you like that best?"

"Somebody must always eat drumsticks," was the concise reply.

And so, presently, without any further advance toward acquaintance, they
went upstairs; and the house, under the new, energetic rule, soon
subsided into quiet for the night.

CHAPTER IX.

LIFE OR DEATH?

"With God the Lord belong the issues from death."--Ps. 68; 18.

The nursery was a corner room, opening both into Faith's and her
mother's. Hendie and Mahala Harris had been removed upstairs, and the
apartment was left at Miss Sampson's disposal. Mrs. Gartney's bed had
been made up in the little dressing room at the head of the front entry,
so that she and the nurse had the sick room between them.

Faith came down the two steps that led from her room into the nursery,
the next night at bedtime, as Miss Sampson entered from her father's
chamber to put on her night wrapper and make ready for her watch.

"How is he, nurse? He will get well, won't he? What does the doctor
say?"

"Nothing," said Miss Sampson, shortly. "He don't know, and he don't
pretend to. And that's just what proves he's good for something. He
ain't one of the sort that comes into a sick room as if the Almighty had
made him a kind of special delegit, and left the whole concern to him.
He knows there's a solemner dealing there than his, whether it's for
life or death."

"But he can't help _thinking_," said Faith, tremblingly. "And I wish I
knew. What do _you_--?" But Faith paused, for she was afraid, after all,
to finish the question, and to hear it answered.

"I don't think. I just keep doing. That's my part. Folks that think too
much of what's a-coming, most likely won't attend to what there is."

Faith was finding out--a little of Miss Sampson, and a good deal of
herself. Had she not thought too much of what might be coming? Had she
not missed, perhaps, some of her own work, when that work was easier
than now? And how presumptuously she had wished for "something to
happen!" Was God punishing her for that?

"You just keep still, and patient--and wait," said Miss Sampson, noting
the wistful look of pain. "That's your work, and after all, maybe it's
the hardest kind. And I can't take it off folks' shoulders," added she
to herself in an under voice; "so I needn't set up for the _very_
toughest jobs, to be sure."

"I'll try," answered Faith, submissively, with quivering lips, "only if
there _should_ be anything that I could do--to sit up, or
anythi