"so he
shall from me. We'll see whether he likes it. Know then, Endecott, that
I found this child absorbed in wedding dresses!"

"Wedding dresses!" he repeated. "More than one?"

"Oh Endy," said his sister with a sort of laughing impatience, "what a
boy you are! I mean other people's." Faith stood smiling a little,
letting her manage it her own way.

"Imagine it," Miss Linden went on,--"imagine this one little real
flower bending over a whole garden of muslin marigolds and silk
sunflowers and velvet verbenas, growing unthriftily in a bed of white
muslin!" Mr. Linden laughed, as if the picture were a pleasant one.

"Mignonette," he said,--"how could you bear the sight?"

"I was trying to make the best of it."

"In whose behalf were you so much interested?"

"Maria Davids," said Faith glancing up at him. "But I was _not_
interested,--only so far as one is in making the best of anything."

"Who is trying to make the best of her?"

Faith looked down and looked grave as she answered--"Jonathan Fax." Mr.
Linden's face was grave too, then, with the recollections that name
brought up.

"There is one place in the house she cannot touch," he said. "Faith, I
am glad she is not to take care of _him_."

"I have thought that so often!"

"Do you like my story, Endy?" said Miss Linden presently.

"Very much--the subject. I am less interested in the application. Who
next is to be married in Pattaquasset?"

"I don't know."--

"Aunt Iredell says she wishes _you_ would be married here," observed
Pet demurely. To which insinuation Faith opposed as demure a silence.

"Oh Endecott," said his sister changing her tone and speaking in that
mixed mood which so well became her,--"I'm so happy that you are here!
This week Faith has been pretty quiet, by dint of being away from home;
but nothing would have kept her here next week--and I had been thinking
what we should do,--if the week should run on into two--or if the wind
should blow!" She spoke laughingly, yet with a voice not quite steady.

"'So he bringeth them to the haven where they would be'!" Mr. Linden
said. But his voice was clear as the very depth of feeling of which it
told. "Aunt Iredell cannot have her wish, Pet," he added
presently,--"there would be at least three negative votes."

"I suppose that! But I shall come down Saturday to hear what wishes
_are_ in progress."

"Won't you go with us, Pet, to-morrow?" said Faith earnestly. She had
been standing in a sor