with the fact of his being in readiness to set out. A shade of
annoyance and displeasure for a moment was upon his face; but
the gate opening from the meadow upon the high road had hardly
swung back upon its hinges after letting them out, when he
recovered the calm sweetness of demeanour that was habitual
with him, and seemed as well as his little granddaughter to
have given care the go-by for the time. Fleda had before this
found out another fault in the harness, or rather in Mr.
Didenhover, which like a wise little child she kept to
herself. A broken place which her grandfather had ordered to
be properly mended, was still tied up with the piece of rope
which had offended her eyes the last time they had driven out.
But she said not a word of it, because "it would only worry
grandpa for nothing;" and forgetting it almost immediately,
she moved on with him in a state of joyous happiness that no
mud-stained wagon nor untidy rope-bound harness could stir for
an instant. Her spirit was like a clear still-running stream,
which quietly and surely deposits every defiling and obscuring
admixture it may receive from its contact with the grosser
elements around; the stream might for a moment be clouded; but
a little while, and it would run as clear as ever. Neither
Fleda nor her grandfather cared a jot for the want of
elegancies which one despised, and the other, if she had ever
known, had well nigh forgotten. What mattered it to her that
the little old green wagon was rusty and worn, or that years
and service had robbed the old mare of all the jauntiness she
had ever possessed, so long as the sun shone and the birds
sang? And Mr. Ringgan, in any imaginary comparison, might be
pardoned for thinking that he was the proud man, and that his
poor little equipage carried such a treasure as many a coach