"But I do think it is a shame, Mis' Rheid, for your Hollis to treat my Marjorie so! After writing to her four years to give her the slip like this! And the girl takes on about it, I can see it by her looks, although she's too proud to say a word."
"I'm sure I'm sorry," said Mrs. Rheid. "Hollis wouldn't do a mean thing."
"I don't know what you call this, then," Marjorie's mother had replied spiritedly as she turned towards the house.
Mrs. Rheid pondered night and day before she wrote to Hollis what Marjorie's mother had said; but he never answered that part of the letter, and his mother never knew whether she had done harm or good. Poor little Marjorie could have told her, with an indignation that she would have been frightened at; but Marjorie never knew. I'm afraid she would not have felt like kissing her mother good-night if she had known it.
Her father looked grave and anxious that night when her mother told him, as in duty bound she was to tell him everything, how she was arranging things for Marjorie's comfort.
"That was wrong, Sarah, that was wrong," he said.
"How wrong? I don't see how it was wrong?" she had answered sharply.
"Then I cannot explain to you, Marjorie isn't hurt any; I don't believe she cares half as much as you do?"
"You don't know; you don't see her all the time."
"She misses Linnet and Morris, and perhaps she grieves about going away. You remind me of some one in the Bible—a judge. He had thirty sons and thirty daughters and he got them all married! It's well for your peace of mind that you have but two."