"Yes--my uncle doesn't like to have any but his own family around him."
"I guess I shouldn't suit!" said Miss Gall, after another little pause, and stooping very diligently to pick up some scattered shreds from the floor. But Fleda could see the flushed face and the smile which pride and a touch of spiteful pleasure in the revenge she was taking made particularly hateful. She needed no more convincing that Miss Gall "wouldn't suit;" but she was sorry at the same time for the perverseness that had so needlessly disappointed her; and went rather pensively back again down the little foot-path to the waiting wagon.
"This is hardly the romance of life, dear Hugh," she said as she seated herself.
"Haven't you succeeded?"
Fleda shook her head.
"What's the matter?"
"O--pride,--injured pride of station! The wrong of not coming to our table and putting her knife into our butter."
"And living in such a place!" said Hugh.
"You don't know what a place. They are miserably poor, I am sure; and yet--I suppose that the less people have to be proud of the more they make of what is left. Poor people!--"
"Poor Fleda!" said Hugh looking at her. "What will you do now?"