"I wonder what the family or anybody in it would do without Fleda!" said Hugh, his gentle eyes quite firing with indignation. "You had better know more before you speak, Charlton."
"What is there for me to know?"
"Fleda does everything."
"So I say; and that is what I don't like."
"How little you know what you are talking about!" said Hugh. "I can tell you she is the life of the house, almost literally; we should have had little enough to live upon this summer if it had not been for her."
"What do you mean?"--impatiently enough.
"Fleda--if it had not been for her gardening and management. She has taken care of the garden these two years and sold I can't tell you how much from it. Mr. Sweet, the hotel-man at the Pool, takes all we can give him."
"How much does her 'taking care of the garden' amount to?"
"It amounts to all the planting and nearly all the other work, after the first digging,--by far the greater part of it."
Charlton walked up and down a few turns in most unsatisfied silence.