th?"

"No, mother--but could you learn?"

"Why--I suppose I could, child," said her mother, as if she disliked to
admit even so much. "But I'd about as lieve have my own arm shot
off--I'm so dreadfully afraid of hurting people, Faith--and I always
was afraid of _him_. Why can't the doctor do it? he can come six times
a day if he's wanted--I guess he don't do much else."

Faith said no more on the subject, but hurried through her tea and sat
down by the lamp in the sitting-room to read her letter. A minute or
two she sat thinking, deeply, with her cheek on her hand; then
dismissing everything else she opened the precious paper at last.

It was another Italy letter, but took her a very different journey from
the last. A little graver perhaps than that, a little more longing in
the wish to use eyesight instead of pen and ink; and as if absence was
telling more and more upon the writer. Yet all this was rather in the
tone than the wording--_that_ was kept in hand. But it was midway in
some bright description, that the message to Faith broke forth.

"Tell Miss Faith," she said, "that I would rather have seen her
roasting clams down at 'the shore,' than anything I have seen since I
heard of it,--which is none the less true, that I should have wanted to
stand both sides of the window at once. And tell her if you can (though
I don't believe even _you_ can, John Endy) how much I love her for
taking such care of one of my precious things. I feel as if all my love
was very powerless just now! However--you remember that comforting old
ballad--

'Where there is no space
For the glow-worm to lye;
Where there is no space
For receipt of a fly;
Where the midge dares not venture,
Lest herself fast she lay;
If love come he will enter,
And soon find out his way!'

So, Miss Faith, you may expect to see me appear some time in the shape
of a midge!--Endecott will tell you I am not much better than that now."

So far Faith got in reading the letter, and it was a long while before
she got any further; that message to herself she went over again and
again. It was incomprehensible, it was like one of Mr. Linden's own
puzzles for that. It was so strange, and at the same time it was such a
beautiful thing, that Mr. Linden's sister should have heard of _her_
and in such fashion as to make her wish to send a message! Faith's head
stooped lower and lower over the paper, from her mother and the lamp.
It was such a b