"Mr. Linden," said Faith, "I want to ask something--will you tell me if you don't like it?"

"Don't like to have you ask me, do you mean? I do like it."

"Then," said Faith half laughing, "will you tell me it you don't quite like what I mean?"

"I'll see--" Mr. Linden replied with a smile. "It's not safe for teachers to commit themselves."

"But I must commit myself," said Faith. "I want to go and pick up nuts with the boys under the trees--may I?"

She looked for her answer with an eye that thought _he_ might possibly find an objection where she saw none.

He paused a little before he replied,

"I think you may--if I could be among them and answer for their good behaviour I should not need to think about it; but you know a man loses power when he is too far above the heads of his audience. Yet I think I may trust them--and you," he added with a little smile. "Especially as the first tree touched this afternoon is yours."

"What does that mean?" said Faith, her doubt all gone.

"Do you think I shall so far forget my office as to let them pick up nuts for n.o.body but themselves? Therefore the first tree this afternoon is for you--or if you please for your mother; the second for Mr.

Simlins. If that will take away your desire for the 'fun,' why I cannot help it."

"I have no objection to pick up nuts for mother, not even for Mr.

Simlins," said Faith smiling. "And I am not afraid of the boys--I know half of them, you know. Thank you, Mr. Linden!"

"You might, if I could take you up into the tree-top. There is fine reading on those upper shelves."

Her eye shewed instantly that she liked that 'higher' fun best--not the tree-top, verily, but the reading, that she could not get at. Yet for Faith there were charms plenty below the tree-tops, in both kinds; and she looked very happy.

"Well"--Mr. Linden said, "as the successful meeting of one emergency always helps us in the next, and as it is quite impossible to tell _what_ you may meet under those nut trees,--let me give you a little abstract of Catherine Dougla.s.s, before you read it and before I go. The said lady wishing to keep the door against sundry lords and gentle men who came with murderous intent against her sovereign; and finding no bar to aid her loyal endeavours,--did boldly thrust her own arm through the stanchions of the door. To be sure--'the brave lady's arm was soon broken,'--but after all, what did that signify?"

And with a laughing gesture of farewell, he once more left the house.

With which cessation of murmuring voices, Mrs. Derrick awoke from her after dinner nap in the rocking chair. Faith was standing in the middle of the floor, smiling and looking in a puzzle.

"Mother, will you go over to the nutting again?"

"I'm a great deal more likely to go to sleep again," said Mrs. Derrick rubbing her eyes. "It's the sleepiest place I ever saw in my life--or else it's having nothing to do. I don't doubt you're half asleep too, Faith, only you won't own it."

The decision was, that Mrs. Derrick preferred to sit quiet in the house; she said she would maybe run down by and by and see what they were at. So Faith took her sunbonnet, kissed her mother; and went forth with light step over the meadow and through the orchard.

The nutting party she found a little further on in the same edge of woodland. It seemed that they had pitched upon a great chestnut for her tree; and Faith was half concerned to see what a quant.i.ty of work they had given themselves on her account. However, the proverb of 'many hands' was verified here; the ground under the chestnut tree was like a colony of ants, while in the capacious head of the tree their captain, established quite at his ease, was whipping off the burrs with a long pole.

Faith took a general view as she came up, and then fell upon the chestnut burrs like the rest of them; and no boy there worked more readily or joyously. There seemed little justification of Mr. Linden's doubts of the boys or fears for her. Faith was everywhere among them, and making Reuben's prophecy true, that 'they would all enjoy themselves a great deal better' for her being there; throwing nuts into the baskets of the little boys and pleasant words at the heads of the big ones, that hit softly and did gentle execution; giving sly handfuls to Reuben, and then hammering out for some little fellow the burrs that her hands were yet more unfit to deal with than his; and doing it all with a will that the very spirit of enjoyment seemed to have moved.

_She_ in any danger of rude treatment from those boys! Nothing further from the truth. And so her happy face informed Mr. Linden, when he at last descended to terra firma out of the stripped chestnut tree.

He did not say anything, but leaning up against the great brown trunk of the chestnut took a pleased survey of the whole--then went to work with the rest.

"Boys!" he said--"aren't there enough of you to open these burrs as fast as Miss Derrick can pick out the nuts? You should never let a lady p.r.i.c.k her fingers when you can p.r.i.c.k yours in her place."

There was a general shout and rush at this, which made Faith give way before it. The burrs disappeared fast; the brown nuts gathered into an immense heap. That tree was done.

"Hurrah! for Mr. Simlins!" shouted all the boys, throwing up their caps into the air,--then turning somersets, and wrestling, and rolling over by way of further relief to their feelings.

"The chestnut beyond that red maple for him," said Mr. Linden, flinging a little stone in the right direction; at which with another shout the little tornado swept away.

"Will you follow, Miss Faith? or are you tired?"

"No, I'm not tired yet. I must do something for Mr. Simlins."

"Well don't handle those burrs--" he said. "They're worse than darning needles."

"Have you seen Kildeer river yet, Mr. Linden?"

"I have had a bird's eye view."

Faith looked a little wistfully, but only said,

"We must look at it after the nutting is done. That's a bit of reading hereabout you ought not to pa.s.s over."

"I mean to read 'everything I can,' too," he said with a smile as they reached the tree.

"Now Mr. Linden," said Joe Deacon, "_this_ tree's a whapper! How long you suppose it'll take you to go up?"

"About as long as it would you to come down--every-one knows how long _that_ would be. Stand out of my way, boys--catch all the burrs on your own heads and don't let one fall on Miss Derrick." And amidst the general laugh Mr. Linden swung himself up into the branches in a way that made his words good; while Joe Deacon whistled and danced 'Yankee Doodle' round the great trunk.

Half at least of Mr. Linden's directions the boys obeyed;--they caught all the burrs they well could, on their own heads. Faith was too busy among them to avoid catching some on her own bright hair whenever her sunbonnet declined to stay on, which happened frequently. The new object lent this tree a new interest of its own, and boys being an untiring species of animals the sport went on with no perceptible flagging. But when this tree too was about half cleared, Faith withdrew a little from the busy rush and bustle, left the chestnuts and chestnut burrs, and sat down on the bank to rest and look. Her eye wandered to the further woodland, softest of all in hazy veils; to the nearer brilliant vegetation; the open fallow; the wood behind her, where the trees closed in upon each other; oftenest of all, at the 'whapper' of a tree in which Mr. Linden still kept his place, and at the happy busy sight and sound of all under that tree.

And so it happened, that when in time Mr. Linden came down out of Mr.

Simlins' chestnut, besides the boys he found n.o.body there but Mr.

Simlins himself.

"Well!"--said that gentleman after a cordial grasp of the hand,--"I reckon, in the matter of nuts you're going to reduce me to penur'ousness! How you like Neanticut?"

"It's a fine place," said Mr. Linden.--"And for the matter of nuts, you need not take the benefit of the bankrupt act yet, Mr. Simlins."

"Over here to see a man on business," Mr. Simlins went on in explanation,--"and thought I'd look at you by the way. Don't you want to take this farm of me?"

"I might want to do it--and yet not be able," was the smiling reply; while one of the smallest boys, pulling the tail of the grey coat which Mr. Simlins wore 'on business,' and pointing to the heap of nuts, said succinctly,

"Them's yourn!"

"Mine!" said Mr. Simlins. "Well where's yourn? What have you done with Miss Faith Derrick?"

"Why we hain't done nothin' to her," said the boy--"she's done a heap to us."

"What has she done to you, you green hickory?"

"Why--she's run round, firstrate," said little Rob,--"and she's helped me shuck."

"So some o' you's thanked her. 'Twan't _you_. Here, you sir," said Mr.

Simlins, addressing this time Joe Deacon,--"what have you been doing with Miss Faith Derrick?"