The tears rushed to Fleda's eyes, but she said no, and managed to mount the stairs, though it was evidently an exertion. Mrs. Carleton's dressing-room, as her son had called it, looked very pleasant when they got there. It was well lighted and warmed, and something answering to curtains had been summoned from its obscurity in storeroom or garret and hung up at the windows, "them air fussy English folks had made such a pint of it," the landlord said. Truth was, that Mr. Carleton as well as his mother wanted this room as a retreat for the quiet and privacy which travelling in company as they did they could have nowhere else. Everything the hotel could furnish in the shape of comfort had been drawn together to give this room as little the look of a public-house as possible. Easy chairs, as Mrs. Carleton remarked with a disgusted face, one could not expect to find in a country inn; there were instead as many as half-a-dozen of "those miserable substitutes", as she called rocking-chairs, and sundry fashions of couches and sofas, in various degrees of elegance and convenience. The best of these, a great chintz-covered thing, full of pillows, stood invitingly near the bright fire. There Mr. Carleton placed little Fleda, took off her bonnet and things, and piled the cushions about her just in the way that would make her most easy and comfortable. He said little, and she nothing, but her eyes watered again at the kind tenderness of his manner. And then he left her in peace till the tea came.
The tea was made in that room for those three alone. Fleda knew that Mr. and Mrs. Carleton stayed up there only for her sake, and it troubled her, but she could not help it. Neither could she be very sorry so far as one of them was concerned. Mr. Carleton was too good to be wished away. All that evening his care of her never ceased. At tea, which the poor child would hardly have shared but for him and after tea, when in the absence of bustle she had leisure to feel more fully her strange circumstances and position, he hardly permitted her to feel either, doing everything for her ease and pleasure, and quietly managing at the same time to keep back his mother's more forward and less happily adapted tokens of kind feeling. Though she knew he was constantly occupied with her, Fleda could not feel oppressed; his kindness was as pervading and as unobtrusive as the summer air itself; she felt as if she was in somebody's hands that knew her wants before she did, and quietly supplied or prevented them, in a way she could not tell how. It was very rarely that she even got a chance to utter the quiet and touching "thank you," which invariably answered every token of kindness or thoughtfulness that permitted an answer. How greatly that harsh and sad day was softened to little Fleda's heart by the good feeling and fine breeding of one person. She thought when she went to bed that night, thought seriously and gratefully, that since she must go over the ocean and take that long journey to her aunt, how glad she was, how thankful she ought to be, that she had so very kind and pleasant people to go with. Kind and pleasant she counted them both; but what more she thought of a Mr. Carleton it would be hard to say. Her admiration of him was very high, appreciating as she did to the full all that charm of manner which she could neither analyze nor describe.
Her last words to him that night, spoken with a most wistful anxious glance into his face, were,
"You will take me back again, Mr. Carleton?"
He knew what she meant.
"Certainly I will. I promised you, Fleda."
"Whatever Guy promises you may be very sure he will do," said his mother, with a smile.
Fleda believed it. But the next morning it was very plain that this promise he would not be called upon to perform; Fleda would not be well enough to go to the funeral. She was able indeed to get up, but she lay all day upon the sofa in the dressing-room. Mr. Carleton had bargained for no company last night; to-day female curiosity could stand it no longer, and Mrs. Thorn and Mrs. Evelyn came up to look and gossip openly, and to admire and comment privately, when they had a chance. Fleda lay perfectly quiet and still, seeming not much to notice or care for their presence; they thought she was tolerably easy in body and mind, perhaps tired and sleepy, and like to do well enough after a few days. How little they knew! How little they could imagine the assembly of Thought which was holding in that child's mind; how little they deemed of the deep, sad, serious look into life which that little spirit was taking. How far they were from fancying while they were discussing all manner of trifles before her, sometimes when they thought her sleeping, that in the intervals between sadder and weightier things her nice instincts were taking the gauge of all their characters unconsciously, but surely; how they might have been ashamed if they had known that while they were busy with all affairs in the universe but those which most nearly concerned them, the little child at their side, whom they had almost forgotten, was secretly looking up to her Father in heaven, and asking to be kept pure from the world! "Not unto the wise and prudent;" how strange it may seem in one view of the subject, in another, how natural, how beautiful, how reasonable.
Fleda did not ask again to be taken to Queechy. But as the afternoon drew on she turned her face away from the company and shielded it from view among the cushions, and lay in that utterly motionless state of body which betrays a concentrated movement of the spirits in some hidden direction. To her companions it betrayed nothing. They only lowered their tones a little lest they should disturb her.
It had grown dark, and she was sitting up again, leaning against the pillows, and in her usual quietude, when Mr. Carleton came in. They had not seen him since before dinner. He came to her side, and taking her hand made some gentle inquiry how she was.