The thresher's weary flingin-treeThe lee-lang day had tired me:And whan the day bad closed his e'e,Far i' the west,Ben i' the spence, right pensivelie,I 'gaed to rest.
The thresher's weary flingin-treeThe lee-lang day had tired me:And whan the day bad closed his e'e,Far i' the west,Ben i' the spence, right pensivelie,I 'gaed to rest.
Burns.
Burns.
Queechy was reached at night. Fleda had promised herself to be off almost with the dawn of light the next morning to see aunt Miriam, but a heavy rain kept her fast at home the whole day. It was very well; she was wanted there.
Despite the rain and her disappointment it was impossible for Fleda to lie abed from the time the first grey light began to break in at her windows,--those old windows that had rattled their welcome to her all night. She was up and dressed and had had a long consultation with herself over matters and prospects, before anybody else had thought of leaving the indubitable comfort of a feather bed for the doubtful contingency of happiness that awaited them down stairs. Fleda took in the whole length and breadth of it, half wittingly and half through some finer sense than that of the understanding.
The first view of things could not strike them pleasantly; it was not to be looked for. The doors did not happen to be painted blue; they were a deep chocolate colour; doors and wainscot. The fireplaces were not all furnished with cranes, but they were all uncouthly wide and deep. Nobody would have thought them so indeed in the winter, when piled up with blazing hickory logs, but in summer they yawned uncomfortably upon the eye. The ceilings were low; the walls rough papered or rougher white-washed; the sashes not hung; the rooms, otherwise well enough proportioned, stuck with little cupboards, in recesses and corners and out of the way places, in a style impertinently suggestive of housekeeping, and fitted to shock any symmetrical set of nerves. The old house had undergone a thorough putting in order, it is true; the chocolate paint was just dry, and the paper hangings freshly put up; and the bulk of the new furniture had been sent on before and unpacked, though not a single article of it was in its right place. The house was clean and tight, that is, as tight as it ever was. But the colour had been unfortunately chosen--perhaps there was no help for that;--the paper wasverycoarse and countryfied; the big windows were startling, they looked so bare, without any manner of drapery; and the long reaches of wall were unbroken by mirror or picture-frame. And this to eyes trained to eschew ungracefulness and that abhorred a vacuum as much as nature is said to do! Even Fleda felt there was something disagreeable in the change, though it reached her more through the channel of other people's sensitiveness than her own. To her it was the dear old house still, though her eyes had seen better things since they loved it. No corner or recess had a pleasanter filling, to her fancy, than the old brown cupboard or shelves which had always been there. But whatwouldher uncle say to them! and to that dismal paper! and what would aunt Lucy think of those rattling window sashes! this cool raw day too, for the first!--
Think as she might Fleda did not stand still to think. She had gone softly all over the house, taking a strange look at the old places and the images with which memory filled them, thinking of the last time, and many a time before that;--and she had at last come back to the sitting-room, long before anybody else was down stairs; the two tired servants were just rubbing their eyes open in the kitchen and speculating themselves awake. Leaving them, at their peril, to get ready a decent breakfast, (by the way she grudged them the old kitchen) Fleda set about trying what her wand could do towards brightening the face of affairs in the other part of the house. It was quite cold enough for a fire, luckily. She ordered one made, and meanwhile busied herself with the various stray packages and articles of wearing apparel that lay scattered about giving the whole place a look of discomfort. Fleda gathered them up and bestowed them in one or two of the impertinent cupboards, and then undertook the labour of carrying out all the wrong furniture that had got into the breakfast-room and bringing in that which really belonged there from the hall and the parlour beyond; moving like a mouse that she might not disturb the people up stairs. A quarter of an hour was spent in arranging to the best advantage these various pieces of furniture in the room; it was the very same in which Mr. Carleton and Charlton Rossitur had been received the memorable day of the roast pig dinner, but that was not the uppermost association in Fleda's mind. Satisfied at last that a happier effect could not be produced with the given materials, and well pleased too with her success, Fleda turned to the fire. It was made, but not by any means doing its part to encourage the other portions of the room to look their best. Fleda knew something of wood fires from old times; she laid hold of the tongs, and touched and loosened and coaxed a stick here and there, with a delicate hand, till, seeing the very opening it had wanted,--without which neither fire nor hope can keep its activity,--the blaze sprang up energetically, crackling through all the piled oak and hickory and driving the smoke clean out of sight. Fleda had done her work. It would have been a misanthropical person indeed that could have come into the room then and not felt his face brighten. One other thing remained,--setting the breakfast table; and Fleda would let no hands but hers do it this morning; she was curious about the setting of tables. How she remembered or divined where everything had been stowed; how quietly and efficiently her little fingers unfastened hampers and pried into baskets, without making any noise; till all the breakfast paraphernalia of silver, china, and table-linen was found, gathered from various receptacles, and laid in most exquisite order on the table. State street never saw better. Fleda stood and looked at it then, in immense satisfaction, seeing that her uncle's eye would miss nothing of its accustomed gratification. To her the old room, shining with firelight and new furniture, was perfectly charming. If those great windows were staringly bright, health and cheerfulness seemed to look in at them. And what other images of association, with "nods and becks and wreathed smiles," looked at her out of the curling flames in the old wide fireplace! And one other angel stood there unseen,--the one whose errand it is to see fulfilled the promise, "Give and it shall be given to you; full measure, and pressed down, and heaped up, and running over."
A little while Fleda sat contentedly eying her work; then a new idea struck her and she sprang up. In the next meadow, only one fence between, a little spring of purest water ran through from the woodland; water cresses used to grow there. Uncle Rolf was very fond of them. It was pouring with rain, but no matter. Her heart beating between haste and delight, Fleda slipped her feet into galoches and put an old cloak of Hugh's over her head, and ran out through the kitchen, the old accustomed way. The servants exclaimed and entreated, but Fleda only flashed a bright look at them from under her cloak as she opened the door, and ran off, over the wet grass, under the fence, and over half the meadow, till she came to the stream. She was getting a delicious taste of old times, and though the spring water was very cold and with it and the rain one-half of each sleeve was soon thoroughly wetted, she gathered her cresses and scampered back with a pair of eyes and cheeks that might have struck any city belle chill with envy.
"Then but that's a sweet girl!" said Mary the cook to Jane the housemaid.
"A lovely countenance she has," answered Jane, who was refined in her speech.
"Take her away and you've taken the best of the house, I'm a thinking."
"Mrs. Rossitur is a lady," said Jane in a low voice.
"Ay, and a very proper-behaved one she is, and him the same, that is, for a gentleman I maan; but Jane! I say, I'm thinking he'll have eat too much sour bread lately! I wish I knowed how they'd have their eggs boiled, till I'd have 'em ready."
"Sure it's on the table itself they'll do 'em," said Jane. "They've an elegant little fixture in there for the purpose."
"Is that it!"
Nobody found out how busy Fleda's wand had been in the old breakfast room. But she was not disappointed; she had not worked for praise. Her cresses were appreciated; that was enough. She enjoyed her breakfast, the only one of the party that did. Mr. Rossitur looked moody; his wife looked anxious; and Hugh's face was the reflection of theirs. If Fleda's face reflected anything it was the sunlight of heaven.
"How sweet the air is after New York!" said she.
They looked at her. There was a fresh sweetness of another kind about that breakfast-table. They all felt it, and breathed more freely.
"Delicious cresses!" said Mrs. Rossitur.
"Yes, I wonder where they came from," said her husband. "Who got them?"
"I guess Fleda knows," said Hugh.
"They grow in a little stream of spring water over here in the meadow," said Fleda demurely.
"Yes, but you don't answer my question," said her uncle, putting his hand under her chin and smiling at the blushing face he brought round to view;--"Who got them?"
"I did."
"You have been out in the rain?"
"O Queechy rain don't hurt me, uncle Rolf."
"And don't it wet you either?"
"Yes sir--a little."
"How much?"
"My sleeves,--O I dried them long ago."
"Don't you repeat that experiment, Fleda," said he seriously, but with a look that was a good reward to her nevertheless.
"It is a raw day!" said Mrs. Rossitur, drawing her shoulders together as an ill-disposed window sash gave one of its admonitory shakes.
"What little panes of glass for such big windows!" said Hugh.
"But what a pleasant prospect through them," said Fleda,--"look, Hugh!--worth all the Batteries and Parks in the world."
"In the world!--in New York you mean," said her uncle. "Not better than the Champs Elysées?"
"Better to me," said Fleda.
"For to-day I must attend to the prospect in-doors," said Mrs. Rossitur.
"Now aunt Lucy," said Fleda, "you are just going to put yourself down in the corner, in the rocking-chair there, with your book, and make yourself comfortable; and Hugh and I will see to all these things. Hugh and I and Mary and Jane,--that makes quite an army of us, and we can do everything without you, and you must just keep quiet. I'll build you up a fine fire, and then when I don't know what to do I will come to you for orders. Uncle Rolf, would you be so good as just to open that box of books in the hall? because I am afraid Hugh isn't strong enough. I'll take care of you, aunt Lucy."
Fleda's plans were not entirely carried out, but she contrived pretty well to take the brunt of the business on her own shoulders. She was as busy as a bee the whole day. To her all the ins and outs of the house, its advantages and disadvantages, were much better known than to anybody else; nothing could be done but by her advice; and more than that, she contrived by some sweet management to baffle Mrs. Rossitur's desire to spare her, and to bear the larger half of every burden that should have come upon her aunt. What she had done in the breakfast room she did or helped to do in the other parts of the house; she unpacked boxes and put away clothes and linen, in which Hugh was her excellent helper; she arranged her uncle's dressing-table with a scrupulosity that left nothing uncared-for;--and the last thing before tea she and Hugh dived into the book-box to get out some favourite volumes to lay upon the table in the evening, that the room might not look to her uncle quite so dismally bare. He had been abroad notwithstanding the rain near the whole day.
It was a weary party that gathered round the supper-table that night, weary it seemed as much in mind as in body; and the meal exerted its cheering influence over only two of them; Mr. and Mrs. Rossitur sipped their cups of tea abstractedly.
"I don't believe that fellow Donohan knows much about his business," remarked the former at length.
"Why don't you get somebody else, then?" said his wife.
"I happen to have engaged him, unfortunately."
A pause.--
"What doesn't he know?"
Mr. Rossitur laughed, not a pleasant laugh.
"It would take too long to enumerate. If you had asked me what part of his business hedoesunderstand, I could have told you shortly that I don't know."
"But you do not understand it very well yourself. Are you sure?"
"Am I sure of what?"
"That this man does not know his business?"
"No further sure than I can have confidence in my own common sense."
"What will you do?" said Mrs. Rossitur after a moment
A question men are not fond of answering, especially when they have not made up their minds. Mr. Rossitur was silent, and his wife too, after that.
"If I could get some long-headed Yankee to go along with him"--he remarked again, balancing his spoon on the edge of his cup in curious illustration of his own mental position at the moment; Donohan being the only fixed point and all the rest wavering in uncertainty. There were a few silent minutes before anybody answered.
"If you want one and don't know of one, uncle Rolf," said Fleda, "I dare say cousin Seth might."
That gentle modest speech brought his attention round upon her. His face softened.
"Cousin Seth? who is cousin Seth?"
"He is aunt Miriam's son," said Fleda. "Seth Plumfield. He's a very good farmer, I know; grandpa used to say he was; and he knows everybody."
"Mrs. Plumfield," said Mrs. Rossitur, as her husband's eyes went inquiringly to her,--"Mrs. Plumfield was Mr. Ringgan's sister, you remember. This is her son."
"Cousin Seth, eh?" said Mr. Rossitur dubiously. "Well--Why Fleda, your sweet air don't seem to agree with you, as far as I see; I have not known you look so--sotriste--since we left Paris. What have you been doing, my child?"
"She has been doing everything, father," said Hugh.
"O! it's nothing," said Fleda, answering Mr. Rossitur's look and tone of affection with a bright smile. "I'm a little tired, that's all."
'A little tired!' She went to sleep on the sofa directly after supper and slept like a baby all the evening; but her power did not sleep with her; for that quiet, sweet, tired face, tired in their service, seemed to bear witness against the indulgence of anything harsh or unlovely in the same atmosphere. A gentle witness-bearing, but strong in its gentleness. They sat close together round the fire, talked softly, and from time to time cast loving glances at the quiet little sleeper by their side. They did not know that she was a fairy, and that though her wand had fallen out of her hand it was still resting upon them.
Gon. Here is everything advantageous to lift.
Gon. Here is everything advantageous to lift.
Ant. True; save means to live.
Ant. True; save means to live.
Tempest.
Tempest.
Fleda's fatigue did not prevent her being up before sunrise the next day. Fatigue was forgotten, for the light of a fair spring morning was shining in at her windows and she meant to see aunt Miriam before breakfast. She ran out to find Hugh, and her merry shout reached him before she did, and brought him to meet her.
"Come, Hugh!--I'm going off up to aunt Miriam's, and I want you. Come! Isn't this delicious?"
"Hush!--" said Hugh. "Father's just here in the barn. I can't go, Fleda."
Fleda's countenance clouded.
"Can't go! what's the matter?--can't you go, Hugh?"
He shook his head and went off into the barn.
A chill came upon Fleda. She turned away with a very sober step. What if her uncle was in the barn, why should she hush? He never had been a check upon her merriment, never; what was coming now? Hugh too looked disturbed. It was a spring morning no longer. Fleda forgot the glittering wet grass that had set her own eyes a sparkling but a minute ago; she walked along, cogitating, swinging her bonnet by the strings in thoughtful vibration,--till by the help of sunlight and sweet air, and the loved scenes, her spirits again made head and swept over the sudden hindrance they had met. There were the blessed old sugar maples, seven in number, that fringed the side of the road,--how well Fleda knew them. Only skeletons now, but she remembered how beautiful they looked after the October frosts; and presently they would be putting out their new green leaves and be beautiful in another way. How different in their free-born luxuriance from the dusty and city-prisoned elms and willows she had left. She came to the bridge then, and stopped with a thrill of pleasure and pain to look and listen, Unchanged!--all but herself. The mill was not going; the little brook went by quietly chattering to itself, just as it had done the last time she saw it, when she rode past on Mr. Carleton's horse. Four and a half years ago!--And now how strange that she had come to live there again.
Drawing a long breath, and swinging her bonnet again, Fleda softly went on up the hill; past the saw-mill, the ponds, the factories, the houses of the settlement. The same, and not the same!--Bright with the morning sun, and yet somehow a little browner and homelier than of old they used to be. Fleda did not care for that; she would hardly acknowledge it to herself; her affection never made any discount for infirmity. Leaving the little settlement behind her thoughts as behind her back, she ran on now towards aunt Miriam's, breathlessly, till field after field was passed and her eye caught a bit of the smooth lake and the old farmhouse in its old place. Very brown it looked, but Fleda dashed on, through the garden and in at the front door.
Nobody at all was in the entrance room, the common sitting-room of the family. With trembling delight Fleda opened the well-known door and stole noiselessly through the little passage-way to the kitchen. The door of that was only on the latch and a gentle movement of it gave to Fleda's eye the tall figure of aunt Miriam, just before her, stooping down to look in at the open mouth of the oven which she was at that moment engaged in supplying with more work to do. It was a huge one, and beyond her aunt's head Fleda could see in the far end the great loaves of bread, half baked, and more near a perfect squad of pies and pans of gingerbread just going in to take the benefit of the oven's milder mood. Fleda saw all this as it were without seeing it; she stood still as a mouse and breathless till her aunt turned; and then, a spring and a half shout of joy, and she had clasped her in her arms and was crying with her whole heart. Aunt Miriam was taken all aback; she could do nothing but sit down and cry too and forget her oven door.
"Ain't breakfast ready yet, mother?" said a manly voice coming in. "I must be off to see after them ploughs. Hollo!--why mother!--"
The first exclamation was uttered as the speaker put the door to the oven's mouth; the second as he turned in quest of the hand that should have done it. He stood wondering, while his mother and Fleda between laughing and crying tried to rouse themselves and look up.
"What is all this?"
"Don't you see, Seth?"
"I see somebody that had like to have spoiled your whole baking--I don't know who it is, yet."
"Don't you now, cousin Seth?" said Fleda shaking away her tears and getting up.
"I ha'n't quite lost my recollection. Cousin, you must give me a kiss.--How do you do? You ha'n't forgot how to colour, I see, for all you've been so long among the pale city-folks."
"I haven't forgotten any thing, cousin Seth," said Fleda, blushing indeed but laughing and shaking his hand with as hearty good-will.
"I don't believe you have,--anything that is good," said he. "Where have you been all this while?"
"O part of the time in New York, and part of the time in Paris, and some other places."
"Well you ha'n't seen anything better than Queechy, or Queechy bread and butter, have you?"
"No indeed!"
"Come, you shall give me another kiss for that," said he, suiting the action to the word;--"and now sit down and eat as much bread and butter as you can. It's just as good as it used to be. Come mother!--I guess breakfast is ready by the looks of that coffee-pot."
"Breakfast ready!" said Fleda.
"Ay indeed; it's a good half hour since it ought to ha' been ready. If it ain't I can't stop for it. Them boys will be running their furrows like sarpents 'f I ain't there to start them."
"Which like serpents," said Fleda,--"the furrows or the men?"
"Well, I was thinking of the furrows," said he glancing at her;--"I guess there ain't cunning enough in the others to trouble them. Come sit down, and let me see whether you have forgotten a Queechy appetite."
"I don't know," said Fleda doubtfully,--"they will expect me at home."
"I don't care who expects you--sit down! you ain't going to eat any bread and butter this morning but my mother's--you haven't got any like it at your house. Mother, give her a cup of coffee, will you, and set her to work."
Fleda was too willing to comply with the invitation, were it only for the charm of old times. She had not seen such a table for years, and little as the conventionalities of delicate taste were known there, it was not without a comeliness of its own in its air of wholesome abundance and the extreme purity of all its arrangements. If but a piece of cold pork were on aunt Miriam's table, it was served with a nicety that would not have offended the most fastidious; and amid irregularities that the fastidious would scorn, there was a sound excellence of material and preparation that they very often fail to know. Fleda made up her mind she would be wanted at home; all the rather perhaps for Hugh's mysterious "hush"; and there was something in the hearty kindness and truth of these friends that she felt particularly genial. And if there was a lack of silver at the board its place was more than filled with the pure gold of association. They sat down to table, but aunt Miriam's eyes devoured Fleda. Mr. Plum field set about his more material breakfast with all despatch.
'They will expect me at home.'"They will expect me at home."
"So Mr. Rossitur has left the city for good," said aunt Miriam. "How does he like it?"
"He hasn't been here but a day, you know, aunt Miriam," said Fleda evasively.
"Is he anything of a farmer?" asked her cousin.
"Not much," said Fleda.
"Is he going to work the farm himself?"
"How do you mean?"
"I mean, is he going to work the farm himself, or hire it out, or let somebody else work it on shares?"
"I don't know," said Fleda;--"I think he is going to have a farmer and oversee things himself."
"He'll get sick o' that," said Seth; "unless he's the luck to get hold of just the right hand."
"Has he hired anybody yet?" said aunt Miriam, after a little interval of supplying Fleda with 'bread and butter.'
"Yes ma'am, I believe so."
"What's his name?"
"Donohan,--an Irishman, I believe; uncle Rolf hired him in New York."
"For his head man?" said Seth, with a sufficiently intelligible look.
"Yes," said Fleda. "Why?"
But he did not immediately answer her.
"The land's in poor heart now," said he, "a good deal of it; it has been wasted; it wants first-rate management to bring it in order and make much of it for two or three years to come. I never see an Irishman's head yet that was worth more than a joke. Their hands are all of 'em that's good for anything."
"I believe uncle Rolf wants to have an American to go with this man," said Fleda.
Seth said nothing, but Fleda understood the shake of his head as he reached over after a pickle.
"Are you going to keep a dairy, Fleda?" said her aunt.
"I don't know, ma'am;--I haven't heard anything about it."
"Does Mrs. Rossitur know anything about country affairs?"
"No--nothing," Fleda said, her heart sinking perceptibly with every new question.
"She hasn't any cows yet?"
She!--any cows!--But Fleda only said they had not come; she believed they were coming.
"What help has she got?"
"Two women--Irishwomen," said Fleda.
"Mother you'll have to take hold and learn her," said Mr. Plumfield.
"Teachher?" cried Fleda, repelling the idea;--"aunt Lucy? she cannot do anything--she isn't strong enough;--not anything of that kind."
"What did she come here for?" said Seth.
"You know," said his mother, "that Mr. Rossitur's circumstances obliged him to quit New York."
"Ay, but that ain't my question. A man had better keep his fingers off anything he can't live by. A farm's one thing or t'other, just as it's worked. The land won't grow specie--it must be fetched out of it. Is Mr. Rossitur a smart man?"
"Very," Fleda said, "about everything but farming."
"Well if he'll put himself to school maybe, he'll learn," Seth concluded as he finished his breakfast and went off. Fleda rose too, and was standing thoughtfully by the fire, when aunt Miriam came up and put her arms round her. Fleda's eyes sparkled again.
"You're not changed--you're the same little Fleda," she said.
"Not quite so little," said Fleda smiling.
"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 passed 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 quantities 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 get 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 association 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. Kossitur 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 shewed 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 shewed 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 themanthat 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 hands, 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. Douglass!"--said Seth, raising his voice to speak to one of his assistants who was approaching them,--"Mr. Douglass!--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 Douglass?" 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 ain't 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 clevis--I ha'n't touched anything nor nothing, and it broke right in teu!"
"What do you s'pose'll be done now?" said Mr. Plumfield gravely going up to examine the fracture.
"Well 'twa'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 clevis; 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 principal 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 stitches and the width and depth of the farrow 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 lays, and ploughing for fallow crops, and ribbing, where the land has been some years in grass,--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 stitch. I keep 'em right between the horses and plough 'em down one after another. It's a kind of way country folks play at ninepins," said Seth, with a glance half inquisitive, half sly, at his questioner.
Mr. Rossitur asked no more. Fleda felt a little uneasy again. It was rather a longish walk to uncle Joshua's, and hardly a word spoken on either side.
The old gentleman was "to hum;" and while Fleda went back into some remote part of the house to see "aunt Syra," Mr. Rossitur set forth his errand.
"Well,--and so you're looking for help, eh?" said uncle Joshua when he had heard him through.
"Yes sir,--I want help."
"And a team too?"
"So I have said, sir," Mr. Rossitur answered rather shortly. "Can you supply me?"
"Well,--I don't know as I can," said the old man, rubbing his hands slowly over his knees.--"You ha'n't got much done yet, I s'pose?"
"Nothing. I came the day before yesterday."
"Land's in rather poor condition in some parts, ain't it?"
"I really am not able to say, sir,--till I have seen it."
"It ought to be," said the old gentleman shaking his head,--the fellow that was there last didn't do right by it--he worked the land too hard, and didn't put on it anywhere near what he had ought to--I guess you'll find it pretty poor in some places. He was trying to get all he could out of it, I s'pose. There's a good deal of fencing to be done too, ain't there?"
"All that there was, sir,--I have done none since I came."
"Seth Plumfield got through ploughing yet?"
"We found him at it."
"Ay, he's a smart man. What are you going to do, Mr. Rossitur, with that piece of marsh land that lies off to the south-east of the barn, beyond the meadow, between the hills? I had just sich another, and I"--
"Before I do anything with the wet land, Mr. ---- I am so unhappy as to have forgotten your name?--"
"Springer, sir," said the old gentleman,--"Springer--Joshua Springer. That is my name, sir."
"Mr. Springer, before I do anything with the wet land I should like to have something growing on the dry; and as that is the present matter in hand will you be so good as to let me know whether I can have your assistance."
"Well I don't know,--" said the old gentleman; "there ain't anybody to send but my boy Lucas, and I don't know whether he would make up his mind to go or not."
"Well sir!"--said Mr. Rossitur rising,--"in that case I will bid you good morning. I am sorry to have given you the trouble."
"Stop," said the old man,--"stop a bit. Just sit down--I'll go in and see about it."
Mr. Rossitur sat down, and uncle Joshua left him to go into the kitchen and consult his wife, without whose counsel, of late years especially, he rarely did anything. They never varied in opinion, but aunt Syra's wits supplied the steel edge to his heavy metal.
"I don't know but Lucas would as leave go as not," the old gentleman remarked on coming back from this sharpening process,--"and I can make out to spare him, I guess. You calculate to keep him, I s'pose?"
"Until this press is over; and perhaps longer, if I find he can do what I want."
"You'll find him pretty handy at a' most anything; but I mean,--I s'pose he'll get his victuals with you."
"I have made no arrangements of the kind," said Mr. Rossitur controlling with some effort his rebelling muscles. "Donohan is boarded somewhere else, and for the present it will be best for all in my employ to follow the same plan."
"Very good," said uncle Joshua, "it makes no difference,--only of course in that case it is worth more, when a man has to find himself and his team."
"Whatever it is worth I am quite ready to pay, sir."
"Very good! You and Lucas can agree about that. He'll be along in the morning."
So they parted; and Fleda understood the impatient quick step with which her uncle got over the ground.
"Is that man a brother of your grandfather?"
"No sir--Oh no! only his brother-in-law. My grandmother was his sister, but they weren't in the least like each other."
"I should think they could not," said Mr. Rossitur.
"Oh they were not!" Fleda repeated. "I have always heard that."
After paying her respects to aunt Syra in the kitchen she had come back time enough to hear the end of the discourse in the parlour, and had felt its full teaching. Doubts returned, and her spirits were sobered again. Not another word was spoken till they reached home; when Fleda seized upon Hugh and went off to the rock after her forsaken pie.
"Have you succeeded!' asked Mrs. Rossitur while they were gone.
"Yes--that is, a cousin has kindly consented to come and help me."
"A cousin!" said Mrs. Rossitur.
"Ay,--we're in a nest of cousins."
"In awhat, Mr. Rossitur?"
"In a nest of cousins; and I had rather be in a nest of rooks. I wonder if I shall be expected to ask my ploughmen to dinner! Every second man is a cousin, and the rest are uncles."