n."

"I don't think I want you should. Philosophers and birds, you know, go
through the world on different principles."

She laughed a little at that, gave the hearth a parting brush, and went
off to dinner.

Business claimed its place after dinner, business of a less pleasant
kind, quite up to the time when Faith must put on her bonnet to walk
with Dr. Harrison.

Faith had no great mind to the walk, but she couldn't help finding it
pleasant. The open air was very sweet and bracing; the exercise was
inspiriting, and the threatened talk went well with both. There was
nothing whatever formidable about it; the words and thoughts seemed to
play, like the sunlight, on anything that came in their way. Dr.
Harrison knew how to make a walk or a talk pleasant, even to Faith, it
seemed. Whatever she had at any time seen in him that she did not like,
was out of sight; pleasant, gentle, intelligent, grave, he was
constantly supplying ear and mind with words and things that were worth
the having. Probably he had discovered her eager thirst for knowledge;
for he furnished her daintily with bits of many a kind, from his own
stores which were large. She did not know there was any design in this;
she knew only that the steps were taken very easily in that walk. So
pleasant it was that Faith was in no haste to turn, in no mood to
quicken her pace. But something else was on her mind,--and must come
out.

"Dr. Harrison,"--she said when they were in a quiet part of the way,
with nobody near, "may I speak to you about something?--that perhaps
you won't like?"

"You can speak of nothing I should not like--to hear," he said with
gentle assurance.

"Dr. Harrison--" said Faith, speaking as if the recollection touched
her,--"when you and I were thrown out in that meadow the other day and
came so near losing our lives--if the _almost_ had been _quite_, if we
had both been killed,--_I_ should have been safe and well, I
believe.--How would it have been with you?"

Dr. Harrison looked at her.

"If I had gone in your company," he said, "I think it would hardly have
been ill with me."

"Do you know so little as that?"--she said, in such a tone of sorrow
and pity as might have suited one of the 'ministering spirits' she had
been likened to.

"I don't think I am as good as you are," the doctor said with a face
not unmoved.

"Good!" said Faith. "What do you mean by goodness, Dr. Harrison?"

"I shall have the worst of it if I try to go i