Say and Seal, Volume I

by Susan Warner; Anna Bartlett Warner

"I am not tired at all," she said with some flitting colour,—"but you are, Mr. Linden. Won't you rest—sleep—till after dinner—and then, if you like, let me come?"

"I will let you come then—and stay now," he said smiling.

"Let me stay and be silent then—or do something that will not tire you. Please, Mr. Linden!"

"Your line of action lies all within that last bound," he said gently. "But you may read French if you will—or write it and let me look over you,—or another geographical chapter. Neither need make me talk much."

The hint about looking over her writing startled Faith amazingly, but perhaps for that very reason she took it as the delicate expression of a wish. That would be a trial, but then too it would call for the least exertion on the part of her teacher. Faith was brave, if she was fearful, and too really humble to have false shame; and after an instant's doubt and hesitation, she said, though she felt it to her fingers' ends,

"My exercise is all ready—it only wants to be copied—but how could you look over me, Mr. Linden?"

"Could you do such an inconvenient thing as to use that small atlas for a table? and bring it here by me—I am not quite fit to sit up just now."

Faith said no more words, but went for her exercise and sat down to write it, as desired, under an observing and she knew a critical eye. It was well her business engrossed her very completely; for she was in an extremely puzzled and disturbed state of mind. Dr. Harrison's words about the occasion of Mr. Linden's accident, carelessly run on, had at last unwittingly given her the clue her own innocent spirit might have waited long for; and grief and pain would have almost overcome her, but for a conflicting feeling of another kind raised by the preceding colloquy between the two gentlemen. Faith was in a state of profound uncertainty, whether Mr. Linden's words had meant anything or nothing. They were spoken so that they might have meant nothing—but then Phil Davids had just been with him—what for?—and whatever Mr. Linden's words might have meant, Faith's knowledge of him made her instinctively know, through all the talk, that they had been spoken for the sake of warding off something disagreeable from her—not for himself. She tried as far as she could to dismiss the question from her thoughts—she could not decide it—and to go on her modest way just as if it had not been raised; and she did; but for all that her face was a study as she sat there writing. For amid all her abstraction in her work, the thought of the possibility that Mr. Linden might have known what he was talking about, would send a tingling flush up into her cheeks; and sometimes again the thoughts of pain that had been at work would bring upon her lip almost one of those sorrowful curves which are so lovely and so pure on the lip of a little child—and rarely seen except there. All this was only by the way; it did not hinder the most careful attention to what she was about, nor the steadiest working of her quite unsteady fingers, which she knew were very likely to move not according to rule.

For a little while she was suffered to go on without interruption, other than an occasional word about the French part of her exercise; but presently Mr. Linden's hand began to come now and then with a modifying touch upon her pen and fingers. At first this was done with a gentle "forgive me!" or, "if you please, Miss Faith,"—after that without words, though the manner always expressed them; and once or twice, towards the very end of the lesson, he told her that such a letter was too German—or too sophisticated; and shewed her a more Saxon way. Which admonitions he helped her, as well as he could, to bear, by a quietness which was really as kind, as it seemed oblivious of all that had disturbed or could disturb her. And the words of praise and encouragement were spoken with their usual pleasure-taking and pleasure-giving effect. All this after a time effectually distracted Faith from all other thoughts whatever. When it was done, she sat a moment looking down at the paper, then looked up and gave him a very frank and humble "Thank you, Mr. Linden!" from face and lips both.

If Faith liked approbation—that clover-honey to a woman's taste, so far beyond the sickly sweets of flattery and admiration—she might have been satisfied with the grave look of Mr. Linden's eyes at her then.