"What an abominable smoke you can make to be sure, Marion Wilbur, when you try. Hardly any one can compete with you in that line, at least."
Then she drew her school reports toward her, intending to make them out for the week thus far, but she scribbled on the fly-leaf with her pencil instead. She wrote her own name, "Marion J. Wilbur," a pretty enough name. She smiled tenderly over the initial of "J"—nobody knew what that was for.
Suppose the girls knew that it stood for "Josiah," her father's name; that he had named her, after the mother was buried, Marion—that after the mother, Josiah—that after the father, Wilbur—the dear name that belonged to them both; in this way fancying in his gentle heart that he linked this child to them both in a way that would be dear to her to remember.
It was dear; she loved him for it; she thoroughly understood the feeling, but hardly any one else would. So she thought she had never given them a chance to smile over the queer name her father had given. She could smile herself, but she wanted no one else to do so.
Then she wrote "Grace L. Dennis." What a pretty name that was. She knew what the "L" was for—Lawrence, the family name—Grace's mother's name. Her mother, too, had died when she was a wee baby. Gracie remembered her, though, and by that memory so much more did she miss her.
Marion knew how that was by her remembrance of her father. All the same she would not have that blotted out, by so much richer was Gracie than herself, and then that living, loving father. Marion smiled over the folly of Grace Dennis considering her life a lonely one. "Yet, I presume she feels it, poor darling," she said aloud, and with a sigh. It was true that every heart knew its own bitterness.
Then she said, "I really must go to work at these reports. I wonder what the girls are doing this evening? Eurie is nursing her mother, I suppose. Blessed Eurie! mother and father both within the fold, brought there by Eurie's faithful life. Mrs. Mitchell told me so, herself. What a sparkle that will make in Eurie's crown. I wonder what Ruth meant this morning? Poor child! she has trouble too; different from mine. Why as to that, I really haven't any. Ruth ought to 'count her marcies,' though, as old Dinah says. She has a great deal that I haven't. Yes, indeed, she has! I suppose little Flossy is going through tribulation over that tiresome party. I wonder why one-half of the world have to exist by tormenting the other half? Now, Marion Wilbur, stop scribbling names and go to work."
Steady scratching from the old steel pen a few minutes, then a knock and a message: "Dr. Dennis wanted to see her a few minutes, if she had leisure."
"Dr. Dennis!" she said, rising quickly and pushing away her papers. "Oh, dear me! where is that class-book of mine? He wants those names, I dare say, and I haven't them ready. I might have been copying them while I was mooning my time away here."
The first words she said to him as she went down to the stuffy boarding-house parlor were, "I haven't them ready, Dr. Dennis; I'm real sorry, and it's my fault, too. I had time to copy them, and I just didn't do it."