There was certainly a promising beginning made for the future minister's comfort. One shelf was already completely stocked with pies, and another showed a quantity of cake, and biscuits enough to last a good-sized family for several meals.
"That is always the way," said Mrs. Douglass; "it's the strangest thing that folks has no sense! Now, one half o' them pies 'll be dried up afore they can eat the rest; 't aint much loss, for Mis' Prin sent 'em down, and if they are worth anything, it's the first time anything ever come out of her house that was. Now look at them biscuit!"
"How many are coming to eat them?" said Fleda.
"How?"
"How large a family has the minister?"
"He ha'n't a bit of a family! He ain't married."
"Not!"
At the grave way in which Mrs. Douglass faced round upon her and answered, and at the idea of a single mouth devoted to all that closetful Fleda's gravity gave place to most uncontrollable merriment.
"No," said Mrs. Douglass, with a curious twist of her mouth, but commanding herself, "he aint, to be sure, not yet. He ha'n't any family but himself and some sort of a housekeeper, I suppose; they'll divide the house between 'em."
"And the biscuits, I hope," said Fleda. "But what will he do with all the other things, Mrs. Douglass?"