"I always loved them," said Fleda. "But what good company they have been to us for years past, Hugh;--to me especially; I have more reason to love them."
They walked on quietly and soberly to the brow of the tableland, where they parted; Hugh being obliged to go home, and Fleda wishing to pay a visit to her aunt Miriam.
She turned off alone to take the way to the high road and went softly on, no longer certainly in the momentary spirits with which she had shaken hands with the wind and skipped down the mountain; but feeling, and thankful that she felt, a cheerful patience to tread the dusty highway of life.
The old lady had been rather ailing, and from one or two expressions she had let fall Fleda could not help thinking that she looked upon her ailments with a much more serious eye than anybody else thought was called for. It did not, however, appear to-day. She was not worse, and Fleda's slight anxious feeling could find nothing to justify it, if it were not the very calm and quietly happy face and manner of the old lady; and that if it had something to alarm, did much more to sooth. Fleda had sat with her a long time, patience and cheerfulness all the while unconsciously growing in her company; when catching up her bonnet with a sudden haste very unlike her usual collectedness of manner Fleda kissed her aunt and was rushing away.
"But stop!--where are you going, Fleda?"
"Home, aunt Miriam--I must--don't keep me!"
"But what are you going that way for? you can't go home that way?"
"Yes I can."
"How?"
"I can cross the blackberry hill behind the barn and then over the east hill, and then there's nothing but the water-cress meadow."