"This is the Dutch conception of a welcome after five months!" I could not help thinking to myself, uncharitably forgetting for the moment my aunt's infirmities. Aloud I said:
"How are they all--Mr. Stewart and Daisy? And where are they? And how have the farms been doing?"
"Well," answered Dame Kronk, upon reflection, "I maintain that the wool is the worst we ever clipped. Was the shearing after you went? Yes, of course it was. Well, how I'm going to get out enough fine for the stockings alone, is more than I can see. It's downright poor."
"But Mr. Stewart and Daisy--are they well? Where are they?"
"But the niggers have gathered five times as much ginseng as they ever did before. The pigs are fattening fit to eat alive. Eli's been drunk some, bur his girls are really a good deal of help. There are going to be more elder-berries this fall than you can shake a stick at; they're just breaking the branches. And the--"
"Oh, aunt," I broke in, "do tell me! Are Daisy and Mr. Stewart well?"
"Why, of course they are," she answered; "that is, they were when they left here a week come Thursday. And Marinus Folts didn't say anything to the contrary yesterday. Why shouldn't they be well? They don't do anything but gad about, these days. Daisy hasn't done a stitch of work all summer but knit a couple of comforters--and the time she's been about it! When I was her age I could have knit the whole side of a house in less time. One of them is for you."
Dear girl, I had wronged her, then. She had been thinking of me--working for me. My heart felt lighter.
"But where are they?" I repeated.
"Oh, where are they? Up at Sir William's new summer-house that he's just built. I don't know just where it is, but it's fourteen miles from the Hall, up somewhere on the Sacondaga Vlaie, where two creeks join. He's made a corduroy road out to it, and he's painted it white and green, and he's been having a sort of fandango out there--a house-warming, I take it. Marinus Folts says he never saw so much drinking in his born days. He'd had his full share himself, I should judge. They're coming back to-night."