"He will like that," said Marjorie, finding her voice.
"He is somebody to be depended on. But there is the tea-bell, and my little traveller is hungry, for she would not eat on the train and I tempted her with fruit and crackers."
"Aunt Prue, I like it here. May I see up stairs, too?"
"You must see the supper table first. And then Marjorie may show you everything while I write to Uncle John, to tell him that our little bird has found her nest."
Marjorie gave up her place that night in the wide, old-fashioned mahogany bedstead beside Miss Prudence and betook herself to the room that opened out of Miss Prudence's, a room with handsome furniture in ash, the prevailing tint of the pretty things being her favorite shade of light blue.
"That is a maiden's room," Miss Prudence had said; "and when Prue has a maiden's room it shall be in rose."
Marjorie was not jealous, as she had feared she might be, of the little creature who nestled close to Miss Prudence; she felt that Miss Prudence was being comforted in the child. She was too happy to sleep that night. In the years afterward she did not leave Hollis out of her prayers, but she never once thought to pray that he might be brought back again to be her friend. Her prayer for him had been answered and with that she was well content.
XVII.
MORRIS.
"What I aspired to be comforts me."—Browning.