Volume I Part 48 (2/2)
”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 blus.h.i.+ng face he brought round to view. ”Who got them?”
”I did.”
”You have been out in the rain?”
”Oh, Queechy rain don't hurt me, uncle Rolf.”
”And don't it wet you either?”
”Yes, Sir ? a little.”
”How much?”
”My sleeves ? oh, 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 gla.s.s 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 Elysees?”
”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.
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