"O we'll do somehow," said she cheerfully. "Perhaps it is just as well after all, for Cynthy isn't the smartest woman in the world. I remember grandpa used to say he didn't believe she could get a bean into the middle of her bread."
"A bean into the middle of her bread!" said Hugh.
But Fleda's sobriety was quite banished by his mystified look, and her laugh rang along over the fields before she answered him.
That laugh had blown away all the vapours, for the present at least, and they jogged on again very sociably.
"Do you know," said Fleda, after a while of silent enjoyment in the changes of scene and the mild autumn weather,--"I am not sure that it wasn't very well for me that we came away from New York."
"I dare say it was," said Hugh,--"since we came; but what makes you say so?"
"I don't mean that it was for anybody else, but for me. I think I was a little proud of our nice things there."
"You, Fleda!" said Hugh with a look of appreciating affection.
"Yes I was, a little. It didn't make the greatest part of my love for them, I am sure; but I think I had a little, undefined, sort of pleasure in the feeling that they were better and prettier than other people had."
"You are sure you are not proud of your little King Charles now?" said Hugh.