Volume I Part 88 (2/2)
”My dear Miss Ringgan!” said the doctor, ”I ? I ? nothing, I a.s.sure you, could give me greater pleasure than to drive my oxen to any place where you would like to have them go.”
Poor Fleda wished she could have despatched them and him in one direction while she took another; the art of driving oxen _quietly_ was certainly not among the doctor's accomplishments.
She was almost deafened. She tried to escape from the immediate din by running before to show Philetus about tapping the trees and fixing the little spouts, but it was a longer operation than she had counted upon, and by the time they were ready to leave the tree the doctor was gee-hawing alongside of it; and then if the next maple was not within sight she could not in decent kindness leave him alone. The oxen went slowly, and though Fleda managed to have no delay longer than to throw down a trough as the sled came up with each tree which she and Philetus had tapped, the business promised to make a long day of it. It might have been a pleasant day in pleasant company; but Fleda's spirits were down to set out with, and Doctor Quackenboss was not the person to give them the needed spring; his long-winded complimentary speeches had not interest enough even to divert her. She felt that she was entering upon an untried and most weighty undertaking; charging her time and thoughts with a burden they could well spare. Her energies did not flag, but the spirit that should have sustained them was not strong enough for the task.
It was a bl.u.s.tering day of early March, with that uncompromising brightness of sky and land which has no shadow of sympathy with a heart overcast. The snow still lay a foot thick over the ground, thawing a little in sunny spots; the trees quite bare and brown, the buds even of the early maples hardly showing colour; the blessed evergreens alone doing their utmost to redeem the waste, and speaking of patience and fort.i.tude that can brave the blast and outstand the long waiting, and cheerfully bide the time when ”the winter shall be over and gone.” Poor Fleda thought they were like her in their circ.u.mstances, but she feared she was not like them in their strong endurance. She looked at the pines and hemlocks as she pa.s.sed, as if they were curious preachers to her; and when she had a chance, she prayed quietly that she might stand faithfully like them to cheer a desolation far worse, and she feared far more abiding than snows could make or melt away.
She thought of Hugh, alone in his mill-work that rough chilly day, when the wind stalked through the woods and over the country as if it had been the personification of March just come of age and taking possession of his domains. She thought of her uncle, doing what? ? in Michigan ? leaving them to fight with difficulties as they might ? why? ? why? and her gentle aunt at home sad and alone, pining for the want of them all, but most of him, and fading with their fortunes. And Fleda's thoughts travelled about from one to the other, and dwelt with them all by turns till she was heart-sick; and tears, tears fell hot on the snow many a time when her eyes had a moment's s.h.i.+eld from the doctor and his somewhat more obtuse coadjutor. She felt half superst.i.tiously, as if with her taking the farm were beginning the last stage of their falling prospects, which would leave them with none of hope's colouring. Not that in the least she doubted her own ability and success; but her uncle did not deserve to have his affairs prosper under such a system, and she had no faith that they would.
”It is most grateful,” said the doctor, with that sideway twist of his jaw and his head at once, in harmony ? ”it is a most grateful thing to see such a young lady ? Haw! there now!
? what are you about? ? haw ? haw? then! It is a most grateful thing to see ?”
But Fleda was not at his side ? she had bounded away and was standing under a great maple-tree a little a-head, making sure that Philetus screwed his auger _up_ into the tree instead of _down_, which he had several times shown an unreasonable desire to do. The doctor had steered his oxen by her little grey hood and black cloak all the day. He made for it now.
”Have we arrived at the termination of our ? a ? adventure?”
said he, as he came up and threw down the last trough.
”Why, no, Sir,” said Fleda, ”for we have yet to get home again.”
” 'Tain't so fur going that way as it were this'n,” said Philetus. ”My! aint I glad?”
”Glad of what?” said the doctor. ”Here's Miss Ringgan's walked the whole way, and she a lady ? aint you ashamed to speak of being tired?”
”I ha'n't said the first word o' being tired!” said Philetus, in an injured tone of voice ? ”but a man ha'n't no right to kill hisself, if he aint a gal!”
”I'll qualify to your being safe enough,” said the doctor.
”But, Miss Ringgan, my dear, you are ? a ? you have lost something since you came out ?”
”What?” said Fleda, laughing. ”Not my patience?”
”No,” said the doctor, ”no ? you're ? a ? you're an angel! but your cheeks, my dear Miss Ringgan, show that you have exceeded your ? a ?”
”Not my intentions, doctor,” said Fleda, lightly. ”I am very well satisfied with our day's work, and with my share of it, and a cup of coffee will make me quite up again. Don't look at my cheeks till then.”
”I shall disobey you constantly,” said the doctor; ”but, my dear Miss Fleda, we must give you some felicities for reaching home, or Mrs. Rossitur will be ? a ? distressed when she sees them. Might I propose ? that you should just bear your weight on this wood-sled, and let my oxen and me have the honour ?
The cup of coffee, I am confident, would be at your lips considerably earlier ?”
”The sun wont be a great haighth by the time we get there,”
said Philetus, in a cynical manner; ”and I ha'n't took the first thing to-day!”
”Well, who has?” said the doctor; ”you aint the only one.
Follow your nose down hill, Mr. Skillcorn, and it'll smell supper directly. Now, my dear Miss Ringgan, will you?”
Fleda hesitated, but her relaxed energies warned her not to despise a homely mode of relief. The wood-sled was pretty clean, and the road decently good over the snow. So Fleda gathered her cloak about her, and sat down flat on the bottom of her rustic vehicle ? too grateful for the rest to care if there had been a dozen people to laugh at her ? but the doctor was only delighted, and Philetus regarded every social phenomenon as coolly, and in the same business light, as he would the b.u.t.ter to his bread, or any other infallible every- day matter.
Fleda was very glad presently that she had taken this plan, for, besides the rest of body, she was happily relieved from all necessity of speaking. The doctor, though but a few paces off, was perfectly given up to the care of his team, in the intense anxiety to show his skill and gallantry in saving her harmless from every ugly place in the road that threatened a jar or a plunge. Why his oxen didn't go distracted was a question; but the very vehemence and iteration of his cries at last drowned itself in Fleda's ear, and she could hear it like the wind's roaring, without thinking of it. She presently subsided to that. With a weary frame, and with that peculiar quietness of spirits that comes upon the ending of a day's work in which mind and body have both been busily engaged, and the sudden ceasing of any call upon either, fancy asked no leave, and dreamily roved hither and thither between the material and the spirit world; the will too subdued to stir.
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