other who was even then coming up from the gate,
and knocked at Mr. Linden's door again just as Mrs. Derrick was taking
her minister's wife into the parlour. Her first move this time on
coming in, was to brush up the hearth and put the fire in proper order
for burning well; then she faced round before the couch and stood in a
sort of pleasant expectation, as waiting for orders.

"You are a bright little visiter!" Mr. Linden said, holding out his
hand to her. "You float in as softly and alight as gently as one of
these crimson leaves through my window. Did anybody ever tell you the
real reason why women are like angels?"

"I didn't know they were," said Faith laughing, and with something more
of approximation to a crimson leaf.

"'They are all ministering spirits,'" he said looking at her. "But you
must be content with that, Miss Faith, and not make your visits angelic
in any other sense. What do you suppose I have been considering this
afternoon?--while you have been spoiling the last Pattaquasset story by
confessing that I am alive?"

"Did you hear them coming in?" said Faith. "I didn't know when they
were going to let me get away.--What have you been considering, Mr.
Linden?"

"The wide-spread presence and work of beauty. You see what a shock you
gave my nervous system yesterday. Will you please to sit down, Miss
Faith?"

Faith sat down, clearly in a puzzle; from which she expected to be
somehow fetched out.

"What do you suppose is beauty's work in the world?--I don't mean any
particular Beauty."

Faith looked at the crimson leaves on the floor--for the window was
open though the fire was burning; then at the fair sky outside, seen
beyond and through some other crimson leaves yet hanging on the large
maple there,--then coming back to the face before her, she smiled and
said,

"I don't know--except to make people happy, Mr. Linden."

"That is one part of its use, certainly. But take the thousands of
wilderness flowers, and the thousands of deep sea shells; look at the
carvings on the scale of a fish, which no human eye can see without a
glass, or those other exquisite patterns traced upon the roots and
stems of some of the fossil pines, which were hid in the solid rock
before there was a human eye to see. What is _their_ use?"

To the wilderness and to the deep sea, Faith's thought and almost her
eye went, and she took some time to consider the subject.

"I suppose--" she said thoughtfully--"I don't kn