"Here's the first buckwheats of the season," said he, "and I told Miss Fortune I warn't agoing to eat one on 'em if you didn't come down to enjoy 'em along with us. Take two take two! you want 'em to keep each other hot."
Ellen's look and smile thanked him, as, following his advice, she covered one generous "buckwheat" with another as ample.
"That's the thing! Now, here's some prime maple. You like 'em, I guess, don't you?"
"I don't know, yet I have never seen any," said Ellen.
"Never seen buckwheats! why, they're most as good as my mother's splitters. Buckwheat cakes and maple molasses that's food fit for a king, I think when they're good; and Miss Fortune's are always first-rate."
Miss Fortune did not relent at all at this compliment.
"What makes you so white, this morning?" Mr. Van Brunt presently went on; "you ain't well, be you?"
"Yes," said Ellen, doubtfully "I'm well"
"She's as well as I am, Mr. Van Brunt, if you don't go and put her up to any notions!" Miss Fortune said, in a kind of choked voice.
Mr. Van Brunt hemmed, and said no more to the end of breakfast-time.
Ellen rather dreaded what was to come next, for her aunt's look was ominous. In dead silence the things were put away, and put up, and in course of washing and drying, when Miss Fortune suddenly broke forth
"What did you do with yourself yesterday afternoon?"
"Nothing! you expect me to believe that? you call yourself a truth-teller, I suppose?"
"Mamma used to say I was," said poor Ellen, striving to swallow her feelings.
"Your mother! I daresay mothers always are blind. I daresay she took everything you said for gospel!"
Ellen was silent, from sheer want of words that were pointed enough to suit her.
"I wish Morgan could have had the gumption to marry in his own country; but he must go running after a Scotchwoman! A Yankee would have brought up his child to be worth something. Give me Yankees!"
"You don't know anything about my mother," she said. "You oughtn't to speak so it's not right."
"Why ain't it right, I should like to know?" said Miss Fortune; "this is a free country, I guess. Our tongues ain't tied we're all free here."
"I wish we were," muttered Ellen; "I know what I'd do."