"And happy, mamma--Fleda don't look miserable--she seems perfectly happy and contented!"
"Yes," said Mrs. Evelyn,--"she has got accustomed to this state of things--it's her life--she makes delicious bread and puddings for her aunt, and raises vegetables for market, and oversees her uncle's farmers, and it isn't a hardship to her; she finds her happiness in it. She is a very good girl! but she might have been made something much better than a farmer's wife."
"You may set your mind at rest on that subject, mamma," said Constance, still using her chop-sticks with great complacency;--"it's my opinion that the farmer is not in existence who is blessed with such a conjugal futurity. I think Fleda's strong pastoral tastes are likely to develope themselves in a new direction."
Mrs. Evelyn looked with a partial smile at the pretty features which the business of eating the strawberries displayed in sundry novel and picturesque points of view; and asked what she meant?
"I don't know,--" said Constance, intent upon her basket,--"I feel a friend's distress for Mr. Thorn--it's all your doing, mamma,--you won't be able to look him in the face when we have Fleda next fall--I am sure I shall not want to look at his! He'll be too savage for anything."
"Mr. Thorn!" said Mr. Carleton.
"Yes," said Mrs. Evelyn in an indulgent tone,--"he was very attentive to her last winter when she was with us, but she went away before anything was decided. I don't think he has forgotten her."
"I shouldn't think anybody could forget her," said Edith.
"I am confident he would be here at this moment," said Constance, "if he wasn't in London."
"But what is 'all mamma's doing,' Constance?" inquired her sister.