"I guess this is the first time you ever rid in an ox-cart,
ain't it?"
"Yes," said Ellen; "I never saw one before."
"Han't you never seen an ox-cart! Well — how do you like it?"
"I like it very much indeed. Have we much further to go before
we get to aunt Fortune's house?"
" 'Aunt Fortune's house?' a pretty good bit yet. You see that
mountain over there?" — pointing with his whip to a hill
directly west of them, and about a mile distant.
"Yes," said Ellen.
"That's the Nose. Then you see that other?" — pointing to one
that lay some two miles further south; — "Miss Fortune's house
is just this side of that; it's all of two miles from here."
And urged by this recollection, he again scolded and cheered
the patient oxen, who for the most part kept on their steady
way without any reminder. But perhaps it was for Ellen's sake
that he scarcely touched them with the whip.
"That don't hurt them, not a bit," he remarked to Ellen — "it
only lets them know that I'm here, and they must mind their
business. So you're Miss Fortune's niece, eh?"
"Yes," said Ellen.
"Well," said Mr. Van Brunt, with a desperate attempt at being
complimentary, "I shouldn't care if you was mine too."
Ellen was somewhat astounded, and so utterly unable to echo
the wish, that she said nothing. She did not know it, but Mr.
Van Brunt had made, for him, most extraordinary efforts at
sociability.
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