"How much rent would this bring?"
Mr. Gartney turned around and looked at his daughter. He began to see there was a meaning in her questions. And as he caught her eye, he read, or discerned without fully reading, a certain eager kindling there.
"Why, what has come over you, Faithie, to set you catechising so?"
Faith laughed.
"Just answer this, please, and I won't ask a single question more to-night."
"About the rent? Why, this house ought to bring six hundred, certainly. And now, if the court will permit, I'll read the news."
About a week after this, in the latter half of one of those spring days that come with a warm breath to tell that summer is glowing somewhere, and that her face is northward, Aunt Faith Henderson came out upon the low, vine-latticed stoop of her house in Kinnicutt.
Up the little footpath from the road—across the bit of greensward that lay between it and the stoop—came a quick, noiseless step, and there was a touch, presently, on the old lady's arm.
Faith Gartney stood beside her, in trim straw bonnet and shawl, with a black leather bag upon her arm.
"Auntie! I've come to make you a tiny little visit! Till day after to-morrow."