of distant woodland. Her eye came back as from a book it would take
long to read thoroughly.

"I am so glad it is such a day!" she repeated.

"I see my boys are coming back," Mr. Linden said, with a smile which
hardly belonged to them,--"I must go and get their report. Au revoir,
Miss Faith." And he went forward into the midst of the little swarm--so
manageable in his hands, so sure to sting anybody else.

"Child," said Mrs. Derrick, looking over Faith's head from her more
elevated position of the door-sill (looking _at_ it too); "Child, why
don't you get--" and there, for the first and last time in her life,
Mrs. Derrick stopped short in the middle of a sentence.

"What, mother?"

But Mrs. Derrick replied not.

"What do you want me to get, mother?"

"I don't know as I want you to get anything,--child you've got enough
now for me. Not that he wouldn't like it, either," said Mrs. Derrick
musingly--"because if he wouldn't, _I_ wouldn't give much for him. But
I guess it's just as well not." And Mrs Derrick stroked her hand fondly
over Faith's head, and told her that if she stood out there without a
bonnet she would get sunburnt.

"But mother!" said Faith at this enigmatical speech, "what do you mean?
_Who_ wouldn't like _what?_"

"What does it signify, child?--since I didn't say it?"

"But mother," persisted Faith gently, "what had I better get that I
haven't?"

"I don't know as you _had_ better get it, child--and I never said he
wouldn't like it, I'm sure," said Mrs. Derrick with a little
self-vindication.

"Who, mother?"

"Why--nobody," said Mrs. Derrick,--"who's talking of anybody?"

"Dear mother," said Faith, "don't you mean to tell me what you mean?"

"I guess it's just as well not," her mother repeated. "The fact that
he'd like it don't prove anything."

Faith looked at her, coloured a little, laughed a little, and gave up
the point.

The morning passed on its pleasant way in quietness; at least with the
old farmhouse and its two occupants. Mrs. Derrick was not without her
knitting, and having come from the door sat comfortably click-clacking
her needles together--and her thoughts too perhaps--before the cheerful
blaze of the fence sticks. Faith _had_ a book with her--a little
one--with which she sat in the kitchen doorway, which looked towards
the direction the nut party had taken; and apparently divided her
attention between that volume and the one Mr. Linden had recommended.
For she looked