"I don't know,--" said Fleda, eyes and voice wavering alike,--"I am foolish, I believe,--"
Aunt Miriam tenderly put aside the hair from her forehead and kissed it again, but the cruller was burning and she went back to the kettle.
"I got down-hearted somehow this morning," Fleda went on, trying to steady her voice and school herself.
"You down-hearted, dear? About what?"
There was a world of sympathy in these words, in the warmth of which Fleda's shut-up heart unfolded itself at once.
"It's nothing new, aunt Miriam,--only somehow I felt it particularly this morning,--I have been kept in the house so long by this snow I have got dumpish I suppose.--"
Aunt Miriam looked anxiously at the tears which seemed to come involuntarily, but she said nothing.
"We are not getting along well at home."
"I supposed that," said Mrs. Plumfield quietly. "But anything new?"
"Yes--uncle Rolf has let the farm--only think of it!--he has let the farm to that Didenhover."