If your interest in the writer has carried you so far, perhaps he may indulge the hope that at some future time it may carry you further--even to the head of the stairs--where it is needless to say you will be received with open arms.

It is also needless to sign this--it could come from but one person!"

Some two minutes after, Faith's room door opened, and a very flashing bright sunbeam came out upon the place indicated, only a little peachblossom tinge in her cheeks witnessing to any consciousness. She was met according to promise--then held off and looked at with serio-comic eyes.

"What a cruel child you are!" Mr. Linden said.

"What do you want, Endecott?" said Faith trying to be serious.

"How can you have the heart to sit up stairs and sew while I am down stairs in my study?"

Faith instantly came so close, taking the nearest refuge, that he could not very well see her face; but that she was laughing still he knew.

"Endecott!--don't talk so. I didn't know where you were."

"Will it be in this sort of weather that you will 'go out to do errands' and leave me at home?"

"Endecott!--If you don't want anything more of me," said Faith lifting up a face which was an array of peach-blossoms,--"I'll go back again."

"Will you?--" with a little tightening of his hold, and signification of his approval of peachblossoms. "Faith, you are a lovely child! Will it distress you very much if I go off and ride about the country alone?"

But now,--seeing she could not get away,--she stood graver; and the answer was very gentle, almost tender--"No."

"Then you will not confess that you were frightened out of your wits at the picture?" said Mr. Linden smiling, though with an answering change of tone.

"Did you think I was?"

"No--you are too much of a woman for that, even if you had believed it true."

"Then _you_ were not frightened?--" she said with some comicality.

"I? desperately!--my note did not give you any idea of the state of my mind! Imagine me sitting down stairs and saying to myself--(words naturally suggested by the state of the weather)--

'O how this spring of love resembleth Th' uncertain glories of an April day, Which now shews all the beauties of the sun, And by and by a cloud takes all away!'"

One of the soft flashes of Faith's eye came first to answer him; and then she remarked very coolly, (N.B. her face was not so,) "I think it will clear at noon, Endecott."

"Do you?" he said looking towards the window with a counterfeit surprise that was in comical ant.i.thesis to his last words,--"does it rain still!"

Faith's eye came back quick from the window to him, and then, for the first time in many a long day, her old mellow sweet laugh rolled over the subject, dismissing make-believes and figures of speech in its clear matter-of-fact rejoicing.

"My dear little Mignonette!" Mr. Linden said, "that does my very heart good. You are really getting better, in spite of lessons and warnings, and all other hindrances. Do you want to know what I have truly been thinking of since you came up stairs? Shall we exchange thoughts?"

"Please give me yours," she answered.

"They sprang from Miss Essie's question. Faith, when she asked me what my wife would have, I could not tell her--I could not answer it to myself afterwards very definitely. Only so far--she will have all I have to give." His hand was smoothing and arranging her hair as he spoke--his look one that n.o.body but Faith ever had from Mr. Linden. She had looked up once and seen it; and then she stood before him, so still and silent as if she might have had nothing to say; but every line of her brow, her moved lip, her att.i.tude, the very power of her silence, contradicted that, and testified as well to the grace of a grave and most exquisite humility which clothed her from head to foot. Mr. Linden was as silent as she, watching her; but then he drew her off to the low couch in the wide old-fashioned entry window, and seated her there in a very bath of spring air and struggling sunbeams.

"I suppose it is useless to say 'Please give me yours'," he said smiling. "Mignonette, we have had no reading to-day--do you like this time and place?--and shall it be with you or to you?"

"It will be both, won't it?" said Faith; and she went for her Bible.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

The day was struggling into clearness by the time dinner was over.

Patches of blue sky looked down through grey, vapoury, scattering clouds; while now and then a few rain drops fell to keep up the character of the morning, and broad warm genial sunbeams fell between them. It was not fair yet for a drive; and Mr. Linden went out on some errands of business, leaving Faith with a charge to sleep and rest and be ready against his return.

He was but a little while gone when Jem Waters made his appearance and asked for Faith. Mr. Simlins had been ill--that Faith knew--but Jem brought a sad report of how ill he had been, and a message that he was "tired of not seeing Faith and wished she would let Jem fetch her down.

She might go back again as soon as she'd a mind to." He wanted to see her "real bad," according to Jem; for he had ordered the best wagon on the premises to be cleaned and harnessed up, and the best buffalo robe put in, and charged Jem to bring Miss Faith "if she could anyways come." And there was Jem and the wagon.

Faith demurred; she had not had her sleep and didn't know, or rather did know, how the proceeding would be looked upon; but she also fancied more meaning in the summons than Jem had been commissioned to make known. And perhaps another little wee feminine thought came in to help her decision.

"Mother," she said, "I shall go. You need not say anything about it unless you are asked. It isn't far to Mr. Simlins--I shall be home in time for my ride." So, quickly ready, Jem drove her down.

Mr. Simlins she found sitting up, in a nondescript invalid's attire of an old cloak and a summer waistcoat; and warm as the day was, with a little fire burning, which was not unnecessary to correct the damp of the unused sitting-room. He was, as he said, "fallen away considerable, and with no more strength than a spring chicken," but for the rest looked as usual. And so spoke.

"Well,--why haint you been to see me before?"

"I have been sick, sir."

"Sick?" said he, his voice softening unconsciously towards her sweet tones. "Sit there and let me see.--I believe you have. But you aint fur from well now!" He had some reason, for the face he had turned to the sunlight bore all the quiet lines of happiness, and its somewhat faint colour was replaced under his scrutiny by a conscious deep rose.

"Don't you know," said he settling himself back in his chair,--"I don't think I see the sun and moon when I don't see you? Or the moon, anyways--you aint but the half of my Zodiack."

"What did you want to see the moon for, Mr. Simlins?" said Faith willing to interrupt him.

"Well--you see, I've been a kind of a latudinarian too," said Mr.

Simlins doubtfully.--"It pulls a man's mind down; as well as his flesh--and I got tired of thinkin' to-day and concluded I'd send for you to stop it." His look confessed more than his words. Faith had little need to ask what he had been thinking about.

"What shall I do to stop it, sir?"

"Well, you can read--can't you?--or talk to me."

There was a strange uneasy wandering of his eye, and a corresponding unwonted simplicity and directness in his talk. Faith noted both and silently went for a Bible she saw lying on a table. She brought it to Mr. Simlins' side and opened its pages slowly, questioning with herself where she should read. Some a.s.sociation of a long past conversation perhaps was present with her, for though she paused over one and another of several pa.s.sages, she could fix upon none but the parable of the unfruitful tree.

"Do you mean that for me?" said the farmer a minute after she had done.

"Yes sir--and no, dear Mr. Simlins!" said Faith looking up.

"Why is it 'yes' and 'no'? how be I like that?"--he growled, but with a certain softening and lowering of his growl.

"The good trees all do the work they were made for. G.o.d calls for the same from us," Faith said gently.