"You couldn't guess!" said Johnny with a very bright face.

"I couldn't guess!" said Mr. Linden. "Don't you suppose I can do anything?"

"Yes--" said Johnny shaking his head,--"but you can't do that."

"Then I shall not try," said Mr. Linden, "and you'll have to tell me."

Johnny put his face close down by Mr. Linden, and whispered, but not so low that Faith could not hear--

"It's two white eggs that my black hen laid for you, sir!"

"Well I never should have guessed that!"--said Mr. Linden smiling. "I didn't suppose there was a hen in the world that cared so much for me.

I don't believe she would if she was not _your_ hen, Johnny."--Which last sentence Johnny understood just well enough to feel delighted; and stood with a glad little face while his teacher opened the basket, and taking up first one egg and then the other, commented upon their size and whiteness.

"As soon as I can get out I shall come and see that hen," said Mr.

Linden, drawing the child closer and giving him another kiss--which Johnny thought was worth a whole basket of eggs;--"so you must tell her to have her feathers in good order. Now what have you to say to Miss Faith?"

"O _she_ talks to _me_," said Johnny.

"Does she?" said Mr. Linden,--"is that the division of labour? What does she talk about, Johnny?--let me see how well you remember." It was said with a little acknowledging look that he was asking that to which somebody would demur--but also with a wilful a.s.sumption that somebody would come to no harm. So though Faith flushed and started, she sat back in her seat again without making any word interposition. Johnny stood and thought--for he was a real little literalist.

"She talked about heaven--" he said slowly,--"and how to get there,--and said she was going--and we must too. That's what she said Sunday. And at Judge Harrison's she said she was glad I'd got a red ribband--and down to Neanticut she told me to run away."

"I'm sure that was a gentle way of dismissing you," said Mr. Linden, stroking the child's forehead. "Well Johnny--are you trying to follow her in that way to heaven she told you of?"

The "yes" was given without hesitation, and came with strangely sweet effect from those childish lips. Then after a minute Johnny added, as if he feared some misunderstanding,

"It's the same way you told me, sir."

"Yes, I trust you will see me there too," Mr. Linden said, with a rather moved look at the little face before him.

What made Faith, at those last words of Johnny's, jump up and spring to the fire? And after a most elaborate handling of the sticks of wood, she did not come back to her seat, but stood still with her back turned to the couch and the little witness who was testifying there. He was not called upon for any more evidence, however. Mr. Linden talked--or let him talk--about various important things in Johnny's daily life and experience and gave a promise that he himself would be at school as soon as the doctor gave his permission.

Mrs. Derrick's soft knock and entrance came now, she herself looking in good truth as if a "tear-storm" had pa.s.sed over her. But she brightened up a little at the sight of Faith.

"Pretty child!" she said, coming up to her, "and so you're here? I couldn't rest any longer without seeing just where you were."

Faith put one hand on her shoulder as she stood, and then clasped the other upon that.

"Pretty child!" her mother repeated, in a tone that spoke more of pain than pleasure--and Faith could feel the shudder that pa.s.sed over her then. But she controlled herself. "Do you know it's dinner time, Faith?

How is Mr. Linden?"

"There he is," said Faith smiling. "I don't know, mother."

"He don't look to me as if he had ever been asleep," said Mrs.

Derrick,--but whether that shewed want of sleep, or the reverse, was, as Mr. Linden remarked, quite doubtful.

Mrs. Derrick looked at him, met his smile--then her whole heart answered to something it said.

"Oh Mr. Linden! think of her being in such danger!" and there was a minute of deep silence.

"Nay!" he answered softly--and the face was beautiful in its changing expression,--"think of her being so safe!"

Mrs. Derrick could bear neither word nor look after that. The two ladies went down together, leaving Johnny to dine with his teacher.

CHAPTER XXVI.

The dinner up stairs was a very quiet and uninterrupted one. The dinner down stairs was destined not to be so.

The first break was the entrance of Cindy with a bunch of flowers--which the doctor had sent to Miss Derrick, with the desire to know how she was. Faith received the flowers with a dubious face and put them in water on the dinner-table, where they looked splendid. Mrs.

Derrick could hardly see their splendour.

"He needn't think to come round me that way," she said. "Child! I wouldn't let you go off with him again for twenty kingdoms!"

"Not with those horses, mother."

"Nor with any others. I sha'n't ever want to have you go with anybody again, Faith."

"What's goin' on here?" said a growling voice which they knew, before Mr. Simlins entered the door of the dining room. "That gal o' yourn wants me to stay politely in the parlour yonder--but I ain't polite--and I come to see you, not your doors and windows nor the pretty paper on your walls. What are you all about, Mrs. Derrick? I hear the very spirit of turbidness has got into this house!"

"There's not much spirit in me to-day," said Mrs. Derrick, "nor spirits neither. I've lost what little I had. Anybody could knock me down with a straw. Sit down, Mr. Simlins, and take some dinner."

"I'm afeard, if it's done so easy, I might occasionally do it with one o' them posies," said Mr. Simlins standing and surveying the bouquet as if he didn't know what to make of it. "Do you eat the gra.s.s of the field at your noon-spell?"

"You may ask Faith," said Mrs. Derrick; "she put 'em there."

"Sit down, Mr. Simlins," said Faith.

"I ain't goin' to sit down! I've eat _my_ dinner. I've just come in, Mrs. Derrick, to see if you're all overturned, or if there's anything left straight yet."

"It's _all_ straight," said Faith smiling up at him. "Sit down, Mr.

Simlins."

"What's the truth of it, Mrs. Derrick? This child ain't all straight, is she?"

It followed that, bit by bit, Mr. Simlins got out the story of the accident, for neither Faith nor Mrs. Derrick was forward to speak about it. He then enquired, with an unsatisfied grunt, why Faith was "postin'

round with Dr. Harrison?" Whereat Mrs. Derrick felt justly indignant.

"Why she ain't! Mr. Simlins. She went down there on business, and there was n.o.body else at hand to take her just then."

"What do you call bein' at hand?" said Mr. Simlins. "I've got two hands, and more'n two horses--that won't run away neither. It's only my cows do that!--Where's Mr. Linden?"

"O he's up stairs--" said Mrs. Derrick. "He's not been down yet. Faith, don't you think he's some stronger to-day?"

"And so," said Mr. Simlins turning to her again reproachfully,--"while he's lyin' up there and can't stir, you go drivin' over the country with 'tother one!"