"Well, how do you like him?"
"I believe everybody likes him," said Fleda, colouring and vexed at herself that she could not help it. The bright eyes opposite her took note of the fact with a sufficiently wide-awake glance.
"He's very good!" said Constance hugging herself, and taking a fresh supply of butter,--"but don't let him know I have been to see you or he'll tell you all sorts of evil things about me for fear you should innocently be contaminated. Don't you like to be taken care of?"
"Very much," said Fleda smiling,--"by people that know how."
"I can't bear it!" said Constance, apparently with great sincerity;--"I think it is the most impertinent thing in the world people can do. I can't endure it--except from--! Oh my dear Fleda! it is perfect luxury to have him put a shawl round your shoulders!--"
"Fleda," said Earl Douglass putting his head in from the kitchen, and before he said any more bobbing it frankly at Miss Evelyn, half in acknowledgment of her presence and half as it seemed in apology for his own,--"Fleda, will you let Barby pack up somethin' 'nother for the men's lunch?--my wife would ha' done it, as she had ought to, if she wa'n't down with the teeth-ache, and Catherine's away on a jig to Kenton, and the men won't do so much work on nothin', and I can't say nothin' to 'em if they don't; and I'd like to get that 'ere clover field down afore night--it's goin' to be a fine spell o' weather. I was a goin' to try to get along without it; but I believe we can't."
"Very well," said Fleda. "But, Mr. Douglass, you'll try the experiment of curing it in cocks?"
"Well I don't know," said Earl in a tone of very discontented acquiescence,--"I don't see how anythin' should be as sweet as the sun for dryin' hay--I know folks says it is, and I've heerd 'em say it is! and they'll stand to it and you can't beat 'em off the notion it is; but somehow or 'nother I can't seem to come into it. I know the sun makes sweet hay, and I think the sun was meant to make hay, and I don't want to see no sweeter hay than the sun makes; it's as good hay as you need to have."
"But you wouldn't mind trying it for once, Mr. Douglass, just for me?"
"I'll do just what you please," said he with a little exculpatory shake of his head;--"'tain't my concern--it's no concern of mine--the gain or the loss'll be your'n, and it's fair you should have the gain or the loss, which ever on 'em you choose to have. I'll put it in cocks--how much heft should be in 'em?"