Among the lookers-on there were also indications. To those who did not know him, Mr. Linden's face looked as unmoved as the pillar against which he leaned,--yet the varying play of light and shade upon the one was well repeated in the other. Squire Stoutenburgh nodded and smiled, to himself and his neighbours, and made little aside observations--"_That_ told, sir!"--"Always was a good boy!--studious."--"Yes--Reuben Taylor does well--very well, considering who his father is." That father the while, stood alone--even beyond the outskirts of the gay party. With Miss Cilly's blue dress he had nothing in common--as little with Faith's spotless white. Dark, weatherbeaten, dressed for his boat and the clam banks, he stood there on the green turf as if in a trance. Unable to follow one question or answer, his eager eye caught every word of Reuben's voice; his intent gaze read first the assurance that it would be right, then the assurance that it was. The whole world might have swept by him in a pageant--and he would scarcely have turned to look! There was one other listener perhaps, whose interest was as rapt as his; that was Faith. But her interest was of more manifold character. There was the natural feeling for and with the boys; and there was sympathy for their instructor and concern for his honour, which latter grew presently to be a very gratified concern. Then also Dr. Harrison's examination was a matter of curious novelty; and back of all that, lay in Faith's mind a deep, searching, pressing interest in the subject matters of it. What of all that, _she_ knew,--how little,--and how much the boys;--how vastly much Dr. Harrison; what far-reaching fields of knowledge there were in some people's minds. Where was Faith's mind going? Yet she was almost as outwardly quiet as Mr. Linden himself. All her shew of feeling was in the intent eye, the grave face, and a little deepening and deepening tinge in her cheeks. The questioning and answering was over--the boys were all in their ranks--there was a little hush and stir of expectancy,--and Dr. Harrison gave his hand to a very bright lady with a basket and led her to a position by his side, filling the eye of the whole assembly. Faith looked over to her with a tiny giving way of the lips which meant a great self-gratulation that she was not in the lady's place. There she stood, very much at home apparently,--Miss Essie de Staff, as fifty mouths said at once. She was rather a little lady, not very young, nor old; dressed in a gay-coloured plaid silk, with a jaunty little black apron with pockets, black hair in curls behind her ears, and a glitter of jewelry. It was not false jewelry, nor ill put on, and this was Miss Essie de Staff. She belonged to the second great family of Pattaquasset; she too had been abroad and had seen life like the Harrisons; but somehow she had seen it in a different way; and while the de Staffs had the shew, the Harrisons always had the reality of precedence in the town.