"Now don't you go and get talking like a book," said grandmother, sharply, "if you do you can't come and talk to me."
"But you can talk to me," returned Marjorie, smiling, "and that is what I want. Hollis wrote me that I mustn't say 'guess' and I do forget so often."
"Hollis is getting ideas," said Hollis' mother; "well, let him, I want him to learn all he can."
Marjorie was wondering where her own letter to Hollis would come in; she had stowed away in the storehouse of her memory messages enough from mother and grandmother to fill one sheet, both given with many explanations, and before she went home Captain Rheid would come in and add his word to Hollis. And if she should write two sheets this time would her mother think it foolish? It was one of Mrs. West's old-fashioned ways to ask Marjorie to let her read every letter that she wrote.
With her reserve Marjorie could open her heart more fully to Miss Prudence than she could to one nearer her; it was easier to tell Miss Prudence that she loved her than to tell her mother that she loved her, and there were some things that she could say to Mr. Holmes that she could not say to her father. It may be a strange kind of reserve, but it is like many of us. Therefore, under this surveillance, Marjorie's letters were not what her heart prompted them to be.
If, in her own young days, her mother had ever felt thus she had forgotten it.
But for this Marjorie's letters would have been one unalloyed pleasure. One day it occurred to her to send her letter to the mail before her mother was aware that she had written, but she instantly checked the suggestion as high treason.
Josie Grey declared that Marjorie was "simple" about some things. A taint of deceit would have caused her as deep remorse as her heart was capable of suffering.
"Grandma, please tell me something that happened when you were little," coaxed Marjorie, as she placed the knitting back in the old fingers. How pink and plump the young fingers looked as they touched the old hands.
"You haven't told me about the new boy yet," said the old lady. "How old is he? Where did he come from? and what does he look like?"