The woman upon this raised her voice and directed it at an inner door.
"Lucindy!" said she in a diversity of tones,--"Lucindy!--tell Cynthy here's somebody wants to see her."--But no one answered, and throwing the work from her lap the woman muttered she would go and see, and left Fleda with a cold invitation to sit down.
Dismal work! Fleda wished herself out of it. The house did not look poverty-stricken within, but poverty must have struck to the very heart, Fleda thought, where there was no apparent cherishing of anything. There was no absolute distress visible, neither was there a sign of real comfort or of a happy home. She could not fancy it was one.
She waited so long that she was sure Cynthia did not hold herself in readiness to see company. And when the lady at last came in it was with very evident marks of "smarting up" about her.
"Why it's Flidda Ringgan!" said Miss Gall after a dubious look or two at her visitor. "How do you do? I didn't 'spect to see you. How much you have growed!"
She looked really pleased and gave Fleda's hand a very strong grasp as she shook it.
"There ain't no fire here to-day," pursued Cynthy, paying her attentions to the fireplace,--"we let it go down on account of our being all busy out at the back of the house. I guess you're cold, ain't you?"
Fleda said no, and remembered that the woman she had first seen was certainly not busy at the back of the house nor anywhere else but in that very room, where she had found her deep in a pile of patchwork.
"I heerd you had come to the old place. Were you glad to be back again?" Cynthy asked with a smile that might be taken to express some doubt upon the subject.
"I was very glad to see it again."