Many visits were made during the next few days to furniture, carpet, and china stores.  One would have supposed, at the least, that Mrs. Vincent was furnishing a hotel; but it is no easy matter to take fine tastes and a small purse, and make both ends meet.

The purchases were all made at last, first and foremost the gasoline stove; then the pretty light carpets, the matting, the neat furniture, some cheap white muslin curtains for the windows, and a small store of china.  The young housekeeper bought carefully; there was nothing for mere show, but when it was all arranged in the little house, and Faith’s pictures hung on the white walls, there was nothing to be desired in the way of beauty or comfort—­that is, in the estimation of those most nearly concerned.  Meanwhile Faith had kept her secret well, going to and fro to the cottage, busy and happy as any other robin in spring-time preparing her nest.

The nest was all finished now, and Faith stood one afternoon in her kitchen door, taking a critical and comprehensive view of the whole, then turning with great satisfaction to survey the kitchen.  It was a mite of a room, but Faith was very proud of it; this was to be her workshop; here cooking was to be carried on as a fine art.  No ruthless Biddy should soil the purity of her new pine table, or tread out the gray matting of the floor.  She took a last peep into the china closet, looked lovingly at a row of tin dishes new and shining, bestowed admiring glances at the gasoline stove, the presiding genius of the whole, then she opened the outside door into an old-fashioned garden, filled with lilacs and roses, and pinks and southernwood, and all spicy plants and fragrant herbs.  She sat down to rest a few minutes, she had accomplished such wonders to-day.  Daisy had been left for the day in the care of a kind old lady, and Faith, hiring a woman to help her a few hours, had been hard at work.  There was a stone jar filled with golden brown loaves of delicious bread, another jar with cake light as down, a tempting bit of roast lamb sat in the refrigerator; all was in readiness for tomorrow, when the grand secret would be revealed.  Faith felt so happy and satisfied; she had tried and proved the stove, it was all that it was represented to be; there was assuredly nothing, now, in the way of a home together in the country.

“Will you not come home early, and let us take a little trip on the street car out into the country?” Faith asked her husband next morning.

“Yes, indeed!” he answered, sighing.  “I must make the most of my family now; only three days more left, I believe.”

The unsuspecting man little though that all his worldly possessions were not long after on the way to Maplewood, and that his wife waited impatiently to take him there too.

“Now you are out on my invitation, you and baby,” Faith said, as they alighted from the car at Maplewood.  “You are to ask no questions, but do as you are told.”