Again her daughter's glance and smile went over to the speaker.
"You stay in Queechy and live like Queechy folks do," Mrs. Douglass added, nodding encouragingly, "and you'll beat both on 'em."
But this speech jarred, and Fleda wished it had not been spoken.
"How does your uncle like farming?" said aunt Syra.
A home-thrust, which Fleda parried by saying he had hardly got accustomed to it yet.
"What's been his business? what has he been doing all his life till now?" said the sewing-woman.
Fleda replied that he had had no business; and after the minds of the company had had time to entertain this statement she was startled by Miss Lucy's voice at her elbow.
"It seems kind o' curious, don't it, that a man should live to be forty or fifty years old and not know anything of the earth he gets his bread from?"
"What makes you think he don't?" said Miss Thornton rather tartly.
"She wa'n't speaking o' nobody," said aunt Syra.