good cheese. I think I am proud of my
carnations, and perhaps--" she went on colouring--"of being so good a
baker as I am. And perhaps--I think I am--of such things as sewing and
dressmaking;--but I don't think there is much harm in all that. I know
myself sometimes proud of other things, where I know it is wrong."

"How do you know but I am proud of your rolls of butter too?" said Mr.
Linden looking amused. "But Mignonette, what called forth such a
display of the carnations you are _not_ proud of? What was the force of
that 'And yet'?"

It brought the colour again, and Faith hesitated and looked puzzled,
Then she tried a new way of escape.

"Don't you mean to let me have any of my thoughts to myself?" she said
playfully.

"Don't you mean to let me have any of them for myself?"

"You?--Haven't you them almost all?"

"My dear I beg pardon!--one for every carnation,--but I did not know
that I had so nearly made the tour of your mind. I was under the
impression that my passports were not yet made out--and that my
knowledge of your thoughts was all gained from certain predatory
excursions, telescopic observations, and such like illegal practices. I
am sure all my attempts to cross the frontier in the ordinary way are
met by something more impassable than a file of bayonets."

Faith looked up at him as if to see how much of this was meant for true.

"But," said she naively, "I feel as if I had been under a microscope."

"My dear!" said Mr. Linden again, with an air at once resigned and
deprecating. But then his gravity gave way. "Faith!--is _that_ your
feeling in my company? I wonder you can endure the sight of me."

"Why?"--said she timidly.

"If I seem to you like a microscope."

"Only your eyes, like those power-glasses.--Not for size!" said Faith,
laughing now herself.

"Ah little Mignonette," he said smiling, "some things can be seen
without microscopic vision. And do not you know, my child, that
carnations must draw attention to the particular point round which they
bloom?"

"Endy, you shall know what I was thinking of," she said. "You touched
it already. It was only--that perhaps sometime you _would_ be a little
proud even of those little things in me--because--Now you can punish me
for being proud in earnest!"--It was said in great confusion; it had
cost Faith a struggle; the white and red both strove in her downcast
face. Mr. Linden might not fathom what was not in a man's nature; but
Faith had har