"Well it beats me," she said taking up her dishcloth again, "why you should have anything to trouble you. I can understand wicked folks being plagued, but I can't see the sense of the good ones."
"Troubles are to make good people better, Barby."
"Well," said Barby with a very odd mixture of real feeling and seeming want of it,--"it's a wonder I never got religion, for I will say that all the decent people I ever see were of that kind!--Mis' Rossitur ain't though, is she?"
"No," said Fleda, a pang crossing her at the thought that all her aunt's loveliness must tell directly and heavily in this case to lighten religion's testimony. It was that thought and no other which saddened her brow as she went back into the other room.
"Troubles already!" said Mrs. Rossitur. "You will be sorry you have come back to them, dear."
"No indeed!" said Fleda brightly; "I am very glad I have come home. We will try and manage the troubles, aunt Lucy."
There was no doing anything that day, but the very next afternoon Fleda and Hugh walked down through the snow to Mrs. Douglass's. It was a long walk and a cold one and the snow was heavy; but the pleasure of being together made up for it all. It was a bright walk, too, in spite of everything.
In a most thrifty-looking well-painted farm-house lived Mrs. Douglass.
"Why 'tain't you, is it?" she said when she opened the door,--"Catharine said it was, and I said I guessed it wa'n't, for I reckoned you had made up your mind not to come and see me at all.--How do you do?"
The last sentence in the tone of hearty and earnest hospitality. Fleda made her excuses.