"I heerd you had come to the old place. Were you glad to be back again?" Cynthy asked, with a smile that might be taken to express some doubt upon the subject.
"I was very glad to see it again."
"I ha'n't seen it in a great while. I've been staying to hum this year or two. I got tired o' going out," Cynthy remarked, with again a smile very peculiar, and, Fleda thought, a little sardonical. She did not know how to answer.
"Well, how do you come along down yonder?" Cynthy went on, making a great fuss with the shovel and tongs to very little purpose. "Ha' you come all the way from Queechy?"
"Yes. I came on purpose to see you, Cynthy."
Without staying to ask what for, Miss Gall now went out to "the back of the house," and came running in again with a live brand pinched in the tongs, and a long tail of smoke running after it. Fleda would have compounded for no fire and no choking. The choking was only useful to give her time to think. She was uncertain how to bring in her errand.
"And how is Mis' Plumfield?" said Cynthy, in an interval of blowing the brand.
"She is quite well; but, Cynthy, you need not have taken all that trouble for me. I cannot stay but a few minutes."
"There is wood enough!" Cynthia remarked, with one of her grim smiles an assertion Fleda could not help doubting. Indeed, she thought Miss Gall had grown altogether more disagreeable than she used to be in old times. Why, she could not divine, unless the souring effect had gone on with the years.
"And what's become of Earl Douglass and Mis' Douglass? I hain't heerd nothin' of 'em this great while. I always told your grandpa he'd ha' saved himself a great deal o' trouble if he'd ha' let Earl Douglass take hold of things. You han't got Mr. Didenhover into the works again, I guess, have you? He was there a good spell after your grandpa died.''