Faith Gartneys Girlhood | Page 4

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 had a downright and rather extreme fashion of putting things; nevertheless, in her heart she was not unkindly.
So when Faithie, with her fair, fresh face--a little apprehensive trouble in it for her tardiness--came in, there was a grim bending of the old lady's brows; but, below, a half-belying twinkle in the eye, that, long as it had looked out sharply and keenly on the things and people of this mixed-up world, found yet a pleasure in anything so young and bright.
"Why, auntie! How do you do?" cried Faith, cunning culprit that she was, taking the "bull by the horns," and holding out her hand. "I wish you a Happy New Year! Good morning, father, and mother! A Happy New Year! I'm sorry I'm so late."
"Wish you a great many," responded the great-aunt, in stereotyped phrase. "It seems to me, though, you've lost the beginning of this one."
"Oh, no!" replied Faithie, gayly. "I had that at the party. We danced the New Year in."
"Humph!" said Aunt Henderson.
Breakfast over, and Mr. Gartney gone to his counting room, the parlor girl made her appearance with her mop and tub of hot water, to wash up the silver and china.
"Give me that," said