Marjorie had been fanning herself with her broad brim, she let it fall in her eagerness and her eyes were two convincing arguments against the truth of her own theory, for they were two emphasized exclamation points; sometimes when she was very eager she doubled herself up and made an interrogation point of herself.
"Up in my room on the table you will find paper and pencil; please bring them to me."
Marjorie flew away and Miss Prudence gave herself up to her interrupted reverie. To-day was one of Miss Prudence's hard-working days; that is, it was followed by the effect of a hard-working day; the days in which she felt too weak to do anything beside pray she counted the successful days of her life. She said they were the only days in her life in which she accomplished anything.
Marjorie was at home in every part of her grandfather's queer old house; Miss Prudence's room was her especial delight. It was a low-studded chamber, with three windows looking out to the sea, the wide fireplace was open, filled with boughs of fragrant hemlock; the smooth yellow floor with its coolness and sweet cleanliness invited you to enter; there were round braided mats spread before the bureau and rude washstand, and more pretentious ones in size and beauty were laid in front of the red, high-posted bedstead and over the brick hearth. There were, beside, in the apartment, two tables, an easy-chair with arms, its cushions covered with red calico, a camp stool, three rush-bottomed chairs, a Saratoga trunk, intruding itself with ugly modernness, also, hanging upon hooks, several articles of clothing, conspicuously among them a gray flannel bathing suit. The windows were draperied in dotted swiss, fastened back with green cord; her grandmother would never have been guilty of those curtains. Marjorie was sure they had intimate connection with the Saratoga trunk. Sunshine, the salt-breath of the sea and the odor of pine woods as well!
There were rollicking voices outside the window, Marjorie looked out and spied her five little cousins playing in the sand. Three of them held in their hands, half-eaten, the inevitable doughnut; morning, noon, and night those children were to be found with doughnuts in their hands.
She laughed and turned again to the contemplation of the room; on the high mantel was a yellow pitcher, that her grandmother knew was a hundred years old, and in the centre of the mantel were arranged a sugar bowl and a vinegar cruet that Miss Prudence had coaxed away from the old lady; her city friends would rave over them, she said. The old lady had laughed, remarking that "city folks" had ways of their own.
"I've given away a whole set of dishes to folks that come in the yachts," she said. "I should think you would rather have new dishes."
Miss Prudence never dusted her old possessions; she told Marjorie that she had not the heart to disturb the dust of ages.
Marjorie was tempted to linger and linger; in winter this room was closed and seemed always bare and cold when she peeped into it; there was no temptation to stay one moment; and now she had to tear herself away. It must be Miss Prudence's spirit that brooded over it and gave it sweetness and sunshine. This was the way Marjorie put the thought to herself. The child was very poetical when she lived alone with herself. Miss Prudence's wicker work-basket with its dainty lining of rose-tinted silk, its shining scissors and gold thimble, with its spools and sea-green silk needlebook was a whole poem to the child; she thought the possession of one could make any kind of sewing, even darning stockings, very delightful work. "Stitch, stitch, stitch," would not seem dreadful, at all.
How mysterious and charming it was to board by the seashore with somebody's grandfather! And then, in winter, to go back to some bewildering sort of a fairyland! To some kind of a world where people did not talk all the time about "getting along" and "saving" and "doing without" and "making both ends meet." How Marjorie's soul rebelled against the constant repetition of those expressions! How she thought she would never let her little girls know what one of them meant! If she and her little girls had to be saving and do without, how brave they would be about it, and laugh over it, and never ding it into anybody's ears! And she would never constantly be asking what things cost! Miss Prudence never asked such questions. But she would like to know if that gold pen cost so very much, and that glass inkstand shaped like a pyramid, and all that cream note-paper with maple tassels and autumn leaves and butterflies and ever so many cunning things painted in its left corners. And there was a pile of foolscap on the table, and some long, yellow envelopes, and some old books and some new books and an ivory paper-cutter; all something apart from the commonplace world she inhabited. Not apart from the world her thoughts and desires revelled in; not her hopes, for she had not gotten so far as to hope to live in a magical world like Miss Prudence. And yet when Miss Prudence did not wear white she was robed in deep mourning; there was sorrow in Miss Prudence's magical world.