CHAPTER VIII.
"It is a hard matter for friends to meet: but mountains may be removed with earthquakes, and so encounter." AS YOU LIKE IT.
"What have we to do to-night?" said Florence, at breakfast the next morning.
"You have no engagement, have you?" said her mother.
"No, Mamma," said Constance, arching her eyebrows "we are to taste the sweets of domestic life you, as head of the family, will go to sleep in the dormeuse, and Florence and I shall take turns in yawning by your side."
"And what will Fleda do?" said Mrs. Evelyn, laughing.
"Fleda, Mamma, will be wrapped in remorseful recollections of having enacted a mob last evening, and have enough occupation in considering how she shall repair damages."
"Fleda , my dear, she is very saucy," said Mrs. Evelyn, sipping her tea with great comfort.
"Why should we yawn to-night any more than last night?" said Fleda a question which Edith would certainly have asked if she had not been away at school. The breakfast was too late for both her and her father.
"Last night, my dear, your fractious disposition kept us upon half breath; there wasn't time to yawn. I meant to have eased my breast by laughing afterwards, but that expectation was stifled."
"What stifled it?"
"I was afraid!" said Constance, with a little flutter of her person up and down in her chair.
"Afraid of what?"
"And besides, you know, we can't have our drawing-rooms filled with distinguished foreigners every evening we are not at home. I shall direct the fowling-piece to be severe in his execution of orders to-night, and let nobody in. I forgot!" exclaimed Constance, with another flutter "it is Mr. Thorn's night! My dearest mamma, will you consent to have the dormeuse wheeled round with its back to the fire? and Florence and I will take the opportunity to hear little Edith's lessons in the next room, unless Mr. Decatur comes. I must endeavour to make the Manton comprehend what he has to do."
"But what is to become of Mr. Evelyn?" said Fleda; "you make
Mrs. Evelyn the head of the family very unceremoniously."
"Mr. Evelyn, my dear," said Constance, gravely, "makes a futile attempt semi-weekly to beat his brains out with a club; and every successive failure encourages him to try again; the only effect being a temporary decapitation of his family; and I believe this is the night on which he periodically turns a frigid eye upon their destitution."
"You are too absurd!" said Florence, reaching over for a sausage.
"Dear Constance!" said Fleda, half laughing, "why do you talk so?"
"Constance, behave yourself," said her mother.
"Mamma," said the young lady, "I am actuated by a benevolent desire to effect a diversion of Miss Ringgan's mind from its gloomy meditations, by presenting to her some more real subjects of distress."
"I wonder if you ever looked at such a thing," said Fleda.
"What 'such a thing'?"
"As a real subject of distress."
"Yes; I have one incessantly before me in your serious countenance. Why in the world, Fleda, don't you look like other people?"
"I suppose, because I don't feel like them."
"And why don't you? I am sure you ought to be as happy as most people."
"I think I am a great deal happier," said Fleda.
"Than I am?" said the young lady, with arched eyebrows. But they went down, and her look softened in spite of herself, at the eye and smile which answered her.
"I should be very glad, dear Constance, to know you were as happy as I."
"Why do you think I am not?" said the young lady, a little tartly.
"Because no happiness would satisfy me that cannot last."
"And why can't it last?"
"It is not built upon lasting things."
"Pshaw!" said Constance, "I wouldn't have such a dismal kind of happiness as yours, Fleda, for anything."
"Dismal!" said Fleda, smiling; "because it can never disappoint me? or because it isn't noisy?"
"My dear little Fleda," said Constance, in her usual manner, "you have lived up there among the solitudes till you have got morbid ideas of life, which it makes me melancholy to observe. I am very much afraid they verge towards stagnation."
"No, indeed!" said Fleda, laughing; "but, if you please, with me the stream of life has flowed so quietly, that I have looked quite to the bottom, and know how shallow it is, and growing shallower; I could not venture my bark of happiness there; but with you it is like a spring torrent the foam and the roar hinder your looking deep into it."
Constance gave her a significant glance; a strong contrast to the earnest simplicity of Fleda's face, and presently inquired if she ever wrote poetry.
"Shall I have the pleasure, some day, of discovering your uncommon signature in the secular corner of some religious newspaper?"
"I hope not," said Fleda, quietly.
Joe Manton just then brought in a bouquet for Miss Evelyn, a very common enlivener of the breakfast-table, all the more when, as in the present case, the sisters could not divine where it came from. It moved Fleda's wonder to see how very little the flowers were valued for their own sake; the probable cost, the probable giver, the probable éclat, were points enthusiastically discussed and thoroughly appreciated; but the sweet messengers themselves were carelessly set by for other eyes, and seemed to have no attraction for those they were destined to. Fleda enjoyed them at a distance, and could not help thinking that Heaven sends almonds to those that have no teeth.
"This camellia will just do for my hair to-morrow night!" said
Florence; "just what I want with my white muslin."
"I think I will go with you to-morrow, Florence," said Fleda;
"Mrs. Decatur has asked me so often."
"Well, my dear, I shall be made happy by your company," said Florence abstractedly, examining her bouquet. "I am afraid it hasn't stem enough, Constance; never mind I'll fix it where is the end of this myrtle? I shall be very glad, of course, Fleda, my dear, but" picking her bouquet to pieces "I think it right to tell you, privately, I am afraid you will find it very stupid."
"Oh, I dare say she will not," said Mrs. Evelyn; "she can go and try, at any rate; she would find it very stupid with me here alone, and Constance at the concert; I dare say she will find some one there whom she knows."
"But the thing is, Mamma, you see, at these conversaziones they never talk anything but French and German I don't know of course I should be delighted to have Fleda with me, and I have no doubt Mrs. Decatur would be very glad to have her; but I am afraid she wont enjoy herself."
"I do not want to go where I shall not enjoy myself," said
Fleda, quietly; "that is certain."
"Of course, you know, dear, I would a great deal rather have you than not; I only speak for what I think would be for your pleasure."
"I would do just as I felt inclined, Fleda," said Mrs. Evelyn.
"I shall let her encounter the dullness alone, Ma'am," said
Fleda, lightly.
But it was not in a light mood that she put on her bonnet after dinner, and set out to pay a visit to her uncle at the library; she had resolved that she would not be near the dormeuse in whatsoever relative position that evening. Very, very quiet she was; her grave little face walked through the crowd of busy, bustling, anxious people, as if she had nothing in common with them; and Fleda felt that she had very little. Half unconsciously, as she passed along the streets, her eye scanned the countenances of that moving panorama; and the report it brought back made her draw closer within herself.
She wondered that her feet had ever tripped lightly up those library stairs.
"Ha! my fair Saxon," said the doctor, "what has brought you down here to-day?"
"I felt in want of something fresh, uncle Orrin, so I thought
I would come and see you."
"Fresh!" said he. "Ah! you are pining for green fields, I know. But, you little piece of simplicity, there are no green fields now at Queechy, they are two feet deep with snow by this time."
"Well, I am sure that is fresh," said Fleda, smiling.
The doctor was turning over great volumes one after another in a delightful confusion of business.
"When do you think you shall go north, uncle Orrin?"
"North?" said he "what do you want to know about the north?"
"You said, you know, Sir, that you would go a little out of your way to leave me at home."
"I wont go out of my way for anybody. If I leave you there, it will be in my way. Why, you are not getting home-sick?"
"No Sir, not exactly; but I think I will go with you when you go."
"That wont be yet awhile; I thought those people wanted you to stay till January."
"Ay, but suppose I want to do something else?"
He looked at her with a comical kind of indecision, and said
"You don't know what you want; I thought when you came in you needn't go further than the glass to see something fresh; but I believe the sea-breezes haven't had enough of you yet. Which part of you wants freshening?" he said, in his mock-fierce way.
Fleda laughed, and said she didn't know.
"Out of humour, I guess," said the doctor. "I'll talk to you. Take this and amuse yourself awhile with something that isn't fresh till I get through, and then you shall go home with me."
Fleda carried the large volume into one of the reading-rooms, where there was nobody, and sat down at the baize-covered table. But the book was not of the right kind, or her mood was not, for it failed to interest her. She sat nonchalantly turning over the leaves; but mentally she was busy turning over other leaves, which had by far most of her attention. The pages that memory read the record of the old times passed in that very room, and the old childish light-hearted feelings that were, she thought, as much beyond recall. Those pleasant times, when the world was all bright and friends all fair, and the light heart had never been borne down by the pressure of care, nor sobered by disappointment, nor chilled by experience. The spirit will not spring elastic again from under that weight; and the flower that has closed upon its own sweetness will not open a second time to the world's breath. Thoughtfully, softly, she was touching and feeling of the bands that years had fastened about her heart they would not be undone though so quietly and almost stealthily they had been bound there. She was remembering the shadows that, one after another, had been cast upon her life, till now one soft veil of a cloud covered the whole; no storm-cloud certainly, but also there was nothing left of the glad sunlight that her young eyes rejoiced in. At Queechy the first shadow had fallen; it was a good while before the next one, but then they came thick. There was the loss of some old comforts and advantages, that could have been borne; then, consequent upon that, the annoyances and difficulties that had wrought such a change in her uncle, till Fleda could hardly look back and. believe that he was the same person. Once manly, frank, busy, happy and making his family so now reserved, gloomy, irritable, unfaithful to his duty, and selfishly throwing down the burden they must take up, but were far less able to bear. And so Hugh was changed too; not in loveliness of character and demeanour, nor even much in the always gentle and tender expression of countenance; but the animal spirits and frame, that should have had all the strong cherishing and bracing that affection and wisdom together could have applied, had been left to wear themselves out under trials his father had shrunk from, and other trials his father had made. And Mrs. Rossitur it was hard for Fleda to remember the face she wore at Paris the bright eye and joyous corners of the mouth, that now were so utterly changed. All by his fault that made it so hard to bear. Fleda had thought all this a hundred times; she went over it now as one looks at a thing one is well accustomed to; not with new sorrow, only in a subdued mood of mind just fit to make the most of it. The familiar place took her back to the time when it became familiar; she compared herself sitting there, and feeling the whole world a blank, except for the two or three at home, with the child who had sat there years before in that happy time "when the feelings were young and the world was new."
Then the Evelyns why should they trouble one so inoffensive, and so easily troubled as her poor little self? They did not know all they were doing; but if they had eyes, they must see a little of it. Why could she not have been allowed to keep her old free, simple feeling with everybody, instead of being hampered, and constrained, and miserable, from this pertinacious putting of thoughts in her head that ought not to be there? It had made her unlike herself, she knew, in the company of several people. And perhaps they might be sharp- sighted enough to read it; but, even if not, how it had hindered her enjoyment! She had taken so much pleasure in the Evelyns last year, and in her visit; well, she would go home and forget it, and maybe they would come to their right minds by the next time she saw them.
"What pleasant times we used to have here once, uncle Orrin!" she said, with half a sigh, the other half quite made up by the tone in which she spoke. But it was not, as she thought, uncle Orrin that was standing by her side, and looking up as she finished speaking Fleda saw, with a start, that it was Mr. Carleton. There was such a degree of life and pleasantness in his eyes, that, in spite of the start, her own quite brightened.
"That is a pleasure one may always command," he said, answering part of her speech.
"Ay, provided one has one's mind always under command," said Fleda. "It is possible to sit down to a feast with a want of appetite."
"In such a case, what is the best tonic?"
His manner, even in those two minutes, had put Fleda perfectly at her ease, ill-bred eyes and ears being absent. She looked up and answered, with such entire trust in him, as made her forget that she had ever had any cause to distrust herself.
"For me," she said, "as a general rule, nothing is better than to go out of doors into the woods or the garden they are the best fresheners I know of. I can do myself good there at times when books are a nuisance."
"You are not changed from your old self," he said.
The wish was strong upon Fleda to know whether he was, but it was not till she saw the answer in his face that she knew how plainly hers had asked the question. And then she was so confused that she did not know what the answer had been.
"I find it so, too," he said. "The influences of pure nature are the best thing I know for some moods after the company of a good horse."
"And you on his back, I suppose?"
"That was my meaning. What is the doubt thereupon?" said he, laughing.
"Did I express any doubt?"
"Or my eyes were mistaken."
"I remember they never used to be that," said Fleda.
"What was it?"
"Why," said Fleda, thinking that Mr. Carleton had probably retained more than one of his old habits, for she was answering with her old obedience "I was doubting what the influence is in that case worth analyzing, I think. I am afraid the good horse's company has little to do with it."
"What, then, do you suppose?" said he, smiling.
"Why," said Fleda "it might be but I beg your pardon, Mr.
Carleton! I am astonished at my own presumption."
"Go on, and let me know why," he said, with that happiness of manner which was never resisted. Fleda went on, reassuring her courage now and then with a glance.
"The relief might spring, Sir, from the gratification of a proud feeling of independence or from a dignified sense of isolation or an imaginary riding down of opposition or the consciousness of being master of what you have in hand."
She would have added to the general category, "the running away from one's-self;" but the eye and bearing of the person before her forbade even such a thought as connected with him. He laughed, but shook his head.
"Perhaps, then," said Fleda, "it may be nothing worse than the working off of a surplus of energy or impatience that leaves behind no more than can be managed."
"You have learned something of human nature since I had the pleasure of knowing you," he said, with a look at once amused and penetrating.
"I wish I hadn't," said Fleda.
Her countenance absolutely fell.
"I sometimes think," said he, turning over the leaves of her book, "that these are the best companionship one can have the world at large is very unsatisfactory."
"O, how much!" said Fleda, with a long breath. "The only pleasant thing that my eyes rested upon as I came through the streets this afternoon, was a huge bunch of violets that somebody was carrying. I walked behind them as long as I could."
"Is your old love for Queechy in full force?" said Mr.
Carleton, still turning over the leaves, and smiling.
"I believe so I should be very sorry to live here long at home I can always go out and find society that refreshes me."
"You have set yourself a high standard," he said, with no displeased expression of the lips.
"I have been charged with that," said Fleda; "but is it possible to set too high a standard, Mr. Carleton?"
"One may leave one's-self almost alone in the world."
"Well, even then," said Fleda, "I would rather have only the image of excellence than be contented with inferiority."
"Isn't it possible to do both?" said he, smiling again.
"I don't know," said Fleda; "perhaps I am too easily dissatisfied I believe I have grown fastidious, living alone I have sometimes almost a disgust at the world and everything in it."
"I have often felt so," he said; "but I am not sure that it is a mood to be indulged in likely to further our own good or that of others."
"I am sure it is not," said Fleda; "I often feel vexed with myself for it; but what can one do, Mr. Carleton?"
"Don't your friends the flowers help you in this?"
"Not a bit," said Fleda "they draw the other way; their society is so very pure and satisfying, that one is all the less inclined to take up with the other."
She could not tell quite what to make of the smile with which he began to speak; it half abashed her.
"When I spoke, a little while ago," said he, "of the best cure for an ill mood, I was speaking of secondary means simply the only really humanizing, rectifying, peace-giving thing I ever tried, was looking at time in the light of eternity, and shaming or melting my coldness away in the rays of the Sun of Righteousness."
Fleda's eyes, which had fallen on her book, were raised again with such a flash of feeling that it quite prevented her seeing what was in his. But the feeling was a little too strong the eyes went down, lower than ever, and the features showed that the utmost efforts of self-command were needed to control them.
"There is no other cure," he went on in the same tone; "but disgust and weariness and selfishness shrink away and hide themselves before a word or a look of the Redeemer of men. When we hear him say, 'I have bought thee thou art mine,' it is like one of those old words of healing, 'Thou art loosed from thine infirmity' 'Be thou clean' and the mind takes sweetly the grace and the command together, 'That he who loveth God love his brother also.' Only the preparation of the gospel of peace can make our feet go softly over the roughnesses of the way."
Fleda did not move, unless her twinkling eyelashes might seem to contradict that.
"I need not tell you," Mr. Carleton went on, a little lower, "where this medicine is to be sought."
"It is strange," said Fleda, presently, "how well one may know, and how well one may forget. But I think the body has a great deal to do with it sometimes these states of feeling, I mean."
"No doubt it has; and in these cases the cure is a more complicated matter. I should think the roses would be useful there?"
Fleda's mind was crossed by an indistinct vision of peas, asparagus, and sweet corn; she said nothing.
"An indirect remedy is sometimes the very best that can be employed. However, it is always true that the more our eyes are fixed upon the source of light, the less we notice the shadows that things we are passing fling across our way."
Fleda did not know how to talk for a little while; she was too happy. Whatever kept Mr. Carleton from talking, he was silent also. Perhaps it was the understanding of her mood.
"Mr. Carleton," said Fleda, after a little time, "did you ever carry out that plan of a rose-garden that you were talking of a long while ago?"
"You remember it?" said he, with a pleased look. "Yes, that was one of the first things I set about, after I went home but I did not follow the regular fashion of arrangement that one of your friends is so fond of."
"I should not like that for anything," said Fleda, "and least of all for roses."
"Do you remember the little shrubbery path that opened just in front of the library windows leading, at the distance of half a mile, to a long, narrow, winding glen?"
"Perfectly well," said Fleda, "through the wood of evergreens Oh, I remember the glen very well."
"About half way from the house," said he, smiling at her eyes, "a glade opens, which merges at last in the head of the glen I planted my roses there the circumstances of the ground were very happy for disposing them according to my wish."
"And how far?"
"The roses? Oh, all the way, and some distance down the glen. Not a continuous thicket of them," he added, smiling again "I wished each kind to stand so that its peculiar beauty should be fully relieved and appreciated; and that would have been lost in a crowd."
"Yes, I know it," said Fleda; "one's eye rests upon the chief objects of attraction, and the others are hardly seen they do not even serve as foils. And they must show beautifully against that dark background of firs and larches!"
"Yes; and the windings of the ground gave me every sort of situation and exposure. I wanted room, too, for the different effects of masses of the same kind growing together, and of fine individuals or groups standing alone, where they could show the full graceful development of their nature."
"What a pleasure! What a beauty it must be!"
"The ground is very happy many varieties of soil and exposure were needed for the plants of different habits, and I found or made them all. The rocky beginnings of the glen even furnished me with south walls for the little tea-roses, and the Macartneys, and musk roses; the banksias I kept nearer home."
"Do you know them all, Mr. Carleton?"
"Not quite," said he, smiling at her.
"I have seen one banksia the Macartney is a name that tells me nothing."
"They are evergreens with large white flowers very abundant and late in the season, but they need the shelter of a wall with us."
"I should think you would say 'with me,' " said Fleda. "I cannot conceive that the head-quarters of the rose tribe should be anywhere else."
"One of the queens of the tribe is there, in the neighbourhood of the Macartneys the difficult rosa sulphurea it finds itself so well accommodated, that it condescends to play its part to perfection. Do you know that?"
"Not at all."
"It is one of the most beautiful of all, though not my favourite it has large double yellow flowers, shaped like the Provence very superb, but as wilful as any queen of them all."
"Which is your favourite, Mr. Carleton?"
"Not that which shows itself most splendid to the eye, but which offers fairest indications to the fancy."
Fleda looked a little wistfully, for there was a smile rather of the eye than of the lips, which said there was a hidden thought beneath.
"Don't you assign characters to your flowers?" said he, gravely.
"Always."
"That rosa sulphurea is a haughty high-bred beauty, that disdains even to show herself beautiful, unless she is pleased I love better what comes nearer home to the charities and wants of every-day life."
He had not answered her, Fleda knew; she thought of what he had said to Mrs. Evelyn about liking beauty, but not beauties.
"Then." said he, smiling again in that hidden way, "the head of the glen gave me the soil I needed for the Bourbons and French roses."
"Bourbons?" said Fleda.
"Those are exceeding fine a hybrid between the Chinese and the rose-à-quatre-saisons I have not confined them all to the head of the glen; many of them are in richer soil, grafted on standards."
"I like standard roses," said Fleda, "better than any."
"Not better than climbers?"
"Better than any climbers I ever saw except the banksia."
"There is hardly a more elegant variety than that, though it is not strictly a climber; and, indeed, when I spoke, I was thinking as much of the training roses. Many of the noisettes are very fine. But I have the climbers all over in some parts nothing else, where the wood closes in upon the path there the evergreen roses or the Ayrshire, cover the ground under the trees, or are trained up the trunks, and allowed to find their own way through the branches down again the multiflora in the same manner. I have made the boursault cover some unsightly rocks that were in my way. Then in wider parts of the glade, nearer home, are your favourite standards the damask, and Provence, and moss, which, you know, are varieties of the centifolia, and the noisette standards some of them are very fine, and the Chinese roses, and countless hybrids and varieties of all these, with many Bourbons; and your beautiful American yellow rose, and the Austrian briar and eglantine, and the Scotch, and white and dog roses, in their innumerable varieties, change admirably well with the others, and relieve the eye very happily."
"Relieve the eye!" said Fleda; "my imagination wants relieving! Isn't there I have a fancy that there is a view of the sea from some parts of that walk, Mr. Carleton?"
"Yes you have a good memory," said he, smiling. "On one side the wood is rather dense, and in some parts of the other side; but elsewhere the trees are thinned off towards the south- west, and in one or two points the descent of the ground and some cutting have given free access to the air and free range to the eye, bounded only by the sea-line in the distance; if, indeed, that can be said to bound anything."
"I haven't seen it since I was a child," said Fleda. "And for how long a time in the year is this literally a garden of roses, Mr. Carleton?"
"The perpetual roses are in bloom for eight months the damask and the Chinese, and some of their varieties; the Provence roses are in blossom all the summer."
"Ah! we can do nothing like that in this country," said Fleda, shaking her head; "our winters are unmanageable."
She was silent a minute, turning over the leaves of her book in an abstracted manner.
"You have struck out upon a grave path of reflection," said Mr. Carleton, gently, "and left me bewildered among the roses."
"I was thinking," said Fleda, looking up and laughing, "I was moralizing to myself upon the curious equalization of happiness in the world; I just sheered off from a feeling of envy, and comfortably reflected that one measures happiness by what one knows not by what one does not know; and so, that in all probability I have had near as much enjoyment in the little number of plants that I have brought up and cherished, and know intimately, as you, Sir, in your superb walk through fairy-land."
"Do you suppose," said he, laughing, "that I leave the whole care of fairy-land to my gardener? No, you are mistaken; when the roses are to act as my correctors, I find I must become theirs. I seldom go among them without a pruning knife, and never without wishing for one. And you are certainly right so far that the plants on which I bestow most pains give me the most pleasure. There are some that no hand but mine ever touches, and those are by far the best loved of my eye."
A discussion followed partly natural, partly moral on the manner of pruning various roses, and on the curious connection between care and complacency, and the philosophy of the same.
"The rules of the library are to shut up at sundown, Sir," said one the bookmen, who had come into the room.
"Sundown!" exclaimed Fleda, jumping up; "is my uncle not here,
Mr. Frost?"
"He has been gone half an hour, Ma'am."
"And I was to have gone home with him; I have forgotten myself."
"If that is at all the fault of my roses," said Mr. Carleton, smiling, "I will do my best to repair it."
"I am not disposed to call it a fault," said Fleda, tying her bonnet-strings; "it is rather an agreeable thing once in a while. I shall dream of those roses, Mr. Carleton."
"That would be doing them too much honour."
Very happily she had forgotten herself; and during all the walk home her mind was too full of one great piece of joy, and, indeed, too much engaged with conversation to take up her own subject again. Her only wish was that they might not meet any of the Evelyns; Mr. Thorn, whom they did meet, was a matter of entire indifference.
The door was opened by Dr. Gregory himself. To Fleda's utter astonishment, Mr. Carleton accepted his invitation to come in. She went up stairs to take off her things, in a kind of maze.
"I thought he would go away without my seeing him; and now, what a nice time I have had in spite of Mrs. Evelyn!"
That thought slipped in without Fleda's knowledge, but she could not get it out again.
"I don't know how much it has been her fault either, but one thing is certain I never could have had it at her house. How very glad I am! how very glad I am! that I have seen him, and heard all this from his own lips. But how very funny that he will be here to tea!"
"Well!" said the doctor, when she came down, "you do look freshened up, I declare. Here is this girl, Sir, was coming to me a little while ago, complaining that she wanted something fresh, and begging me to take her back to Queechy, forsooth, to find it with two feet of snow on the ground. Who wants to see you at Queechy?" he said, facing round upon her with a look half fierce, half quizzical.
Fleda laughed, but was vexed to feel that she could not help colouring, and colouring exceedingly, partly from the consciousness of his meaning, and partly from a vague notion that somebody else was conscious of it, too. Dr. Gregory, however, dashed right off into the thick of conversation with his guest, and kept him busily engaged till tea-time. Fleda sat still on the sofa, looking and listening with simple pleasure memory served her up a rich entertainment enough. Yet she thought her uncle was the most heartily interested of the two in the conversation; there was a shade more upon Mr. Carleton, not than he often wore, but than he had worn a little while ago. Dr. Gregory was a great bibliopole, and in the course of the hour hauled out, and made his guest overhaul, no less than several musty old folios, and Fleda could not help fancying that he did it with an access of gravity greater even than the occasion called for. The grace of his manner, however, was unaltered; and at tea, she did not know whether she had been right or not. Demurely as she sat there behind the tea-urn for Dr. Gregory still engrossed all the attention of his guest, as far as talking was concerned Fleda was again inwardly smiling to herself at the oddity and the pleasantness of the chance that had brought those three together in such a quiet way, after all the weeks she had been seeing Mr. Carleton at a distance. And she enjoyed the conversation, too; for though Dr. Gregory was a little fond of his hobby, it was still conversation worthy the name.
"I have been so unfortunate in the matter of the drives," Mr. Carleton said, when he was about to take leave, and standing before Fleda, "that I am half afraid to mention it again."
"I could not help it both those times, Mr. Carleton," said
Fleda, earnestly.
"Both the last? or both the first?" said he, smiling.
"The last!" said Fleda.
"I have had the honour of making such an attempt twice within the last ten days to my disappointment."
"It was not by my fault then, either, Sir," Fleda said, quietly.
But he knew very well from the expression of her face a moment before, where to put the emphasis her tongue would not make.
"Dare I ask you to go with me, to-morrow?"
"I don't know," said Fleda, with the old childish sparkle of her eye; "but if you ask me, Sir, I will go."
He sat down beside her immediately, and Fleda knew, by his change of eye, that her former thought had been right.
"Shall I see you at Mrs. Decatur's, to-morrow?"
"No, Sir."
"I thought I understood," said he, in an explanatory tone, "from your friends, the Miss Evelyns, that they were going."
"I believe they are, and I did think of it; but I have changed my mind, and shall stay at home with Mrs. Evelyn."
After some further conversation, the hour for the drive was appointed, and Mr. Carleton took leave.
"Come for me twice, and Mrs. Evelyn refused without consulting me!" thought Fleda. "What could make her do so? How very rude he must have thought me! And how glad I am I have had an opportunity of setting that right!"
So, quitting Mrs. Evelyn, her thoughts went off upon a long train of wandering over the afternoon's talk.
"Wake up!" said the doctor, laying his hand kindly upon her shoulder; "you'll want something fresh again presently. What mine of profundity are you digging into now?"
Fleda looked up, and came back from her profundity with a glance and smile as simple as a child's.
"Dear uncle Orrin, how came you to leave me alone in the library?"
"Was that what you were trying to discover?"
"Oh no, Sir! But why did you, uncle Orrin? I might have been left utterly alone."
"Why," said the doctor, "I was going out, and a friend, that I thought I could confide in, promised to take care of you."
"A friend! Nobody came near me," said Fleda.
"Then I'll never trust anybody again," said the doctor. "But what were you hammering at, mentally, just now? Come, you shall tell me."
"O nothing, uncle Orrin," said Fleda, looking grave again, however; "I was thinking that I had been talking too much to- day."
"Talking too much? why, whom have you been talking to?"
"Oh, nobody but Mr. Carleton."
"Mr. Carleton! Why, you didn't say six and a quarter words while he was here."
"No, but I mean in the library, and walking home."
"Talking too much! I guess you did," said the doctor; "your tongue is like
'the music of the spheres, So loud it deafens human ears.'
How came you to talk too much? I thought you were too shy to talk at all in company."
"No, Sir, I am not; I am not at all shy unless people frighten me. It takes almost nothing to do that; but I am very bold if I am not frightened."
"Were you frightened this afternoon?"
"No, Sir?"
"Well, if you weren't frightened, I guess nobody else was," said the doctor.