It was another hand however that brought them and laid them beside her; but Fleda very intent upon her work and hidden under her close hood did not find it out. She went on busily putting in the plants as she found room for them, and just conscious, as she thought, that Philetus was still standing at her side she called upon him from time to time, or merely stretched out her hand, for a fresh plant as she had occasion for it.
"Philetus," she said at length, raising her voice a little that it might win to him round the edge of her hood without turning her face,--"I wish you would get the ground ready for that other planting of potatoes--you needn't stay to help me any longer."
"'Tain't me, I guess," said the voice of Philetus on the other side of her.
Fleda looked in astonishment to make sure that it really was Mr. Skillcorn proceeding along the garden path in that quarter, and turning jumped up and dropped her trowel and fork, to have her hands otherwise occupied. Mr. Skillcorn walked off leisurely towards the potato ground, singing to himself in a kind of consolatory aside,--
"I cocked up my beaver, and who but I!--
The lace in my hat was so gallant and so gay,
That I flourished like a king in his own countray."
"There is one of your countrymen that is an odd variety, certainly," said Mr. Carleton, looking after him with a very comic expression of eye.
"Is he not!" said Fleda. "And hardly a common one. There never was a line more mathematically straight than the course of Philetus's ideas; they never diverge, I think, to the right hand or the left, a jot from his own self-interest."
"You will be an invaluable help to me, Elfie, if you can read my English friends as closely."
"I am afraid you will not let me come as close to them," said Fleda laughing.
"Perhaps not. I shouldn't like to pay too high a premium for the knowledge. How is Hugh, to-day?"