"Do you mean to send me?" she said wistfully.
"Or take you—" he said, with a soft touch of his fingers on her hair.
"I don't know but I could be spared long enough for that."
It was arranged so, Mrs. Derrick undertaking to supply all deficiencies so far as she could, until Mr. Linden should get back again. The fast drive home through the still cold air was refreshing to both parties; it was a still drive too. Then leaving Mr. Linden to get a little rest on the sofa, Faith prepared tea. But Mr. Linden would not stay long after that, for rest or anything.
"I am coming very early to-morrow, Endecott," Faith said then.
"You may, dear child—if you will promise to sleep to-night. But you must not rouse yourself too early. You know to-morrow is Saturday—so I shall not be called off by other duties."
He went, and Mrs. Derrick came; but Faith, though weary enough certainly, spent the evening in study.
CHAPTER XII.
There is no knowing what Mr. Linden would have considered "too early," and Faith had prudently omitted to enquire. She studied nothing but her Bible that morning and spent the rest of the time in getting ready what she was to take with her; for Mr. Linden would not come home to breakfast. And it was but fair day, the sun had not risen, when she was on her way. She wondered, as she went, what they would have done that winter without Jerry; and looked at the colouring clouds in the east with a strange quick appreciation of the rising of that other day told of in the Bible. Little Johnny brought the two near; the type and the antitype. It was a pretty ride; cold, bright, still, shadowless; till the sun got above the horizon, and then the long yellow faint beams threw themselves across the snow that was all a white level before. They reached Faith's heart, as the commissioned earnest of that other Sun that will fill the world with his glory and that will make heaven a place where "there shall be no night."
The room where little Johnny was,—lay like the chamber called Peace, in the Pilgrim's Progress—towards the sunrising; but to reach it Faith had first to pass through another on the darker side of the house. The door between the two stood open, perhaps for fresher air, and as Faith came lightly in she could see that room lit up as it were with the early sunbeams. It was an old-fashioned room;—the windows with chintz shades, the floor painted, with a single strip of rag carpet; the old low-post bed-stead, with its check blue and white spread, the high-backed splinter chairs, told of life that had made but little progress in modern improvement. And Jonathan Fax himself, lean, long-headed, and lantern-jawed, looked grimmer than ever under his new veil of solemn feeling. He sat by the window.
The wood fire in the low fireplace flickered and fell with its changing light, on all; but within the warm glow a little group told of life that had made progress—progress which though but yet begun, was to go on its fair course through all the ages of eternity!