"I'll take my share of credit whenever I can get it," said Earl, "and I think it's right to take it, as long as you ha'n't nothing to be ashamed of; but I won't take no more than my share; and I will say I thought we was a goin' to choke the corn to death when we seeded the field in that way.--Well, there's better than two thousand bushel--more or less--and as handsome corn as I want to see;--there never was handsomer corn. Would you let it go for five shillings?--there's a man I've heerd of wants the hull of it."
"Is that a good price, Mr. Douglass? Why don't you ask Mr. Rossitur?"
"Do you s'pose Mr. Rossitur knows much about it?" inquired Earl with a curious turn of feature, between sly and contemptuous. "The less he has to do with that heap of corn the bigger it'll be--that's my idee, I ain't agoin' to ask him nothin'--you may ask him what you like to ask him--but I don't think he'll tell you much that'll make you and me wiser in the matter o' farmin'."
"But now that he is at home, Mr. Douglass, I certainly cannot decide without speaking to him."
"Very good!" said Earl uneasily,--"'tain't no affair of mine--as you like to have it so you'll have it--just as you please!--But now, Fleda, there's another thing I want to speak to you about--I want you to let me take hold of that 'ere piece of swamp land and bring it in. I knew a man that fixed a piece of land like that and cleared nigh a thousand dollars off it the first year."
"Which piece?" said Fleda.
"Why you know which 'tis--just the other side of the trees over there--between them two little hills. There's six or seven acres of it--nothin' in the world but mud and briars--will you let me take hold of it? I'll do the hull job if you'll give me half the profits for one year.--Come over and look at it, and I'll tell you--come! the walk won't hurt you, and it ain't fur."
All Fleda's inclinations said no, but she thought it was not best to indulge them. She put on her hood and went off with him; and was treated to a long and most implicated detail of ways and means, from which she at length disentangled the rationale of the matter and gave Mr. Douglass the consent he asked for, promising to gain that of her uncle.
The day was fair and mild, and in spite of weariness of body a certain weariness of mind prompted Fleda when she had got rid of Earl Douglass, to go and see her aunt Miriam. She went questioning with herself all the way for her want of good-will to these matters. True, they were not pleasant mind-work; but she tried to school herself into taking them patiently as good life-work. She had had too much pleasant company and enjoyed too much conversation, she said. It had unfitted her for home duties.
Mrs. Plumfield, she knew, was no better. But her eye found no change for the worse. The old lady was very glad to see her, and very cheerful and kind as usual.