"Mr. Rossitur is a most gentlemanlike man," said the voice of Dr. Quackenboss.
"Ay,--I dare say he is," Earl responded in precisely the same tone. "I was down to his house one day last summer to see him.--He wa'n't to hum, though."
"It would be strange if harm come to a man with such a guardian angel in the house as that man has in his'n," said Dr. Quackenboss.
"Well she's a pretty creetur'!" said Douglass, looking up with some animation. "I wouldn't blame any man that sot a good deal by her. I will say I think she's as handsome as my own darter; and a man can't go no furder than that I suppose."
"She won't help his farming much, I guess," said uncle Joshua,--"nor his wife, nother."
Fleda heard Dr. Quackenboss coming through the doorway and started from her corner for fear he might find her out there and know what she had heard.
He very soon found her out in the new place she had chosen and came up to pay his compliments. Fleda was in a mood for anything but laughing, yet the mixture of the ludicrous which the doctor administered set her nerves a twitching. Bringing his chair down sideways at one angle and his person at another, so as to meet at the moment of the chair's touching the floor, and with a look and smile slanting to match, the doctor said,
"Well, Miss Ringgan, has--a--Mrs. Rossitur,--does she feel herself reconciled yet?"
"Reconciled, sir?" said Fleda.
"Yes--a--to Queechy?"