Faith turned away and said rather quickly, "Endy, how did you know?"

"From some lesson evidence. And I always hear you come down--and whiles I see a face at breakfast which has not lately come from rest."

Faith's secret thought was that it was better than rest. But after folding her hands with a grave face, she looked up at Mr. Linden with a smile which yielded the whole question.

"To prove to you what a naughty child you have been," said Mr. Linden, "I shall give you an increase of outdoor lessons, and take you off on an expedition the first mild day. On which occasion you may study me--if you have any of Miss Essie's curiosity."

"Don't I?" said Faith. "And I am going to do it more. What expedition are you going on, Endecott?"

"Up to Kildeer river--I have business there. Will you trust yourself to me in a boat--if I will let you steer?"

"I'll do anything to go," said Faith. "And I suppose if I steered wrong, the helm would come about pretty quick!" And so ended her last early morning studies.

It was in the afternoon of the same day that Faith put in practice what she had been thinking of when she avowed her determination of further studying Mr. Linden. He had come home from school, and it was the dusky hour again; the pleasant interregnum between day and night when even busy folk take a little time to think and rest. Mr. Linden was indulging in both apparently; he was in one of those quiet times of doing nothing which Faith chose for making any of her very gentle attacks upon him. One seemed to be in meditation now. She stole up behind him and leaned down on the back of his chair, after her wont.

"Endecott"--she said softly.

Faith's voice was in ordinary a pleasant thing to hear; but this name from her lips was always a concretion of sweetness, flavoured differently as the case might be. Sometimes with mere gladness, sometimes with the spirit of fun, often enough with a little timidity, and sometimes with a rose-drop from the very bottom of her heart's well; with various compounds of the same. But this time it was more than timidity; Faith's one word was spoken as from lips that were positively afraid to follow it with others.

"That note," said Mr. Linden smiling, "seems to come from the top of a primeval pine tree--with a hawk in sight! Little bird, will you please come down into the lower regions of air?--where you can be (comparatively) safe."

Faith laughed; but the hawk remained in sight--of her words.

"You said this morning I never asked you any but impossible things."

"Most sorrowfully true!--have you another one ready?"

"If I ask you something possible, what will you do?" she said, softly touching the side of his head with her hand. It was Faith's utmost freedom; a sort of gentle admiring touch of her fingers which the thick locks of hair felt hardly more than a spider's feet.

"That depends so much upon the thing!" he said, half turning to give her the look which belonged to his words. "There are such a variety of ways in which I might deal with it--and with you."

"I am not going to ask you anything but what would be right."

"You do not doubt that my answer will be conformable?"

"Yes I do. It will be your 'right,' but it may not be my 'right,' you know."

"If you get what is not your right, you ought to be contented," said Mr. Linden.

"Now you have turned me and my meaning round! Endecott--you know Aunt Dilly gave me something?--mayn't I--won't you let me lend it to you?"

Very low and doubtfully the words came out! But if Faith had any more to say, she had little chance for a while. One quick look round at her Mr. Linden gave, but then he sprang up and came to where she stood, lifting her face and giving her her "right" in one sense at least.

Other answer he made none.

"Endy--have I asked a possible thing this time?" she said under breath.

"My precious child!--Do you think it possible?"

"It ought to be possible, Endecott." And if ever an humble suggestion of a possibility was made, Faith made it then.

"I shall have to go back to my first answer," said Mr. Linden,--"I have no words for any other. Faith, dearest--don't you know that it is not needful? Will that content you, little sweet one?"

A soft "no."

"Why not?" he said, making good his threat. "What do you want me to have more than I need?"

"I fear the ways you will take to make that true. I should think you might, Endecott!"--The ellipsis was not hard to supply.

"I shall not take any unlawful means--nor any unwise ones, I hope," he said lightly. "What are you afraid I shall do?"

"Get up early in the morning," she whispered.

"But that is so pleasant! Do you suppose I get up late now, little bird?"

"Not late, with breakfast at seven. How early do you?"

"Philosophically early! Do you know you have not had your poem to-day?--what shall it be? sunrise or sunset?"

"Which you please," she said gently, with the tone of a mind upon something else. Mr. Linden looked down at her in silence for a minute.

"Dear Faith," he said, "I told you truly that there is no need. This year's work has done quite as much as I thought it would. What are you afraid of?"

"I am not afraid of much," she said, looking up at him now with a clear brow. "But Endy, I have changed my mind about something. Could you easily come down and read with me a little while every morning?--or are you busy?"

"I am never too busy to spend time with you, my child,--that is one piece of pleasure I shall always allow myself. At what hour shall I come?"

"At six o'clock, can you?" said Faith. "If you gave me a quarter of an hour then, I should still have time enough for breakfast work. This morning I was afraid--but I was foolish. This evening I want all I can get. And when you read me a _ladder of verses_ again," she said smiling, "I shall mark them in my Bible, and then I shall have them by and by--when you are gone."

"Yes, and I can send you more. It is good to go up a ladder of Bible verses when one is afraid--or foolish," he said gently and answering her smile. "One end of it always rests on earth, within reach of the weakest and weariest."

"That is just it! Oh Endy," she said, clasping her hands sadly and wishfully before her and her eyes tilling as she spoke--"I wish there were more people to tell people the truth!"

CHAPTER XV.

It was a fair, fair May morning when Mr. Linden and Faith set forth on their expedition to Kildeer river. After their early rising and early breakfast, they took their way down to the sh.o.r.e of the Mong, where the little sail-boat lay rocking on the incoming tide, her ropes and streamers just answering to the morning breeze. The soft spring sunlight glinted on every tree and hillside. The "Balm of a Thousand Flowers"--true and not spurious--was sprinkled through the air, under the influence of which unseen nectar the birds became almost intoxicated with joy; pouring out their songs with a sort of spendthrift recklessness,--the very fish caught the infection, and flashed and sparkled in the blue water by shoals at a time.

In the sailboat now stood baskets and shawls, a book or two, an empty basket for wild flowers, and by the tiller sat Faith--invested with her new dignity but not yet instructed therein. Mr. Linden stood on the sh.o.r.e, with the boat's detaining rope in his hand, looking about him as if he had a mind to take the good of things as he went along. Up the hill from the sh.o.r.e, trotted Jerry and Mr. Skip.

"Endecott," said Faith joyously,--"Goethe would have more than enough if he was here."

She was not a bad part of the picture herself; fair and glad as she looked, as fair as the May morning and the birds and the sunlight.--

"Isn't this air sweet?"

"Very! But Goethe would choose my point of view. So much depends, in a picture, upon the princ.i.p.al light!"