Mr. Van Brunt, seemingly dubious about the success of this line of conduct, stroked his chin and his axe alternately two or three times in silence, and finally walked off. Ellen, without waiting for her courage to cool, went directly into the house. Miss Fortune, however, was not in the kitchen; to follow her into her secret haunts, the dairy, cellar, or lower kitchen, was not to be thought of. Ellen waited a while, but her aunt did not come, and the excitement of the moment cooled down. She was not quite so ready to enter upon the business as she had felt at first; she had even some qualms about it. "But I'll do it!" said Ellen to herself — "it will be hard, but I'll do it!" CHAPTER XIV. Work _not_ deferred. The next morning, after breakfast, Ellen found the chance she rather dreaded than wished for. Mr. Van Brunt had gone out; the old lady had not left her room, and Miss Fortune was quietly seated by the fire, busied with some mysteries of cooking. Like a true coward, Ellen could not make up her mind to bolt at once into the thick of the matter, but thought to come to it gradually — always a bad way. "What is that, Aunt Fortune?" said she, after she had watched her with a beating heart for about five minutes. "What is what?" "I mean, what is that you are straining through the colander into that jar?" "Hop-water." "What is it for?" "I'm scalding this meal with it to make turnpikes." "Turnpikes!" said Ellen — "I thought turnpikes were high, smooth roads, with toll-gates every now and then — that's what Mamma told me they were." "That's all the kind of turnpikes your Mamma knew anything about, I reckon," said Miss Fortune, in a tone that conveyed the notion that Mrs. Montgomery's education had been very incomplete. "And indeed," she added, immediately after, "if she had made more turnpikes and paid fewer tolls, it would have been just as well, I'm thinking." Ellen felt the tone, if she did not thoroughly understand the words. She was silent for a moment; then remembering her purpose, she began again — "What are these, then, aunt Fortune?" "Cakes, child, cakes — turnpike-cakes — what I raise the bread with." "What, those little brown cakes I have seen you melt in water and mix in the flour when you make bread?" "Mercy on us! yes! you've seen hundreds of 'em since you've been here, if you never saw one before." "I never did," said Ellen. "But what are they called turnpikes for?" "The land knows! — I don't. For mercy's sake, stop asking me questions, Ellen; I don't know what's gotten into you; you'll drive me crazy." "But there's one more question I want to ask very much," said Ellen, with her heart beating. "Well, ask it, then, quick, and have done, and take yourself off. I have other fish to fry than to answer all your questions." Miss Fortune, however, was still quietly seated by the fire stirring her meal and hop-water, and Ellen could not be quick; the words stuck in her throat — came out at last.