Volume I Part 55 (1/2)
”What's the matter?”
”Oh ? pride ? injured pride of station! The wrong of not coming to our table and putting her knife into our b.u.t.ter.”
”And living in such a place!” said Hugh.
”You don't know what a place. They are rniserably poor, I am sure; and yet ? I suppose that the less people have to be proud of, the more they make of what is left. Poor people!” ?
”Poor Fleda!” said Hugh, looking at her. ”What will you do now?”
”Oh, we'll do somehow,” said she, cheerfully. ”Perhaps it is just as well, after all; for Cynthy isn't the smartest woman in the world. I remember grandpa used to say he didn't believe she could get a bean into the middle of her bread.”
”A bean into the middle of her bread!” said Hugh.
But Fleda's sobriety was quite banished by his mystified look, and her laugh rang along over the fields before she answered him.
That laugh had blown away all the vapours, for the present at least, and they jogged on again very sociably.
”Do you know,” said Fleda, after a while of silent enjoyment in the changes of scene and the mild autumn weather ? ”I am not sure that it wasn't very well for me that we came away from New York.”
”I dare say it was,” said Hugh ? ”since we came; but what makes you say so?”
”I don't mean that it was for anybody else, but for me. I think I was a little proud of our nice things there.”
”You, Fleda!” said Hugh, with a look of appreciating affection.
”Yes, I was, a little. It didn't make the greatest part of my love for them, I am sure; but I think I had a little undefined sort of pleasure in the feeling that they were better and prettier than other people had.”
”You are sure you are not proud of your little King Charles now?” said Hugh.
”I don't know but I am,” said Fleda, laughing. ”But how much pleasanter it is here on almost every account! Look at the beautiful sweep of the ground off among those hills ? isn't it? What an exquisite horizon line, Hugh!”
”And what a sky over it!”
”Yes ? I love these fall skies. Oh, I would a great deal rather be here than in any city that ever was built!”
”So would I,” said Hugh. ”But the thing is ?”
Fleda knew quite well what the thing was, and did not answer.
”But, my dear Hugh,” she said, presently ? ”I don't remember that sweep of hills when we were coming?”
”You were going the other way,” said Hugh.
”Yes, but Hugh ? I am sure we did not pa.s.s these grain fields.
We must have got into the wrong road.”
Hugh drew the reins, and looked and doubted.
”There is a house yonder,” said Fleda ? we had better drive on, and ask.”
”There is no house ?”