st in the subject was gone.

"I am very busy, sir," she said. "I have work to do that I do not wish
to put off."

"Cannot you go with us _at all?_ We will wait and make it any day?"

"Do not wait," said Faith. "I _could_ go, but I could not go with
pleasure, Dr. Harrison. I have not the time to spare, for that, nor for
more now. Please excuse me."

And she went.

"Mrs. Derrick," said the doctor musingly, "this is a winged creature, I
believe--but it is not a bird!"

At which Mrs. Derrick looked at him with a mingled satisfaction that he
had got his answer, and curiosity to know what he thought of it. For
the further she felt herself from her child's high stand, the more
presuming did she think it in any one to try to bring _her_ down from
it.

"If I thought, as I came here, that I walked on a higher level than the
generality of mankind, as perhaps in the vanity of my heart I did,--I
feel well put down on the ground now," pursued the doctor. "But Mrs
Derrick, when may I hope to see this winged thing of yours again?"

It must be confessed that Mrs. Derrick did not admire this speech,--'a
winged thing,' as she justly thought, was a somewhat indefinite term,
and might mean a flying grasshopper as well as a canary bird. Therefore
it was with some quickness that she replied,

"What sort of a winged thing are you talking of, doctor?"

"Nothing worse than a heavenly one, madam. But angel or cherub are such
worn-out terms that I avoided them."

He was standing yet where Faith left him, looking down gravely,
speaking half lightly, to her mother.

"I don't know who'll see her when she's an angel," said Mrs. Derrick,
with a little flush coming over her eyes. "But she wouldn't thank you
for calling her one now," she added presently, with her usual placid
manner. "Won't you sit down again, doctor?"

"May I ask," said he eying her, somewhat intent upon the answer,--"why
she wouldn't thank me for calling her one now?--by which I understand
that it would incur her displeasure."

"Why--why should she?" said Mrs. Derrick, who having dropped a stitch
was picking it up with intentness equal to the doctor's.

"True!" said the doctor in his usual manner. "Angels don't thank
mortals for looking at them. But Mrs. Derrick, when may such a poor
mortal as I, stand a chance of seeing this particular one again?"

Mrs. Derrick laid down her work.

"Well you _have_ changed!" she said, "there's no doubt of that! I don't
recollect