Faith had been taken more and more into counsel and confidence with her parents since the time of the illness that had brought them all so close together. And more and more helpful she had grown, both in word and doing, since she had learned to look daily for the daily work set before her, and to perform it conscientiously, even although it consisted only of little things. She still remembered with enthusiasm Nurse Sampson and the "drumsticks," and managed to pick up now and then one for herself. Meantime she began to see, indistinctly, before her, the vision of a work that must be done by some one, and the duty of it pressed hourly closer home to herself. Her father's health had never been fully reestablished. He had begun to use his strength before and faster than it came. There was danger--it needed no Dr. Gracie, even, to tell them so--of grave disease, if this went on. And still, whenever urged, his answer was the same. "What would become of his family without his business?" Faith turned these things over and over in her mind. "Father," said she, after a while--the conversation having been dropped at the old conclusion, and nobody appearing to have anything more to say--"I don't know anything about business; but I wish you'd tell me how much money you've got!" Her father laughed; a sad sort of laugh though, that was not so much amusement as tenderness and pity. Then, as if the whole thing were a mere joke, yet with a shade upon his face that betrayed there was far too much truth under the jest, after all, he took out his portemonnaie and told her to look and see. "You know I don't mean that, father! How much in the bank, and everywhere?" "Precious little in the bank, now, Faithie. Enough to keep house with for a year, nearly, perhaps. But if I were to take it and go off and spend it in traveling, you can understand that the housekeeping would fall short, can't you?" Faith looked horrified. She was bringing down her vague ideas of money that came from somewhere, through her father's pocket, as water comes from Lake Kinsittewink by the turning of a faucet, to the narrow point of actuality. "But that isn't all, I know! I've heard you talk about railroad dividends, and such things." "Oh! what does the Western Road pay this time?" asked his wife. "I've had to sell out my stock there." "And where's the money, father?" asked Faith. "Gone to pay debts, child," was the answer. Mrs. Gartney said nothing, but she looked very grave. Her husband surmised, perhaps, that she would go on to imagine worse than had really happened, and so added, presently: "I haven't been obliged to sell _all_ my railroad stocks, wifey. I held on to some. There's the New York Central all safe; and the Michigan Central, too. That wouldn't have sold so well, to be sure, just when I was wanting the money; but things are looking better, now."