Queechy Volume I Part 51

"Not quite so little, but my own darling. The world hasn't spoiled thee yet."

"I hope not, aunt Miriam."

"You have remembered your mother's prayer, Fleda?"

"Always!"

How tenderly aunt Miriam's hand was pa.s.sed over the bowed head ? how fondly she pressed her! And Fleda's answer was as fond.

"I wanted to bring Hugh up to see you, aunt Miriam, with me, but he couldn't come. You will like Hugh. He is so good!"

"I will come down and see him," said aunt Miriam; and then she went to look after her oven's doings. Fleda stood by, amused to see the quant.i.ties of nice things that were rummaged out of it. They did not look like Mrs. Renney's work, but she knew from old experience that they were good.

"How early you must have been up to put these things in," said Fleda.

"Put them in! yes, and make them. These were all made this morning, Fleda."

"This morning! ? before breakfast! Why, the sun was only just rising when I set out to come up the hill, and I wasn't long coming, aunt Miriam."

"To be sure; that's the way to get things done. Before breakfast! ? What time do you breakfast, Fleda?"

"Not till eight or nine o'clock."

"Eight or nine! ? Here?"

"There hasn't been any change made yet, and I don't suppose there will be. Uncle Rolf is always up early, but he can't bear to have breakfast early."

Aunt Miriam's face showed what she thought; and Fleda went away with all its gravity and doubt settled like lead upon her heart. Though she had one of the identical apple pies in her hands, which aunt Miriam had quietly said was for "her and Hugh," and though a pleasant savour of old times was about it, Fleda could not get up again the bright feeling with which she had come up the hill. There was a miserable misgiving at heart. It would work off in time.

It had begun to work off, when, at the foot of the hill, she met her uncle. He was coming after her to ask Mr. Plumfield about the desideratum of a Yankee. Fleda put her pie in safety behind a rock, and turned back with him, and aunt Miriam told them the way to Seth's ploughing ground.

A pleasant word or two had set Fleda's spirits a-bounding again, and the walk was delightful. Truly the leaves were not on the trees, but it was April, and they soon would be; there was promise in the light, and hope in the air, and everything smelt of the country and spring-time. The soft tread of the sod, that her foot had not felt for so long, the fresh look of the newly-turned earth; here and there the brilliance of a field of winter grain, and that nameless beauty of the budding trees, that the full luxuriance of summer can never equal ?

Fleda's heart was springing for sympathy. And to her, with whom a.s.sociation was everywhere so strong, there was in it all a shadowy presence of her grandfather, with whom she had so often seen the spring-time bless those same hills and fields long ago. She walked on in silence, as her manner commonly was when deeply pleased; there were hardly two persons to whom she would speak her mind freely then. Mr. Rossitur had his own thoughts.

"Can anything equal the spring-time?" she burst forth at length.

Her uncle looked at her and smiled. "Perhaps not; but it is one thing," said he, sighing, "for taste to enjoy, and another thing for calculation to improve."

"But one can do both, can't one?" said Fleda, brightly.

"I don't know," said he, sighing again. "Hardly."

Fleda knew he was mistaken, and thought the sighs out of place. But they reached her; and she had hardly condemned them before they set her off upon a long train of excuses for him, and she had wrought herself into quite a fit of tenderness by the time they reached her cousin.

They found him on a gentle side-hill, with two other men and teams, both of whom were stepping away in different parts of the field. Mr. Plumfield was just about setting off to work his way to the other side of the lot, when they came up with him.

Fleda was not ashamed of her aunt Miriam's son, even before such critical eyes as those of her uncle. Farmer-like as were his dress and air, they showed him, nevertheless, a well- built, fine-looking man, with the independent bearing of one who has never recognised any but mental or moral superiority.

His face might have been called handsome; there was at least manliness in every line of it; and his excellent dark eye showed an equal mingling of kindness and acute common sense.

Let Mr. Plumfield wear what clothes he would, one felt obliged to follow Burns' notable example, and pay respect to the man that was in them.

"A fine day, Sir," he remarked to Mr. Rossitur, after they had shaken hands.

"Yes, and I will not interrupt you but a minute. Mr.

Plumfield, I am in want of hands ? hands for this very business you are about, ploughing ? and Fleda says you know everybody; so I have come to ask if you can direct me."

" Heads or hands, do you want?" said Seth, clearing his boot- sole from some superfluous soil upon the share of his plough.

"Why both, to tell you the truth. I want bands and teams, for that matter, for I have only two, and I suppose there is no time to be lost. And I want very much to get a person thoroughly acquainted with the business to go along with my man. He is an Irishman, and I am afraid not very well accustomed to the ways of doing things here."

"Like enough," said Seth; " and the worst of 'em is, you can't learn 'em."

"Well! ? can you help me?"

"Mr. Dougla.s.s!" said Seth, raising his voice to speak to one of his a.s.sistants who was approaching them ? "Mr. Dougla.s.s!

you're holding that 'ere plough a little too obleekly for my grounds."

"Very good, Mr. Plumfield!" said the person called upon, with a quick accent that intimated, "If you don't know what is best, it is not my affair!" ? the voice very peculiar, seeming to come from no lower than the top of his throat, with a guttural roll of the words.

"Is that Earl Dougla.s.s?" said Fleda.

"You remember him?" said her cousin, smiling. "He's just where he was, and his wife too. Well, Mr. Rossitur, 'tain't very easy to find what you want just at this season, when most folks have their hands full, and help is all taken up. I'll see if I can't come down and give you a lift myself with the ploughing, for a day or two, as I'm pretty beforehand with the spring, but you'll want more than that. I ain't sure ? I haven't more hands than I'll want myself, but I think it is possible Squire Springer may spare you one of his'n. He aint taking in any new land this year, and he's got things pretty snug; I guess he don't care to do any more than common, ?

anyhow, you might try. You know where uncle Joshua lives, Fleda? Well, Philetus ? what now?"

They had been slowly walking along the fence towards the furthest of Mr. Plumfield's coadjutors, upon whom his eye had been curiously fixed as he was speaking ? a young man who was an excellent sample of what is called "the raw material." He had just come to a sudden stop in the midst of the furrow when his employer called to him; and he answered, somewhat lack-a- daisically ?

"Why, I've broke this here clavis: I ha'n't touched anything nor nothing, and it broke right in teu!"

"What do you 'spose 'll be done now?" said Mr. Plumfield, gravely, going up to examine the fracture.

"Well, 't wa'n't none of my doings," said the young man. "I ha'n't touched anything nor nothing, and the mean thing broke right in teu. 'Tain't so handy as the old kind o' plough, by a long jump."

"You go 'long down to the house and ask my mother for a new clavis; and talk about ploughs when you know how to hold 'em,"

said Mr. Plumfield.

"It don't look so difficult a matter," said Mr. Rossitur, ?

"but I am a novice myself. What is the princ.i.p.al thing to be attended to in ploughing, Mr. Plumfield?"

There was a twinkle in Seth's eye, as he looked down upon a piece of straw he was breaking to bits, which Fleda, who could see, interpreted thoroughly.

"Well," said he, looking up ? "the breadth of the st.i.tches and the width and depth of the furrow must be regulated according to the nature of the soil and the lay of the ground, and what you're ploughing for. There's stubble-ploughing, and breaking up old leys, and ploughing for fallow crops, and ribbing, where the land has been some years in gra.s.s, and so on; and the plough must be geared accordingly, and so as not to take too much land nor go out of the land; and after that the best part of the work is to guide the plough right, and run the furrows straight and even."

He spoke with the most impenetrable gravity, while Mr.

Rossitur looked blank and puzzled. Fleda could hardly keep her countenance.

"That row of poles," said Mr. Rossitur, presently, "are they to guide you in running the furrow straight?"

"Yes, Sir, they are to mark out the crown of the st.i.tch. I keep 'em right between the horses, and plough 'em down one after another. It's a kind of way country-folks play at nine- pins," said Seth, with a glance half inquisitive, half sly, at his questioner.

Mr. Rossitur asked no more. Fleda felt a little uneasy again.