Faith would have cut off her little finger, rather than have had her father dream that such a thing had been put into her head! But unfortunately it was there, now, and could not be helped. She could only--sitting there in her chamber window with the blood tingling to the hair upon her temples, as if from every neighboring window of the clustering houses about her, eyes could overlook and read what she was reading now--"wish that Saidie would not write such things as that!" For all that, it was one pleasant thing Faith would have to lose in leaving Mishaumok. It was very agreeable to have him dropping in, with his gay college gossip; and to dance the "German" with the nicest partner in the Monday class; and to carry the flowers he so often sent her. Had she done things greater than she knew in shutting her eyes resolutely to all her city associations and enjoyments, and urging, for her father's sake, this exodus in the desert? Only that means were actually wanting to continue on as they were, and that health must at any rate be first striven for as a condition to the future enlargement of means, her father and mother, in their thought for what their child hardly considered for herself, would surely have been more difficult to persuade. They hoped that a summer's rest might enable Mr. Gartney to undertake again some sort of lucrative business, after business should have revived from its present prostration; and that a year or two, perhaps, of economizing in the country, might make it possible for them to return, if they chose, to the house in Hickory Street. There were leave takings to be gone through--questions to be answered, and reasons to be given; for Mrs. Gartney, the polite wishes of her visiting friends that "Mr. Gartney's health might allow them to return to the city in the winter," with the wonder, unexpressed, whether this were to be a final breakdown of the family, or not; and for Faith, the horror and extravagant lamentations of her young _coterie_, at her coming occultation--or setting, rather, out of their sky. Paul Rushleigh demanded eagerly if there weren't any sober old minister out there, with whom he might be rusticated for his next college prank. Everybody promised to come as far as Kinnicutt "some time" to see them; the good-bys were all said at last; the city cook had departed, and a woman had been taken in her place who "had no objections to the country"; and on one of the last bright days of May they skimmed, steam-sped, over the intervening country between the brick-and-stone-encrusted hills of Mishaumok and the fair meadow reaches of Kinnicutt; and so disappeared out of the places that had known them so long, and could yet, alas! do so exceedingly well without them. By the first of June nobody in the great city remembered, or remembered very seriously to regard, the little gap that had been made in its midst. CHAPTER XIV. A DRIVE WITH THE DOCTOR.