Miss Anastasia was a little surprised and a good deal gratified, Fleda saw, by her coming, and played the hostess with great benignity. The quilting-frame was stretched in an upper room, not in the long kitchen, to Fleda's joy; most of the company were already seated at it, and she had to go through a long string of introductions before she was permitted to take her place. First of all, Earl Douglass's wife, who rose up, and taking both Fleda's hands, squeezed and shook them heartily, giving her, with eye and lip, a most genial welcome. This lady had every look of being a very clever woman "a manager," she was said to be; and, indeed, her very nose had a little pinch, which prepared one for nothing superfluous about her. Even her dress could not have wanted another breadth from the skirt, and had no fullness to spare about the body neat as a pin, though; and a well-to-do look through it all. Miss Quackenboss Fleda recognised as an old friend, gilt beads and all. Catherine Douglass had grown up to a pretty girl during the five years since Fleda had left Queechy, and gave her a greeting, half-smiling, half-shy. There was a little more affluence about the flow of her drapery, and the pink ribbon round her neck was confined by a little dainty Jew's-harp of a brooch; she had her mother's pinch of the nose too. Then there were two other young ladies Miss Letitia Ann Thornton, a tall-grown girl in pantalettes, evidently a would-be aristocrat, from the air of her head and lip, with a well-looking face, and looking well knowing of the same, and sporting neat little white cuffs at her wrists the only one who bore such a distinction. The third of these damsels, Jessie Healy, impressed Fleda with having been brought up upon coarse meat, and having grown heavy in consequence; the other two were extremely fair and delicate, both in complexion and feature. Her aunt Syra, Fleda recognised without particular pleasure, and managed to seat herself at the quilt with the sewing-woman and Miss Hannah between them. Miss Lucy Finn she found seated at her right hand, but after all the civilities she had just gone through, Fleda had not courage just then to dash into business with her, and Miss Lucy herself stitched away, and was dumb.
So were the rest of the party rather. The presence of the new comer seemed to have the effect of a spell. Fleda could not think they had been as silent before her joining them, as they were for some time afterwards. The young ladies were absolutely mute, and conversation seemed to flag even among the elder ones; and if Fleda ever raised her eyes from the quilt to look at somebody, she was sure to see somebody's eyes looking at her, with a curiosity well enough defined, and mixed with a more or less amount of benevolence and pleasure. Fleda was growing very industrious and feeling her cheeks grow warm, when the checked stream of conversation began to take revenge by turning its tide upon her.
"Are you glad to be back to Queechy, Fleda?" said Mrs.
Douglass, from the opposite far end of the quilt.
"Yes Ma'am," said Fleda, smiling back her answer "on some accounts."
"Ain't she growed like her father, Mis' Douglass?" said the sewing-woman. "Do you recollect Walter Ringgan? What a handsome feller he was!"
The two opposite girls immediately found something to say to each other.
"She aint a bit more like him than she is like her mother," said Mrs. Douglass, biting off the end of her thread energetically. "Amy Ringgan was a sweet good woman as ever was in this town."
Again her daughter's glance and smile went over to the speaker.
"You stay in Queechy, and live like Queechy folks do," Mrs. Douglass added, nodding encouragingly, "and you'll beat both on 'em."
But this speech jarred, and Fleda wished it had not been spoken.