"Listen, aunt Lucy," said Fleda, pressing a hand on her shoulder; "listen, and don't cry so. I'll go and make all right, if efforts can do it. I am not going alone I'll get Seth to go with me, and I can sleep in the cars, and rest nicely in the steamboat. I shall feel happy and well when I know that I am leaving you easier, and doing all that can be done to bring uncle Rolf home. Leave me to manage, and don't say anything to Marion it is one blessed thing that she need not know anything about all this. I shall feel better than if I were at home, and had trusted this business to any other hands."
"You are the blessing of my life," said Mrs. Rossitur.
"Cheer up, and come down and let us have some tea," said Fleda, kissing her; "I feel as if that would make me up a little; and then I'll write the letters. I sha'n't want but very little baggage; there'll be nothing to pack up."
Philetus was sent up the hill with a note to Seth Plumfield, and brought home a favourable answer. Fleda thought, as she went to rest, that it was well the mind's strength could sometimes act independently of its servant, the body, hers felt so very shattered and unsubstantial.
CHAPTER XIV.
"I thank you for your company; but, good faith, I had as lief have been myself alone." AS YOU LIKE IT.
The first thing next morning, Seth Plumfield came down to say that he had seen Dr. Quackenboss the night before, and had chanced to find out that he was going to New York, too, this very day; and knowing that the doctor would be just as safe an escort as himself, Seth had made over the charge of his cousin to him; "calculating," he said, "that it would make no difference to Fleda, and that he had better stay at home with his mother."
Fleda said nothing, and looked as little as possible of her disappointment, and her cousin went away wholly unsuspecting of it.
"Seth Plumfield ha'n't done a smarter thing than that in a good while," Barby remarked, satirically, as he was shutting the door. "I should think he'd ha' hurt himself."
"I dare say the doctor will take good care of me," said Fleda; "as good as he knows how."