she liked; rest
being considered the best work for that evening. It would seem that she
liked to be silent,--if that were a fair conclusion from her silence.
Her eye took happy note of the familiar things in and about the room;
then she sat and looked into the fireplace, as glad to see it again
maybe,--or doubtful about looking elsewhere. As silently, for a few
minutes, Mr. Linden took note of her: then he spoke.

"Miss Faith, will you let me give you lessons all through the holidays?"

She gave him a swift blushing glance and smile. "If you like to do it,
Mr. Linden--and if I am here."

"Where do you find those two 'ifs'?"

"I thought, perhaps, when I came away from Pequot to-day, that I might
go back again after Monday. I am afraid aunt Dilly will want me."

"How much must people want you, to gain a hearing?"

"There are different kinds of wanting," Faith said gravely. "Aunt Dilly
may miss me too much."

"And the abstract 'too much,' is different from the comparative. What
about that other 'if'?"

"The other 'if'?--I don't know that there is anything about it, Mr.
Linden," Faith said laughing.

"Whence did it come?--before it 'trickeled,' as Bunyan says, to your
tongue?"

"I don't know, sir!"--

"Miss Faith!--I did not think you would so forget me in three weeks. Do
you want to hear the story of a very cold, icy little brook?" he said,
with a sort of amused demureness that gave her the benefit of all his
adjectives. She looked up at him with earnest eyes not at all amused,
but that verged on being hurt; and it was with a sort of fear of what
the real answer might be, that she asked what he meant.

"Miss Faith, I mean nothing very bad," he said with a full smile at her
then. "When I really think you are building yourself an ice palace, I
shall spend my efforts upon thawing, not talking. What have you been
doing all these weeks?"

With a little bit of answering smile she said, in a deliberate kind of
way,--"I have been running about house--and learning how to cook French
cookery, Mr. Linden--and most of all, I've been reading the Bible. I
haven't had time to do much else."

"Do you know," Mr. Linden said as he watched her, "that is just what I
thought?--And so you have been going step by step 'up the mountain'! Do
you see how the road improves?--do you find the 'richer pastures' and
the purer air?"

"O sir," said Faith looking up at him,--"I was reading to aunt Dilly."

"I know,--I understood that.