ments
he constituted himself, as in duty bound, Faith's knight and sworn
attendant; and a superb bouquet for each occasion, the result of the
ransack of successive greenhouses, came punctually, from him, to her
door. For years afterwards--perhaps for all her life--Faith couldn't
smell heliotrope, and geranium, and orange flowers, without floating
back, momentarily, into the dream of those few, enchanted days!

She stayed in Mishaumok a little beyond the limit she had fixed for
herself, to go, with the others, on board the steamer at the time of her
sailing, and see the gay party off. Paul Rushleigh had more significant
words, and another gift of flowers as a farewell.

When she carried these last to her own room, to put them in water, on
her return, something she had not noticed before glittered among their
stems. It was a delicate little ring, of twisted gold, with a
forget-me-not in turquoise and enamel upon the top.

Faith was half pleased, half frightened, and wholly ashamed.

Paul Rushleigh was miles out on the Atlantic. There was no help for it,
she thought. It had been cunningly done.

And so, in the short November days, she went back to Kinnicutt.

The east parlor had to be shut up now, for the winter. The family
gathering place was the sunny little sitting room; and with closed doors
and doubled windows, they began, for the first time, to find that they
were really living in a little bit of a house.

It was very pretty, though, with the rich carpet and the crimson
curtains that had come from Hickory Street, replacing the white muslin
draperies and straw matting of the summer; and the books and vases, and
statuettes and pictures, gathered into so small space, seemed to fill
the room with luxury and beauty.

Faith nestled her little workstand into a nook between the windows.
Hendie's blocks and picture books were stowed in a corner cupboard. Mr.
Gartney's newspapers and pamphlets, as they came, found room in a deep
drawer below; and so, through the wintry drifts and gales, they were
"close hauled" and comfortable.

Faith was happy; yet she thought, now and then, when the whistling wind
broke the stillness of the dark evenings, of light and music elsewhere;
and how, a year ago, there had always been the chance of a visitor or
two to drop in, and while away the hours. Nobody lifted the
old-fashioned knocker, here at Cross Corners.

By day, even, it was scarcely different. Kinnicutt was hibernating. Each