"I don't know she had about everything that was good. A sweet pretty creature she was as ever I saw."
"Was she like aunt Lucy?"
"No, not much. She was a deal handsomer than your aunt is or ever could have been. She was the handsomest woman, I think, that ever I set eyes upon; and a sweet, gentle, lovely creature. You'll never match her," said Mr. Ringgan, with a curious twist of his head and sly laughing twist of his eyes at Fleda; "you may be as good as she was, but you'll never be as good-looking."
Fleda laughed, nowise displeased.
"You've got her hazel eyes though," remarked Mr. Ringgan, after a minute or two, viewing his little grand-daughter with a sufficiently satisfied expression of countenance.
"Grandpa," said she, "don't you think Mr. Carleton has handsome eyes?"
"Mr. Carleton? hum I don't know; I didn't look at his eyes. A very well-looking young man though very gentlemanly too."
Fleda had heard all this and much more about her parents some dozens of times before; but she and her grandfather were never tired of going it over. If the conversation that recalled his lost treasures had of necessity a character of sadness and tenderness, it yet bespoke not more regret that he had lost them than exulting pride and delight in what they had been, perhaps not so much. And Fleda delighted to go back and feed her imagination with stories of the mother whom she could not remember, and of the father whose fair bright image stood in her memory as the embodiment of all that is high and noble and pure. A kind of guardian angel that image was to little Fleda. These ideal likenesses of her father and mother, the one drawn from history and recollection, the other from history only, had been her preservative from all the untoward influences and unfortunate examples which had surrounded her since her father's death, some three or four years before, had left her almost alone in her grandfather's house. They had created in her mind a standard of the true and beautiful in character, which nothing she saw around her, after, of course, her grandfather and one other exception, seemed at all to meet; and partly from her own innate fineness of nature, and partly from this pure ideal always present with her, she had shrunk almost instinctively from the few varieties of human nature the country-side presented to her, and was in fact a very isolated little being, living in a world of her own, and clinging with all her strong out-goings of affection to her grandfather only; granting to but one other person any considerable share in her regard or esteem. Little Fleda was not in the least misanthropical; she gave her kindly sympathies to all who came in her way on whom they could possibly be bestowed; but these people were nothing to her; her spirit fell off from them, even in their presence; there was no affinity. She was in truth what her grandfather had affirmed of her father, made of different stuff from the rest of the world. There was no tincture of pride in all this; there was no conscious feeling of superiority; she could merely have told you that she did not care to hear these people talk, that she did not love to be with them; though she would have said so to no earthly creature but her grandfather, if even to him.
"It must be pleasant," said Fleda, after looking for some minutes thoughtfully into the fire, "it must be a pleasant thing to have a father and mother."
"Yes, dear!" said her grandfather, sighing, "you have lost a great deal! But there is your aunt Lucy you are not dependent altogether on me."