Volume I Part 10 (1/2)
'Amontillado' was Hebrew to Fleda, but 'goblet' was intelligible.
”I am sorry!” she said; ”I don't know where there is any spring up here, but we shall come to one going down the mountain.”
”Do you know where all the springs are?”
”No, not all, I suppose,” said Fleda; ”but I know a good many.
I have gone about through the woods so much, and I always look for the springs.”
”And who roams about through the woods with you?”
”Oh, n.o.body but grandpa,” said Fleda. ”He used to be out with me a great deal, but he can't go much now ? this year or two.”
”Don't you go to school?”
”O no!” said Fleda, smiling.
”Then your grandfather teaches you at home?”
”No,” said Fleda; father used to teach me; grandpa doesn't teach me much.”
”What do you do with yourself all day long?”
”O, plenty of things,” said Fleda, smiling again. ”I read, and talk to grandpa, and go riding, and do a great many things.”
”Has your home always been here, Fairy?” said Mr. Carleton, after a few minutes' pause.
Fleda said, ”No, Sir,” and there stopped; and then seeming to think that politeness called upon her to say more, she added ?
”I have lived with grandpa ever since father left me here, when he was going away among the Indians; I used to be always with him before.”
”And how long ago is that?”
”It is ? four years, Sir; more, I believe. He was sick when he came back, and we never went away from Queechy again.”
Mr. Carleton looked again silently at the child, who had given him these pieces of information with a singular, grave propriety of manner; and even as it were reluctantly.
”And what do you read, Fairy?” he said, after a minute.
”Stories of fairy-land?”
”No,” said Fleda; ”I haven't any. We haven't a great many books ? there are only a few up in the cupboard, and the Encyclopaedia; father had some books, but they are locked up in a chest. But there is a great deal in the Encyclopaedia.”
”The Encyclopaedia!” said Mr. Carleton; ? ”what do you read in that? what can you find to like there?”
”I like all about the insects, and birds, and animals; and about flowers, ? and lives of people, and curious things.
There are a great many in it.”
”And what are the other books in the cupboard, which you read?”
”There's Quentin Durward,” said Fleda, ? ”and Rob Roy, and Guy Mannering in two little bits of volumes; and the Knickerbocker, and the Christian's Magazine, and an odd volume of Redgauntlet, and the Beauties of Scotland.”