoughts which had been pressing confusedly upon her brain.
+      "Look away from the roses" indeed she could not, for the same range of
+      vision took in the sea and them,--and the same range of thought. These
+      might stand for an emblem of the present; that, of the future,--grave,
+      far-off, impenetrable;--and passing as it were the roses of time Fleda
+      fixed upon that image of eternity; and weighing the one against the other,
+      felt, never in her life more keenly, how wild it would be to forget in
+      smelling the roses her preparations for that distant voyage that must be
+      made from the shores where they grow. With one eye upon this brightest
+      bits of earth before her, the other mentally was upon Hugh's grave. The
+      roses could not be sweeter to any one; but in view of the launching away
+      into that distant sea-line, in view of the issues on the other shore, in
+      view of the welcome that might be had there,--the roses might fade and
+      wither, but her happiness could not go with their breath. They were
+      something to be loved, to be used, to be thankful for,--but not to live
+      upon; something too that whispered of an increased burden of
+      responsibility, and never more deeply than at that moment did Fleda
+      remember her mother's prayer; never more simply recognized that happiness
+      could not be made of these things. She might be as happy at Queechy as
+      here. It depended on the sunlight of undying hopes, which indeed would
+      give wonderful colour to the flowers that might be in her way;--on the
+      possession of resources the spring of which would never dry;--on the peace
+      which secures the continual feast of a merry heart. Fleda could take her
+      new honours and advantages very meekly, and very soberly, with all her
+      appreciation of them. The same work of life was to be done here as at
+      Queechy. To fulfil the trust committed to her, larger here--to keep her
+      hope for the future--undeceived by the sunshine of earth to plant her
+      roses where they would bloom everlastingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The weight of these things bowed Fleda to the ground and made her bury her
+      face in her hands. But there was one item of happiness from which her
+      thoughts never even in imagination dissevered themselves, and round it
+      they gathered now in their weakness. A strong mind and heart to uphold
+      hers,--a strong hand for here to rest in,--that was a blessing; and Fleda
+      would have cried heartily but that her feelings were too high wrought.
+      They made her deaf to the light sound of footsteps coming over the
+      grass,--till two hands gently touched hers and lifted her up, and then
+      Fleda was at home. But surprised and startled she could hardly lift up her
+      face. Mr. Carleton's greeting was as grave and gentle as if she had been a
+      stray child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do not fancy I am going to thank you for the grace you have shewn me,"
+      said he lightly. "I know you would never have done it if circumstances had
+      not been hard pleaders in my cause. I will thank you presently when you
+      have answered one or two questions for me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Questions?" said Fleda looking up. But she blushed the next instant at
+      her own simplicity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was leading her back on the path she had come. No further however than
+      to the first opening, where the climbing dog-rose hung over the way. There
+      he turned aside crossing the little plot of greensward, and they ascended
+      some steps cut in the rock to the pavilion Fleda had looked at from a
+      distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It stood high enough to command the same sea-view. On that side it was
+      entirely open, and of very light construction on the others. Several
+      people were there; Fleda could hardly tell how many; and when Lord
+      Peterborough was presented to her she did not find out that he was her
+      morning's acquaintance. Her eye only took in besides that there were one
+      or two ladies, and a clergyman in the dress of the Church of England; she
+      could not distinguish. Yet she stood beside Mr. Carleton with all her
+      usual quiet dignity, though her eye did not leave the ground and her words
+      were in no higher key than was necessary, and though she could hardly bear
+      the unchanged easy tone of his. The birds were in a perfect ecstasy all
+      about them; the soft breeze came through the trees, gently waving the
+      branches and stirring the spray wreaths of the roses, the very fluttering
+      of summer's drapery; some roses looked in at the lattice, and those which
+      could not be there sent in their congratulations on the breath of the
+      wind, while the words were spoken that bound them together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton then dismissing his guests to the house, went with Fleda
+      again the other way. He had felt the extreme trembling of the hand which
+      he took, and would not go in till it was quieted. He led her back to the
+      very rose-bush where he had found her, and in his own way, presently
+      brought her spirit home from its trembling and made it rest; and then
+      suffered her to stand a few minutes quite silent, looking out again over
+      the fair rich spread of country that lay between them and the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now tell me, Elfie," said he softly, drawing back with the same old
+      caressing and tranquillizing touch the hair that hung over her
+      brow,--"what you were thinking about when I found you here?--in the very
+      luxury of seclusion--behind a rose-bush."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda looked a quick look, smiled, and hesitated, and then said it was
+      rather a confusion of thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It will be a confusion no longer when you have disentangled them for me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know--" said Fleda. And she was silent, but so was he, quietly
+      waiting for her to go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps you will wonder at me, Mr. Carleton," she said, hesitating and
+      colouring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Perhaps," he said smiling;--"but if I do I will not keep you in
+      ignorance, Elfie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was almost bewildered, in the first place,--with beauty--and then--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do you like the rose garden?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Like it!--I cannot speak of it!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't want you to speak of it," said he smiling at her. "What followed
+      upon liking it, Elfie?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was thinking," said Fleda, looking resolutely away from him,--"in the
+      midst of all this,--that it is not these things which make people happy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There is no question of that," he replied. "I have realized it thoroughly
+      for a few months past."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "No, but seriously, I mean," said Fleda pleadingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And seriously you are quite right, dear Elfie. What then?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I was thinking," said Fieda, speaking with some difficulty, "of Hugh's
+      grave,--and of the comparative value of things; and afraid, I
+      believe,--especially--here--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of making a wrong estimate?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes--and of not doing and being just what I ought."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton was silent for a minute, considering the brow from which his
+      fingers drew off the light screen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you trust me to watch over and tell you?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda did not trust her voice to tell him, but her eyes did it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As to the estimate--the remedy is to 'keep ourselves in the love of God;'
+      and then these things are the gifts of our Father's hand and will never be
+      put in competition with him. And they are never so sweet as when taken
+      so."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh I know that!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This is a danger I share with you. We will watch over each other."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda was silent with filling eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We do not seek our happiness in these things," he said tenderly. "I never
+      found it in them. For years, whatever others may have judged, I have felt
+      myself a poor man; because I had not in the world a friend in whom I could
+      have entire sympathy. And if I am rich now, it is not in any treasure that
+      I look to enjoy in this world alone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Oh do not, Mr. Carleton!" exclaimed Fleda, bowing her head in distress,
+      and giving his hand an earnest entreaty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What shall I not do?" said he half laughing and half gently, bringing her
+      face near enough for his lips to try another kind of eloquence. "You shall
+      not do this, Elfie, for any so light occasion.--Was this the whole burden
+      of those grave thoughts?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not quite--entirely--" she said stammering. "But grave thoughts are not
+      always unhappy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not always. I want to know what gave yours a tinge of that colour this
+      morning."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was hardly that.--You know what Foster says about 'power to its very
+      last particle being duty'--I believe it frightened me a little."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you feel that as strongly as I do, Elfie, it will act as a strong
+      corrective to the danger of false estimates."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do feel it," said Fleda. "One of my fears was that I should not feel it
+      enough."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One of my cares will be that you do not act upon it too fiercely," said
+      he smiling. "The power being limited so is the duty. But you shall have
+      power enough, Elfie, and work enough. I have precisely what I have
+      needed--my good sprite back again."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "With a slight difference."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What difference?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is to act under direction now."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not at all--only under safe control," he said laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am very glad of the difference, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda, with a grave
+      and grateful remembrance of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If you think the sprite's old office is gone, you are mistaken," said he.
+      "What were your other fears?--one was that you should not feel enough your
+      responsibility, and the other that you might forget it."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't know that there were any other particular fears," said Fleda;--"I
+      had been thinking of all these things--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what else?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her colour and her silence begged him not to ask. He said no more, and let
+      her stand still again looking off through the roses, while her mind more
+      quietly and lightly went over the same train of thoughts that had moved it
+      before; gradually calmed; came back from being a stranger to being at
+      home, at least in one presence; and ended, her action even before her look
+      told him where, as her other hand unconsciously was joined to the one
+      already on his arm. A mute expression of feeling the full import of which
+      he read, even before her eye coming back from its musings was raised to
+      him, perhaps unconsciously too, with all the mind in it; its timidity was
+      not more apparent than its simplicity of clinging affection and
+      dependence. Mr. Carleton's answer was in three words, but in the tone and
+      manner that accompanied them there was a response to every part of her
+      appeal; so perfect that Fleda was confused at her own frankness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They began to move towards the house, but Fleda was in a maze again and
+      could hardly realize anything. "His wife"!--was she that?--had so
+      marvellous a change really been wrought in her?--the little asparagus
+      cutter of Queechy transformed into the mistress of all this domain, and of
+      the stately mansion of which they caught glimpses now and then, as they
+      drew near it by another approach into which Mr. Carleton had diverged. And
+      his wife!--that was the hardest to realize of all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was as far from realizing it when she got into the house. They entered
+      now at once into the breakfast-room where the same party were gathered
+      whom she had met once before that morning. Mr. Carleton the elder, and
+      Lord Peterborough and Lady Peterborough, she had met without seeing. But
+      Fleda could look at them now; and if her colour came and went as frankly
+      as when she was a child, she could speak to them and meet their advances
+      with the same free and sweet self-possession as then; the rare dignity of
+      a little wood-flower, that is moved by a breath, but recovers as easily
+      and instantly its quiet standing. There were one or two who looked a
+      little curiously at first to see whether this new member of the family
+      were worthy of her place and would fill it to satisfy them. Not Mr.
+      Carleton; he never sought to ascertain the value of anything that belonged
+      to him by a popular vote; and his own judgment always stood carelessly
+      alone. But Mrs. Carleton was less sure of her own ground or of others. For
+      five minutes she noted Fleda's motions and words, her blushes and smiles,
+      as she stood talking to one and another;--for five minutes, and then with
+      a little smile at her sister Mrs. Carleton moved off to the
+      breakfast-table, well pleased that Lady Peterborough was too engaged to
+      answer her. Fleda had won them all. Mr. Carleton's intervening shield of
+      grace and kindness was only needed here against the too much attention or
+      attraction that might distress her. He was again, now they were in
+      presence of others, exactly what he had been to her when she was a child,
+      the same cool and efficient friend and protector. Nobody in the room
+      shewed less thought of her <i>except</i> in action; a great many little
+      things done for her pleasure or comfort, so quietly that nobody knew it
+      but one person, and she hardly noticed it at the time. All could not have
+      the same tact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an uninterrupted easy flow of talk at the table, which Fleda
+      heard just enough to join in where it was necessary; the rest of the time
+      she sat in a kind of abstraction, dipping enormous strawberries one by one
+      into white sugar, with a curious want of recognition between them and the
+      ends of her fingers; it never occurred to her that they had picked baskets
+      full.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have done something for which you will hardly thank me, Mr. Carleton,"
+      said Lord Peterborough. "I have driven this lady to tears within the first
+      hour of her being in the house."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "If she will forgive you, I will, my lord," Mr. Carleton answered
+      carelessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will confess myself though," continued his lordship looking at the face
+      that was so intent over the strawberries. "I was under the impression when
+      I first saw a figure in the window that it was Lady Peterborough. I own as
+      soon as I found it was a stranger I had my suspicions--which did not lack
+      confirmation in the course of the interview--I trust I am forgiven the
+      means I used."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It seems you had your curiosity too, my lord," said Mr. Carleton the
+      uncle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Which ought in all justice to have lacked gratification," said Lady
+      Peterborough. "I hope Fleda will not be too ready to forgive you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I expect forgiveness nevertheless," said he looking at Fleda. "Must I
+      wait for it?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am much obliged to you, sir."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then she gave him a very frank smile and blush as she added, "I beg
+      pardon--you know my tongue is American."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't like that," said his lordship gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," said the elder
+      Carleton. "The heart being English, we may hope the tongue will become so
+      too."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will not assure you of that, sir," Fleda said laughingly, though her
+      cheeks showed the conversation was not carried on without effort. Oddly
+      enough nobody saw it with any dissatisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Of what, madam?" said Lord Peterborough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "That I will not always keep a rag of the stars and stripes flying
+      somewhere."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But that little speech had almost been too much for her equanimity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Like Queen Elizabeth who retained the crucifix when she gave up the
+      profession of popery."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Very unlike indeed!" said Fleda, endeavouring to understand what Mr.
+      Carleton was saying to her about wood strawberries and hautbois.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Will you allow that, Carleton?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What, my lord?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A rival banner to float alongside of St. George's?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      '"The flags are friendly, my lord."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Hum--just now,--they may seem so.--Has your little standard-bearer
+      anything of a rebellious disposition?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Not against any lawful authority, I hope," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then there is hope for you, Mr. Carleton, that you will be able to
+      prevent the introduction of mischievous doctrines."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "For shame, Lord Peterborough!" said his wife,--"what atrocious
+      suppositions you are making. I am blushing, I am sure, for your want of
+      discernment."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why--yes--" said his lordship, looking at another face whose blushes were
+      more unequivocal,--"it may seem so--there is no appearance of anything
+      untoward, but she is a woman after all. I will try her. Mrs. Carleton,
+      don't you think with my Lady Peterborough that in the present nineteenth
+      century women ought to stand more on that independent footing from which
+      lordly monopoly has excluded them?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first name Fleda thought belonged to another person, and her downcast
+      eyelids prevented her seeing to whom it was addressed. It was no matter,
+      for any answer was anticipated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The boast of independence is not engrossed by the boldest footing, my
+      lord."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She has never considered the subject," said Lady Peterborough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is no matter," said his lordship. "I must respectfully beg an answer
+      to my question."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The silence made Fleda look up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Don't you think that the rights of the weak ought to be on a perfect
+      equality with those of the strong?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The rights of the weak <i>as such</i>--yes, my lord."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gentlemen smiled; the ladies looked rather puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have no more to say, Mr. Carleton," said his lordship, "but that we
+      must make an Englishwoman of her!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am afraid she will never be a perfect cure," said Mr. Carleton smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I conceive it might require peculiar qualities in the physician,--but I
+      do not despair. I was telling her of some of your doings this morning, and
+      happy to see that they met with her entire disapproval."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Carleton did not even glance towards Fleda and made no answer, but
+      carelessly gave the conversation another turn; for which she thanked him
+      unspeakably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no other interruption of any consequence to the well-bred flow
+      of talk and kindliness of manner on the part of all the company, that put
+      Fleda as much as possible at her ease. Still she did not realize anything,
+      and yet she did realize it so strongly that her woman's heart could not
+      rest till it bad eased itself in tears. The superbly appointed table at
+      which she sat,--her own, though Mrs. Carleton this morning presided,--the
+      like of which she had not seen since she was at Carleton before; the
+      beautiful room with its arrangements, bringing back a troop of
+      recollections of that old time; all the magnificence about her, instead of
+      elevating sobered her spirits to the last degree. It pressed home upon her
+      that feeling of responsibility, of the change that come over her; and
+      though beneath it all very happy, Fleda hardly knew it, she longed so to
+      be alone and to cry. One person's eyes, however little seemingly observant
+      of her, read sufficiently well the unusual shaded air of her brow and her
+      smile. But a sudden errand of business called him abroad immediately after
+      breakfast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ladies seized the opportunity to carry Fleda up and introduce her to
+      her dressing-room and take account of Lady Peterborough's commission, and
+      ladies and ladies' maids soon formed a busy committee of dress and
+      decorations. It did not enliven Fleda, it wearied her, though she forgave
+      them the annoyance in gratitude for the pleasure they took in looking at
+      her. Even the delight her eye had from the first minute she saw it, in the
+      beautiful room, and her quick sense of the carefulness with which it had
+      been arranged for her, added to the feeling with which she was oppressed;
+      she was very passive in the hands of her friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the midst of all this the housekeeper was called in and formally
+      presented, and received by Fleda with a mixture of frankness and
+      bashfulness that caused Mrs. Fothergill afterwards to pronounce her "a
+      lady of a very sweet dignity indeed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "She is just such a lady as you might know my master would have fancied,"
+      said Mr. Spenser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what kind of a lady is that?" said Mrs. Fothergill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mr. Spenser was too wise to enter into any particulars and merely
+      informed Mrs. Fothergill that she would know in a few days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The first words Mrs. Carleton said when Mr. Carleton got home," said the
+      old butler,--"she put both her hands on his arms and cried out, 'Guy, I am
+      delighted with her!'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And what did <i>he</i> say?" said Mrs. Fothergill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He!" echoed Mr. Spenser in a tone of indignant intelligence,--"what
+      should <i>he</i> say?--He didn't say anything; only asked where she was, I
+      believe."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the midst of silks, muslins and jewels Mr. Carleton found Fleda still
+      on his return; looking pale and even sad, though nobody but himself
+      through her gentle and grateful bearing would have discerned it. He took
+      her out of the hands of the committee and carried her down to the little
+      library, adjoining the great one, but never thrown open,--<i>his</i> room,
+      as it was called, where more particularly art and taste had accumulated
+      their wealth of attractions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I remember this very well," said Fleda. "This beautiful room!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is as free to you as to me, Elfie; and I never gave the freedom of it
+      to any one else."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I will not abuse it," said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I hope not, my dear Elfie," said he smiling,--"for the room will want
+      something to me now when you are not in it; and a gift is abused that is
+      not made free use of."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A large and deep bay window in the room looked upon the same green lawn
+      and fir wood with the windows of the library. Like those this casement
+      stood open, and Mr. Carleton leading Fleda there remained quietly beside
+      her for a moment, watching her face which his last words had a little
+      moved from its outward composure. Then, gently and gravely as if she had
+      been a child, putting his arm round her shoulders and drawing her to him
+      he whispered,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My dear Elfie,--you need not fear being misunderstood--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda started and looked up to see what he meant. But his face said it so
+      plainly, in its perfect intelligence and sympathy with her, that her
+      barrier of self-command and reserve was all broken down; and hiding her
+      head in her hands upon his breast she let the pent-up burden upon her
+      heart come forth in a flood of unrestrained tears. She could not help
+      herself. And when she would fain have checked them after the first burst
+      and bidden them, according to her habit to wait another time, it was out
+      of her power; for the same kindness and tenderness that had set them a
+      flowing, perhaps witting of her intent, effectually hindered its
+      execution. He did not say a single word, but now and then a soft touch of
+      his hand or of his lips upon her brow, in its expressive tenderness would
+      unnerve all her resolution and oblige her to have no reserve that time at
+      least in letting her secret thoughts and feelings be known, as far as
+      tears could tell them. She wept, at first in spite of herself and
+      afterwards in the very luxury of indulged feeling; till she was as quiet
+      as a child, and the weight of oppression was all gone. Mr. Carleton did
+      not move, nor speak, till she did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I never knew before how good you were, Mr. Carleton," said Fleda raising
+      her head at length, as soon as she dared, but still held fast by that kind
+      arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What new light have you got on the subject?" said he, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Why," said Fleda, trying as hard as ever did sunshine to scatter the
+      remnants of a cloud,--it was a bright cloud too by this time, "I have
+      always heard that men cannot endure the sight of a woman's tears."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You shall give me a reward then. Elfie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What reward?" said Fleda.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Promise me that you will shed them nowhere else."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Nowhere else?--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But here--in my arms."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I don't feel like crying any more now," said Fleda evasively;--at
+      least."--for drops were falling rather fast again,--" not sorrowfully."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Promise me, Elfie," said Mr. Carleton after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda hesitated still and looked dubious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Come!--" he said smiling,--"you know you promised a little while ago that
+      you would have a particular regard to my wishes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fleda's cheeks answered that appeal with sufficient brightness, but she
+      looked down and said demurely,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am sure one of your wishes is that I should not say anything rashly."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well?--"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "One cannot answer for such wilful things as tears."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "And for such wilful things as men?" said he smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Fleda was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then I will alter the form of my demand. Promise me that no shadow of
+      anything shall come over your spirit that you do not let me either share
+      or remove."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no trifling in the tone,--full of gentleness as it was; there
+      could be no evading its requisition. But the promise demanded was a grave
+      one. Fleda was half afraid to make it. She looked up, in the very way he
+      had seen her do when a child, to find a warrant for her words before she
+      uttered them. But the full, clear, steadfast eye into which she looked for
+      two seconds, authorized as well as required the promise; and hiding her
+      face again on his breast Fleda gave it, amid a gush of tears every one of
+      which was illumined with heart-sunshine.
+    </p>
+    <p class="smallcaps">
+      The End.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Queechy, Susan Warner
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #8874 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8874)