Queechy Volume I Part 57

"An invitation to a party, and a slight possibility that at the party I may find what I want."

"A party," said Hugh. Fleda laughed and explained.

"And do you intend to go?"

"Not I ? at least I think not. But, Hugh, don't say anything about all this to aunt Lucy. She would be troubled."

Fleda had certainly, when she came away, no notion of improving her acquaintance with Miss Anastasia; but the supper, and the breakfast and the dinner of the next day, with all the nameless and almost numberless duties of house work that filled up the time between, wrought her to a very strong sense of the necessity of having some kind of "help" soon.

Mrs. Rossitur wearied herself excessively with doing very little, and then looked so sad to see Fleda working on, that it was more disheartening and harder to bear than the fatigue.

Hugh was a most faithful and invaluable coadjutor, and his lack of strength was, like her own, made up by energy of will; but neither of them could bear the strain long; and when the final clearing away of the dinner-dishes gave her a breathing- time, she resolved to dress herself, and put her thimble in her pocket, and go over to Miss Finn's quilting. Miss Lucy might not be like Miss Anastasia; and if she were, anything that had hands and feet to move instead of her own, would be welcome.

Hugh went with her to the door, and was to come for her at sunset.

CHAPTER XX.

"With superfluity of breeding First makes you sick, and then with feeding."

JENYNS.

Miss Anastasia was a little surprised and a good deal gratified, Fleda saw, by her coming, and played the hostess with great benignity. The quilting-frame was stretched in an upper room, not in the long kitchen, to Fleda's joy; most of the company were already seated at it, and she had to go through a long string of introductions before she was permitted to take her place. First of all, Earl Dougla.s.s's wife, who rose up, and taking both Fleda's hands, squeezed and shook them heartily, giving her, with eye and lip, a most genial welcome. This lady had every look of being a very clever woman ? "a manager," she was said to be; and, indeed, her very nose had a little pinch, which prepared one for nothing superfluous about her. Even her dress could not have wanted another breadth from the skirt, and had no fullness to spare about the body ? neat as a pin, though; and a well-to-do look through it all. Miss Quackenboss Fleda recognised as an old friend, gilt beads and all. Catherine Dougla.s.s had grown up to a pretty girl during the five years since Fleda had left Queechy, and gave her a greeting, half-smiling, half-shy.

There was a little more affluence about the flow of her drapery, and the pink ribbon round her neck was confined by a little dainty Jew's-harp of a brooch; she had her mother's pinch of the nose too. Then there were two other young ladies ? Miss Let.i.tia Ann Thornton, a tall-grown girl in pantalettes, evidently a would-be aristocrat, from the air of her head and lip, with a well-looking face, and looking well knowing of the same, and sporting neat little white cuffs at her wrists ? the only one who bore such a distinction. The third of these damsels, Jessie Healy, impressed Fleda with having been brought up upon coa.r.s.e meat, and having grown heavy in consequence; the other two were extremely fair and delicate, both in complexion and feature. Her aunt Syra, Fleda recognised without particular pleasure, and managed to seat herself at the quilt with the sewing-woman and Miss Hannah between them. Miss Lucy Finn she found seated at her right hand, but after all the civilities she had just gone through, Fleda had not courage just then to dash into business with her, and Miss Lucy herself st.i.tched away, and was dumb.

So were the rest of the party ? rather. The presence of the new comer seemed to have the effect of a spell. Fleda could not think they had been as silent before her joining them, as they were for some time afterwards. The young ladies were absolutely mute, and conversation seemed to flag even among the elder ones; and if Fleda ever raised her eyes from the quilt to look at somebody, she was sure to see somebody's eyes looking at her, with a curiosity well enough defined, and mixed with a more or less amount of benevolence and pleasure.

Fleda was growing very industrious and feeling her cheeks grow warm, when the checked stream of conversation began to take revenge by turning its tide upon her.

"Are you glad to be back to Queechy, Fleda?" said Mrs.

Dougla.s.s, from the opposite far end of the quilt.

"Yes Ma'am," said Fleda, smiling back her answer ? "on some accounts."

"Ain't she growed like her father, Mis' Dougla.s.s?" said the sewing-woman. "Do you recollect Walter Ringgan? What a handsome feller he was!"

The two opposite girls immediately found something to say to each other.

"She aint a bit more like him than she is like her mother,"

said Mrs. Dougla.s.s, biting off the end of her thread energetically. "Amy Ringgan was a sweet good woman as ever was in this town."

Again her daughter's glance and smile went over to the speaker.

"You stay in Queechy, and live like Queechy folks do," Mrs.

Dougla.s.s added, nodding encouragingly, "and you'll beat both on 'em."

But this speech jarred, and Fleda wished it had not been spoken.

"How does your uncle like farming?" said aunt Syra.

A home thrust, which Fleda parried by saying he had hardly got accustomed to it yet.

"What's been his business? what has he been doing all his life till now?" said the sewing-woman.

Fleda replied that he had had no business; and after the minds of the company had had time to entertain this statement, she was startled by Miss Lucy's voice at her elbow.

"It seems kind o' curious, don't it, that a man should live to be forty or fifty years old, and not know anything of the earth he gets his bread from?"

"What makes you think he don't?" said Miss Thornton, rather tartly.

"She wa'n't speaking o' n.o.body," said aunt Syra.

"I was ? I was speaking of man ? I was speaking abstractly,"

said Fleda's right-hand neighbour.

"What's abstractly?" said Miss Anastasia, scornfully.

"Where do you get hold of such hard words, Lucy?" said Mrs.

Dougla.s.s.

"I don't know, Mis' Dougla.s.s, they come to me; it's practice, I suppose. I had no intention of being obscure."

"One kind o' word 's as easy as another, I suppose, when you're used to it, aint it?" said the sewing-woman.

"What's abstractly?" said the mistress of the house, again.

"Look in the dictionary, if you want to know," said her sister.

"I don't want to know ? I only want you to tell."

"When do you get time for it, Lucy? ha'n't you nothing else to practise?" pursued Mrs. Dougla.s.s.

"Yes, Mis' Dougla.s.s; but then there are times for exertion, and other times less disposable; and when I feel thoughtful or low, I commonly retire to my room, and contemplate the stars, or write a composition."

The sewing-woman greeted this speech with an unqualified ha!

ha! and Fleda involuntarily raised her head to look at the last speaker; but there was nothing to be noticed about her, except that she was in rather nicer order than the rest of the Finn family.

"Did you get home safe last night?" inquired Miss Quackenboss, bending forward over the quilt to look down to Fleda.

Fleda thanked her, and replied that they had been overturned, and had several ribs broken.

"And where have you been, Fleda, all this while?" said Mrs.

Dougla.s.s.

Fleda told, upon which all the quilting party raised their heads simultaneously, to take another review of her.

"Your uncle's wife aint a Frenchwoman, be she?" asked the sewing-woman.

Fleda said, "Oh, no!" and Miss Quackenboss remarked, that "she thought she wa'n't;" whereby Fleda perceived it had been a subject of discussion.