United States or United Arab Emirates ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"You came near loving me!" cried Paul, catching at this sentence, only, out of all that should, by and by, nevertheless, come out in letters of light upon his thought and memory. "Oh, Faith! you may, yet! It isn't all quite over?" Then Faith Gartney knew she must say it all.
I don't believe in putting yourself under obligations to people till you're sure they're going to be something to you. Things don't always turn out according to the Almanac." "She goes just as she always has gone to the Rushleighs," replied Mr. Gartney. "Paul is to be away. It is a visit to Margaret.
"And take good care of your things when you have got them, for I don't pick up many five dollars nowadays." And the old look of care crept up, replacing the kindly smile, as he turned and left the room. "I feel very much as if I had picked my father's pocket," said Faith, holding the bank note, half ashamedly, in her hand. Henderson Gartney, Esq., was a man of no method in his expenditure.
And she laughed again such a merry little waterfall of a laugh. When she reached home, Mrs. Gartney met her at the door. "Well, Faithie," she cried, somewhat eagerly, "what have you found?" Faith's eyes danced with merriment. "I don't know, mother! A hippopotamus, I think!" "Won't she do? What do you mean?" "Why she's as big! I can't tell you how big!
"Keep still a minute longer, Faith," said her father, lifting the remaining shaft against the dasher, and trying to push the sleigh back, away from the animal. But this, alone, he was unable to accomplish. So the minister came up, and found Faith still seated on the horse's head. "Miss Gartney! Let me hold him!" cried he. "I'm quite comfortable!" laughed Faith.
Then they saw him turn, as one lingering and reluctant, and retrace his steps toward them. "Faith! Stay here, darling! Let me meet him first," said Mrs. Gartney. Faith shrank back, fearful of she knew not what, into the room they had just quitted. A sudden, panic dread and terror seized her. She felt her hearing sharpened, strained, involuntarily.
That night, Faith, her little purchases and arrangements all complete, and flowers and carriage bespoken for the next evening, went to bed to dream such dreams as only come to the sleep of early years. At the same time, lingering by the fireside below for a half hour's unreserved conversation, Mr. Gartney was telling his wife of another money disappointment.
Recovering, so, from her momentary and utter astonishment, and taking in, during that instant of repose, the full drift of the question propounded, she rose from her involuntarily assumed position, and continued her way down answering, without so much as turning her head, "It would be just the most sensible thing that Henderson Gartney ever did in his life!"
"Faith!" ejaculated the village matron, her courage and her mind to meddle returning. "Well, that's intimate!" It might as well be done now, as at any time. Mr. Armstrong, himself, had heedlessly precipitated the occasion. It had only been, among them, a question of how and when. There was nothing to conceal. "Yes," replied Mrs. Gartney, quietly. "They will be married by and by."
The months of overstrained effort and anxiety that had culminated in its violent attack were telling upon him now, in the scarcely less perilous prostration that followed. And Mrs. Gartney had quite given out since the excessive tension of nerve and feeling had relaxed. She was almost ill enough to be regularly nursed herself.
Word Of The Day