Rossitur, drily, "for the thing is done. I have engaged him."
Not another word was spoken.
Mr. Rossitur went out after breakfast, and Mrs. Rossitur busied herself with the breakfast cups and a tub of hot water ? a work she never would let Fleda share with her, and which lasted in consequence long enough, Barby said, to cook and eat three breakfasts. Fleda and Hugh sat looking at the floor and the fire respectively.
"I am going up the hill to get a sight of aunt Miriam," said Fleda, bringing her eyes from the fire upon her aunt.
"Well, dear, do. You have been shut up long enough by the snow. Wrap yourself up well, and put on my snow-boots."
"No, indeed!" said Fleda. "I shall just draw on another pair of stockings over my shoes, within my India-rubbers ? I will take a pair of Hugh"s woollen ones."
"What has become of your own?" said Hugh.
"My own what? Stockings?"
"Snow-boots."
"Worn out, Mr. Rossitur! I have run them to death, poor things! Is that a slight intimation that you are afraid of the same fate for your socks?"
"No," said Hugh, smiling in spite of himself, at her manner ?
"I will lend you anything I have got, Fleda."
His tone put Fleda in mind of the very doubtful pretensions of the socks in question to be comprehended under the term ? she was silent a minute.
"Will you go with me, Hugh?"
"No, dear, I can"t; I must get a little ahead with the wood while I can; it looks as if it would snow again, and Barby isn"t provided for more than a day or two."
"And how for this fire?"
Hugh shook his head, and rose up to go forth into the kitchen.
Fleda went too, linking her arm in his, and bearing affectionately upon it; a sort of tacit saying, that they would sink or swim together. Hugh understood it perfectly.
"I am very sorry you have to do it, dear Hugh; oh, that woodshed! If it had only been made ?"
"Never mind ? can"t help it now ? we shall get through the winter by and by."
"Can"t you get uncle Rolf to help you a little?" whispered Fleda; "It would do him good."
But Hugh only shook his head.
"What are we going to do for dinner, Barby?" said Fleda, still holding Hugh there before the fire.
"Aint much choice," said Barby. "It would puzzle anybody to spell much more out of it than pork and ham. There"s plenty of them. _I_ sha"n"t starve this some time."
"But we had ham yesterday, and pork the day before yesterday, and ham Monday," said Fleda. "There is plenty of vegetables, thanks to you and me, Hugh," she said, with a little reminding squeeze of his arm. "I could make soups nicely, if I had anything to make them of!"
"There"s enough to be had for the catching," said Barby. "If I hadn"t a man-mountain of work upon me, I"d start out and shoot or steal something."
"_You_ shoot, Barby!" said Fleda, laughing.
"I guess I can do most anything I set my hand to. If I couldn"t, I"d shoot myself. It wont do to kill no more o" them chickens."
"O no, ? now they are laying so finely. Well, I am going up the hill, and when I come home I"ll try and make up something, Barby."
"Earl Dougla.s.s "ll go out in the woods now and then, of a day, when he ha"n"t no work particular to do, and fetch hum as many pigeons and woodchucks as you could shake a stick at."
"Hugh, my dear," said Fleda, laughing, "it"s a pity you aren"t a hunter ? I would shake a stick at you with great pleasure.
Well, Barby, we will see when I come home."
"I was just a-thinkin"," said Barby; ? "Mis" Dougla.s.s sent round to know if Mis" Rossitur would like a piece of fresh meat ? Earl"s been killing a sheep ? there"s a nice quarter, she says, if she"d like to have it."
"A quarter of mutton!" said Fleda, ? "I don"t know ? no, I think not, Barby; I don"t know when we should be able to pay it back again. And yet, Hugh ? do you think uncle Rolf will kill another sheep this winter?"
"I am sure he will not," said Hugh; "there have so many died."
"If he only knowed it, that is a reason for killing more,"
said Barby ? "and have the good of them while he can."
"Tell Mrs. Dougla.s.s we are obliged to her, but we do not want the mutton, Barby."
Hugh went to his chopping, and Fleda set out upon her walk ?
the lines of her face settling into a most fixed gravity so soon as she turned away from the house. It was what might be called a fine winter"s day ? cold and still, and the sky covered with one uniform grey cloud. The snow lay in uncompromising whiteness, thick over all the world ? a kindly shelter for the young grain and covering for the soil; but Fleda"s spirits, just then in another mood, saw in it only the cold refusal to hope, and the barren check to exertion. The wind had cleared the snow from the trees and fences, and they stood in all their unsoftened blackness and nakedness, bleak and stern. The high grey sky threatened a fresh fall of snow in a few hours; it was just now a lull between two storms; and Fleda"s spirits, that sometimes would have laughed in the face of nature"s soberness, to-day sank to its own quiet. Her pace neither slackened nor quickened till she reached aunt Miriam"s house, and entered the kitchen.
Aunt Miriam was in high tide of business over a pot of boiling lard, and the enormous bread-tray by the side of the fire was half-full of very tempting light-brown cruller, which, however, were little more than a kind of sweet bread for the workmen. In the bustle of putting in and taking out, aunt Miriam could give her visitor but a word and a look. Fleda pulled off her hood, and sitting down, watched in unusual silence the old lady"s operations.
"And how are they all at your house to-day?" aunt Miriam asked, as she was carefully draining her cruller out of the kettle.
Fleda answered that they were as well as usual, but a slight hesitation and the tell-tale tone of her voice made the old lady look at her more narrowly. She came near and kissed that gentle brow, and looking in her eyes, asked her what the matter was?
"I don"t know; " said Fleda, eyes and voice wavering alike ?
"I am foolish, I believe ?"
Aunt Miriam tenderly put aside the hair from her forehead, and kissed it again, but the cruller was burning, and she went back to the kettle.
"I got down-hearted somehow this morning," Fleda went on, trying to steady her voice and school herself.
"_You_ down-hearted, dear! About what?"
There was a world of sympathy in these words, in the warmth of which Fleda"s shut-up heart unfolded itself at once.
"It"s nothing new, aunt Miriam ? only somehow I felt it particularly this morning ? I have been kept in the house so long by this snow, I have got dumpish, I suppose ?"
Aunt Miriam looked anxiously at the tears which seemed to come involuntarily, but she said nothing.
"We are not getting along well at home."
"I supposed that," said Mrs. Plumfield, quietly. "But anything new?"