"I don't know," she resumed, after a pause, "how your father's affairs are now. The likelihood is, if he has any health, that he'll go into some kind of a venture again before very long. But I shall have a talk with him, and if he isn't satisfied I'll alter it so as to do something more for you." "Something more!" said Faith. "But you have done a great deal, as it is! I didn't say so, because I was thinking so much of the other." "It won't make an heiress of you," said Aunt Faith. "But it'll be better than nothing, if other means fall short. And I don't feel, somehow, as if you need be a burden on my mind. There's a kind of a certainty borne in on me, otherwise. I can't help thinking that what I've done has been a leading. And if it has, it's right. Now, put this back, and tell Miss Sampson she may bring my gruel." CHAPTER XXXII. GLORY McWHIRK'S INSPIRATION. "No bird am I to sing in June, And dare not ask an equal boon. Good nests and berries red are Nature's To give away to better creatures,-- And yet my days go on, go on." MRS. BROWNING. Mr. and Mrs. Gartney arrived on Thursday. Two weeks and three days they had been absent; and in that time how the busy sprites of change and circumstance had been at work! As if the scattered straws of events, that, stretched out in slender windrows, might have reached across a field of years, had been raked together, and rolled over--crowded close, and heaped, portentous, into these eighteen days! Letters had told them something; of the burned mill, and Faith's fearful danger and escape; of Aunt Henderson's continued illness, and its present serious aspect; and with this last intelligence, which met them in New York but two days since, Mrs. Gartney found her daughter's agitated note of pained avowal, that she "had come, through all this, to know herself better, and to feel sure that this marriage ought not to be"; that, in short, all was at length over between her and Paul Rushleigh. It was a meeting full of thought--where much waited for speech that letters could neither have conveyed nor satisfied--when Faith and her father and mother exchanged the kiss of love and welcome, once more, in the little home at Cross Corners. It was well that Mis' Battis had made waffles, and spread a tempting summer tea with these and her nice, white bread, and fruits and creams; and wished, with such faint impatience as her huge calm was capable of, that "they would jest set right down, while things was good and hot"; and that Hendie was full of his wonderful adventures by boat and train, and through the wilds; so that these first hours were gotten over, and all a little used to the old feeling of being together again, before there was opportunity for touching upon deeper subjects.