Queechy Volume I Part 54

"Where? oh, don't you remember the days of Mrs. Renney? I have seen Emile make them. And by dint of trying to teach Mary this summer, I have taught myself. There is no knowing, you see, what a person may come to."

"I wonder what father would say, if he knew you had made all the coffee this summer?"

"That is an unnecessary speculation, my dear Hugh, as I have no intention of telling him. But see! that is the way with speculators! 'while they go on refining,' the toast burns!"

The coffee, and the omelette, and the toast, and Mr.

Rossitur's favourite French salad, were served with beautiful accuracy; and he was quite satisfied. But aunt Lucy looked sadly at Fleda's flushed face, and saw that her appet.i.te seemed to have gone off in the steam of her preparations.

Fleda had a kind of heart-feast, however, which answered as well.

Hugh harnessed the little wagon, for no one was at hand to do it, and he and Fleda set off as early as possible after dinner. Fleda's thoughts had turned to her old acquaintance, Cynthia Gall, who she knew was out of employment, and staying at home somewhere near Montepoole. They got the exact direction from aunt Miriam, who approved of her plan.

It was a pleasant, peaceful drive they had. They never were alone together, they two, but vexations seemed to lose their power, or be forgotten; and an atmosphere of quietness gather about them, the natural element of both hearts. It might refuse its presence to one, but the attraction of both together was too strong to be resisted.

Miss Cynthia's present abode was in an out-of-the-way place, and a good distance off; they were some time in reaching it.

The barest-looking and dingiest of houses, set plump in a green field, without one softening or home-like touch from any home-feeling within; not a flower, not a shrub, not an out- house, not a tree near. One would have thought it a deserted house, but that a thin wreath of smoke lazily stole up from one of the brown chimneys; and graceful as that was, it took nothing from the hard, stern barrenness below, which told of a worse poverty than that of paint and glazing.

"Can this be the place?" said Hugh.

"It must be. You stay here with the horse, and I'll go in and seek my fortune. ? Don't promise much," said Fleda, shaking her head.

The house stood back from the road. Fleda picked her way to it along a little footpath which seemed to be the equal property of the geese. Her knock brought an invitation to "come in."

An elderly woman was sitting there, whose appearance did not mend the general impression. She had the same dull and unhopeful look that her house had.

"Does Mrs. Gall live here?"

"I do," said this person.

"Is Cynthia at home?"

The woman, upon this, raised her voice, and directed it at an inner door.

"Lucindy!" said she, in a diversity of tones; "Lucindy! tell Cynthy here's somebody wants to see her." But no one answered; and throwing the work from her lap, the woman muttered she would go and see, and left Fleda, with a cold invitation to sit down.

Dismal work! Fleda wished herself out of it. The house did not look poverty-stricken within, but poverty must have struck to the very heart, Fleda thought, where there was no apparent cheris.h.i.+ng of anything. There was no absolute distress visible, neither was there a sign of real comfort, or of a happy home. She could not fancy it was one.

She waited so long, that she was sure Cynthia did not hold herself in readiness to see company. And when the lady at last came in, it was with very evident marks of "smarting up" about her.

"Why, it's Flidda Ringgan!" said Miss Gall, after a dubious look or two at her visitor. "How do you do? I didn't 'spect to see you. How much you have growed!"

She looked really pleased, and gave Fleda's hand a very strong grasp as she shook it.

"There aint no fire here to-day," pursued Cynthy, paying her attentions to the fire-place; "we let it go down on account of our being all busy out at the back of the house. I guess you're cold, aint you."

Fleda said, "No;" and remembered that the woman she had first seen was certainly not busy at the back of the house, nor anywhere else but in that very room, where she had found her deep in a pile of patchwork.

"I heerd you had come to the old place. Were you glad to be back again?" Cynthy asked, with a smile that might be taken to express some doubt upon the subject.

"I was very glad to see it again."

"I ha'n't seen it in a great while. I've been staying to hum this year or two. I got tired o' going out," Cynthy remarked, with again a smile very peculiar, and, Fleda thought, a little sardonical. She did not know how to answer.

"Well, how do you come along down yonder?" Cynthy went on, making a great fuss with the shovel and tongs to very little purpose. "Ha' you come all the way from Queechy?"

"Yes. I came on purpose to see you, Cynthy."

Without staying to ask what for, Miss Gall now went out to "the back of the house," and came running in again with a live brand pinched in the tongs, and a long tail of smoke running after it. Fleda would have compounded for no fire and no choking. The choking was only useful to give her time to think. She was uncertain how to bring in her errand.

"And how is Mis' Plumfield?" said Cynthy, in an interval of blowing the brand.

"She is quite well; but, Cynthy, you need not have taken all that trouble for me. I cannot stay but a few minutes."

"There is wood enough!" Cynthia remarked, with one of her grim smiles ? an a.s.sertion Fleda could not help doubting. Indeed, she thought Miss Gall had grown altogether more disagreeable than she used to be in old times. Why, she could not divine, unless the souring effect had gone on with the years.

"And what's become of Earl Dougla.s.s and Mis' Dougla.s.s? I hain't heerd nothin' of 'em this great while. I always told your grandpa he'd ha' saved himself a great deal o' trouble if he'd ha' let Earl Dougla.s.s take hold of things. You han't got Mr. Didenhover into the works again, I guess, have you? He was there a good spell after your grandpa died.''

"I haven't seen Mrs. Dougla.s.s," said Fleda. "But, Cynthy, what do you think I have come here for?"

"I don't know," said Cynthy, with another of her peculiar looks directed at the fire. "I s'pose you want someh'n nother of me."

"I have come to see if you wouldn't come and live with my aunt, Mrs. Rossitur. We are left alone, and want somebody very much; and I thought I would find you out and see if we couldn't have you, first of all, before I looked for anybody else."

Cynthy was absolutely silent. She sat before the fire, her feet stretched out towards it as far as they would go, and her arms crossed, and not moving her steady gaze at the smoking wood, or the chimney-back, whichever it might be; but there was in the corners of her mouth the threatening of a smile that Fleda did not at all like.

"What do you say to it, Cynthy?"

"I reckon you'd best get somebody else," said Miss Gall, with a kind of condescending dryness, and the smile showing a little more.

"Why?" said Fleda. "I would a great deal rather have an old friend than a stranger."

"Be you the housekeeper?" said Cynthy, a little abruptly.

"Oh, I am a little of everything," said Fleda ? "cook and housekeeper, and whatever comes first. I want you to come and be housekeeper, Cynthy."

"I reckon Mis' Rossitur don't have much to do with her help, does she?" said Cynthy, after a pause, during which the corners of her mouth never changed. The tone of piqued independence let some light into Fleda's mind.

"She is not strong enough to do much herself, and she wants some one that will take all the trouble from her. You'd have the field all to yourself, Cynthy."

"Your aunt sets two tables, I calculate, don't she?"

"Yes; my uncle doesn't like to have any but his own family around him."

"I guess I shouldn't suit!" said Miss Gall, after another little pause, and stooping very diligently to pick up some scattered shreds from the floor. But Fleda could see the flushed face, and the smile which pride and a touch of spiteful pleasure in the revenge she was taking made particularly hateful. She needed no more convincing that Miss Gall "wouldn't suit;" but she was sorry, at the same time, for the perverseness that had so needlessly disappointed her; and went rather pensively back again down the little footpath to the waiting wagon.

"This is hardly the romance of life, dear Hugh," she said, as she seated herself.

"Haven't you succeeded?"

Fleda shook her head.