, gently and tenderly. "You know
all I can tell you. You know I have cared for you all my life. And I'll
wait now till you tell me I may speak again. Till you put on that little
ring of mine, Faith!"

There was a little loving reproach in these last words.

"Please take me home, now, Paul!"

They were close upon the return path around the Lake. A look of
disappointed pain passed over Paul Rushleigh's features. This was hardly
the happy reception, however shy, he had hoped and looked for. Still he
hoped, however. He could not think she did not care for him. She, who
had been the spring of his own thoughts and purposes for years. But,
obedient to her wish, he touched his horse with the lash, and urged him
homeward.

Paul helped her from the wagon at the little white gate at Cross
Corners, and then they both remembered that she was to have gone to
Lakeside to tea.

"What shall I tell Margaret?" he asked.

"Oh, don't tell her anything! I mean--tell her, I couldn't come
to-night. And, Paul--forgive me! I do want so to do what is right!"

"Isn't it right to let me try and make you happy all your life?"

A light had broken upon her--confusedly, it is true--yet that began to
show her to herself more plainly than any glimpse she had had before, as
Paul's words, simple, yet burning with his strong sure love, came to
her, with their claim to honest answer.

She saw what it was he brought her; she felt it was less she had to give
him back. There was something in the world she might go missing all the
way through life, if she took this lot that lay before her now. Would he
not miss a something in her, also? Yet, must she needs insist on the
greatest, the rarest, that God ever sends? Why should she, more than
others? Would she wrong him more, to give him what she could, or to
refuse him all?

"I ought--if I do--" she said, tremulously, "to care as you do!"

"You never can, Faith!" cried the young man, impetuously. "I care as a
man cares! Let me love you! care a little for me, and let it grow to
more!"

Men, till something is accorded, are willing to take so little! And then
the little must become so entire!

"Well, I declare!" exclaimed Mis' Battis, as Faith came in. "Who'd a
thought o' seein' you home to tea! I s'pose you ain't had none?"

"Yes--no. That is, I don't want any. Where is my mother?"

"She and your pa's gone down to Dr. Wasgatt's. I knew 'twould be
contrary to the thirty-nine articles that they should