Faith told him about Louise, and was surprised to see her father’s face grave and troubled. For Mr. Carew had heard of the shoemaker, and was sure that he was an English spy, and feared that his daughter’s friendship with Faith might get the Scotts into some trouble.
“She is my dearest friend. I tell her everything,” went on Faith.
“I’m afraid her father is not a friend to the settlers about here,” replied Mr. Carew. “Be careful, dear child, that you do not mention any of the visitors who come to your uncle’s house. Your friend would mean no harm, but if she told her father great harm might come of it,” for Mr. Scott was doing his best to help the Americans. Messengers from Connecticut and Massachusetts with news for the settlers came to his house, and Mr. Scott found ways to forward their important communications to the men on the other side of Lake Champlain.
“Aunt Prissy likes Louise; we all do,” pleaded Faith; so her father said no more, thinking that perhaps he had been overanxious.
“Your mother sent your blue beads. I expect you would have been scolded a little for being a careless child if you had been at home, for she found them under the settle cushion the very day you left home,” said Mr. Carew, handing Faith two small packages. “The larger package is one that came from Esther Eldridge a few weeks ago,” he added, in answer to Faith’s questioning look.
“I wonder what it can be,” said Faith; but before she opened Esther’s package she had taken the blue beads from the pretty box and put them around her neck, touching them with loving fingers, and looking down at them with delight. Then she unfastened the wrapping of the second package.
“Here is a letter!” she exclaimed, and began reading it. As she read her face brightened, and at last she laughed with delight. “Oh, father! Read it! Esther says to let you and mother read it. And she has sent me another string of beads!” And now Faith opened the other box, a very pretty little box of shining yellow wood with “Faith” cut on the top, and took out another string of blue beads, so nearly like her own that it was difficult to tell them apart.
Mr. Carew read Esther’s letter. She wrote that she had lost Faith’s beads, and had been afraid to tell her. “Now I am sending you another string that my father got on purpose. I think you were fine not to say a word to any one about how horrid I was to ask for your beads. Please let your mother and father read this letter, so they will know how polite you were to company.”
“So it was Esther who lost the beads! Well, now what are you going to do with two strings of beads?” said her father smilingly.
When Aunt Prissy came into the room Faith ran to show her Esther’s present and the letter, and told her of what had happened when she had so rashly promised to give Esther anything she might ask for. “I am so glad to have my own beads back again. And most of all I am glad not to have the secret,” she said, thinking to herself that life was much happier when father and mother and Aunt Prissy could know everything that she knew. Then, suddenly, Faith recalled the fort, and the difficult climb down the cliff. “But that’s not my secret. It’s something outside. Something that I ought not to tell,” she thought, with a little sense of satisfaction.