"You made me begin to think and wish immediately," she said.—"It was no wonder I wondered."
"Yes, and how I longed to give you your wish, so far as I could,—and how afraid I was to offer my services,—and how you would persist in thanking me for pleasing myself, do you remember, little Sunbeam?—and your fright when I asked about Prescott?"
She looked up with the prettiest, rosiest remembrance of it all; and then her face suddenly changed, and turning from him she shielded it again with her hand, but not to hide the rosy colour this time. Mr. Linden drew her close to him, resting his face upon her other cheek at first without words.
"Dear child!" he said,—"my own little Mignonette!—you must not forget what you said to me,—and you must not forget that I hope to come home quite often. There was a time, when I thought I might have to go away and never have the right to come and see you again. And you must think to yourself—though you will not speak of it to me—that after this bit of time, all our life will be spent together. You need not expect me to wait for anything—not even the cottage you like so much."
She did not answer immediately, as was natural, his last suggestions not being very word-provoking with her. But when she did speak, it was in a clear, cheerful tone.
"I'll bear my part, Endy—I should be very ungrateful if I couldn't. And you can bear your part—I am glad to think of that!—for you are working for a Master that always gives full pay."
"We can always bear God's will," he said, a little gravely,—"it is only our own that points the trial and makes it unbearable."
CHAPTER XIV.
Faith had no chance to think that night. She went to sleep conscientiously. And a chance the next morning was out of the question. She dared not come down as early as usual, if her own strength would have let her. The few minutes before breakfast were busy ones; and the few hours after breakfast. Faith went about with the consciousness of something on her heart to be looked at; but it had to bide its time. Her household duties done, her preparations for Mr. Linden being already in advance, she had leisure to attend to this other thing. And alone Faith sat down and looked at it.
It was the first real steady trial her life had known. Her father's death had come when she was too young to feel deeply any want that her mother could not fill. To be away from anything she much loved was a sorrow Faith hardly knew by experience. But a two years' separation was a very, very heavy and sharp pain to think of; and Faith had an inward assurance that the reality would be heavier and sharper than her thoughts beforehand could make it. Perhaps it was too great a pain to be struggled with; for Faith did not struggle—or not long. She sat down and looked at it,—what she had not dared to do the night before;—measured it and weighed it; and then bowed her heart and head to it in utter submission. With it came such a crowd of glad and good things, things indeed that made the trial and were bound up with it,—that Faith locked the one and the other up in her heart together. And remembering too the sunshine of joy in which she had lately lived, she humbly confessed that some check might be needed to remind her and make her know that earth has not the best sunshine, and that any gain would be loss that turned her eyes away from that best, or lessened her sense of its brightness.