"Where do you find those two 'ifs'?" "I thought, perhaps, when I came away from Pequot to-day, that I might go back again after Monday. I am afraid aunt Dilly will want me." "How much must people want you, to gain a hearing?" "There are different kinds of wanting," Faith said gravely. "Aunt Dilly may miss me too much." "And the abstract 'too much,' is different from the comparative. What about that other 'if'?" "The other 'if'?--I don't know that there is anything about it, Mr. Linden," Faith said laughing. "Whence did it come?--before it 'trickeled,' as Bunyan says, to your tongue?" "I don't know, sir!"-- "Miss Faith!--I did not think you would so forget me in three weeks. Do you want to hear the story of a very cold, icy little brook?" he said, with a sort of amused demureness that gave her the benefit of all his adjectives. She looked up at him with earnest eyes not at all amused, but that verged on being hurt; and it was with a sort of fear of what the real answer might be, that she asked what he meant. "Miss Faith, I mean nothing very bad," he said with a full smile at her then. "When I really think you are building yourself an ice palace, I shall spend my efforts upon thawing, not talking. What have you been doing all these weeks?" With a little bit of answering smile she said, in a deliberate kind of way,--"I have been running about house--and learning how to cook French cookery, Mr. Linden--and most of all, I've been reading the Bible. I haven't had time to do much else." "Do you know," Mr. Linden said as he watched her, "that is just what I thought?--And so you have been going step by step 'up the mountain'! Do you see how the road improves?--do you find the 'richer pastures' and the purer air?" "O sir," said Faith looking up at him,--"I was reading to aunt Dilly." "I know,--I understood that. Are not my words true still?" Gravity and shyness, all except the gravity that belonged to her and to the subject, broke away from Faith. She rose up and stood beside Mr. Linden, moved, happy, and glad with the gladness of full sympathy. "It has been a pleasant two weeks, Mr. Linden!--though I would have liked to be at home. Aunt Dilly has wanted the Bible, morning, noon, and night;--and it was wonderful to read it to her! It has been my business, all these days." "My dear child! I am very glad!" he said, taking her hand. "Wonderful?--yes, it is wonderful to read, to one who wants it." "She wanted it so much,"--Faith said, catching her breath a little. "And understood it, Mr. Linden. Very soon it was all--or mostly--clear to her. I read to her sometimes till twelve o'clock at night--and sometimes began at four in the morning." Mr. Linden looked at her with a mingling of expressions.