"I did."
"It's all over slosh."
"That's Mr. Didenhover's work--he had it out day 'fore yesterday; and if you want it cleaned, Mr. Ringgan, you must speak to him about it. Mr. Didenhover may file his own doings; it's more than I'm a going to."
The old gentleman made no answer, except to acquaint the mare with the fact of his being in readiness to set out. A shade of annoyance and displeasure for a moment was upon his face; but the gate opening from the meadow upon the high road had hardly swung back upon its hinges after letting them out when he recovered the calm sweetness of demeanour that was habitual with him, and seemed as well as his little granddaughter to have given care the go-by for the time. Fleda had before this found out another fault in the harness, or rather in Mr. Didenhover, which like a wise little child she kept to herself. A broken place which her grandfather had ordered to be properly mended was still tied up with the piece of rope which had offended her eyes the last time they had driven out. But she said not a word of it, because "it would only worry grandpa for nothing;" and forgetting it almost immediately she moved on with him in a state of joyous happiness that no mud-stained wagon nor untidy rope-bound harness could stir for an instant. Her spirit was like a clear still-running stream which quietly and surely deposits every defiling and obscuring admixture it may receive from its contact with the grosser elements around; the stream might for a moment be clouded; but a little while, and it would run as clear as ever. Neither Fleda nor her grandfather cared a jot for the want of elegancies which one despised, and the other if she had ever known had well nigh forgotten. What mattered it to her that the little old green wagon was rusty and worn, or that years and service had robbed the old mare of all the jauntiness she had ever possessed, so long as the sun shone and the birds sang? And Mr. Ringgan, in any imaginary comparison, might be pardoned for thinking that he was the proud man, and that his poor little equipage carried such a treasure as many a coach and four went without.
"Where are we going first, grandpa? to the post-office?"
"Just there!"
"How pleasant it is to go there always, isn't it, grandpa? You have the paper to get, and I--I don't very often get a letter, but I have always the hope of getting one; and that's something. Maybe I'll have one to-day, grandpa?" "We'll see. It's time those cousins of yours wrote to you."
"O they don't write to me--it's only Aunt Lucy; I never had a letter from a single one of them, except once from little Hugh,--don't you remember, grandpa? I should think he must be a very nice little boy, shouldn't you?"
"Little boy? why I guess he is about as big as you are, Fleda--he is eleven years old, ain't he?"
"Yes, but I am past eleven, you know, grandpa, and I am a little girl."