"Sell 'em if he don't want 'em," said Mrs. Douglass, quizzically. "Shut up, Fleda, I forget who sent them biscuit somebody that calculated to make a show for a little, I reckon. My sakes! I believe it was Mis' Springer herself! she didn't hear me though," said Mrs. Douglass, peeping out of the half-open door. "It's a good thing the world aint all alike; there's Mis' Plumfield stop now, and I'll tell you all she sent; that big jar of lard, there's as good as eighteen or twenty pound and that basket of eggs, I don't know how many there is and that cheese, a real fine one, I'll be bound, she wouldn't pick out the worst in her dairy; and Seth fetched down a hundred weight of corn meal, and another of rye flour; now, that's what I call doing things something like; if everybody else would keep up their end as well as they keep up their'n, the world wouldn't be quite so one-sided as it is. I never see the time yet when I couldn't tell where to find Mis' Plumfield."
"No, nor anybody else," said Fleda, looking happy.
"There's Mis' Silbert couldn't find nothing better to send than a kag of soap," Mrs. Douglass went on, seeming very much amused; "I was beat when I saw that walk in! I should think she'd feel streaked to come here by and by, and see it a- standing between Mis' Plumfield's lard and Mis' Clavering's pork that's a handsome kag of pork, aint it? What's that man done with your strawberries? I'll put 'em up here, afore somebody takes a notion to 'em. I'll let the minister know who he's got to thank for 'em," said she, winking at Fleda. "Where's Dr. Quackenboss?"
"Coming, Ma'am!" sounded from the hall, and forthwith, at the open door, entered the doctor's head, simultaneously with a large cheese, which he was rolling before him, the rest of the doctor's person being thrown into the background in consequence a curious natural representation of a wheelbarrow, the wheel being the only artificial part.
"Oh! that's you, doctor, is it?" said Mrs. Douglass.
"This is me, Ma'am," said the doctor, rolling up to the closet door; "this has the honour to be a myself, bringing my service to the feet of Miss Ringgan."
" 'Tain't very elegant," said the sharp lady.
Fleda thought if his service was at her feet, her feet should be somewhere else, and accordingly stepped quietly out of the way, and went to one of the windows, from whence she could have a view both of the comers and the come; and by this time, thoroughly in the spirit of the thing, she used her eyes upon both with great amusement. People were constantly arriving now, in wagons and on foot; and stores of all kinds were most literally pouring in. Bags, and even barrels of meal, flour, pork, and potatoes; strings of dried apples, salt, hams, and beef; hops, pickles, vinegar, maple-sugar and molasses; rolls of fresh butter, cheese, and eggs; cake, bread, and pies, without end. Mr. Penny, the storekeeper, sent a box of tea. Mr. Winegar, the carpenter, a new ox-sled. Earl Douglass brought a handsome axe-helve of his own fashioning; his wife, a quantity of rolls of wool. Zan Finn carted a load of wood into the wood-shed, and Squire Thornton another. Home-made candles, custards, preserves, and smoked liver, came in a batch from two or three miles off, up on the mountain. Half-a- dozen chairs from the factory-man; half-a-dozen brooms from the other storekeeper at the Deepwater settlement; a carpet for the best room from the ladies of the township, who had clubbed forces to furnish it and a home-made concern it was, from the shears to the loom.
The room was full now, for every one, after depositing his gift, turned aside to see what others had brought and were bringing; and men and women, the young and old, had their several circles of gossip in various parts of the crowd. Apart from them all Fleda sat in her window, probably voted "elegant" by others than the doctor, for they vouchsafed her no more than a transitory attention, and sheered off to find something more congenial. She sat watching the people, smiling very often as some odd figure, or look, or some peculiar turn of expression or tone of voice, caught her ear or her eye.
Both ear and eye were fastened by a young countryman, with a particularly fresh face, whom she saw approaching the house. He came up on foot, carrying a single fowl slung at his back by a stick thrown across his shoulder, and, without stirring hat or stick, he came into the room, and made his way through the crowd of people, looking to the one hand and the other, evidently in a maze of doubt to whom he should deliver himself and his chicken, till brought up by Mrs. Douglass's sharp voice.