"Tell me first, Miss Faith," he said turning over the leaves, "what you have been doing here by yourself."
"I have been all through it," she said; 'fluttering' sure enough, yet as much with pleasure as with timidity; not at all with fear.
"Will you work these out for me—" and he gave her half a dozen different tests on a bit of paper.
She coloured, and he could see her hand tremble; but she was not long doing them, and she did them well, and gave them back without a word and without raising her eyes.
"Well," said Mr. Linden, smiling a little as he looked at the paper, "if it takes half an hour to hear Charles twelfth his lesson, and Johnny gives you but one quarter the trouble, and Rob Waters about twice as much as Johnny, how much time will you spend upon them all?"
"It will be about an hour—wanting an eighth," she said without raising her eyes, but with a bit of a smile too.
"I hear you and Johnny have arranged preliminaries, Miss Faith."
"Yes," said Faith looking up brightly, "he came to shew me his ribband and to tell me last night. But I was almost sorry, Mr. Linden,—that you should send him away from you."
"For Johnny's sake, or my own?"
"For his sake—certainly."