"It led to another."
"What I want to know is," said Miss Danforth, "where did you find yourselves when you were furthest from home."
"Let me shew you," said he. "Suppose your plate to be a rock, and this tumbler of radishes a tree, and the table-cloth grass,—the moon over your head, crickets under your feet. Miss Faith walks round the rock, I follow her,—and we both follow the road. On the way, the still night air is enlivened with owls, grasshoppers, family secrets. Our attention is thus divided between the moon and sublunary affairs. Miss Faith—what shall I give you?"
Miss Danforth's curiosity seemed for once willing to be satisfied with fun; and Faith's hunger was in the same predicament.
"But child," said Mrs. Derrick, who had bent her attention upon the diagram at the other end of the table, "I don't recollect any such place!"
"Mother!" said Faith,—and her gravity gave way hopelessly.
"Squire Deacon sends his best compliments of the season," said Cindy opening the door a while later, "and he says they'll be to take supper precisely at four. I'm free to confess he don't look much sweeter than common," added Cindy.
"Pray Miss Faith," said Mr. Linden as they left the table, "what is the precise depth of water down at the shore?"
Faith had very near broke down again, for she laughed and blushed, a good deal more than her wont; and at last replied that "it depended on how far people went in—she never went very far herself."
"I was naturally curious," said he.