"We might go and see her launched! Perhaps we all have an invitation; suppose you run and ask mother," replied Linnet, with the demure smile about her lips.
Marjorie flew away, Linnet arose slowly, gathering her shawl about her, and passed through the entry up to her own chamber.
Miss Prudence did not mean to sigh, she did not mean to be so ungrateful, there was work enough in her life, why should she long for a holiday time? Girls must all have their story and the story must run on into womanhood as hers had, there was no end till it was all lived through.
"When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee."
Miss Prudence dropped her head in her hands; she was going through yet.
Will Rheid was a manly young fellow, just six feet one, with a fine, frank face, a big, explosive voice, and a half-bashful, half-bold manner that savored of land and sea. He was as fresh and frolicsome as a sea breeze itself, as shrewd as his father, and as simple as Linnet.
But—Miss Prudence came back from her dreaming over the past,—would Linnet go home with her and go to school? Perhaps John Holmes would take Marjorie under his special tutelage for awhile, until she might come to her, and—how queer it was for her to be planning about other people's homes—why might he not take up his abode with the Wests, pay good board, and not that meagre two dollars a week, take Linnet's seat at the table, become a pleasant companion for Mr. West through the winter, and, above all, fit Marjorie for college? And did not he need the social life? He was left too much to his own devices at old Mrs. Devoe's. Marjorie, her father with his ready talk, her mother, with a face that held remembrance of all the happy events of her life, would certainly be a pleasant exchange for Mrs. Devoe, and Dolly, her aged cat. She would go home to her own snuggery, with Linnet to share it, with a relieved mind if John Holmes might be taken into a family. And it was Linnet, after all, who was to make the changes and she had only been thinking of Marjorie.
When Linnet came to her to kiss her good night, Miss Prudence looked down into her smiling eyes and quoted:
"'Keep happy, sweetheart, and grow wise.'"
The low murmur of voices reached Miss Prudence in her chamber long after midnight, she smiled as she thought of Giant Despair and his wife Diffidence. And then she prayed for the wanderer over the seas, that he might go to his Father, as the prodigal did, and that, if it were not wrong or selfish to wish it, she might hear from him once more before she died.