"Oh, grandpa!"
Poor Fleda's cheek was hot with a distressful blush. Rossitur coloured with anger. Mr. Carleton's smile had a very different expression.
"If Fleda will have the goodness to recollect," said Rossitur, "I cannot be charged with breaking a promise, for I made none."
"But Mr. Carleton did," said Fleda.
"She is right, Mr. Rossitur, she is right," said that gentleman; "a fallacy might as well elude Ithuriel's spear as the sense of a pure spirit there is no need of written codes. Make your apologies, man, and confess yourself in the wrong."
"Pho, pho," said the old gentleman, "she don't take it very much to heart, I guess I ought to be the one to make the apologies," he added, looking at Fleda's face.
But Fleda commanded herself, with difficulty, and announced that dinner was ready.
"Mr. Rossitur tells me, Mr. Carleton, you are an Englishman," said his host. "I have some notion of that's passing through my head before, but somehow I had entirely lost sight of it when I was speaking so freely to you a little while ago, about our national quarrel I know some of your countrymen owe us a grudge yet."
"Not I, I assure you," said the young Englishman. "I am ashamed of them for it. I congratulate you on being Washington's countryman, and a sharer in his grand struggle for the right against the wrong."
Mr. Ringgan shook his guest's hand, looking very much pleased; and having by this time arrived at the house, the young gentlemen were formally introduced at once to the kitchen, their dinner, and aunt Miriam.