Say and Seal, Volume I

by Susan Warner; Anna Bartlett Warner

"I have not said all I could say, but it is not easy for me to talk to you about it at all. You see, Miss Faith," said Mr. Linden smiling, "there cannot be such an anomaly in nature as a philosophical bird—so what am I to do?"

Faith smiled a little and thought that as long as he gave her the benefit of his philosophy, it did not much matter. Which recondite view of the subject she did not put into words.

The days began to roll on smoothly once more, subsiding into their old uneventful flow. The flow of talk indeed had not quite subsided; but as nothing came to throw any light on the point of the unknown sportsman who chose his sport so strangely, curiosity took a modified, condensed form; and the whole matter was stowed away in people's minds as the one Pattaquasset mystery. Happy Pattaquasset!

Even Mr. Linden's protracted confinement to the house made little difference to most, he had been so little seen when he was able to be out: only the boys had had his daylight hours; and where he had spent those times of twilight and evening when he was not at home, no one knew but the poor unknown class who mourned his absence as they had blessed his presence, in secret. The boys were not silent,—but they had the indemnification of going to see him, and of watching—or sleeping—in his room at night, according to their various dispositions. There came all his scholars on Sunday,—met by Faith on her contrary way; there came the whole school by turns, and at all hours. Indeed when once the embargo upon visiters was taken off, the supply was great!—and without careful measures on the part of Mr. Linden, French exercises would have been put aside with a witness. But he made two or three rules, and carried them out. In the first place he would see nobody before dinner, except the doctor; nor anybody after tea, save the same privileged individual. In the second place, when he was able to be out of his room without too much fatigue, the lessons were carried on down stairs,—in the dining-room generally, as being more private. There could both parties come and go without observation; and often when Mrs. Derrick was entertaining a roomful, a sudden fall of the thin partition would have revealed the very people they were discussing, deep in some pretty point of information. Pretty those lessons were! Faith's steps,—arithmetical, geographical, or what other,—were swift, steady, and sure; herself indefatigable, her teacher no less. If Mr. Linden had not quite come to be in her eyes "an old school book," she was yet enough accustomed to his teaching and animadversions to merge the binding in the book; and as to him, she might have been one of his school boys, for the straightforward way in which he opened paths of knowledge and led her through. The leading was more careful of her strength, more respectful of her timidity,—was more strictly leading than pushing,—that was all. Of course in two weeks, or even in four, the best of teachers and scholars could make but a beginning; but that was well made, and the work went steadily on from thence—despite "teaching all day," despite the various other calls for time and strength.

And Faith was as docile and obedient as Johnny Fax himself, and as far as those qualities went, very much in the same way. If the denial of Phil's information and Mr. Linden's manner the day after her overturn, had raised a doubt as to the real abstractness of his regard for her, Faith's modesty and simplicity put the thought well into the background. She did not care to look at it or bring it up; in the full, happy, peaceful hours she was enjoying she had enough, for the present; and so Faith went on very much after her old fashion. A little quieter, perhaps, when not called out of it; a little shyer of even innocently putting herself forward; but in speech or action, speaking and acting with her wonted free simplicity.

The only breaks in these weeks were one or two visits to Mrs. Custers, and the doctor's comings and goings. He could not be shut out.

The Monday evening after the doctor's absence at Quilipeak, the little party were as usual in the sitting-room; and a pretty chapter of Physical Geography was in process of reading and talk, when the doctor's quick wheels at the door announced not only his return but his arrival. And Mr. Linden announced to his scholar, that it was needful now to return to the surface of the earth and attend to the flow of conversation—and to put the book in his pocket.

"Are you glad to see me back?" said the doctor as he took the hand of his patient. He looked rather glad himself.

"If I say yes, that will be to confess that I have reason. You perceive my dilemma," Mr. Linden said, but with a smile that was certainly as kind and trustworthy as any the doctor had seen since he went away.

"Do you mean—that you have no reason to be glad?" said Dr. Harrison slowly, eying the smile and giving it, to judge by his own, a trustful regard.