"Yes, poor little Marjorie!" said the old man compassionately. "It will go hard with her."
"Linnet or her mother can tell her."
The captain touched his horse, and they flew past the laughing sleighload. Linnet waved her handkerchief, Marjorie laughed, and their father took off his hat to them.
"Oh, dear," groaned the captain.
"Lord, help her; poor little thing," prayed Hollis, with motionless lips.
He remembered that last letter of hers that he had not answered. His mother had written to him that she surmised that Marjorie was engaged to Morris; and he had felt it wrong—"almost interfering," he had put it to himself—to push their boy and girl friendship any further. And, again—Hollis was cautious in the extreme—if she did not belong to Morris, she might infer that he was caring with a grown up feeling, which he was not at all sure was true—he was not sure about himself in anything just then; and, after he became a Christian, he saw all things in a new light, and felt that a "flirtation" was not becoming a disciple of Christ. He had become a whole-hearted disciple of Christ. His Aunt Helen and his mother were very eager for him to study for the ministry; but he had told them decidedly that he was not "called."
"And I am called to serve Christ as a businessman. Commercial travellers, as a rule, are men of the world; but, as I go about, I want to go about my Father's business."
"But he would be so enthusiastic," lamented Aunt Helen.
"And he has such a nice voice," bewailed his mother; "and I did hope to see one of my five boys in the pulpit."