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Miss Prudence: A Story of Two Girls' Lives.

by Mrs. Nathaniel Conklin · English · Gutenberg #10322 · 608,095 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Miss Prudence: A Story of Two Girls' Lives.

Author: Mrs. Nathaniel Conklin


        
Release date: November 1, 2003 [eBook #10322]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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                              MISS PRUDENCE

                       A STORY OF TWO GIRLS' LIVES

                         By JENNIE M. DRINKWATER

                                  1883


"We are not to lead events but to follow them."--_Epictetus_.




CONTENTS

CHAP

      I. AFTER SCHOOL

     II. EVANGELIST

    III. WHAT "DESULTORY" MEANS

     IV. A RIDE, A WALK, A TALK, AND A TUMBLE

      V. TWO PROMISES

     VI. MARJORIE ASLEEP AND AWAKE

    VII. UNDER THE APPLE-TREE

   VIII. BISCUITS AND OTHER THINGS

     IX. JOHN HOLMES

      X. LINNET

     XI. GRANDMOTHER

    XII. A BUDGET OF LETTERS

   XIII. A WEDDING DAY

    XIV. A TALK AND ANOTHER TALK

     XV. JEROMA

    XVI. MAPLE STREET

   XVII. MORRIS

  XVIII. ONE DAY

    XIX. A STORY THAT WAS NOT VERY SAD

     XX. "HEIRS TOGETHER"

    XXI. MORRIS AGAIN

   XXII. TIDINGS

  XXIII. GOD'S LOVE

   XXIV. JUST AS IT OUGHT TO BE

    XXV. THE WILL OF GOD

   XXVI. MARJORIE'S MOTHER

  XXVII. ANOTHER WALK AND ANOTHER TALE

 XXVIII. THE LINNET

   XXIX. ONE NIGHT

    XXX. THE COSEY CORNER

   XXXI. AND WHAT ELSE?




MISS PRUDENCE.




I.

AFTER SCHOOL.

"Our content is our best having."--_Shakespeare_.


Nobody had ever told Marjorie that she was, as somebody says we all
are, three people,--the Marjorie she knew herself, the Marjorie other
people knew, and the Marjorie God knew. It was a "bother" sometimes to
be the Marjorie she knew herself, and she had never guessed there was
another Marjorie for other people to know, and the Marjorie God knew
and understood she did not learn much about for years and years. At
eleven years old it was hard enough to know about herself--her naughty,
absent-minded, story-book-loving self. Her mother said that she loved
story-books entirely too much, that they made her absent-minded and
forgetful, and her mother's words were proving themselves true this very
afternoon. She was a real trouble to herself and there was no one near to
"confess" to; she never could talk about herself unless enveloped in the
friendly darkness, and then the confessor must draw her out, step by
step, with perfect frankness and sympathy; even then, a sigh, or sob, or
quickly drawn breath and half inarticulate expression revealed more than
her spoken words.

She was one of the children that are left to themselves. Only Linnet knew
the things she cared most about; even when Linnet laughed at her, she
could feel the sympathetic twinkle in her eye and the sympathetic
undertone smothered in her laugh.

It was sunset, and she was watching it from the schoolroom window, the
clouds over the hill were brightening and brightening and a red glare
shone over the fields of snow. It was sunset and the schoolroom clock
pointed to a quarter of five. The schoolroom was chilly, for the fire had
died out half an hour since. Hollis Rheid had shoved big sticks into the
stove until it would hold no more and had opened the draft, whispering to
her as he passed her seat that he would keep her warm at any rate. But
now she was shivering, although she had wrapped herself in her coarse
green and red shawl, and tapped her feet on the bare floor to keep them
warm; she was hungry, too; the noon lunch had left her unsatisfied, for
she had given her cake to Rie Blauvelt in return for a splendid Northern
Spy, and had munched the apple and eaten her two sandwiches wishing all
the time for more. Leaving the work on her slate unfinished, she had
dived into the depths of her home-made satchel and discovered two crumbs
of molasses cake. That was an hour ago. School had closed at three
o'clock to-day because it was Friday and she had been nearly two hours
writing nervously on her slate or standing at the blackboard making
hurried figures. For the first time in her life Marjorie West had been
"kept in." And that "Lucy" book hidden in her desk was the cause of it;
she had taken it out for just one delicious moment, and the moment had
extended itself into an hour and a half, and the spelling lesson was
unlearned and the three hard examples in complex fractions unworked.
She had not been ignorant of what the penalty would be. Mr. Holmes had
announced it at the opening of school: "Each word in spelling that is
missed, must be written one hundred times, and every example not brought
in on the slate must be put on the blackboard after school."

She had smiled in self-confidence. Who ever knew Marjorie West to miss in
spelling? And had not her father looked over her examples last night and
pronounced them correct? But on her way to school the paper on which the
examples were solved had dropped out of her Geography, and she had been
wholly absorbed in the "Lucy" book during the time that she had expected
to study the test words in spelling. And the overwhelming result was
doing three examples on the board, after school, and writing seven
hundred words. Oh, how her back ached and how her wrist hurt her and how
her strained eyes smarted! Would she ever again forget _amateur, abyss,
accelerate, bagatelle, bronchitis, boudoir_ and _isosceles_?

Rie Blauvelt had written three words one hundred times, laughed at her,
and gone home; Josie Grey had written _isosceles_ one hundred times, and
then taken up a slate to help Marjorie; before Marjorie was aware Josie
had written _abyss_ seventy-five times, then suspecting something by the
demureness of Josie's eyes she had snatched her slate and erased the
pretty writing.

"You're real mean," pouted Josie; "he said he would take our word for it,
and you could have answered some way and got out of it."

Marjorie's reply was two flashing eyes.

"You needn't take my head off," laughed Josie; "now I'll go home and
leave you, and you may stay all night for all I care."

"I will, before I will deceive anybody," resented Marjorie stoutly.

Without another word Josie donned sack and hood and went out, leaving the
door ajar and the cold air to play about Marjorie's feet.

But five o'clock came and the work was done!

More than one or two tears fell slowly on the neat writing on Marjorie's
slate; the schoolroom was cold and she was shivering and hungry. It would
have been such a treat to read the last chapter in the "Lucy" book; she
might have curled her feet underneath her and drawn her shawl closer; but
it was so late, and what would they think at home? She was ashamed to go
home. Her father would look at her from under his eyebrows, and her
mother would exclaim, "Why, Marjorie!" She would rather that her father
would look at her from under his eyebrows, than that her mother would
say, "Why, _Marjorie!_" Her mother never scolded, and sometimes she
almost wished she would. It would be a relief if somebody would scold her
tonight; she would stick a pin into herself if it would do any good.

_Her_ photograph would not be in the group next time. She looked across
at the framed photograph on the wall; six girls in the group and herself
the youngest--the reward for perfect recitations and perfect deportment
for one year. Her father was so proud of it that he had ordered a copied
picture for himself, and, with a black walnut frame, it was hanging in
the sitting-room at home. The resentment against herself was tugging away
at her heart and drawing miserable lines on her brow and lips--on her
sweet brow and happy lips.

It was a bare, ugly country schoolroom, anyway, with the stained floor,
the windows with two broken panes, and the unpainted desks with
innumerable scars made by the boys' jack-knives, and Mr. Holmes was
unreasonable, anyway, to give her such a hard punishment, and she didn't
care if she had been kept in, anyway!

In that "anyway" she found vent for all her crossness. Sometimes she
said, "I don't care," but when she said, "I don't care, _anyway_!"
then everybody knew that Marjorie West was dreadful.

"I'm _through_," she thought triumphantly, "and I didn't cheat, and I
wasn't mean, and nobody has helped me."

Yes, somebody had helped her. She was sorry that she forgot to think that
God had helped her. Perhaps people always did get through! If they didn't
help themselves along by doing wrong and--God helped them. The sunshine
rippled over her face again and she counted the words on her slate for
the second time to assure herself that there could be no possible
mistake. Slowly she counted seven hundred, then with a sudden impulse
seized her pencil and wrote each of the seven words five times more to be
"_sure_ they were all right."

Josie Grey called her "horridly conscientious," and even Rie Blauvelt
wished that she would not think it wicked to "tell" in the class, and to
whisper about something else when they had permission to whisper about
the lessons.

By this time you have learned that my little Marjorie was strong and
sweet. I wish you might have seen her that afternoon as she crouched over
the wooden desk, snuggled down in the coarse, plaid shawl, her elbows
resting on the hard desk, her chin dropped in her two plump hands, with
her eyes fixed on the long, closely written columns of her large slate.
She was not sitting in her own seat, her seat was the back seat on the
girls' side, of course, but she was sitting midway on the boys' side, and
her slate was placed on the side of the double desk wherein H.R. was cut
in deep, ugly letters. She had fled to this seat as to a refuge, when she
found herself alone, with something of the same feeling, that once two or
three years ago when she was away from home and homesick she used to
kneel to say her prayers in the corner of the chamber where her valise
was; there was home about the valise and there was protection and safety
and a sort of helpfulness about this desk where her friend Hollis Rheid
had sat ever since she had come to school. This was her first winter at
school, her mother had taught her at home, but in family council this
winter it had been decided that Marjorie was "big" enough to go to
school.

The half mile home seemed a long way to walk alone, and the huge
Newfoundland at the farmhouse down the hill was not always chained; he
had sprung out at them this morning and the girls had huddled together
while Hollis and Frank Grey had driven him inside his own yard. Hollis
had thrown her an intelligent glance as he filed out with the boys, and
had telegraphed something back to her as he paused for one instant at the
door. Not quite understanding the telegraphic signal, she was waiting for
him, or for something. His lips had looked like: "Wait till I come." If
the people at home were not anxious about her she would have been willing
to wait until midnight; it would never occur to her that Hollis might
forget her.

Her cheeks flushed as she waited, and her eyes filled with tears; it was
a soft, warm, round face, with coaxing, kissable lips, a smooth, low brow
and the gentlest of hazel eyes: not a pretty face, excepting in its
lovely childishness and its hints of womanly graces; some of the girls
said she was homely. Marjorie thought herself that she was very homely;
but she had comforted herself with, "God made my face, and he likes it
this way." Some one says that God made the other features, but permits us
to make the mouth. Marjorie's sweetness certainly made her mouth. But
then she was born sweet. Josie Grey declared that she would rather see a
girl "get mad" than cry, as Marjorie did when the boys washed her face in
the snow.

Mr. Holmes had written to a friend that Marjorie West, his favorite among
the girls, was "almost too sweet." He said to himself that he feared she
"lacked character." Marjorie's quiet, observant father would have smiled
at that and said nothing. The teacher said that she did not know how to
take her own part. Marjorie had been eleven years in this grasping world
and had not learned that she had any "part" to take.

Since her pencil had ceased scribbling the room was so still that a tiny
mouse had been nibbling at the toe of her shoe. Just then as she raised
her head and pinned her shawl more securely the door opened and something
happened. The something happened in Marjorie's face. Hollis Rheid thought
the sunset had burst across it. She did not exclaim, "Oh, I am so glad!"
but the gladness was all in her eyes. If Marjorie had been more given to
exclamations her eyes would not have been so expressive. The closed lips
were a gain to the eyes and her friends missed nothing. The boy had
learned her eyes by heart. How stoutly he would have resisted if some one
had told him that years hence Marjorie's face would be a sealed volume to
him.

But she was making her eyes and mouth to-day and years hence she made
them, too. Perhaps he had something to do with it then as he certainly
had something to do with it now.

"I came back with my sled to take you home. I gave Sam my last ten cents
to do the night work for me. It was my turn, but he was willing enough.
Where's your hood, Mousie? Any books to take?"

"Yes, my Geography and Arithmetic," she answered, taking her fleecy white
hood from the seat behind her.

"Now you look like a sunbeam in a cloud," he said poetically as she tied
it over her brown head. "Oh, ho!" turning to the blackboard, "you do make
handsome figures. Got them all right, did you?"

"I knew how to do them, it was only that--I forgot."

"I don't think you'll forget again in a hurry. And that's a nice looking
slate, too," he added, stepping nearer. "Mother said it was too much of a
strain on your nervous system to write all that."

"I guess I haven't much of a nervous system," returned Marjorie,
seriously; "the girls wrote the words they missed fifty times last Friday
and he warned us about the one hundred to-day. I suppose it will be one
hundred and fifty next Friday. I don't believe I'll _ever_ miss again,"
she said, her lips trembling at the mention of it.

"I think I'll have a word or two to say to the master if you do. I wonder
how Linnet would have taken it."

"She wouldn't have missed."

"I'll ask Mr. Holmes to put you over on the boys side if you miss next
week," he cried mischievously, "and make you sit with us all the
afternoon."

"I'd rather write each word five hundred times," she cried vehemently.

"I believe you would," he said good humoredly. "Never mind, Mousie, I
know you won't miss again."

"I'll do my examples to-night and father will help me if I can't do them.
He used to teach in this very schoolhouse; he knows as much as Mr.
Holmes."

"Then he must be a Solomon," laughed the boy.

The stamp of Hollis' boots and the sound of his laughter had frightened
the mouse back into its hiding-place in the chimney; Marjorie would not
have frightened the mouse all day long.

The books were pushed into her satchel, her desk arranged in perfect
order, her rubbers and red mittens drawn on, and she stood ready, satchel
in hand, for her ride on the sled down the slippery hill where the boys
and girls had coasted at noon and then she would ride on over the snowy
road half a mile to the old, brown farmhouse. Her eyes were subdued a
little, but the sunshine lingered all over her face. She knew Hollis
would come.

He smiled down at her with his superior fifteen-year-old smile, she was
such a wee mousie and always needed taking care of. If he could have a
sister, he would want her to be like Marjorie. He was very much like
Marjorie himself, just as shy, just as sensitive, hardly more fitted to
take his own part, and I think Marjorie was the braver of the two. He was
slow-tempered and unforgiving; if a friend failed him once, he never took
him into confidence again. He was proud where Marjorie was humble. He
gave his services; she gave herself. He seldom quarrelled, but never was
the first to yield. They were both mixtures of reserve and frankness;
both speaking as often out of a shut heart as an open heart. But when
Marjorie could open her heart, oh, how she opened it! As for Hollis, I
think he had never opened his; demonstrative sympathy was equally the key
to the hearts of both.

But here I am analyzing them before they had learned they had any self to
analyze. But they existed, all the same.

Marjorie was a plain little body while Hollis was noticeably handsome
with eloquent brown eyes and hair with its golden, boyish beauty just
shading into brown; his sensitive, mobile lips were prettier than any
girl's, and there was no voice in school like his in tone or culture. Mr.
Holmes was an elocutionist and had taken great pains with Hollis Rheid's
voice. There was a courteous gentleness in his manner all his own; if
knighthood meant purity, goodness, truth and manliness, then Hollis Rheid
was a knightly school-boy. The youngest of five rough boys, with a stern,
narrow-minded father and a mother who loved her boys with all her heart
and yet for herself had no aims beyond kitchen and dairy, he had not
learned his refinement at home; I think he had not _learned_ it anywhere.
Marjorie's mother insisted that Hollis Rheid must have had a praying
grandmother away back somewhere. The master had written to his friend,
Miss Prudence Pomeroy, that Hollis Rheid was a born gentleman, and had
added with more justice and penetration than he had shown in reading
Marjorie, "he has too little application and is too mischievous to become
a real student. But I am not looking for geniuses in a country school.
Marjorie and Hollis are bright enough for every purpose in life excepting
to become leaders."

"Are you going to church, to-night?" Hollis inquired as she seated
herself carefully on the sled.

"In the church?" she asked, bracing her feet and tucking the ends of her
shawl around them.

"Yes; an evangelist is going to preach."

"Evangelist!" repeated Marjorie in a voice with a thrill in it.

"Don't you know what that is?" asked Hollis, harnessing himself into the
sled.

"Oh, yes, indeed," said she. "I know about him and Christian."

Hollis looked perplexed; this must be one of Marjorie's queer ways of
expressing something, and the strange preacher certainly had something to
do with Christians.

"If it were not for the fractions I suppose I might go. I wish I wasn't
stupid about Arithmetic."

"It's no matter if girls are stupid," he said consolingly. "Are you sure
you are on tight? I'm going to run pretty soon. You won't have to earn
your living by making figures."

"Shall you?" she inquired with some anxiety.

"Of course, I shall. Haven't I been three times through the Arithmetic
and once through the Algebra that I may support myself and somebody else,
sometime?"

This seemed very grand to child Marjorie who found fractions a very
Slough of Despond.

"I'm going to the city as soon as Uncle Jack finds a place for me. I
expect a letter from him every night."

"Perhaps it will come to-night," said Marjorie, not very hopefully.

"I hope it will. And so this may be your last ride on Flyaway. Enjoy it
all you can, Mousie."

Marjorie enjoyed everything all she could.

"Now, hurrah!" he shouted, starting on a quick run down the hill. "I'm
going to turn you over into the brook."

Marjorie laughed her joyous little laugh. "I'm not afraid," she said in
absolute content.

"You'd better be!" he retorted in his most savage tone.

The whole west was now in a glow and the glorious light stretched across
fields of snow.

"Oh, how splendid," Marjorie exclaimed breathlessly as the rapid motion
of the sled and the rush of cold air carried her breath away.

"Hold on tight," he cried mockingly, "we're coming to the brook."

Laughing aloud she held on "tight." Hollis was her true knight; she would
not have been afraid to cross the Alps on that sled if he had asked her
to!

She was in a talkative mood to-night, but her horse pranced on and would
not listen. She wanted to tell him about _vibgyor_. The half mile was
quickly travelled and he whirled the sled through the large gateway and
around the house to the kitchen door. The long L at the back of the house
seemed full of doors.

"There, Mousie, here you are!" he exclaimed. "And don't you miss your
lesson to-morrow."

"To-morrow is Saturday! oh, I had forgotten. And I can go to see
Evangelist to-night."

"You haven't said 'thank you' for your last ride on Flyaway."

"I will when I'm sure that it is," she returned with her eyes laughing.

He turned her over into a snowdrift and ran off whistling; springing up
she brushed the snow off face and hands and with a very serious face
entered the kitchen. The kitchen was long and low, bright with the sunset
shining in at two windows and cheery with its carpeting of red, yellow
and green mingled confusingly in the handsome oilcloth.

Unlike Hollis, Marjorie was the outgrowth of home influences; the kitchen
oilcloth had something to do with her views of life, and her mother's
broad face and good-humored eyes had a great deal more. Good-humor in the
mother had developed sweet humor in the child.

Now I wonder if you understand Marjorie well enough to understand all she
does and all she leaves undone during the coming fifteen or twenty years?




II.

EVANGELIST.

"The value of a thought cannot be told."--_Bailey_.


Her mother's broad, gingham back and the twist of iron gray hair low in
her neck greeted her as she opened the door, then the odor of hot
biscuits intruded itself, and then there came a shout from somebody
kneeling on the oilcloth near the stove and pushing sticks of dry wood
through its blazing open door.

"Oh, Marjie, what happened to you?"

"Something _didn't_ happen. I didn't have my spelling or my examples. I
read the "Lucy" book in school instead," she confessed dolefully.

"Why, _Marjie_!" was her mother's exclamation, but it brought the color
to Marjorie's face and suffused her eyes.

"We are to have company for tea," announced the figure kneeling on the
oilcloth as she banged the stove door. "A stranger; the evangelist Mr.
Horton told us about Sunday."

"I know," said Marjorie. "I've read about him in _Pilgrim's Progress_; he
showed Christian the way to the Wicket Gate."

Linnet jumped to her feet and shook a chip from her apron. "O, Goosie!
Don't you know any better?"

Fourteen-year-old Linnet always knew better.

"Where is he?" questioned Marjorie.

"In the parlor. Go and entertain him. Mother and I must get him a good
supper: cold chicken, canned raspberries, currant jelly, ham, hot
biscuit, plain cake and fruit cake and--butter and--tea."

"I don't know how," hesitated Marjorie.

"Answer his questions, that's all," explained Linnet promptly. "I've told
him all I know and now it's your turn."

"I don't like to answer questions," said Marjorie, still doubtfully.

"Oh, only your age and what you study and--if--you are a Christian."

"And he tells you how if you don't know how," said Marjorie, eagerly;
"that's what he's for."

"Yes," replied her mother, approvingly, "run in and let him talk to you."

Very shyly glad of the opportunity, and yet dreading it inexpressibly,
Marjorie hung her school clothing away and laid her satchel on the shelf
in the hall closet, and then stood wavering in the closet, wondering if
she dared go in to see Evangelist. He had spoken very kindly to
Christian. She longed, oh, how she longed! to find the Wicket Gate, but
would she dare ask any questions? Last Sabbath in church she had seen a
sweet, beautiful face that she persuaded herself must be Mercy, and now
to have Evangelist come to her very door!

What was there to know any better about? She did not care if Linnet had
laughed. Linnet never cared to read _Pilgrim's Progress_.

It is on record that the first book a child reads intensely is the book
that will influence all the life.

At ten Marjorie had read _Pilgrim's Progress_ intensely. Timidly, with
shining eyes, she stood one moment upon the red mat outside the parlor
door, and then, with sudden courage, turned the knob and entered. At a
glance she felt that there was no need of courage; Evangelist was seated
comfortably in the horse-hair rocker with his feet to the fire resting on
the camp stool; he did not look like Evangelist at all, she thought,
disappointedly; he reminded her altogether more of a picture of Santa
Claus: massive head and shoulders, white beard and moustache, ruddy
cheeks, and, as the head turned quickly at her entrance, she beheld,
beneath the shaggy, white brows, twinkling blue eyes.

"Ah," he exclaimed, in an abrupt voice, "you are the little girl they
were expecting home from school."

"Yes, sir."

He extended a plump, white hand and, not at all shyly, Marjorie laid her
hand in it.

"Isn't it late to come from school? Did you play on the way home?"

"No sir; I'm too big for that"

"Doesn't school dismiss earlier?"

"Yes, sir," flushing and dropping her eyes, "but I was kept in."

"Kept in," he repeated, smoothing the little hand. "I'm sure it was not
for bad behavior and you look bright enough to learn your lessons."

"I didn't know my lessons," she faltered.

"Then you should have done as Stephen Grellet did," he returned,
releasing her hand.

"How did he do?" she asked.

Nobody loved stories better than Marjorie.

Pushing her mother's spring rocker nearer the fire, she sat down,
arranged the skirt of her dress, and, prepared herself, not to
"entertain" him, but to listen.

"Did you never read about him?"

"I never even heard of him."

"Then I'll tell you something about him. His father was an intimate
friend and counsellor of Louis XVI. Stephen was a French boy. Do you
know who Louis XVI was?"

"No, sir."

"Do you know the French for Stephen?"

"No, sir."

"Then you don't study French. I'd study everything if I were you. My wife
has read the Hebrew Bible through. She is a scholar as well as a good
housewife. It needn't hinder, you see."

"No, sir," repeated Marjorie.

"When little Etienne--that's French for Stephen--was five or six years
old he had a long Latin exercise to learn, and he was quite
disheartened."

Marjorie's eyes opened wide in wonder. Six years old and a long Latin
exercise. Even Hollis had not studied Latin.

"Sitting alone, all by himself, to study, he looked out of the window
abroad upon nature in all her glorious beauty, and remembered that God
made the gardens, the fields and the sky, and the thought came to him:
'Cannot the same God give me memory, also?' Then he knelt at the foot of
his bed and poured out his soul in prayer. The prayer was wonderfully
answered; on beginning to study again, he found himself master of his
hard lesson, and, after that, he acquired learning with great readiness."

It was wonderful, Marjorie thought, and beautiful, but she could not say
that; she asked instead: "Did he write about it himself?"

"Yes, he has written all about himself."

"When I was six I didn't know my small letters. Was he so bright because
he was French?"

The gentleman laughed and remarked that the French were a pretty bright
nation.

"Is that all you know about him?"

"Oh, no, indeed; there's a large book of his memoirs in my library. He
visited many of the crowned heads of Europe."

There was another question forming on Marjorie's lips, but at that
instant her mother opened the door. Now she would hear no more about
Stephen Grellet and she could not ask about the Wicket Gate or Mercy or
the children.

Rising in her pretty, respectful manner she gave her mother the spring
rocker and pushed an ottoman behind the stove and seated herself where
she might watch Evangelist's face as he talked.

How the talk drifted in this direction Marjorie did not understand; she
knew it was something about finding the will of the Lord, but a story was
coming and she listened with her listening eyes on his face.

"I had been thinking that God would certainly reveal his will if we
inquired of him, feeling sure of that, for some time, and then I had this
experience."

Marjorie's mother enjoyed "experiences" as well as Marjorie enjoyed
stories. And she liked nothing better than to relate her own; after
hearing an experience she usually began, "Now I will tell you mine."

Marjorie thought she knew every one of her mother's experiences. But it
was Evangelist who was speaking.

The little girl in the brown and blue plaid dress with red stockings and
buttoned boots, bent forward as she sat half concealed behind the stove
and drank in every word with intent, wondering, unquestioning eyes.

Her mother listened, also, with eyes as intent and believing, and years
afterward, recalled this true experience, when she was tempted to take
Marjorie's happiness into her own hands, her own unwise, haste-making
hands.

"My wife had been dead about two years," began Evangelist again, speaking
in a retrospective tone. "I had two little children, the elder not eight
years old, and my sister was my housekeeper. She did not like
housekeeping nor taking care of children. Some women don't. She came to
me one day with a very serious face. 'Brother,' said she, 'you need a
wife, you must have a wife. I do not know how to take care of your
children and you are almost never at home.' She left me before I could
reply, almost before I could think what to reply. I was just home from
helping a pastor in Wisconsin, it was thirty-six degrees below zero the
day I left, and I had another engagement in Maine for the next week. I
_was_ very little at home, and my children did need a mother. I had not
thought whether I needed a wife or not; I was too much taken up with the
Lord's work to think about it. But that day I asked the Lord to find me a
wife. After praying about it three days it came to me that a certain
young lady was the one the Lord had chosen. Like Peter, I drew back and
said, 'Not so, Lord.' My first wife was a continual spiritual help to me;
she was the Lord's own messenger every day; but this lady, although a
church member, was not particularly spiritually minded. Several years
before she had been my pupil in Hebrew and Greek. I admired her
intellectual gifts, but if a brother in the ministry had asked me if she
would be a helpful wife to him, I should have hesitated about replying
in the affirmative. And, yet here it was, the Lord had chosen her for me.
I said, 'Not so, Lord,' until he assured me that her heart was in his
hand and he could fit her to become my wife and a mother to my children.
After waiting until I knew I was obeying the mind of my Master, I asked
her to marry me. She accepted, as far as her own heart and will were
concerned, but refused, because her father, a rich and worldly-minded
man, was not willing for her to marry an itinerant preacher.

"I had not had a charge for three years then. I was so continually called
to help other pastors that I had no time for a charge of my own. So it
kept on for months and months; her father was not willing, and she would
not marry me without his consent. My sister often said to me, 'I don't
see how you can want to marry a woman that isn't willing to have you,'
but I kept my own counsel. I knew the matter was in safe hands. I was not
at all troubled; I kept about my Master's business and he kept about
mine. Therefore, when she wrote to say that suddenly and unexpectedly her
father had withdrawn all opposition, I was not in the least surprised.
My sister declared I was plucky to hold on, but the Lord held on for me;
I felt as if I had nothing to do with it. And a better wife and mother
God never blessed one of his servants with. She could do something beside
read the Bible in Hebrew; she could practice it in English. For forty
years [missing text] my companion and counsellor and dearest
friend. So you see"--he added in his bright, convincing voice, "we may
know the will of the Lord about such things and everything else."

"I believe it," responded Marjorie's mother, emphatically.

"Now tell me about all the young people in your village. How many have
you that are unconverted?"

Was Hollis one of them? Marjorie wondered with a beating heart. Would
Evangelist talk to him? Would he kiss him, and give him a smile, and bid
him God speed?

But--she began to doubt--perhaps there was another Evangelist and this
was not the very one in _Pilgrim's Progress_; somehow, he did not seem
just like that one. Might she dare ask him? How would she say it? Before
she was aware her thought had become a spoken thought; in the interval
of quiet while her mother was counting the young people in the village
she was very much astonished to hear her own timid, bold, little voice
inquire:

"Is there more than one Evangelist?"

"Why, yes, child," her mother answered absently and Evangelist began to
tell her about some of the evangelists he was acquainted with.

"Wonderful men! Wonderful men!" he repeated.

Before another question could form itself on her eager lips her father
entered and gave the stranger a cordial welcome.

"We have to thank scarlet fever at the Parsonage for the pleasure of your
visit with us, I believe," he said.

"Yes, that seems to be the bright side of the trouble."

"Well, I hope you have brought a blessing with you."

"I hope I have! I prayed the Lord not to bring me here unless he came
with me."

"I think the hush of the Spirit's presence has been in our church all
winter," said Mrs. West. "I've had no rest day or night pleading for our
young people."

The words filled Marjorie with a great awe; she slipped out to unburden
herself to Linnet, but Linnet was setting the tea-table in a frolicsome
mood and Marjorie's heart could not vent itself upon a frolicsome
listener.

From the china closet in the hall Linnet had brought out the china, one
of her mother's wedding presents and therefore seldom used, and the glass
water pitcher and the small glass fruit saucers.

"Can't I help?" suggested Marjorie looking on with great interest.

"No," refused Linnet, decidedly, "you might break something as you did
the night Mrs. Rheid and Hollis were here."

"My fingers were too cold, then."

"Perhaps they are too warm, now," laughed Linnet.

"Then I can tell you about the primary colors; I suppose I won't break
_them_," returned Marjorie with her usual sweet-humor.

Linnet moved the spoon holder nearer the sugar bowl with the air of a
house wife, Marjorie stood at the table leaning both elbows upon it.

"If you remember _vibgyor_, you'll remember the seven primary colors!"
she said mysteriously.

"Is it like cutting your nails on Saturday without thinking of a fox's
tail and so never have the toothache?" questioned Linnet.

"_No_; this is earnest. It isn't a joke; it's a lesson," returned
Marjorie, severely. "Mr. Holmes said a professor told it to him when he
was in college."

"You see it's a joke! I remember _vibgyor_, but now I don't know the
seven primary colors. You are always getting taken in, Goosie! I hope
you didn't ask Mr. Woodfern if he is the man in _Pilgrim's Progress_."

"I know he isn't," said Marjorie, seriously, "there are a good many of
them, he said so. I guess _Pilgrim's Progress_ happened a long time ago.
I shan't look for Great-heart, any more," she added, with a sigh.

Linnet laughed and scrutinized the white handled knives to see if there
were any blemishes on the blades; her mother kept them laid away in old
flannel.

"Now, Linnet, you see it isn't a joke," began Marjorie, protestingly;
"the word is made of all the first letters of the seven colors,--just
see!" counting on her fingers, "violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow,
orange, red! Did you see how it comes right?"

"I didn't see, but I will as soon as I get time. You were not taken in
that time, I do believe. Did Mr. Woodfern ask you questions?"

"Not _that_ kind! And I'm glad he didn't. Linnet, I haven't any
'experience' to talk about."

"You are not old enough," said Linnet, wisely.

"Are you?"

"Yes, I have a little bit."

"Shall you tell him about it?" asked Marjorie curiously.

"I don't know."

"I wish I had some; how do you get it?"

"It comes."

"From where?"

"Oh, I don't know."

"Then you can't tell me how to get it," pleaded Marjorie.

"No," said Linnet, shaking her sunshiny curls, "perhaps mother can."

"When did you have yours?" Marjorie persisted.

"One day when I was reading about the little girl in the Sandwich
Islands. Her father was a missionary there, and she wrote in her journal
how she felt and I felt so, too,"

"Did you put it in your journal?"

"Some of it."

"Did you show it to mother?"

"Yes."

"Was she glad?"

"Yes, she kissed me and said her prayers were answered."

Marjorie looked very grave. She wished she could be as old as Linnet and
have "experience" to write in her journal and have her mother kiss her
and say her prayers were answered.

"Do you have it all the time?" she questioned anxiously as Linnet hurried
in from the kitchen with a small platter of sliced ham in her hand.

"Not every day; I do some days."

"I want it every day."

"You call them to tea when I tell you. And you may help me bring things
in."

When Marjorie opened the parlor door to call them to tea she heard Mr.
Woodfern inquire:

"Do all your children belong to the Lord?"

"The two in heaven certainly do, and I think Linnet is a Christian," her
mother was saying.

"And Marjorie," he asked.

"You know there are such things; I think Marjorie's heart was changed in
her cradle."

With the door half opened Marjorie stood and heard this lovely story
about herself.

"It was before she was three years old; one evening I undressed her and
laid her in the cradle, it was summer and she was not ready to go to
sleep; she had been in a frolic with Linnet and was all in a gale of
mischief. She arose up and said she wanted to get out; I said 'no,' very
firmly, 'mamma wants you to stay.' But she persisted with all her might,
and I had to punish her twice before she would consent to lie still; I
was turning to leave her when I thought her sobs sounded more rebellious
than subdued, I knelt down and took her in my arms to kiss her, but she
drew back and would not kiss me. I saw there was no submission in her
obedience and made up my mind not to leave her until she had given up her
will to mine. If you can believe it, it was two full hours before she
would kiss me, and then she couldn't kiss me enough. I think when she
yielded to my will she gave up so wholly that she gave up her whole being
to the strongest and most loving will she knew. And as soon as she knew
God, she knew--or I knew--that she had submitted to him."

"Come to tea," called Marjorie, joyfully, a moment later.

This lovely story about herself was only one of the happenings that
caused Marjorie to remember this day and evening: this day of small
events stood out clearly against the background of her childhood.

That evening in the church she had been moved to do the hardest, happiest
thing she had ever done in her hard and happy eleven years. At the close
of his stirring appeal to all who felt themselves sinners in God's sight,
Evangelist (he would always be Evangelist to Marjorie) requested any to
rise who had this evening newly resolved to seek Christ until they found
him. A little figure in a pew against the wall, arose quickly, after an
undecided, prayerful moment, a little figure in a gray cloak and broad,
gray velvet hat, but it was such a little figure, and the radiant face
was hidden by such a broad hat, and the little figure dropped back into
its seat so hurriedly, that, in looking over the church, neither the
pastor nor the evangelist noticed it. Her heart gave one great jump when
the pastor arose and remarked in a grieved and surprised tone: "I am
sorry that there is not one among us, young or old, ready to seek our
Saviour to-night."

The head under the gray hat drooped lower, the radiant face became for
one instant sorrowful. As they were moving down the aisle an old lady,
who had been seated next to Marjorie, whispered to her, "I'm sorry they
didn't see you, dear."

"Never mind," said the bright voice, "God saw me."

Hollis saw her, also, and his heart smote him. This timid little girl had
been braver than he. From the group of boys in the gallery he had looked
down at her and wondered. But she was a girl, and girls did not mind
doing such things as boys did; being good was a part of Marjorie's life,
she wouldn't be Marjorie without it. There was a letter in his pocket
from his uncle bidding him to come to the city without delay; he pushed
through the crowd to find Marjorie, "it would be fun to see how sorry she
would look," but her father had hurried her out and lifted her into the
sleigh, and he saw the gray hat in the moonlight close to her father's
shoulder.

As he was driving to the train the next afternoon, he jumped out and ran
up to the door to say good-bye to her.

Marjorie opened the door, arrayed in a blue checked apron with fingers
stained with peeling apples.

"Good-bye, I'm off," he shouted, resisting the impulse to catch her in
his arms and kiss her.

"Good-bye, I'm so glad, and so sorry," she exclaimed with a shadowed
face.

"I wish I had something to give you to remember me by," he said suddenly.

"I think you _have_ given me lots of things."

"Come, Hol, don't stand there all day," expostulated his brother from the
sleigh.

"Good-bye, then," said Hollis.

"Good-bye," said Marjorie. And then he was off and the bells were
jingling down the road and she had not even cautioned him "Be a good
boy." She wished she had had something to give him to remember _her_ by;
she had never done one thing to help him remember her and when he came
back in years and years they would both be grown up and not know each
other.

"Marjie, you are taking too thick peels," remonstrated her mother. For
the next half hour she conscientiously refrained from thinking of any
thing but the apples.

"Oh, Marjie," exclaimed Linnet, "peel one whole, be careful and don't
break it, and throw it over your right shoulder and see what letter
comes."

"Why?" asked Magorie, selecting a large, fair apple to peel.

"I'll tell you when it comes," answered Linnet, seriously.

With an intent face, and slow, careful fingers, Marjorie peeled the
handsome apple without breaking the coils of the skin, then poised her
hand and gave the shining, green rings a toss over her shoulder to the
oilcloth.

"_S! S!_ Oh! what a handsome _S!_" screamed Linnet.

"Well, what does it mean?" inquired Marjorie, interestedly.

"Oh, nothing, only you will marry a man whose name begins with _S_," said
Linnet, seriously.

"I don't believe I will!" returned Marjorie, contentedly. "Do you believe
I will, mother?"

Mrs. West was lifting a deliciously browned pumpkin pie from the oven,
she set it carefully on the table beside Marjorie's yellow dish of
quartered apples and then turned to the oven for its mate.

"Now cut one for me," urged Linnet gleefully.

"But I don't believe it," persisted Marjorie, picking among the apples in
the basket at her feet; "you don't believe it yourself."

"I never _knew_ it to come true," admitted Linnet, sagely, "but _S_ is a
common letter. There are more Smiths in the world than any one else. A
woman went to an auction and bought a brass door plate with _Smith_ on it
because she had six daughters and was sure one of them would marry a
Smith."

"And _did_ one?" asked Maijorie, in her innocent voice. Linnet was sure
her lungs were made of leather else she would have burst them every day
laughing at foolish little Marjorie.

"The story ended there," said Linnet.

"Stories always leave off at interesting places," said Marjorie, guarding
Linnet's future with slow-moving fingers. "I hope mine won't."

"It will if you die in the middle of it," returned Linnet

Linnet was washing the baking dishes at the sink.

"No, it wouldn't, it would go on and be more interesting," said Marjorie,
in her decided way; "but I do want to finish it all."

"Be careful, don't break mine," continued Linnet, as Marjorie gave the
apple rings a toss. "There! you have!" she cried disappointedly. "You've
spoiled my fortune, Marjie."

"Linnet! Linnet!" rebuked her mother, shutting the oven door, "I thought
you were only playing. I wouldn't have let you go on if I had thought you
would have taken it in earnest."

"I don't really," returned Linnet, with a vexed laugh, "but I did want to
see what letter it would be."

"It's _O_," said Marjorie, turning to look over her shoulder.

"Rather a crooked one," conceded Linnet, "but it will have to do."

"Suppose you try a dozen times and they all come different," suggested
practical Marjorie.

"That proves it's all nonsense," answered her mother.

"And suppose you don't marry anybody," Marjorie continued, spoiling
Linnet's romance, "some letter, or something _like_ a letter has to come,
and then what of it?"

"Oh, it's only fun," explained Linnet.

"I don't want to know about my _S_" confessed Marjorie. "I'd rather wait
and find out. I want my life to be like a story-book and have surprises
in the next chapter."

"It's sure to have that," said her mother. "We mustn't _try_ to find out
what is hidden. We mustn't meddle with our lives, either. Hurry
providence, as somebody says in a book."

"And we can't ask anybody but God," said Marjorie, "because nobody else
knows. He could make any letter come that he wanted to."

"He will not tell us anything that way," returned her mother.

"I don't want him to," said Marjorie.

"Mother, I was in fun and you are making _serious_," cried Linnet with a
distressed face.

"Not making it dreadful, only serious," smiled her mother.

"I don't see why the letter has to be about your husband," argued
Marjorie, "lots of things will happen to us first"

"But that is exciting," said Linnet, "and it is the most of things in
story-books."

"I don't see why," continued Marjorie, unconvinced, turning an apple
around in her fingers, "isn't the other part of the story worth
anything?"

"Worth anything!" repeated Linnet, puzzled.

"Doesn't God care for the other part?" questioned the child. "I've got to
have a good deal of the other part."

"So have all unmarried people," said her mother, smiling at the quaint
gravity of Marjorie's eyes.

"Then I don't see why--" said Marjorie.

"Perhaps you will by and by," her mother replied, laughing, for Marjorie
was looking as wise as an owl; "and now, please hurry with the apples,
for they must bake before tea. Mr. Woodfern says he never ate baked apple
sauce anywhere else."

Marjorie hoped he would not stay a whole week, as he proposed, if she had
to cut the apples. And then, with a shock and revulsion at herself, she
remembered that her father had read at worship that morning something
about giving even a cup of cold water to a disciple for Christ's sake.

Linnet laughed again as she stooped to pick up the doubtful _O_ and
crooked _S_ from the oilcloth.

But the letters had given Marjorie something to think about.

I had decided to hasten over the story of Marjorie's childhood and bring
her into her joyous and promising girlhood, but the child's own words
about the "other part" that she must have a "good deal" of have changed
my mind. Surely God does care for the "other part," too.

And I wonder what it is in you (do you know?) that inclines you to hurry
along and skip a little now and then, that you may discover whether
Marjorie ever married Hollis? Why can't you wait and take her life as
patiently as she did?

That same Saturday evening Marjorie's mother said to Marjorie's father,
with a look of perplexity upon her face,

"Father, I don't know what to make of our Marjorie."

He was half dozing over the _Agriculturist_; he raised his head and asked
sharply, "Why? What has she done now?"

Everybody knew that Marjorie was the apple of her father's eye.

"Nothing new! Only everything she does _is_ new. She is two Marjories,
and that's what I can't make out. She is silent and she is talkative;
she is shy, very shy, and she is as bold as a little lion; sometimes she
won't tell you anything, and sometimes she tells you everything;
sometimes I think she doesn't love me, and again she loves me to death;
sometimes I think she isn't as bright as other girls, and then again I'm
sure she is a genius. Now Linnet is always the same; I always know what
she will do and say; but there's no telling about Marjorie. I don't know
what to make of her," she sighed.

"Then I wouldn't try, wife," said Marjorie's father, with his shrewd
smile. "I'd let somebody that knows."

After a while, Marjorie's mother spoke again:

"I don't know that you help me any."

"I don't know that I can; girls are mysteries--you were a mystery once
yourself. Marjorie can respond, but she will not respond, unless she has
some one to respond _to_, or some _thing_ to respond to. Towards myself I
never find but one Marjorie!"

"That means that you always give her something to respond to!"

"Well, yes, something like it," he returned in one of Marjorie's
contented tones.

"She'll have a good many heart aches before she's through, then," decided
Mrs. West, with some sharpness.

"Probably," said Marjorie's father with the shadow of a smile on his thin
lips.




III.

WHAT "DESULTORY" MEANS.

"A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded."


"Miss Prudence! O, Miss Prudence!"

It was summer time and Marjorie was almost fourteen years old. Her soul
was looking out of troubled eyes to-day. Just now life was all one
unanswered question.

"Marjorie! O, Marjorie!" mimicked Miss Prudence.

"I don't know what _desultory_ means," said Marjorie.

"And you don't know where to find a dictionary?"

"Mustn't I ask you questions when I can find the answer myself?" asked
Marjorie, straightforwardly.

"I think it's rather impertinent, don't you?"

"Yes," considered Marjorie, "rather."

Miss Prudence was a fair vision in Marjorie's eyes and Marjorie was a
radiant vision in Miss Prudence's eyes. The radiant vision was not
clothed in gorgeous apparel; the radiance was in the face and voice and
in every motion; the apparel was simply a stiffly starched blue muslin,
that had once belonged to Linnet and had been "let down" for Marjorie,
and her head was crowned with a broad-brimmed straw hat, around the crown
of which was tied a somewhat faded blue ribbon, also a relic of Linnet's
summer days; her linen collar was fastened with an old-fashioned pin of
her mother's; her boots were new and neatly fitting, her father had made
them especially for herself.

Her sense of the fitness of things was sometimes outraged; one of the
reasons why she longed to grow up was that she might have things of her
own; things bought for her and made for her as they always were for
Linnet. But Linnet was pretty and good and was going away to school!

The fair vision was clothed in white, a soft white, that fell in folds
and had no kinship with starch. Marjorie had never seen this kind of
white dress before; it was a part of Miss Prudence's loveliness. The face
was oval and delicate, with little color in the lips and less in the
cheeks, smooth black hair was brushed away from the thoughtful forehead
and underneath the heavily pencilled black brows large, believing, gray
eyes looked unquestioningly out upon the world. Unlike Marjorie, Miss
Prudence's questions had been answered. She would have told Marjorie that
it was because she had asked her questions of One who knew how to answer.
She was swinging in her hammock on the back porch; this back porch looked
over towards the sea, a grass plat touched the edge of the porch and then
came the garden; it was a kitchen garden, and stretched down to the flat
rocks, and beyond the flat rocks were the sand and the sea.

Marjorie had walked two miles and a half this hot afternoon to spend two
or three hours with her friend, Miss Prudence. Miss Prudence was boarding
at Marjorie's grandfather's; this was the second summer that she had been
at this farmhouse by the sea. She was the lady of whom Marjorie had
caught a glimpse so long ago in church, and called her Mercy. Throwing
aside her hat, Marjorie dropped down on the floor of the porch, so near
the gently swaying hammock that she might touch the soft, white drapery,
and in a position to watch Miss Prudence's face.

"I don't see the use of learning somethings," Marjorie began; that is, if
she could be said to begin anything with Miss Prudence, the beginning of
all her questions had been so long ago. So long ago to Marjorie; long ago
to Miss Prudence was before Marjorie was born.

There were no books or papers in the hammock. Miss Prudence had settled
herself comfortably, so comfortably that she was not conscious of
inhabiting her body when Marjorie had unlatched the gate.

"Which one of the things, for instance?"

In the interested voice there was not one trace of the delicious reverie
she had been lost in.

"Punctuation," said Marjorie, promptly; "and Mr. Holmes says we must be
thorough in it. I can't see the use of anything beside periods, and, of
course, a comma once in a while."

A gleam of fun flashed into the gray eyes. Miss Prudence was a born
pedagogue.

"I'll show you something I learned when I was a little girl; and, after
this, if you don't confess that punctuation has its work in the world, I
have nothing more to say about it."

Marjorie had been fanning herself with her broad brim, she let it fall in
her eagerness and her eyes were two convincing arguments against the
truth of her own theory, for they were two emphasized exclamation points;
sometimes when she was very eager she doubled herself up and made an
interrogation point of herself.

"Up in my room on the table you will find paper and pencil; please bring
them to me."

Marjorie flew away and Miss Prudence gave herself up to her interrupted
reverie. To-day was one of Miss Prudence's hard-working days; that is, it
was followed by the effect of a hard-working day; the days in which she
felt too weak to do anything beside pray she counted the successful days
of her life. She said they were the only days in her life in which she
accomplished anything.

Marjorie was at home in every part of her grandfather's queer old house;
Miss Prudence's room was her especial delight. It was a low-studded
chamber, with three windows looking out to the sea, the wide fireplace
was open, filled with boughs of fragrant hemlock; the smooth yellow
floor with its coolness and sweet cleanliness invited you to enter; there
were round braided mats spread before the bureau and rude washstand, and
more pretentious ones in size and beauty were laid in front of the red,
high-posted bedstead and over the brick hearth. There were, beside, in
the apartment, two tables, an easy-chair with arms, its cushions covered
with red calico, a camp stool, three rush-bottomed chairs, a Saratoga
trunk, intruding itself with ugly modernness, also, hanging upon hooks,
several articles of clothing, conspicuously among them a gray flannel
bathing suit. The windows were draperied in dotted swiss, fastened back
with green cord; her grandmother would never have been guilty of those
curtains. Marjorie was sure they had intimate connection with the
Saratoga trunk. Sunshine, the salt-breath of the sea and the odor of pine
woods as well!

There were rollicking voices outside the window, Marjorie looked out and
spied her five little cousins playing in the sand. Three of them held in
their hands, half-eaten, the inevitable doughnut; morning, noon, and
night those children were to be found with doughnuts in their hands.

She laughed and turned again to the contemplation of the room; on the
high mantel was a yellow pitcher, that her grandmother knew was a hundred
years old, and in the centre of the mantel were arranged a sugar bowl and
a vinegar cruet that Miss Prudence had coaxed away from the old lady; her
city friends would rave over them, she said. The old lady had laughed,
remarking that "city folks" had ways of their own.

"I've given away a whole set of dishes to folks that come in the yachts,"
she said. "I should think you would rather have new dishes."

Miss Prudence never dusted her old possessions; she told Marjorie that
she had not the heart to disturb the dust of ages.

Marjorie was tempted to linger and linger; in winter this room was closed
and seemed always bare and cold when she peeped into it; there was no
temptation to stay one moment; and now she had to tear herself away. It
must be Miss Prudence's spirit that brooded over it and gave it sweetness
and sunshine. This was the way Marjorie put the thought to herself. The
child was very poetical when she lived alone with herself. Miss
Prudence's wicker work-basket with its dainty lining of rose-tinted silk,
its shining scissors and gold thimble, with its spools and sea-green silk
needlebook was a whole poem to the child; she thought the possession of
one could make any kind of sewing, even darning stockings, very
delightful work. "Stitch, stitch, stitch," would not seem dreadful, at
all.

How mysterious and charming it was to board by the seashore with
somebody's grandfather! And then, in winter, to go back to some
bewildering sort of a fairyland! To some kind of a world where people did
not talk all the time about "getting along" and "saving" and "doing
without" and "making both ends meet." How Marjorie's soul rebelled
against the constant repetition of those expressions! How she thought she
would never _let_ her little girls know what one of them meant! If she
and her little girls had to be saving and do without, how brave they
would be about it, and laugh over it, and never ding it into anybody's
ears! And she would never constantly be asking what things cost! Miss
Prudence never asked such questions. But she would like to know if that
gold pen cost so very much, and that glass inkstand shaped like a
pyramid, and all that cream note-paper with maple tassels and autumn
leaves and butterflies and ever so many cunning things painted in its
left corners. And there was a pile of foolscap on the table, and some
long, yellow envelopes, and some old books and some new books and an
ivory paper-cutter; all something apart from the commonplace world she
inhabited. Not apart from the world her thoughts and desires revelled
in; not her hopes, for she had not gotten so far as to hope to live in a
magical world like Miss Prudence. And yet when Miss Prudence did not wear
white she was robed in deep mourning; there was sorrow in Miss Prudence's
magical world.

It was some few moments before the roving eyes could settle themselves
upon the paper and pencil she had been sent for; she would have liked to
choose a sheet of the thick cream-paper with the autumn leaves painted on
it, but that was not for study, and Miss Prudence certainly intended
study, although there was fun in her eyes. She selected carefully a sheet
of foolscap and from among the pen oils a nicely sharpened Faber number
three. With the breath of the room about her, and the beauty and
restfulness of it making a glory in her eyes, she ran down to the broad,
airy hall.

Glancing into the sitting-room as she passed its partly opened door she
discovered her grandfather asleep in his arm-chair and her grandmother
sitting near him busy in slicing apples to be strung and hung up in the
kitchen to dry! With a shiver of foreboding the child passed the door on
tiptoe; suppose her grandmother _should_ call her in to string those
apples! The other children never strung them to suit her and she
"admired" Marjorie's way of doing them. Marjorie said once that she hated
apple blossoms because they turned into dried apples. But that was when
she had stuck the darning needle into her thumb.

I'm afraid you will think now that Marjorie is not as sweet as she used
to be.

She presented the paper, congratulating herself upon her escape, and Miss
Prudence lifted herself in the hammock and took the pencil, holding it in
her fingers while she meditated. What a little girl she was when her
whiteheaded old teacher had bidden her write this sentence on the
blackboard. She wrote it carefully, Marjorie's attentive eyes following
each movement of the pencil.

"The persons inside the coach were Mr Miller a clergyman his son a lawyer
Mr Angelo a foreigner his lady and a little child" In the entire sentence
there was not one punctuation mark.

"Read it, please."

Marjorie began to read, then stopped and laughed.

"I can't."

"You wouldn't enjoy a book very much written in that style, would you?"

"I couldn't enjoy it at all. I wouldn't read it"

"Well, if you can't read it, explain it to me. How many persons are in
the coach?"

"That's easy enough! There's Mr. Miller, that's one; there's the
clergyman, that's two!"

"Perhaps that is only one; Mr. Miller may be a clergyman."

"So he may. But how can I tell?" asked Marjorie, perplexed. "Well, then,
his son makes two."

"Whose son?"

"Why, Mr. Miller's!"

"Perhaps he was the clergyman's son," returned Miss Prudence seriously.

"Well, then," declared Marjorie, "I guess there were eight people! Mr.
Miller, the clergyman, the son, the lawyer, Mr. Angelo, a foreigner, a
lady, and a child!"

"Placing a comma after each there are eight persons," said Miss Prudence
making the commas.

"Yes," assented Marjorie, watching her.

Beneath it Miss Prudence wrote the sentence again, punctuating thus:

"The persons inside the conch were Mr. Miller, a clergyman; his son, a
lawyer; Mr. Angelo, a foreigner, his lady; and a little child."

"Now how many persons are there inside this coach?"

"Three gentlemen, a lady and child," laughed Marjorie--"five instead of
eight. Those little marks have caused three people to vanish."

"And to change occupations."

"Yes, for Mr. Miller is a clergyman, his son a lawyer, and Mr. Angelo has
become a foreigner."

The pencil was moving again and the amused, attentive eyes were
steadfastly following.

"The persons inside the coach were Mr. Miller; a clergyman, his son; a
lawyer, Mr. Angelo; a foreigner, his lady, and a little child."

Marjorie uttered an exclamation; it was so funny!

"Now, Mr. Miller's son is a clergyman instead of himself, Mr. Angelo is a
lawyer, and nobody knows whether he is a foreigner or not, and we don't
know the foreigner's name, and he has a wife and child."

Miss Prudence smiled over the young eagerness, and rewrote the sentence
once again causing Mr. Angelo to cease to be a lawyer and giving the
foreigner a wife but no little child.

"O, Miss Prudence, you've made the little thing an orphan all alone in a
stage-coach all through the change of a comma to be a semi-colon!"
exclaimed Marjorie in comical earnestness. "I think punctuation means
ever so much; it isn't dry one bit," she added, enthusiastically.

"You couldn't enjoy Mrs. Browning very well without it," smiled Miss
Prudence.

"I never would know what the 'Cry of the Children' meant, or anything
about Cowper's grave, would I? And if I punctuated it myself, I might
not get all _she_ meant. I might make a meaning of my own, and that would
be sad."

"I think you do," said Miss Prudence; "when I read it to you and the
children, there were tears in your eyes, but the others said all they
liked was my voice."

"Yes," said Marjorie, "but if somebody had stumbled over every line I
shouldn't have felt it so. I know the good there is in studying
elocution. When Mr. Woodfern was here and read 'O, Absalom, my son! My
son, Absalom!' everybody had tears in their eyes, and I had never seen
tears about it before. And now I know the good of punctuation. I guess
punctuation helps elocution, too."

"I shouldn't wonder," replied Miss Prudence, smiling at Marjorie's air of
having discovered something. "Now, I'll give you something to do while I
close my eyes and think awhile."

"Am I interrupting you?" inquired Marjorie in consternation. "I didn't
know how I could any more than I can interrupt--"

"God" was in her thought, but she did not give it utterance.

"I shall not allow you," returned Miss Prudence, quietly. "You will work
awhile, and I will think and when I open my eyes you may talk to me about
anything you please. You are a great rest to me, child."

"Thank you," said the child, simply.

"You may take the paper and change the number of people, or relationship,
or professions again. I know it may be done."

"I don't see how."

"Then it will give you really something to do."

Seating herself again on the yellow floor of the porch, within range of
Miss Prudence's vision, but not near enough to disturb her, Marjorie bit
the unsharpened end of her pencil and looked long at the puzzling
sentences on the foolscap. With the attitude of attentiveness she was not
always attentive; Mr. Holmes told her that she lacked concentration and
that she could not succeed without it. Marjorie was very anxious to
"succeed." She scribbled awhile, making a comma and a dash, a
parenthesis, an interrogation point, an asterisk and a line of asterisks!
But the sense was not changed; there was nobody new in the stage-coach
and nobody did anything new. Then she rewrote it again, giving the little
child to the foreigner and lady; she wanted the child to have a father
and mother, even if the father were a foreigner and did not speak
English; she called the foreigner Mr. Angelo, and imagined him to be a
brother of the celebrated Michael Angelo; making a dive into the shallow
depths of her knowledge of Italian nomenclature she selected a name for
the child, a little girl, of course--Corrinne would do, or it might be a
boy and named for his uncle Michael. In what age of the world had Michael
Angelo lived? At the same time with Petrarch and Galileo, and Tasso
and--did she know about any other Italians? Oh, yes. Silvio
Pellico,--wasn't he in prison and didn't he write about it? And was not
the leaning tower of Pisa in Italy? Was that one of the Seven Wonders of
the World? And weren't there Seven Wise Men of Greece? And wasn't there a
story about the Seven Sleepers? But weren't they in Asia? And weren't the
churches in Revelation in Asia? And wasn't the one at Laodicea lukewarm?
And did people mix bread with lukewarm water in summer as well as winter?
And wasn't it queer--why how had she got there? But it _was_ queer for
the oriental king to refuse to believe and say it wasn't so--that water
couldn't become hard enough for people to walk on it! And it was funny
for the East Indian servant to be alarmed because the butter was
"spoiled," just because when they were up in the mountains it became hard
and was not like oil as it was down in Calcutta! And that was where Henry
Martyn went, and he dressed all in white, and his face was so lovely and
pure, like an angel's; and angels _were_ like young men, for at the
resurrection didn't it say they were young men! Or was it some other
time? And how do you spell _resurrection_? Was that the word that had one
_s_ and two _r's_ in it? And how would you write two _r's?_ Would
punctuation teach you that? Was _B_ a word and could you spell it?

"Well, Marjorie?"

"Oh, dear me!" exclaimed Marjorie. "I've been away off! I always do go
away off! I don't remember what the last thing I thought of was. I never
shall be concentrated," she sighed. "I believe I could go right on and
think of fifty other things. One thing always reminds me of some thing
else."

"And some day," rebuked Miss Prudence, "when you must concentrate your
thoughts you will find that you have spoiled yourself."

"I have found it out now," acknowledged Marjorie humbly.

"I have to be very severe with myself."

"I ought to be," Marjorie confessed with a rueful face, "for it spoils my
prayers so often. I wouldn't dare tell you all the things I find myself
thinking of. Why, last night--you know at the missionary meeting they
asked us to pray for China and so I thought I'd begin last night, and I
had hardly begun when it flashed into my mind--suppose somebody should
make me Empress of China, and give me supreme power, of course. And I
began to make plans as to how I should make them all Christians. I
thought I wouldn't _force_ them or destroy their temples, but I'd have
all my officers real Christians; Americans, of course; and I thought I
_would_ compel them to send the children to Christian schools. I'd have
such grand schools. I had you as principal for the grandest one. And I'd
have the Bible and all our best books, and all our best Sunday School
books translated into Chinese and I _would_ make the Sabbath a holy day
all over the land. I didn't know what I would do about that room in every
large house called the Hall of Ancestors. You know they worship their
grandparents and great-great-grandparents there. I think I should have to
let them read the old books. Isn't it queer that one of the proverbs
should be like the Bible? 'God hates the proud and is kind to the
humble.' Do you know all about Buddha?"

"Is that as far as you got in your prayer?" asked Miss Prudence, gravely.

"About as far. And then I was so contrite that I began to pray for myself
as hard as I could, and forgot all about China."

"Do you wander off in reading the Bible, too?"

"Oh, no; I can keep my attention on that. I read Genesis and Exodus last
Sunday. It is the loveliest story-book I know. I've begun to read it
through. Uncle James said once, that when he was a sea-captain, he
brought a passenger from Germany and he used to sit up all night and read
the Bible. He told me last Sunday because he thought I read so long. I
told him I didn't wonder. Miss Prudence," fixing her innocent,
questioning eyes upon Miss Prudence's face, "why did a lady tell mother
once that she didn't want her little girl to read the Bible through until
she was grown up? It was Mrs. Grey,--and she told mother she ought not to
let me begin and read right through."

"What did your mother say?"

"She said she was glad I wanted to do it."

"I think Mrs. Grey meant that you might learn about some of the sin there
is in the world. But if you live in the world, you will be kept from the
evil, because Christ prayed that his disciples might be thus kept; but
you must know the sin exists. And I would rather my little girl would
learn about the sins that God hates direct from his lips than from any
other source. As soon as you learn what sin is, you will learn to hate
it, and that is not sure if you learn it in any other way. I read the
Bible through when I was about your age, and I think there are some forms
of sin I never should have hated so intensely if I had not learned about
them in the way God thinks best to teach us his abhorrence of them. I
never read any book in which a sin was fully delineated that I did not
feel some of the excitement of the sin--some extenuation, perhaps, some
glossing over, some excuse for the sinner,--but in the record God gives I
always intensely hate the sin and feel how abominable it is in his sight.
The first book I ever cried over was the Bible and it was somebody's sin
that brought the tears. I would like to talk to Mrs. Grey!" cried Miss
Prudence, her eyes kindling with indignation. "To think that God does not
know what is good for his children."

"I wish you would," said Marjorie with enthusiasm, "for I don't know how
to say it. Mother knows a lady who will not read Esther on Sunday because
God isn't in it"

"The name of God, you mean," said Miss Prudence smiling. "I think Esther
and Mordecai and all the Jews thought God was in it."

"I will try not to build castles," promised Marjorie often a silent half
minute. "I've done it so much to please Linnet. After we go to bed at
night she says, 'Shut your eyes, Marjie, and tell me what you see,' Then
I shut my eyes and see things for us both. I see ourselves grown up and
having a splendid home and a real splendid husband, and we each have
three children. She has two boys and one girl, and I have two girls and
one boy. And we educate them and dress them so nice, and they do lovely
things. We travel all around the world with them, and I tell Linnet all
we see in Europe and Asia. Our husbands stay home and send us money. They
have to stay home and earn it, you know," Marjorie explained with a
shrewd little smile. "Would you give that all up?" she asked
disappointedly.

"Yes, I am sure I would. You are making a disappointment for yourself;
your life may not be at all like that. You may never marry, in the first
place, and you may marry a man who cannot send you to Europe, and I think
you are rather selfish to spend his money and not stay home and be a good
wife to him," said Miss Prudence, smiling.

"Oh. I write him splendid long letters!" said Marjorie quickly. "They are
so splendid that he thinks of making a book of them."

"I'm afraid they wouldn't take," returned Miss Prudence seriously, "books
of travel are too common nowadays."

"Is it wrong to build castles for any other reason than for making
disappointments?" Marjorie asked anxiously.

"Yes, you dwell only on pleasant things and thus you do not prepare
yourself, or rather un-prepare yourself for bearing trial. And why should
a little girl live in a woman's world?"

"Oh, because it's so nice!" cried Marjorie.

"And are you willing to lose your precious childhood and girlhood?"

"Why no," acknowledged the child, looking startled.

"I think you lose a part of it when you love best to look forward to
womanhood; I should think every day would be full enough for you to live
in."

"To-day is full enough; but some days nothing happens at all."

"Now is your study time; now is the time for you to be a perfect little
daughter and sister, a perfect friend, a perfect helper in every way that
a child may help. And when womanhood comes you will be ready to enjoy it
and to do its work. It would be very sad to look back upon a lost or
blighted or unsatisfying childhood."

"Yes," assented Marjorie, gravely.

"Perhaps you and Linnet have been reading story-books that were not
written for children."

"We read all the books in the school library."

"Does your mother look over them?"

"No, not always."

"They may harm you only in this way that I see. You are thinking of
things before the time. It would be a pity to spoil May by bringing
September into it."

"All the girls like the grown-up stories best" excused Marjorie.

"Perhaps they have not read books written purely for children. Think of
the histories and travels and biographies and poems piled up for you to
read!"

"I wish I had them. I read all I could get."

"I am sure you do. O, Marjorie, I don't want you to lose one of your
precious days. I lost so many of mine by growing up too soon. There are
years and years to be a woman, but there are so few years to be a child
and a girl."

Marjorie scribbled awhile thinking of nothing to say. Had she been
"spoiling" Linnet, too? But Linnet was two years older, almost old enough
to think about growing up.

"Marjorie, look at me!"

Marjorie raised her eyes and fixed them upon the glowing eyes that were
reading her own. Miss Prudence's lips were white and tremulous.

"I have had some very hard things in my life and I fully believe I
brought many of them upon myself. I spoiled my childhood and early
girlhood by light reading and castle-building; I preferred to live among
scenes of my own imagining, than in my own common life, and oh, the
things I left up done! The precious girlhood I lost and the hard
womanhood I made for myself."

The child's eyes were as full of tears as the woman's.

"Please tell me what to do," Marjorie entreated. "I don't want to lose
anything. I suppose it is as good to be a girl as a woman."

"Get all the sweetness out of every day; _live_ in to-day, don't plan or
hope about womanhood; God has all that in his safe hands. Read the kind
of books I have spoken of and when you read grown-up stories let some one
older and wiser choose them for you. By and by your taste will be so
formed and cultivated that you will choose only the best for yourself. I
hope the Bible will spoil some other books for you."

"I _devour_ everything I can borrow or find anywhere."

"You don't eat everything you can borrow or find anywhere. If you choose
for your body, how much more ought you to choose for your mind."

"I do get discontented sometimes and want things to happen as they do in
books; something happens in every chapter in a book," acknowledged
Marjorie.

"There's nothing said about the dull, uneventful days that come between;
if the author should write only about the dull days no one would read the
book."

"It wouldn't be like life, either," said Marjorie, quickly, "for
something does happen, sometimes nothing has happened yet to me, though.
But I suppose something will, some day."

"Then if I should write about your thirteen years the charm would have to
be all in the telling."

"Like Hector in the Garden," said Marjorie, brightly. "How I do love
that. And he was only nine years old."

"But how far we've gotten away from punctuation!"

Next to prayer children were Miss Prudence's most perfect rest. They were
so utterly unconscious of what she was going through. It seemed to Miss
Prudence as if she were always going through and never getting through.

"Are you fully satisfied that punctuation has its work in the world?"

"Yes, ever so fully. I should never get along in the Bible without it."

"That reminds me; run upstairs and bring me my Bible and I'll show you
something.

"And, then, after that will you show me the good of remembering _dates_.
They are so hard to remember. And I can't see the good. Do you suppose
you _could_ make it as interesting as punctuation?"

"I might try. The idea of a little girl who finds punctuation so
interesting having to resort to castle-building to make life worth
living," laughed Miss Prudence.

"Mother said to-day that she was afraid I was growing deaf, for she spoke
three times before I answered; I was away off somewhere imagining I had a
hundred dollars to spend, so she went down cellar for the butter
herself."

Marjorie walked away with a self-rebuked air; she did dread to pass that
open sitting-room door; Uncle James had come in in his shirt sleeves,
wiping his bald head with his handkerchief and was telling her
grandfather that the hay was poor this year; Aunt Miranda was brushing
Nettie's hair and scolding her for having such greasy fingers; and her
grandmother had a pile, _such_ a pile of sliced apple all ready to be
strung. Her head was turning, yes, she would see her and then she could
not know about dates or have a lesson in reading poetry! Tiptoing more
softly still and holding the skirt of her starched muslin in both hands
to keep it from rustling, she at last passed the ordeal and breathed
freely as she gained Miss Prudence's chamber. The spirit of handling
things seemed to possess her this afternoon, for, after finding the
Bible, she went to the mantel and took into her hands every article
placed upon it; the bird's nest with the three tiny eggs, the bunch of
feathers that she had gathered for Miss Prudence with their many shades
of brown, the old pieces of crockery, handling these latter very
carefully until she seized the yellow pitcher; Miss Prudence had paid her
grandmother quite a sum for the pitcher, having purchased it for a
friend; Marjorie turned it around and around in her hands, then,
suddenly, being startled by a heavy, slow step on the stairs which
she recognized as her grandmother's, and having in fear those apples to
be strung, in attempting to lift it to the high mantel, it fell short of
the mantel edge and dropped with a crash to the hearth.

For an instant Marjorie was paralyzed with horror; then she stifled a
shriek and stood still gazing down through quick tears upon the yellow
fragments. Fortunately her grandmother, being very deaf, had passed the
door and heard no sound. What would have happened to her if her
grandmother had looked in!

How disappointed Miss Prudence would be! It belonged to her friend and
how could she remedy the loss?

Stooping, with eyes so blinded with tears that she could scarcely see the
pieces she took into her hand, she picked up each bit, and then on the
spur of the moment hid them among the thick branches of hemlock. Now what
was she to do next? Could she earn money to buy another hundred-years-old
yellow pitcher? And if she could earn the money, where could she find the
pitcher? She would not confess to Miss Prudence until she found some way
of doing something for her. Oh, dear! This was not the kind of thing that
she had been wishing would happen! And how could she go down with such a
face to hear the rest about punctuation?

"Marjorie! Marjorie!" shouted Uncle James from below, "here's Cap'n Rheid
at the gate, and if you want to catch a ride you'd better go a ways with
him."

The opportunity to run away was better than the ride; hastening down to
the hammock she laid the Bible in Miss Prudence's lap.

"I have to go, you see," she exclaimed, hurriedly, averting her face.

"Then our desultory conversation must be finished another time."

"If that's what it means, it means delightful!" said Marjorie. "Thank
you, and good-bye."

The blue muslin vanished between the rows of currant bushes. She was
hardly a radiant vision as she flew down to the gate; in those few
minutes what could have happened to the child?




IV.

A RIDE, A WALK, A TALK, AND A TUMBLE.

"Children always turn toward the light"


"Well, Mousie!"

The old voice and the old pet name; no one thought of calling her
"Mousie" but Hollis Rheid.

Her mother said she was noisier than she used to be; perhaps he would not
call her Mousie now if he could hear her sing about the house and run up
and down stairs and shout when she played games at school. That time when
she was so quiet and afraid of everybody seemed ages ago; ages ago before
Hollis went to New York. He had returned home once since, but she had
been at her grandfather's and had not seen him. Springing to the ground,
he caught her in his arms, this tall, strange boy, who had changed so
much, and yet who had not changed at all, and lifted her into the back of
the open wagon.

"Will you squeeze in between us--there's but one seat you see, and
father's a big man, or shall I make a place for you in the bottom among
the bags?"

"I'd rather sit with the bags," said Marjorie, her timidity coming back.
She had always been afraid of Hollis' father; his eyes were the color of
steel, and his voice was not encouraging. He thought he was born to
command. People said old Captain Rheid acted as if he were always on
shipboard. His wife said once in the bitterness of her spirit that he
always marched the quarter-deck and kept his boys in the forecastle.

"You don't weigh more than that bag of flour yourself, not as much, and
that weighs one hundred pounds."

"I weigh ninety pounds," said Marjorie.

"And how old are you?"

"Almost fourteen," she answered proudly.

"Four years younger than I am! Now, are you comfortable? Are you afraid
of spoiling your dress? I didn't think of that?"

"Oh, no; I wish I was," laughed Marjorie, glancing shyly at him from
under her broad brim.

It was her own bright face, yet, he decided, with an older look in it,
her eyelashes were suspiciously moist and her cheeks were reddened with
something more than being lifted into the wagon.

Marjorie settled herself among the bags, feeling somewhat strange and
thinking she would much rather have walked; Hollis sprang in beside his
father, not inclined to make conversation with him, and restrained, by
his presence, from turning around to talk to Marjorie.

Oh, how people misunderstand each other! How Captain Rheid misunderstood
his boys and how his boys misunderstood him! The boys said that Hollis
was the Joseph among them, his father's favorite; but Hollis and his
father had never opened their hearts to each other. Captain Rheid often
declared that there was no knowing what his boys would do if they were
not kept in; perhaps they had him to thank that they were not all in
state-prison. There was a whisper among the country folks that the old
man himself had been in prison in some foreign country, but no one had
ever proved it; in his many "yarns" at the village store, he had not even
hinted at such a strait. If Marjorie had not stood quite so much in fear
of him she would have enjoyed his adventures; as it was she did enjoy
with a feverish enjoyment the story of thirteen days in an open boat on
the ocean. His boys were fully aware that he had run away from home when
he was fourteen, and had not returned for fourteen years, but they were
not in the least inclined to follow his example. Hollis' brothers had all
left home with the excuse that they could "better" themselves elsewhere;
two were second mates on board large ships, Will and Harold, Sam was
learning a trade in the nearest town, he was next to Hollis in age, and
the eldest, Herbert, had married and was farming on shares within ten
miles of his father's farm. But Captain Rheid held up his head, declaring
that his boys were good boys, and had always obeyed him; if they had left
him to farm his hundred and fifty acres alone, it was only because their
tastes differed from his. In her lonely old age, how his wife sighed for
a daughter!--a daughter that would stay at home and share her labors, and
talk to her, and read to her on stormy Sundays, and see that her collar
was on straight, and that her caps were made nice. Some mothers had
daughters, but she had never had much pleasure in her life!

"Like to come over to your grandfather's, eh?" remarked Captain Rheid,
looking around at the broad-brimmed hat among the full bags.

"Yes, sir," said Marjorie, denting one of the full bags with her
forefinger and wondering what he would do to her if she should make a
hole in the bag, and let the contents out.

She rarely got beyond monosyllables with Hollis' father.

"Your uncle James isn't going to stay much longer, he tells me,"

"No, sir," said Marjorie, obediently.

"Wife and children going back to Boston, too?"

"Yes, sir."

Her forefinger was still making dents.

"Just come to board awhile, I suppose?"

"I thought they _visited_" said Marjorie.

"Visited? Humph! _Visit_ his poor old father with a wife and five
children!"

Marjorie wanted to say that her grandfather wasn't poor.

"Your grandfather's place don't bring in much, I reckon."

"I don't know," Marjorie answered.

"How many acres? Not more'n fifty, and some of that _made_ land. I
remember when some of your grandfather's land was water! I don't see what
your uncle James had to settle down to business in Boston for--_that's_
what comes of marrying a city girl! Why didn't he stay home and take care
of his old father?"

Marjorie had nothing to say. Hollis flushed uncomfortably.

"And your mother had to get married, too. I'm glad I haven't a daughter
to run away and get married?"

"She didn't run away," Marjorie found voice to answer indignantly.

"O, no, the Connecticut schoolmaster had to come and make a home for
her."

Marjorie wondered what right he had to be so disagreeable to her, and why
should he find fault with her mother and her uncle, and what right had he
to say that her grandfather was poor and that some of his land had once
been water?

"Hollis shan't grow up and marry a city girl if I can help it," he
growled, half good-naturedly.

Hollis laughed; he thought he was already grown up, and he did admire
"city girls" with their pretty finished manners and little ready
speeches.

Marjorie wished Hollis would begin to talk about something pleasant;
there were two miles further to ride, and would Captain Rheid talk all
the way?

If she could only have an errand somewhere and make an excuse to get out!
But the Captain's next words relieved her perplexity; "I can't take you
all the way, Sis, I have to branch off another road to see a man about
helping me with the hay. I would have let Hollis go to mill, but I
couldn't trust him with these horses."

Hollis fidgeted on his seat; he had asked his father when they set out to
let him take the lines, but he had replied ungraciously that as long as
he had hands he preferred to hold the reins.

Hollis had laughed and retorted: "I believe that, father."

"Shall I get out now?" asked Marjorie, eagerly. "I like to walk. I
expected to walk home."

"No; wait till we come to the turn."

The horses were walking slowly up the hill; Marjorie made dents in the
bag of flour, in the bag of indian meal, and in the bag of wheat bran,
and studied Hollis' back. The new navy-blue suit was handsome and
stylish, and the back of his brown head with its thick waves of brownish
hair was handsome also--handsome and familiar; but the navy-blue suit was
not familiar, and the eyes that just then turned and looked at her were
not familiar either. Marjorie could get on delightfully with _souls_, but
bodies were something that came between her soul and their soul; the
flesh, like a veil, hid herself and hid the other soul that she wanted to
be at home with. She could have written to the Hollis she remembered many
things that she could not utter to the Hollis that she saw today.
Marjorie could not define this shrinking, of course.

"Hollis has to go back in a day or two," Captain Rheid announced; "he
spent part of his vacation in the country with Uncle Jack before he came
home. Boys nowadays don't think of their fathers and mothers."

Hollis wondered if _he_ thought of his mother and father when he ran away
from them those fourteen years: he wished that his father had never
revealed that episode in his early life. He did not miss it that he did
not love his father, but he would have given more than a little if he
might respect him. He knew Marjorie would not believe that he did not
think about his mother.

"I wonder if your father will work at his trade next winter," continued
Captain Rheid.

"I don't know," said Marjorie, hoping the "turn" was not far off.

"I'd advise him to--summers, too, for that matter. These little places
don't pay. Wants to sell, he tells me."

"Yes, sir."

"Real estate's too low; 'tisn't a good time to sell. But it's a good time
to buy; and I'll buy your place and give it to Hollis if he'll settle
down and work it."

"It would take more than _that_ farm to keep me here," said Hollis,
quickly; "but, thank you all the same, father; Herbert would jump at the
chance."

"Herbert shan't have it; I don't like his wife; she isn't respectful to
Herbert's father. He wants to exchange it for city property, so he can go
into business, he tells me."

"Oh, does he?" exclaimed Marjorie. "I didn't know that."

"Girls are rattlebrains and chatterboxes; they can't be told everything,"
he replied shortly.

"I wonder what makes you tell me, then," said Marjorie, demurely, in the
fun of the repartee forgetting for the first time the bits of yellow ware
secreted among the hemlock boughs.

Throwing back his head Captain Rheid laughed heartily, he touched the
horses with the whip, laughing still.

"I wouldn't mind having a little girl like you," he said, reining in the
horses at the turn of the road; "come over and see marm some day."

"Thank you," Marjorie said, rising.

Giving the reins to Hollis, Captain Rheid climbed out of the wagon that
he might lift the child out himself.

"Jump," he commanded, placing her hands on his shoulders.

Marjorie jumped with another "thank you."

"I haven't kissed a little girl for twenty years--not since my little
girl died--but I guess I'll kiss you."

Marjorie would not withdraw her lips for the sake of the little girl that
died twenty years ago.

"Good-bye, Mousie, if I don't see you again," said Hollis.

"Good-bye," said Marjorie.

She stood still till the horses' heads were turned and the chains had
rattled off in the distance, then, very slowly, she walked on in the
dusty road, forgetting how soft and green the grass was at the wayside.

"She's a proper nice little thing," observed Hollis' father; "her father
wouldn't sell her for gold. I'll exchange my place for his if he'll throw
her in to boot. Marm is dreadful lonesome."

"Why don't she adopt a little girl?" asked Hollis.

"I declare! That _is_ an idea! Hollis, you've hit the nail on the head
this time. But I'd want her willing and loving, with no ugly ways. And
good blood, too. I'd want to know what her father had been before her."

"Are your boys like _you_, father?" asked Hollis.

"God forbid!" answered the old man huskily. "Hollis, I want you to be a
better man than your father. I pray every night that my boys may be
Christians; but my time is past, I'm afraid. Hollis, do you pray and read
your Bible, regular?"

Hollis gave an embarrassed cough. "No, sir," he returned.

"Then I'd see to it that I did it. That little girl joined the Church
last Sunday and I declare it almost took my breath away. I got the Bible
down last Sunday night and read a chapter in the New Testament. If you
haven't got a Bible, I'll give you money to buy one."

"Oh, I have one," said Hollis uneasily.

"Git up, there!" shouted Captain Rheid to his horses, and spoke not
another word all the way home.

After taking a few slow steps Marjorie quickened her pace, remembering
that Linnet did not like to milk alone; Marjorie did not like to milk at
all; at thirteen there were not many things that she liked to do very
much, except to read and think.

"I'm afraid she's indolent," sighed her mother; "there's Linnet now,
she's as spry as a cricket"

But Linnet was not conscious of very many things to think about and
Marjorie every day discovered some new thought to revel in. At this
moment, if it had not been for that unfortunate pitcher, she would have
been reviewing her conversation with Miss Prudence. It _was_ wonderful
about punctuation; how many times a day life was "wonderful" to the
growing child!

Along this road the farmhouses were scattered at long distances, there
was one in sight with the gable end to the road, but the next one was
fully quarter of a mile away; she noted the fact, not that she was afraid
or lonely, but it gave her something to think of; she was too thoroughly
acquainted with the road to be afraid of anything by night or by day; she
had walked to her grandfather's more times than she could remember ever
since she was seven years old. She tried to guess how far the next house
was, how many feet, yards or rods; she tried to guess how many quarts of
blueberries had grown in the field beyond; she even wondered if anybody
could count the blades of grass all along the way if they should try! But
the remembrance of the broken pitcher persisted in bringing itself
uppermost, pushing through the blades of grass and the quarts of
blueberries; she might as well begin to plan how she was to earn another
pitcher! Or, her birthday was coming--in a month she would be fourteen;
her father would certainly give her a silver dollar because he was glad
that he had had her fourteen years. A quick, panting breath behind her,
and the sound of hurrying feet, caused her to turn her head; she fully
expected to meet the gaze of some big dog, but instead a man was close
upon her, dusty, travel-stained, his straw hat pushed back from a
perspiring face and a hand stretched out to detain her.

On one arm he carried a long, uncovered basket in which were arranged
rows and piles of small bottles; a glance at the basket reassured her,
every one knew Crazy Dale, the peddler of essences, cough-drops and quack
medicines.

"It's lonesome walking alone; I've been running to overtake you; I tried
to be in time to catch a ride; but no matter, I will walk with you, if
you will kindly permit."

She looked up into his pleasant countenance; he might have been handsome
years ago.

"Well," she assented, walking on.

"You don't know where I could get a girl to work for me," he asked in a
cracked voice.

"No sir."

"And you don't want a bottle of my celebrated mixture to teach you how to
discern between the true and the false! Rub your head with it every
morning, and you'll never believe a lie."

"I don't now," replied Marjorie, taking very quick steps.

"How do you know you don't?" he asked keeping step with her. "Tell me how
to tell the difference between a lie and the truth!"

"Rub your head with your mixture," she said, laughing.

But he was not disconcerted, he returned in a simple tone.

"Oh, _that's_ my receipt, I want yours. Yours may be better than mine."

"I think it is."

"Tell me, then, quick."

"Don't you want to go into that house and sell something?" she asked,
pointing to the house ahead of them.

"When I get there; and you must wait for me, outside, or I won't go in."

"Don't you know the way yourself?" she evaded.

"I've travelled it ever since the year 1, I ought to know it," he
replied, contemptuously. "But you've got to wait for me."

"Oh, dear," sighed Marjorie, frightened at his insistence; then a quick
thought came to her: "Perhaps they will keep you all night."

"They won't, they always refuse. They don't believe I'm an angel
unawares. That's in the Bible."

"I'd ask them, if I were you," said Marjorie, in a coaxing, tremulous
voice; "they're nice, kind people."

"Well, then, I will," he said, hurrying on.

She lingered, breathing more freely; he would certainly overtake her
again before she could reach the next house and if she did not agree
with everything he proposed he might become angry with her. Oh, dear! how
queerly this day was ending! She did not really want anything to happen;
the quiet days were the happiest, after all. He strode on before her,
turning once in a while, to learn if she were following.

"That's right; walk slow," he shouted in a conciliatory voice.

By the wayside, near the fence opposite the gate he was to enter, there
grew a dense clump of blackberry vines; as the gate swung behind him, she
ran towards the fence, and, while he stood with his back towards her in
the path talking excitedly to a little boy who had come to meet him, she
squeezed herself in between the vines and the fence, bending her head and
gathering the skirt of her dress in both hands.

He became angry as he talked, vociferating and gesticulating; every
instant she the more congratulated herself upon her escape; some of the
girls were afraid of him, but she had always been too sorry for him to be
much afraid; still, she would prefer to hide and keep hidden half the
night rather than be compelled to walk a long, lonely mile with him. Her
father or mother had always been within the sound of her voice when he
had talked with her; she had never before had to be a protection to
herself. Peering through the leaves, she watched him, as he turned again
towards the gate, with her heart beating altogether too rapidly for
comfort: he opened the gate, strode out to the road and stood looking
back.

He stood a long, long time, uttering no exclamation, then hurried on,
leaving a half-frightened and very thankful little girl trembling among
the leaves of the blackberry vines. But, would he keep looking back? And
how could she ever pass the next house? Might he not stop there and be
somewhere on the watch for her? If some one would pass by, or some
carriage would only drive along! The houses were closer together a mile
further on, but how dared she pass that mile? He would not hurt her, he
would only look at her out of his wild eyes and talk to her. Answering
Captain Rheid's questions was better than this! Staying at her
grandfather's and confessing about the pitcher was better than this!

Suddenly--or had she heard it before, a whistle burst out upon the air, a
sweet and clear succession of notes, the air of a familiar song: "Be it
ever so humble, there's no place like home."

Some one was at hand, she sprang through the vines, the briers catching
the old blue muslin, extricating herself in time to run almost against
the navy-blue figure that she had not yet become familiar with.

The whistle stopped short--"Well, Mousie! Here you are!"

"O, Hollis," with a sobbing breath, "I'm so glad!"

"So am I. I jumped off and ran after you. Why, did I frighten you? Your
eyes are as big as moons."

"No," she laughed, "I wasn't frightened."

"You look terribly like it."

"Perhaps some things are _like_--" she began, almost dancing along by his
side, so relieved that she could have poured out a song for joy.

"What do you do nowadays?" he asked presently. "You are more of a _live_
mouse than you used to be! I can't call you Mousie any more, only for the
sake of old times."

"I like it," said Marjorie.

"But what do you do nowadays?"

"I read all the time--when I can, and I work, different kinds of work.
Tell me about the little city girls."

"I only know my cousins and one or two others, their friends."

"What do they look like?"

"Like girls! Don't you know how girls look?"

"Not city girls."

"They are pretty, most of them, and they dress older than you and have a
_manner;_ they always know how to reply and they are not awkward and too
shy; they know how to address people, and introduce people, and sometimes
to entertain them, they seem to know what to talk about, and they are
bright and wide-awake. They play and sing and study the languages and
mathematics. The girls I know are all little ladies."

Marjorie was silent; her cheeks were burning and her eyes downcast. She
never could be like that; she never could be a "little lady," if a little
lady meant all those unattainable things.

"Do they talk differently from us--from country girls?" she asked after a
long pause.

"Yes, I think they do. Mira Crane--I'll tell you how the country girls
talk--says 'we am,' and 'fust rate,' and she speaks rudely and abruptly
and doesn't look directly at a person when she speaks, she says 'good
morning' and 'yes' and 'no' without 'sir' or 'ma'am' or the person's
name, and answers 'I'm very well' without adding 'thank you.'"

"Yes," said Marjorie, taking mental note of each expression.

"And Josie Grey--you see I've been studying the difference in the girls
since I came home--"

Had he been studying _her_?

"Is there so much difference?" she asked a little proudly.

"Yes. The difference struck me. It is not city or country that makes the
difference, it is the _homes_ and the _schools_ and every educating
influence. Josie Grey has all sorts of exclamations like some old
grandmother, and she says 'I tell you,' and 'I declare,' and she hunches
all up when she sits or puts her feet out into the middle of the room."

"Yes," said Marjorie, again, intently.

"And Nettie Trevor colors and stammers and talks as if she were afraid of
you. My little ladies see so many people that they become accustomed to
forgetting themselves and thinking of others. They see people to admire
and imitate, too."

"So do I," said Marjorie, spiritedly. "I see Miss Prudence and I see Mrs.
Proudfit, our new minister's wife, and I see--several other people."

"I suppose I notice these things more than some boys would. When I left
home gentleness was a new language to me; I had never heard it spoken
excepting away from home. I was surprised at first that a master could
command with gentleness and that those under authority could obey with
gentleness."

Marjorie listened with awe; this was not like Hollis; her old Hollis was
gone, a new, wise Hollis had come instead. She sighed a little for the
old Hollis who was not quite so wise.

"I soon found how much I lacked. I set myself to reading and studying.
From the first of October all through the winter I attend evening school
and I have subscribed to the Mercantile Library and have my choice among
thousands of books. Uncle Jack says I shall be a literary business man."

A "literary business man" sounded very grand to Marjorie. Would she stay
home and be ignorant and never be or do anything? At that instant a
resolve was born in her heart; the resolve to become a scholar and a
lady. But she did not speak, if possible she became more quiet. Hollis
should not be ashamed of being her friend.

"Mousie! Why don't you talk to me?" he asked, at last.

"Which of your cousins do you like best?"

"Helen," he said unhesitatingly.

"How old is she?" she asked with a sinking at her heart.

"Seventeen. _She's_ a lady, so gentle and bright, she never rustles or
makes a noise, she never says anything to hurt any one's feelings: and
how she plays and sings. She never once laughed at me, she helps me in
everything; she wanted me to go to evening school and she told me about
the Mercantile Library. She's a Christian, too. She teaches in a mission
school and goes around among poor people with Aunt Helen. She paints and
draws and can walk six miles a day. I go everywhere with her, to lectures
and concerts and to church and Sunday school."

How Marjorie's eyes brightened! She had found her ideal; she would give
herself no rest until she had become like Helen Rheid. But Helen Rheid
had everything to push her on, every one to help her. For the first time
in her life Marjorie was disheartened. But, with a reassuring conviction,
flashed the thought--there were years before _she_ would be seventeen.

"Wouldn't you like to see her, Mousie?"

"Indeed, I would," said Marjorie, enthusiastically.

"I brought her photograph to mother--how she looked at me when 'marm'
slipped out one day. The boys always used to say 'Marm,'" he said
laughing.

Marjorie remembered that she had been taught to say "grandmarm," but as
she grew older she had softened it to "grandma."

"I'll bring you her photograph when I come to-morrow to say good-bye.
Now, tell me what you've been looking sad about."

Is it possible that she was forgetting?

"Oh, perhaps you can help me!"

"Help you! Of course I will."

"How did you know I was troubled?" she asked seriously, looking up into
his eyes.

"Have I eyes?" he answered as seriously. "Father happened to think that
mother had an errand for him to do on this road, so I jumped off and ran
after you."

"No, you ran after your mother's errand," she answered, jealously.

"Well, then, I found you, my precise little maiden, and now you must tell
me what you were crying about."

"Not spilt milk, but only a broken milk pitcher! _Do_ you think you can
find me a yellow pitcher, with yellow figures--a man, or a lion, or
something, a hundred or two hundred years old?"

"In New York? I'm rather doubtful. Oh, I know--mother has some old ware,
it belonged to her grandmother, perhaps I can beg a piece of it for you.
Will it do if it isn't a pitcher?"

"I'd rather have a pitcher, a yellow pitcher. The one I broke belongs to
a friend of Miss Prudence."

"Prudence! Is she a Puritan maiden?" he asked.

Marjorie felt very ignorant, she colored and was silent. She supposed
Helen Rheid would know what a Puritan maiden was.

"I won't tease you," he said penitently. "I'll find you something to make
the loss good, perhaps I'll find something she'll like a great deal
better."

"Mr. Onderdonk has a plate that came from Holland, it's over two hundred
years old he told Miss Prudence; oh, if you _could_ get that!" cried
Marjorie, clasping her hands in her eagerness.

"Mr. Onderdonk? Oh, the shoemaker, near the schoolhouse. Well, Mousie,
you shall have some old thing if I have to go back a century to get it.
Helen will be interested to know all about it; I've told her about you."

"There's nothing to tell about me," returned Marjorie.

"Then I must have imagined it; you used to be such a cunning little
thing."

"_Used to be!_" repeated sensitive Marjorie, to herself. She was sure
Hollis was disappointed in her. And she thought he was so tall and wise
and handsome and grand! She could never be disappointed in him.

How surprised she would have been had she known that Helen's eyes had
filled with tears when Hollis told her how his little friend had risen
all alone in that full church! Helen thought she could never be like
Marjorie.

"I wish you had a picture of how you used to look for me to show Helen."

Not how she looked to-day! Her lips quivered and she kept her eyes on her
dusty shoes.

"I suppose you want the pitcher immediately."

Two years ago Hollis would have said "right away."

After that Marjorie never forgot to say "immediately."

"Yes, I would," she said, slowly. "I've hidden the pieces away and nobody
knows it is broken."

"That isn't like you," Hollis returned, disappointedly.

"Oh, I didn't do it to deceive; I couldn't. I didn't want her to be sorry
about it until I could see what I could do to replace it"

"That sounds better."

Marjorie felt very much as if he had been finding fault with her.

"Will you have to pay for it?"

"Not if mother gives it to me, but perhaps I shall exact some return from
you."

She met his grave eyes fully before she spoke. "Well, I'll give you all I
can earn. I have only seventy-three cents; father gives me one tenth of
the eggs for hunting them and feeding the chickens, and I take them to
the store. That's the only way I can earn money," she said in her sweet
half-abashed voice.

A picture of Helen taking eggs to "the store" flashed upon Hollis'
vision; he smiled and looked down upon his little companion with
benignant eyes.

"I could give you all I have and send you the rest. Couldn't I?" she
asked.

"Yes, that would do. But you must let me set my own price," he returned
in a business like tone.

"Oh I will. I'd do anything to get Miss Prudence a pitcher," she said
eagerly.

The faded muslin brushed against him; and how odd and old-fashioned her
hat was! He would not have cared to go on a picnic with Marjorie in this
attire; suppose he had taken her into the crowd of girls among which his
cousin Helen was so noticeable last week, how they would have looked at
her! They would think he had found her at some mission school. Was her
father so poor, or was this old dress and broad hat her mother's taste?
Anyway, there was a guileless and bright face underneath the flapping
hat and her voice was as sweet as Helen's even it there was such an
old-fashioned tone about it. One word seemed to sum up her dress and
herself--old-fashioned. She talked like some little old grandmother.
She was more than quaint--she was antiquated. That is, she was antiquated
beside Helen. But she did not seem out of place here in the country; he
was thinking of her on a city pavement, in a city parlor, or among a
group of fluttering, prettily dressed city girls, with their modulated
voices, animated gestures and laughing, bright replies. There was light
and fire about them and Marjorie was such a demure little mouse.

"Don't fret about it any more," he said, kindly, with his grown-up air,
patting her shoulder with a light, caressing touch. "I will take it into
my hands and you need not think of it again."

"Oh, thank you! thank you!" she cried, her eyes brimming over.

It was the old Hollis, after all; he could do anything and everything she
wanted.

Forgetting her shyness, after that home-like touch upon her shoulder, she
chatted all the way home. And he did not once think that she was a quiet
little mouse.

He did not like "quiet" people; perhaps because his own spirit was so
quiet that it required some effort for him to be noisy. Hollis admired
most characteristics unlike his own; he did not know, but he _felt_ that
Marjorie was very much like himself. She was more like him than he was
like her. They were two people who would be very apt to be drawn together
under all circumstances, but without special and peculiar training could
never satisfy each other. This was true of them even now, and, if
possible with the enlarged vision of experience, became truer as they
grew older. If they kept together they might grow together; but, the
question is, whether of themselves they would ever have been drawn very
close together. They were close enough together now, as Marjorie chatted
and Hollis listened; he had many questions to ask about the boys and
girls of the village and Marjorie had many stories to relate.

"So George Harris and Nell True are really married!" he said. "So young,
too!"

"Yes, mother did not like it. She said they were too young. He always
liked her best at school, you know. And when she joined the Church she
was so anxious for him to join, too, and she wrote him a note about it
and he answered it and they kept on writing and then they were married."

"Did he join the Church?" asked Hollis,

"He hasn't yet."

"It is easier for girls to be good than for boys," rejoined Hollis in an
argumentative tone,

"Is it? I don't see how."

"Of course you don't. We are in the world where the temptations are; what
temptations do _you_ have?"

"I have enough. But I don't want to go out in the world where more
temptations are. Don't you know--" She colored and stopped,

"Know what?"

"About Christ praying that his disciples might be kept from the evil that
was in the world, not that they might be taken out of the world. They
have _got_ to be in the world."

"Yes."

"And," she added sagely, "anybody can be good where no temptations are."

"Is that why girls are good?"

"I don't think girls are good."

"The girls I know are."

"You know city girls," she said archly. "We country girls have the world
in our own hearts."

There was nothing of "the world" in the sweet face that he looked down
into, nothing of the world in the frank, true voice. He had been wronging
her; how much there was in her, this wise, old, sweet little Marjorie!

"Have you forgotten your errand?" she asked, after a moment.

"No, it is at Mr. Howard's, the house beyond yours."

"I'm glad you had the errand."

"So am I. I should have gone home and not known anything about you."

"And I should have stayed tangled in the black berry vines ever so long,"
she laughed.

"You haven't told me why you were there."

"Because I was silly," she said emphatically.

"Do silly people always hide in blackberry vines?" he questioned,
laughing.

"Silly people like me," she said.

At that moment they stopped in front of the gate of Marjorie's home;
through the lilac-bushes--the old fence was overgrown with lilacs--Hollis
discerned some bright thing glimmering on the piazza. The bright thing
possessed a quick step and a laugh, for it floated towards them and when
it appeared at the gate Hollis found that it was only Linnet.

There was nothing of the mouse about Linnet.

"Why, Marjie, mother said you might stay till dark."

Linnet was seventeen, but she was not too grown up for "mother said" to
be often on her lips.

"I didn't want to," said Marjorie. "Good-bye, Hollis. I'm going to hunt
eggs."

"I'd go with you, it's rare fun to hunt eggs, only I haven't seen
Linnet--yet."

"And you must see Linnet--yet," laughed Linnet, "Hollis, what a big boy
you've grown to be!" she exclaimed regarding him critically; the new
suit, the black onyx watch-chain, the blonde moustache, the full height,
and last of all the friendly brown eyes with the merry light in them.

"What a big girl you've grown to be, Linnet," he retorted surveying her
critically and admiringly.

There was fun and fire and changing lights, sauciness and defiance, with
a pretty little air of deference, about Linnet. She was not unlike his
city girl friends; even her dress was more modern and tasteful than
Marjorie's.

"Marjorie is so little and doesn't care," she often pleaded with their
mother when there was not money enough for both. And Marjorie looked on
and held her peace.

Self-sacrifice was an instinct with Marjorie.

"I am older and must have the first chance," Linnet said.

So Marjorie held back and let Linnet have the chances.

Linnet was to have the "first chance" at going to school in September.
Marjorie stayed one moment looking at the two as they talked, proud of
Linnet and thinking that Hollis must think she, at least, was something
like his cousin Helen, and then she hurried away hoping to return with
her basket of eggs before Hollis was gone. Hollis was almost like some
one in a story-book to her. I doubt if she ever saw any one as other
people saw them; she always saw so much. She needed only an initial; it
was easy enough to fill out the word. She hurried across the yard, opened
the large barn-yard gate, skipped across the barn-yard, and with a little
leap was in the barn floor. Last night she had forgotten to look in the
mow; she would find a double quantity hidden away there to-night. She
wondered if old Queen Bess were still persisting in sitting on nothing in
the mow's far dark corner; tossing away her hindering hat and catching up
an old basket, she ran lightly up the ladder to the mow. She never
remembered that she ran up the ladder.

An hour later--Linnet knew that it was an hour later--Marjorie found
herself moving slowly towards the kitchen door. She wanted to see her
mother. Lifting the latch she staggered in.

She was greeted with a scream from Linnet and with a terrified
exclamation from her mother.

"Marjorie, what _is_ the matter?" cried her mother catching her in her
arms.

"Nothing," said Marjorie, wondering.

"Nothing! You are purple as a ghost!" exclaimed Linnet, "and there's a
lump on your forehead as big as an egg."

"Is there?" asked Marjorie, in a trembling voice.

"Did you fall? Where did you fall?" asked her mother shaking her gently.
"Can't you speak, child?"

"I--didn't--fall," muttered Marjorie, slowly.

"Yes, you did," said Linnet. "You went after eggs."

"Eggs," repeated Marjorie in a bewildered voice.

"Linnet, help me quick to get her on to the sitting-room lounge! Then get
pillows and a comforter, and then run for your father to go for the
doctor."

"There's nothing the matter," persisted the child, smiling weakly. "I can
walk, mother. Nothing hurts me."

"Doesn't your head ache?" asked Linnet, guiding her steps as her head
rested against her mother's breast.

"No."

"Don't you ache _anywhere?_" questioned her mother, as they led her to
the lounge.

"No, ma'am. Why should I? I didn't fall."

Linnet brought the pillow and comforter, and then ran out through the
back yard calling, "Father! Father!"

Down the road Hollis heard the agonized cry, and turning hastened back to
the house.

"Oh, go for the doctor quick!" cried Linnet, catching him by the arm;
"something dreadful has happened to Marjorie, and she doesn't know what
it is."

"Is there a horse in the stable?"

"Oh, no, I forgot. And mother forgot Father has gone to town."

"I'll get a horse then--somewhere on the road--don't be so frightened.
Dr. Peck will be here in twenty minutes after I find him."

Linnet flew back to satisfy her mother that the doctor had been sent for,
and found Marjorie reiterating to her mother's repeated inquiries:

"I don't ache anywhere; I'm not hurt at all."

"Where were you, child."

"I wasn't--anywhere," she was about to say, then smiled, for she knew she
must have been somewhere.

"What happened after you said good-bye to Hollis?" questioned Linnet,
falling on her knees beside her little sister, and almost taking her into
her arms.

"Nothing."

"Oh, dear, you're crazy!" sobbed Linnet.

Marjorie smiled faintly and lifted her hand to stroke Linnet's cheeks.

"I won't hurt _you_," she comforted tenderly.

"I know what I'll do!" exclaimed Mrs. West suddenly and emphatically, "I
can put hot water on that bump; I've heard that's good."

Marjorie closed her eyes and lay still; she was tired of talking about
something that had not happened at all. She remembered afterward that the
doctor came and opened a vein in her arm, and that he kept the blood
flowing until she answered "Yes, sir," to his question, "Does your head
hurt you _now_?" She remembered all their faces--how Linnet cried and
sobbed, how Hollis whispered, "I'll get a pitcher, Mousie, if I have to
go to China for it," and how her father knelt by the lounge when he came
home and learned that it had happened and was all over, how he knelt and
thanked God for giving her back to them all out of her great danger. That
night her mother sat by her bedside all night long, and she remembered
saying to her:

"If I had been killed, I should have waked up in Heaven without knowing
that I had died. It would have been like going to Heaven without dying."




V.

TWO PROMISES.

"He who promiseth runs in debt."


Hollis held a mysterious looking package in his hand when he came in the
next day; it was neatly done up in light tissue paper and tied with
yellow cord. It looked round and flat, not one bit like a pitcher, unless
some pitchers a hundred years ago _were_ flat.

Marjorie lay in delicious repose upon the parlor sofa, with the green
blinds half closed, the drowsiness and fragrance of clover in the air
soothed her, rather, quieted her, for she was not given to nervousness;
a feeling of safety enwrapped her, she was _here_ and not very much hurt,
and she was loved and petted to her heart's content. And that is saying a
great deal for Marjorie, for _her_ heart's content was a very large
content. Linnet came in softly once in a while to look at her with
anxious eyes and to ask, "How do you feel now?" Her mother wandered in
and out as if she could rest in nothing but in looking at her, and her
father had given her one of his glad kisses before he went away to the
mowing field. Several village people having heard of the accident through
Hollis and the doctor had stopped at the door to inquire with a
sympathetic modulation of voice if she were any better. But the safe
feeling was the most blessed of all. Towards noon she lay still with her
white kitten cuddled up in her arms, wondering who would come next;
Hollis had not come, nor Miss Prudence, nor the new minister, nor
grandma, nor Josie Grey; she was wishing they would all come to-day when
she heard a quick step on the piazza and a voice calling out to somebody.

"I won't stay five minutes, father."

The next instant the handsome, cheery face was looking in at the parlor
door and the boisterous "vacation" voice was greeting her with,

"Well, Miss Mousie! How about the tumble down now?"

But her eyes saw nothing excepting the mysterious, flat, round parcel in
his hand.

"Oh, Hollis, I'm so glad!" she exclaimed, raising herself upon one elbow.

The stiff blue muslin was rather crumpled by this time, and in place of
the linen collar and old-fashioned pin her mother had tied a narrow scarf
of white lace about her throat; her hair was brushed back and braided in
two heavy braids and her forehead was bandaged in white.

"Well, Marjorie, you _are_ a picture, I must say," he cried, bounding in.
"Why don't you jump up and take another climb?"

"I want to. I want to see the swallow's nest again; I meant to have fed
the swallows last night"

"Where are they?"

"Oh, up in the eaves. Linnet and I have climbed up and fed them."

As he dropped on his knees on the carpet beside the sofa she fell back on
her pillow.

"Father is waiting for me to go to town with him and I can't stay. You
will soon be climbing up to see the swallows again and hunting eggs and
everything as usual."

"Oh, yes, indeed," said Marjorie, hopefully.

Watching her face he laid the parcel in her hand. "Don't open it till I'm
gone. I had something of a time to get it. The old fellow was as
obstinate as a mule when he saw that my heart was set on it. Mother
hadn't a thing old enough--I ransacked everywhere--if I'd had time to go
to grandmother's I might have done better. She's ninety-three, you know,
and has some of her grandmother's things. This thing isn't a beauty to
look at, but it's old, and that's the chief consideration. Extreme old
age will compensate for its ugliness; which is an extenuation that I
haven't for mine. I'm going to-morrow."

"Oh, I want to see it," she exclaimed, not regarding his last remark.

"That's all you care," he said, disappointedly. "I thought you would be
sorry that I'm going."

"You know I am," she returned penitently, picking at the yellow cord.

"Perhaps when I am two hundred years old you'll be as anxious to look at
me as you are to look at that!"

"Oh, Hollis, I do thank you so."

"But you must promise me two things or you can't have it!"

"I'll promise twenty."

"Two will do until next time. First, will you go and see my mother as
soon as you get well, and go often?"

"That's too easy; I want to do something _hard_ for you," she answered
earnestly.

"Perhaps you will some day, who knows? There are hard enough things to do
for people, I'm finding out. But, have you promised?"

"Yes, I have promised."

"And I know you keep your promises. I'm sure you won't forget. Poor
mother isn't happy; she's troubled."

"About you?"

"No, about herself, because she isn't a Christian."

"That's enough to trouble anybody," said Marjorie, wisely.

"Now, one more promise in payment. Will you write to me every two weeks?"

"Oh, I couldn't," pleaded Marjorie.

"Now you've found something too hard to do for me," he said,
reproachfully.

"Oh, I'll do it, of course; but I'm afraid."

"You'll soon get over that. You see mother doesn't write often, and
father never does, and I'm often anxious about them, and if you write and
tell me about them twice a month I shall be happier. You see you are
doing something for me."

"Yes, thank you. I'll do the best I can. But I can't write like your
cousin Helen," she added, jealously.

"No matter. You'll do; and you will be growing older and constantly
improving and I shall begin to travel for the house by and by and my
letters will be as entertaining as a book of travels."

"Will you write to me? I didn't think of that."

"Goosie!" he laughed, giving her Linnet's pet name. "Certainly I will
write as often as you do, and you mustn't stop writing until your last
letter has not been answered for a month."

"I'll remember," said Marjorie, seriously. "But I wish I could do
something else. Did you have to pay money for it?"

Marjorie was accustomed to "bartering" and that is the reason that she
used the expression "pay money."

"Well, yes, something," he replied, pressing his lips together.

He was angry with the shoemaker about that bargain yet.

"How much? I want to pay you."

"Ladies never ask a gentleman such a question when they make them a
present," he said, laughing as he arose. "Imagine Helen asking me how
much I paid for the set of books I gave her on her birthday."

The tears sprang to Marjorie's eyes. Had she done a dreadful thing that
Helen would not think of doing?

Long afterward she learned that he gave for the plate the ten dollars
that his father gave him for a "vacation present."

"Good-bye, Goosie, keep both promises and don't run up a ladder again
until you learn how to run down."

But she could not speak yet for the choking in her throat.

"You have paid me twice over with those promises," he said. "I am glad
you broke the old yellow pitcher."

So was she even while her heart was aching. Her fingers held the parcel
tightly; what a hearts-ease it was! It had brought her peace of mind that
was worth more hard promises than she could think of making.

"He said his father's great-grandfather had eaten out of that plate over
in Holland and he had but one more left to bequeath to his little
grandson."

"I'm glad the great-grandfather didn't break it," said Marjorie.

Hollis would not disturb her serenity by remarking that the shoemaker
_might_ have added a century to the age of his possession; it looked two
hundred years old, anyway.

"Good-bye, again, if you don't get killed next time you fall you may live
to see me again. I'll wear a linen coat and smell of cheese and smoke a
pipe too long for me to light myself by that time--when I come home from
Germany."

"Oh, don't," she exclaimed, in a startled voice.

"Which? The coat or the cheese or the pipe."

"I don't care about the cheese or the coat--"

"You needn't be afraid about the pipe; I promised mother to-day that I
would never smoke or drink or play cards."

"That's good," said Marjorie, contentedly.

"And so she feels safe about me; safer than I feel about myself, I
reckon. But it _is_ good-bye this time. I'll tell Helen what a little
mouse and goose you are!"

"Hollis! _Hollis!_" shouted a gruff voice, impatiently.

"Aye, aye, sir," Hollis returned. "But I must say good-bye to your mother
and Linnet."

Instead of giving him a last look she was giving her first look to her
treasure. The first look was doubtful. It was not half as pretty as the
pitcher. It was not very large and there were innumerable tiny cracks
interlacing each other, there were little raised figures on the broad rim
and a figure in the centre, the colors were buff and blue. But it was a
treasure, twofold more a treasure than the yellow pitcher, for it was
twice as old and had come from Holland. The yellow pitcher had only come
from England. Miss Prudence would be satisfied that she had not hidden
the pitcher to escape detection, and perhaps her friend might like this
ancient plate a great deal better and be glad of what had befallen the
pitcher. But suppose Miss Prudence did believe all this time that she had
hidden the broken pieces and meant, never to tell! At that, she could not
forbear squeezing her face into the pillow and dropping a few very
sorrowful tears. Still she was glad, even with a little contradictory
faint-heartedness, for Hollis would write to her and she would never lose
him again. And she could _do_ something _for_ him, something hard.

Her mother, stepping in again, before the tears were dried upon her
cheek, listened to the somewhat incoherent story of the naughty thing she
had done and the splendid thing Hollis had done, and of how she had paid
him with two promises.

Mrs. West examined the plate critically. "It's old, there's no sham about
it. I've seen a few old things and I know. I shouldn't wonder if he gave
five dollars for it"

"Five dollars!" repeated Marjorie in affright "Oh, I hope not."

"Well, perhaps not, but it is worth it and more, too, to Miss Prudence's
friend."

"And I'll keep my promises," said Marjorie's steadfast voice.

"H'm," ejaculated her mother. "I rather think Hollis has the best of it."

"That depends upon me," said wise little Marjorie.




VI.

MARJORIE ASLEEP AND AWAKE.

"She was made for happy thoughts."--_Mary Howlet._


I wonder if there is anything, any little thing I should have said, that
tries a woman more than the changes in her own face, a woman that has
just attained two score and--an unmarried woman. Prudence Pomeroy was
discovering these changes in her own face and, it may be undignified, it
may be unchristian even, but she was tried. It was upon the morning of
her fortieth birthday, that, with considerable shrinking, she set out
upon a voyage of discovery upon the unknown sea of her own countenance.
It was unknown, for she had not cared to look upon herself for some
years, but she bolted her chamber door and set herself about it with grim
determination this birthday morning. It was a weakness, it may be, but we
all have hours of weakness within our bolted chamber doors.

She had a hard early morning all by herself; but the battle with herself
did not commence until she shoved that bolt, pushed back the white
curtains, and stationed herself in the full glare of the sun light with
her hand-glass held before her resolute face. It was something to go
through; it was something to go through to read the record of a score of
birthdays past: but she had done that before the breakfast bell rang,
locked the old leathern bound volume in her trunk and arranged herself
for breakfast, and then had run down with her usual tripping step and
kept them all amused with her stories during breakfast time. But that was
before the door was bolted. She gazed long at the reflection of the face
that Time had been at work upon for forty years; there were the tiniest
creases in her forehead, they were something like the cracks in the plate
two hundred years old that Marjorie had sent to her last night, there
were unmistakable lines under her eyes, the pale tint of her cheek did
not erase them nor the soft plumpness render them invisible, they stared
at her with the story of relentless years; at the corners of her lips the
artistic fingers of Time had chiselled lines, delicate, it is true, but
clearly defined--a line that did not dent the cheeks of early maidenhood,
a line that had found no place near her own lips ten years ago; and above
her eyes--she had not discerned that, at first--there was a lack of
fullness, you could not name it hollowness; that was new, at least new to
her, others with keener eyes may have noticed it months ago, and there
was a yellowness--she might as well give it boldly its right name--at the
temple, decrease of fairness, she might call it, but that it was a
positive shade of that yellowness she had noticed in others no older than
herself; and, then, to return to her cheeks, or rather her chin, there
was a laxity about the muscles at the sides of her mouth that gave her
chin an elderly outline! No, it was not only the absence of youth, it was
the presence of age--her full forty years. And her hair! It was certainly
not as abundant as it used to be, it had wearied her, once, to brush out
its thick glossy length; it was becoming unmistakably thinner; she was
certainly slightly bald about the temples, and white hairs were
straggling in one after another, not attempting to conceal themselves. A
year ago she had selected them from the mass of black and cut them short,
but now they were appearing too fast for the scissors. It was a sad face,
almost a gloomy one, that she was gazing into: for the knowledge that her
forty years had done their work in her face as surely, and perhaps not as
sweetly as in her life had come to her with a shock. She was certainly
growing older and the signs of it were in her face, nothing could hide
it, even her increasing seriousness made it more apparent; not only
growing older, but growing old, the girls would say. Twenty years ago,
when she first began to write that birthday record, she had laughed at
forty and called it "old" herself. As she laid the hand-glass aside with
a half-checked sigh, her eyes fell upon her hand and wrist; it was
certainly losing its shapeliness; the fingers were as tapering as ever
and the palm as pink, but--there was a something that reminded her of
that plate of old china. She might be like a bit of old china, but she
was not ready to be laid upon the shelf, not even to be paid a price for
and be admired! She was in the full rush of her working days. Awhile ago
her friends had all addressed her as "Prudence," but now, she was not
aware when it began or how, she was "Miss Prudence" to every one who was
not within the nearest circle of intimacy. Not "Prudie" or "Prue" any
more. She had not been "Prudie" since her father and mother died, and not
"Prue" since she had lost that friend twenty years ago.

In ten short years she would be fifty years old, and fifty was half a
century: old enough to be somebody's grandmother. Was she not the bosom
friend of somebody's grandmother to-day? Laura Harrowgate, her friend
and schoolmate, not one year her senior, was the grandmother of
three-months-old Laura. Was it possible that she herself did not belong
to "the present generation," but to a generation passed away? She had no
daughter to give place to, as Laura had, no husband to laugh at her
wrinkles and gray hairs, as Laura had, and to say, "We're growing old
together." If it were only "together" there would be no sadness in it.
But would she want it to be such a "together" as certain of her friends
shared?

Laura Harrowgate was a grandmother, but still she would gush over that
plate from Holland two centuries old, buy a bracket for it and exhibit it
to her friends. A hand-glass did not make _her_ dolorous. A few years
since she would have rebelled against what the hand-glass revealed; but,
to-day, she could not rebel against God's will; assuredly it _was_ his
will for histories to be written in faces. Would she live a woman's life
and adorn herself with a baby's face? Had not her face been moulded by
her life? Had she stopped thinking and working ten years ago she might,
to-day, have looked at the face she looked at ten years ago. No, she
demurred, not a baby's face, but--then she laughed aloud at herself--was
not her fate the common fate of all? Who, among her friends, at forty
years of age, was ever taken, or mistaken, for twenty-five or thirty? And
if _she_ were, what then? Would her work be worth more to the world?
Would the angels encamp about her more faithfully or more lovingly? And,
then, was there not a face "marred"? Did he live his life upon the earth
with no sign of it in his face? Was it not a part of his human nature to
grow older? Could she be human and not grow old? If she lived she must
grow old; to grow old or to die, that was the question, and then she
laughed again, this time more merrily. Had she made the changes herself
by fretting and worrying; had she taken life too hard? Yes; she had taken
life hard. Another glance into the glass revealed another fact: her neck
was not as full and round and white as it once was: there was a
suggestion of old china about that, too. She would discard linen collars
and wear softening white ruffles; it would not be deceitful to hide
Time's naughty little tracery. She smiled this time; she _was_ coming to
a hard place in her life. She had believed--oh, how much in vain!--that
she had come to all the hard places and waded through them, but here
there was looming up another, fully as hard, perhaps harder, because it
was not so tangible and, therefore, harder to face and fight. The
acknowledging that she had come to this hard place was something. She
remembered the remark of an old lady, who was friendless and poor: "The
hardest time of my life was between forty and forty-five; I had to accept
several bitter facts that after became easier to bear." Prudence Pomeroy
looked at herself, then looked up to God and accepted, submissively, even
cheerfully, his fact that she had begun to grow old, and then, she
dressed herself for a walk and with her sun-umbrella and a volume of
poems started out for her tramp along the road and through the fields to
find her little friend Marjorie. The china plate and pathetic note last
night had moved her strangely. Marjorie was in the beginning of things.
What was her life worth if not to help such as Marjorie live a worthier
life than her own two score years had been?

A face flushed with the long walk looked in at the window upon Marjorie
asleep. The child was sitting near the open window in a wooden rocker
with padded arms and back and covered with calico with a green ground
sprinkled over with butterflies and yellow daisies; her head was thrown
back against the knitted tidy of white cotton, and her hands were resting
in her lap; the blue muslin was rather more crumpled than when she had
seen it last, and instead of the linen collar the lace was knotted about
her throat. The bandage had been removed from her forehead, the swelling
had abated but the discolored spot was plainly visible; her lips were
slightly parted, her cheeks were rosy; if this were the "beginning of
things" it was a very sweet and peaceful beginning.

Entering the parlor with a soft tread Miss Prudence divested herself of
hat, gloves, duster and umbrella, and, taking a large palm leaf fan from
the table, seated herself near the sleeper, gently waving the fan to and
fro as a fly lighted on Marjorie's hands or face. On the window seat were
placed a goblet half filled with lemonade, a small Bible, a book that had
the outward appearance of being a Sunday-school library book, and a copy
in blue and gold of the poems of Mrs. Hemans. Miss Prudence remembered
her own time of loving Mrs. Hemans and had given this copy to Marjorie;
later, she had laid her aside for Longfellow, as Marjorie would do by and
by, and, in his turn, she had given up Longfellow for Tennyson and Mrs.
Browning, as, perhaps, Marjorie would never do. She had brought Jean
Ingelow with her this morning to try "Brothers and a Sermon" and the
"Songs of Seven" with Marjorie. Marjorie was a natural elocutionist; Miss
Prudence was afraid of spoiling her by unwise criticism. The child must
thoroughly appreciate a poem, forget herself, and then her rendering
would be more than Miss Prudence with all her training could perfectly
imitate.

"Don't teach her too much; she'll want to be an actress," remonstrated
Marjorie's father after listening to Marjorie's reading one day.

Miss Prudence laughed and Marjorie looked perplexed.

"Marjorie is to comfort with her reading as some do by singing," she
replied. "Wait till you are old and she reads the Bible to you!"

"She reads to me now," he said. "She read 'The Children of the Lord's
Supper' to me last night."

Miss Prudence moved the fan backward and forward and studied the
sleeping, innocent face. I had almost written "sweet" again; I can
scarcely think of her face, as it was then, without writing sweet. It
would be long, Miss Prudence mused, before lines and creases intruded
here and there in that smooth forehead, and in the tinted cheeks that
dimpled at the least provocation; but life would bring them in time, and
they would add beauty if there were no bitterness nor hardness in them.
If the Holy Spirit dwelt in the temple of the body were not the lines
upon the face his handwriting? She knew more than one old face that
was growing more attractive with each year of life.

The door was pushed open and Mrs. West's broad shoulders and motherly
face appeared. Miss Prudence smiled and laid her finger on her lips and,
smiling, too, the mother moved away. Linnet, in her kitchen apron, and
with the marks of the morning's baking on her fingers, next looked in,
nodded and ran away. After awhile, the sleeping eyelids quivered and
lifted themselves; a quick flush, a joyous exclamation and Marjorie
sprang into her friend's arms.

"I _felt_ as if I were not alone! How long have you been here? Oh, why
_didn't_ you speak to me or touch me?"

"I wanted to have the pleasure all on my side. I never saw you asleep
before."

"I hope I didn't keep my mouth open and snore."

"Oh, no, your lips were gently apart and you breathed regularly as they
would say in books!"

Marjorie laughed, released Miss Prudence from the tight clasp and went
back to her chair.

"You received my note and the plate," she said anxiously.

"Both in perfect preservation. There was not one extra crack in the
plate, it was several hours older than when it left your hands, but that
only increases its value."

"And did you think I was dreadful not to confess before?" asked Marjorie,
tremulously.

"I thought you were dreadful to run away from me instead of _to_ me."

"I was so sorry; I wanted to get something else before you knew about it.
Did you miss it?"

"I missed something in the room, I could not decide what it was."

"Will the plate do, do you think? Is it handsome enough?"

"It is old enough, that is all the question. Do you know all about
Holland when that plate first came into existence?"

"No; I only know there _was_ a Holland."

"That plate will be a good point to begin with. You and I will study up
Holland some day. I wonder what you know about it now."

"Is that why your friend wants the plate, because she knows about Holland
two hundred years ago?"

"No; I'm afraid not. I don't believe she knows more than you do about it.
But she will delight in the plate. Which reminds me, your uncle has
promised to put the unfortunate pitcher together for me. And in its
mended condition it will appear more ancient than ever. I cannot say that
George Washington broke it with his little hatchet; but I can have a
legend about you connected with it, and tell it to your grandchildren
when I show it to them fifty years hence. Unto them I will discover--not
a swan's nest among the reeds, as Mrs. Browning has it, but an old yellow
pitcher that their lovely grandmother was in trouble about fifty years
ago."

"It will be a hundred and fifty years old then," returned Marjorie,
seriously, "and I think," she added rebukingly, "that _you_ were building
castles then."

"I had you and the pitcher for the foundation," said Miss Prudence, in a
tone of mock humility.

"Don't you think--" Marjorie's face had a world of suggestion in
it--"that 'The Swan's Nest' is bad influence for girls? Little Ellie sits
alone and builds castles about her lover, even his horse is 'shod in
silver, housed in azure' and a thousand serfs do call him master, and he
says 'O, Love, I love but thee.'"

"But all she looks forward to is showing him the swan's nest among the
reeds! And when she goes home, around a mile, as she did daily, lo, the
wild swan had deserted and a rat had gnawed the reeds. That was the end
of her fine castle!"

"'If she found the lover, ever,
  Sooth, I know not, but I know
She could never show him, never,
  That swan's nest among the reeds,'"

quoted Marjorie. "So it did all come to nothing."

"As air-castles almost always do. But we'll hope she found something
better."

"Do people?" questioned Marjorie.

"Hasn't God things laid up for us better than we can ask or think or
build castles about?"

"I _hope_ so," said Marjorie; "but Hollis Rheid's mother told mother
yesterday that her life was one long disappointment."

"What did your mother say?"

"She said 'Oh, Mrs. Rheid, it won't be if you get to Heaven, at last.'"

"I think not."

"But she doesn't expect to go to Heaven, she says. Mother says she's
almost in 'despair' and she pities her so!"

"Poor woman! I don't see how she can live through despair. The old
proverb 'If it were not for hope, the heart would break,' is most
certainly true."

"Why didn't you come before?" asked Marjorie, caressing the hand that
still played with the fan.

"Perhaps you never lived on a farm and cannot understand. I could not
come in the ox-cart because the oxen were in the field, and every day
since I heard of your accident your uncle has had to drive your aunt to
Portland on some business. And I did not feel strong enough to walk until
this morning."

"How good you are to walk!"

"As good as you are to walk to see me."

"Oh, but I am young and strong, and I wanted to see you so, and ask you
questions so."

"I believe the latter," said Miss Prudence smiling.

"Well, I'm happy now," Marjorie sighed, with the burden of her trouble
still upon her. "Suppose I had been killed when I fell and had not told
you about the pitcher nor made amends for it."

"I don't believe any of us could be taken away without one moment to make
ready and not leave many things undone--many tangled threads and rough
edges to be taken care of. We are very happy if we have no sin to
confess, no wrong to make right."

"I think Hollis would have taken care of the plate for me," said
Marjorie, simply; "but I wanted to tell you myself. Mother wants to go
home as suddenly as that would have been for me, she says. I shouldn't
wonder if she prays about it--she prays about everything. Do people have
_that_ kind of a prayer answered?"

"I have known more than one instance--and I read about a gentleman who
had desired to be taken suddenly and he was killed by lightning while
sitting on his own piazza."

"Oh!" said Marjorie.

"That was all he could have wished. And the mother of my pastor at home,
who was over ninety, was found dead on her knees at her bedside, and she
had always wished to be summoned suddenly."

"When she was speaking to him, too," murmured Marjorie. "I like old
people, don't you? Hollis' grandmother is at his house and Mrs. Rheid
wants me to go to see her; she is ninety-three and blind, and she loves
to tell stories about herself, and I am to stay all day and listen to her
and take up her stitches when she drops them in her knitting work and
read the Bible to her. She won't listen to anything but the Bible; she
says she's too old to hear other books read."

"What a treat you will have!"

"Isn't it lovely? I never had _that_ day in my air-castles, either. Nor
you coming to stay all day with me, nor writing to Hollis. I had a letter
from him last night, the funniest letter! I laughed all the time I was
reading it. He begins: 'Poor little Mousie,' and ends, 'ours, till next
time.' I'll show it to you. He doesn't say much about Helen. I shall tell
him if I write about his mother he must write about Helen. I'm sorry to
tell him what his mother said yesterday about herself but I promised and
I must be faithful."

"I hope you will have happy news to write soon."

"I don't know; she says the minister doesn't do her any good, nor reading
the Bible nor praying. Now what can help her?"

"God," was the solemn reply. "She has had to learn that the minister and
Bible reading and prayer are not God. When she is sure that God will do
all the helping and saving, she will be helped and saved. Perhaps she has
gone to the minister and the Bible instead of to God, and she may have
thought her prayers could save her instead of God."

"She said she was in despair because they did not help her and she did
not know where to turn next," said Marjorie, who had listened with
sympathetic eyes and aching heart.

"Don't worry about her, dear, God is teaching her to turn to himself."

"I told her about the plate, but she did not seem to care much. What
different things people _do_ care about!" exclaimed Marjorie, her eyes
alight with the newness of her thought.

"Mrs. Harrowgate will never be perfectly satisfied until she has a
memorial of Pompeii. I've promised when I explore underground I'll find
her a treasure. Your Holland plate is something for her small collection;
she has but eighty-seven pieces of china, while a friend of hers has
gathered together two hundred."

"What do _you_ care for most, Miss Prudence?

"In the way of collections? I haven't shown you my penny buried in the
lava of Mt. Vesuvius; I told my friend that savored of Pompeii, the only
difference is one is above ground and the other underneath, but I
couldn't persuade her to believe it."

"I don't mean collecting coins or things; I mean what do you care for
_most_?"

"If you haven't discovered, I cannot care very much for what I care for
most."

Marjorie laughed at this way of putting it, then she answered gravely: "I
do know. I think you care most--" she paused, choosing her phrase
carefully--"to help people make something out of themselves."

"Thank you. That's fine. I never put it so excellently to myself."

"I haven't found out what I care most for."

"I think I know. You care most to make something out of yourself."

"Do I? Isn't that selfish? But I don't know how to help any one else, not
even Linnet."

"Making the best of ourselves is the foundation for making something out
of others."

"But I didn't say _that_" persisted Marjorie. "You help people to do it
for themselves."

"I wonder if that is my work in the world," rejoined Miss Prudence,
musingly. "I could not choose anything to fit me better--I had no thought
that I have ever succeeded; I never put it to myself in that way."

"Perhaps I'll begin some day. Helen Rheid helps Hollis. He isn't the same
boy; he studies and buys books and notices things to be admired in
people, and when he is full of fun he isn't rough. I don't believe I ever
helped anybody."

"You have some work to do upon yourself first. And I am sure you have
helped educate your mother and father."

Marjorie pulled to pieces the green leaf that had floated in upon her lap
and as she kept her eyes on the leaf she pondered.

Her companion was "talking over her head" purposely to-day; she had a
plan for Marjorie and as she admitted to herself she was "trying the
child to see what she was made of."

She congratulated herself upon success thus far.

"That children do educate their mothers is the only satisfactory reason I
have found when I have questioned why God does give children to _some_
mothers."

"Then what becomes of the children?" asked Marjorie, alarmed.

"The Giver does not forget them; he can be a mother himself, you know."

Marjorie did not know; she had always had her mother. Had she lost
something, therefore, in not thus finding out God? Perhaps, in after life
she would find his tenderness by losing--or not having--some one else. It
was not too bad, for it would be a great pity if there were not such
interruptions, but at this instant Linnet's housewifely face was pushed
in at the door, and her voice announced: "Dinner in three minutes and a
half! Chicken-pie for the first course and some new and delicious thing
for dessert."

"Oh, splendid!" cried Marjorie, hopping up. "And we'll finish everything
after dinner, Miss Prudence."

"As the lady said to the famous traveller at a dinner party: 'We have
five minutes before dinner, please tell me all about your travels,'" said
Miss Prudence, rising and laughing.

"You remember you haven't told me what you sent me for the Bible to show
me that unhappy--no, happy time--I broke the picture," reminded Marjorie,
leading the way to the dining-room.




VII.

UNDER THE APPLE-TREE.

"Never the little seed stops in its growing."--_Mrs. Osgood._


Linnet moved hither and thither, after the dinner dishes were done, all
through the house, up stairs and down, to see that everything was in
perfect order before she might dress and enjoy the afternoon. Linnet was
pre-eminently a housekeeper, to her mother's great delight, for her
younger daughter was not developing according to her mind in housewifely
arts.

"That will come in time," encouraged Marjorie's father when her mother
spoke faultfindingly of some delinquency in the kitchen.

"I should like to know _what_ time!" was the sharp reply.

It was queer about Marjorie's mother, she was as sharp as she was
good-humored.

"Linnet has no decided tastes about anything but housekeeping and
fancy-work, and Marjorie has some other things to be growing in," said
her father.

"I wish she would grow to some purpose then," was the energetic reply.

"As the farmer said about his seed before it was time for it to sprout,"
laughed the children's father.

This father and mother could not talk confidentially together five
minutes without bringing the "children" in.

Their own future was every day; but the children had not begun to live in
theirs yet; their golden future, which was to be all the more golden
because of their parents' experiences.

This mother was so very old-fashioned that she believed that there was no
career open to a girl beside marriage; the dreadful alternative was
solitary old-maidenhood. She was a good mother, in many respects a wise
mother; but she would not have slept that night had she believed that
either of her daughters would attain to thirty years unmarried. This may
have been owing to a defect of education, or it may have been that she
was so happily married to a husband six years her junior--whom she could
manage. And she was nearly thirty when she was married herself and had
really begun to believe that she should never be married at all. She
believed marriage to be so honorable in all, that the absence of it, as
in Miss Prudence's case, was nearly dishonorable. She was almost a Jewish
mother in her reverence for marriage and joyfulness for the blessing of
children. This may have been the result of her absorbed study of the Old
Testament Scriptures. Marjorie had wondered why her mother in addressing
the Lord had cried, "O, Lord God of Israel," and instead of any other
name nearer New Testament Christians, she would speak of him as "The Holy
One of Israel." Sometimes I have thought that Marjorie's mother began her
religious life as a Jew, and that instead of being a Gentile Christian
she was in reality a converted Jew, something like what Elizabeth would
have been if she had been more like Marjorie's mother and Graham West's
wife. This type of womanhood is rare in this nineteenth century; for
aught I know, she is not a representative woman, at all; she is the only
one I ever knew, and perhaps you never saw any one like her. She has no
heresies, she can prove every assertion from the Bible, her principles
are as firm as adamant and her heart as tender as a mother's. Still,
marriage and motherhood have been her education; if the Connecticut,
school-teacher had not realized her worth, she might have become what she
dreaded her own daughters becoming--an old maid with uncheerful views of
life. In planning their future she looked into her own heart instead of
into theirs.

The children were lovely blossomings of the seed in the hearts of both
parents; of seeds, that in them had not borne abundant fruitage.

"How did two such cranky old things ever have such happy children!" she
exclaimed one day to her husband.

"Perhaps they will become what we stopped short of being," he replied.

Graham West was something of a philosopher; rather too much of a
philosopher for his wife's peace of mind. To her sorrow she had learned
that he had no "business tact," he could not even scrape a comfortable
living off his scrubby little farm.

But I began with Linnet and fell to discoursing about her mother; it was
Linnet, as she appeared in her grayish brown dress with a knot of crimson
at her throat, running down the stairway, that suggested her mother's
thought to me.

"Linnet is almost growing up," she had said to herself as she removed her
cap for her customary afternoon nap. This afternoon nap refreshed her
countenance and kept her from looking six years older than her husband.
Mrs. West was not a worldly woman, but she did not like to look six years
older than her husband.

Linnet searched through parlor and hall, then out on the piazza, then
looked through the front yard, and, finally, having explored the garden,
found Marjorie and her friend in camp-chairs on the soft green turf under
the low hanging boughs of an apple-tree behind the house. There were two
or three books in Marjorie's lap, and Miss Prudence was turning the
leaves of Marjorie's Bible. She was answering one of Marjorie's questions
Linnet supposed and wondered if Marjorie would be satisfied with the
answer; she was not always satisfied, as the elder sister knew to her
grievance. For instance: Marjorie had said to her yesterday, with that
serious look in her eyes: "Linnet, father says when Christ was on earth
people didn't have wheat ground into fine flour as we do;--now when it is
so much nicer, why do you suppose he didn't tell them about grinding it
fine?"

"Perhaps he didn't think of it," she replied, giving the first thought
that occurred to her.

"That isn't the reason," returned Marjorie, "for he could think of
everything he wanted to."

"Then--for the same reason why didn't he tell them about chloroform and
printing and telegraphing and a thousand other inventions?" questioned
Linnet in her turn.

"That's what I want to know," said Marjorie.

Linnet settled herself on the turf and drew her work from her pocket; she
was making a collar of tatting for her mother's birthday and working at
it at every spare moment. It was the clover leaf pattern, that she had
learned but a few weeks ago; the thread was very fine and she was doing
it exquisitely. She had shown it to Hollis because he was in the lace
business, and he had said it was a fine specimen of "real lace." To make
real lace was one of Linnet's ambitions. The lace around Marjorie's neck
was a piece that their mother had made towards her own wedding outfit.
Marjorie's mother sighed and feared that Marjorie would never care to
make lace for her wedding outfit.

Linnet frowned over her clover leaf and Marjorie watched Miss Prudence as
she turned the leaves. Marjorie did not care for the clover leaf, only as
she was interested in everything that Linnet's fingers touched, but
Linnet did care for the answer to Marjorie's question. She thought
perhaps it was about the wheat.

The Bible leaves were still, after a second Miss Prudence read:

"'For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even
weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ.'"

_That_ was not the answer, Linnet thought.

"What does that mean to you, Marjorie?" asked Miss Prudence.

"Why--it can't mean anything different from what it says. Paul was so
sorry about the people he was writing about that he wept as he told
them--he was so sorry they were enemies of the cross of Christ."

"Yes, he told them even weeping. But I knew an old gentleman who read the
Bible unceasingly--I saw one New Testament that he had read through
fifteen times--and he told me once that some people were so grieved
because they were the enemies of the cross of Christ that they were
enemies even weeping. I asked 'Why did they continue enemies, then?' and
he said most ingenuously that he supposed they could not help it. Then I
remembered this passage, and found it, and read it to him as I read it to
you just now. He was simply astounded. He put on his spectacles and read
it for himself. And then he said nothing. He had simply put the comma in
the wrong place. He had read it in this way: 'For many walk, of whom I
have told you often and now tell you, even weeping that they are the
enemies of the cross of Christ.'"

"Oh," cried Marjorie, drawing an astonished long breath, "what a
difference it does make."

"Now I know, it's punctuation you're talking about," exclaimed Linnet.
"Marjorie told me all about the people in the stage-coach. O, Miss
Prudence, I don't love to study; I want to go away to school, of course,
but I can't see the _use_ of so many studies. Marjorie _loves_ to study
and I don't; perhaps I would if I could see some use beside 'being like
other people.' Being like other people doesn't seem to me to be a _real_
enough reason."

Linnet had forgotten her clover leaf, she was looking at Miss Prudence
with eyes as grave and earnest as Marjorie's ever were. She did not love
to study and it was one of the wrong doings that she had confessed in her
prayers many a time.

"Well, don't you see the reason now for studying punctuation?"

"Yes, I do," she answered heartily. "But we don't like dates, either of
us."

"Did you ever hear about Pompeii, the city buried long ago underground?"

Linnet thought that had nothing to do with her question.

"Oh, yes," said Marjorie, "we have read about it. 'The Last Days of
Pompeii' is in the school library. I read it, but Linnet didn't care for
it."

"Do you know _when_ it was buried?"

"No," said Linnet, brightening.

"Have you any idea?"

"A thousand years ago?" guessed Marjorie.

"Then you do not know how long after the Crucifixion?"

"No," they replied together.

"You know when the Crucifixion was, of course?"

"Why--yes," admitted Linnet, hesitatingly.

"Christ was thirty-three years old," said Marjorie, "so it must have been
in the year 33, or the beginning of 34."

"Of course I know _Anno Domini_," said Linnet; "but I don't always know
what happened before and after."

"Suppose we were walking in one of the excavated streets of Pompeii and I
should say, 'O, girls! Look at that wall!' and you should see a rude
cross carved on it, what would you think?"

"I should think they knew about Christ," answered Linnet.

The clover leaf tatting had fallen into her lap and the shuttle was on
the grass.

"Yes, and is that all?"

"Why, yes," she acknowledged.

"Pompeii wasn't so far, so very far from Jerusalem and--they could hear,"
said Marjorie.

"And you two would pass on to a grand house with a wonderful mosaic floor
and think no more about the cross."

"I suppose we would," said Linnet "Wouldn't you?"

"But I should think about the cross. I should think that the city was
destroyed in 79 and be rejoiced that the inhabitants had heard of the
Cross and knew its story before swift destruction overtook them. It was
destroyed about forty-five years after the Crucifixion."

"I _like_ to know that," said Marjorie. "Perhaps some of the people in it
had seen St. Paul and heard him tell about the Cross."

"I see some use in that date," said Linnet, picking up her shuttle.

"Suppose I should tell you that once on a time a laborer would have to
work fifteen years to earn enough to buy a Bible and then the Bible must
be in Latin, wouldn't you like to know when it was."

"I don't know when the Bible was printed in English," confessed Marjorie.

"If you did know and knew several other things that happened about that
time you would be greatly interested. Suppose I should tell you about
something that happened in England, you would care very much more if you
knew about something that was linked with it in France, and in Germany.
If I say 1517 I do not arouse your enthusiasm; you don't know what was
happening in Germany then; and 1492 doesn't remind you of anything--"

"Yes, it does," laughed Marjorie, "and so does 1620."

"Down the bay on an island stand the ruins of a church, and an old lady
told me it was built in 1604. I did not contradict her, but I laughed
all to myself."

"I know enough to laugh at that," said Linnet.

"But I have seen in America the spot where Jamestown stood and that dates
almost as far back. Suppose I tell you that Martin Luther read _Pilgrims
Progress_ with great delight, do you know whether I am making fun or not?
If I say that Queen Elizabeth wrote a letter to Cleopatra, do you know
whether I mean it or not? And if I say that Richard the Third was
baptized by St. Augustine, can you contradict it? And Hannah More wrote a
sympathetic letter to Joan of Arc, and Marie Antoinette danced with
Charlemagne, and George Washington was congratulated on becoming
President by Mary Queen of Scots."

The girls could laugh at this for they had an idea that the Queen of
Scots died some time before the first president of the United States was
born; but over the other names and incidents they looked at each other
gravely.

"Life is a kind of conglomeration without dates," said Linnet.

"I wonder if you know how long ago the flood was!" suggested Miss
Prudence, "or if Mahomet lived before the flood or after," she added,
seriously.

Marjorie smiled, but Linnet was serious.

"You confuse me so," said Linnet. "I believe I don't know when anything
_was_. I don't know how long since Adam was made. Do you, Marjorie?"

"No," in the tone of one dreadfully ashamed.

"And now I'll tell you a lovely thought out of the Bible that came
through dates. I did not discover it myself, of course."

"I don't see why 'of course,'" Marjorie said in a resentful tone. "You
_do_ discover things."

"I discover little girls once in a while," returned Miss Prudence with a
rare softening of lips and eyes.

If it had not been for a few such discoveries the lines about Miss
Prudence's lips might have been hard lines.

"Of course you both remember the story of faithful old Abraham, how he
longed and longed for a son and hoped against hope, and, after waiting
so long, Isaac was born at last. He had the sure promise of God that in
his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed. Do you know
how many nations Abraham knew about? Did he know about France and England
and America, the Empire of Russia and populous China?"

Linnet looked puzzled; Marjorie was very grave.

"Did he know that the North American Indians would be blessed in him? Did
he know they would learn that the Great Spirit had a Son, Jesus Christ?
And that Jesus Christ was descended from him?"

"I--don't--know," said Marjorie, doubtfully. "I get all mixed up."

"It was because all the world would be blessed that he was so anxious to
have a son. And, then, after Isaac was born and married for years and
years the promise did not seem to come true, for he had no child. Must
the faithful, hopeful old father die with his hope deferred? We read that
Abraham died in a good old age, an old man, full of years, and Isaac and
Ishmael buried him, and farther on in the same chapter we find that the
twin boys are born, Jacob and Esau. But their old grandfather was dead.
He knew now how true God is to his promises, because he was in Heaven,
but we can't help wishing he had seen those two strong boys from one of
whom the Saviour of the whole world was to descend. But if we look at
Abraham's age when he died, and comparing it with Isaac's when the twins
were born, we find that the old man, truly, had to wait twenty years
before they were born, but that he really lived to see them seventeen or
eighteen years of age. He lived to tell them with his own lips about that
wonderful promise of God."

"Oh, I'm so glad!" cried Marjorie, enthusiastically.

"He had another long time to wait, too," said Linnet.

"Yes, he had hard times all along," almost sighed Miss Prudence.

Forty years old did not mean to her that her hard times were all over.

"But he had such a good time with the boys," said Marjorie, who never
could see the dark side of anything. "Just to think of _dates_ telling us
such a beautiful thing."

"That's all you hate, dates and punctuation," Linnet declared; "but I
can't see the use of ever so many other things."

"If God thought it worth while to make the earth and people it and
furnish it and govern it with laws, don't you think it worth your poor
little while to learn what he has done?" queried Miss Prudence, gently.

"Oh!" exclaimed Linnet, "is _that_ it?"

"Just it," said Miss Prudence, smiling, "and some day I will go over with
you each study by itself and show you how it will educate you and help
you the better to do something he asks you to do."

"Oh, how splendid!" cried Linnet. "Before I go to school, so the books
won't seem hard and dry?"

"Yes, any day that you will come to me. Marjorie may come too, even
though she loves to study."

"I wonder if you can find any good in Natural Philosophy," muttered
Linnet, "and in doing the examples in it. And in remembering the signs
of the Zodiac! Mr. Holmes makes us learn everything; he won't let us
skip."

"He is a fine teacher, and you might have had, if you had been so minded,
a good preparation for your city school."

"I haven't," said Linnet. "If it were not for seeing the girls and
learning how to be like city girls, I would rather stay home."

"Perhaps that knowledge would not improve you. What then?"

"Why, Miss Prudence!" exclaimed Marjorie, "don't you think we country
girls are away behind the age?"

"In the matter of dates! But you need not be. With such a teacher as you
have you ought to do as well as any city girl of your age. And there's
always a course of reading by yourself."

"It isn't always," laughed Linnet, "it is only for the studiously
disposed."

"I was a country girl, and when I went to the city to school I did not
fail in my examination."

"Oh, _you_!" cried Linnet.

"I see no reason why you, in your happy, refined, Christian home, with
all the sweet influences of your healthful, hardy lives, should not be as
perfectly the lady as any girl I know."

Marjorie clapped her hands. Oh, if Hollis might only hear this! And Miss
Prudence _knew_.

"I thought I had to go to a city school, else I couldn't be refined and
lady-like," said Linnet.

"That does not follow. All city girls are not refined and lady-like; they
may have a style that you haven't, but that style is not always to their
advantage. It is true that I do not find many young ladies in your little
village that I wish you to take as models, but the fault is in them, as
well as in some of their surroundings. You have music, you have books,
you have perfection of beauty in shore and sea, you have the Holy Spirit,
the Educator of mankind."

The girls were awed and silent.

"I have been shocked at the rudeness of city girls, and I have been
charmed with the tact and courtesy of more than one country maiden.
Nowadays education and the truest culture may be had everywhere."

"Even in Middlefield," laughed Marjorie her heart brimming over with the
thought that, after all, she might be as truly a lady as Helen Rheid.

If Linnet had been as excited as Marjorie was, at that moment, she would
have given a bound into the grass and danced all around. But Marjorie
only sat still trembling with a flush in eyes and cheeks.

"I think I'll keep a list of the books I read," decided Marjorie after a
quiet moment.

"That's a good plan. I'll show you a list I made in my girlhood, some
day. But you mustn't read as many as an Englishman read,--Thomas Henry
Buckle,--his library comprised twenty-two thousand."

"He didn't read them _all,_" cried Linnet.

"He read parts of all, and some attentively, I dare say. He was a rapid
reader and had the rare faculty of being able to seize on what he needed
to use. He often read three volumes a day. But I don't advise you to copy
him. I want you to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. He could
absorb, but, we'll take it for granted that you must plod on steadily,
step by step. He read through Johnson's Dictionary to enlarge his
vocabulary."

"Vocabulary!" repeated Linnet.

"His stock of words," exclaimed Marjorie. "Miss Prudence!" with a new
energy in her voice, "I'm going to read Webster through."

"Well," smiled Miss Prudence.

"Don't you believe I _can?_"

"Oh, yes."

"Then I will. I'll be like Buckle in one thing. I'll plan to read so many
pages a day. We've got a splendid one; mother got it by getting
subscriptions to some paper. Mother will do _anything_ to help us on,
Miss Prudence."

"I have learned that. I have a plan to propose to her by and by."

"Oh, can't you tell us?" entreated Linnet, forgetting her work.

"Not yet."

"Does it concern _us?_" asked Marjorie.

"Yes, both of you."

Two hours since it had "concerned" only Marjorie, but in this hour under
the apple-tree Miss Prudence had been moved to include Linnet, also.
Linnet was not Marjorie, she had mentally reasoned, but she was Linnet
and had her own niche in the world. Was she not also one of her little
sisters that were in the world and not of it?

"When may we know?" questioned Linnet

"That depends. Before I leave your grandfather's, I hope."

"I know it is something good and wonderful, because you thought of it,"
said Marjorie. "Perhaps it is as good as one of our day-dreams coming
true."

"It may be something very like one of them, but the time may not be yet.
It will not do you any harm to know there's something pleasant ahead,
if it can be arranged."

"I do like to know things that are going to happen to us," Linnet
confessed. "I used to wish I could dream and have the dreams come true."

"Like the wicked ancients who used to wrap themselves in skins of beasts
and stay among the graves and monuments to sleep and dream--and in the
temples of the idols, thinking the departed or the idols would foretell
to them in dreams. Isaiah reproves the Jews for doing this. And Sir
Walter Scott, in his notes to 'The Lady of the Lake,' tells us something
about a similar superstition among the Scotch."

"I like to know about superstitions," said Linnet, "but I'd be afraid to
do that."

"Miss Prudence, I haven't read 'The Lady of the Lake'!" exclaimed
Marjorie.

"No, imitator of Buckle, you haven't. But I'll send it to you when I go
home."

"What did Buckle _do_ with all his learning?" inquired Marjorie.

"I haven't told you about half of his learning. He wrote a work of great
learning, that startled the world somewhat, called 'The History of
Civilization,' in which he attempted to prove that the differences
between nations and peoples were almost solely to be attributed to
physical causes that food had more to do with the character of a
nation than faith."

"Didn't the Israelites live on the same food that the Philistines did?"
asked Marjorie, "and didn't--"

"Are you getting ready to refute him? The Jews could not eat pork, you
remember."

"And because they didn't eat pork they believed in one true God!"
exclaimed Marjorie, indignantly. "I don't like his book, Miss Prudence."

"Neither do I. And we need not read it, even if he did study twenty-two
thousand books and Johnson's Dictionary to help him write it."

"Why didn't he study Webster?" asked Linnet.

"Can't you think and tell me?"

"No."

"Can you not, Marjorie?"

"Because he was English, I suppose, and Johnson wrote the English
Dictionary and Webster the American."

"An Irish lady told me the other day that Webster was no authority. I
wish I could tell you all about Johnson; I love him, admire him, and pity
him."

Marjorie laughed and squeezed Miss Prudence's hand. "Don't you wish you
could tell us about every _body_ and every _thing_, Miss Prudence?"

"And then help you use the knowledge. I am glad of your question,
Marjorie, 'What did Mr. Buckle _do_ with his knowledge?' If I should
learn a new thing this week and not use it next week I should feel
guilty."

"I don't know how to use knowledge," said Linnet.

"You are putting your knowledge of tatting to very good service."

"Miss Prudence, will you use your things on me?" inquired Marjorie,
soberly.

"That is just what I am hoping to do."

"Hillo! Hillo! Hillo!" sounded a voice behind the woodshed. After a
moment a tall figure emerged around a corner, arrayed in coarse working
clothes, with a saw over his shoulders.

"Hillo! gals, I can't find your father. Tell him I left my saw here for
him to file."

"I will," Linnet called back.

"That's African John," explained Linnet as the figure disappeared around
the corner of the woodshed. "I wish I had asked him to stay and tell you
some of his adventures."

"_African_ John. He is not an African;" said Miss Prudence.

"No, oh no; he's Captain Rheid's cousin. People call him that because he
was three years in Africa. He was left on the coast. It happened this
way. He was only a sailor and he went ashore with another sailor and they
got lost in a jungle or something like it and when they came back to the
shore they saw the sails of their ship in the distance and knew it had
gone off and left them. The man with him fell down dead on the sand and
he had to stay three years before a ship came. He's an old man now and
that happened years and years ago. Captain Rheid can't tell anything more
frightful than that. Mother had a brother lost at sea, they supposed so,
for he never came back; if I ever have anybody go and not come back I'll
never, never, _never_ give him up."

"Never, never, never give him up," echoed Miss Prudence in her heart.

"They thought Will Rheid was lost once, but he came back! Linnet didn't
give him up, and his father and mother almost did."

"I'd never give him up," said Linnet again, emphatically.

"Will Rheid," teased Marjorie, "or anybody?"

"Anybody," replied Linnet, but she twitched at her work and broke her
thread.

"Now, girls, I'm going in to talk to your mother awhile, and then perhaps
Linnet will walk part of the way home with me," said Miss Prudence.

"To talk about _that_," cried Marjorie.

"I'll tell you by and by."




VIII.

BISCUITS AND OTHER THINGS.

"I am rather made for giving than taking."--_Mrs. Browning._


Mrs. West had been awakened from her nap with an uncomfortable feeling
that something disagreeable had happened or was about to happen; she felt
"impressed" she would have told you. Pushing the light quilt away from
her face she arose with a decided vigor, determined to "work it off" if
it were merely physical; she brushed her iron gray hair with steady
strokes and already began to feel as if her presentiment were groundless;
she bathed her cheeks in cool water, she dressed herself carefully in her
worn black and white barège, put on her afternoon cap, a bit of black
lace with bows of narrow black ribbon, fastened the linen collar Linnet
had worked with button-hole stitch with the round gold and black
enamelled pin that contained locks of the light hair of her two lost
babes, and then felt herself ready for the afternoon, even ready for the
minister and his stylish wife, if they should chance to call. But she was
not ready without her afternoon work; she would feel fidgety unless she
had something to keep her fingers moving; the afternoon work happened to
be a long white wool stocking for Linnet's winter wear. Linnet must have
new ones, she decided; she would have no time to darn old ones, and
Marjorie might make the old ones do another winter; it was high time for
Marjorie to learn to mend.

The four shining knitting needles were clicking in the doorway of the
broad little entry that opened out to the green front yard when Miss
Prudence found her way around to the front of the house. The ample figure
and contented face made a picture worth looking at, and Miss Prudence
looked at it a moment before she announced her presence by speaking.

"Mrs. West, I want to come to see you a little while--may I?"

Miss Prudence had a pretty, appealing way of speaking, oftentimes, that
caused people to feel as if she were not quite grown up. There was
something akin to childlikeness in her voice and words and manner,
to-day. She had never felt so humble in her life, as to-day when her
whole life loomed up before her--one great disappointment.

"I was just thinking that I would go and find you after I had turned the
heel; I haven't had a talk with you yet."

"I want it," returned the younger lady, seating herself on the upper step
and leaning back against the door post. "I've been wanting to be
_mothered_ all day. I have felt as if the sunshine were taking me into
its arms, and as if the soft warm grass were my mother's lap."

"Dear child, you have had trouble in your life, haven't you?" replied the
motherly voice.

Miss Prudence was not impulsive, at least she believed that she had
outgrown yielding to a sudden rush of feeling, but at these words she
burst into weeping, and drawing nearer dropped her head in the broad lap.

"There, there, deary! Cry, if it makes you feel any better," hushed the
voice that had rocked babies to sleep.

After several moments of self-contained sobbing Miss Prudence raised her
head. "I've never told any one, but I feel as if I wanted to tell you. It
is so long that it makes me feel old to speak of it. It is twenty years
ago since it happened. I had a friend that I love as girls love the man
they have chosen to marry; father admired him, and said he was glad to
leave me with such a protector. Mother had been dead about a year and
father was dying with consumption; they had no one to leave me with
excepting this friend; he was older than I, years older, but I admired
him all the more for that. Father had perfect trust in him. I think
the trouble hastened father's death. He had a position of trust--a great
deal of money passed through his hands. Like every girl I liked diamonds
and he satisfied me with them; father used to look grave and say:
'Prudie, your mother didn't care for such things.' But I cared for mine.
I had more jewels than any of my friends; and he used to promise that I
should have everything I asked for. But I did not want anything if I
might have him. My wedding dress was made--our wedding tour was all
planned: we were to come home to his beautiful house and father was to be
with us. Father and I were so contented over our plans; he seemed just
like himself that last evening that we laughed and talked. But he--my
friend was troubled and left early; when he went away he caught me in his
arms and held me. 'God bless you, bless you' he said, and then he said,
'May he forgive me!' I could not sleep that night, the words sounded in
my ears. In the morning I unburdened myself to father, I always told him
everything, and he was as frightened as I. Before two days we knew all.
He had taken--money--that was not his own, thousands of dollars, and he
was tried and sentenced. I sent them all my diamonds and everything that
would bring money, but that was only a little of the whole. They sent
him--to state-prison, to hard labor, for a term of five years. Father
died soon after and I had not any one nearer than an aunt or cousin. I
thought my heart broke with the shame and dishonor. I have lived in many
places since. I have money enough to do as I like--because I do not like
to do very much, perhaps. But I can't forget. I can't forget the shame.
And I trusted him so! I believed in him. He had buried a young wife years
ago, and was old and wise and good! When I see diamonds they burn into me
like live coals. I would have given up my property and worked for my
living, but father made me bind myself with a solemn promise that I would
not do it. But I have sought out many that he wronged, and given them all
my interest but the sum I compelled myself to live on. I have educated
two or three orphans, and I help every month several widows and one or
two helpless people who suffered through him. Father would be glad of
that, if he knew how comfortably I can live on a limited income. I have
made my will, remembering a number of people, and if they die before I
do, I shall keep trace of their children. I do all I can; I would, rather
give all my money up, but it is my father's money until I die."

Mrs. West removed a knitting needle from between her lips and knit it
into the heel she had "turned."

"Where is he--now?" she asked.

"I never saw him after that night--he never wrote to me; I went to him in
prison but he refused to see me. I have heard of him many times through
his brother; he fled to Europe as soon as he was released, and has never
returned home--to my knowledge. I think his brother has not heard from
him for some years. When I said I had not a friend, I did not mention
this brother; he was young when it happened, too young to have any pity
for his brother; he was very kind to me, they all were. This brother was
a half-brother--there were two mothers--and much younger."

"What was his name?"

Mrs. West did not mean to be inquisitive, but she did want to know and
not simply for the sake of knowing.

"Excuse me--but I must keep the secret for his brother's sake. He's the
only one left."

"I may not know the name of the bank then?"

"If you knew that you would know all. But _I_ know that your husband lost
his small patrimony in it--twenty-five hundred dollars--"

"H'm," escaped Mrs. West's closely pressed lips.

"And that is one strong reason why I want to educate your two daughters."

The knitting dropped from the unsteady fingers.

"And I've fretted and fretted about that money, and asked the Lord how my
girls ever were to be educated."

"You know now," said Miss Prudence. "I had to tell you, for I feared that
you would not listen to my plan. You may guess how I felt when your
sister-in-law, Mrs. Easton, told me that she was to take Linnet for a
year or two and let her go to school. At first I could not see my way
clear, my money is all spent for a year to come--I only thought of taking
Marjorie home with me--but, I have arranged it so that I can spare a
little; I have been often applied to to take music pupils, and if I do
that I can take one of the girls home with me and send her to school;
next year I will take all the expense upon myself, wardrobe and all.
There is a cheap way of living in large cities as well as an expensive
one. If Linnet goes to Boston with her aunt, she will be kept busy out of
school hours. Mrs. Easton is very kindhearted but she considers no one
where her children are concerned. If I wore diamonds that Linnet's money
purchased, aren't you willing she shall eat bread and butter my money
purchases?"

"But you gave the diamonds up?"

"I wore them, though."

"That diamond plea has done duty a good many times, I guess," said Mrs.
West, smiling down upon the head in her lap.

"No, it hasn't. His brother has done many things for me; people are ready
enough to take money from his brother, and the widows are my friends. It
has not been difficult. It would have been without him."

"The nights I've laid awake and made plans. My little boys died in
babyhood. I imagine their father and I would have mortgaged the farm, and
I would have taken in washing, and he would have gone back to his trade
to send those boys through college. But the girls don't need a college
education. The boys might have been ministers--one of them, at least. But
I would like the girls to have a piano, they both play so well on the
melodeon! I would like them to be--well, like you, Miss Prudence, and not
like their rough, hardworking old mother. I've shed tears enough about
their education, and told the Lord about it times enough. If the Boston
plan didn't suit, we had another, Graham and I--he always listens and
depends upon my judgment. I'm afraid, sometimes, I depend upon my own
judgment more than upon the Lord's wisdom. But this plan was--" the
knitting needle was being pushed vigorously through her back hair now,
"to exchange the farm for a house and lot in town--Middlefield is quite a
town, you know--and he was to go back to his trade, and I was to take
boarders, and the girls were to take turns in schooling and
accomplishments. I am not over young myself, and he isn't over strong,
but we had decided on that. I shed some tears over it, and he looked pale
and couldn't sleep, for we've counted on this place as the home of our
old age which isn't so far off as it was when he put that twenty-five
hundred dollars into that bank. But I do breathe freer if I think we may
have this place to live and die on, small as it is and the poor living it
gives us. Father's place isn't much to speak of, and James will come in
for his share of that, so we haven't much to count on anywhere. I don't
know, though," the knitting needle was doing duty in the stocking again,
"about taking _your_ money. You were not his wife, you hadn't spent it or
connived at his knavery."

"I felt myself to be his wife--I am happier in making all the reparation
in my power. All I could do for one old lady was to place her in The Old
Ladies' Home. I know very few of the instances; I would not harrow my
soul with hearing of those I could not help. I have done very little, but
that little has been my exceeding comfort."

"I guess so," said Mrs. West, in a husky voice. "I'll tell father what
you say, we'll talk it over and see. I know you love my girls--especially
Marjorie."

"I love them both," was the quick reply.

"Linnet is older, she ought to have the first chance."

Miss Prudence thought, but did not say, "As Laban said about Leah," she
only said, "I do not object to that. We do Marjorie no injustice. This is
Linnet's schooltime. There does seem to be a justice in giving the first
chance to the firstborn, although God chose Jacob instead of the elder
Esau, and Joseph instead of his older brethren, and there was little
David anointed when his brothers were refused."

Miss Prudence's tone was most serious, but her eyes were full of fun. She
was turning the partial mother's weapons against herself.

"But David and Jacob and Joseph were different from the others," returned
the mother, gravely, "and in this case, the elder is as good as the
younger."

It almost slipped off Miss Prudence's tongue, "But she will not take the
education Marjorie will," but she wisely checked herself and replied that
both the girls were as precious as precious could be.

"And now don't you go home to-night, stay all night and I'll talk to
father," planned Mrs. West, briskly; "as Marjorie would say, Giant
Despair will get Diffidence his wife to bed and they will talk
the matter over. She doesn't read _Pilgrim's Progress_ as much as she
used to, but she calls you Mercy yet. And you are a mercy to us."

With the tears rolling down her cheeks the mother stooped over and kissed
the lover of her girls.

"Mr. Holmes is coming to see Marjorie to-night, he hasn't called since
her accident, and to talk to father, he likes to argue with him, and it
will be pleasanter to have you here. And Will Rheid is home from a
voyage, and he'll be running in. It must be lonesome for you over there
on the Point. It used to be for me when I was a girl."

"But I'm not a girl," smiled Miss Prudence.

"You'll pass for one any day. And you can play and make it lively. I am
not urging you with disinterested motives."

"I can see through you; and I _am_ anxious to know how Mr. West will
receive my proposal."

"He will see through my eyes in the end, but he always likes to argue a
while first. I want you to taste Linnet's cream biscuit, too. She made
them on purpose for you. There's father, now, coming with African John,
and there _is_ Will Rheid coming across lots. Well, I'm glad Linnet did
make the biscuits."

Miss Prudence arose with a happy face, she did not go back to the girls
at once, there was a nook to be quiet in at the foot of the kitchen
garden, and she felt as if she must be alone awhile. Mrs. West, with her
heart in a tremor that it had not known since Marjorie was born, tucked
away her knitting behind the school-books on the dining-room table, tied
on her blue checked apron, and went out to the kitchen to kindle the fire
for tea, singing in her mellow voice, "Thus far the Lord hath led me on,"
suddenly stopping short as she crammed the stove with shavings to
exclaim, "His name _was_ Holmes! And that's the school-master's name. And
that's why he's in such a fume when the boys cheat at marbles. Well, did
I _ever_!"

Linnet ran in to exchange her afternoon dress for a short, dark calico,
and to put on her old shoes before she went into the barnyard to milk
Bess and Brindle and Beauty. Will Rheid found her in time to persuade
her to let him milk Brindle, for he was really afraid he would get his
hand out, and it would never do to let his wife do all the milking
when his father bequeathed him a fifth of his acres and two of his
hardest-to-be-milked cows. Linnet laughed, gave him one of her pails,
and found an other milking stool for him.

Marjorie wandered around disconsolate until she discovered Miss Prudence
in the garden.

She was perplexed over a new difficulty which vented itself in the
question propounded between tasting currants.

"Ought I--do you think I ought--talk to people--about--like the
minister--about--"

"No, child!" and Miss Prudence laughed merrily. "You ought to talk to
people like Marjorie West! Like a child and not like a minister."




IX.

JOHN HOLMES.

"Courage to endure and to obey."--_Tennyson._


It was vacation-time and yet John Holmes was at work. No one knew him to
take a vacation, he had attempted to do it more than once and at the end
of his stipulated time had found himself at work harder than ever. The
last lazy, luxurious vacation that he remembered was his last college
vacation. What a boyish, good-for-nothing, aimless fellow he was in those
days! How his brother used to snap him up and ask if he had nothing
better to do than to dawdle around into Maple Street and swing Prudence
under the maples in that old garden, or to write rhymes with her and
correct her German exercises! How he used to tease her about having by
and by to color her hair white and put on spectacles, or else she would
have to call her husband "papa." And she would dart after him and box his
ears and laugh her happy laugh and look as proud as a queen over every
teasing word. He had told her that she grew prettier every hour as her
day of fate drew nearer, and then had audaciously kissed her as he bade
her good-by, for, in one week would she not be his sister, the only
sister he had ever had? He stood at the gate watching her as she tripped
up to her father's arm-chair on the piazza, and saw her bend her head
down to his, and then he had gone off whistling and thinking that his
brother certainly had a share of all of earth's good things position, a
good name, money, and now this sweet woman for a wife. Well, the world
was all before _him_ where to choose, and he would have money and a
position some day and the very happiest home in the land.

The next time he saw Prudence she looked like one just risen out of a
grave: pallid, with purple, speechless lips, and eyes whose anguish rent
his soul. Her father had been suddenly prostrated with hemorrhage and he
stayed through the night with her, and afterward he made arrangements for
the funeral, and his mother and himself stood at the grave with her. And
then there was a prison, and after that a delirious fever for himself,
when for days he had not known his mother's face or Prudence's voice.

The other boys had gone back to college, but his spirit was crushed, he
could not hold up his head among men. He had lost his "ambition," people
said. Since that time he had taught in country schools and written
articles for the papers and magazines; he had done one thing beside, he
had purchased books and studied them. In the desk in his chamber there
were laid away to-day four returned manuscripts, he was only waiting
for leisure to exchange their addressee and send them forth into the
world again to seek their fortunes. A rejection daunted him no more than
a poor recitation in the schoolroom; where would be the zest in life if
one had not the chance of trying again?

John Holmes was a hermit, but he was a hermit who loved boys; girls were
too much like delicate bits of china, he was afraid of handling for fear
of breaking. Girls grown up were not quite so much like bits of china,
but he had no friend save one among womankind, his sister that was to
have been, Prudence Pomeroy. He had not addressed her with the name his
brother had given her since that last day in the garden; she was gravely
Prudence to him, in her plain attire, her smooth hair and little
unworldly ways, almost a veritable Puritan maiden.

As to her marrying--again (he always thought "again"), he had no more
thought of it than she had. He had given to her every letter he had
received from his brother, but they always avoided speaking his name;
indeed Prudence, in her young reverence for his age and wisdom, had
seldom named his Christian name to others or to himself, he was "Mr.
Holmes" to her.

John Holmes was her junior by three years, yet he had constituted himself
friend, brother, guardian, and sometimes, he told her, she treated him as
though he were her father, beside.

"It's good to have all in one," she once replied, "for I can have you all
with me at one time."

After being a year at Middlefield he had written to her about the
secluded homestead and fine salt bathing at the "Point," urging her to
spend her summer there. Marjorie had seen her face at church one day in
early spring as she had stopped over the Sabbath at the small hotel in
the town on her way on a journey farther north.

This afternoon, while Prudence had been under the apple-tree and in the
front entry, he had bent over the desk in his chamber, writing. This
chamber was a low, wide room, carpeted with matting, with neither shades
nor curtains at the many-paned windows, containing only furniture that
served a purpose--a washstand, with a small, gilt-framed glass hanging
over it, one rush-bottomed chair beside the chair at the desk, that
boasted arms and a leather cushion, a bureau, with two large brass rings
to open each drawer, and a narrow cot covered with a white counterpane
that his hostess had woven as a part of her wedding outfit before he was
born, and books! There were books everywhere--in the long pine chest, on
the high mantel, in the bookcase, under the bed, on the bureau, and on
the carpet wherever it was not absolutely necessary for him to tread.

Prudence and Marjorie had climbed the narrow stairway once this summer to
take a peep at his books, and Prudence had inquired if he intended
to take them all out West when he accepted the presidency of the college
that was waiting for him out there.

"I should have t

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