n belonged to more than one thing.

"You must not make me wait for that letter, Faith," he said--"and I
must not let you keep me any longer here! But if you want anything, of
any sort, you must send to me."

"Yes!--to you or to mother."

"To me--if it is anything I can do," he said as he bade her good-bye.
"And take care of yourself, dear child, for me." And releasing her at
last, none too willingly, Mr. Linden went out alone into the starlight.
He did not see--nor guess--how Faith stood before the fire where he had
left her, looking down into it,--motionless and grave until Madame
Danforth came back. Then all that part of her life was shut up within
her, and Faith was again to other eyes what she had been before at
Pequot. Yet not so entirely the same, nor was all that part of her life
so entirely shut up to herself, that both her aunt and Madame Danforth
did not have a thought and exchange a word on the subject.

"The sun has found the blossom!" said the little Frenchwoman knowingly
one day; "they do not open so without that!"

"Nonsense!" said Miss Danforth. "I will ask her." But she never did.

And for a little while again Faith filled her old office. Miss Dilly
had no troubles or darkness to clear away now; the Bible was plain
sailing to her; but she could never spread her sails too soon or too
full for that navigation. Early and late, as before, Faith read to her,
with a joy and gladness all brightened from the contrast of that Sunday
night's reading, and coming with a fuller spring since that one little
word of her mother the same night. Indeed the last few days had seemed
to make the Bible even greatly more precious to Faith than ever before.
She clung more fast, she searched more eagerly, among its treasures of
riches, to its pillars of strength; valuing them all, as it seemed to
her, with a new value, with a fresh knowledge of what might be found
and won there for others and herself. So with the very eagerness of
love Faith read the Bible to Miss Dilly; and so as she had done before,
many a time, early and late, in childlike simpleness prayed at her
bedside and by her chair. And as before when she was at Pequot she won
Madame Danforth's heart, she intrenched herself there now. She was all
over the house, carrying a sunbeam with her; but Faith never thought it
was her own. She was a most efficient maid of all work, for nursing and
too much care had worn poor Madame Danforth not a little. Faith was
upper s