"The 'running' brooks are good letter-press," he said—"and the grey stones, and that white oak in the meadow. And is not that woodpecker a pretty illustration?"
"I have looked at them often," said Faith. "I don't know how to read them as you do. There isn't any brook here, though, that I know of, but Kildeer river. You'll like Neanticut, Mr. Linden. I'm so glad you let us come. I'll read everything—that I can."
"I don't know how long everything'll last you, child—at the rate you've gone on lately," said Mrs. Derrick who stood in the doorway.
Faith smiled again, and shook her head a little at the same time as her eye went from the woodpecker to the green leaves above his head, then to the bright red of some pepperidge trees further off, to the lush grass of the meadow, and on to the soft brownish, reddish, golden hues of distant woodland. Her eye came back as from a book it would take long to read thoroughly.
"I am so glad it is such a day!" she repeated.
"I see my boys are coming back," Mr. Linden said, with a smile which hardly belonged to them,—"I must go and get their report. Au revoir, Miss Faith." And he went forward into the midst of the little swarm—so manageable in his hands, so sure to sting anybody else.
"Child," said Mrs. Derrick, looking over Faith's head from her more elevated position of the door-sill (looking at it too); "Child, why don't you get—" and there, for the first and last time in her life, Mrs. Derrick stopped short in the middle of a sentence.
"What, mother?"
But Mrs. Derrick replied not.
"What do you want me to get, mother?"