Paul helped her from the wagon at the little white gate at Cross Corners, and then they both remembered that she was to have gone to Lakeside to tea. "What shall I tell Margaret?" he asked. "Oh, don't tell her anything! I mean--tell her, I couldn't come to-night. And, Paul--forgive me! I do want so to do what is right!" "Isn't it right to let me try and make you happy all your life?" A light had broken upon her--confusedly, it is true--yet that began to show her to herself more plainly than any glimpse she had had before, as Paul's words, simple, yet burning with his strong sure love, came to her, with their claim to honest answer. She saw what it was he brought her; she felt it was less she had to give him back. There was something in the world she might go missing all the way through life, if she took this lot that lay before her now. Would he not miss a something in her, also? Yet, must she needs insist on the greatest, the rarest, that God ever sends? Why should she, more than others? Would she wrong him more, to give him what she could, or to refuse him all? "I ought--if I do--" she said, tremulously, "to care as you do!" "You never can, Faith!" cried the young man, impetuously. "I care as a man cares! Let me love you! care a little for me, and let it grow to more!" Men, till something is accorded, are willing to take so little! And then the little must become so entire! "Well, I declare!" exclaimed Mis' Battis, as Faith came in. "Who'd a thought o' seein' you home to tea! I s'pose you ain't had none?" "Yes--no. That is, I don't want any. Where is my mother?" "She and your pa's gone down to Dr. Wasgatt's. I knew 'twould be contrary to the thirty-nine articles that they should get away from there without their suppers, and so I let the fire right down, and blacked the stove." "Never mind," said Faith, abstractedly. "I don't feel hungry." And she went away, upstairs. "'M!" said Mis 'Battis, significantly, to herself, running a released knitting needle through her hair, "don't tell me! I've been through the mill!" Half an hour after, she came up to Faith's door. "The minister's downstairs," said she. "Hope to goodness, he's had _his_ supper!" "Oh, if I dared!" thought Faith; and her heart throbbed tumultuously. "Why can't there be somebody to tell me what I ought to do?" If she had dared, how she could have leaned upon this friend! How she could have trusted her conscience and her fate to his decision! "Does anything trouble you to-night, Miss Faith?" asked Mr. Armstrong, watching her sad, abstracted look in one of the silent pauses that broke their attempts at conversation. "Are you ill, or tired?" "Oh, no!" answered Faith, quickly, from the surface, as one often does when thoughts lie deep. "I am quite well. Only--I am sometimes puzzled." "About what is? Or about what ought to be?"