"I have come to see if you wouldn't come and live with my aunt, Mrs. Rossitur. We are left alone and want somebody very much; and I thought I would find you out and see if we couldn't have you, first of all,--before I looked for anybody else."
Cynthy was absolutely silent. She sat before the fire, her feet stretched out towards it as far as they would go and her arms crossed, and not moving her steady gaze at the smoking wood, or the chimney-back, whichever it might be; but there was in the corners of her mouth the threatening of a smile that Fleda did not at all like.
"What do you say to it, Cynthy?"
"I reckon you'd best get somebody else," said Miss Gall with a kind of condescending dryness, and the smile shewing a little more.
"Why?" said Fleda, "I would a great deal rather have an old friend than a stranger."
"Be you the housekeeper?" said Cynthy a little abruptly.
"O I am a little of everything," said Fleda;--"cook and housekeeper and whatever comes first. I want you to come and be housekeeper, Cynthy."
"I reckon Mis' Rossitur don't have much to do with her help, does she?" said Cynthy after a pause, during which the corners of her mouth never changed. The tone of piqued independence let some light into Fleda's mind.
"She is not strong enough to do much herself, and she wants some one that will take all the trouble from her. You'd have the field all to yourself, Cynthy."
"Your aunt sets two tables I calculate, don't she?"