"Mrs. Rossitur-my aunt."

“Mrs. Rossitur?—what, down to old Squire Ringgan's place?” "Yes. We are left alone and want somebody very much."

"Do you want her only a few days, or do you calculate to have her stop longer? because you know it wouldn't be worth the while to put oneself out for a week."

"Oh we want her to stay-if we suit each other."

"Well, I don't know,” said the woman going on with her sweeping, “I could let you have Hannah, but I 'spect I'll want her to hum. What does Mis' Rossitur calculate to give?"

"I don't know-anything that's reasonable.' "Hannah kin go-just as good as not," said the old woman in the corner, rubbing her hands up and down her lap; “Hannah kin go, just as good as not!"

"Hannah ain't a going," said the first speaker, answering without looking at her. "Hannah 'll be wanted to hum; and she ain't a well girl neither; she's kind o' weak in her muscles; and I calculate you want somebody that can take hold lively. There's Lucy-if she took a notion she could go-but she'd please herself about it. She won't do nothing without she has a notion."

This was inconclusive, and desiring to bring matters to a point Fleda after a pause asked if this lady thought Lucy would have a notion to go. 'Well, I can't say—she ain't to hum or you could ask her.

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She's down

to Mis' Douglass', working for her to-day. Do you know Mis' Douglas?— Earl Douglass' wife?"

"Oh yes, I knew her long ago," said Fleda, thinking it might be as we!! to throw in a spice of ingratiation; "I am Fleda Ringgan. I used to live here with my grandfather.”

"Don't say? Well I thought you had a kind o' look-the old Squire's granddarter ain't you?"

"She looks like her father," said the sewing-woman, laying down her needle, which indeed had been little hindrance to her admiration since Fleda came in.

"She's a real pretty gal," said the old woman in the corner.

"He was as smart a lookin' man as there was in Queechy township, or Montepoole either," the sewing-woman went on. "Do you mind him, Flidda?"

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Anastasy," said the old woman aside, "let Hannah go!"

"Hannah's going to keep to hum! Well, about Lucy," she said, as Fleda rose to go,—“I can't just say--suppos'n you come here to-morrow afternoon-there's a few coming to quilt, and Lucy'll be to hum then. I should admire to have you,--and then you and Lucy can agree what you'll fix upon.

You can get somebody to bring you, can't you?"

Fleda inwardly shrank, but managed to get off with thanks and without making a positive promise, which Miss Anastasia would fain have had. She was glad to be out of the house and driving off with Hugh.

"How delicious the open air feels!"

"What has this visit produced?" said Hugh.

"An invitation to a party, and a slight possibility that at the party I may find what I want."

"A party!" said Hugh. Fleda laughed and explained.

"And do you intend to go?"

"Not I!—at least I think not.

But Hugh, don't say anything about all

this to aunt Lucy. She would be troubled."

Fleda had certainly when she came away no notion of improving her acquaintance with Miss Anastasia; but the supper, and the breakfast and the dinner of the next day, with all the nameless and almost numberless duties of housework that filled up the time between, wrought her to a very strong sense of the necessity of having some kind of "help" soon. Mrs. Rossitur wearied herself excessively with doing very little, and then looked so sad to see Fleda working on, that it was more disheartening and harder to bear than the fatigue. Hugh was a most faithful and invaluable coadjutor, and his lack of strength was like her own made up by energy of will; but neither of them could bear the strain long; and when the final clearing away of the dinner-dishes gave her a breathing-time, she resolved to dress herself and put her thimble in her pocket and go over to Miss Finn's quilting. Miss Lucy might not be like Miss Anastasia; and if she were, any. thing that had hands and feet to move instead of her own would be wel

come.

Hugh went with her to the door and was to come for her at sunset.

M

CHAPTER XX.

With superfluity of breeding

First makes you sick, and then with feeding.-Fenyns.

ISS ANASTASIA was a little surprised and a good deal gratified, Fleda saw, by her coming, and played the hostess with great benignity. The quilting-frame was stretched in an upper room, not in the long kitchen, to Fleda's joy; most of the company were already seated at it, and she had to go through a long string of introductions before she was permitted to take her place. First of all Earl Douglass's wife, who rose up and taking both Fleda's hands squeezed and shook them heartily, giving her with eye and lip a most genial welcome. This lady had every look of being a very clever woman; 'a manager" she was said to be; and indeed her very nose had a little pinch which prepared one for nothing superfluous

about her. Even her dress could not have wanted another breadth from the skirt and had no fulness to spare about the body. Neat as a pin though, and a well-to-do look through it all. Miss Quackenboss Fleda recognised as an old friend, gilt beads and all. Catherine Douglass had grown up to a pretty girl during the five years since Fleda had left Queechy, and gave her a greeting half smiling, half shy. There was a little more affluence about the flow of her drapery, and the pink ribbon round her neck was confined by a little dainty Jew's harp of a brooch; she had her mother's pinch of the nose too. Then there were two other young ladies-Miss Letitia Ann Thornton, a tall grown girl in pantalettes, evidently a would-be aristocrat, from the air of her head and lip, with a well-looking face and looking well knowing of the same, and sporting neat little white cuffs at her wrists, the only one who bore such a distinction. The third of these damsels, Jessie Healy, impressed Fleda with having been brought up upon coarse meat and having grown heavy in consequence; the other two were extremely fair and delicate, both in complexion and feature. Her aunt Syra, Fleda recognised without particular pleasure and managed to seat herself at the quilt with the sewing-woman and Miss Hannah between them. Miss Lucy Finn she found seated at her right hand, but after all the civilities she had just gone through Fleda had not courage just then to dash into business with her, and Miss Lucy herself stitched away and was dumb.

So were the rest of the party, rather. The presence of the new-comer seemed to have the effect of a spell. Fleda could not think they had been as silent before her joining them as they were for some time afterwards. The young ladies were absolutely mute, and conversation seemed to flag even among the elder ones; and if Fleda ever raised her eyes from the quilt to look at somebody, she was sure to see somebody's eyes looking at her with a curiosity well enough defined and mixed with a more or less amount of benevolence and pleasure. Fleda was growing very industrious and feeling her cheeks grow warm, when the checked stream of conversation began to take revenge by turning its tide upon her.

"Are you glad to be back to Queechy, Fleda?” said Mrs. Douglass from the opposite far end of the quilt.

"Yes ma'am," said Fleda, smiling back her answer; on some accounts." "Ain't she growed like her father, Mis' Douglass?" said the sewingwoman. "Do you recollect Walter Ringgan; what a handsome feller he was?" The two opposite girls immediately found something to say to each other. "She ain't a bit more like him than she is like her mother," said Mrs. Douglass, biting off the end of her thread energetically. Amy Ringgan was a sweet good woman as ever was in this town."

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Again her daughter's glance and smile went over to the speaker. "You stay in Queechy and live like Queechy folks do," Mrs. Douglass added, nodding encouragingly, "and you'll beat both on 'em."

But this speech jarred, and Fleda wished it had not been spoken. "How does your uncle like farming?" said Aunt Syra.

A home-thrust, which Fleda parried by saying he had hardly got accustomed to it yet.

"What's been his business? what has he been doing all his life till now?" said the sewing-woman.

Fleda replied that he had had no business; and after the minds of the company had had time to entertain this statement, she was startled by Miss Lucy's voice at her elbow.

"It seems kind o' curious, don't it, that a man should live to be forty or fifty years old and not know anything of the earth he gets his bread from?" "What makes you think he don't?" said Miss Thornton rather tartly. "She wa'n't speaking o' nobody," said Aunt Syra.

"I was-I was speaking of man-I was speaking abstractly," said Fleda's right-hand neighbour.

"What's abstractly?" said Miss Anastasia scornfully.

"Where do you get hold of such hard words, Lucy?" said Mrs. Douglass.

"I don't know, Mis' Douglass; they come to me; it's practice, I suppose. I had no intention of being obscure."

"One kind o' word's as easy as another I suppose, when you're used to it, ain't it?" said the sewing-woman.

"What's abstractly?" said the mistress of the house again.

"Look in the dictionary, if you want to know," said her sister.

"I don't want to know-I only want you to tell."

"When do you get time for it, Lucy? han't you nothing else to practice?" pursued Mrs. Douglass.

"Yes, Mis' Douglass; but then there are times for exertion, and other times less disposable; and when I feel thoughtful, or low, I commonly retire to my room and contemplate the stars or write a composition."

The sewing-woman greeted this speech with an unqualified ha ha! and Fleda involuntarily raised her head to look at the last speaker; but there was nothing to be noticed about her, except that she was in rather nicer order than the rest of the Finn family.

"Did you get home safe last night?" inquired Miss Quackenboss, bending forward over the quilt to look down to Fleda.

Fleda thanked her, and replied that they had been overturned and had several ribs broken.

"And where have you been, Fleda, all this while?" said Mrs. Douglass. Fleda told, upon which all the quilting-party raised their heads simulta neously to take another review of her.

"Your uncle's wife ain't a Frenchwoman, be she?" asked the sewing.

woman.

Fleda said "Oh no!" and Miss Quackenboss remarked that "she thought she wa'n't;" whereby Fled2 perceived it had been a subject of discussion. "She lives like one, don't she?" said Aunt Syra.

Which imputation Fleda also refuted to the best of her power.

"Well don't she have dinner in the middle of the afternoon?” pursued aunt Syra.

Fleda was obliged to admit that.

"And she can't eat without she has a fresh piece of roast meat on table every day, can she?"

"It is not always roast," said Fleda, half vexed and half laughing. "I'd rather have a good dish o' bread and 'lasses than the hull on't;' observed old Mrs. Finn; from the corner where she sat manifestly turning her nose at the far-off joints on Mrs. Rossitur's dinner-table.

up

The girls on the other side of the quilt again held counsel together, deep and low.

“Well didn't she pick up all them notions in that place yonder? where you say she has been?" aunt Syra went on.

"No," said Fleda; "everybody does so in New York."

"I want to know what kind of a place New York is, now," said old Mrs. Finn drawlingly. "I s'pose its pretty big, ain't it?"

Fleda replied that it was.

"I shouldn't wonder if it was a'most as far as from here to Queechy Run, now, ain't it?"

The distance mentioned being somewhere about one-eighth of New York's longest diameter, Fleda answered that it was quite as far.

"I s'pose there's plenty o' mighty rich folks there, ain't there?"

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Plenty, I believe, said Fleda."

"I

"I should hate to live in it awfully!" was the old woman's conclusion. "I should admire to travel in many countries," said Miss Lucy, for the first time seeming to intend her words particularly for Fleda's ear. think nothing makes people more genteel. I have observed it frequently." Fleda said it was very pleasant; but though encouraged by this opening could not muster enough courage to ask if Miss Lucy had a "notion" to come and prove their gentility. Her next question was startling,-if Fleda had ever studied mathematics?

"No," said Fleda. "Have you?"

"Oh my, yes! There was a lot of us concluded we would learn it; and we commenced to study it a long time ago. I think it's a most elevating

The discussion was suddenly broken off, for the sewing-woman exclaimed, as the other sister came in and took her seat

"Why Hannah! you ha'n't been makin' bread with that crock on your hands!"