"Kate will go with you," said she.
"No, she won't!" ejaculated that young woman.
"Thank you," said I, making a minuet bow, and off I went to the
farm-house. Such a pretty walk it was, too! through a thicket of
birches, down a little hill-side into a hollow full of hoary
chestnut-trees, across a bubbling, dancing brook, and you came out
upon the tiniest orchard in the world, a one-storied house with a red
porch, and a great sweet-brier bush thereby; while up the hill-side
behind stretched a high picket fence, enclosing huge trees, part of
the same brook I had crossed here dammed into a pond, and a
chicken-house of pretentious height and aspect,--one of those model
institutions that are the ruin of gentlemen-farmers and the delight of
women. I had to go into the farm-kitchen for the poultry-yard key.
The door stood open, and I stepped in cautiously, lest I should come
unaware upon some domestic scene not intended to be visible to the
naked eye. And a scene I did come upon, fit for Retzsch to
outline;--the cleanest kitchen, a dresser of white wood under one
window, and the farmer's daughter, Melinda Tucker, moulding bread
thereat in a ponderous tray; her deep red hair,--yes, it was red and
comely! of the deepest bay, full of gilded reflections, and
accompanied by the fair, rose-flushed skin, blue eyes, and scarlet
lips that belong to such hair,--which, as I began to say, was puckered
into a thousand curves trying to curl, and knotted strictly against a
pretty head, while her calico frock-sleeves were pinned-back to the
shoulders, baring such a dimpled pair of arms,--how they did fly up
and down in the tray! I stood still contemplating the picture, and
presently seeing her begin to strip the dough from her pink fingers
and mould it into a mass, I ventured to knock.
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