robe she’d wore all huddled round herself so long, and as the sun looked down closter and more smilin’ it throwed it clear off and begun to put on its new green spring suit. Them same smiles, only more warm and persuadin’ like, coaxed the sweet sap up into the bare maple tops in Josiah’s sugar bush and the surroundin’ world, till them same sunny smiles wuz packed away in depths of sugar loaves and golden syrup in our store room. Wild-flowers peeped out in sheltered places; pussy willows bent down and bowed low as they see their pretty faces in the onchained brook; birds sung amongst the pale green shadders of openin’ leaves; the west wind jined in the happy chorus. And lo! on lookin’ out of our winder before we knowed it, as it were, we see Spring had come!

And with the spring come my expected visitor, Faithful Smith. She is my own cousin on my own side, called by some a old maid. But she hain’t so very old, and she’s real good-lookin’—better than when she wuz a girl, I think, for life has been cuttin’ pure and sweet meanin’s into her face, some as they carve beauty into a cameo. She’s kinder pale and her sweet soul seems to look right out at you from her soft gray 12 eyes, and the lay of her hull face is such that you would think, if the fire of happiness could be built up under it (in her soul), it would light up into loveliness.

She wuz disappinted some years ago (or I d’no what you would call it) when she sent the man away herself. But she had a Bo when she wuz a girl by the name of Richard West. Dick West wuz the fullest of fun you ever see, though generous and good hearted; but he boasted on not believin’ anything, and Faithful’s father, bein’ a church member of the closest kind, and she brung up as you may say, right inside the tabernacle, with her Pa’s phylakracy hangin’ on the very horns of the altar, you may know what opposition Richard got from her Pa and her own conscience. Her conscience, as so many good girl’s consciences are, wuz a perfect tyrant, and drove her round—that, and her Pa. He wanted to be a good man, but wuz bigoted and couldn’t see no higher than the top of the steeple, and didn’t want to. And take these facts, with her deep true love for Richard, you may know she got tossted about more’n considerable.

Richard would make fun right in meetin’—make fun of their religious observances—and 13 finally, though he wuz good natured, and did all his pranks through light-hearted mischief and not malice, yet at last he did git mad at the old deacon, who wuz comin’ it dretful strong on him with his doctrines and exhortin’ him, tellin’ him he wuz a lost soul and had been from before his birth. Then Richard sassed him right back and told him he didn’t believe in his idee of the Deity.

The old deacon couldn’t stand such talk. He turned him outdoors, slammed the door in his face, and forbid Faith to speak to him again. She obeyed her Pa and her own conscience; but it seemed to take all the nip out of her life. You see, she loved this young man; and when anyone like Faith loves it hain’t for a week or a summer, but for life.

He writ to her burnin’ words of love and passion, for he loved her too in the old-fashioned way Adam did Eve—no other woman round, you know. And the words he writ wuz, I spoze, enough to melt a slate stun, let alone a heart, tender and true. She never writ a word back, and at last she wouldn’t read his letters and sent ’em back onopened. That madded him and he went on from bad to worse, swung right out into wickedness. He seemed to git harder and harder, and finally seein’ he could make no more impression on Faith than he could on white clear crystal, he went off west, as fur as Michigan at first, so I hearn, and so on, I don’t know where to.

“The old deacon couldn’t stand such talk. He turned him outdoors, slammed the door in his face, and forbid Faith to speak to him again.” (See page 13)

Well, Faith lived on in the old home, very calm and sweet actin’, with a shadder on her pretty face, worryin’ dretful about her lover, so it wuz spozed. But at last it seemed to wear off and a clear white light took its place on her gentle forward, as if her trouble had bleached off the earthly in her nature so her white soul could show through plain. Mebby she’d got willin’ to trust even his future with the Lord.

Dretful good to children and sick folks and them that wuz in trouble, Faith wuz. Good to her Pa, who wuz very disagreable in his last days, findin’ fault with his porridge and with sinners, and most of them round him. But she took care on him patient, rubbed his back and soaked his feet, and read the Sams to him, and reconciled him all she could, and finally he went out into the Great Onknown to find out his own mistakes if he had made any, and left Faith alone.

The house wuz a big square one with a large front yard with some Pollard willers standin’ 16 in a row in front on’t, through which the wind come in melancholy sithes into the great front chamber at night where Faith slept, or ruther lay. And the moon fallin’ through the willers made mournful reflections on the clean-painted floor, and I spoze Faith looked at ’em and read her past in the white cold rays and her future too.

She hired a man and his wife to live in part of the house, and she herself lived on there, a life as cold and colorless as a nun’s. But there wuz them that said that she loved that young West to-day jest as well as she did the day they parted, bein’ one of the constant naters that can’t forgit; that she kep’ his birthdays every year, but sarahuptishously, and on the anniversary of the day she parted with him, nobody ever see her from mornin’ till night.

The tall Pollard willers wuz the only ones that could look down into her chamber, and see how she looked, or what she wuz doin’. And they never told, only jest murmured and sithed, and kinder took on about it in their own way. But the next day, Faith always looked paler and sweeter than ever, they said.

Well, I wuz glad enough to see Faith. I think a sight on her and she of me, and we had 17 a real good time. Josiah sez to me the day after she come, “She is the flower of your family!”

And I told him I didn’t know as I should put it in jest that way, and he might jest as well be mejum, sez I, “You’re quite apt to demean the relation on my side, and if you take it into your head to praise one of the females, you no need to go too high.”

“Well,” he repeated, “she is the flower of the Smith race. Of course,” sez he, glancin’ at my liniment and then off towards the buttery full of good vittles, “I always except you, Samantha, who I consider the fairest flower that ever blowed out on the family tree of Smith.”

Josiah is a man of excelent judgment. But to resoom backward, I had a dretful good visit with Faith and enjoyed her bein’ with us the best that ever wuz. Instead of makin’ work she helped, though I told her not to. She would wipe and I would wash, and we would git through the dishes in no time. She hunted round in my work basket and found some nightcaps I’d begun and would finish ’em, put more work on ’em than I should, for I slight my every day sheep’s-head nightcaps. But she trimmed ’em and cat-stitched ’em, till they wuz beautiful to look upon. She wuz always very sweet and