Queechy Volume I Part 72

"Well! ? what is the matter? ? can't I have them?"

"Yes, yes, but ask me for what you want. You mustn't call upon Barby in that fashion."

"Why not? Is she too good to be spoken to? What is she in the kitchen for?"

"She wouldn't be in the kitchen long if we were to speak to her in that way," said Fleda. "I suppose she would as soon put your boots on for you as fetch and carry them. I'll see about it."

"It seems to me Fleda rules the house," remarked Captain Rossitur, when she had left the room.

"Well, who should rule it?" said Hugh.

"Not she!"

"I don't think she does," said Hugh; "but if she did, I am sure it could not be in better hands."

"It shouldn't be in her hands at all. But I have noticed since I have been here that she takes the arrangement of almost everything. My mother seems to have nothing to do in her own family."

"I wonder what the family or anybody in it would do without Fleda!" said Hugh, his gentle eyes quite firing with indignation. "You had better know more before you speak, Charlton."

"What is there for me to know?"

"Fleda does everything."

"So I say ? and that is what I don't like."

"How little you know what you are talking about!" said Hugh.

"I can tell you she is the life of the house, almost literally, we should have had little enough to live upon this summer if it had not been for her."

"What do you mean?" ? impatiently enough.

"Fleda ? if it had not been for her gardening and management ?

she has taken care of the garden these two years, and sold I can't tell you how much from it. Mr. Sweet, the hotelman at the Pool, takes all we can give him."

"How much does her 'taking care of the garden' amount to?"

"It amounts to all the planting, and nearly all the other work, after the first digging ? by far the greater part of it."

Charlton walked up and down a few turns in most unsatisfied silence.

"How does she get the things to Montepoole?"

"I take them."

"You! ? When?"

"I ride with them there before breakfast. Fleda is up very early to gather them."

"You have not been there this morning?"

"Yes."

"With what?"

"Pease and strawberries."

"And Fleda picked them?"

"Yes ? with some help from Barby and me."

"That glove of hers was wringing wet."

"Yes, with the pea-vines, and strawberries too; you know they get so loaded with dew. Oh, Fleda gets more than her gloves wet. But she does not mind anything she does for father and mother."

"Humph! and does she get enough when all is done to pay for the trouble?"

"I don't know," said Hugh, rather sadly. "_She_ thinks so. It is no trifle."

"Which, the pay or the trouble?"

"Both. But I meant the pay. Why, she made ten dollars last year from the asparagus beds alone, and I don't know how much more this year."

"Ten dollars! ? The devil!"

"Why?"

"Have you come to counting your dollars by the tens?"

"We have counted our sixpences so a good while," said Hugh, quietly.

Charlton strode about the room again in much perturbation.

Then came in Fleda, looking as bright as if dollars had been counted by the thousand, and bearing his boots.

"What on earth did you do that for?" said he, angrily. "I could have gone for them myself."

"No harm done," said Fleda, lightly; "only I have got something else instead of the thanks I expected."

"I can't conceive," said he, sitting down and sulkily drawing on his foot-gear, "why this piece of punctiliousness should have made any more difficulty about bringing me my boots than about blacking them."

A sly glance of intelligence, which Charlton was quick enough to detect, pa.s.sed between Fleda and Hugh. His eye carried its question from one to the other. Fleda's gravity gave way.

"Don't look at me so, Charlton," said she, laughing; "I can't help it, you are so excessively comical! ? I recommend that you go out upon the gra.s.s-plat before the door and turn round two or three times.

"Will you have the goodness to explain yourself? Who did black these boots?"

"Never pry into the secrets of families," said Fleda. "Hugh and I have a couple of convenient little fairies in our service that do things _unknownst_."

"I blacked them, Charlton," said Hugh.

Captain Rossitur gave his slippers a fling that carried them clean into the corner of the room.