The smoke of the chimney-tops came in sight, and fancy went home a few minutes before her.
"I wonder what you'll take and do to yourself next," said Barby, in extreme vexation, when she saw her come in. "You're as white as the wall, and as cold, aint you? I'd ha' let Philetus cut all the trees, and drink all the sap afterwards. I wonder which you think is the worst, the want o' you, or the want o' sugar."
A day's headache was pretty sure to visit Fleda after any overexertion or exhaustion, and the next day justified Barby's fears. She was the quiet prisoner of pain. But Earl Douglass and Mr. Skillcorn could now do without her in the woods; and her own part of the trouble Fleda always took with speechless patience. She had the mixed comfort that love could bestow Hugh's sorrowful kiss and look before setting off for the mill, Mrs. Rossitur's caressing care, and Barby's softened voice, and sympathizing hand on her brow, and hearty heart- speaking kiss; and poor little King lay all day with his head in her lap, casting grave wistful glances up at his mistress's face, and licking her hand with intense affection when even in her distress it stole to his head to reward and comfort him. He never would budge from her side, or her feet, till she could move herself, and he knew that she was well. As sure as King came trotting into the kitchen, Barby used to look into the other room, and say, "So you're better, aint you, Fleda? I knowed it."
After hours of suffering, the fit was at last over; and in the evening, though looking and feeling racked, Fleda would go out to see the sap-boilers. Earl Douglass and Philetus had had a very good day of it, and now were in full blast with the evening part of the work. The weather was mild, and having the stay of Hugh's arm, Fleda grew too amused to leave them.
It was a very pretty scene. The sap-boilers had planted themselves near the cellar door on the other side of the house from the kitchen door and the woodyard the casks and tubs for syrup being under cover there; and there they had made a most picturesque work-place. Two strong crotched sticks were stuck in the ground some six or eight feet apart, and a pole laid upon them, to which by the help of some very rustic hooks two enormous iron kettles were slung. Under them a fine fire of smallish split sticks was doing duty, kept in order by a couple of huge logs which walled it in on the one side and on the other. It was a dark night, and the fire painted all this in strong lights and. shadows threw a faint, fading, Aurora- like light over the snow, beyond the shade of its log barriers; glimmered by turns upon the paling of the garden fence, whenever the dark figures that were passing and repassing between gave it a chance; and invested the cellar- opening and the outstanding corner of the house with striking and unwonted dignity, in a light that revealed nothing except to the imagination. Nothing was more fancifully dignified, or more quaintly travestied by that light than the figures around it, busy and flitting about, and showing themselves in every novel variety of grouping and colouring. There was Earl Douglass, not a hair different from what he was every day in reality, but with his dark skin and eyes, and a hat that, like its master, had concluded to abjure all fashions; and perhaps, for the same reason, he looked now like any bandit, and now, in a more pacific view, could pass for nothing less than a Spanish shepherd at least, with an iron ladle in lieu of crook. There was Dr. Quackenboss, who had come too, determined, as Earl said, "to keep his eend up," excessively bland, and busy, and important; the fire would throw his one- sidedness of feature into such aspects of gravity or sternness that Fleda could make nothing of him but a poor clergyman or a poor schoolmaster alternately. Philetus, who was kept handing about a bucket of sap, or trudging off for wood, defied all comparison he was Philetus still; but when Barby came once or twice and peered into the kettle, her strong features, with the handkerchief she always wore about her head, were lit up into a very handsome gipsy. Fleda stood some time unseen in the shadow of the house to enjoy the sight, and then went forward on the same principle that a sovereign princess shows herself to her army, to grace and reward the labours of her servants. The doctor was profuse in inquiries after her health, and Earl informed her of the success of the day.
"We've had first-rate weather," he said; "I don't want to see no better weather for sugar-makin'; it's as good kind o' weather as you need to have. It friz everythin' up tight in the night, and it thew in the sun this morning as soon as the sun was anywhere; the trees couldn't do no better than they have done. I guess we ha'n't got much this side o' two hundred gallon I aint sure about it, but that's what I think; there's nigh two hundred gallon we've fetched down; I'll qualify to better than a hundred and fifty, or a hundred and sixty either. We should ha' had more yet if Mr. Skillcorn hadn't managed to spill over one cask of it I reckon he wanted it for sass for his chicken."
"Now, Mr. Douglass!" said Philetus, in a comical tone of deprecation.
"It is an uncommonly fine lot of sugar trees," said the doctor; "and they stand so on the ground as to give great felicities to the oxen."
"Now, Fleda," Earl went on, busy all the while with his iron ladle in dipping the boiling sap from one kettle into the other "you know how this is fixed when we've done all we've got to do with it? it must be strained out o' this biler into a cask or a tub, or somethin' nother anythin' that'll hold it and stand a day or so; you may strain it through a cotton cloth, or through a woollen cloth, or through any kind of a cloth, and let it stand to settle; and then when it's biled down Barby knows about bilin' down you can tell when it's comin' to the sugar when the yellow blobbers rises thick to the top and puffs off; and then it's time to try it in cold water it's best to be a leetle the right side o' the sugar and stop afore it's done too much, for the molasses will dreen off afterwards"
"It must be clarified in the commencement," put in the doctor.