s Sunday promising to be a good
specimen,--it happened that Johnny and his companion had received a
special injunction to come, as Faith found out, and were there
accordingly.

And if Johnny regretted his old place in another class, it was not for
the reason his new teacher had feared. Faith's face was very
pale,--that of itself touched the children; and her words this day came
in a tone that won all the recesses of their hearts. She had forgot
about other teachers or children being in her neighbourhood; on those
three her stores of love and tenderness poured themselves out. She told
them with warm lips, of Christ and his love and his leading,--of the
safety and joy of his sheep,--of her wish that her little charge should
be lambs in that flock, and what sort of lambs they must be. Faith
spoke to her children very much as if she had been a child herself.
They knew instinctively, with very sure knowledge, that she belonged to
the fold of which she was joyously telling them.

The children, on their part, met her variously. Johnny--with his clear
childish eyes, the flower-like unfolding of his little heart to that
warm sunshine--gave her more help than trouble,--she understood the
liking to teach him for her own sake. If his thoughts sometimes
wandered a little from her words, the downcast look, the slight quiver
of his childish lips, told Faith where they had gone; and she could
forgive him. But though at such times Robbie Waters always remembered
to look grave too, yet he displaced Faith's gravity once by whispering
to her (in the midst of her earnest admonitions to Charles twelfth)
that 'she knew she was pretty'; and was in general in an easy, docile
state of mind, and much interested and amazed at the 'deportment' of
his little neighbour, Charles twelfth. When Faith came out of the
school, she saw that all the seats of Mr. Linden's class were vacant;
and with that little reminding touch, went to her own place in the
church.

It was between nine and ten o'clock, while Faith was yet lost in her
little charge, while Mrs. Derrick at home was thinking of her, and Mr.
Simlins was taking his late breakfast, that Dr. Harrison's curricle
reached the farmer's gate. All was quiet without the house, but when
Jenny Lowndes admitted the doctor into the hall, the array of hats and
caps upon the table might have startled a less professional man; might
have even suggested the idea that Mr. Simlins was giving a breakfast
party.

"