“A farm?”
“A tobacco plantation, although we raise other crops. My younger brother, James, lives there, too.”
“And how old is he?”
“Old enough to be a very fitting beau for you,” laughed Lettice.
Rhoda frowned, to Lettice’s delight. “Why don’t you say, Such frivolity! that is what Aunt Martha always says when I mention beaux. One would suppose it a wicked thing to marry or to receive a gentleman’s attention. I wonder how Aunt Martha ever brought herself to the point of becoming Uncle Tom’s second wife; but I believe she says he carried her by storm, and she was surprised into saying yes. How do the young men carry on such things up your way, Rhoda? Do they sit and tweedle their thumbs and cast sheep’s eyes at you, as some of our country bumpkins do? or do they make love to the mother, as I have heard is the custom in some places?”
“Nonsense, Lettice, how your thoughts do run on such things! Is that the market?”
“Yes, and now you will see as fine a display as you could wish.”
A moment after Lettice had become the careful housewife, selecting her various articles with great judgment, tasting butter, scrutinizing strawberries to be sure their caps were fresh and green, lifting with delicate finger the gills of a fish to see if they were properly red, and quite surprising Rhoda by her knowledge of and interest in articles of food.
“One would suppose you were the housekeeper,” she said to Lettice. “How did you learn all those things?”
“My mother taught me some, and our old cook others. My mother considered certain matters of housekeeping the first for a girl to learn, and I hope to keep house for my father in another year, if this wretched war is over then.”