eserved it. What made him take your nuts away?"

"He wanted 'em to make a present to you"--said the boy; and with
another glance at the hands of the clock, he darted out of the house
and down the road towards the schoolhouse, as if truly he had expected
to meet there the character he had mentioned.

"My dear--" said Mr. Somers--"do you think it is quite--a--politic, to
tell Mrs. Davids she don't bring up her children right? Mrs. Davids is
a very respectable woman--and so is Farmer Davids--none more so."

"I don't know what you call respectable women--" said Mrs. Somers--"I
should be sorry to think _he_ was. But I just wish, Mr. Somers, that
you would preach a sermon to the people about cutting off their
children's tongues if they can't keep them in order. I declare! I could
hardly keep hands off that boy."

And with this suggested and suggestive text, Mr. Somers retired to his
study.

It had been a busy day with more than Mr. Somers, when towards the
close of the afternoon Faith came out upon the porch of her mother's
house. She had not read more than one delicious bit of her letter on
the ride home from Neanticut; the light failed too soon. After getting
home there was no more chance. Saturday night, that Saturday, had a
crowd of affairs. And Monday had been a day full of business. Faith had
got through with it all at last; and now, as fresh as if the kitchen
had been a bygone institution--though that was as true of Faith in the
kitchen as out of it--she sat down in the afternoon glow to read the
letter. The porch was nice to match; she took a low seat on the step,
and laying the letter in her lap rested her elbow on the yellow floor
of the porch to take it at full ease.

It was not just such a letter as is most often found in
biographies,--yet such as may be found--'out of print.' A bright medley
of description and fancy--mountains and legends and scraps of song
forming a mosaic of no set pattern. And well-read as the writer was in
other respects, it was plain that she was also learned in both the
books Faith had had at Neanticut. The quick flow of the letter was only
checked now and then by a little word-gesture of affection,--if that
could be called a check, which gave to the written pictures a better
glow than lit up the originals.

It was something to see Faith read that letter--or would have been, if
anybody had been there to look. She leaned over it in a sort of
breathless abstraction, catching her breat