now it's dinner time, Faith?
How is Mr. Linden?"

"There he is," said Faith smiling. "I don't know, mother."

"He don't look to me as if he had ever been asleep," said Mrs.
Derrick,--but whether that shewed want of sleep, or the reverse, was,
as Mr. Linden remarked, quite doubtful.

Mrs. Derrick looked at him, met his smile--then her whole heart
answered to something it said.

"Oh Mr. Linden! think of her being in such danger!" and there was a
minute of deep silence.

"Nay!" he answered softly--and the face was beautiful in its changing
expression,--"think of her being so safe!"

Mrs. Derrick could bear neither word nor look after that. The two
ladies went down together, leaving Johnny to dine with his teacher.

CHAPTER XXVI.

The dinner up stairs was a very quiet and uninterrupted one. The dinner
down stairs was destined not to be so.

The first break was the entrance of Cindy with a bunch of
flowers--which the doctor had sent to Miss Derrick, with the desire to
know how she was. Faith received the flowers with a dubious face and
put them in water on the dinner-table, where they looked splendid. Mrs.
Derrick could hardly see their splendour.

"He needn't think to come round me that way," she said. "Child! I
wouldn't let you go off with him again for twenty kingdoms!"

"Not with those horses, mother."

"Nor with any others. I sha'n't ever want to have you go with anybody
again, Faith."

"What's goin' on here?" said a growling voice which they knew, before
Mr. Simlins entered the door of the dining room. "That gal o' yourn
wants me to stay politely in the parlour yonder--but I ain't
polite--and I come to see you, not your doors and windows nor the
pretty paper on your walls. What are you all about, Mrs. Derrick? I
hear the very spirit of turbidness has got into this house!"

"There's not much spirit in me to-day," said Mrs. Derrick, "nor spirits
neither. I've lost what little I had. Anybody could knock me down with
a straw. Sit down, Mr. Simlins, and take some dinner."

"I'm afeard, if it's done so easy, I might occasionally do it with one
o' them posies," said Mr. Simlins standing and surveying the bouquet as
if he didn't know what to make of it. "Do you eat the grass of the
field at your noon-spell?"

"You may ask Faith," said Mrs. Derrick; "she put 'em there."

"Sit down, Mr. Simlins," said Faith.

"I ain't goin' to sit down! I've eat _my_ dinner. I've just come in,
Mrs. Derrick, to see