"Am I?" said Fleda. "I dare say I am, for I feel so. I have the very same feeling I used to have then, that I am a child, and you taking the care of me into your own hands."
"One half of that is true, and the other half nearly so."
"How good you always were to me!" Fleda said with a sigh.
"Not necessary to balance the debtor and creditor items on both sides," he said with a smile, "as the account bids fair to run a good while."
A silence again, during which Fleda is clearly not enjoying the landscape nor the fine weather.
"Elfie,--what are you meditating?"
She came back from her meditations with a very frank look.
"I was thinking,--Mr. Carleton,--of your notions about female education."
"Well?--"
They had paused upon a rising ground. Fleda hesitated, and then looked up in his face.