[Illustration: "They will expect me at home."]
"So Mr. Rossitur has left the city for good," said aunt Miriam. "How does he like it?"
"He hasn't been here but a day, you know, aunt Miriam," said Fleda evasively.
"Is he anything of a farmer?" asked her cousin.
"I mean, is he going to work the farm himself, or hire it out, or let somebody else work it on shares?"
"I don't know," said Fleda;--"I think he is going to have a farmer and oversee things himself."
"He'll get sick o' that," said Seth; "unless he's the luck to get hold of just the right hand."
"Has he hired anybody yet?" said aunt Miriam, after a little interval of supplying Fleda with 'bread and butter.'
"Donohan,--an Irishman, I believe; uncle Rolf hired him in New York."
"For his head man?" said Seth, with a sufficiently intelligible look.
"The land's in poor heart now," said he, "a good deal of it; it has been wasted; it wants first-rate management to bring it in order and make much of it for two or three years to come. I never see an Irishman's head yet that was worth more than a joke. Their hands are all of 'em that's good for anything."
"I believe uncle Rolf wants to have an American to go with this man," said Fleda.
Seth said nothing, but Fleda understood the shake of his head as he reached over after a pickle.
"Are you going to keep a dairy, Fleda?" said her aunt.
"I don't know, ma'am;--I haven't heard anything about it."
"Does Mrs. Rossitur know anything about country affairs?"
"No--nothing," Fleda said, her heart sinking perceptibly with every new question.
_She_!--any cows!--But Fleda only said they had not come; she believed they were coming.
"Mother you'll have to take hold and learn her," said Mr. Plumfield.
"Teach _her_?" cried Fleda, repelling the idea;--"aunt Lucy? she cannot do anything--she isn't strong enough;--not anything of that kind."
"You know," said his mother, "that Mr. Rossitur's circumstances obliged him to quit New York."
"Ay, but that ain't my question. A man had better keep his fingers off anything he can't live by. A farm's one thing or t'other, just as it's worked. The land won't grow specie--it must be fetched out of it. Is Mr. Rossitur a smart man?"
"Very," Fleda said, "about everything but farming."