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 h