Chapter XXIX…

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.

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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.

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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.

"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.

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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.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

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.'"

"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.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

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.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

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.

"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.

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