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Queechy by Susan Warner
page 8 of 1137 (00%)
Didenhover may file his own doings; it's more than I'm a going to."

The old gentleman made no answer, except to acquaint the mare 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 and four went without.

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