"Never seen buckwheats! why, they're most as good as my
mother's splitters. Buckwheat cakes and maple molasses —
that's food fit for a king, I think — when they're good; and
Miss Fortune's are always first-rate."
Miss Fortune did not relent at all at this compliment.
"What makes you so white, this morning?" Mr. Van Brunt
presently went on; — "you ain't well, be you?"
"Yes," said Ellen, doubtfully — "I'm well" —
"She's as well as I am, Mr. Van Brunt, if you don't go and put
her up to any notions!" Miss Fortune said, in a kind of choked
voice.
Mr. Van Brunt hemmed, and said no more to the end of
breakfast-time.
Ellen rather dreaded what was to come next, for her aunt's
look was ominous. In dead silence the things were put away,
and put up, and in course of washing and drying, when Miss
Fortune suddenly broke forth —
"What did you do with yourself yesterday afternoon?"
"I was up on the mountain," said Ellen.
"What mountain?"
"I believe they call it the Nose."
"What business had you up there?"
"I hadn't any business there."
"What did you go there for?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing! — you expect me to believe that? you call yourself a
truth-teller, I suppose?"
"Mamma used to say I was," said poor Ellen, striving to
swallow her feelings.
"Your mother! — I daresay — mothers always are blind. I
daresay she took everything you said for gospel!"
Ellen was silent, from sheer want of words that were pointed
enough to suit her.
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