Fleda's natural inquisitiveness carried her often to the housekeeper's room, and made her there the same curious and careful observer that she had been in the library or at the Louvre.
"Come," said Hugh one day when he had sought and found her in Mrs. Renney's precincts,--"come away, Fleda! What do you want to stand here and see Mrs. Renney roll butter and sugar for?"
"My dear Mr. Rossitur!" said Fleda,--"you don't understand quelquechoses. How do you know but I may have to get my living by making them, some day."
"Quelquechoses,--anglicé, kickshaws,--alias, sweet trifles denominated merrings."
"Miss Fleda is more likely to get her living by eating them, Mr. Hugh, isn't she?" said the housekeeper.
"I hope to decline both lines of life," said Fleda laughingly as she followed Hugh out of the room. But her chance remark had grazed the truth sufficiently near.
Those years in New York were a happy time for little Fleda, a time when mind and body flourished under the sun of prosperity. Luxury did not spoil her; and any one that saw her in the soft furs of her winter wrappings would have said that delicate cheek and frame were never made to know the unkindliness of harsher things.
Whereunto is money good? Who has it not wants hardihood, Who has it has much trouble and care, Who once has had it has despair.
It was the middle of winter. One day Hugh and Fleda had come home from their walk. They dashed into the parlour, complaining that it was bitterly cold, and began unrobing before the glowing grate, which was a mass of living fire from end to end. Mrs. Rossitur was there in an easy chair, alone and doing nothing. That was not a thing absolutely unheard of, but Fleda had not pulled off her second glove before she bent down towards her and in a changed tone tenderly asked if she did not feel well?
Mrs. Rossitur looked up in her face a minute, and then drawing her down kissed the blooming cheeks one and the other several times. But as she looked off to the fire again Fleda saw that it was through watering eyes. She dropped on her knees by the side of the easy chair that she might have a better sight of that face, and tried to read it as she asked again what was the matter; and Hugh coming to the other side repeated her question. His mother passed an arm round each, looking wistfully from one to the other and kissing them earnestly, but she said only, with a very heart-felt emphasis, "Poor children!"