"Hugh, my dear," said Fleda laughing, "it's a pity you aren't a hunter--I would shake a stick at you with great pleasure. Well, Barby, we will see when I come home."
"I was just a thinkin," said Barby;--"Mis' Douglass sent round to know if Mis' Rossitur would like a piece of fresh meat--Earl's been killing a sheep--there's a nice quarter, she says, if she'd like to have it."
"A quarter of mutton?"--said Fleda,--"I don't know--no, I think not, Barby; I don't know when we should be able to pay it back again.--And yet--Hugh, do you think uncle Rolf will kill another sheep this winter?"
"I am sure he will not," said Hugh;--"there have so many died."
"If he only knowed it, that is a reason for killing more," said Barby,--" and have the good of them while he can."
"Tell Mrs. Douglass we are obliged to her, but we do not want the mutton, Barby."
Hugh went to his chopping and Fleda set out upon her walk; the lines of her face settling into a most fixed gravity so soon as she turned away from the house. It was what might be called a fine winter's day; cold and still, and the sky covered with one uniform grey cloud. The snow lay in uncompromising whiteness thick over all the world; a kindly shelter for the young grain and covering for the soil; but Fleda's spirits just then in another mood saw in it only the cold refusal to hope and the barren check to exertion. The wind had cleared the snow from the trees and fences, and they stood in all their unsoftened blackness and nakedness, bleak and stern. The high grey sky threatened a fresh fall of snow in a few hours; it was just now a lull between two storms; and Fleda's spirits, that sometimes would have laughed in the face of nature's soberness, to-day sank to its own quiet. Her pace neither slackened nor quickened till she reached aunt Miriam's house and entered the kitchen.
Aunt Miriam was in high tide of business over a pot of boiling lard, and the enormous bread-tray by the side of the fire was half full of very tempting light-brown cruller, which however were little more than a kind of sweet bread for the workmen. In the bustle of putting in and taking out aunt Miriam could give her visitor but a word and a look. Fleda pulled off her hood and sitting down watched in unusual silence the old lady's operations.
"And how are they all at your house to-day?" aunt Miriam asked as she was carefully draining her cruller out of the kettle.
Fleda answered that they were as well as usual, but a slight hesitation and the tell-tale tone of her voice made the old lady look at her more narrowly. She came near and kissed that gentle brow and looking in her eyes asked her what the matter was?