ords seemed confounded in their utterance.

"You do not mean that you have finished it already?" he said with an
excellent look of astonishment.

"I have almost,"--said Faith. "Mr. Linden, how could you tell?--I don't
know what makes me do so!" she said putting both hands to her
cheeks,--"there's no shame in it."

"I didn't suppose there was," he said smiling, and closed the door.

Very oddly, in spite of morning duties, Faith's next move was to go to
her basket, pull out that little French book and examine it all over
inside and out. Not one word of it could she read, not one sign of it
did she know; what was the meaning of its place in her basket? Faith
pondered that question probably while her cheeks were coming back to
their usual tint; then the book was slipped back again and she hurried
away to help her mother with the dishes.

"You needn't come, child," said Mrs. Derrick,--"what do you think I'll
make of such a handful of things as that? To be sure Cindy's cleaning
up to-day, but I'm pretty smart, yet. Go off and study arithmetic if
you want to. Have you got through that yet?"

"Almost through, mother," Faith answered smiling.

"Well why don't you go and finish?" said her mother.

"Mayn't I finish these first?" said Faith, through whose fingers and
the towel the cups and saucers slipped with a dexterity that was, to
say the least of it, pretty. "Why mother, you were not so keen after
arithmetic the other day."

"Keen after it!" said Mrs. Derrick,--"la, child, I don't pretend to be
keen. But I never could bear to see a thing half done,--I'd rather do
it twice over."

There was something else running in Faith's mind; for after
abstractedly setting down one after another several saucers, polished
from the hot water and huckaback, she dropped her towel and flung both
arms round her mother's neck.

"Mother!--there is one thing I want you to do--I want you to be a
Christian!"

There was persuasion in the soft head that nestled against her, if
Faith's words lacked it.

To the words her mother gave no answer, but she returned the caress
with interest; wrapping Faith in her arms, and drawing her down to the
next chair, as if--literally--she could not stand that.

"Pretty child!" she said--and more than one tear fell upon Faith's
bright hair,--"you're the best child that ever was!--and always were!"

"No, mother," said Faith kissing her.--"But will you?"

"I don't know!" said Mrs. Derrick,--"that's what