Hunter's Marjory / A Story for Girls

by Margaret Bruce Clarke

"I'll try," said Blanche, looking very solemn, "but I haven't much hope."

After that the girls teased their good-natured governess with many other "problems," as they called them, such as, "Whether would you choose to be very pretty and very poor, or very rich and quite plain?" and another, "Whether would you prefer to walk in a very fashionable place with a person you love, who is so badly dressed as to attract attention, or with a nicely-dressed person for whom you did not care so much?"

Miss Waspe rather encouraged the girls to give their opinions on all sorts of subjects, as she liked them to think.

"Learn to think and to see," she would say. And one day she told them how, when she was a girl, she had been made to learn some lines by heart, which had helped her to begin thinking for herself. "I think they frightened me into it," she said, laughing. "They were written by Carlyle; you will know something of his works some day, I hope. This is what he says: 'Not one in a thousand has the smallest turn for thinking; only for passive dreaming, and hearsaying, and active babbling by rote. Of the eyes that men do glare withal, so few can see.' It sounds rather like a scolding, doesn't it? Well, I don't want you to be like that; I want you both to think and to see, and you will find much happiness to think about and many beauties to see."

Certainly Marjory's world had grown much wider and brighter by this woman's thought. The romance and wonder of reality put before the girl had opened up possibilities of interest in every direction to her who was so eager to learn and so quick to see. To give an instance: it may be remembered that in her days of loneliness Marjory had woven fairy stories about the flowers and trees in the garden and the woods. Knowledge had now replaced these fairy tales with facts far more marvellous than any of her fancies had been.

These were happy hours spent in the schoolroom at Braeside. They never became irksome to Marjory, but they made her long to see more of this "great, wide, beautiful, wonderful world."

Two things were often in her mind at this time—the prophecy about the dark-haired maiden, and the letter of which Mary Ann had told her. She built many hopes upon that letter; night and day she prayed that her father might be found and brought back to her.

The postman only came once a day to Hunters' Brae, and the letter-bag was always taken straight to her uncle's study; so, although Marjory watched carefully for any sign, she did not know whether a reply had been received to that letter her uncle had sent to foreign parts.

One day, coming out of church, Mary Ann managed to whisper to her, "That letter came back, so I expect your father's really dead."

This was a great blow to Marjory. She had hardly realized how much she had hoped, and this bitter disappointment seemed to leave her nothing to hope for. Still she refused to give up altogether, for there was just the chance that the letter might not have been written to her father, as Mary Ann had not actually seen the address on it. Marjory reasoned with herself in this way, for she felt that her life would be strangely empty without the hope of some day finding her father.