Faith Gartneys Girlhood | Page 4

an inlaid table,
brought forward a piano stool, and seated herself thereon, as a priestess
upon a tripod.
A little shyly, one after another, gaining knowledge of what was going
on, the company strayed in from without, and, each in turn hazarding a
number, received in answer the rhyme or stanza indicated; and who
shall say how long those chance-directed words, chosen for the most
part with the elastic ambiguity of all oracles of any established
authority, lingered echoing in the heads and hearts of them to whom
they were given--shaping and confirming, or darkening with their
denial many an after hope and fear?
Faith Gartney came up among the very last.
"How many numbers are there to choose from?" she asked.
"Three hundred and sixty-five. The number of days in the year."
"Well, then, I'll take the number of the day; the last--no, I forgot--the
first of all."
Nobody before had chosen this, and Margaret read, in a clear, gentle
voice, not untouched with the grave beauty of its own words, and the
sweet, earnest, listening look of the young face that bent toward her to
take them in:
"Rouse to some high and holy work of love, And thou an angel's
happiness shalt know; Shalt bless the earth while in the world above;
The good begun by thee while here below Shall like a river run, and
broader flow."

Ten minutes later, and all else were absorbed in other things
again--leave-takings, parting chat, and a few waltzing a last measure to
a specially accorded grace of music. Faith stood, thoughtfully, by the
table where the book was closed and left. She quietly reopened it at that
first page. Unconscious of a step behind her, her eyes ran over the lines
again, to make their beautiful words her own.
"And that was your oracle, then?" asked a kindly voice.
Glancing quickly up, while the timid color flushed her cheek, she met a
look as of a wise and watchful angel, though it came through the eye
and smile of a gray-haired man, who laid his hand upon the page as he
said:
"Remember--it is conditional."
CHAPTER III.
AUNT HENDERSON.
"I never met a manner more entirely without frill." SYDNEY SMITH.
Late into the morning of the New Year, Faith slept. Through her half
consciousness crept, at last, a feeling of music that had been wandering
in faint echoes among the chambers of her brain all those hours of her
suspended life.
Light, and music, and a sense of an unexamined, half-remembered joy,
filled her being and embraced her at her waking on this New Year's
Day. A moment she lay in a passive, unthinking delight; and then her
first, full, and distinct thought shaped itself, as from a sweet and
solemn memory:
"Rouse to some high and holy work of love, And thou an angel's
happiness shalt know."
An impulse of lofty feeling held her in its ecstasy; a noble longing and
determination shaped itself, though vaguely, within her. For a little, she

was touched in her deepest and truest nature; she was uplifted to the
threshold of a great resolve. But generalities are so grand--details so
commonplace and unsatisfying. What should she do? What "high and
holy work" lay waiting for her?
And, breaking in upon her reverie--bringing her down with its rough
and common call to common duty--the second bell for breakfast rang.
"Oh, dear! It is no use! Who'll know what great things I've been
wishing and planning, when I've nothing to show for it but just being
late to breakfast? And father hates it so--and New Year's morning,
too!"
Hurrying her toilet, she repaired, with all the haste possible, to the
breakfast room, where her consciousness of shortcoming was in nowise
lessened when she saw who occupied the seat at her father's right
hand--Aunt Henderson!
Aunt Faith Henderson, who had reached her nephew's house last
evening just after the young Faith, her namesake, had gone joyously off
to "dance the Old Year out and the New Year in." Old-fashioned Aunt
Faith--who believed most devoutly that "early to bed and early to rise"
was the only way to be "healthy, wealthy, or wise!" Aunt Faith, who
had never quite forgiven our young heroine for having said, at the
discreet and positive age of nine, that "she didn't see what her father
and mother had called her such an ugly name for. It was a real old
maid's name!" Whereupon, having asked the child what she would have
preferred as a substitute, and being answered, "Well--Clotilda, I guess;
or Cleopatra," Miss Henderson had told her that she was quite welcome
to change it for any heathen woman's that she pleased, and the worse
behaved perhaps the better. She wouldn't be so likely to do it any
discredit!
Aunt Henderson