After reaching the brow of the hill the road continued on a very gentle ascent towards a little settlement half a quarter of a mile off; passing now and then a few scattered cottages or an occasional mill or turner's shop. Several mills and factories, with a store and a very few dwelling-houses were all the settlement; not enough to entitle it to the name of a village. Beyond these and the mill-ponds, of which in the course of the road there were three or four, and with a brief intervening space of cultivated fields, a single farm house stood alone; just upon the borders of a large and very fair sheet of water from which all the others had their supply.--So large and fair that nobody cavilled at its taking the style of a lake and giving its own pretty name of Deepwater both to the settlement and the farm that half embraced it. This farm was Seth Plumfield's.
At the garden gate Fleda quitted Cynthy and rushed forward to meet her aunt, whom she saw coming round the corner of the house with her gown pinned up behind her from attending to some domestic concern among the pigs, the cows, or the poultry.
"O aunt Miriam," said Fleda eagerly, "we are going to have company to tea to-morrow--won't you come and help us?"
Aunt Miriam laid her hands upon Fleda's shoulders and looked at Cynthy.
"I came up to see if you wouldn't come down to-morrow, Mis' Plumfield," said that personage, with her usual dry business tone, always a little on the wrong side of sweet;--"your brother has taken a notion to ask two young fellers from the Pool to supper, and they're grand folks I s'pose, and have got to have a fuss made for 'em. I don't know what Mr. Ringgan was thinkin' of, or whether he thinks I have got anything to do or not; but anyhow they're a comin', I s'pose, and must have something to eat; and I thought the best thing I could do would be to come and get you into the works, if I could. I should feel a little queer to have nobody but me to say nothin' to them at the table."
"Ah do come, aunt Miriam!" said Fleda; "it will be twice as pleasant if you do; and besides, we want to have everything very nice, you know."
Aunt Miriam smiled at Fleda, and inquired of Miss Gall what she had in the house.
"Why I don't know, Mis' Plumfield," said the lady, while Fleda threw her arms round her aunt and thanked her,--"there ain't nothin' particler--pork and beef and the old story. I've got some first-rate pickles. I calculated to make some sort o' cake in the morning."
"Any of those small hams left?"
"Not a bone of 'em--these six weeks, I don't see how they've gone, for my part. I'd lay any wager there were two in the smoke-house when I took the last one out. If Mr. Didenhover was a little more like a weasel I should think he'd been in."