"Well, ma'am—I won't say a word, if I can help it. Do you mean to anybody, Miss Faith?"
"Not to anybody. I mean, not to any one at home."
"I won't if I can help it," Sam repeated. "But it's my night to stay with Mr. Linden."
"Is it?—Well—what if it is?"
"I don't know—" said Sam dubiously,—"he has a funny way of reading people's faces."
"But what is going to be in yours, Sam?"
"I don't know that, neither," said Sam. "But the fact is, Miss Faith, he always does find out things—and if it's anything he's got to do with you may just as good tell him at once as to fuss round."
A pretty significant piece of information! Upon which Faith mused.
It was not so late when they reached Mrs. Derrick's door, that the good lady's anxiety had got fairly under way. At that moment indeed, she had quitted the front of the house, and gone to hurry Cindy and the teakettle; so that Faith was in the house and her escort dismissed, before Mrs. Derrick appeared.
"Why pretty child!" she said—"here you are! I was very near getting worried. And I went up and asked Mr. Linden what time it was, lest the clock shouldn't be right; but he seemed to think it wasn't worth while to fret about you yet. You're tired to death!" she added, looking at Faith. "You're as pale as anything, child!"