The sewing-woman greeted this speech with an unqualified ha! ha! and Fleda involuntarily raised her head to look at the last speaker; but there was nothing to be noticed about her, except that she was in rather nicer order than the rest of the Finn family.
"Did you get home safe last night?" inquired Miss Quackenboss, bending forward over the quilt to look down to Fleda.
Fleda thanked her, and replied that they had been overturned and had several ribs broken.
"And where have you been, Fleda, all this while?" said Mrs. Douglass.
Fleda told, upon which all the quilting-party raised their heads simultaneously to take another review of her.
"Your uncle's wife ain't a Frenchwoman, be she?" asked the sewing-woman.
Fleda said "oh no"--and Miss Quackenboss remarked that "she thought she wa'n't;" whereby Fleda perceived it had been a subject of discussion.
"She lives like one, don't she?" said aunt Syra.
Which imputation Fleda also refuted to the best of her power.
"Well, don't she have dinner in the middle of the afternoon?" pursued aunt Syra.