"But I don't know how we're to find any one here in the country--I don't know who'll go to look--I am sure your uncle won't want to,--and Hugh wouldn't know--"
"I'll go," said Fleda cheerfully;--"Hugh and I. We can do famously--if you'll trust me. I won't promise to bring home a French cook."
"No indeed--we must take what we can get. But you can get no one to-day, and they will be off by the morning's coach--what shall we do to-morrow,--for dinner? Your uncle--"
"I'll get dinner," said Fleda caressing her;--"I'll take all that on myself. It sha'n't be a bad dinner either. Uncle Rolf will like what I do for him I dare say. Now cheer up, aunt Lucy!--do--that's all I ask of you. Won't you?--for me?"
She longed to speak a word of that quiet hope with which in every trouble she secretly comforted herself--she wanted to whisper the words that were that moment in her own mind, "Truly I know that it shall be well with them that fear God;"--but her natural reserve and timidity kept her lips shut; to her grief.
The women were paid off and dismissed and departed in the next day's coach from Montepoole. Fleda stood at the front door to see them go, with a curious sense that there was an empty house at her back, and indeed upon her back. And in spite of all the cheeriness of her tone to her aunt, she was not without some shadowy feeling that soberer times might be coming upon them.
"What is to be done now?" said Hugh close beside her.
"O we are going to get somebody else," said Fleda.
"Where?"
"I don't know!--You and I are going to find out."