“I am glad you have the grace to acknowledge that,” said Anne, smiling; “but I do think, Marjory, that some of it should have been said sooner.”
“Anne!” exclaimed Marjory Falconer, with one of her violent blushes, “you would not have had me speak to you, the way young ladies speak in novels.”
“Many young ladies in novels speak very sensibly, Marjory,” said Anne.
“Very well—never mind, that is all over now. Tell me of your own matters, Anne—you have not returned to Merkland as you went away; there is to be no more brooding, no more unhappiness?”
Anne told her story briefly, as they went up Oranside. Marjory was much affected. To her strong, joyous spirit, in its vigorous contendings with mere external evil, and now in the prospective strength and honor of its new, grave, happy household life, the mention of these agonies came with strange power. Nothing like them, as the fair promise of her future went, should ever enter the healthful precincts of the Manse of Portoran, yet her heart swelled within her in deep sympathy as the hearts of those swell who feel that they themselves also could bear like perils and miseries—the true fraternity.
In the inner drawing-room they found little Alice alone, and there ensued some gayer badinage, which Marjory bore with wonderful patience and a considerable amount of blushing laughter, inevitable in the circumstances. “The only thing is,” said Marjory, with a look of comical distress, “what I shall do with Ralph—I wish somebody would marry him—I do wish some one would do me the special favor of marrying Ralph!”
Little Alice Aytoun looked up in wonder. It was Alice’s wont to be greatly puzzled with those speeches of Marjory’s, and quite at a loss to know how much was joke, and how much earnest.
“Yes, indeed,” said Marjory, laying her hand on Alice’s shoulder. “I think it would have been a very much more sensible thing for you, little Alice Aytoun, to have fallen in love with my poor brother Ralph, who needs somebody to take care of him, than with that rational, prudent Lewis of Anne’s who can take such very good care of himself.”