ructed,--that they made her long to be home and yet content to
be there; giving her all sorts of details, of things in Pattaquasset
and things elsewhere--just as the writer would have talked them to her;
with sometimes a word of counsel, or of caution, or of suggestion,--or
some old German hymn which she might find of use in her ministrations,
written out in full. It may be mentioned in passing, that the fair
little face he had been looking at, or her evident fear of writing to
him, made Mr. Linden write to her that very night; a little sugarplum
of a letter, which Faith had for her dinner next day.

And Faith read these letters at all sorts of times, and thought of them
at other times; and made them next to her Bible--as she should.

CHAPTER X.

Two weeks passed quietly, without much apparent change in Miss
Danforth; and Faith was beginning to think of appointing a time to go
home. But the necessity for that was suddenly superseded. The Friday
following, Miss Dilly took a change for the worse, and Saturday she
died. Faith sent off tidings immediately to Pattaquasset; but her
letter could not reach there till Monday; and Monday came a very great
fall of snow which made travelling impossible. Faith waited patiently,
comforting Madame Danforth as she might, and endeavouring to win her to
some notion of that joy in the things of the Bible in which Miss Dilly
had lived and died. For no change had come over Miss Dilly's sky; and
she had set sail from the shores of earth in the very sunlight.

It fell out, that Faith's letter of Saturday afternoon had been five
minutes too late for the mail; and after lying in the office at Pequot
over Sunday, had been again subjected to the delays of Monday's storm,
which in its wild fury put a stop to everything else; and thus, when
Mr. Linden went to the office Tuesday morning before school time, the
mail had not yet got in. Not long after, however, Mr. Skip brought home
the letters; and Mrs. Derrick reading hers, at once took Mr. Skip and
Jerry and set off for Pequot; minding neither snowdrifts nor driving
wind, when the road to Faith lay through them, and arriving there quite
safe about the hour of midday.

The delayed funeral took place the same afternoon. And the next
morning, in a brilliant cold day, snow all over the ground and the sky
all blue, the mother and daughter set forth homewards. Madame Danforth
was going to take another relation in, and live on still in the lit