"It all looked green and smooth," said poor Ellen "one part just like another and the first thing I knew, I was up to my ankles."
"What were you there at all for?" said Miss Fortune, shortly enough.
"I couldn't see where the water came from, and I wanted to find out."
"Well you've found out enough for one day, I hope. Just look at those stockings! Han't you got never a pair of coloured stockings, that you must go poking into the mud with white ones?"
"Do you mean to say you never wore any but white ones at home?"
Miss Fortune's thoughts seemed too much for speech, from the way in which she jumped up and went off without saying anything more. She presently came back with an old pair of gray socks, which she bade Ellen put on as soon as her feet were dry.
"How many of those white stockings have you?" she said.
"Mamma bought me half a dozen pair of new ones just before I came away, and I had as many as that of old ones besides."
"Well, now go up to your trunk and bring 'em all down to me every pair of white stockings you have got. There's a pair of old slippers you can put on till your shoes are dry," she said, flinging them to her "They aren't much too big for you."
"They're not much too big for the _socks_ they're a great deal too big for me," thought Ellen. But she said nothing. She gathered all her stockings together and brought them down stairs, as her aunt had bidden her.
"Now you may run out to the barn, to Mr. Van Brunt you'll find him there and tell him I want him to bring me some white maple bark when he comes home to dinner white maple bark, do you hear?"
Away went Ellen, but in a few minutes came back.
"Those great doors are shut, and I can't open them. I knocked, but nobody came."
"Knock at a barn door!" said Miss Fortune. "You must go in at the little cow-house door, at the left, and go round. He's in the lower barn-floor."
The barn stood lower than the level of the chip-yard, from which a little bridge led to the great doorway of the second floor. Passing down the range of outhouses, Ellen came to the little door her aunt had spoken of. "But what in the world should I do if there should be cows inside there?" said she to herself. She peeped in the cow-house was perfectly empty; and cautiously, and with many a fearful glance to the right and left, lest some terrible horned animal should present itself, Ellen made her way across the cow-house, and through the barn-yard, littered thick with straw wet and dry, to the lower barn-floor. The door of this stood wide open. Ellen looked with wonder and pleasure when she got in. It was an immense room the sides showed nothing but hay up to the ceiling, except here and there an enormous upright post; the floor was perfectly clean, only a few locks of hay and grains of wheat scattered upon it; and a pleasant sweet smell was there, Ellen could not tell of what. But no Mr. Van Brunt. She looked about for him, she dragged her disagreeable slippers back and forth over the floor, in vain.