"Yes, you must, aunt Lucy," said Fleda, soothingly. "I couldn't do anything else with it that would give me so much pleasure. I don't want it; it would lie in my drawer till I don't know when. We'll let these people be off as soon as they please. Don't take it so; uncle Rolf will have money again only just now he is out, I suppose and we'll get somebody else in the kitchen that will do nicely; you see if we don't."
Mrs. Rossitur's embrace said what words were powerless to say.
"But I don't know how we're to find any one here in the country I don't know who'll go to look I am sure your uncle wont want to; and Hugh wouldn't know "
"I'll go," said Fleda, cheerfully "Hugh and I. We can do famously, if you'll trust me. I wont promise to bring home a French cook."
"No, indeed; we must take what we can get. But you can get no one to-day, and they will be off by the morning's coach; what shall we do to-morrow for dinner? your uncle "
"I'll get dinner," said Fleda, caressing her; "I'll take all that on myself. It sha'n't be a bad dinner either. Uncle Rolf will like what I do for him, I dare say. Now, cheer up, aunt Lucy; do; that's all I ask of you. Wont you for me?"
She longed to speak a word of that quiet hope with which in every trouble she secretly comforted herself she wanted to whisper the words that were that moment in her own mind, "Truly, I know that it shall be well with them that fear God;" but her natural reserve and timidity kept her lips shut to her grief.
The women were paid off and dismissed, and departed in the next day's coach from Montepoole. Fleda stood at the front door to see them go, with a curious sense that there was an empty house at her back, and indeed upon her back. And in spite of all the cheeriness of her tone to her aunt, she was not without some shadowy feeling that soberer times might be coming upon them.
"What is to be done now?" said Hugh, close beside her.
"Oh, we are going to get somebody else," said Fleda.