"'_Lucus a non lucendo_,'" quoted Faith, rather wittily, from her little stock of Latin. "Stupidity offices, _I_ should call them, from the specimens they send out." "Hold your tongue, chit! Don't talk Latin to me!" growled Aunt Henderson. "What are you writing?" she asked, shortly after, when Mrs. Gartney had again left her and Faith to each other. "Letters, or Latin?" Faith colored, and laughed. "Only a fortune that was told me last night," she replied. "Oh! 'A little husband,' I suppose, 'no bigger than my thumb; put him in a pint pot, and there bid him drum.'" "No," said Faith, half seriously, and half teased out of her seriousness. "It's nothing of that sort. At least," she added, glancing over the lines again, "I don't think it means anything like that." And Faith laid down the book, and went upstairs for a word with her mother. Aunt Henderson, who had been brought up in times when all the doings of young girls were strictly supervised, and who had no high-flown scruples, because she had no mean motives, deliberately walked over and fetched the elegant little volume from the table, reseated herself in her armchair--felt for her glasses, and set them carefully upon her nose--and, as her grandniece returned, was just finishing her perusal of the freshly inscribed lines. "Humph! A good fortune. Only you've got to earn it." "Yes," said Faith, quite gravely. "And I don't see how. There doesn't seem to be much that I can do." "Just take hold of the first thing that comes in your way. If the Lord's got anything bigger to give you, he'll see to it. There's your mother's mending basket brimful of stockings." Faith couldn't help laughing. Presently she grew grave again. "Aunt Henderson," said she, abruptly, "I wish something would happen to me. I get tired of living sometimes. Things don't seem worth while." Aunt Henderson bent her head slightly, and opened her eyes wide over the tops of her glasses. "Don't say that again," said she. "Things happen fast enough. Don't you dare to tempt Providence." "Providence won't be tempted, nor misunderstand," replied Faith, an undertone of reverence qualifying her girlish repartee. "He knows just what I mean." "She's a queer child," said Aunt Faith to herself, afterwards, thinking over the brief conversation. "She'll be something or nothing, I always said. I used to think 'twould be nothing." CHAPTER IV. GLORY McWHIRK. "There's beauty waiting to be born, And harmony that makes no sound; And bear we ever, unawares, A glory that hath not been crowned." Shall I try to give you a glimpse of quite another young life than Faith Gartney's? One looking also vaguely, wonderingly, for "something to happen"--that indefinite "something" which lies in everybody's future, which may never arrive, and yet which any hour may bring?