hate to trouble him with
reminding. Must you really have new gloves and slippers, both?"

Faith held up her little foot for answer, shod with a partly worn bronze
kid, reduced to morning service.

"These are the best I've got. And my gloves have been cleaned over and
over, till you said yourself, last time, they would hardly do to wear
again. If it were any use, I should say I must have a new dress; but I
thought at least I should freshen up with the 'little fixings,' and
perhaps have something left for a few natural flowers for my hair."

"I know. But your father looked annoyed when I told him we should want
fresh marketing to-day. He is really pinched, just now, for ready
money--and he is so discouraged about the times. He told me only last
night of a man who owed him five hundred dollars, and came to say he
didn't know as he could pay a cent. It doesn't seem to be a time to
afford gloves and shoes and flowers. And then there'll be the carriage,
too."

"Oh, dear!" sighed Faith, in the tone of one who felt herself
checkmated. "I wish I knew what we really _could_ afford! It always
seems to be these little things that don't cost much, and that other
girls, whose fathers are not nearly so well off, always, have, without
thinking anything about it." And she glanced over the table, whereon
shone a silver coffee service, and up at the mantel where stood a French
clock that had been placed there a month before.

"Pull at the bobbin and the latch will fly up." An unspoken suggestion,
of drift akin to this, flitted through the mind of Faith. She wondered
if her father knew that this was a Signal Street invitation.

Mr. Gartney was ambitious for his children, and solicitous for their
place in society.

But Faith had a touch of high-mindedness about her that made it
impossible for her to pull bobbins.

So, when her father presently, with hat and coat on, came into the room
again for a moment, before going out for the day, she sat quite silent,
with her foot upon the fender, looking into the fire.

Something in her face however, quite unconsciously, bespoke that the
world did not lie entirely straight before her, and this catching her
father's eye, brought up to him, by an untraceable association, the
half-proffered request of his wife.

"So you haven't any shoes, Faithie. Is that it?"

"None nice enough for a party, father."

"And the party is a vital necessity, I suppose. Where is it to be?"

The latch string w