"How large a family has the minister?"
"He ha'n't a bit of a family! He ain't married."
"Not!"
At the grave way in which Mrs. Douglass faced around upon her and answered, and at the idea of a single mouth devoted to all that closetful, Fleda's gravity gave place to most uncontrollable merriment.
"No," said Mrs. Douglass, with a curious twist of her mouth but commanding herself,--"he ain't to be sure--not yet. He ha'n't any family but himself and some sort of a housekeeper, I suppose; they'll divide the house between 'em."
"And the biscuits, I hope," said Fleda. "But what will he do with all the other things, Mrs. Douglass?"
"Sell 'em if he don't want 'em," said Mrs. Douglass quizzically. "Shut up, Fleda, I forget who sent them biscuit--somebody that calculated to make a shew for a little, I reckon.--My sakes! I believe it was Mis' Springer herself!--she didn't hear me though," said Mrs. Douglass peeping out of the half-open door. "It's a good thing the world ain't all alike;--there's Mis' Plumfield--stop now, and I'll tell you all she sent;--that big jar of lard, there's as good as eighteen or twenty pound,--and that basket of eggs, I don't know how many there is,--and that cheese, a real fine one I'll be bound, she wouldn't pick out the worst in her dairy,--and Seth fetched down a hundred weight of corn meal and another of rye flour; now that's what I call doing things something like; if everybody else would keep up their end as well as they keep up their'n the world wouldn't be quite so one-sided as it is. I never see the time yet when I couldn't tell where to find Mis' Plumfield."
"No, nor anybody else," said Fleda looking happy.
"There's Mis' Silbert couldn't find nothing better to send than a kag of soap," Mrs. Douglass went on, seeming very much amused;--"I was beat when I saw that walk in! I should think she'd feel streaked to come here by and by and see it a standing between Mis' Plumfield's lard and Mis' Clavering's pork--that's a handsome kag of pork, ain't it? What's that man done with your strawberries?--I'll put 'em up here afore somebody takes a notion to 'em.--I'll let the minister know who he's got to thank for 'em," said she, winking at Fleda. "Where's Dr. Quackenboss?"
"Coming, ma'am!" sounded from the hall, and forthwith at the open door entered the doctor's head, simultaneously with a large cheese which he was rolling before him, the rest of the doctor's person being thrown into the background in consequence. A curious natural representation of a wheelbarrow, the wheel being the only artificial part.