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 sewing woman. "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."
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.