And then, other hours, or minutes, she knows not which, went by.

And then, a stir—a feeble word—a whisper from Nurse Sampson—a low "Thank God!" from her mother.

The crisis was passed. Henderson Gartney lived.



CHAPTER X.

ROUGH ENDS.

"So others shall Take patience, labor, to their heart and hand, From thy hand and thy heart, and thy brave cheer, And God's grace fructify through thee to all." MRS. BROWNING.

"M. S. What does that stand for?" said little Hendie, reading the white letters painted on the black leather bottom of nurse's carpetbag. He got back, now, often, in the daytime, to his old nursery quarters, where his father liked to hear his chatter and play, for a short time together—though he still slept, with Mahala, upstairs. "Does that mean 'Miss Sampson'?"

Faith glanced up from her stocking mending, with a little fun and a little curiosity in her eyes.

"What does 'M.' stand for?" repeated Hendie.

The nurse was "setting to rights" about the room. She turned round at the question, from hanging a towel straight over the stand, and looked a little amazed, as if she had almost forgotten, herself. But it came out, with a quick opening and shutting of the thin lips, like the snipping of a pair of scissors—"Mehitable."

Faith had been greatly drawn to this odd, efficient woman. Beside that her skillful, untiring nursing had humanly, been the means of saving her father's life, which alone had warmed her with an earnest gratitude that was restless to prove itself, and that welled up in every glance and tone she gave Miss Sampson, there were a certain respect and interest that could not withhold themselves from one who so evidently worked on with a great motive that dignified her smallest acts. In whom self-abnegation was the underlying principle of all daily doing.

Miss Sampson had stayed on at the Gartneys', notwithstanding the doctor's prediction, and her usual habit. And, in truth, her patient did not "get well too fast." She was needed now as really as ever, though the immediate danger which had summoned her was past, and the fever had gone. The months of overstrained effort and anxiety that had culminated in its violent attack were telling upon him now, in the scarcely less perilous prostration that followed. And Mrs. Gartney had quite given out since the excessive tension of nerve and feeling had relaxed. She was almost ill enough to be regularly nursed herself. She alternated between her bed in the dressing room and an easy-chair opposite her husband's, at his fireside. Miss Sampson knew when she was really wanted, whether the emergency were more or less obvious. She knew the mischief of a change of hands at such a time. And so she stayed on, though she did sleep comfortably of a night, and had many an hour of rest in the daytime, when Faith would come into the nursery and constitute herself her companion.

Miss Sampson was to her like a book to be read, whereof she turned but a leaf or so at a time, as she had accidental opportunity, yet whose every page rendered up a deep, strong—above all, a most sound and healthy meaning.

She turned over a leaf, one day, in this wise.

"Miss Sampson, how came you, at first, to be a sick nurse?"

The shadow of some old struggle seemed to come over Miss Sampson's face, as she answered, briefly:

"I wanted to find the very toughest sort of a job to do."

Faith looked up, surprised.

"But I heard you tell my father that you had been nursing more than twenty years. You must have been quite a young woman when you began. I wonder—"

"You wonder why I wasn't like most other young women, I suppose. Why I didn't get married, perhaps, and have folks of my own to take care of? Well, I didn't; and the Lord gave me a pretty plain indication that He hadn't laid out that kind of a life for me. So then I just looked around to find out what better He had for me to do. And I hit on the very work I wanted. A trade that it took all the old Sampson grit to follow. I made up my mind, as the doctor says, that somebody in the world had got to choose drumsticks, and I might as well take hold of one."

"But don't you ever get tired of it all, and long for something to rest or amuse you?"

"Amuse! I couldn't be amused, child. I've been in too much awful earnest ever to be much amused again. No, I want to die in the harness. It's hard work I want. I couldn't have been tied down to a common, easy sort of life. I want something to fight and grapple with; and I'm thankful there's been a way opened for me to do good according to my nature. If I hadn't had sickness and death to battle against, I should have got into human quarrels, maybe, just for the sake of feeling ferocious."

"And you always take the very worst and hardest cases, Dr. Gracie says."

"What's the use of taking a tough job if you don't face the toughest part of it? I don't want the comfortable end of the business. Somebody's got to nurse smallpox, and yellow fever, and raving-distracted people; and I know the Lord made me fit to do just that very work. There ain't many that He does make for it, but I'm one. And if I shirked, there'd be a stitch dropped."

"Yellow fever! where have you nursed that?"

"Do you suppose I didn't go to New Orleans? I've nursed it, and I've had it, and nursed it again. I've been in the cholera hospitals, too. I'm seasoned to most everything."

"Do you think everybody ought to take the hardest thing they can find, to do?"

"Do you think everybody ought to eat drumsticks? We'd have to kill an unreasonable lot of fowls to let 'em! No. The Lord portions out breasts and wings, as well as legs. If He puts anything into your plate, take it."

Dr. Gracie always had a word for the nurse, when he came; and, to do her justice, it was seldom but she had a word to give him back.

"Well, Miss Sampson," said he gayly, one bright morning, "you're as fresh as the day. What pulls down other folks seems to set you up. I declare you're as blooming as—twenty-five."

"You—fib—like—sixty! It's no such thing! And if it was, I'd ought to be ashamed of it."

"Prodigious! as your namesake, the Dominie, would say. Don't tell me a woman is ever ashamed of looking young, or handsome!"

"Now, look here, doctor!" said Miss Sampson, "I never was handsome; and I thank the Lord He's given me enough to do in the world to wear off my young looks long ago! And any woman ought to be ashamed that gets to be thirty and upward, to say nothing of forty-five, and keeps her baby face on! It's a sign she ain't been of much account, anyhow."

"Oh, but there are always differences and exceptions," persisted the doctor, who liked nothing better than to draw Miss Sampson out. "There are some faces that take till thirty, at least, to bring out all their possibilities of good looks, and wear on, then, till fifty. I've seen 'em. And the owners were no drones or do-nothings, either. What do you say to that?"

"I say there's two ways of growing old. And growing old ain't always growing ugly. Some folks grow old from the inside, out; and some from the outside, in. There's old furniture, and there's growing trees!"

"And the trunk that is roughest below may branch out greenest a-top!" said the doctor.

The talk Faith heard now and then, in her walks from home, or when some of "the girls" came in and called her down into the parlor—about pretty looks, and becoming dresses, and who danced with who at the "German" last night, and what a scrape Loolie Lloyd had got into with mixing up and misdating her engagements at the class, and the last new roll for the hair—used to seem rather trivial to her in these days!

Occasionally, when Mr. Gartney had what nurse called a "good" day, he would begin to ask for some of his books and papers, with a thought toward business; and then Miss Sampson would display her carpetbag, and make a show of picking up things to put in it. "For," said she, "when you get at your business, it'll be high time for me to go about mine."

"But only for half an hour, nurse! I'll give you that much leave of absence, and then we'll have things back again as they were before."

"I guess you will! And further than they were before. No, Mr. Gartney, you've got to behave. I won't have them vicious-looking accounts about, and it don't signify."

"If it don't, why not?" But it ended in the accounts and the carpetbag disappearing together.

Until one morning, some three weeks from the beginning of Mr. Gartney's illness, when, after a few days' letting alone the whole subject, he suddenly appealed to the doctor.

"Doctor," said he, as that gentleman entered, "I must have Braybrook up here this afternoon. I dropped things just where I stood, you know. It's time to take an observation."

The doctor looked at his patient gravely.

"Can't you be content with simply picking up things, and putting them by, for this year? What I ought to tell you to do would be to send business to the right about, and go off for an entire rest and change, for three months, at least."

"You don't know what you're talking about, doctor!"

"Perhaps not, on one side of the subject. I feel pretty certain on the other, however."

Mr. Gartney did not send for Braybrook that afternoon. The next morning, however, he came, and the tabooed books and papers were got out.

In another day or two, Miss Sampson did pack her carpetbag, and go back to her air-tight stove and solitary cups of tea. Her occupation in Hickory Street was gone.



CHAPTER XI.

CROSS CORNERS.

"O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the Gods for a kingdom, wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth, the thing thou seekest is already with thee, 'here or nowhere,' couldst thou only see!"—CARLYLE.

"It is of no use to talk about it," said Mr. Gartney, wearily. "If I live—as long as I live—I must do business. How else are you to get along?"

"How shall we get along if you do not live?" asked his wife, in a low, anxious tone.

"My life's insured," was all Mr. Gartney's answer.

"Father!" cried Faith, distressfully.

Faith had been taken more and more into counsel and confidence with her parents since the time of the illness that had brought them all so close together. And more and more helpful she had grown, both in word and doing, since she had learned to look daily for the daily work set before her, and to perform it conscientiously, even although it consisted only of little things. She still remembered with enthusiasm Nurse Sampson and the "drumsticks," and managed to pick up now and then one for herself. Meantime she began to see, indistinctly, before her, the vision of a work that must be done by some one, and the duty of it pressed hourly closer home to herself. Her father's health had never been fully reestablished. He had begun to use his strength before and faster than it came. There was danger—it needed no Dr. Gracie, even, to tell them so—of grave disease, if this went on. And still, whenever urged, his answer was the same. "What would become of his family without his business?"

Faith turned these things over and over in her mind.

"Father," said she, after a while—the conversation having been dropped at the old conclusion, and nobody appearing to have anything more to say—"I don't know anything about business; but I wish you'd tell me how much money you've got!"

Her father laughed; a sad sort of laugh though, that was not so much amusement as tenderness and pity. Then, as if the whole thing were a mere joke, yet with a shade upon his face that betrayed there was far too much truth under the jest, after all, he took out his portemonnaie and told her to look and see.

"You know I don't mean that, father! How much in the bank, and everywhere?"

"Precious little in the bank, now, Faithie. Enough to keep house with for a year, nearly, perhaps. But if I were to take it and go off and spend it in traveling, you can understand that the housekeeping would fall short, can't you?"

Faith looked horrified. She was bringing down her vague ideas of money that came from somewhere, through her father's pocket, as water comes from Lake Kinsittewink by the turning of a faucet, to the narrow point of actuality.

"But that isn't all, I know! I've heard you talk about railroad dividends, and such things."

"Oh! what does the Western Road pay this time?" asked his wife.

"I've had to sell out my stock there."

"And where's the money, father?" asked Faith.

"Gone to pay debts, child," was the answer.

Mrs. Gartney said nothing, but she looked very grave. Her husband surmised, perhaps, that she would go on to imagine worse than had really happened, and so added, presently:

"I haven't been obliged to sell all my railroad stocks, wifey. I held on to some. There's the New York Central all safe; and the Michigan Central, too. That wouldn't have sold so well, to be sure, just when I was wanting the money; but things are looking better, now."

"Father," said Faithie, with her most coaxing little smile, "please just take this bit of paper and pencil, and set down these stocks and things, will you?"

The little smile worked its way; and half in idleness, half in acquiescence, Mr. Gartney took the pencil and noted down a short list of items.

"It's very little, Faith, you see." They ran thus:

New York Central Railroad 20 shares. Michigan Central " 15 " Kinnicutt Branch " 10 " Mishaumok Insurance Co. 15 " Merchants Bank 30 "

"And now, father, please put down how much you get a year in dividends."

"Not always the same, little busybody."

Nevertheless he noted down the average sums. And the total was between six and seven hundred dollars.

"But that isn't all. You've got other things. Why, there's the house at Cross Corners."

"Yes, but I can't let it, you know."

"What used you to get for it?"

"Two hundred and fifty. For house and land."

"And you own this house, too, father?"

"Yes. This is your mother's."

"How much rent would this bring?"

Mr. Gartney turned around and looked at his daughter. He began to see there was a meaning in her questions. And as he caught her eye, he read, or discerned without fully reading, a certain eager kindling there.

"Why, what has come over you, Faithie, to set you catechising so?"

Faith laughed.

"Just answer this, please, and I won't ask a single question more to-night."

"About the rent? Why, this house ought to bring six hundred, certainly. And now, if the court will permit, I'll read the news."

About a week after this, in the latter half of one of those spring days that come with a warm breath to tell that summer is glowing somewhere, and that her face is northward, Aunt Faith Henderson came out upon the low, vine-latticed stoop of her house in Kinnicutt.

Up the little footpath from the road—across the bit of greensward that lay between it and the stoop—came a quick, noiseless step, and there was a touch, presently, on the old lady's arm.

Faith Gartney stood beside her, in trim straw bonnet and shawl, with a black leather bag upon her arm.

"Auntie! I've come to make you a tiny little visit! Till day after to-morrow."

"Faith Gartney! However came you here? And in such a fashion, too, without a word of warning, like—an angel from Heaven!"

"I came up in the cars, auntie! I felt just like it! Will you keep me?"

"Glory! Glory McWhirk!" Like the good Vicar of Wakefield, Aunt Henderson liked often to give the whole name; and calling, she disappeared round the corner of the stoop, without ever a word of more assured welcome.

"Put on the teapot again, and make a slice of toast." The good lady's voice, going on with further directions, was lost in the intricate threading of the inner maze of the singular old dwelling, and Faith followed her as far as the first apartment, where she set down her bag and removed her bonnet.

It was a quaint, dim room, overbrowed and gloomed by the roofed projection of the stoop; low-ceiled, high-wainscoted and paneled. All in oak, of the natural color, deepened and glossed by time and wear. The heavy beams that supported the floor above were undisguised, and left the ceiling in panels also, as it were, between. In these highest places, a man six feet tall could hardly have stood without bending. He certainly would not, whether he could or no. Even Aunt Faith, with her five feet, six-and-a-half, dropped a little of her dignity, habitually, when she entered. But then, as she said, "A hen always bobs her head when she comes in at a barn door." Between the windows stood an old, old-fashioned secretary, that filled up from floor to ceiling; and over the fireplace a mirror of equally antique date tilted forward from the wall. Opposite the secretary, a plain mahogany table; and eight high-backed, claw-footed chairs ranged stiffly around the room.

Aunt Henderson was proud of her old ways, her old furniture, and her house, that was older than all.

Some far back ancestor and early settler had built it—the beginning of it—before Kinnicutt had even become a town; and—rare exception to the changes elsewhere—generation after generation of the same name and line had inhabited it until now. Aunt Faith, exultingly, told each curious visitor that it had been built precisely two hundred and ten years. Out in the back kitchen, or lean-to, was hung to a rafter the identical gun with which the "old settler" had ranged the forest that stretched then from the very door; and higher up, across a frame contrived for it, was the "wooden saddle" fabricated for the back of the placid, slow-moving ox, in the time when horses were as yet rare in the new country, and used with pillions, to transport I can't definitely say how many of the family to "meeting."

Between these—the best room and the out-kitchen—the labyrinth of sitting room, bedrooms, kitchen proper, milk room, and pantry, partitioned off, or added on, many of them since the primary date of the main structure, would defy the pencil of modern architect.

In one of these irregularly clustered apartments that opened out on different aspects, unexpectedly, from their conglomerate center, Faith sat, some fifteen minutes after her entrance into the house, at a little round table between two corner windows that looked northwest and southwest, and together took in the full radiance of the evening sky.

Opposite sat her aunt, taking care of her as regarded tea, toast, and plain country loaf cake, and watching somewhat curiously, also, her face.

Faith's face had changed a little since Aunt Henderson had seen her last. It was not the careless girl's face she had known. There was a thought in it now. A thought that seemed to go quite out from, and forget the self from which it came.

Aunt Henderson wondered greatly what sudden whim or inward purpose had brought her grandniece hither.

When Faith absolutely declined any more tea or cake, Miss Henderson's tap on the table leaf brought in Glory McWhirk.

A tall, well-grown girl of eighteen was Glory, now—quite another Glory than had lightened, long ago, the dull little house in Budd Street, and filled it with her bright, untutored dreams. The luminous tresses had had their way since then; that is, with certain comfortable bounds prescribed; and rippled themselves backward from a clear, contented face, into the net that held them tidily.

Faith looked up, and remembered the poor office girl of three years since, half clad and hopeless, with a secret amaze at what "Aunt Faith had made of her."

"You may give me some water, Glory," said Miss Henderson.

Glory brought the pitcher, and poured into the tumbler, and gazed at Faith's pretty face, and the dark-brown glossy rolls that framed it, until the water fairly ran over the table.

"There! there! Why, Glory, what are you thinking of?" cried Miss Henderson.

Glory was thinking her old thoughts—wakened always by all that was beautiful and beyond.

She came suddenly to herself, however, and darted off, with her face as bright a crimson as her hair was golden; flashing up so, as she did most easily, into as veritable a Glory as ever was. Never had baby been more aptly or prophetically named.

Coming back, towel in hand, to stop the freshet she had set flowing, she dared not give another glance across the table; but went busily and deftly to work, clearing it of all that should be cleared, that she might make her shy way off again before she should be betrayed into other unwonted blundering.

"And now, Faith Gartney, tell me all about it! What sent you here?"

"Nothing. Nobody. I came, aunt. I wanted to see the place, and you."

The rough eyebrows were bent keenly across the table.

"Hum!" breathed Aunt Henderson.

There was small interior sympathy between her ideas and those that governed the usual course of affairs in Hickory Street. Fond of her nephew and his family, after her fashion, notwithstanding Faith's old rebellion, and all other differences, she certainly was; but they went their way, and she hers. She felt pretty sure theirs would sooner or later come to a turning; and when that should happen, whether she should meet them round the corner, or not, would depend. Her path would need to bend a little, and theirs to make a pretty sharp angle, first.

But here was Faith cutting across lots to come to her! Aunt Henderson put away her loaf cake in the cupboard, set back her chair against the wall in its invariable position of disuse, and departed to the milk room and kitchen for her evening duty and oversight.

Glory's hands were busy in the bread bowl, and her brain kneading its secret thoughts that no one knew or intermeddled with.

Faith sat at the open window of the little tea room, and watched the young moon's golden horn go down behind the earth rim among the purple, like a flamy flower bud floating over, and so lost.

And the three lives gathered in to themselves, separately, whatsoever the hour brought to each.

At nine o'clock Aunt Faith came in, took down the great leather-bound Bible from the corner shelf, and laid it on the table. Glory appeared, and seated herself beside the door.

For a few moments, the three lives met in the One Great Life that overarches and includes humanity. Miss Henderson read from the sixth chapter of St. John.

They were fed with the five thousand.



CHAPTER XII.

A RECONNOISSANCE.

"Then said his Lordship, 'Well God mend all!' 'Nay, Donald, we must help him to mend it,' said the other."—Quoted by CARLYLE.

"Oh, leave these jargons, and go your way straight to God's work in simplicity and singleness of heart!"—MISS NIGHTINGALE.

"Auntie," said Faith, next morning, when, after some exploring, she had discovered Miss Henderson in a little room, the very counterpart of the one she had had her tea in the night before, only that this opened to the southeast, and hailed the morning sun. "Auntie, will you go over with me to the Cross Corners house, after breakfast? It's empty, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's empty. But it's no great show of a house. What do you want to see it for?"

"Why, it used to be so pretty, there. I'd like just to go into it. Have you heard of anybody's wanting it yet?"

"No; and I guess nobody's likely to, for one while. Folks don't make many changes, out here."

"What a bright little breakfast room this is, auntie! And how grand you are to have a room for every meal!"

"It ain't for the grandeur of it. But I always did like to follow the sun round. For the most part of the year, at any rate. And this is just as near the kitchen as the other. Besides, I kind of hate to shut up any of the rooms, altogether. They were all wanted, once; and now I'm all alone in 'em."

For Miss Henderson, this was a great opening of the heart. But she didn't go on to say that the little west room had been her young brother's, who long ago, when he was just ready for his Master's work in this world, had been called up higher; and that her evening rest was sweeter, and her evening reading holier for being holden there; or that here, in the sunny morning hours, her life seemed almost to roll back its load of many years, and to set her down beside her mother's knee, and beneath her mother's gentle tutelage, once more; that on the little "light stand" in the corner by the fireplace stood the selfsame basket that had been her mother's then—just where she had kept it, too, when it was running over with little frocks and stockings that were always waiting finishing or mending—and now held only the plain gray knitting work and the bit of sewing that Aunt Faith might have in hand.

A small, square table stood now in the middle of the floor, with a fresh brown linen breakfast cloth upon it; and Glory, neat and fresh, also, with her brown spotted calico dress and apron of the same, came in smiling like a very goddess of peace and plenty, with the steaming coffeepot in one hand, and the plate of fine, white rolls in the other. The yellow print of butter and some rounds from a brown loaf were already on the table. Glory brought in, presently, the last addition to the meal—six eggs, laid yesterday, the water of their boiling just dried off, and modestly took her own seat at the lower end of the board.

Aunt Faith, living alone, kept to the kindly old country fashion of admitting her handmaid to the table with herself. "Why not?" she would say. "In the first place, why should we keep the table about, half an hour longer than we need? And I suppose hot cakes and coffee are as much nicer than cold, for one body as another. Then where's the sense? We take Bible meat together. Must we be more dainty about 'meat that perisheth'?" So her argument climbed up from its lower reason to its climax.

Glory had little of the Irish now about her but her name. And all that she retained visibly of the Roman faith she had been born to, was her little rosary of colored shells, strung as beads, that had been blessed by the Pope.

Miss Henderson had trained and fed her in her own ways, and with such food as she partook herself, physically and spiritually. Glory sat, every Sunday, in the corner pew of the village church, by her mistress's side. And this church-going being nearly all that she had ever had, she took in the nutriment that was given her, to a soul that recognized it, and never troubled itself with questions as to one truth differing from another, or no. Indeed, no single form or theory could have contained the "credo" of her simple, yet complex, thought. The old Catholic reverence clung about her still, that had come with her all the way from her infancy, when her mother and grandmother had taught her the prayers of their Church; and across the long interval of ignorance and neglect flung a sort of cathedral light over what she felt was holy now.

Rescued from her dim and servile city life—brought out into the light and beauty she had mutely longed for—feeling care and kindliness about her for the long-time harshness and oppression she had borne—she was like a spirit newly entered into heaven, that needs no priestly ministration any more. Every breath drew in a life and teaching purer than human words.

And then the words she did hear were Divine. Miss Henderson did no preaching—scarcely any lip teaching, however brief. She broke the bread of life God gave her, as she cut her daily loaf and shared it—letting each soul, God helping, digest it for itself.

Glory got hold of some old theology, too, that she could but fragmentarily understand but that mingled itself—as all we gather does mingle, not uselessly—with her growth. She found old books among Miss Henderson's stores, that she read and mused on. She trembled at the warnings, and reposed in the holy comforts of Doddridge's "Rise and Progress," and Baxter's "Saint's Rest." She traveled to the Holy City, above all, with Bunyan's Pilgrim. And then, Sunday after Sunday, she heard the simple Christian preaching of an old and simple Christian man. Not terrible—but earnest; not mystical—but high; not lax—but liberal; and this fused and tempered all.

So "things had happened" for Glory. So God had cared for this, His child. So, according to His own Will—not any human plan or forcing— she grew.

Aunt Faith washed up the breakfast cups, dusted and "set to rights" in the rooms where, to the young Faith's eyes, there seemed such order already as could not be righted, made up a nice little pudding for dinner, and then, taking down her shawl and silk hood, and putting on her overshoes, announced herself ready for Cross Corners.

"Though it's all cross corners to me, child, sure enough. I suppose it's none of my business, but I can't think what you're up to."

"Not up to any great height, yet, auntie. But I'm growing," said Faith, merrily, and with meaning somewhat beyond the letter.

They went out at the back door, which opened on a little footpath down the sudden green slope behind, and stretched across the field, diagonally, to a bar place and stile at the opposite corner. Here the roads from five different directions met and crossed, which gave the locality its name.

Opposite the stile at which they came out, across the shady lane that wound down from the Old Road whereon Miss Henderson's mansion faced, a gateway in a white paling that ran round and fenced in a grassy door yard, overhung with pendent branches of elms and stouter canopy of chestnuts, let them in upon the little "Cross Corners Farm."

"Oh, Aunt Faith! It's just as lovely as ever! I remember that path up the hill, among the trees, so well! When I was a little bit of a girl, and nurse and I came out to stay with you. I had my 'fairy house' there. I'd like to go over this minute, only that we shan't have time. How shall we get in? Where is the key?"

"It's in my pocket. But it mystifies me, what you want there."

"I want to look out of all the windows, auntie, to begin with."

Aunt Faith's mystification was not lessened.

The front door opened on a small, square hall, with doors to right and left. The room on the left, spite of the bare floor and fireless hearth, was warm with the spring sunshine that came pouring in at the south windows. Beyond this, embracing the corner of the house rectangularly, projected an equally sunny and cheery kitchen; at the right of which, communicating with both apartments, was divided off a tiny tea and breakfast room. So Faith decided, though it had very likely been a bedroom.

From the entrance hall at the right opened a room larger than either of the others—so large that the floor above afforded two bedrooms over it—and having, besides its windows south and east, a door in the farther corner beyond the chimney, that gave out directly upon the grassy slope, and looked up the path among the trees that crossed the ridge.

Faith drew the bolt and opened it, expecting to find a closet or a passage somewhither. She fairly started back with surprise and delight. And then seated herself plump upon the threshold, and went into a midsummer dream.

"Oh, auntie!" she cried, at her waking, presently, "was ever anything so perfect? To think of being let out so! Right from a regular, proper parlor, into the woods!"

"Do you mean to go upstairs?" inquired Miss Henderson, with a vague amaze in her look that seemed to question whether her niece had not possibly been "let out" from her "regular and proper" wits!

Whereupon Faith scrambled up from her seat upon the sill, and hurried off to investigate above.

Miss Henderson closed the door, pushed the bolt, and followed quietly after.

It was a funny little pantomime that Faith enacted then, for the further bewilderment of the staid old lady.

Darting from one chamber to another, with an inexplicable look of business and consideration in her face, that contrasted comically with her quick movements and her general air of glee, she would take her stand in the middle of each one in turn, and wheeling round to get a swift panoramic view of outlook and capabilities, would end by a succession of mysterious and apparently satisfied little nods, as if at each pause some point of plan or arrangement had settled itself in her mind.

"Aunt Faith!" cried she, suddenly, as she came out upon the landing when she had peeped into the last corner, and found Miss Henderson on the point of making her descent—"what sort of a thing do you think it would be for us to come here and live?"

Aunt Faith sat down now as suddenly, in her turn, on the stairhead. Recovering, so, from her momentary and utter astonishment, and taking in, during that instant of repose, the full drift of the question propounded, she rose from her involuntarily assumed position, and continued her way down—answering, without so much as turning her head, "It would be just the most sensible thing that Henderson Gartney ever did in his life!"

What made Faithie a bit sober, all at once, when the key was turned, and they passed on, out under the elms, into the lane again?

Did you ever project a very wise and important scheme, that involves a little self-sacrifice, which, by a determined looking at the bright side of the subject, you had managed tolerably to ignore; and then, by the instant and unhesitating acquiescence of some one to whose judgment you submitted it, find yourself suddenly wheeled about in your own mind to the standpoint whence you discerned only the difficulty again?

"There's one thing, Aunt Faith," said she, as they slowly walked up the field path; "I couldn't go to school any more."

Faith had discontinued her regular attendance since the recommencement for the year, but had gone in for a few hours on "French and German days."

"There's another thing," said Aunt Faith. "I don't believe your father can afford to send you any more. You're eighteen, ain't you?"

"I shall be, this summer."

"Time for you to leave off school. Bring your books and things along with you. You'll have chance enough to study."

Faith hadn't thought much of herself before. But when she found her aunt didn't apparently think of her at all, she began to realize keenly all that she must silently give up.

"But it's a good deal of help, auntie, to study with other people. And then—we shouldn't have any society out here. I don't mean for the sake of parties, and going about. But for the improvement of it. I shouldn't like to be shut out from cultivated people."

"Faith Gartney!" exclaimed Miss Henderson, facing about in the narrow footway, "don't you go to being fine and transcendental! If there's one word I despise more than another, in the way folks use it nowadays—it's 'Culture'! As if God didn't know how to make souls grow! You just take root where He puts you, and go to work, and live! He'll take care of the cultivating! If He means you to turn out a rose, or an oak tree, you'll come to it. And pig-weed's pig-weed, no matter where it starts up!"

"Aunt Faith!" replied the child, humbly and earnestly, "I believe that's true! And I believe I want the country to grow in! But the thing will be," she added, a little doubtfully, "to persuade father."

"Doesn't he want to come, then? Whose plan is it, pray?" asked Miss Henderson, stopping short again, just as she had resumed her walk, in a fresh surprise.

"Nobody's but mine, yet, auntie! I haven't asked him, but I thought I'd come and look."

Miss Henderson took her by the arm, and looked steadfastly in her dark, earnest eyes.

"You're something, sure enough!" said she, with a sharp tenderness.

Faith didn't know precisely what she meant, except that she seemed to mean approval. And at the one word of appreciation, all difficulty and self-sacrifice vanished out of her sight, and everything brightened to her thought, again, till her thought brightened out into a smile.

"What a skyful of lovely white clouds!" she said, looking up to the pure, fleecy folds that were flittering over the blue. "We can't see that in Mishaumok!"

"She's just heavenly!" said Glory to herself, standing at the back door, and gazing with a rapturous admiration at Faith's upturned face. "And the dinner's all ready, and I'm thankful, and more, that the custard's baked so beautiful!"



CHAPTER XIII.

DEVELOPMENT.

"Sits the wind in that corner?" MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

"For courage mounteth with occasion." KING JOHN.

The lassitude that comes with spring had told upon Mr. Gartney. He had dyspepsia, too; and now and then came home early from the counting room with a headache that sent him to his bed. Dr. Gracie dropped in, friendly-wise, of an evening—said little that was strictly professional—but held his hand a second longer, perhaps, than he would have done for a mere greeting, and looked rather scrutinizingly at him when Mr. Gartney's eyes were turned another way. Frequently he made some slight suggestion of a journey, or other summer change.

"You must urge it, if you can, Mrs. Gartney," he said, privately, to the wife. "I don't quite like his looks. Get him away from business, at almost any sacrifice," he came to add, at last.

"At every sacrifice?" asked Mrs. Gartney, anxious and perplexed. "Business is nearly all, you know."

"Life is more—reason is more," answered the doctor, gravely.

And the wife went about her daily task with a secret heaviness at her heart.

"Father," said Faith, one evening, after she had read to him the paper while he lay resting upon the sofa, "if you had money enough to live on, how long would it take you to wind up your business?"

"It's pretty nearly wound up now! But what's the use of asking such a question?"

"Because," said Faith, timidly, "I've got a little plan in my head, if you'll only listen to it."

"Well, Faithie, I'll listen. What is it?"

And then Faith spoke it all out, at once.

"That you should give up all your business, father, and let this house, and go to Cross Corners, and live at the farm."

Mr. Gartney started to his elbow. But a sudden pain that leaped in his temples sent him back again. For a minute or so, he did not speak at all. Then he said:

"Do you know what you are talking of, daughter?"

"Yes, father; I've been thinking it over a good while—since the night we wrote down these things."

And she drew from her pocket the memorandum of stocks and dividends.

"You see you have six hundred and fifty dollars a year from these, and this house would be six hundred more, and mother says she can manage on that, in the country, if I will help her."

Mr. Gartney shaded his eyes with his hand. Not wholly, perhaps, to shield them from the light.

"You're a good girl, Faithie," said he, presently; and there was assuredly a little tremble in his voice.

"And so, you and your mother have talked it over, together?"

"Yes; often, lately. And she said I had better ask you myself, if I wished it. She is perfectly willing. She thinks it would be good."

"Faithie," said her father, "you make me feel, more than ever, how much I ought to do for you!"

"You ought to get well and strong, father—that is all!" replied Faith, with a quiver in her own voice.

Mr. Gartney sighed.

"I'm no more than a mere useless block of wood!"

"We shall just have to set you up, and make an idol of you, then!" cried Faith, cheerily, with tears on her eyelashes, that she winked off.

There had been a ring at the bell while they were speaking; and now Mrs. Gartney entered, followed by Dr. Gracie.

"Well, Miss Faith," said the doctor, after the usual greetings, and a prolonged look at Mr. Gartney's flushed face, "what have you done to your father?"

"I've been reading the paper," answered Faith, quietly, "and talking a little."

"Mother!" said Mr. Gartney, catching his wife's hand, as she came round to find a seat near him, "are you really in the plot, too?"

"I'm glad there is a plot," said the doctor, quickly, glancing round with a keen inquiry. "It's time!"

"Wait till you hear it," said Mr. Gartney. "Are you in a hurry to lose your patient?"

"Depends upon how!" replied the doctor, touching the truth in a jest.

"This is how. Here's a little jade who has the conceit and audacity to propose to me to wind up my business (as if she understood the whole process!), and let my house, and go to my farm at Cross Corners. What do you think of that?"

"I think it would be the most sensible thing you ever did in your life!"

"Just exactly what Aunt Henderson said!" cried Faith, exultant.

"Aunt Faith, too! The conspiracy thickens! How long has all this been discussing?" continued Mr. Gartney, fairly roused, and springing, despite the doctor's request, to a sitting position, throwing off, as he did so, the afghan Faith had laid over his feet.

"There hasn't been much discussion," said Faith. "Only when I went out to Kinnicutt I got auntie to show me the house; and I asked her how she thought it would be if we were to do such a thing, and she said just what Dr. Gracie has said now. And, father, you don't know how beautiful it is there!"

"So you really want to go? and it isn't drumsticks?" queried the doctor, turning round to Faith.

"Some drumsticks are very nice," said Faith.

"Gartney!" said Dr. Gracie, "you'd better mind what this girl of yours says. She's worth attending to."

The wedge had been entered, and Faith's hand had driven it.

The plan was taken into consideration. Of course, such a change could not be made without some pondering; but when almost the continual thought of a family is concentrated upon a single subject, a good deal of pondering and deciding can be done in three weeks. At the end of that time an advertisement appeared in the leading Mishaumok papers, offering the house in Hickory Street to be let; and Mrs. Gartney and Faith were busy packing boxes to go to Kinnicutt.

Only a passing shade had been flung on the project which seemed to brighten into sunshine, otherwise, the more they looked at it, when Mrs. Gartney suddenly said, after a long "talking over," the second evening after the proposal had been first broached:

"But what will Saidie say?"

Now Saidie—whom before it has been unnecessary to mention—was Faith's elder sister, traveling at this moment in Europe, with a wealthy elder sister of Mrs. Gartney.

"I never thought of Saidie," cried Faith.

Saidie was pretty sure not to like Kinnicutt. A young lady, educated at a fashionable New York school—petted by an aunt who found nobody else to pet, and who had money enough to have petted a whole asylum of orphans—who had shone in London and Paris for two seasons past—was not exceedingly likely to discover all the possible delights that Faith had done, under the elms and chestnuts at Cross Corners.

But this could make no practical difference.

"She wouldn't like Hickory Street any better," said Faith, "if we couldn't have parties or new furniture any more. And she's only a visitor, at the best. Aunt Etherege will be sure to have her in New York, or traveling about, ten months out of twelve. She can come to us in June and October. I guess she'll like strawberries and cream, and—whatever comes at the other season, besides red leaves."

Now this was kind, sisterly consideration of Faith, however little so it seems, set down. It was very certain that no more acceptable provision could be made for Saidie Gartney in the family plan, than to leave her out, except where the strawberries and cream were concerned. In return, she wrote gay, entertaining letters home to her mother and young sister, and sent pretty French, or Florentine, or Roman ornaments for them to wear. Some persons are content to go through life with such exchange of sympathies as this.

By and by, Faith being in her own room, took out from her letter box the last missive from abroad. There was something in this which vexed Faith, and yet stirred her a little, obscurely.

All things are fair in love, war, and—story books! So, though she would never have shown the words to you or me, we will peep over her shoulder, and share them, "en rapport."

"And Paul Rushleigh, it seems, is as much as ever in Hickory Street! Well—my little Faithie might make a far worse 'parti' than that! Tell papa I think he may be satisfied there!"

Faith would have cut off her little finger, rather than have had her father dream that such a thing had been put into her head! But unfortunately it was there, now, and could not be helped. She could only—sitting there in her chamber window with the blood tingling to the hair upon her temples, as if from every neighboring window of the clustering houses about her, eyes could overlook and read what she was reading now—"wish that Saidie would not write such things as that!"

For all that, it was one pleasant thing Faith would have to lose in leaving Mishaumok. It was very agreeable to have him dropping in, with his gay college gossip; and to dance the "German" with the nicest partner in the Monday class; and to carry the flowers he so often sent her. Had she done things greater than she knew in shutting her eyes resolutely to all her city associations and enjoyments, and urging, for her father's sake, this exodus in the desert?

Only that means were actually wanting to continue on as they were, and that health must at any rate be first striven for as a condition to the future enlargement of means, her father and mother, in their thought for what their child hardly considered for herself, would surely have been more difficult to persuade. They hoped that a summer's rest might enable Mr. Gartney to undertake again some sort of lucrative business, after business should have revived from its present prostration; and that a year or two, perhaps, of economizing in the country, might make it possible for them to return, if they chose, to the house in Hickory Street.

There were leave takings to be gone through—questions to be answered, and reasons to be given; for Mrs. Gartney, the polite wishes of her visiting friends that "Mr. Gartney's health might allow them to return to the city in the winter," with the wonder, unexpressed, whether this were to be a final breakdown of the family, or not; and for Faith, the horror and extravagant lamentations of her young coterie, at her coming occultation—or setting, rather, out of their sky.

Paul Rushleigh demanded eagerly if there weren't any sober old minister out there, with whom he might be rusticated for his next college prank.

Everybody promised to come as far as Kinnicutt "some time" to see them; the good-bys were all said at last; the city cook had departed, and a woman had been taken in her place who "had no objections to the country"; and on one of the last bright days of May they skimmed, steam-sped, over the intervening country between the brick-and-stone-encrusted hills of Mishaumok and the fair meadow reaches of Kinnicutt; and so disappeared out of the places that had known them so long, and could yet, alas! do so exceedingly well without them.

By the first of June nobody in the great city remembered, or remembered very seriously to regard, the little gap that had been made in its midst.



CHAPTER XIV.

A DRIVE WITH THE DOCTOR.

"And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days; Then heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear lays." LOWELL.

"All lives have their prose translation as well as their ideal meaning."—CHARLES AUCHESTER.

But Kinnicutt opened wider to receive them than Mishaumok had to let them go.

If Mr. Gartney's invalidism had to be pleaded to get away with dignity, it was even more needed to shield with anything of quietness their entrance into the new sphere they had chosen.

Faith, with her young adaptability, found great fund of entertainment in the new social developments that unfolded themselves at Cross Corners.

All sorts of quaint vehicles drove up under the elms in the afternoon visiting hours, day after day—hitched horses, and unladed passengers. Both doctors and their wives came promptly, of course; the "old doctor" from the village, and the "young doctor" from "over at Lakeside." Quiet Mrs. Holland walked in at the twilight, by herself, one day, to explain that her husband, the minister, was too unwell to visit, and to say her pleasant, unpretentious words of welcome. Squire Leatherbee's daughters made themselves fine in lilac silks and green Estella shawls, to offer acquaintance to the new "city people." Aunt Faith came over, once or twice a week, at times when "nobody else would be round under foot," and always with some dainty offering from dairy, garden, or kitchen. At other hours, Glory was fain to seize all opportunity of errands that Miss Henderson could not do, and irradiate the kitchen, lingeringly, until she herself might be more ecstatically irradiated with a glance and smile from Miss Faith.

There was need enough of Aunt Faith's ministrations during these first, few, unsettled weeks. The young woman who "had no objections to the country," objected no more to these pleasant country fashions of neighborly kindness. She had reason. Aunt Faith's "thirds bread," or crisp "vanity cakes," or "velvet creams," were no sooner disposed of than there surely came a starvation interval of sour biscuits, heavy gingerbread, and tough pie crust, and dinners feebly cooked, with no attempt at desserts, at all.

This was gloomy. This was the first trial of their country life. Plainly, this cook was no cook. Mr. Gartney's dyspepsia must be considered. Kinnicutt air and June sunshine would not do all the curative work. The healthy appetite they stimulated must be wholesomely supplied.

Faith took to the kitchen. To Glory's mute and rapturous delight, she began to come almost daily up the field path, in her pretty round hat and morning wrapper, to waylay her aunt in the tidy kitchen at the early hour when her cookery was sure to be going on, to ask questions and investigate, and "help a little," and then to go home and repeat the operation as nearly as she could for their somewhat later dinner.

"Miss McGonegal seems to be improving," observed Mr. Gartney, complacently, one day, as he partook of a simple, but favorite pudding, nicely flavored and compounded; "or is this a charity of Aunt Henderson's?"

"No," replied his wife, "it is home manufacture," and she glanced at Faith without dropping her tone to a period. Faith shook her head, and the sentence hung in the air, unfinished.

Mrs. Gartney had not been strong for years. Moreover, she had not a genius for cooking. That is a real gift, as much as a genius for poetry or painting. Faith was finding out, suddenly, that she had it. But she was quite willing that her father should rest in the satisfactory belief that Miss McGonegal, in whom it never, by any possibility, could be developed, was improving; and that the good things that found their way to his table had a paid and permanent origin. He was more comfortable so, she thought. Meanwhile, they would inquire if the region round about Kinnicutt might be expected to afford a substitute.

Dr. Wasgatt's wife told Mrs. Gartney of a young American woman who was staying in the "factory village" beyond Lakeside, and who had asked her husband if he knew of any place where she could "hire out." Dr. Wasgatt would be very glad to take her or Miss Faith over there, of a morning, to see if she would answer.

Faith was very glad to go.

Dr. Wasgatt was the "old doctor." A benign man, as old doctors—when they don't grow contrariwise, and become unspeakably gruff and crusty—are apt to be. A benign old doctor, a docile old horse, an old-fashioned two-wheeled chaise that springs to the motion like a bough at a bird flitting, and an indescribable June morning wherein to drive four miles and back—well! Faith couldn't help exulting in her heart that they wanted a cook.

The way was very lovely toward Lakeside, and across to factory village. It crossed the capricious windings of Wachaug two or three times within the distance, and then bore round the Pond Road, which kept its old traditional cognomen, though the new neighborhood that had grown up at its farther bend had got a modern name, and the beautiful pond itself had come to be known with a legitimate dignity as Lake Wachaug.

Graceful birches, with a spring, and a joyous, whispered secret in every glossy leaf, leaned over the road toward the water; and close down to its ripples grew wild shrubs and flowers, and lush grass, and lady bracken, while out over the still depths rested green lily pads, like floating thrones waiting the fair water queens who, a few weeks hence, should rise to claim them. Back, behind the birches, reached the fringe of woodland that melted away, presently, in the sunny pastures, and held in bush and branch hundreds of little mother birds, brooding in a still rapture, like separate embodied pulses of the Universal Love, over a coming life and joy.

Life and joy were everywhere. Faith's heart danced and glowed within her. She had thought, many a time before, that she was getting somewhat of the joy of the country, when, after dinner and business were over, she had come out from Mishaumok, in proper fashionable toilet, with her father and mother, for an afternoon airing in the city environs. But here, in the old doctor's "one-hoss shay," and with her round straw hat and chintz wrapper on, she was finding out what a rapturously different thing it is to go out into the bountiful morning, and identify oneself therewith.

She had almost forgotten that she had any other errand when they turned away from the lake, and took a little side road that wound off from it, and struck the river again, and brought them at last to the Wachaug Mills and the little factory settlement around them.

"This is Mrs. Pranker's," said the doctor, stopping at the third door in a block of factory houses, "and it's a sister-in-law of hers who wants to 'hire out.' I've a patient in the next row, and if you like, I'll leave you here a few minutes."

Faith's foot was instantly on the chaise step, and she sprang to the ground with only an acknowledging touch of the good doctor's hand, upheld to aid her.

A white-haired boy of three, making gravel puddings in a scalloped tin dish at the door, scrambled up as she approached, upset his pudding, and sidled up the steps in a scared fashion, with a finger in his mouth, and his round gray eyes sending apprehensive peeps at her through the linty locks.

"Well, tow-head!" ejaculated an energetic female voice within, to an accompaniment of swashing water, and a scrape of a bucket along the floor; "what's wanting now? Can't you stay put, nohow?"

An unintelligible jargon of baby chatter followed, which seemed, however, to have conveyed an idea to the mother's mind, for she appeared immediately in the passage, drying her wet arms upon her apron.

"Mrs. Pranker?" asked Faith.

"That's my name," replied the woman, as who should say, peremptorily, "what then?"

"I was told—my mother heard—that a sister of yours was looking for a place."

"She hain't done much about lookin'," was the reply, "but she was sayin' she didn't know but what she'd hire out for a spell, if anybody wanted her. She's in the keepin' room. You can come in and speak to her, if you're a mind to. The kitchen floor's wet. I'm jest a-washin' of it. You little sperrit!" This to the child, who was amusing himself with the floor cloth which he had fished out of the bucket, and held up, dripping, letting a stream of dirty water run down the front of his red calico frock. "If children ain't the biggest torments! Talk about Job! His wife had to have more patience than he did, I'll be bound! And patience ain't any use, either! The more you have, the more you're took advantage of! I declare and testify, it makes me as cross as sin, jest to think how good-natured I be!" And with this, she snatched the cloth from the boy's hands, shook first him and then his frock, to get rid, in so far as a shake might accomplish it, of original depravity and sandy soapsuds, and carried him, vociferant, to the door, where she set him down to the consolation of gravel pudding again.

Meanwhile Faith crossed the sloppy kitchen, on tiptoe, toward an open door, that revealed a room within.

Here a very fat young woman, with a rather pleasant face, was seated, sewing, in a rocking-chair.

She did not rise, or move, at Faith's entrance, otherwise than to look up, composedly, and let fall her arms along those of the chair, retaining the needle in one hand and her work in the other.

"I came to see," said Faith—obliged to say something to explain her presence, but secretly appalled at the magnitude of the subject she had to deal with—"if you wanted a place in a family."

"Take a seat," said the young woman.

Faith availed herself of one, and, doubtful what to say next, waited for indications from the other party.

"Well—I was calc'latin' to hire out this summer, but I ain't very partic'ler about it, neither."

"Can you cook?"

"Most kinds. I can't do much fancy cookin'. Guess I can make bread—all sorts—and roast, and bile, and see to common fixin's, though, as well as the next one!"

"We like plain country cooking," said Faith, thinking of Aunt Henderson's delicious, though simple, preparations. "And I suppose you can make new things if you have direction."

"Well—I'm pretty good at workin' out a resate, too. But then, I ain't anyways partic'ler 'bout hirin' out, as I said afore."

Faith judged rightly that this was a salvo put in for pride. The Yankee girl would not appear anxious for a servile situation. All the while the conversation went on, she sat tilting herself gently back and forth in the rocking-chair, with a lazy touching of her toes to the floor. Her very vis inertiae would not let her stop.

Faith's only question, now, was with herself—how she should get away again. She had no idea that this huge, indolent creature would be at all suitable as their servant. And then, her utter want of manners!

"I'll tell my mother what you say," said she, rising.

"What's your mother's name, and where d'ye live?"

"We live at Kinnicutt Cross Corners. My mother is Mrs. Henderson Gartney."

"'M!"

Faith turned toward the kitchen.

"Look here!" called the stout young woman after her; "you may jest say if she wants me she can send for me. I don't mind if I try it a spell."

"I didn't ask your name," remarked Faith.

"Oh! my name's Mis' Battis!"

Faith escaped over the wet floor, sprang past the white-haired child at the doorstep, and was just in time to be put into the chaise by Dr. Wasgatt, who drove up as she came out. She did not dare trust her voice to speak within hearing of the house; but when they had come round the mills again, into the secluded river road, she startled its quietness and the doctor's composure, with a laugh that rang out clear and overflowing like the very soul of fun.

"So that's all you've got out of your visit?"

"Yes, that is all," said Faith. "But it's a great deal!" And she laughed again—such a merry little waterfall of a laugh.

When she reached home, Mrs. Gartney met her at the door.

"Well, Faithie," she cried, somewhat eagerly, "what have you found?"

Faith's eyes danced with merriment.

"I don't know, mother! A—hippopotamus, I think!"

"Won't she do? What do you mean?"

"Why she's as big! I can't tell you how big! And she sat in a rocking-chair and rocked all the time—and she says her name is Miss Battis!"

Mrs. Gartney looked rather perplexed than amused.

"But, Faith!—I can't think how she knew—she must have been, listening—Norah has been so horribly angry! And she's upstairs packing her things to go right off. How can we be left without a cook?"

"It seems Miss McGonegal means to demonstrate that we can! Perhaps—the hippopotamus might be trained to domestic service! She said you could send if you wanted her."

"I don't see anything else to do. Norah won't even stay till morning. And there isn't a bit of bread in the house. I can't send this afternoon, though, for your father has driven over to Sedgely about some celery and tomato plants, and won't be home till tea time."

"I'll make some cream biscuits like Aunt Faith's. And I'll go out into the garden and find Luther. If he can't carry us through the Reformation, somehow, he doesn't deserve his name."

Luther was found—thought Jerry Blanchard wouldn't "value lettin' him have his old horse and shay for an hour." And he wouldn't "be mor'n that goin'." He could "fetch her, easy enough, if that was all."

Mis' Battis came.

She entered Mrs. Gartney's presence with nonchalance, and "flumped" incontinently into the easiest and nearest chair.

Mrs. Gartney began with the common preliminary—the name. Mis' Battis introduced herself as before.

"But your first name?" proceeded the lady.

"My first name was Parthenia Franker. I'm a relic'."

Mrs. Gartney experienced an internal convulsion, but retained her outward composure.

"I suppose you would quite as lief be called Parthenia?"

"Ruther," replied the relict, laconically.

And Mrs. Parthenia Battis was forthwith installed—pro tem.—in the Cross Corners kitchen.

"She's got considerable gumption," was the opinion Luther volunteered, of his own previous knowledge—for Mrs. Battis was an old schoolmate and neighbor—"but she's powerful slow."



CHAPTER XV.

NEW DUTIES.

"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."—Ecc. 9:10.

"A servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine;— Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws, Makes that and the action fine." GEORGE HERBERT.

Mis' Battis's "gumption" was a relief—conjoined, even, as it was, to a mighty inertia—after the experience of Norah McGonegal's utter incapacity; and her admission, pro tempore, came to be tacitly looked upon as a permanent adoption, for want of a better alternative. She continued to seat herself, unabashed, whenever opportunity offered, in the presence of the family; and invariably did so, when Mrs. Gartney either sent for, or came to her, to give orders. She always spoke of Mr. Gartney as "he," addressed her mistress as Miss Gartney, and ignored all prefix to the gentle name of Faith. Mrs. Gartney at last remedied the pronominal difficulty by invariably applying all remarks bearing no other indication, to that other "he" of the household—Luther. Her own claim to the matronly title she gave up all hope of establishing; for, if the "relic'" abbreviated her own wifely distinction, how should she be expected to dignify other people?

As to Faith, her mother ventured one day, sensitively and timidly, to speak directly to the point.

"My daughter has always been accustomed to be called Miss Faith," she said, gently, in reply to an observation of Parthenia's, in which the ungarnished name had twice been used. "It isn't a very important matter—still, it would be pleasanter to us, and I dare say you won't mind trying to remember it?"

"'M! No—I ain't partic'ler. Faith ain't a long name, and 'twon't be much trouble to put a handle on, if that's what you want. It's English fashion, ain't it?"

Parthenia's coolness enabled Mrs. Gartney to assert, somewhat more confidently, her own dignity.

"It is a fashion of respect and courtesy, everywhere, I believe."

"'M!" reejaculated the relict.

Thereafter, Faith was "Miss," with a slight pressure of emphasis upon the handle.

"Mamma!" cried Hendie, impetuously, one day, as he rushed in from a walk with his attendant, "I hate Mahala Harris! I wish you'd let me dress myself, and go to walk alone, and send her off to Jericho!"

"Whereabouts do you suppose Jericho to be?" asked Faith, laughing.

"I don't know. It's where she keeps wishing I was, when she's cross, and I want anything. I wish she was there!—and I mean to ask papa to send her!"

"Go and take your hat off, Hendie, and have your hair brushed, and your hands washed, and then come back in a nice quiet little temper, and we'll talk about it," said Mrs. Gartney.

"I think," said Faith to her mother, as the boy was heard mounting the stairs to the nursery, right foot foremost all the way, "that Mahala doesn't manage Hendie as she ought. She keeps him in a fret. I hear them in the morning while I am dressing. She seems to talk to him in a taunting sort of way."

"What can we do?" exclaimed Mrs. Gartney, worriedly. "These changes are dreadful. We might get some one worse. And then we can't afford to pay extravagantly. Mahala has been content to take less wages, and I think she means to be faithful. Perhaps if I make her understand how important it is, she will try a different manner."

"Only it might be too late to do much good, if Hendie has really got to dislike her. And—besides—I've been thinking—only, you will say I'm so full of projects——"

But what the project was, Mrs. Gartney did not hear at once, for just then Hendie's voice was heard again at the head of the stairs.

"I tell you, mother said I might! I'm going—down—in a nice—little temper—to ask her—to send you—to Jericho!" Left foot foremost, a drop between each few syllables, he came stumping, defiantly, down the stairs, and appeared with all his eager story in his eyes.

"She plagues me, mamma! She tells me to see who'll get dressed first; and if she does, she says:

"'The first's the best, The second's the same; The last's the worst Of all the game!'

"And if I get dressed first—all but the buttoning, you know—she says:

"'The last's the best, The second's the same; The first's the worst Of all the game!'

"And then she keeps telling me 'her little sister never behaved like me.' I asked her where her little sister was, and she said she'd gone over Jordan. I'm glad of it! I wish Mahala would go too!"

Mrs. Gartney smiled, and Faith could not help laughing outright.

Hendie burst into a passion of tears.

"Everybody keeps plaguing me! It's too bad!" he cried, with tumultuous sobs.

Faith checked her laughter instantly. She took the indignant little fellow on her lap, in despite of some slight, implacable struggle on his part, and kissed his pouting lips.

"No, indeed, Hendie! We wouldn't plague you for all the world! And you don't know what I've got for you, just as soon as you're ready for it!"

Hendie took his little knuckles out of his eyes.

"A bunch of great red cherries, as big as your two hands!"

"Where?"

"I'll get them, if you're good. And then you can go out in the front yard, and eat them, so that you can drop the stones on the grass."

Hendie was soon established on a flat stone under the old chestnut trees, in a happy oblivion of Mahala's injustice, and her little sister's perfections.

"I'll tell you, mamma. I've been thinking we need not keep Mahala, if you don't wish. She has been so used to do nothing but run round after Hendie, that, really, she isn't much good about the house; and I'll take Hendie's trundle bed into my room, and there'll be one less chamber to take care of; and you know we always dust and arrange down here."

"Yes—but the sweeping, Faithie! And the washing! Parthenia never would get through with it all."

"Well, somebody might come and help wash. And I guess I can sweep."

"But I can't bear to put you to such work, darling! You need your time for other things."

"I have ever so much time, mother! And, besides, as Aunt Faith says, I don't believe it makes so very much matter what we do. I was talking to her, the other day, about doing coarse work, and living a narrow, common kind of life, and what do you think she said?"

"I can't tell, of course. Something blunt and original."

"We were out in the garden. She pointed to some plants that were coming up from seeds, that had just two tough, clumsy, coarse leaves. 'What do you call them?' said auntie. 'Cotyledons, aren't they?' said I. 'I don't know what they are in botany,' said she; 'but I know the use of 'em. They'll last a while, and help feed up what's growing inside and underneath, and by and by they'll drop off, when they're done with, and you'll see what's been coming of it. Folks can't live the best right out at first, any more than plants can. I guess we all want some kind of—cotyledons.'"

Mrs. Gartney's eyes shone with affection, and something that affection called there, as she looked upon her daughter.

"I guess the cotyledons won't hinder your growing," said she.

And so, in a few days after, Mahala was dismissed, and Faith took upon herself new duties.

It was a bright, happy face that glanced hither and thither, about the house, those fair summer mornings; and it wasn't the hands alone that were busy, as under their dexterous and delicate touch all things arranged themselves in attractive and graceful order. Thought straightened and cleared itself, as furniture and books were dusted and set right; and while the carpet brightened under the broom, something else brightened and strengthened, also, within.

It is so true, what the author of "Euthanasy" tells us, that exercise of limb and muscle develops not only themselves, but what is in us as we work.

"Every stroke of the hammer upon the anvil hardens a little what is at the time the temper of the smith's mind."

"The toil of the plowman furrows the ground, and so it does his brow with wrinkles, visibly; and invisibly, but quite as certainly, it furrows the current of feeling, common with him at his work, into an almost unchangeable channel."

Faith's life purpose deepened as she did each daily task. She had hold, already, of the "high and holy work of love" that had been prophesied.

"I am sure of one thing, mother," said she, gayly; "if I don't learn much that is new, I am bringing old knowledge into play. It's the same thing, taken hold of at different ends. I've learned to draw straight lines, and shape pictures; and so there isn't any difficulty in sweeping a carpet clean, or setting chairs straight. I never shall wonder again that a woman who never heard of a right angle can't lay a table even."



CHAPTER XVI.

"BLESSED BE YE, POOR."

"And so we yearn, and so we sigh, And reach for more than we can see; And, witless of our folded wings, Walk Paradise, unconsciously."

October came, and brought small dividends. The expenses upon the farm had necessarily been considerable, also, to put things in "good running order." Mr. Gartney's health, though greatly improved, was not yet so confidently to be relied on, as to make it advisable for him to think of any change, as yet, with a view to business. Indeed, there was little opportunity for business, to tempt him. Everything was flat. Mr. Gartney must wait. Mrs. Gartney and Faith felt, though they talked of waiting, that the prospect really before them was that of a careful, obscure life, upon a very limited income. The house in Mishaumok had stood vacant all the summer. There was hope, of course, of letting it now, as the winter season came on, but rents were falling, and people were timid and discouraged.

October was beautiful at Kinnicutt. And Faith, when she looked out over the glory of woods and sky, felt rich with the great wealth of the world, and forgot about economies and privations. She was so glad they had come here with their altered plans, and had not struggled shabbily and drearily on in Mishaumok!

It was only when some chance bit of news from the city, or a girlish, gossipy note from some school friend found its way to Cross Corners, that she felt, a little keenly, her denials—realized how the world she had lived in all her life was going on without her.

It was the old plaint that Glory made, in her dark days of childhood—this feeling of despondency and loss that assailed Faith now and then—"such lots of good times in the world, and she not in 'em!"

Mrs. Etherege and Saidie were coming home. Gertrude Rushleigh, Saidie's old intimate, was to be married on the twenty-eighth, and had fixed her wedding thus for the last of the month, that Miss Gartney might arrive to keep her promise of long time, by officiating as bridesmaid.

The family eclipse would not overshadow Saidie. She had made her place in the world now, and with her aunt's aid and countenance, would keep it. It was quite different with Faith—disappearing, as she had done, from notice, before ever actually "coming out."

"It was a thousand pities," Aunt Etherege said, when she and Saidie discussed with Mrs. Gartney, at Cross Corners, the family affairs. "And things just as they were, too! Why, another year might have settled matters for her, so that this need never have happened! At any rate, the child shouldn't be moped up here, all winter!"

Mrs. Etherege had engaged rooms, on her arrival, at the Mishaumok House; and it seemed to be taken for granted by her, and by Saidie as well, that this coming home was a mere visit; that Miss Gartney would, of course, spend the greater part of the winter with her aunt; and that lady extended also an invitation to Mishaumok for a month—including the wedding festivities at the Rushleighs'—to Faith.

Faith shook her head. She "knew she couldn't be spared so long." Secretly, she doubted whether it would be a good plan to go back and get a peep at things that might send her home discontented and unhappy.

But her mother reasoned otherwise. Faithie must go. "The child mustn't be moped up." She would get on, somehow, without her. Mothers always can. So Faith, by a compromise, went for a fortnight. She couldn't quite resist her newly returned sister.

Besides, a pressing personal invitation had come from Margaret Rushleigh to Faith herself, with a little private announcement at the end, that "Paul was refractory, and utterly refused to act as fourth groomsman, unless Faith Gartney were got to come and stand with him."

Faith tore off the postscript, and might have lit it at her cheeks, but dropped it, of habit, into the fire; and then the note was at the disposal of the family.

It was a whirl of wonderful excitement to Faith—that fortnight! So many people to see, so much to hear, and in the midst of all, the gorgeous wedding festival!

What wonder if a little dream flitted through her head, as she stood there, in the marriage group, at Paul Rushleigh's side, and looked about her on the magnificent fashion, wherein the affection of new relatives and old friends had made itself tangible; and heard the kindly words of the elder Mr. Rushleigh to Kate Livingston, who stood with his son Philip, and whose bridal, it was well known, was to come next? Jewels, and silver, and gold, are such flashing, concrete evidences of love! And the courtly condescension of an old and world-honored man to the young girl whom his son has chosen, is such a winning and distinguishing thing!

Paul Rushleigh had finished his college course, and was to go abroad this winter—between the weddings, as he said—for his brother Philip's was to take place in the coming spring. After that—things were not quite settled, but something was to be arranged for him meanwhile—he would have to begin his work in the world; and then—he supposed it would be time for him to find a helpmate. Marrying was like dying, he believed; when a family once began to go off there was soon an end of it!

Blushes were the livery of the evening, and Faith's deeper glow at this audacious rattle passed unheeded, except, perhaps, as it might be somewhat willfully interpreted.

There were two or three parties made for the newly married couple in the week that followed. The week after, Paul Rushleigh, with the bride and groom, was to sail for Europe. At each of these brilliant entertainments he constituted himself, as in duty bound, Faith's knight and sworn attendant; and a superb bouquet for each occasion, the result of the ransack of successive greenhouses, came punctually, from him, to her door. For years afterwards—perhaps for all her life—Faith couldn't smell heliotrope, and geranium, and orange flowers, without floating back, momentarily, into the dream of those few, enchanted days!

She stayed in Mishaumok a little beyond the limit she had fixed for herself, to go, with the others, on board the steamer at the time of her sailing, and see the gay party off. Paul Rushleigh had more significant words, and another gift of flowers as a farewell.

When she carried these last to her own room, to put them in water, on her return, something she had not noticed before glittered among their stems. It was a delicate little ring, of twisted gold, with a forget-me-not in turquoise and enamel upon the top.

Faith was half pleased, half frightened, and wholly ashamed.

Paul Rushleigh was miles out on the Atlantic. There was no help for it, she thought. It had been cunningly done.

And so, in the short November days, she went back to Kinnicutt.

The east parlor had to be shut up now, for the winter. The family gathering place was the sunny little sitting room; and with closed doors and doubled windows, they began, for the first time, to find that they were really living in a little bit of a house.

It was very pretty, though, with the rich carpet and the crimson curtains that had come from Hickory Street, replacing the white muslin draperies and straw matting of the summer; and the books and vases, and statuettes and pictures, gathered into so small space, seemed to fill the room with luxury and beauty.

Faith nestled her little workstand into a nook between the windows. Hendie's blocks and picture books were stowed in a corner cupboard. Mr. Gartney's newspapers and pamphlets, as they came, found room in a deep drawer below; and so, through the wintry drifts and gales, they were "close hauled" and comfortable.

Faith was happy; yet she thought, now and then, when the whistling wind broke the stillness of the dark evenings, of light and music elsewhere; and how, a year ago, there had always been the chance of a visitor or two to drop in, and while away the hours. Nobody lifted the old-fashioned knocker, here at Cross Corners.

By day, even, it was scarcely different. Kinnicutt was hibernating. Each household had drawn into its shell. And the huge drifts, lying defiant against the fences in the short, ineffectual winter sunlight, held out little hope of reanimation. Aunt Faith, in her pumpkin hood, and Rob Roy cloak, and carpet moccasins, came over once in two or three days, and even occasionally stayed to tea, and helped make up a rubber of whist for Mr. Gartney's amusement; but, beyond this, they had no social excitement.

January brought a thaw; and, still further to break the monotony, there arose a stir and an anxiety in the parish.

Good Mr. Holland, its minister of thirty years, whose health had been failing for many months, was at last compelled to relinquish the duties of his pulpit for a time; and a supply was sought with the ultimate probability of a succession. A new minister came to preach, who was to fill the pastor's place for the ensuing three months. On his first Sunday among them, Faith heard a wonderful sermon.

I indicate thus, not the oratory, nor the rhetoric; but the sermon, of which these were the mere vehicle—the word of truth itself—which was spoken, seemingly, to her very thought.

So also, as certainly, to the long life-thought of one other. Glory McWhirk sat in Miss Henderson's corner pew, and drank it in, as a soul athirst.

A man of middle age, one might have said, at first sight—there was, here and there, a silver gleam in the dark hair and beard; yet a fire and earnestness of youth in the deep, beautiful eye, and a look in the face as of life's first flush and glow not lost, but rather merged in broader light, still climbing to its culmination, belied these tokens, and made it as if a white frost had fallen in June—rising up before the crowded village congregation, looked round upon the upturned faces, as One had looked before who brought the bread of Life to men's eager asking; and uttered the selfsame simple words.

It was a certain pause and emphasis he made—a slight new rendering of punctuation—that sent home the force of those words to the people who heard them, as if it had been for the first time, and fresh from the lips of the Great Teacher.

* * * * *

"'Blessed are the poor: in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'

"Herein Christ spoke, not to a class, only, but to the world! A world of souls, wrestling with the poverty of life!

"In that whole assemblage—that great concourse—that had thronged from cities and villages to hear His words upon the mountainside—was there, think you, one satisfied nature?

"Friends—are ye satisfied?

. . . . .

"Or, does every life come to know, at first or at last, how something—a hope, or a possibility, or the fulfillment of a purpose—has got dropped out of it, or has even never entered, so that an emptiness yawns, craving, therein, forever?

"How many souls hunger till they are past their appetite! Go on—down through the years—needy and waiting, and never find or grasp that which a sure instinct tells them they were made for?

"This, this is the poverty of life! These are the poor, to whom God's Gospel was preached in Christ! And to these denied and waiting ones the first words of Christ's preaching—as I read them—were spoken in blessing.

"Because, elsewhere, he blesses the meek; elsewhere and presently, he tells us how the lowly in spirit shall inherit the earth; so, when I open to this, his earliest uttered benediction upon our race, I read it with an interpretation that includes all humanity:

"'Blessed, in spirit, are the poor. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'

. . . . .

"What is this Kingdom of Heaven? 'It is within you.' It is that which you hold, and live in spiritually; the real, of which all earthly, outward being and having are but the show. It is the region wherein little children 'do always behold the Face of my Father which is in Heaven.' It is where we are when we shut our eyes and pray in the words that Christ taught us.

. . . . .

"What matters, then, where your feet stand, or wherewith your hands are busy? So that it is the spot where God has put you, and the work He has given you to do? Your real life is within—hid in God with Christ—ripening, and strengthening, and waiting, as through the long, geologic ages of night and incompleteness waited the germs of all that was to unfold into this actual, green, and bounteous earth!

. . . . .

"The narrower your daily round, the wider, maybe, the outreach. Isolated upon a barren mountain peak, you may take in river and lake—forest, field, and valley. A hundred gardens and harvests lift their bloom and fullness to your single eye.

"There is a sunlight that contracts the vision; there is a starlight that enlarges it to take in infinite space.

"'God sets some souls in shade, alone. They have no daylight of their own. Only in lives of happier ones They see the shine of distant suns.

"'God knows. Content thee with thy night. Thy greater heaven hath grander light, To-day is close. The hours are small. Thou sit'st afar, and hast them all.

"'Lose the less joy that doth but blind; Reach forth a larger bliss to find. To-day is brief: the inclusive spheres Rain raptures of a thousand years.'"

Faith could not tell what hymn was sung, or what were the words of the prayer that followed the sermon. There was a music and an uplifting in her own soul that made them needless, but for the pause they gave her.

She hardly knew that a notice was read as the people rose before the benediction, when the minister gave out, as requested, that "the Village Dorcas Society would meet on Wednesday of the coming week, at Mrs. Parley Gimp's."

She was made aware that it had fallen upon her ears, though heard unconsciously, when Serena Gimp caught her by the sleeve in the church porch.

"Ain't it awful," said she, with a simper and a flutter of importance, "to have your name called right out so in the pulpit? I declare, if it hadn't been for seeing the new minister, I wouldn't have come to meeting, I dreaded it so! Ain't he handsome? He's old, though—thirty-five! He's broken-hearted, too! Somebody died, or something else, that he was going to be married to, ever so many years ago; and they say he hasn't hardly spoken to a lady since. That's so romantic! I don't wonder he preaches such low-spirited kind of sermons. Only I wish they warn't quite so. I suppose it's beautiful, and heavenly minded, and all that; but yet I'd rather hear something a little kind of cheerful. Don't you think so? But the poetry was elegant—warn't it? I guess it's original, too. They say he puts things in the Mishaumok Monthly. Come Wednesday, won't you? We shall depend, you know."

To Miss Gimp, the one salient point, amidst the solemnities of the day, had been that pulpit notice. She had put new strings to her bonnet for the occasion. Mrs. Gimp, being more immediately and personally affected, had modestly remained away from church.

Glory McWhirk went straight through the village, home; and out to her little room in the sunny side of the low, sloping roof. This was her winter nook. She had a shadier one, looking the other way, for summer.

"I wonder if it's all true!" she cried, silently, in her soul, while she stood for a minute with bonnet and shawl still on, looking out from her little window, dreamily, over the dazzle of the snow, even as her half-blinded thought peered out from its own narrowness into the infinite splendor of the promise of God—"I wonder if God will ever make me beautiful! I wonder if I shall ever have a real, great joyfulness, that isn't a make believe!"

Glory called her fancies so. They followed her still. She lived yet in an ideal world. The real world—that is, the best good of it—had not come close enough to her, even in this, her widely amended condition, to displace the other. Remember—this child of eighteen had missed her childhood; had known neither father nor mother, sister nor brother.

Don't think her simple, in the pitiful meaning of the word; but she still enacted, in the midst of her plain, daily life, wonderful dreams that nobody could have ever suspected; and here, in her solitary chamber, called up at will creatures of imagination who were to her what human creatures, alas! had never been. Above all, she had a sister here, to whom she told all her secrets. This sister's name was Leonora.



CHAPTER XVII.

FROST-WONDERS.

"No hammers fell, no ponderous axes rung; Like some tall palm, the mystic fabric sprung. Majestic silence!" HEBER.

The thaw continued till the snow was nearly gone. Only the great drifts against the fences, and the white folds in the rifts of distant hillsides lingered to tell what had been. Then came a day of warm rain, that washed away the last fragment of earth's cast-off vesture, and bathed her pure for the new adornment that was to be laid upon her. At night, the weather cooled, and the rain changed to a fine, slow mist, congealing as it fell.

Faith stood next morning by a small round table in the sitting-room window, and leaned lovingly over her jonquils and hyacinths that were coming into bloom. Then, drawing the curtain cord to let in the first sunbeam that should slant from the south upon her bulbs, she gave a little cry of rapturous astonishment. It was a diamond morning!

Away off, up the lane, and over the meadows, every tree and bush was hung with twinkling gems that the slight wind swayed against each other with tiny crashes of faint music, and the sun was just touching with a level splendor.

After that first, quick cry, Faith stood mute with ecstasy.

"Mother!" said she, breathlessly, at last, as Mrs. Gartney entered, "look there! have you seen it? Just imagine what the woods must be this morning! How can we think of buckwheats?"

Sounds and odors betrayed that Mis' Battis and breakfast were in the little room adjoining.

"There is a thought of something akin to them, isn't there, under all this splendor? Men must live, and grass and grain must grow."

Mr. Gartney said this, as he came up behind wife and daughter, and laid a hand on a shoulder of each.

"I know one thing, though," said Faith. "I'll eat the buckwheats, as a vulgar necessity, and then I'll go over the brook and up in the woods behind the Pasture Rocks. It'll last, won't it?"