"Pretty, isn't it?" said Fleda. "Stand a little further back, Mr. Olmney; isn't it quite a wild looking scene, in that peculiar light, and with the snowy background? Look at Philetus now, with that bundle of sticks. Hugh, isn't he exactly like some of the figures in the old pictures of the martyrdoms, bringing billets to feed the fire? that old martyrdom of St. Lawrence whose was it Spagnoletto! at Mrs. Decatur's don't you recollect? It is fine, isn't it, Mr. Olmney?"
"I am afraid," said he, shaking his head a little, "my eye wants training. I have not been once in your company, I believe, without your showing me something I could not see."
"That young lady, Sir," said Dr. Quackenboss, from the far side of the fire, where he was busy giving it more wood; "that young lady, Sir, is a patron to her a to all young ladies."
"A patron!" said Mr. Olmney.
"Passively, not actively, the doctor means," said Fleda, softly.
"Well, I wont say but she's a good girl," said Mr. Douglass, in an abstracted manner, busy with his iron ladle: "she means to be a good girl, she's as clever a girl as you need to have."
Nobody's gravity stood this, excepting Philetus, in whom the principle of fun seemed not to be developed.
"Miss Ringgan, Sir," Dr. Quackenboss went on, with a most benign expression of countenance "Miss Ringgan, Sir, Mr. Olmney, sets an example to all ladies who a have had elegant advantages. She gives her patronage to the agricultural interest in society."
"Not exclusively, I hope?" said Mr. Olmney, smiling, and making the question with his eye of Fleda. But she did not meet it.
"You know," she said, rather quickly, and drawing back from the fire, "I am of an agricultural turn, perforce; in uncle Rolf's absence, I am going to be a farmer myself."