ervant and cook by turns; and sometimes went to market; made
every meal pleasant with her gentle happy ways; and comforted the two
old ladies to the very top of comfort.

Whether she wanted to be at home or not, Faith did not stop to ask
herself. But those letters--those letters--they were written, and they
were carried to the postoffice--and others were found at the postoffice
in reply to them. And what had been such trial in the proposition,
became, even in the first instance, the joy of Faith's life. She wrote
hers how she could; generally at night, when she could be quite
uninterrupted and alone. It was often very late at night, but it was
always a time of rare pleasure and liberty of heart; for if the body
were tired, the spirit was free. And Faith's was particularly free, for
the manacles and fetters of pride which weigh so bitter heavy on many a
mind and life, her gentle and true spirit had let fall. She
knew--nobody better--that her letters were not like those letters of
Mr. Linden's sister, Pet:--those exquisite letters, where every grace
and every talent of a finely gifted and fully cultivated mind seemed
playing together with all the rich stores of the past and realities of
the present. She knew, that in very style and formalities of execution,
her own letters were imperfect and unformed. But she was equally sure
that in time what was wrong in this kind would be made right; and she
was not afraid to be found wrong, at all, for her own sake. It was
because of somebody else, that she had flinched from this writing
proposal; because she felt that what was wrong in _her_ touched him
now. But there again, Faith wrote, trusting with an absolute trust in
the heart and hand to which she sent her letters; willing to be found
wrong if need be; sure to be set right truly and gently. And so, Faith
wrote her own heart and life out, from day to day, giving Mr. Linden
precisely what he wanted, and with a child's fearlessness. It was a
great thing to go to the postoffice those days! Faith left it to nobody
else to do for her. And how strange--how weird, almost, the signature
of those letters and her own name on the outside looked to her, in the
same free, graceful handwriting which she had read on that little card
so long ago! And the letters themselves?--enough to say, that they made
Faith think of the way she had been sheltered from the wind, and
carried upstairs when her strength failed, and read to and talked to
and inst