“My poor little white lily,” said Frank, “you know not whereof you speak, Think of a little hot house, you broiling over a cook-stove, and baby crying for your care; besides, my dear, you are not accustomed to work.  I shouldn’t wonder, now, if I knew just about as, much as you do about cooking.  I think I can see you with blistered fingers and aching head, studying cook-books.  No, Faith, we shall be obliged to live in two places this summer, I fear.  I know it will be lonely for you at uncle Joshua’s, but for your own sake and the dear baby’s, it must be done.  Let us be of good cheer, and perhaps by fall business will revive and my salary be increased, or I can get a better position.  Now good-bye, my blossoms, I must be gone,” and he sprang away down the stairs hastily, lest Faith should see that his courage was more than half assumed, for the prospect before him was dismal in the extreme.

What Mrs. Vincent did when her husband left her we already know, yet she was not one to sit down in weeping despair before a difficulty until every energy had been put forth to remove it.  She sat long and pondered the question; no light came, although she bent her white brows into a deep frown in perplexed thought.

“If I could only keep house,” she mused.  “Frank imagines I know nothing of cooking.  I’d just like to have him eat some bread and puffy biscuits of my making.  I am so glad I never told him that I took lessons of Dinah all one winter before we were married.  I’ll surprise that boy some day with my knowledge.  If it were not for the horrid heat of the cook-stove, I know I could keep house nicely, and save money, too, I dare say; but, my head never would endure a hot kitchen, I suppose.”

Just here the clock chimed out ten, reminding Faith of an engagement at the dressmaker’s.  Leaving Daisy with her young nurse, she was soon on her way, not to “Madame Aubrey’s,” but to plain Mrs. Macpherson’s, who lived up two flights of stairs, and was nevertheless “a good fitter,” and kept her rooms and herself as neat as wax.

While Faith waited, and the busy shears slipped and snipped her wrapper, she had time to look about her.  The rooms wore such a pleasant, home-like air; they were cool and comfortable-looking, and not a fly to be seen.  Faith, reared to the finest and best of everything, now looked with almost covetous eyes on this poor, plain home.

“What a cosy place you have here, Mrs. Macpherson,” she said, and she wearily leaned her head back in the comfortable old rocking-chair, newly covered with chintz.  “It is so nice, I would like to stay.”

Mrs. Macpherson glanced up in surprise, the tones were such tired, sad ones.  She noticed for the first time the dark rings under Faith’s eyes, and the eyes themselves looked suspiciously red.  Her motherly heart went out to the “poor young thing” straightway.

“Something troubles you, child,” she said, “or you don’t feel well.  Can’t I help you?”