re solid, to
any amount you please."

"Something more solid than yourself!--O Mr. Stoutenburgh!" his wife
said, though her eyes were bright with more than one feeling.

Faith was silent a minute, and then gave Mr. Stoutenburgh a full view
of those steady eyes that some people liked and some did not care _just
so_ to meet.

"No, sir!--" she said with a smile and also a little wistful look of
the gratitude she did not speak,--"if the hay will pay the rent, I
don't want anything else. Mother and I can do very well. We will be
very much obliged to you to manage Mr. Deacon for us--and the hay. I
think I can manage the rest. I shall keep the cows and make
butter,"--she said with a laughing flash of the eye.

"O delicious!" cried Mrs. Stoutenburgh, "(I mean the butter,
Faith)--but will you let me have it?"

"You don't want it," said Faith.

"I do!--nobody makes such butter--I should eat my breakfast with a new
appetite, and so would Sam. We never can get butter enough when he's in
the house. I'll send down for it three times a week--how often do you
churn, Faith?"

Faith came close up to her and kissed her as she whispered laughingly,
"Every day!"

"Then I'll send every day!" said Mrs. Stoutenburgh clapping her hands.
"And then I shall hear of you once in a while.--Ungrateful child, you
haven't been here before since--I suppose it won't do to say when," she
added, kissing Faith on both cheeks. "I shall tell Mr. Linden it is not
benevolent to pet you so much."

"But my dear--my dear--" said the Squire from one to the other. "Well,
well,--I'll talk to you another time, Miss Faith,--I can't keep up with
more than one lady at once. You and Mrs. Stoutenburgh have gone on
clean ahead of me."

"What's the matter, Mr. Stoutenburgh?" said Faith. "I would like to
hear it now, for there is something I want settled."

"What's that?" said the Squire.

"Will you please go on, sir?"

"I guess I'll hear you first," said the Squire. "You seem to know just
what you want to say, Miss Faith, and I'm not sure that I do."

"You said we had gone on ahead of you, sir. Shall we go back now?"

"Why my dear," said the Squire smiling, "I thought you two were
settling up accounts and arrangements rather fast, that's all. If they
are the beginning and end, _that's_ very well; but if they're only
premonitory symptoms, that again's different."

"And not 'very well'?" said Faith, waiting.

"Not very," said Mr. Stoutenburgh shaking his h