"Cara, Dr. Stewart has come to see you."
It was Faith who spoke. It was the afternoon after Miss Cosie's tea party, and she had met her old acquaintance down the village and had brought him in at his solicitation to see her sisters. Matters were not quite satisfactory to-day. Faith had had a sleepless night after her excitement, and a racking headache had been the consequence. And Miss Charity had been in one of her trying moods. A fresh access of pain made her exacting and irritable. Faith's nervousness and pale looks met with scant sympathy. "If you were not quite so fond of gadding about and leaving other people to do your work you would not be so tired," was the severe comment; the truth being, that poor Miss Charity was having a bad time of it, and had missed Faith's soft voice and gentle manipulations.
It did not improve matters when Miss Hope came to the rescue, and took the book out of her sister's unwilling hands. "There, Faith, run along and put on your bonnet and get some air; I will read to Charity," she said, in her brusque, kindly way, and settled herself vigorously to her task; and Faith, who knew how Cara hated Hope's reading, hesitated and lingered, and then finally yielded to the temptation of the fresh air and sunshine.
It was a little trying that at this moment she should meet Dr. Stewart.
At thirty-five a sleepless night is no beautifier, one lacks youth's cosmetiques then. Faith knew her heavy half-extinguished eyes had black rings round them. The face under the close little Quaker bonnet looked older and more worn than it had last night.
"How do you do, Miss Faith? we can see each other more clearly than we could last evening. Well, we have neither of us grown younger," and Dr. Stewart scrutinized his pale companion with the utmost composure.
Faith glanced at him rather timidly; his manner troubled her, it was more brusque, a little rougher than it used to be. The shy young doctor had seen the world since then. Dr. Stewart certainly looked a little different this afternoon. He was much older and stouter than she had thought him yesterday; his whiskers were iron-grey, and his face had a brown, weather-beaten aspect, and the lines round the mouth were a trifle hard and sarcastic. She could see him more clearly than in Miss Cosie's dim room.
"You find me changed too, I dare say," he continued abruptly, reading her thoughts more shrewdly than of old. "You see I have knocked about the world for the last seven or eight years, and that makes a man old before his time."
"I don't think you look particularly old, Dr. Stewart."
"Well, forty is not exactly patriarchal," somewhat sarcastically. "On the whole I think I am rather proud of my grey hairs, they make me more important. You ought to have kept younger, Miss Faith, leading this quiet pastoral life of yours; you have not had all the hard hits and thumps that fate has dealt me."