"Is Linnet homesick?" she questioned as her sharp shears cut through the crash.
"Yes, but not very much. She likes new places. She likes the school, and the girls, so far, and she likes Miss Prudence's piano. Hollis has been to see her, and Helen Rheid has called to see her, and invited her and Miss Prudence to come to tea some time. Miss Prudence wrote me about Helen, and she's lovely, Mrs. Rheid."
"So Hollis said. Have you brought her picture back?"
"Yes'm."
Marjorie slowly drew a large envelope from her pocket, and taking the imperial from it gazed at it long. There was a strange fascination to her in the round face, with its dark eyes and mass of dark hair piled high on the head. It was a vignette and the head seemed to be rising from folds of black lace, the only ornament was a tiny gold chain on which was placed a small gold cross.
To Marjorie this picture was the embodiment of every good and beautiful thing. It was somebody that she might be like when she had read all the master's books, and learned all pretty, gentle ways. She never saw Helen Rheid, notwithstanding Helen Rheid's life was one of the moulds in which some of her influences were formed. Helen Rheid was as much to her as Mrs. Browning was to Miss Prudence. After another long look she slipped the picture back into the envelope and laid it on the table behind her.
"You are going with Miss Prudence when Linnet is through, I suppose?" asked Mrs. Rheid.
"So mother says. It seems a long time to wait, but I am studying at home. Mother cannot spare me to go to school, now, and Mr. Holmes says he would rather hear me recite than not. So I am learning to sew and do housework as well."
"You need that as much as schooling," returned Mrs. Rheid, decidedly. "I wish one of my boys could have gone to college, there's money enough to spare, but their father said he had got his learning knocking around the world and they could get theirs the same way."
"Hollis studies—he's studying French now."