the kitchen door! I
have seen so much, and I have heard so much. I told Mr. Armstrong, after
we met him, that I had been through the Alhambra and the Vatican, and
into fairyland, and over the Alps. And after that, mother," she added,
low, "I think he almost took me into heaven!"
CHAPTER XIX.
A "LEADING."
"The least flower, with a brimming cup, may stand
And share its dewdrop with another near."
MRS. BROWNING.
Glory McWhirk was waiting upstairs, in Faith's pretty, white,
dimity-hung chamber.
These two girls, of such utterly different birth and training, were
drawing daily toward each other across the gulf of social circumstance
that separated them.
Twice a week, now, Glory came over, and found her seat and her books
ready in Miss Faith's pleasant room, and Faith herself waiting to impart
to her, or to put her in the way of gathering, those bits of week-day
knowledge she had ignorantly hungered for so long.
Glory made quick progress. A good, plain foundation had been laid during
the earlier period of her stay with Miss Henderson, by a regular
attendance, half daily, at the district school. Aunt Faith said
"nobody's time belonged to anybody that knew better themselves, until
they could read, and write, and figure, and tell which side of the globe
they lived on." Then, too, the girl's indiscriminate gleaning from such
books as had come in her way, through all these years, assorted itself
gradually, now, about new facts.
Glory's "good times" had, verily, begun at last.
On this day that she sat waiting, Faith had been called down by her
mother to receive some village ladies who had walked over to Cross
Corners to pay a visit. Glory had time for two or three chapters of
"Ivanhoe," and to tell Hendie, who strayed in, and begged for it,
Bridget Foye's old story of the little red hen, while the regular course
of topics was gone through below, of the weather--the new minister--the
last meeting of the Dorcas Society--the everlasting wants and
helplessness of Mrs. Sheffley and her seven children, and whether the
society had better do anything more for them--the trouble in the west
district school, and the question "where the Dorcas bag was to go next
time."
At last, the voices and footsteps retreated, through the entry, the door
closed somewhat promptly as the last "good afternoon" was said, and
Faith sprang up the narrow staircase.
There was a lesson in Geog
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