"Ah do come, aunt Miriam!" said Fleda; "it will be twice as pleasant if you do; and besides, we want to have everything very nice, you know."
Aunt Miriam smiled at Fleda, and inquired of Miss Gall what she had in the house.
"Why I don't know, Mis' Plumfield," said the lady, while Fleda threw her arms round her aunt and thanked her,--"there ain't nothin' particler--pork and beef and the old story. I've got some first-rate pickles. I calculated to make some sort o' cake in the morning."
"Not a bone of 'em--these six weeks, _I_ don't see how they've gone, for my part. I'd lay any wager there were two in the smoke-house when I took the last one out. If Mr. Didenhover was a little more like a weasel I should think he'd been in."
"Have you cooked that roaster I sent down?"
"No, Mis' Plumfield, I ha'n't--it's such a plaguy sight of trouble!" said Cynthy with a little apologetic giggle;--"I was keepin' it for some day when I hadn't much to do."
"I'll take the trouble of it. I'll be down bright and early in the morning, and we'll see what's best to do. How's your last churning, Cynthy?"
"Well--I guess it's pretty middlin,' Mis' Plumfield."
"'Tisn't anything very remarkable, aunt Miriam," said Fleda shaking her head.
"Well, well," said Mrs. Plumfield smiling, "run away down home now, and I'll come to-morrow, and I guess we'll fix it. But who is it that grandpa has asked?"
"One of them is my cousin, aunt Miriam, that was at West Point, and the other is the nicest English gentleman you ever saw--you will like him very much--he has been with me getting nuts all to-day."
"They're a smart enough couple of chaps," said Cynthia; "they look as if they lived where money was plenty."
"Well I'll come to-morrow," repeated Mrs. Plumfield, "and we'll see about it. Good night, dear!"
She took Fleda's head in both her hands and gave her a most affectionate kiss; and the two petitioners set off homewards again.
Aunt Miriam was not at all like her brother, in feature, though the moral characteristics suited the relationship sufficiently well. There was the expression of strong sense and great benevolence; the unbending uprightness, of mind and body at once; and the dignity of an essentially noble character, not the same as Mr. Ringgan's, but such as well became his sister. She had been brought up among the Quakers, and though now and for many years a staunch Presbyterian, she still retained a tincture of the calm efficient gentleness of mind and manner that belongs so inexplicably to them. More womanly sweetness than was in Mr. Ringgan's blue eye a woman need not wish to have; and perhaps his sister's had not so much. There was no want of it in her heart, nor in her manner, but the many and singular excellencies of her character were a little overshadowed by super-excellent housekeeping. Not a taint of the littleness that sometimes grows therefrom,--not a trace of the narrowness of mind that over-attention to such pursuits is too apt to bring;--on every important occasion aunt Miriam would come out free and unshackled from all the cobweb entanglements of housewifery; she would have tossed housewifery to the winds if need were (but it never was, for in a new sense she always contrived to make both ends meet). It was only in the unbroken everyday course of affairs that aunt Miriam's face shewed any tokens of that incessant train of _small cares_ which had never left their impertinent footprints upon the broad high brow of her brother. Mr. Ringgan had no affinity with small cares; deep serious matters received his deep and serious consideration; but he had as dignified a disdain of trifling annoyances or concernments as any great mastiff or Newfoundlander ever had for the yelping of a little cur.