"Mr. and Mrs. Strong and Glen and Mrs. Grinnell."
"What in the world will we do with them all? Eight is a tight fit for our dining-room."
"It will crowd us a little, but I have it all planned nicely. Glen must sit in his daddy's lap—he often does at home when they have company and haven't room at the table for his high-chair—and of course I will wait on the people, so there will be room for all."
"Of course you won't wait on the people! What waiting there is to attend to I shall look after. You are mistress of this house. Oh, I can't help hugging myself every other minute to think Mr. Strong was able to get the money for the mortgage and we won't have to leave this dear little brown house after all."
"Do you care so much?" asked Gail, with such a curious wistfulness in her voice that Faith stopped her ecstatic prancing to study the thin, flushed face.
"I should say I do!" she exclaimed emphatically. "Someway, in these last six months it has grown ever so much dearer than I ever dreamed it could. I used to think I hated farm life, and it fretted me because we couldn't live in Pendennis or Martindale, and have things like other folks. I did want a piano so much, instead of a worn-out, wheezy old organ."
"Wouldn't you still like all that?" questioned the older girl, keeping her eyes fixed on the half-picked fowl in her lap, as if afraid of betraying some delightful secret.
"Oh, yes, indeed! But I gave up thinking about such things a long time ago. The farm is all we have, and there is the mortgage to pay on that; so I just shut up my high-falutin notions, as Mrs. Grinnell calls them, and mean to be happy doing my part in the home. I have wasted too much time already."
"You have done your part splendidly," cried Gail with brimming eyes, letting the chicken slip unnoticed from her hands as she threw one arm around Faith's waist; "and now that—" She bit her tongue just in time to keep the wonderful secret from tumbling off, and flushed furiously.
"And now that what?" questioned the other girl, without the faintest trace of suspicion in her voice.