"Yes--I expect he'll be along directly--why, what then?"
"Cause I've got ten chickens for him here, and mother said they hadn't ought to be kept no longer, and if he wa'n't to hum I were to fetch 'em back, straight."
"Well he'll be here, so let's have 'em," said Mrs. Douglass biting her lips.
"What's become o' t'other one?" said Earl, as the young man's stick was brought round to the table;--"I guess you've lost it, ha'n't you?"
"My gracious!" was all Philetus's powers were equal to. Mrs. Douglass went off into fits which rendered her incapable of speaking and left the unlucky chicken-bearer to tell his story his own way, but all he brought forth was "Du tell!--I am beat!--"
"Where's t'other one?" said Mrs. Douglass between paroxysms.
"Why I ha'n't done nothin' to it," said Philetus dismally,--there was teu on 'em afore I started, and I took and tied 'em together and hitched 'em onto the stick, and that one must ha' loosened itself off some way.--I believe the darned thing did it o' purpose."
"I guess your mother knowed that one wouldn't keep till it got here," said Mrs. Douglass.
The room was now all one shout, in the midst of which poor Philetus took himself off as speedily as possible. Before Fleda had dried her eyes her attention was taken by a lady and gentleman who had just got out of a vehicle of more than the ordinary pretension and were coming up to the door. The gentleman was young, the lady was not, both had a particularly amiable and pleasant appearance; but about the lady there was something that moved Fleda singularly and somehow touched the spring of old memories, which she felt stirring at the sight of her. As they neared the house she lost them--then they entered the room and came through it slowly, looking about them with an air of good-humoured amusement. Fleda's eye was fixed but her mind puzzled itself in vain to recover what in her experience had been connected with that fair and lady-like physiognomy and the bland smile that was overlooked by those acute eyes. The eyes met hers, and then seemed to reflect her doubt, for they remained as fixed as her own while the lady quickening her steps came up to her.
"I am sure," she said, holding out her hand, and with a gentle graciousness that was very agreeable,--"I am sure you are somebody I know. What is your name?"