"Oh, I don't care! Well, fish. There will be meat enough for to-morrow's dinner if it isn't meddled with."
The fish was salted down in the season, soaked a little, laid in spiced vinegar for a few hours, cut in thin slices, and was very appetizing. Eunice went about with no useless flutter, she stepped lightly and never made any clatter with dishes. The tea china, thin and lovely, the piles of white bread and brown, molasses gingerbread and frosted sugar cake, stewed dried fruit and rich preserves, made an inviting-looking table. Chilian came in and made himself neat, as usual, then the guests.
Cynthia was very quiet. Twice Miss Winn answered a question for her. She scarcely ate anything. Then she said wearily:
"I am so tired and sleepy. Can't I go to bed?"
CHAPTER IV
UNWELCOME
Miss Winn and her charge went down to the ship the next morning with Chilian Leverett. Elizabeth inspected the rooms. She was not meddlesome, nor over-curious generally, but with a feeling of possessorship and responsibility in the house, she wanted to know how far she could trust the newcomers. The beds were well made, but closets and drawers were rather awry. She did begrudge the best chamber, and wondered whether it would not be possible to change them about presently. True, they seldom had guests.
Then a new load of boxes came, with two trunks, and several more pieces of furniture. The latter were left standing in the hall. The garret had been a sort of fetich with Elizabeth. There were dried herbs hanging to the rafters in their muslin bags, so as not to make a litter and mostly for the fragrance. There was not a cobweb anywhere. On one side of the sloping roof were ranged their own trunks and chests, two of cedar, in which woollen clothes and blankets passed the summer, securely hidden from moths. In one gable were miscellaneous household articles, a few chairs good enough to be repaired, a more than century-old cherry table, spinning-wheels, a bedstead piled high with a feather bed, and numberless pillows, for Elizabeth thought it her duty to make a new pair every year, as they kept a flock of geese that spent their days in a small cove on South River.
The interloper boxes could make a row down the cleared side. That left the centre, the highest part, clear for drying clothes, which probably would not be needed until winter. But careful Elizabeth planned ahead for every emergency. True, the emergency did not always fit the plans, but it gave her tense spirit a rest.