"Do you?" he said looking towards the window with a counterfeit surprise that was in comical antithesis to his last words,—"does it rain still!"
Faith's eye came back quick from the window to him, and then, for the first time in many a long day, her old mellow sweet laugh rolled over the subject, dismissing make-believes and figures of speech in its clear matter-of-fact rejoicing.
"My dear little Mignonette!" Mr. Linden said, "that does my very heart good. You are really getting better, in spite of lessons and warnings, and all other hindrances. Do you want to know what I have truly been thinking of since you came up stairs? Shall we exchange thoughts?"
"Please give me yours," she answered.
"They sprang from Miss Essie's question. Faith, when she asked me what my wife would have, I could not tell her—I could not answer it to myself afterwards very definitely. Only so far—she will have all I have to give." His hand was smoothing and arranging her hair as he spoke—his look one that nobody but Faith ever had from Mr. Linden. She had looked up once and seen it; and then she stood before him, so still and silent as if she might have had nothing to say; but every line of her brow, her moved lip, her attitude, the very power of her silence, contradicted that, and testified as well to the grace of a grave and most exquisite humility which clothed her from head to foot. Mr. Linden was as silent as she, watching her; but then he drew her off to the low couch in the wide old-fashioned entry window, and seated her there in a very bath of spring air and struggling sunbeams.
"I suppose it is useless to say 'Please give me yours'," he said smiling. "Mignonette, we have had no reading to-day—do you like this time and place?—and shall it be with you or to you?"
"It will be both, won't it?" said Faith; and she went for her Bible.
CHAPTER XXX.
The day was struggling into clearness by the time dinner was over. Patches of blue sky looked down through grey, vapoury, scattering clouds; while now and then a few rain drops fell to keep up the character of the morning, and broad warm genial sunbeams fell between them. It was not fair yet for a drive; and Mr. Linden went out on some errands of business, leaving Faith with a charge to sleep and rest and be ready against his return.
He was but a little while gone when Jem Waters made his appearance and asked for Faith. Mr. Simlins had been ill—that Faith knew—but Jem brought a sad report of how ill he had been, and a message that he was "tired of not seeing Faith and wished she would let Jem fetch her down. She might go back again as soon as she'd a mind to." He wanted to see her "real bad," according to Jem; for he had ordered the best wagon on the premises to be cleaned and harnessed up, and the best buffalo robe put in, and charged Jem to bring Miss Faith "if she could anyways come." And there was Jem and the wagon.