Volume I Part 78 (1/2)
”Never mind ? in that case I will walk out too, into the kitchen.”
”Into the thick of it! No ? I will try some other way of relief. This is unendurable!”
Fleda looked, but made no other remonstrance, and not heeding the look, Mr. Charlton walked out into the kitchen, shutting the door behind him.
”Barby,” said he, ”you have got something cooking here that is very disagreeable in the other room.”
”Is it?” said Barby. ”I reckoned it would all fly up chimney.
I guess the draught ain't so strong as I thought it was.”
”But I tell you it fills the house!”
”Well, it'll have to a spell yet,” said Barby, ”cause if it didn't, you see, Captain Rossitur, there'd be nothing to fill Fleda's chickens with.”
”Chickens! ? where's all the corn in the land?”
”It's some place besides in our barn,” said Barby. ”All last year's is out, and Mr. Didenhover aint fetched any of this year's home; so I made a bargain with 'em, they shouldn't starve as long as they'd eat boiled pursley.”
”What do you give them?”
”Most everything ? they aint particular now-a-days ? chunks o'
cabbages, and scarcity, and pun'kin, and that ? all the sa.s.s that aint wanted.”
”And do they eat that?”
”Eat it!” said Barby; ”they don't know how to thank me for't.”
”But it ought to be done out of doors,” said Charlton, coming black from a kind of maze in which he had been listening to her. ”It is unendurable.”
”Then I guess you'll have to go some place where you wont know it,” said Barby ? ”that's the most likely plan I can hit upon; for it'll have to stay on till it's ready.”
Charlton went back into the other room really down-hearted, and stood watching the play of Fleda's fingers.
”Is it come to this!” he said at length. ”Is it possible that you are obliged to go without such a trifle as the miserable supply of food your fowls want?”
”That's a small matter!” said Fleda, speaking lightly though she smothered a sigh. ”We have been obliged to do without more than that.”
”What is the reason?”
”Why, this man Didenhover is a rogue, I suspect, and he manages to spirit away all the profits that should come to uncle Rolf's hands ? I don't know how. We have lived almost entirely upon the mill for some time.”
”And has my father been doing nothing all this while?”
”Nothing on the farm.”
”And what of anything else?”
”I don't know,” said Fleda, speaking with evident unwillingness. ”But surely, Charlton, he knows his own business best. It is not our affair.”