Your pleasure, personal and representative, last night, is a reproach
to me whenever I think of it. Yet my unwonted hand knows neither how to
cut up cake, nor what to do with it when it is cut--except--_avaler!_
Am I wrong in hoping that you will do me the grace to make available
what I should only--if I tried to do better with it--throw away? and
that as a token of your forgiveness and grace you will on the next
opportunity bestow a piece of pumpkin pie, such as you carried the
other night, on

Your very respectful and most obedient servant,

JULIUS HARRISON."

PATTAQUASSET, Nov. 15, 18--.

Mr. Linden read the note more deliberately than Faith had done, but his
face, the while, she could not read; though (fascinated by the
difficulty) her glances changed to a steady gaze. It was quietly
grave--that was all and not all,--and the note was given back to her
with a smile that spoke both "thoughts" of the doctor, and pleasure for
any pleasure Faith might have from his basket. But then some of the
deeper feeling came out in his comments--and they were peculiar. He had
stood still for a second after reading the note,--his eyes looking down
at the cake--gravely; but then they came to her; and suddenly taking
her in his arms Mr. Linden gave her--it would be hazardous to say, as
many kisses as Dr. Harrison had gold pieces--but certainly as many as
he had put in the basket, and more. Faith did not read them, either, at
first,--till the repetition--or the way of it, told what they were; the
glad saying that she was his, beyond any one's power to buy her,--more
than all, an indemnification to himself for all the gold he could not
lay at her feet! There needed no speech to tell her both.

A word or two had answered his demonstrations, first a wondering word,
and then afterwards a low repetition of his name, in a tone of humble
recognition and protest. Now she looked up at him with a child's clear
face, full of the colour he had brought into it.

"Little darling," he said, "you will have your hands full of business!"

"Oh Endy--I am very sorry!"

"Sorry?" Mr. Linden said. "What about?"

"I'm sorry that basket has come here!"

"It gives you the means of making other people glad."

"Yes--but,"--Faith looked uncomfortably at the basket. Then brought her
eyes back to Mr. Linden's face. "What ought I to do, Endecott?"

"The most good and the least harm you can in the circumstances."

"How shall I,--the las