"My father is a wiser man than you can understand, Eliza; and—" Sophia broke off, she was fain to retreat; it was cold for one thing.
"Miss Sophia," said Eliza, as she was getting to the door, "there's one thing—you know that young man they were talking about to-night?"
"What of him?"
"Well, if he were to ask about me, you'd not tell him anything, would you? I've never told anybody but you about father, or any particulars. The others don't know anything, and you won't tell, will you?"
"I've told you I won't take upon myself to speak of your affairs. What has that young man to do with it?"—with some severity.
"It's only that he's a traveller, and I feel so silly about every traveller, for fear they'd want me to go back to the clearin'."
Sophia took the few necessary steps in the cold dark granary and reached her own room.
CHAPTER XVI.
Sophia was sitting with Mrs. Rexford on the sofa that stood with its back to the dining-room window. The frame of the sofa was not turned, but fashioned with saw and knife and plane; not glued, but nailed together. Yet it did not lack for comfort; it was built oblong, large, and low; it was cushioned with sacking filled with loose hay plentifully mixed with Indian grass that gave forth a sweet perfume, and the whole was covered with a large neat pinafore of such light washing stuff as women wear about their work on summer days. Sophia and her step-mother were darning stockings. The homesickness of the household was rapidly subsiding, and to-day these two were not uncomfortable or unhappy. The rest of the family, some to work, some to play, and some to run errands, had been dismissed into the large outside.
The big house was tranquil. The afternoon sun, which had got round to the kitchen window, blazed in there through a fringe of icicles that hung from the low eaves of the kitchen roof, and sent a long strip of bright prismatic rays across the floor and through the door on to the rag carpet under the dining-room table. Ever and anon, as the ladies sewed, the sound of sleigh-bells came to them, distant, then nearer, then near, with the trotting of horses' feet as they passed the house, then again more distant. The dining-room window faced the road, but one could not see through it without standing upright.