Produced by Juliet Sutherland, and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team

Note: There are three lines of text missing from the original printed book. These are marked with: [missing text].

MISS PRUDENCE

A STORY OF TWO GIRLS' LIVES

By JENNIE M. DRINKWATER

1883

"We are not to lead events but to follow them."—Epictetus.

CONTENTS

CHAP

I. AFTER SCHOOL

II. EVANGELIST

III. WHAT "DESULTORY" MEANS

IV. A RIDE, A WALK, A TALK, AND A TUMBLE

V. TWO PROMISES

VI. MARJORIE ASLEEP AND AWAKE

VII. UNDER THE APPLE-TREE

VIII. BISCUITS AND OTHER THINGS

IX. JOHN HOLMES

X. LINNET

XI. GRANDMOTHER

XII. A BUDGET OF LETTERS

XIII. A WEDDING DAY

XIV. A TALK AND ANOTHER TALK

XV. JEROMA

XVI. MAPLE STREET

XVII. MORRIS

XVIII. ONE DAY

XIX. A STORY THAT WAS NOT VERY SAD

XX. "HEIRS TOGETHER"

XXI. MORRIS AGAIN

XXII. TIDINGS

XXIII. GOD'S LOVE

XXIV. JUST AS IT OUGHT TO BE

XXV. THE WILL OF GOD

XXVI. MARJORIE'S MOTHER

XXVII. ANOTHER WALK AND ANOTHER TALE

XXVIII. THE LINNET

XXIX. ONE NIGHT

XXX. THE COSEY CORNER

XXXI. AND WHAT ELSE?

MISS PRUDENCE.

I.

AFTER SCHOOL.

"Our content is our best having."—Shakespeare.

Nobody had ever told Marjorie that she was, as somebody says we all are, three people,—the Marjorie she knew herself, the Marjorie other people knew, and the Marjorie God knew. It was a "bother" sometimes to be the Marjorie she knew herself, and she had never guessed there was another Marjorie for other people to know, and the Marjorie God knew and understood she did not learn much about for years and years. At eleven years old it was hard enough to know about herself—her naughty, absent-minded, story-book-loving self. Her mother said that she loved story-books entirely too much, that they made her absent-minded and forgetful, and her mother's words were proving themselves true this very afternoon. She was a real trouble to herself and there was no one near to "confess" to; she never could talk about herself unless enveloped in the friendly darkness, and then the confessor must draw her out, step by step, with perfect frankness and sympathy; even then, a sigh, or sob, or quickly drawn breath and half inarticulate expression revealed more than her spoken words.

She was one of the children that are left to themselves. Only Linnet knew the things she cared most about; even when Linnet laughed at her, she could feel the sympathetic twinkle in her eye and the sympathetic undertone smothered in her laugh.

It was sunset, and she was watching it from the schoolroom window, the clouds over the hill were brightening and brightening and a red glare shone over the fields of snow. It was sunset and the schoolroom clock pointed to a quarter of five. The schoolroom was chilly, for the fire had died out half an hour since. Hollis Rheid had shoved big sticks into the stove until it would hold no more and had opened the draft, whispering to her as he passed her seat that he would keep her warm at any rate. But now she was shivering, although she had wrapped herself in her coarse green and red shawl, and tapped her feet on the bare floor to keep them warm; she was hungry, too; the noon lunch had left her unsatisfied, for she had given her cake to Rie Blauvelt in return for a splendid Northern Spy, and had munched the apple and eaten her two sandwiches wishing all the time for more. Leaving the work on her slate unfinished, she had dived into the depths of her home-made satchel and discovered two crumbs of molasses cake. That was an hour ago. School had closed at three o'clock to-day because it was Friday and she had been nearly two hours writing nervously on her slate or standing at the blackboard making hurried figures. For the first time in her life Marjorie West had been "kept in." And that "Lucy" book hidden in her desk was the cause of it; she had taken it out for just one delicious moment, and the moment had extended itself into an hour and a half, and the spelling lesson was unlearned and the three hard examples in complex fractions unworked. She had not been ignorant of what the penalty would be. Mr. Holmes had announced it at the opening of school: "Each word in spelling that is missed, must be written one hundred times, and every example not brought in on the slate must be put on the blackboard after school."

She had smiled in self-confidence. Who ever knew Marjorie West to miss in spelling? And had not her father looked over her examples last night and pronounced them correct? But on her way to school the paper on which the examples were solved had dropped out of her Geography, and she had been wholly absorbed in the "Lucy" book during the time that she had expected to study the test words in spelling. And the overwhelming result was doing three examples on the board, after school, and writing seven hundred words. Oh, how her back ached and how her wrist hurt her and how her strained eyes smarted! Would she ever again forget amateur, abyss, accelerate, bagatelle, bronchitis, boudoir and isosceles?

Rie Blauvelt had written three words one hundred times, laughed at her, and gone home; Josie Grey had written isosceles one hundred times, and then taken up a slate to help Marjorie; before Marjorie was aware Josie had written abyss seventy-five times, then suspecting something by the demureness of Josie's eyes she had snatched her slate and erased the pretty writing.

"You're real mean," pouted Josie; "he said he would take our word for it, and you could have answered some way and got out of it."

Marjorie's reply was two flashing eyes.

"You needn't take my head off," laughed Josie; "now I'll go home and leave you, and you may stay all night for all I care."

"I will, before I will deceive anybody," resented Marjorie stoutly.

Without another word Josie donned sack and hood and went out, leaving the door ajar and the cold air to play about Marjorie's feet.

But five o'clock came and the work was done!

More than one or two tears fell slowly on the neat writing on Marjorie's slate; the schoolroom was cold and she was shivering and hungry. It would have been such a treat to read the last chapter in the "Lucy" book; she might have curled her feet underneath her and drawn her shawl closer; but it was so late, and what would they think at home? She was ashamed to go home. Her father would look at her from under his eyebrows, and her mother would exclaim, "Why, Marjorie!" She would rather that her father would look at her from under his eyebrows, than that her mother would say, "Why, Marjorie!" Her mother never scolded, and sometimes she almost wished she would. It would be a relief if somebody would scold her tonight; she would stick a pin into herself if it would do any good.

Her photograph would not be in the group next time. She looked across at the framed photograph on the wall; six girls in the group and herself the youngest—the reward for perfect recitations and perfect deportment for one year. Her father was so proud of it that he had ordered a copied picture for himself, and, with a black walnut frame, it was hanging in the sitting-room at home. The resentment against herself was tugging away at her heart and drawing miserable lines on her brow and lips—on her sweet brow and happy lips.

It was a bare, ugly country schoolroom, anyway, with the stained floor, the windows with two broken panes, and the unpainted desks with innumerable scars made by the boys' jack-knives, and Mr. Holmes was unreasonable, anyway, to give her such a hard punishment, and she didn't care if she had been kept in, anyway!

In that "anyway" she found vent for all her crossness. Sometimes she said, "I don't care," but when she said, "I don't care, anyway!" then everybody knew that Marjorie West was dreadful.

"I'm through," she thought triumphantly, "and I didn't cheat, and I wasn't mean, and nobody has helped me."

Yes, somebody had helped her. She was sorry that she forgot to think that God had helped her. Perhaps people always did get through! If they didn't help themselves along by doing wrong and—God helped them. The sunshine rippled over her face again and she counted the words on her slate for the second time to assure herself that there could be no possible mistake. Slowly she counted seven hundred, then with a sudden impulse seized her pencil and wrote each of the seven words five times more to be "sure they were all right."

Josie Grey called her "horridly conscientious," and even Rie Blauvelt wished that she would not think it wicked to "tell" in the class, and to whisper about something else when they had permission to whisper about the lessons.

By this time you have learned that my little Marjorie was strong and sweet. I wish you might have seen her that afternoon as she crouched over the wooden desk, snuggled down in the coarse, plaid shawl, her elbows resting on the hard desk, her chin dropped in her two plump hands, with her eyes fixed on the long, closely written columns of her large slate. She was not sitting in her own seat, her seat was the back seat on the girls' side, of course, but she was sitting midway on the boys' side, and her slate was placed on the side of the double desk wherein H.R. was cut in deep, ugly letters. She had fled to this seat as to a refuge, when she found herself alone, with something of the same feeling, that once two or three years ago when she was away from home and homesick she used to kneel to say her prayers in the corner of the chamber where her valise was; there was home about the valise and there was protection and safety and a sort of helpfulness about this desk where her friend Hollis Rheid had sat ever since she had come to school. This was her first winter at school, her mother had taught her at home, but in family council this winter it had been decided that Marjorie was "big" enough to go to school.

The half mile home seemed a long way to walk alone, and the huge Newfoundland at the farmhouse down the hill was not always chained; he had sprung out at them this morning and the girls had huddled together while Hollis and Frank Grey had driven him inside his own yard. Hollis had thrown her an intelligent glance as he filed out with the boys, and had telegraphed something back to her as he paused for one instant at the door. Not quite understanding the telegraphic signal, she was waiting for him, or for something. His lips had looked like: "Wait till I come." If the people at home were not anxious about her she would have been willing to wait until midnight; it would never occur to her that Hollis might forget her.

Her cheeks flushed as she waited, and her eyes filled with tears; it was a soft, warm, round face, with coaxing, kissable lips, a smooth, low brow and the gentlest of hazel eyes: not a pretty face, excepting in its lovely childishness and its hints of womanly graces; some of the girls said she was homely. Marjorie thought herself that she was very homely; but she had comforted herself with, "God made my face, and he likes it this way." Some one says that God made the other features, but permits us to make the mouth. Marjorie's sweetness certainly made her mouth. But then she was born sweet. Josie Grey declared that she would rather see a girl "get mad" than cry, as Marjorie did when the boys washed her face in the snow.

Mr. Holmes had written to a friend that Marjorie West, his favorite among the girls, was "almost too sweet." He said to himself that he feared she "lacked character." Marjorie's quiet, observant father would have smiled at that and said nothing. The teacher said that she did not know how to take her own part. Marjorie had been eleven years in this grasping world and had not learned that she had any "part" to take.

Since her pencil had ceased scribbling the room was so still that a tiny mouse had been nibbling at the toe of her shoe. Just then as she raised her head and pinned her shawl more securely the door opened and something happened. The something happened in Marjorie's face. Hollis Rheid thought the sunset had burst across it. She did not exclaim, "Oh, I am so glad!" but the gladness was all in her eyes. If Marjorie had been more given to exclamations her eyes would not have been so expressive. The closed lips were a gain to the eyes and her friends missed nothing. The boy had learned her eyes by heart. How stoutly he would have resisted if some one had told him that years hence Marjorie's face would be a sealed volume to him.

But she was making her eyes and mouth to-day and years hence she made them, too. Perhaps he had something to do with it then as he certainly had something to do with it now.

"I came back with my sled to take you home. I gave Sam my last ten cents to do the night work for me. It was my turn, but he was willing enough. Where's your hood, Mousie? Any books to take?"

"Yes, my Geography and Arithmetic," she answered, taking her fleecy white hood from the seat behind her.

"Now you look like a sunbeam in a cloud," he said poetically as she tied it over her brown head. "Oh, ho!" turning to the blackboard, "you do make handsome figures. Got them all right, did you?"

"I knew how to do them, it was only that—I forgot."

"I don't think you'll forget again in a hurry. And that's a nice looking slate, too," he added, stepping nearer. "Mother said it was too much of a strain on your nervous system to write all that."

"I guess I haven't much of a nervous system," returned Marjorie, seriously; "the girls wrote the words they missed fifty times last Friday and he warned us about the one hundred to-day. I suppose it will be one hundred and fifty next Friday. I don't believe I'll ever miss again," she said, her lips trembling at the mention of it.

"I think I'll have a word or two to say to the master if you do. I wonder how Linnet would have taken it."

"She wouldn't have missed."

"I'll ask Mr. Holmes to put you over on the boys side if you miss next week," he cried mischievously, "and make you sit with us all the afternoon."

"I'd rather write each word five hundred times," she cried vehemently.

"I believe you would," he said good humoredly. "Never mind, Mousie, I know you won't miss again."

"I'll do my examples to-night and father will help me if I can't do them.
He used to teach in this very schoolhouse; he knows as much as Mr.
Holmes."

"Then he must be a Solomon," laughed the boy.

The stamp of Hollis' boots and the sound of his laughter had frightened the mouse back into its hiding-place in the chimney; Marjorie would not have frightened the mouse all day long.

The books were pushed into her satchel, her desk arranged in perfect order, her rubbers and red mittens drawn on, and she stood ready, satchel in hand, for her ride on the sled down the slippery hill where the boys and girls had coasted at noon and then she would ride on over the snowy road half a mile to the old, brown farmhouse. Her eyes were subdued a little, but the sunshine lingered all over her face. She knew Hollis would come.

He smiled down at her with his superior fifteen-year-old smile, she was such a wee mousie and always needed taking care of. If he could have a sister, he would want her to be like Marjorie. He was very much like Marjorie himself, just as shy, just as sensitive, hardly more fitted to take his own part, and I think Marjorie was the braver of the two. He was slow-tempered and unforgiving; if a friend failed him once, he never took him into confidence again. He was proud where Marjorie was humble. He gave his services; she gave herself. He seldom quarrelled, but never was the first to yield. They were both mixtures of reserve and frankness; both speaking as often out of a shut heart as an open heart. But when Marjorie could open her heart, oh, how she opened it! As for Hollis, I think he had never opened his; demonstrative sympathy was equally the key to the hearts of both.

But here I am analyzing them before they had learned they had any self to analyze. But they existed, all the same.

Marjorie was a plain little body while Hollis was noticeably handsome with eloquent brown eyes and hair with its golden, boyish beauty just shading into brown; his sensitive, mobile lips were prettier than any girl's, and there was no voice in school like his in tone or culture. Mr. Holmes was an elocutionist and had taken great pains with Hollis Rheid's voice. There was a courteous gentleness in his manner all his own; if knighthood meant purity, goodness, truth and manliness, then Hollis Rheid was a knightly school-boy. The youngest of five rough boys, with a stern, narrow-minded father and a mother who loved her boys with all her heart and yet for herself had no aims beyond kitchen and dairy, he had not learned his refinement at home; I think he had not learned it anywhere. Marjorie's mother insisted that Hollis Rheid must have had a praying grandmother away back somewhere. The master had written to his friend, Miss Prudence Pomeroy, that Hollis Rheid was a born gentleman, and had added with more justice and penetration than he had shown in reading Marjorie, "he has too little application and is too mischievous to become a real student. But I am not looking for geniuses in a country school. Marjorie and Hollis are bright enough for every purpose in life excepting to become leaders."

"Are you going to church, to-night?" Hollis inquired as she seated herself carefully on the sled.

"In the church?" she asked, bracing her feet and tucking the ends of her shawl around them.

"Yes; an evangelist is going to preach."

"Evangelist!" repeated Marjorie in a voice with a thrill in it.

"Don't you know what that is?" asked Hollis, harnessing himself into the sled.

"Oh, yes, indeed," said she. "I know about him and Christian."

Hollis looked perplexed; this must be one of Marjorie's queer ways of expressing something, and the strange preacher certainly had something to do with Christians.

"If it were not for the fractions I suppose I might go. I wish I wasn't stupid about Arithmetic."

"It's no matter if girls are stupid," he said consolingly. "Are you sure you are on tight? I'm going to run pretty soon. You won't have to earn your living by making figures."

"Shall you?" she inquired with some anxiety.

"Of course, I shall. Haven't I been three times through the Arithmetic and once through the Algebra that I may support myself and somebody else, sometime?"

This seemed very grand to child Marjorie who found fractions a very
Slough of Despond.

"I'm going to the city as soon as Uncle Jack finds a place for me. I expect a letter from him every night."

"Perhaps it will come to-night," said Marjorie, not very hopefully.

"I hope it will. And so this may be your last ride on Flyaway. Enjoy it all you can, Mousie."

Marjorie enjoyed everything all she could.

"Now, hurrah!" he shouted, starting on a quick run down the hill. "I'm going to turn you over into the brook."

Marjorie laughed her joyous little laugh. "I'm not afraid," she said in absolute content.

"You'd better be!" he retorted in his most savage tone.

The whole west was now in a glow and the glorious light stretched across fields of snow.

"Oh, how splendid," Marjorie exclaimed breathlessly as the rapid motion of the sled and the rush of cold air carried her breath away.

"Hold on tight," he cried mockingly, "we're coming to the brook."

Laughing aloud she held on "tight." Hollis was her true knight; she would not have been afraid to cross the Alps on that sled if he had asked her to!

She was in a talkative mood to-night, but her horse pranced on and would not listen. She wanted to tell him about vibgyor. The half mile was quickly travelled and he whirled the sled through the large gateway and around the house to the kitchen door. The long L at the back of the house seemed full of doors.

"There, Mousie, here you are!" he exclaimed. "And don't you miss your lesson to-morrow."

"To-morrow is Saturday! oh, I had forgotten. And I can go to see
Evangelist to-night."

"You haven't said 'thank you' for your last ride on Flyaway."

"I will when I'm sure that it is," she returned with her eyes laughing.

He turned her over into a snowdrift and ran off whistling; springing up she brushed the snow off face and hands and with a very serious face entered the kitchen. The kitchen was long and low, bright with the sunset shining in at two windows and cheery with its carpeting of red, yellow and green mingled confusingly in the handsome oilcloth.

Unlike Hollis, Marjorie was the outgrowth of home influences; the kitchen oilcloth had something to do with her views of life, and her mother's broad face and good-humored eyes had a great deal more. Good-humor in the mother had developed sweet humor in the child.

Now I wonder if you understand Marjorie well enough to understand all she does and all she leaves undone during the coming fifteen or twenty years?

II.

EVANGELIST.

"The value of a thought cannot be told."—Bailey.

Her mother's broad, gingham back and the twist of iron gray hair low in her neck greeted her as she opened the door, then the odor of hot biscuits intruded itself, and then there came a shout from somebody kneeling on the oilcloth near the stove and pushing sticks of dry wood through its blazing open door.

"Oh, Marjie, what happened to you?"

"Something didn't happen. I didn't have my spelling or my examples. I read the "Lucy" book in school instead," she confessed dolefully.

"Why, Marjie!" was her mother's exclamation, but it brought the color to Marjorie's face and suffused her eyes.

"We are to have company for tea," announced the figure kneeling on the oilcloth as she banged the stove door. "A stranger; the evangelist Mr. Horton told us about Sunday."

"I know," said Marjorie. "I've read about him in Pilgrim's Progress; he showed Christian the way to the Wicket Gate."

Linnet jumped to her feet and shook a chip from her apron. "O, Goosie!
Don't you know any better?"

Fourteen-year-old Linnet always knew better.

"Where is he?" questioned Marjorie.

"In the parlor. Go and entertain him. Mother and I must get him a good supper: cold chicken, canned raspberries, currant jelly, ham, hot biscuit, plain cake and fruit cake and—butter and—tea."

"I don't know how," hesitated Marjorie.

"Answer his questions, that's all," explained Linnet promptly. "I've told him all I know and now it's your turn."

"I don't like to answer questions," said Marjorie, still doubtfully.

"Oh, only your age and what you study and—if—you are a Christian."

"And he tells you how if you don't know how," said Marjorie, eagerly; "that's what he's for."

"Yes," replied her mother, approvingly, "run in and let him talk to you."

Very shyly glad of the opportunity, and yet dreading it inexpressibly, Marjorie hung her school clothing away and laid her satchel on the shelf in the hall closet, and then stood wavering in the closet, wondering if she dared go in to see Evangelist. He had spoken very kindly to Christian. She longed, oh, how she longed! to find the Wicket Gate, but would she dare ask any questions? Last Sabbath in church she had seen a sweet, beautiful face that she persuaded herself must be Mercy, and now to have Evangelist come to her very door!

What was there to know any better about? She did not care if Linnet had laughed. Linnet never cared to read Pilgrim's Progress.

It is on record that the first book a child reads intensely is the book that will influence all the life.

At ten Marjorie had read Pilgrim's Progress intensely. Timidly, with shining eyes, she stood one moment upon the red mat outside the parlor door, and then, with sudden courage, turned the knob and entered. At a glance she felt that there was no need of courage; Evangelist was seated comfortably in the horse-hair rocker with his feet to the fire resting on the camp stool; he did not look like Evangelist at all, she thought, disappointedly; he reminded her altogether more of a picture of Santa Claus: massive head and shoulders, white beard and moustache, ruddy cheeks, and, as the head turned quickly at her entrance, she beheld, beneath the shaggy, white brows, twinkling blue eyes.

"Ah," he exclaimed, in an abrupt voice, "you are the little girl they were expecting home from school."

"Yes, sir."

He extended a plump, white hand and, not at all shyly, Marjorie laid her hand in it.

"Isn't it late to come from school? Did you play on the way home?"

"No sir; I'm too big for that"

"Doesn't school dismiss earlier?"

"Yes, sir," flushing and dropping her eyes, "but I was kept in."

"Kept in," he repeated, smoothing the little hand. "I'm sure it was not for bad behavior and you look bright enough to learn your lessons."

"I didn't know my lessons," she faltered.

"Then you should have done as Stephen Grellet did," he returned, releasing her hand.

"How did he do?" she asked.

Nobody loved stories better than Marjorie.

Pushing her mother's spring rocker nearer the fire, she sat down, arranged the skirt of her dress, and, prepared herself, not to "entertain" him, but to listen.

"Did you never read about him?"

"I never even heard of him."

"Then I'll tell you something about him. His father was an intimate friend and counsellor of Louis XVI. Stephen was a French boy. Do you know who Louis XVI was?"

"No, sir."

"Do you know the French for Stephen?"

"No, sir."

"Then you don't study French. I'd study everything if I were you. My wife has read the Hebrew Bible through. She is a scholar as well as a good housewife. It needn't hinder, you see."

"No, sir," repeated Marjorie.

"When little Etienne—that's French for Stephen—was five or six years old he had a long Latin exercise to learn, and he was quite disheartened."

Marjorie's eyes opened wide in wonder. Six years old and a long Latin exercise. Even Hollis had not studied Latin.

"Sitting alone, all by himself, to study, he looked out of the window abroad upon nature in all her glorious beauty, and remembered that God made the gardens, the fields and the sky, and the thought came to him: 'Cannot the same God give me memory, also?' Then he knelt at the foot of his bed and poured out his soul in prayer. The prayer was wonderfully answered; on beginning to study again, he found himself master of his hard lesson, and, after that, he acquired learning with great readiness."

It was wonderful, Marjorie thought, and beautiful, but she could not say that; she asked instead: "Did he write about it himself?"

"Yes, he has written all about himself."

"When I was six I didn't know my small letters. Was he so bright because he was French?"

The gentleman laughed and remarked that the French were a pretty bright nation.

"Is that all you know about him?"

"Oh, no, indeed; there's a large book of his memoirs in my library. He visited many of the crowned heads of Europe."

There was another question forming on Marjorie's lips, but at that instant her mother opened the door. Now she would hear no more about Stephen Grellet and she could not ask about the Wicket Gate or Mercy or the children.

Rising in her pretty, respectful manner she gave her mother the spring rocker and pushed an ottoman behind the stove and seated herself where she might watch Evangelist's face as he talked.

How the talk drifted in this direction Marjorie did not understand; she knew it was something about finding the will of the Lord, but a story was coming and she listened with her listening eyes on his face.

"I had been thinking that God would certainly reveal his will if we inquired of him, feeling sure of that, for some time, and then I had this experience."

Marjorie's mother enjoyed "experiences" as well as Marjorie enjoyed stories. And she liked nothing better than to relate her own; after hearing an experience she usually began, "Now I will tell you mine."

Marjorie thought she knew every one of her mother's experiences. But it was Evangelist who was speaking.

The little girl in the brown and blue plaid dress with red stockings and buttoned boots, bent forward as she sat half concealed behind the stove and drank in every word with intent, wondering, unquestioning eyes.

Her mother listened, also, with eyes as intent and believing, and years afterward, recalled this true experience, when she was tempted to take Marjorie's happiness into her own hands, her own unwise, haste-making hands.

"My wife had been dead about two years," began Evangelist again, speaking in a retrospective tone. "I had two little children, the elder not eight years old, and my sister was my housekeeper. She did not like housekeeping nor taking care of children. Some women don't. She came to me one day with a very serious face. 'Brother,' said she, 'you need a wife, you must have a wife. I do not know how to take care of your children and you are almost never at home.' She left me before I could reply, almost before I could think what to reply. I was just home from helping a pastor in Wisconsin, it was thirty-six degrees below zero the day I left, and I had another engagement in Maine for the next week. I was very little at home, and my children did need a mother. I had not thought whether I needed a wife or not; I was too much taken up with the Lord's work to think about it. But that day I asked the Lord to find me a wife. After praying about it three days it came to me that a certain young lady was the one the Lord had chosen. Like Peter, I drew back and said, 'Not so, Lord.' My first wife was a continual spiritual help to me; she was the Lord's own messenger every day; but this lady, although a church member, was not particularly spiritually minded. Several years before she had been my pupil in Hebrew and Greek. I admired her intellectual gifts, but if a brother in the ministry had asked me if she would be a helpful wife to him, I should have hesitated about replying in the affirmative. And, yet here it was, the Lord had chosen her for me. I said, 'Not so, Lord,' until he assured me that her heart was in his hand and he could fit her to become my wife and a mother to my children. After waiting until I knew I was obeying the mind of my Master, I asked her to marry me. She accepted, as far as her own heart and will were concerned, but refused, because her father, a rich and worldly-minded man, was not willing for her to marry an itinerant preacher.

"I had not had a charge for three years then. I was so continually called to help other pastors that I had no time for a charge of my own. So it kept on for months and months; her father was not willing, and she would not marry me without his consent. My sister often said to me, 'I don't see how you can want to marry a woman that isn't willing to have you,' but I kept my own counsel. I knew the matter was in safe hands. I was not at all troubled; I kept about my Master's business and he kept about mine. Therefore, when she wrote to say that suddenly and unexpectedly her father had withdrawn all opposition, I was not in the least surprised. My sister declared I was plucky to hold on, but the Lord held on for me; I felt as if I had nothing to do with it. And a better wife and mother God never blessed one of his servants with. She could do something beside read the Bible in Hebrew; she could practice it in English. For forty years [missing text] my companion and counsellor and dearest friend. So you see"—he added in his bright, convincing voice, "we may know the will of the Lord about such things and everything else."

"I believe it," responded Marjorie's mother, emphatically.

"Now tell me about all the young people in your village. How many have you that are unconverted?"

Was Hollis one of them? Marjorie wondered with a beating heart. Would Evangelist talk to him? Would he kiss him, and give him a smile, and bid him God speed?

But—she began to doubt—perhaps there was another Evangelist and this was not the very one in Pilgrim's Progress; somehow, he did not seem just like that one. Might she dare ask him? How would she say it? Before she was aware her thought had become a spoken thought; in the interval of quiet while her mother was counting the young people in the village she was very much astonished to hear her own timid, bold, little voice inquire:

"Is there more than one Evangelist?"

"Why, yes, child," her mother answered absently and Evangelist began to tell her about some of the evangelists he was acquainted with.

"Wonderful men! Wonderful men!" he repeated.

Before another question could form itself on her eager lips her father entered and gave the stranger a cordial welcome.

"We have to thank scarlet fever at the Parsonage for the pleasure of your visit with us, I believe," he said.

"Yes, that seems to be the bright side of the trouble."

"Well, I hope you have brought a blessing with you."

"I hope I have! I prayed the Lord not to bring me here unless he came with me."

"I think the hush of the Spirit's presence has been in our church all winter," said Mrs. West. "I've had no rest day or night pleading for our young people."

The words filled Marjorie with a great awe; she slipped out to unburden herself to Linnet, but Linnet was setting the tea-table in a frolicsome mood and Marjorie's heart could not vent itself upon a frolicsome listener.

From the china closet in the hall Linnet had brought out the china, one of her mother's wedding presents and therefore seldom used, and the glass water pitcher and the small glass fruit saucers.

"Can't I help?" suggested Marjorie looking on with great interest.

"No," refused Linnet, decidedly, "you might break something as you did the night Mrs. Rheid and Hollis were here."

"My fingers were too cold, then."

"Perhaps they are too warm, now," laughed Linnet.

"Then I can tell you about the primary colors; I suppose I won't break them," returned Marjorie with her usual sweet-humor.

Linnet moved the spoon holder nearer the sugar bowl with the air of a house wife, Marjorie stood at the table leaning both elbows upon it.

"If you remember vibgyor, you'll remember the seven primary colors!" she said mysteriously.

"Is it like cutting your nails on Saturday without thinking of a fox's tail and so never have the toothache?" questioned Linnet.

"No; this is earnest. It isn't a joke; it's a lesson," returned Marjorie, severely. "Mr. Holmes said a professor told it to him when he was in college."

"You see it's a joke! I remember vibgyor, but now I don't know the seven primary colors. You are always getting taken in, Goosie! I hope you didn't ask Mr. Woodfern if he is the man in Pilgrim's Progress."

"I know he isn't," said Marjorie, seriously, "there are a good many of them, he said so. I guess Pilgrim's Progress happened a long time ago. I shan't look for Great-heart, any more," she added, with a sigh.

Linnet laughed and scrutinized the white handled knives to see if there were any blemishes on the blades; her mother kept them laid away in old flannel.

"Now, Linnet, you see it isn't a joke," began Marjorie, protestingly; "the word is made of all the first letters of the seven colors,—just see!" counting on her fingers, "violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red! Did you see how it comes right?"

"I didn't see, but I will as soon as I get time. You were not taken in that time, I do believe. Did Mr. Woodfern ask you questions?"

"Not that kind! And I'm glad he didn't. Linnet, I haven't any 'experience' to talk about."

"You are not old enough," said Linnet, wisely.

"Are you?"

"Yes, I have a little bit."

"Shall you tell him about it?" asked Marjorie curiously.

"I don't know."

"I wish I had some; how do you get it?"

"It comes."

"From where?"

"Oh, I don't know."

"Then you can't tell me how to get it," pleaded Marjorie.

"No," said Linnet, shaking her sunshiny curls, "perhaps mother can."

"When did you have yours?" Marjorie persisted.

"One day when I was reading about the little girl in the Sandwich Islands. Her father was a missionary there, and she wrote in her journal how she felt and I felt so, too,"

"Did you put it in your journal?"

"Some of it."

"Did you show it to mother?"

"Yes."

"Was she glad?"

"Yes, she kissed me and said her prayers were answered."

Marjorie looked very grave. She wished she could be as old as Linnet and have "experience" to write in her journal and have her mother kiss her and say her prayers were answered.

"Do you have it all the time?" she questioned anxiously as Linnet hurried in from the kitchen with a small platter of sliced ham in her hand.

"Not every day; I do some days."

"I want it every day."

"You call them to tea when I tell you. And you may help me bring things in."

When Marjorie opened the parlor door to call them to tea she heard Mr.
Woodfern inquire:

"Do all your children belong to the Lord?"

"The two in heaven certainly do, and I think Linnet is a Christian," her mother was saying.

"And Marjorie," he asked.

"You know there are such things; I think Marjorie's heart was changed in her cradle."

With the door half opened Marjorie stood and heard this lovely story about herself.

"It was before she was three years old; one evening I undressed her and laid her in the cradle, it was summer and she was not ready to go to sleep; she had been in a frolic with Linnet and was all in a gale of mischief. She arose up and said she wanted to get out; I said 'no,' very firmly, 'mamma wants you to stay.' But she persisted with all her might, and I had to punish her twice before she would consent to lie still; I was turning to leave her when I thought her sobs sounded more rebellious than subdued, I knelt down and took her in my arms to kiss her, but she drew back and would not kiss me. I saw there was no submission in her obedience and made up my mind not to leave her until she had given up her will to mine. If you can believe it, it was two full hours before she would kiss me, and then she couldn't kiss me enough. I think when she yielded to my will she gave up so wholly that she gave up her whole being to the strongest and most loving will she knew. And as soon as she knew God, she knew—or I knew—that she had submitted to him."

"Come to tea," called Marjorie, joyfully, a moment later.

This lovely story about herself was only one of the happenings that caused Marjorie to remember this day and evening: this day of small events stood out clearly against the background of her childhood.

That evening in the church she had been moved to do the hardest, happiest thing she had ever done in her hard and happy eleven years. At the close of his stirring appeal to all who felt themselves sinners in God's sight, Evangelist (he would always be Evangelist to Marjorie) requested any to rise who had this evening newly resolved to seek Christ until they found him. A little figure in a pew against the wall, arose quickly, after an undecided, prayerful moment, a little figure in a gray cloak and broad, gray velvet hat, but it was such a little figure, and the radiant face was hidden by such a broad hat, and the little figure dropped back into its seat so hurriedly, that, in looking over the church, neither the pastor nor the evangelist noticed it. Her heart gave one great jump when the pastor arose and remarked in a grieved and surprised tone: "I am sorry that there is not one among us, young or old, ready to seek our Saviour to-night."

The head under the gray hat drooped lower, the radiant face became for one instant sorrowful. As they were moving down the aisle an old lady, who had been seated next to Marjorie, whispered to her, "I'm sorry they didn't see you, dear."

"Never mind," said the bright voice, "God saw me."

Hollis saw her, also, and his heart smote him. This timid little girl had been braver than he. From the group of boys in the gallery he had looked down at her and wondered. But she was a girl, and girls did not mind doing such things as boys did; being good was a part of Marjorie's life, she wouldn't be Marjorie without it. There was a letter in his pocket from his uncle bidding him to come to the city without delay; he pushed through the crowd to find Marjorie, "it would be fun to see how sorry she would look," but her father had hurried her out and lifted her into the sleigh, and he saw the gray hat in the moonlight close to her father's shoulder.

As he was driving to the train the next afternoon, he jumped out and ran up to the door to say good-bye to her.

Marjorie opened the door, arrayed in a blue checked apron with fingers stained with peeling apples.

"Good-bye, I'm off," he shouted, resisting the impulse to catch her in his arms and kiss her.

"Good-bye, I'm so glad, and so sorry," she exclaimed with a shadowed face.

"I wish I had something to give you to remember me by," he said suddenly.

"I think you have given me lots of things."

"Come, Hol, don't stand there all day," expostulated his brother from the sleigh.

"Good-bye, then," said Hollis.

"Good-bye," said Marjorie. And then he was off and the bells were jingling down the road and she had not even cautioned him "Be a good boy." She wished she had had something to give him to remember her by; she had never done one thing to help him remember her and when he came back in years and years they would both be grown up and not know each other.

"Marjie, you are taking too thick peels," remonstrated her mother. For the next half hour she conscientiously refrained from thinking of any thing but the apples.

"Oh, Marjie," exclaimed Linnet, "peel one whole, be careful and don't break it, and throw it over your right shoulder and see what letter comes."

"Why?" asked Magorie, selecting a large, fair apple to peel.

"I'll tell you when it comes," answered Linnet, seriously.

With an intent face, and slow, careful fingers, Marjorie peeled the handsome apple without breaking the coils of the skin, then poised her hand and gave the shining, green rings a toss over her shoulder to the oilcloth.

"S! S! Oh! what a handsome S!" screamed Linnet.

"Well, what does it mean?" inquired Marjorie, interestedly.

"Oh, nothing, only you will marry a man whose name begins with S," said
Linnet, seriously.

"I don't believe I will!" returned Marjorie, contentedly. "Do you believe
I will, mother?"

Mrs. West was lifting a deliciously browned pumpkin pie from the oven, she set it carefully on the table beside Marjorie's yellow dish of quartered apples and then turned to the oven for its mate.

"Now cut one for me," urged Linnet gleefully.

"But I don't believe it," persisted Marjorie, picking among the apples in the basket at her feet; "you don't believe it yourself."

"I never knew it to come true," admitted Linnet, sagely, "but S is a common letter. There are more Smiths in the world than any one else. A woman went to an auction and bought a brass door plate with Smith on it because she had six daughters and was sure one of them would marry a Smith."

"And did one?" asked Maijorie, in her innocent voice. Linnet was sure her lungs were made of leather else she would have burst them every day laughing at foolish little Marjorie.

"The story ended there," said Linnet.

"Stories always leave off at interesting places," said Marjorie, guarding
Linnet's future with slow-moving fingers. "I hope mine won't."

"It will if you die in the middle of it," returned Linnet

Linnet was washing the baking dishes at the sink.

"No, it wouldn't, it would go on and be more interesting," said Marjorie, in her decided way; "but I do want to finish it all."

"Be careful, don't break mine," continued Linnet, as Marjorie gave the apple rings a toss. "There! you have!" she cried disappointedly. "You've spoiled my fortune, Marjie."

"Linnet! Linnet!" rebuked her mother, shutting the oven door, "I thought you were only playing. I wouldn't have let you go on if I had thought you would have taken it in earnest."

"I don't really," returned Linnet, with a vexed laugh, "but I did want to see what letter it would be."

"It's O," said Marjorie, turning to look over her shoulder.

"Rather a crooked one," conceded Linnet, "but it will have to do."

"Suppose you try a dozen times and they all come different," suggested practical Marjorie.

"That proves it's all nonsense," answered her mother.

"And suppose you don't marry anybody," Marjorie continued, spoiling Linnet's romance, "some letter, or something like a letter has to come, and then what of it?"

"Oh, it's only fun," explained Linnet.

"I don't want to know about my S" confessed Marjorie. "I'd rather wait and find out. I want my life to be like a story-book and have surprises in the next chapter."

"It's sure to have that," said her mother. "We mustn't try to find out what is hidden. We mustn't meddle with our lives, either. Hurry providence, as somebody says in a book."

"And we can't ask anybody but God," said Marjorie, "because nobody else knows. He could make any letter come that he wanted to."

"He will not tell us anything that way," returned her mother.

"I don't want him to," said Marjorie.

"Mother, I was in fun and you are making serious," cried Linnet with a distressed face.

"Not making it dreadful, only serious," smiled her mother.

"I don't see why the letter has to be about your husband," argued
Marjorie, "lots of things will happen to us first"

"But that is exciting," said Linnet, "and it is the most of things in story-books."

"I don't see why," continued Marjorie, unconvinced, turning an apple around in her fingers, "isn't the other part of the story worth anything?"

"Worth anything!" repeated Linnet, puzzled.

"Doesn't God care for the other part?" questioned the child. "I've got to have a good deal of the other part."

"So have all unmarried people," said her mother, smiling at the quaint gravity of Marjorie's eyes.

"Then I don't see why—" said Marjorie.

"Perhaps you will by and by," her mother replied, laughing, for Marjorie was looking as wise as an owl; "and now, please hurry with the apples, for they must bake before tea. Mr. Woodfern says he never ate baked apple sauce anywhere else."

Marjorie hoped he would not stay a whole week, as he proposed, if she had to cut the apples. And then, with a shock and revulsion at herself, she remembered that her father had read at worship that morning something about giving even a cup of cold water to a disciple for Christ's sake.

Linnet laughed again as she stooped to pick up the doubtful O and crooked S from the oilcloth.

But the letters had given Marjorie something to think about.

I had decided to hasten over the story of Marjorie's childhood and bring her into her joyous and promising girlhood, but the child's own words about the "other part" that she must have a "good deal" of have changed my mind. Surely God does care for the "other part," too.

And I wonder what it is in you (do you know?) that inclines you to hurry along and skip a little now and then, that you may discover whether Marjorie ever married Hollis? Why can't you wait and take her life as patiently as she did?

That same Saturday evening Marjorie's mother said to Marjorie's father, with a look of perplexity upon her face,

"Father, I don't know what to make of our Marjorie."

He was half dozing over the Agriculturist; he raised his head and asked sharply, "Why? What has she done now?"

Everybody knew that Marjorie was the apple of her father's eye.

"Nothing new! Only everything she does is new. She is two Marjories, and that's what I can't make out. She is silent and she is talkative; she is shy, very shy, and she is as bold as a little lion; sometimes she won't tell you anything, and sometimes she tells you everything; sometimes I think she doesn't love me, and again she loves me to death; sometimes I think she isn't as bright as other girls, and then again I'm sure she is a genius. Now Linnet is always the same; I always know what she will do and say; but there's no telling about Marjorie. I don't know what to make of her," she sighed.

"Then I wouldn't try, wife," said Marjorie's father, with his shrewd smile. "I'd let somebody that knows."

After a while, Marjorie's mother spoke again:

"I don't know that you help me any."

"I don't know that I can; girls are mysteries—you were a mystery once yourself. Marjorie can respond, but she will not respond, unless she has some one to respond to, or some thing to respond to. Towards myself I never find but one Marjorie!"

"That means that you always give her something to respond to!"

"Well, yes, something like it," he returned in one of Marjorie's contented tones.

"She'll have a good many heart aches before she's through, then," decided
Mrs. West, with some sharpness.

"Probably," said Marjorie's father with the shadow of a smile on his thin lips.

III.

WHAT "DESULTORY" MEANS.

"A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded."

"Miss Prudence! O, Miss Prudence!"

It was summer time and Marjorie was almost fourteen years old. Her soul was looking out of troubled eyes to-day. Just now life was all one unanswered question.

"Marjorie! O, Marjorie!" mimicked Miss Prudence.

"I don't know what desultory means," said Marjorie.

"And you don't know where to find a dictionary?"

"Mustn't I ask you questions when I can find the answer myself?" asked
Marjorie, straightforwardly.

"I think it's rather impertinent, don't you?"

"Yes," considered Marjorie, "rather."

Miss Prudence was a fair vision in Marjorie's eyes and Marjorie was a radiant vision in Miss Prudence's eyes. The radiant vision was not clothed in gorgeous apparel; the radiance was in the face and voice and in every motion; the apparel was simply a stiffly starched blue muslin, that had once belonged to Linnet and had been "let down" for Marjorie, and her head was crowned with a broad-brimmed straw hat, around the crown of which was tied a somewhat faded blue ribbon, also a relic of Linnet's summer days; her linen collar was fastened with an old-fashioned pin of her mother's; her boots were new and neatly fitting, her father had made them especially for herself.

Her sense of the fitness of things was sometimes outraged; one of the reasons why she longed to grow up was that she might have things of her own; things bought for her and made for her as they always were for Linnet. But Linnet was pretty and good and was going away to school!

The fair vision was clothed in white, a soft white, that fell in folds and had no kinship with starch. Marjorie had never seen this kind of white dress before; it was a part of Miss Prudence's loveliness. The face was oval and delicate, with little color in the lips and less in the cheeks, smooth black hair was brushed away from the thoughtful forehead and underneath the heavily pencilled black brows large, believing, gray eyes looked unquestioningly out upon the world. Unlike Marjorie, Miss Prudence's questions had been answered. She would have told Marjorie that it was because she had asked her questions of One who knew how to answer. She was swinging in her hammock on the back porch; this back porch looked over towards the sea, a grass plat touched the edge of the porch and then came the garden; it was a kitchen garden, and stretched down to the flat rocks, and beyond the flat rocks were the sand and the sea.

Marjorie had walked two miles and a half this hot afternoon to spend two or three hours with her friend, Miss Prudence. Miss Prudence was boarding at Marjorie's grandfather's; this was the second summer that she had been at this farmhouse by the sea. She was the lady of whom Marjorie had caught a glimpse so long ago in church, and called her Mercy. Throwing aside her hat, Marjorie dropped down on the floor of the porch, so near the gently swaying hammock that she might touch the soft, white drapery, and in a position to watch Miss Prudence's face.

"I don't see the use of learning somethings," Marjorie began; that is, if she could be said to begin anything with Miss Prudence, the beginning of all her questions had been so long ago. So long ago to Marjorie; long ago to Miss Prudence was before Marjorie was born.

There were no books or papers in the hammock. Miss Prudence had settled herself comfortably, so comfortably that she was not conscious of inhabiting her body when Marjorie had unlatched the gate.

"Which one of the things, for instance?"

In the interested voice there was not one trace of the delicious reverie she had been lost in.

"Punctuation," said Marjorie, promptly; "and Mr. Holmes says we must be thorough in it. I can't see the use of anything beside periods, and, of course, a comma once in a while."

A gleam of fun flashed into the gray eyes. Miss Prudence was a born pedagogue.

"I'll show you something I learned when I was a little girl; and, after this, if you don't confess that punctuation has its work in the world, I have nothing more to say about it."

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.

It was some few moments before the roving eyes could settle themselves upon the paper and pencil she had been sent for; she would have liked to choose a sheet of the thick cream-paper with the autumn leaves painted on it, but that was not for study, and Miss Prudence certainly intended study, although there was fun in her eyes. She selected carefully a sheet of foolscap and from among the pen oils a nicely sharpened Faber number three. With the breath of the room about her, and the beauty and restfulness of it making a glory in her eyes, she ran down to the broad, airy hall.

Glancing into the sitting-room as she passed its partly opened door she discovered her grandfather asleep in his arm-chair and her grandmother sitting near him busy in slicing apples to be strung and hung up in the kitchen to dry! With a shiver of foreboding the child passed the door on tiptoe; suppose her grandmother should call her in to string those apples! The other children never strung them to suit her and she "admired" Marjorie's way of doing them. Marjorie said once that she hated apple blossoms because they turned into dried apples. But that was when she had stuck the darning needle into her thumb.

I'm afraid you will think now that Marjorie is not as sweet as she used to be.

She presented the paper, congratulating herself upon her escape, and Miss Prudence lifted herself in the hammock and took the pencil, holding it in her fingers while she meditated. What a little girl she was when her whiteheaded old teacher had bidden her write this sentence on the blackboard. She wrote it carefully, Marjorie's attentive eyes following each movement of the pencil.

"The persons inside the coach were Mr Miller a clergyman his son a lawyer Mr Angelo a foreigner his lady and a little child" In the entire sentence there was not one punctuation mark.

"Read it, please."

Marjorie began to read, then stopped and laughed.

"I can't."

"You wouldn't enjoy a book very much written in that style, would you?"

"I couldn't enjoy it at all. I wouldn't read it"

"Well, if you can't read it, explain it to me. How many persons are in the coach?"

"That's easy enough! There's Mr. Miller, that's one; there's the clergyman, that's two!"

"Perhaps that is only one; Mr. Miller may be a clergyman."

"So he may. But how can I tell?" asked Marjorie, perplexed. "Well, then, his son makes two."

"Whose son?"

"Why, Mr. Miller's!"

"Perhaps he was the clergyman's son," returned Miss Prudence seriously.

"Well, then," declared Marjorie, "I guess there were eight people! Mr. Miller, the clergyman, the son, the lawyer, Mr. Angelo, a foreigner, a lady, and a child!"

"Placing a comma after each there are eight persons," said Miss Prudence making the commas.

"Yes," assented Marjorie, watching her.

Beneath it Miss Prudence wrote the sentence again, punctuating thus:

"The persons inside the conch were Mr. Miller, a clergyman; his son, a lawyer; Mr. Angelo, a foreigner, his lady; and a little child."

"Now how many persons are there inside this coach?"

"Three gentlemen, a lady and child," laughed Marjorie—"five instead of eight. Those little marks have caused three people to vanish."

"And to change occupations."

"Yes, for Mr. Miller is a clergyman, his son a lawyer, and Mr. Angelo has become a foreigner."

The pencil was moving again and the amused, attentive eyes were steadfastly following.

"The persons inside the coach were Mr. Miller; a clergyman, his son; a lawyer, Mr. Angelo; a foreigner, his lady, and a little child."

Marjorie uttered an exclamation; it was so funny!

"Now, Mr. Miller's son is a clergyman instead of himself, Mr. Angelo is a lawyer, and nobody knows whether he is a foreigner or not, and we don't know the foreigner's name, and he has a wife and child."

Miss Prudence smiled over the young eagerness, and rewrote the sentence once again causing Mr. Angelo to cease to be a lawyer and giving the foreigner a wife but no little child.

"O, Miss Prudence, you've made the little thing an orphan all alone in a stage-coach all through the change of a comma to be a semi-colon!" exclaimed Marjorie in comical earnestness. "I think punctuation means ever so much; it isn't dry one bit," she added, enthusiastically.

"You couldn't enjoy Mrs. Browning very well without it," smiled Miss
Prudence.

"I never would know what the 'Cry of the Children' meant, or anything about Cowper's grave, would I? And if I punctuated it myself, I might not get all she meant. I might make a meaning of my own, and that would be sad."

"I think you do," said Miss Prudence; "when I read it to you and the children, there were tears in your eyes, but the others said all they liked was my voice."

"Yes," said Marjorie, "but if somebody had stumbled over every line I shouldn't have felt it so. I know the good there is in studying elocution. When Mr. Woodfern was here and read 'O, Absalom, my son! My son, Absalom!' everybody had tears in their eyes, and I had never seen tears about it before. And now I know the good of punctuation. I guess punctuation helps elocution, too."

"I shouldn't wonder," replied Miss Prudence, smiling at Marjorie's air of having discovered something. "Now, I'll give you something to do while I close my eyes and think awhile."

"Am I interrupting you?" inquired Marjorie in consternation. "I didn't know how I could any more than I can interrupt—"

"God" was in her thought, but she did not give it utterance.

"I shall not allow you," returned Miss Prudence, quietly. "You will work awhile, and I will think and when I open my eyes you may talk to me about anything you please. You are a great rest to me, child."

"Thank you," said the child, simply.

"You may take the paper and change the number of people, or relationship, or professions again. I know it may be done."

"I don't see how."

"Then it will give you really something to do."

Seating herself again on the yellow floor of the porch, within range of Miss Prudence's vision, but not near enough to disturb her, Marjorie bit the unsharpened end of her pencil and looked long at the puzzling sentences on the foolscap. With the attitude of attentiveness she was not always attentive; Mr. Holmes told her that she lacked concentration and that she could not succeed without it. Marjorie was very anxious to "succeed." She scribbled awhile, making a comma and a dash, a parenthesis, an interrogation point, an asterisk and a line of asterisks! But the sense was not changed; there was nobody new in the stage-coach and nobody did anything new. Then she rewrote it again, giving the little child to the foreigner and lady; she wanted the child to have a father and mother, even if the father were a foreigner and did not speak English; she called the foreigner Mr. Angelo, and imagined him to be a brother of the celebrated Michael Angelo; making a dive into the shallow depths of her knowledge of Italian nomenclature she selected a name for the child, a little girl, of course—Corrinne would do, or it might be a boy and named for his uncle Michael. In what age of the world had Michael Angelo lived? At the same time with Petrarch and Galileo, and Tasso and—did she know about any other Italians? Oh, yes. Silvio Pellico,—wasn't he in prison and didn't he write about it? And was not the leaning tower of Pisa in Italy? Was that one of the Seven Wonders of the World? And weren't there Seven Wise Men of Greece? And wasn't there a story about the Seven Sleepers? But weren't they in Asia? And weren't the churches in Revelation in Asia? And wasn't the one at Laodicea lukewarm? And did people mix bread with lukewarm water in summer as well as winter? And wasn't it queer—why how had she got there? But it was queer for the oriental king to refuse to believe and say it wasn't so—that water couldn't become hard enough for people to walk on it! And it was funny for the East Indian servant to be alarmed because the butter was "spoiled," just because when they were up in the mountains it became hard and was not like oil as it was down in Calcutta! And that was where Henry Martyn went, and he dressed all in white, and his face was so lovely and pure, like an angel's; and angels were like young men, for at the resurrection didn't it say they were young men! Or was it some other time? And how do you spell resurrection? Was that the word that had one s and two r's in it? And how would you write two r's? Would punctuation teach you that? Was B a word and could you spell it?

"Well, Marjorie?"

"Oh, dear me!" exclaimed Marjorie. "I've been away off! I always do go away off! I don't remember what the last thing I thought of was. I never shall be concentrated," she sighed. "I believe I could go right on and think of fifty other things. One thing always reminds me of some thing else."

"And some day," rebuked Miss Prudence, "when you must concentrate your thoughts you will find that you have spoiled yourself."

"I have found it out now," acknowledged Marjorie humbly.

"I have to be very severe with myself."

"I ought to be," Marjorie confessed with a rueful face, "for it spoils my prayers so often. I wouldn't dare tell you all the things I find myself thinking of. Why, last night—you know at the missionary meeting they asked us to pray for China and so I thought I'd begin last night, and I had hardly begun when it flashed into my mind—suppose somebody should make me Empress of China, and give me supreme power, of course. And I began to make plans as to how I should make them all Christians. I thought I wouldn't force them or destroy their temples, but I'd have all my officers real Christians; Americans, of course; and I thought I would compel them to send the children to Christian schools. I'd have such grand schools. I had you as principal for the grandest one. And I'd have the Bible and all our best books, and all our best Sunday School books translated into Chinese and I would make the Sabbath a holy day all over the land. I didn't know what I would do about that room in every large house called the Hall of Ancestors. You know they worship their grandparents and great-great-grandparents there. I think I should have to let them read the old books. Isn't it queer that one of the proverbs should be like the Bible? 'God hates the proud and is kind to the humble.' Do you know all about Buddha?"

"Is that as far as you got in your prayer?" asked Miss Prudence, gravely.

"About as far. And then I was so contrite that I began to pray for myself as hard as I could, and forgot all about China."

"Do you wander off in reading the Bible, too?"

"Oh, no; I can keep my attention on that. I read Genesis and Exodus last Sunday. It is the loveliest story-book I know. I've begun to read it through. Uncle James said once, that when he was a sea-captain, he brought a passenger from Germany and he used to sit up all night and read the Bible. He told me last Sunday because he thought I read so long. I told him I didn't wonder. Miss Prudence," fixing her innocent, questioning eyes upon Miss Prudence's face, "why did a lady tell mother once that she didn't want her little girl to read the Bible through until she was grown up? It was Mrs. Grey,—and she told mother she ought not to let me begin and read right through."

"What did your mother say?"

"She said she was glad I wanted to do it."

"I think Mrs. Grey meant that you might learn about some of the sin there is in the world. But if you live in the world, you will be kept from the evil, because Christ prayed that his disciples might be thus kept; but you must know the sin exists. And I would rather my little girl would learn about the sins that God hates direct from his lips than from any other source. As soon as you learn what sin is, you will learn to hate it, and that is not sure if you learn it in any other way. I read the Bible through when I was about your age, and I think there are some forms of sin I never should have hated so intensely if I had not learned about them in the way God thinks best to teach us his abhorrence of them. I never read any book in which a sin was fully delineated that I did not feel some of the excitement of the sin—some extenuation, perhaps, some glossing over, some excuse for the sinner,—but in the record God gives I always intensely hate the sin and feel how abominable it is in his sight. The first book I ever cried over was the Bible and it was somebody's sin that brought the tears. I would like to talk to Mrs. Grey!" cried Miss Prudence, her eyes kindling with indignation. "To think that God does not know what is good for his children."

"I wish you would," said Marjorie with enthusiasm, "for I don't know how to say it. Mother knows a lady who will not read Esther on Sunday because God isn't in it"

"The name of God, you mean," said Miss Prudence smiling. "I think Esther and Mordecai and all the Jews thought God was in it."

"I will try not to build castles," promised Marjorie often a silent half minute. "I've done it so much to please Linnet. After we go to bed at night she says, 'Shut your eyes, Marjie, and tell me what you see,' Then I shut my eyes and see things for us both. I see ourselves grown up and having a splendid home and a real splendid husband, and we each have three children. She has two boys and one girl, and I have two girls and one boy. And we educate them and dress them so nice, and they do lovely things. We travel all around the world with them, and I tell Linnet all we see in Europe and Asia. Our husbands stay home and send us money. They have to stay home and earn it, you know," Marjorie explained with a shrewd little smile. "Would you give that all up?" she asked disappointedly.

"Yes, I am sure I would. You are making a disappointment for yourself; your life may not be at all like that. You may never marry, in the first place, and you may marry a man who cannot send you to Europe, and I think you are rather selfish to spend his money and not stay home and be a good wife to him," said Miss Prudence, smiling.

"Oh. I write him splendid long letters!" said Marjorie quickly. "They are so splendid that he thinks of making a book of them."

"I'm afraid they wouldn't take," returned Miss Prudence seriously, "books of travel are too common nowadays."

"Is it wrong to build castles for any other reason than for making disappointments?" Marjorie asked anxiously.

"Yes, you dwell only on pleasant things and thus you do not prepare yourself, or rather un-prepare yourself for bearing trial. And why should a little girl live in a woman's world?"

"Oh, because it's so nice!" cried Marjorie.

"And are you willing to lose your precious childhood and girlhood?"

"Why no," acknowledged the child, looking startled.

"I think you lose a part of it when you love best to look forward to womanhood; I should think every day would be full enough for you to live in."

"To-day is full enough; but some days nothing happens at all."

"Now is your study time; now is the time for you to be a perfect little daughter and sister, a perfect friend, a perfect helper in every way that a child may help. And when womanhood comes you will be ready to enjoy it and to do its work. It would be very sad to look back upon a lost or blighted or unsatisfying childhood."

"Yes," assented Marjorie, gravely.

"Perhaps you and Linnet have been reading story-books that were not written for children."

"We read all the books in the school library."

"Does your mother look over them?"

"No, not always."

"They may harm you only in this way that I see. You are thinking of things before the time. It would be a pity to spoil May by bringing September into it."

"All the girls like the grown-up stories best" excused Marjorie.

"Perhaps they have not read books written purely for children. Think of the histories and travels and biographies and poems piled up for you to read!"

"I wish I had them. I read all I could get."

"I am sure you do. O, Marjorie, I don't want you to lose one of your precious days. I lost so many of mine by growing up too soon. There are years and years to be a woman, but there are so few years to be a child and a girl."

Marjorie scribbled awhile thinking of nothing to say. Had she been "spoiling" Linnet, too? But Linnet was two years older, almost old enough to think about growing up.

"Marjorie, look at me!"

Marjorie raised her eyes and fixed them upon the glowing eyes that were reading her own. Miss Prudence's lips were white and tremulous.

"I have had some very hard things in my life and I fully believe I brought many of them upon myself. I spoiled my childhood and early girlhood by light reading and castle-building; I preferred to live among scenes of my own imagining, than in my own common life, and oh, the things I left up done! The precious girlhood I lost and the hard womanhood I made for myself."

The child's eyes were as full of tears as the woman's.

"Please tell me what to do," Marjorie entreated. "I don't want to lose anything. I suppose it is as good to be a girl as a woman."

"Get all the sweetness out of every day; live in to-day, don't plan or hope about womanhood; God has all that in his safe hands. Read the kind of books I have spoken of and when you read grown-up stories let some one older and wiser choose them for you. By and by your taste will be so formed and cultivated that you will choose only the best for yourself. I hope the Bible will spoil some other books for you."

"I devour everything I can borrow or find anywhere."

"You don't eat everything you can borrow or find anywhere. If you choose for your body, how much more ought you to choose for your mind."

"I do get discontented sometimes and want things to happen as they do in books; something happens in every chapter in a book," acknowledged Marjorie.

"There's nothing said about the dull, uneventful days that come between; if the author should write only about the dull days no one would read the book."

"It wouldn't be like life, either," said Marjorie, quickly, "for something does happen, sometimes nothing has happened yet to me, though. But I suppose something will, some day."

"Then if I should write about your thirteen years the charm would have to be all in the telling."

"Like Hector in the Garden," said Marjorie, brightly. "How I do love that. And he was only nine years old."

"But how far we've gotten away from punctuation!"

Next to prayer children were Miss Prudence's most perfect rest. They were so utterly unconscious of what she was going through. It seemed to Miss Prudence as if she were always going through and never getting through.

"Are you fully satisfied that punctuation has its work in the world?"

"Yes, ever so fully. I should never get along in the Bible without it."

"That reminds me; run upstairs and bring me my Bible and I'll show you something.

"And, then, after that will you show me the good of remembering dates. They are so hard to remember. And I can't see the good. Do you suppose you could make it as interesting as punctuation?"

"I might try. The idea of a little girl who finds punctuation so interesting having to resort to castle-building to make life worth living," laughed Miss Prudence.

"Mother said to-day that she was afraid I was growing deaf, for she spoke three times before I answered; I was away off somewhere imagining I had a hundred dollars to spend, so she went down cellar for the butter herself."

Marjorie walked away with a self-rebuked air; she did dread to pass that open sitting-room door; Uncle James had come in in his shirt sleeves, wiping his bald head with his handkerchief and was telling her grandfather that the hay was poor this year; Aunt Miranda was brushing Nettie's hair and scolding her for having such greasy fingers; and her grandmother had a pile, such a pile of sliced apple all ready to be strung. Her head was turning, yes, she would see her and then she could not know about dates or have a lesson in reading poetry! Tiptoing more softly still and holding the skirt of her starched muslin in both hands to keep it from rustling, she at last passed the ordeal and breathed freely as she gained Miss Prudence's chamber. The spirit of handling things seemed to possess her this afternoon, for, after finding the Bible, she went to the mantel and took into her hands every article placed upon it; the bird's nest with the three tiny eggs, the bunch of feathers that she had gathered for Miss Prudence with their many shades of brown, the old pieces of crockery, handling these latter very carefully until she seized the yellow pitcher; Miss Prudence had paid her grandmother quite a sum for the pitcher, having purchased it for a friend; Marjorie turned it around and around in her hands, then, suddenly, being startled by a heavy, slow step on the stairs which she recognized as her grandmother's, and having in fear those apples to be strung, in attempting to lift it to the high mantel, it fell short of the mantel edge and dropped with a crash to the hearth.

For an instant Marjorie was paralyzed with horror; then she stifled a shriek and stood still gazing down through quick tears upon the yellow fragments. Fortunately her grandmother, being very deaf, had passed the door and heard no sound. What would have happened to her if her grandmother had looked in!

How disappointed Miss Prudence would be! It belonged to her friend and how could she remedy the loss?

Stooping, with eyes so blinded with tears that she could scarcely see the pieces she took into her hand, she picked up each bit, and then on the spur of the moment hid them among the thick branches of hemlock. Now what was she to do next? Could she earn money to buy another hundred-years-old yellow pitcher? And if she could earn the money, where could she find the pitcher? She would not confess to Miss Prudence until she found some way of doing something for her. Oh, dear! This was not the kind of thing that she had been wishing would happen! And how could she go down with such a face to hear the rest about punctuation?

"Marjorie! Marjorie!" shouted Uncle James from below, "here's Cap'n Rheid at the gate, and if you want to catch a ride you'd better go a ways with him."

The opportunity to run away was better than the ride; hastening down to the hammock she laid the Bible in Miss Prudence's lap.

"I have to go, you see," she exclaimed, hurriedly, averting her face.

"Then our desultory conversation must be finished another time."

"If that's what it means, it means delightful!" said Marjorie. "Thank you, and good-bye."

The blue muslin vanished between the rows of currant bushes. She was hardly a radiant vision as she flew down to the gate; in those few minutes what could have happened to the child?

IV.

A RIDE, A WALK, A TALK, AND A TUMBLE.

"Children always turn toward the light"

"Well, Mousie!"

The old voice and the old pet name; no one thought of calling her
"Mousie" but Hollis Rheid.

Her mother said she was noisier than she used to be; perhaps he would not call her Mousie now if he could hear her sing about the house and run up and down stairs and shout when she played games at school. That time when she was so quiet and afraid of everybody seemed ages ago; ages ago before Hollis went to New York. He had returned home once since, but she had been at her grandfather's and had not seen him. Springing to the ground, he caught her in his arms, this tall, strange boy, who had changed so much, and yet who had not changed at all, and lifted her into the back of the open wagon.

"Will you squeeze in between us—there's but one seat you see, and father's a big man, or shall I make a place for you in the bottom among the bags?"

"I'd rather sit with the bags," said Marjorie, her timidity coming back. She had always been afraid of Hollis' father; his eyes were the color of steel, and his voice was not encouraging. He thought he was born to command. People said old Captain Rheid acted as if he were always on shipboard. His wife said once in the bitterness of her spirit that he always marched the quarter-deck and kept his boys in the forecastle.

"You don't weigh more than that bag of flour yourself, not as much, and that weighs one hundred pounds."

"I weigh ninety pounds," said Marjorie.

"And how old are you?"

"Almost fourteen," she answered proudly.

"Four years younger than I am! Now, are you comfortable? Are you afraid of spoiling your dress? I didn't think of that?"

"Oh, no; I wish I was," laughed Marjorie, glancing shyly at him from under her broad brim.

It was her own bright face, yet, he decided, with an older look in it, her eyelashes were suspiciously moist and her cheeks were reddened with something more than being lifted into the wagon.

Marjorie settled herself among the bags, feeling somewhat strange and thinking she would much rather have walked; Hollis sprang in beside his father, not inclined to make conversation with him, and restrained, by his presence, from turning around to talk to Marjorie.

Oh, how people misunderstand each other! How Captain Rheid misunderstood his boys and how his boys misunderstood him! The boys said that Hollis was the Joseph among them, his father's favorite; but Hollis and his father had never opened their hearts to each other. Captain Rheid often declared that there was no knowing what his boys would do if they were not kept in; perhaps they had him to thank that they were not all in state-prison. There was a whisper among the country folks that the old man himself had been in prison in some foreign country, but no one had ever proved it; in his many "yarns" at the village store, he had not even hinted at such a strait. If Marjorie had not stood quite so much in fear of him she would have enjoyed his adventures; as it was she did enjoy with a feverish enjoyment the story of thirteen days in an open boat on the ocean. His boys were fully aware that he had run away from home when he was fourteen, and had not returned for fourteen years, but they were not in the least inclined to follow his example. Hollis' brothers had all left home with the excuse that they could "better" themselves elsewhere; two were second mates on board large ships, Will and Harold, Sam was learning a trade in the nearest town, he was next to Hollis in age, and the eldest, Herbert, had married and was farming on shares within ten miles of his father's farm. But Captain Rheid held up his head, declaring that his boys were good boys, and had always obeyed him; if they had left him to farm his hundred and fifty acres alone, it was only because their tastes differed from his. In her lonely old age, how his wife sighed for a daughter!—a daughter that would stay at home and share her labors, and talk to her, and read to her on stormy Sundays, and see that her collar was on straight, and that her caps were made nice. Some mothers had daughters, but she had never had much pleasure in her life!

"Like to come over to your grandfather's, eh?" remarked Captain Rheid, looking around at the broad-brimmed hat among the full bags.

"Yes, sir," said Marjorie, denting one of the full bags with her forefinger and wondering what he would do to her if she should make a hole in the bag, and let the contents out.

She rarely got beyond monosyllables with Hollis' father.

"Your uncle James isn't going to stay much longer, he tells me,"

"No, sir," said Marjorie, obediently.

"Wife and children going back to Boston, too?"

"Yes, sir."

Her forefinger was still making dents.

"Just come to board awhile, I suppose?"

"I thought they visited" said Marjorie.

"Visited? Humph! Visit his poor old father with a wife and five children!"

Marjorie wanted to say that her grandfather wasn't poor.

"Your grandfather's place don't bring in much, I reckon."

"I don't know," Marjorie answered.

"How many acres? Not more'n fifty, and some of that made land. I remember when some of your grandfather's land was water! I don't see what your uncle James had to settle down to business in Boston for—that's what comes of marrying a city girl! Why didn't he stay home and take care of his old father?"

Marjorie had nothing to say. Hollis flushed uncomfortably.

"And your mother had to get married, too. I'm glad I haven't a daughter to run away and get married?"

"She didn't run away," Marjorie found voice to answer indignantly.

"O, no, the Connecticut schoolmaster had to come and make a home for her."

Marjorie wondered what right he had to be so disagreeable to her, and why should he find fault with her mother and her uncle, and what right had he to say that her grandfather was poor and that some of his land had once been water?

"Hollis shan't grow up and marry a city girl if I can help it," he growled, half good-naturedly.

Hollis laughed; he thought he was already grown up, and he did admire "city girls" with their pretty finished manners and little ready speeches.

Marjorie wished Hollis would begin to talk about something pleasant; there were two miles further to ride, and would Captain Rheid talk all the way?

If she could only have an errand somewhere and make an excuse to get out! But the Captain's next words relieved her perplexity; "I can't take you all the way, Sis, I have to branch off another road to see a man about helping me with the hay. I would have let Hollis go to mill, but I couldn't trust him with these horses."

Hollis fidgeted on his seat; he had asked his father when they set out to let him take the lines, but he had replied ungraciously that as long as he had hands he preferred to hold the reins.

Hollis had laughed and retorted: "I believe that, father."

"Shall I get out now?" asked Marjorie, eagerly. "I like to walk. I expected to walk home."

"No; wait till we come to the turn."

The horses were walking slowly up the hill; Marjorie made dents in the bag of flour, in the bag of indian meal, and in the bag of wheat bran, and studied Hollis' back. The new navy-blue suit was handsome and stylish, and the back of his brown head with its thick waves of brownish hair was handsome also—handsome and familiar; but the navy-blue suit was not familiar, and the eyes that just then turned and looked at her were not familiar either. Marjorie could get on delightfully with souls, but bodies were something that came between her soul and their soul; the flesh, like a veil, hid herself and hid the other soul that she wanted to be at home with. She could have written to the Hollis she remembered many things that she could not utter to the Hollis that she saw today. Marjorie could not define this shrinking, of course.

"Hollis has to go back in a day or two," Captain Rheid announced; "he spent part of his vacation in the country with Uncle Jack before he came home. Boys nowadays don't think of their fathers and mothers."

Hollis wondered if he thought of his mother and father when he ran away from them those fourteen years: he wished that his father had never revealed that episode in his early life. He did not miss it that he did not love his father, but he would have given more than a little if he might respect him. He knew Marjorie would not believe that he did not think about his mother.

"I wonder if your father will work at his trade next winter," continued
Captain Rheid.

"I don't know," said Marjorie, hoping the "turn" was not far off.

"I'd advise him to—summers, too, for that matter. These little places don't pay. Wants to sell, he tells me."

"Yes, sir."

"Real estate's too low; 'tisn't a good time to sell. But it's a good time to buy; and I'll buy your place and give it to Hollis if he'll settle down and work it."

"It would take more than that farm to keep me here," said Hollis, quickly; "but, thank you all the same, father; Herbert would jump at the chance."

"Herbert shan't have it; I don't like his wife; she isn't respectful to Herbert's father. He wants to exchange it for city property, so he can go into business, he tells me."

"Oh, does he?" exclaimed Marjorie. "I didn't know that."

"Girls are rattlebrains and chatterboxes; they can't be told everything," he replied shortly.

"I wonder what makes you tell me, then," said Marjorie, demurely, in the fun of the repartee forgetting for the first time the bits of yellow ware secreted among the hemlock boughs.

Throwing back his head Captain Rheid laughed heartily, he touched the horses with the whip, laughing still.

"I wouldn't mind having a little girl like you," he said, reining in the horses at the turn of the road; "come over and see marm some day."

"Thank you," Marjorie said, rising.

Giving the reins to Hollis, Captain Rheid climbed out of the wagon that he might lift the child out himself.

"Jump," he commanded, placing her hands on his shoulders.

Marjorie jumped with another "thank you."

"I haven't kissed a little girl for twenty years—not since my little girl died—but I guess I'll kiss you."

Marjorie would not withdraw her lips for the sake of the little girl that died twenty years ago.

"Good-bye, Mousie, if I don't see you again," said Hollis.

"Good-bye," said Marjorie.

She stood still till the horses' heads were turned and the chains had rattled off in the distance, then, very slowly, she walked on in the dusty road, forgetting how soft and green the grass was at the wayside.

"She's a proper nice little thing," observed Hollis' father; "her father wouldn't sell her for gold. I'll exchange my place for his if he'll throw her in to boot. Marm is dreadful lonesome."

"Why don't she adopt a little girl?" asked Hollis.

"I declare! That is an idea! Hollis, you've hit the nail on the head this time. But I'd want her willing and loving, with no ugly ways. And good blood, too. I'd want to know what her father had been before her."

"Are your boys like you, father?" asked Hollis.

"God forbid!" answered the old man huskily. "Hollis, I want you to be a better man than your father. I pray every night that my boys may be Christians; but my time is past, I'm afraid. Hollis, do you pray and read your Bible, regular?"

Hollis gave an embarrassed cough. "No, sir," he returned.

"Then I'd see to it that I did it. That little girl joined the Church last Sunday and I declare it almost took my breath away. I got the Bible down last Sunday night and read a chapter in the New Testament. If you haven't got a Bible, I'll give you money to buy one."

"Oh, I have one," said Hollis uneasily.

"Git up, there!" shouted Captain Rheid to his horses, and spoke not another word all the way home.

After taking a few slow steps Marjorie quickened her pace, remembering that Linnet did not like to milk alone; Marjorie did not like to milk at all; at thirteen there were not many things that she liked to do very much, except to read and think.

"I'm afraid she's indolent," sighed her mother; "there's Linnet now, she's as spry as a cricket"

But Linnet was not conscious of very many things to think about and Marjorie every day discovered some new thought to revel in. At this moment, if it had not been for that unfortunate pitcher, she would have been reviewing her conversation with Miss Prudence. It was wonderful about punctuation; how many times a day life was "wonderful" to the growing child!

Along this road the farmhouses were scattered at long distances, there was one in sight with the gable end to the road, but the next one was fully quarter of a mile away; she noted the fact, not that she was afraid or lonely, but it gave her something to think of; she was too thoroughly acquainted with the road to be afraid of anything by night or by day; she had walked to her grandfather's more times than she could remember ever since she was seven years old. She tried to guess how far the next house was, how many feet, yards or rods; she tried to guess how many quarts of blueberries had grown in the field beyond; she even wondered if anybody could count the blades of grass all along the way if they should try! But the remembrance of the broken pitcher persisted in bringing itself uppermost, pushing through the blades of grass and the quarts of blueberries; she might as well begin to plan how she was to earn another pitcher! Or, her birthday was coming—in a month she would be fourteen; her father would certainly give her a silver dollar because he was glad that he had had her fourteen years. A quick, panting breath behind her, and the sound of hurrying feet, caused her to turn her head; she fully expected to meet the gaze of some big dog, but instead a man was close upon her, dusty, travel-stained, his straw hat pushed back from a perspiring face and a hand stretched out to detain her.

On one arm he carried a long, uncovered basket in which were arranged rows and piles of small bottles; a glance at the basket reassured her, every one knew Crazy Dale, the peddler of essences, cough-drops and quack medicines.

"It's lonesome walking alone; I've been running to overtake you; I tried to be in time to catch a ride; but no matter, I will walk with you, if you will kindly permit."

She looked up into his pleasant countenance; he might have been handsome years ago.

"Well," she assented, walking on.

"You don't know where I could get a girl to work for me," he asked in a cracked voice.

"No sir."

"And you don't want a bottle of my celebrated mixture to teach you how to discern between the true and the false! Rub your head with it every morning, and you'll never believe a lie."

"I don't now," replied Marjorie, taking very quick steps.

"How do you know you don't?" he asked keeping step with her. "Tell me how to tell the difference between a lie and the truth!"

"Rub your head with your mixture," she said, laughing.

But he was not disconcerted, he returned in a simple tone.

"Oh, that's my receipt, I want yours. Yours may be better than mine."

"I think it is."

"Tell me, then, quick."

"Don't you want to go into that house and sell something?" she asked, pointing to the house ahead of them.

"When I get there; and you must wait for me, outside, or I won't go in."

"Don't you know the way yourself?" she evaded.

"I've travelled it ever since the year 1, I ought to know it," he replied, contemptuously. "But you've got to wait for me."

"Oh, dear," sighed Marjorie, frightened at his insistence; then a quick thought came to her: "Perhaps they will keep you all night."

"They won't, they always refuse. They don't believe I'm an angel unawares. That's in the Bible."

"I'd ask them, if I were you," said Marjorie, in a coaxing, tremulous voice; "they're nice, kind people."

"Well, then, I will," he said, hurrying on.

She lingered, breathing more freely; he would certainly overtake her again before she could reach the next house and if she did not agree with everything he proposed he might become angry with her. Oh, dear! how queerly this day was ending! She did not really want anything to happen; the quiet days were the happiest, after all. He strode on before her, turning once in a while, to learn if she were following.

"That's right; walk slow," he shouted in a conciliatory voice.

By the wayside, near the fence opposite the gate he was to enter, there grew a dense clump of blackberry vines; as the gate swung behind him, she ran towards the fence, and, while he stood with his back towards her in the path talking excitedly to a little boy who had come to meet him, she squeezed herself in between the vines and the fence, bending her head and gathering the skirt of her dress in both hands.

He became angry as he talked, vociferating and gesticulating; every instant she the more congratulated herself upon her escape; some of the girls were afraid of him, but she had always been too sorry for him to be much afraid; still, she would prefer to hide and keep hidden half the night rather than be compelled to walk a long, lonely mile with him. Her father or mother had always been within the sound of her voice when he had talked with her; she had never before had to be a protection to herself. Peering through the leaves, she watched him, as he turned again towards the gate, with her heart beating altogether too rapidly for comfort: he opened the gate, strode out to the road and stood looking back.

He stood a long, long time, uttering no exclamation, then hurried on, leaving a half-frightened and very thankful little girl trembling among the leaves of the blackberry vines. But, would he keep looking back? And how could she ever pass the next house? Might he not stop there and be somewhere on the watch for her? If some one would pass by, or some carriage would only drive along! The houses were closer together a mile further on, but how dared she pass that mile? He would not hurt her, he would only look at her out of his wild eyes and talk to her. Answering Captain Rheid's questions was better than this! Staying at her grandfather's and confessing about the pitcher was better than this!

Suddenly—or had she heard it before, a whistle burst out upon the air, a sweet and clear succession of notes, the air of a familiar song: "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home."

Some one was at hand, she sprang through the vines, the briers catching the old blue muslin, extricating herself in time to run almost against the navy-blue figure that she had not yet become familiar with.

The whistle stopped short—"Well, Mousie! Here you are!"

"O, Hollis," with a sobbing breath, "I'm so glad!"

"So am I. I jumped off and ran after you. Why, did I frighten you? Your eyes are as big as moons."

"No," she laughed, "I wasn't frightened."

"You look terribly like it."

"Perhaps some things are like—" she began, almost dancing along by his side, so relieved that she could have poured out a song for joy.

"What do you do nowadays?" he asked presently. "You are more of a live mouse than you used to be! I can't call you Mousie any more, only for the sake of old times."

"I like it," said Marjorie.

"But what do you do nowadays?"

"I read all the time—when I can, and I work, different kinds of work.
Tell me about the little city girls."

"I only know my cousins and one or two others, their friends."

"What do they look like?"

"Like girls! Don't you know how girls look?"

"Not city girls."

"They are pretty, most of them, and they dress older than you and have a manner; they always know how to reply and they are not awkward and too shy; they know how to address people, and introduce people, and sometimes to entertain them, they seem to know what to talk about, and they are bright and wide-awake. They play and sing and study the languages and mathematics. The girls I know are all little ladies."

Marjorie was silent; her cheeks were burning and her eyes downcast. She never could be like that; she never could be a "little lady," if a little lady meant all those unattainable things.

"Do they talk differently from us—from country girls?" she asked after a long pause.

"Yes, I think they do. Mira Crane—I'll tell you how the country girls talk—says 'we am,' and 'fust rate,' and she speaks rudely and abruptly and doesn't look directly at a person when she speaks, she says 'good morning' and 'yes' and 'no' without 'sir' or 'ma'am' or the person's name, and answers 'I'm very well' without adding 'thank you.'"

"Yes," said Marjorie, taking mental note of each expression.

"And Josie Grey—you see I've been studying the difference in the girls since I came home—"

Had he been studying her?

"Is there so much difference?" she asked a little proudly.

"Yes. The difference struck me. It is not city or country that makes the difference, it is the homes and the schools and every educating influence. Josie Grey has all sorts of exclamations like some old grandmother, and she says 'I tell you,' and 'I declare,' and she hunches all up when she sits or puts her feet out into the middle of the room."

"Yes," said Marjorie, again, intently.

"And Nettie Trevor colors and stammers and talks as if she were afraid of you. My little ladies see so many people that they become accustomed to forgetting themselves and thinking of others. They see people to admire and imitate, too."

"So do I," said Marjorie, spiritedly. "I see Miss Prudence and I see Mrs.
Proudfit, our new minister's wife, and I see—several other people."

"I suppose I notice these things more than some boys would. When I left home gentleness was a new language to me; I had never heard it spoken excepting away from home. I was surprised at first that a master could command with gentleness and that those under authority could obey with gentleness."

Marjorie listened with awe; this was not like Hollis; her old Hollis was gone, a new, wise Hollis had come instead. She sighed a little for the old Hollis who was not quite so wise.

"I soon found how much I lacked. I set myself to reading and studying. From the first of October all through the winter I attend evening school and I have subscribed to the Mercantile Library and have my choice among thousands of books. Uncle Jack says I shall be a literary business man."

A "literary business man" sounded very grand to Marjorie. Would she stay home and be ignorant and never be or do anything? At that instant a resolve was born in her heart; the resolve to become a scholar and a lady. But she did not speak, if possible she became more quiet. Hollis should not be ashamed of being her friend.

"Mousie! Why don't you talk to me?" he asked, at last.

"Which of your cousins do you like best?"

"Helen," he said unhesitatingly.

"How old is she?" she asked with a sinking at her heart.

"Seventeen. She's a lady, so gentle and bright, she never rustles or makes a noise, she never says anything to hurt any one's feelings: and how she plays and sings. She never once laughed at me, she helps me in everything; she wanted me to go to evening school and she told me about the Mercantile Library. She's a Christian, too. She teaches in a mission school and goes around among poor people with Aunt Helen. She paints and draws and can walk six miles a day. I go everywhere with her, to lectures and concerts and to church and Sunday school."

How Marjorie's eyes brightened! She had found her ideal; she would give herself no rest until she had become like Helen Rheid. But Helen Rheid had everything to push her on, every one to help her. For the first time in her life Marjorie was disheartened. But, with a reassuring conviction, flashed the thought—there were years before she would be seventeen.

"Wouldn't you like to see her, Mousie?"

"Indeed, I would," said Marjorie, enthusiastically.

"I brought her photograph to mother—how she looked at me when 'marm' slipped out one day. The boys always used to say 'Marm,'" he said laughing.

Marjorie remembered that she had been taught to say "grandmarm," but as she grew older she had softened it to "grandma."

"I'll bring you her photograph when I come to-morrow to say good-bye.
Now, tell me what you've been looking sad about."

Is it possible that she was forgetting?

"Oh, perhaps you can help me!"

"Help you! Of course I will."

"How did you know I was troubled?" she asked seriously, looking up into his eyes.

"Have I eyes?" he answered as seriously. "Father happened to think that mother had an errand for him to do on this road, so I jumped off and ran after you."

"No, you ran after your mother's errand," she answered, jealously.

"Well, then, I found you, my precise little maiden, and now you must tell me what you were crying about."

"Not spilt milk, but only a broken milk pitcher! Do you think you can find me a yellow pitcher, with yellow figures—a man, or a lion, or something, a hundred or two hundred years old?"

"In New York? I'm rather doubtful. Oh, I know—mother has some old ware, it belonged to her grandmother, perhaps I can beg a piece of it for you. Will it do if it isn't a pitcher?"

"I'd rather have a pitcher, a yellow pitcher. The one I broke belongs to a friend of Miss Prudence."

"Prudence! Is she a Puritan maiden?" he asked.

Marjorie felt very ignorant, she colored and was silent. She supposed
Helen Rheid would know what a Puritan maiden was.

"I won't tease you," he said penitently. "I'll find you something to make the loss good, perhaps I'll find something she'll like a great deal better."

"Mr. Onderdonk has a plate that came from Holland, it's over two hundred years old he told Miss Prudence; oh, if you could get that!" cried Marjorie, clasping her hands in her eagerness.

"Mr. Onderdonk? Oh, the shoemaker, near the schoolhouse. Well, Mousie, you shall have some old thing if I have to go back a century to get it. Helen will be interested to know all about it; I've told her about you."

"There's nothing to tell about me," returned Marjorie.

"Then I must have imagined it; you used to be such a cunning little thing."

"Used to be!" repeated sensitive Marjorie, to herself. She was sure Hollis was disappointed in her. And she thought he was so tall and wise and handsome and grand! She could never be disappointed in him.

How surprised she would have been had she known that Helen's eyes had filled with tears when Hollis told her how his little friend had risen all alone in that full church! Helen thought she could never be like Marjorie.

"I wish you had a picture of how you used to look for me to show Helen."

Not how she looked to-day! Her lips quivered and she kept her eyes on her dusty shoes.

"I suppose you want the pitcher immediately."

Two years ago Hollis would have said "right away."

After that Marjorie never forgot to say "immediately."

"Yes, I would," she said, slowly. "I've hidden the pieces away and nobody knows it is broken."

"That isn't like you," Hollis returned, disappointedly.

"Oh, I didn't do it to deceive; I couldn't. I didn't want her to be sorry about it until I could see what I could do to replace it"

"That sounds better."

Marjorie felt very much as if he had been finding fault with her.

"Will you have to pay for it?"

"Not if mother gives it to me, but perhaps I shall exact some return from you."

She met his grave eyes fully before she spoke. "Well, I'll give you all I can earn. I have only seventy-three cents; father gives me one tenth of the eggs for hunting them and feeding the chickens, and I take them to the store. That's the only way I can earn money," she said in her sweet half-abashed voice.

A picture of Helen taking eggs to "the store" flashed upon Hollis' vision; he smiled and looked down upon his little companion with benignant eyes.

"I could give you all I have and send you the rest. Couldn't I?" she asked.

"Yes, that would do. But you must let me set my own price," he returned in a business like tone.

"Oh I will. I'd do anything to get Miss Prudence a pitcher," she said eagerly.

The faded muslin brushed against him; and how odd and old-fashioned her hat was! He would not have cared to go on a picnic with Marjorie in this attire; suppose he had taken her into the crowd of girls among which his cousin Helen was so noticeable last week, how they would have looked at her! They would think he had found her at some mission school. Was her father so poor, or was this old dress and broad hat her mother's taste? Anyway, there was a guileless and bright face underneath the flapping hat and her voice was as sweet as Helen's even it there was such an old-fashioned tone about it. One word seemed to sum up her dress and herself—old-fashioned. She talked like some little old grandmother. She was more than quaint—she was antiquated. That is, she was antiquated beside Helen. But she did not seem out of place here in the country; he was thinking of her on a city pavement, in a city parlor, or among a group of fluttering, prettily dressed city girls, with their modulated voices, animated gestures and laughing, bright replies. There was light and fire about them and Marjorie was such a demure little mouse.

"Don't fret about it any more," he said, kindly, with his grown-up air, patting her shoulder with a light, caressing touch. "I will take it into my hands and you need not think of it again."

"Oh, thank you! thank you!" she cried, her eyes brimming over.

It was the old Hollis, after all; he could do anything and everything she wanted.

Forgetting her shyness, after that home-like touch upon her shoulder, she chatted all the way home. And he did not once think that she was a quiet little mouse.

He did not like "quiet" people; perhaps because his own spirit was so quiet that it required some effort for him to be noisy. Hollis admired most characteristics unlike his own; he did not know, but he felt that Marjorie was very much like himself. She was more like him than he was like her. They were two people who would be very apt to be drawn together under all circumstances, but without special and peculiar training could never satisfy each other. This was true of them even now, and, if possible with the enlarged vision of experience, became truer as they grew older. If they kept together they might grow together; but, the question is, whether of themselves they would ever have been drawn very close together. They were close enough together now, as Marjorie chatted and Hollis listened; he had many questions to ask about the boys and girls of the village and Marjorie had many stories to relate.

"So George Harris and Nell True are really married!" he said. "So young, too!"

"Yes, mother did not like it. She said they were too young. He always liked her best at school, you know. And when she joined the Church she was so anxious for him to join, too, and she wrote him a note about it and he answered it and they kept on writing and then they were married."

"Did he join the Church?" asked Hollis,

"He hasn't yet."

"It is easier for girls to be good than for boys," rejoined Hollis in an argumentative tone,

"Is it? I don't see how."

"Of course you don't. We are in the world where the temptations are; what temptations do you have?"

"I have enough. But I don't want to go out in the world where more temptations are. Don't you know—" She colored and stopped,

"Know what?"

"About Christ praying that his disciples might be kept from the evil that was in the world, not that they might be taken out of the world. They have got to be in the world."

"Yes."

"And," she added sagely, "anybody can be good where no temptations are."

"Is that why girls are good?"

"I don't think girls are good."

"The girls I know are."

"You know city girls," she said archly. "We country girls have the world in our own hearts."

There was nothing of "the world" in the sweet face that he looked down into, nothing of the world in the frank, true voice. He had been wronging her; how much there was in her, this wise, old, sweet little Marjorie!

"Have you forgotten your errand?" she asked, after a moment.

"No, it is at Mr. Howard's, the house beyond yours."

"I'm glad you had the errand."

"So am I. I should have gone home and not known anything about you."

"And I should have stayed tangled in the black berry vines ever so long," she laughed.

"You haven't told me why you were there."

"Because I was silly," she said emphatically.

"Do silly people always hide in blackberry vines?" he questioned, laughing.

"Silly people like me," she said.

At that moment they stopped in front of the gate of Marjorie's home; through the lilac-bushes—the old fence was overgrown with lilacs—Hollis discerned some bright thing glimmering on the piazza. The bright thing possessed a quick step and a laugh, for it floated towards them and when it appeared at the gate Hollis found that it was only Linnet.

There was nothing of the mouse about Linnet.

"Why, Marjie, mother said you might stay till dark."

Linnet was seventeen, but she was not too grown up for "mother said" to be often on her lips.

"I didn't want to," said Marjorie. "Good-bye, Hollis. I'm going to hunt eggs."

"I'd go with you, it's rare fun to hunt eggs, only I haven't seen
Linnet—yet."

"And you must see Linnet—yet," laughed Linnet, "Hollis, what a big boy you've grown to be!" she exclaimed regarding him critically; the new suit, the black onyx watch-chain, the blonde moustache, the full height, and last of all the friendly brown eyes with the merry light in them.

"What a big girl you've grown to be, Linnet," he retorted surveying her critically and admiringly.

There was fun and fire and changing lights, sauciness and defiance, with a pretty little air of deference, about Linnet. She was not unlike his city girl friends; even her dress was more modern and tasteful than Marjorie's.

"Marjorie is so little and doesn't care," she often pleaded with their mother when there was not money enough for both. And Marjorie looked on and held her peace.

Self-sacrifice was an instinct with Marjorie.

"I am older and must have the first chance," Linnet said.

So Marjorie held back and let Linnet have the chances.

Linnet was to have the "first chance" at going to school in September. Marjorie stayed one moment looking at the two as they talked, proud of Linnet and thinking that Hollis must think she, at least, was something like his cousin Helen, and then she hurried away hoping to return with her basket of eggs before Hollis was gone. Hollis was almost like some one in a story-book to her. I doubt if she ever saw any one as other people saw them; she always saw so much. She needed only an initial; it was easy enough to fill out the word. She hurried across the yard, opened the large barn-yard gate, skipped across the barn-yard, and with a little leap was in the barn floor. Last night she had forgotten to look in the mow; she would find a double quantity hidden away there to-night. She wondered if old Queen Bess were still persisting in sitting on nothing in the mow's far dark corner; tossing away her hindering hat and catching up an old basket, she ran lightly up the ladder to the mow. She never remembered that she ran up the ladder.

An hour later—Linnet knew that it was an hour later—Marjorie found herself moving slowly towards the kitchen door. She wanted to see her mother. Lifting the latch she staggered in.

She was greeted with a scream from Linnet and with a terrified exclamation from her mother.

"Marjorie, what is the matter?" cried her mother catching her in her arms.

"Nothing," said Marjorie, wondering.

"Nothing! You are purple as a ghost!" exclaimed Linnet, "and there's a lump on your forehead as big as an egg."

"Is there?" asked Marjorie, in a trembling voice.

"Did you fall? Where did you fall?" asked her mother shaking her gently.
"Can't you speak, child?"

"I—didn't—fall," muttered Marjorie, slowly.

"Yes, you did," said Linnet. "You went after eggs."

"Eggs," repeated Marjorie in a bewildered voice.

"Linnet, help me quick to get her on to the sitting-room lounge! Then get pillows and a comforter, and then run for your father to go for the doctor."

"There's nothing the matter," persisted the child, smiling weakly. "I can walk, mother. Nothing hurts me."

"Doesn't your head ache?" asked Linnet, guiding her steps as her head rested against her mother's breast.

"No."

"Don't you ache anywhere?" questioned her mother, as they led her to the lounge.

"No, ma'am. Why should I? I didn't fall."

Linnet brought the pillow and comforter, and then ran out through the back yard calling, "Father! Father!"

Down the road Hollis heard the agonized cry, and turning hastened back to the house.

"Oh, go for the doctor quick!" cried Linnet, catching him by the arm; "something dreadful has happened to Marjorie, and she doesn't know what it is."

"Is there a horse in the stable?"

"Oh, no, I forgot. And mother forgot Father has gone to town."

"I'll get a horse then—somewhere on the road—don't be so frightened.
Dr. Peck will be here in twenty minutes after I find him."

Linnet flew back to satisfy her mother that the doctor had been sent for, and found Marjorie reiterating to her mother's repeated inquiries:

"I don't ache anywhere; I'm not hurt at all."

"Where were you, child."

"I wasn't—anywhere," she was about to say, then smiled, for she knew she must have been somewhere.

"What happened after you said good-bye to Hollis?" questioned Linnet, falling on her knees beside her little sister, and almost taking her into her arms.

"Nothing."

"Oh, dear, you're crazy!" sobbed Linnet.

Marjorie smiled faintly and lifted her hand to stroke Linnet's cheeks.

"I won't hurt you," she comforted tenderly.

"I know what I'll do!" exclaimed Mrs. West suddenly and emphatically, "I can put hot water on that bump; I've heard that's good."

Marjorie closed her eyes and lay still; she was tired of talking about something that had not happened at all. She remembered afterward that the doctor came and opened a vein in her arm, and that he kept the blood flowing until she answered "Yes, sir," to his question, "Does your head hurt you now?" She remembered all their faces—how Linnet cried and sobbed, how Hollis whispered, "I'll get a pitcher, Mousie, if I have to go to China for it," and how her father knelt by the lounge when he came home and learned that it had happened and was all over, how he knelt and thanked God for giving her back to them all out of her great danger. That night her mother sat by her bedside all night long, and she remembered saying to her:

"If I had been killed, I should have waked up in Heaven without knowing that I had died. It would have been like going to Heaven without dying."

V.

TWO PROMISES.

"He who promiseth runs in debt."

Hollis held a mysterious looking package in his hand when he came in the next day; it was neatly done up in light tissue paper and tied with yellow cord. It looked round and flat, not one bit like a pitcher, unless some pitchers a hundred years ago were flat.

Marjorie lay in delicious repose upon the parlor sofa, with the green blinds half closed, the drowsiness and fragrance of clover in the air soothed her, rather, quieted her, for she was not given to nervousness; a feeling of safety enwrapped her, she was here and not very much hurt, and she was loved and petted to her heart's content. And that is saying a great deal for Marjorie, for her heart's content was a very large content. Linnet came in softly once in a while to look at her with anxious eyes and to ask, "How do you feel now?" Her mother wandered in and out as if she could rest in nothing but in looking at her, and her father had given her one of his glad kisses before he went away to the mowing field. Several village people having heard of the accident through Hollis and the doctor had stopped at the door to inquire with a sympathetic modulation of voice if she were any better. But the safe feeling was the most blessed of all. Towards noon she lay still with her white kitten cuddled up in her arms, wondering who would come next; Hollis had not come, nor Miss Prudence, nor the new minister, nor grandma, nor Josie Grey; she was wishing they would all come to-day when she heard a quick step on the piazza and a voice calling out to somebody.

"I won't stay five minutes, father."

The next instant the handsome, cheery face was looking in at the parlor door and the boisterous "vacation" voice was greeting her with,

"Well, Miss Mousie! How about the tumble down now?"

But her eyes saw nothing excepting the mysterious, flat, round parcel in his hand.

"Oh, Hollis, I'm so glad!" she exclaimed, raising herself upon one elbow.

The stiff blue muslin was rather crumpled by this time, and in place of the linen collar and old-fashioned pin her mother had tied a narrow scarf of white lace about her throat; her hair was brushed back and braided in two heavy braids and her forehead was bandaged in white.

"Well, Marjorie, you are a picture, I must say," he cried, bounding in.
"Why don't you jump up and take another climb?"

"I want to. I want to see the swallow's nest again; I meant to have fed the swallows last night"

"Where are they?"

"Oh, up in the eaves. Linnet and I have climbed up and fed them."

As he dropped on his knees on the carpet beside the sofa she fell back on her pillow.

"Father is waiting for me to go to town with him and I can't stay. You will soon be climbing up to see the swallows again and hunting eggs and everything as usual."

"Oh, yes, indeed," said Marjorie, hopefully.

Watching her face he laid the parcel in her hand. "Don't open it till I'm gone. I had something of a time to get it. The old fellow was as obstinate as a mule when he saw that my heart was set on it. Mother hadn't a thing old enough—I ransacked everywhere—if I'd had time to go to grandmother's I might have done better. She's ninety-three, you know, and has some of her grandmother's things. This thing isn't a beauty to look at, but it's old, and that's the chief consideration. Extreme old age will compensate for its ugliness; which is an extenuation that I haven't for mine. I'm going to-morrow."

"Oh, I want to see it," she exclaimed, not regarding his last remark.

"That's all you care," he said, disappointedly. "I thought you would be sorry that I'm going."

"You know I am," she returned penitently, picking at the yellow cord.

"Perhaps when I am two hundred years old you'll be as anxious to look at me as you are to look at that!"

"Oh, Hollis, I do thank you so."

"But you must promise me two things or you can't have it!"

"I'll promise twenty."

"Two will do until next time. First, will you go and see my mother as soon as you get well, and go often?"

"That's too easy; I want to do something hard for you," she answered earnestly.

"Perhaps you will some day, who knows? There are hard enough things to do for people, I'm finding out. But, have you promised?"

"Yes, I have promised."

"And I know you keep your promises. I'm sure you won't forget. Poor mother isn't happy; she's troubled."

"About you?"

"No, about herself, because she isn't a Christian."

"That's enough to trouble anybody," said Marjorie, wisely.

"Now, one more promise in payment. Will you write to me every two weeks?"

"Oh, I couldn't," pleaded Marjorie.

"Now you've found something too hard to do for me," he said, reproachfully.

"Oh, I'll do it, of course; but I'm afraid."

"You'll soon get over that. You see mother doesn't write often, and father never does, and I'm often anxious about them, and if you write and tell me about them twice a month I shall be happier. You see you are doing something for me."

"Yes, thank you. I'll do the best I can. But I can't write like your cousin Helen," she added, jealously.

"No matter. You'll do; and you will be growing older and constantly improving and I shall begin to travel for the house by and by and my letters will be as entertaining as a book of travels."

"Will you write to me? I didn't think of that."

"Goosie!" he laughed, giving her Linnet's pet name. "Certainly I will write as often as you do, and you mustn't stop writing until your last letter has not been answered for a month."

"I'll remember," said Marjorie, seriously. "But I wish I could do something else. Did you have to pay money for it?"

Marjorie was accustomed to "bartering" and that is the reason that she used the expression "pay money."

"Well, yes, something," he replied, pressing his lips together.

He was angry with the shoemaker about that bargain yet.

"How much? I want to pay you."

"Ladies never ask a gentleman such a question when they make them a present," he said, laughing as he arose. "Imagine Helen asking me how much I paid for the set of books I gave her on her birthday."

The tears sprang to Marjorie's eyes. Had she done a dreadful thing that
Helen would not think of doing?

Long afterward she learned that he gave for the plate the ten dollars that his father gave him for a "vacation present."

"Good-bye, Goosie, keep both promises and don't run up a ladder again until you learn how to run down."

But she could not speak yet for the choking in her throat.

"You have paid me twice over with those promises," he said. "I am glad you broke the old yellow pitcher."

So was she even while her heart was aching. Her fingers held the parcel tightly; what a hearts-ease it was! It had brought her peace of mind that was worth more hard promises than she could think of making.

"He said his father's great-grandfather had eaten out of that plate over in Holland and he had but one more left to bequeath to his little grandson."

"I'm glad the great-grandfather didn't break it," said Marjorie.

Hollis would not disturb her serenity by remarking that the shoemaker might have added a century to the age of his possession; it looked two hundred years old, anyway.

"Good-bye, again, if you don't get killed next time you fall you may live to see me again. I'll wear a linen coat and smell of cheese and smoke a pipe too long for me to light myself by that time—when I come home from Germany."

"Oh, don't," she exclaimed, in a startled voice.

"Which? The coat or the cheese or the pipe."

"I don't care about the cheese or the coat—"

"You needn't be afraid about the pipe; I promised mother to-day that I would never smoke or drink or play cards."

"That's good," said Marjorie, contentedly.

"And so she feels safe about me; safer than I feel about myself, I reckon. But it is good-bye this time. I'll tell Helen what a little mouse and goose you are!"

"Hollis! Hollis!" shouted a gruff voice, impatiently.

"Aye, aye, sir," Hollis returned. "But I must say good-bye to your mother and Linnet."

Instead of giving him a last look she was giving her first look to her treasure. The first look was doubtful. It was not half as pretty as the pitcher. It was not very large and there were innumerable tiny cracks interlacing each other, there were little raised figures on the broad rim and a figure in the centre, the colors were buff and blue. But it was a treasure, twofold more a treasure than the yellow pitcher, for it was twice as old and had come from Holland. The yellow pitcher had only come from England. Miss Prudence would be satisfied that she had not hidden the pitcher to escape detection, and perhaps her friend might like this ancient plate a great deal better and be glad of what had befallen the pitcher. But suppose Miss Prudence did believe all this time that she had hidden the broken pieces and meant, never to tell! At that, she could not forbear squeezing her face into the pillow and dropping a few very sorrowful tears. Still she was glad, even with a little contradictory faint-heartedness, for Hollis would write to her and she would never lose him again. And she could do something for him, something hard.

Her mother, stepping in again, before the tears were dried upon her cheek, listened to the somewhat incoherent story of the naughty thing she had done and the splendid thing Hollis had done, and of how she had paid him with two promises.

Mrs. West examined the plate critically. "It's old, there's no sham about it. I've seen a few old things and I know. I shouldn't wonder if he gave five dollars for it"

"Five dollars!" repeated Marjorie in affright "Oh, I hope not."

"Well, perhaps not, but it is worth it and more, too, to Miss Prudence's friend."

"And I'll keep my promises," said Marjorie's steadfast voice.

"H'm," ejaculated her mother. "I rather think Hollis has the best of it."

"That depends upon me," said wise little Marjorie.

VI.

MARJORIE ASLEEP AND AWAKE.

"She was made for happy thoughts."—Mary Howlet.

I wonder if there is anything, any little thing I should have said, that tries a woman more than the changes in her own face, a woman that has just attained two score and—an unmarried woman. Prudence Pomeroy was discovering these changes in her own face and, it may be undignified, it may be unchristian even, but she was tried. It was upon the morning of her fortieth birthday, that, with considerable shrinking, she set out upon a voyage of discovery upon the unknown sea of her own countenance. It was unknown, for she had not cared to look upon herself for some years, but she bolted her chamber door and set herself about it with grim determination this birthday morning. It was a weakness, it may be, but we all have hours of weakness within our bolted chamber doors.

She had a hard early morning all by herself; but the battle with herself did not commence until she shoved that bolt, pushed back the white curtains, and stationed herself in the full glare of the sun light with her hand-glass held before her resolute face. It was something to go through; it was something to go through to read the record of a score of birthdays past: but she had done that before the breakfast bell rang, locked the old leathern bound volume in her trunk and arranged herself for breakfast, and then had run down with her usual tripping step and kept them all amused with her stories during breakfast time. But that was before the door was bolted. She gazed long at the reflection of the face that Time had been at work upon for forty years; there were the tiniest creases in her forehead, they were something like the cracks in the plate two hundred years old that Marjorie had sent to her last night, there were unmistakable lines under her eyes, the pale tint of her cheek did not erase them nor the soft plumpness render them invisible, they stared at her with the story of relentless years; at the corners of her lips the artistic fingers of Time had chiselled lines, delicate, it is true, but clearly defined—a line that did not dent the cheeks of early maidenhood, a line that had found no place near her own lips ten years ago; and above her eyes—she had not discerned that, at first—there was a lack of fullness, you could not name it hollowness; that was new, at least new to her, others with keener eyes may have noticed it months ago, and there was a yellowness—she might as well give it boldly its right name—at the temple, decrease of fairness, she might call it, but that it was a positive shade of that yellowness she had noticed in others no older than herself; and, then, to return to her cheeks, or rather her chin, there was a laxity about the muscles at the sides of her mouth that gave her chin an elderly outline! No, it was not only the absence of youth, it was the presence of age—her full forty years. And her hair! It was certainly not as abundant as it used to be, it had wearied her, once, to brush out its thick glossy length; it was becoming unmistakably thinner; she was certainly slightly bald about the temples, and white hairs were straggling in one after another, not attempting to conceal themselves. A year ago she had selected them from the mass of black and cut them short, but now they were appearing too fast for the scissors. It was a sad face, almost a gloomy one, that she was gazing into: for the knowledge that her forty years had done their work in her face as surely, and perhaps not as sweetly as in her life had come to her with a shock. She was certainly growing older and the signs of it were in her face, nothing could hide it, even her increasing seriousness made it more apparent; not only growing older, but growing old, the girls would say. Twenty years ago, when she first began to write that birthday record, she had laughed at forty and called it "old" herself. As she laid the hand-glass aside with a half-checked sigh, her eyes fell upon her hand and wrist; it was certainly losing its shapeliness; the fingers were as tapering as ever and the palm as pink, but—there was a something that reminded her of that plate of old china. She might be like a bit of old china, but she was not ready to be laid upon the shelf, not even to be paid a price for and be admired! She was in the full rush of her working days. Awhile ago her friends had all addressed her as "Prudence," but now, she was not aware when it began or how, she was "Miss Prudence" to every one who was not within the nearest circle of intimacy. Not "Prudie" or "Prue" any more. She had not been "Prudie" since her father and mother died, and not "Prue" since she had lost that friend twenty years ago.

In ten short years she would be fifty years old, and fifty was half a century: old enough to be somebody's grandmother. Was she not the bosom friend of somebody's grandmother to-day? Laura Harrowgate, her friend and schoolmate, not one year her senior, was the grandmother of three-months-old Laura. Was it possible that she herself did not belong to "the present generation," but to a generation passed away? She had no daughter to give place to, as Laura had, no husband to laugh at her wrinkles and gray hairs, as Laura had, and to say, "We're growing old together." If it were only "together" there would be no sadness in it. But would she want it to be such a "together" as certain of her friends shared?

Laura Harrowgate was a grandmother, but still she would gush over that plate from Holland two centuries old, buy a bracket for it and exhibit it to her friends. A hand-glass did not make her dolorous. A few years since she would have rebelled against what the hand-glass revealed; but, to-day, she could not rebel against God's will; assuredly it was his will for histories to be written in faces. Would she live a woman's life and adorn herself with a baby's face? Had not her face been moulded by her life? Had she stopped thinking and working ten years ago she might, to-day, have looked at the face she looked at ten years ago. No, she demurred, not a baby's face, but—then she laughed aloud at herself—was not her fate the common fate of all? Who, among her friends, at forty years of age, was ever taken, or mistaken, for twenty-five or thirty? And if she were, what then? Would her work be worth more to the world? Would the angels encamp about her more faithfully or more lovingly? And, then, was there not a face "marred"? Did he live his life upon the earth with no sign of it in his face? Was it not a part of his human nature to grow older? Could she be human and not grow old? If she lived she must grow old; to grow old or to die, that was the question, and then she laughed again, this time more merrily. Had she made the changes herself by fretting and worrying; had she taken life too hard? Yes; she had taken life hard. Another glance into the glass revealed another fact: her neck was not as full and round and white as it once was: there was a suggestion of old china about that, too. She would discard linen collars and wear softening white ruffles; it would not be deceitful to hide Time's naughty little tracery. She smiled this time; she was coming to a hard place in her life. She had believed—oh, how much in vain!—that she had come to all the hard places and waded through them, but here there was looming up another, fully as hard, perhaps harder, because it was not so tangible and, therefore, harder to face and fight. The acknowledging that she had come to this hard place was something. She remembered the remark of an old lady, who was friendless and poor: "The hardest time of my life was between forty and forty-five; I had to accept several bitter facts that after became easier to bear." Prudence Pomeroy looked at herself, then looked up to God and accepted, submissively, even cheerfully, his fact that she had begun to grow old, and then, she dressed herself for a walk and with her sun-umbrella and a volume of poems started out for her tramp along the road and through the fields to find her little friend Marjorie. The china plate and pathetic note last night had moved her strangely. Marjorie was in the beginning of things. What was her life worth if not to help such as Marjorie live a worthier life than her own two score years had been?

A face flushed with the long walk looked in at the window upon Marjorie asleep. The child was sitting near the open window in a wooden rocker with padded arms and back and covered with calico with a green ground sprinkled over with butterflies and yellow daisies; her head was thrown back against the knitted tidy of white cotton, and her hands were resting in her lap; the blue muslin was rather more crumpled than when she had seen it last, and instead of the linen collar the lace was knotted about her throat. The bandage had been removed from her forehead, the swelling had abated but the discolored spot was plainly visible; her lips were slightly parted, her cheeks were rosy; if this were the "beginning of things" it was a very sweet and peaceful beginning.

Entering the parlor with a soft tread Miss Prudence divested herself of hat, gloves, duster and umbrella, and, taking a large palm leaf fan from the table, seated herself near the sleeper, gently waving the fan to and fro as a fly lighted on Marjorie's hands or face. On the window seat were placed a goblet half filled with lemonade, a small Bible, a book that had the outward appearance of being a Sunday-school library book, and a copy in blue and gold of the poems of Mrs. Hemans. Miss Prudence remembered her own time of loving Mrs. Hemans and had given this copy to Marjorie; later, she had laid her aside for Longfellow, as Marjorie would do by and by, and, in his turn, she had given up Longfellow for Tennyson and Mrs. Browning, as, perhaps, Marjorie would never do. She had brought Jean Ingelow with her this morning to try "Brothers and a Sermon" and the "Songs of Seven" with Marjorie. Marjorie was a natural elocutionist; Miss Prudence was afraid of spoiling her by unwise criticism. The child must thoroughly appreciate a poem, forget herself, and then her rendering would be more than Miss Prudence with all her training could perfectly imitate.

"Don't teach her too much; she'll want to be an actress," remonstrated
Marjorie's father after listening to Marjorie's reading one day.

Miss Prudence laughed and Marjorie looked perplexed.

"Marjorie is to comfort with her reading as some do by singing," she replied. "Wait till you are old and she reads the Bible to you!"

"She reads to me now," he said. "She read 'The Children of the Lord's
Supper' to me last night."

Miss Prudence moved the fan backward and forward and studied the sleeping, innocent face. I had almost written "sweet" again; I can scarcely think of her face, as it was then, without writing sweet. It would be long, Miss Prudence mused, before lines and creases intruded here and there in that smooth forehead, and in the tinted cheeks that dimpled at the least provocation; but life would bring them in time, and they would add beauty if there were no bitterness nor hardness in them. If the Holy Spirit dwelt in the temple of the body were not the lines upon the face his handwriting? She knew more than one old face that was growing more attractive with each year of life.

The door was pushed open and Mrs. West's broad shoulders and motherly face appeared. Miss Prudence smiled and laid her finger on her lips and, smiling, too, the mother moved away. Linnet, in her kitchen apron, and with the marks of the morning's baking on her fingers, next looked in, nodded and ran away. After awhile, the sleeping eyelids quivered and lifted themselves; a quick flush, a joyous exclamation and Marjorie sprang into her friend's arms.

"I felt as if I were not alone! How long have you been here? Oh, why didn't you speak to me or touch me?"

"I wanted to have the pleasure all on my side. I never saw you asleep before."

"I hope I didn't keep my mouth open and snore."

"Oh, no, your lips were gently apart and you breathed regularly as they would say in books!"

Marjorie laughed, released Miss Prudence from the tight clasp and went back to her chair.

"You received my note and the plate," she said anxiously.

"Both in perfect preservation. There was not one extra crack in the plate, it was several hours older than when it left your hands, but that only increases its value."

"And did you think I was dreadful not to confess before?" asked Marjorie, tremulously.

"I thought you were dreadful to run away from me instead of to me."

"I was so sorry; I wanted to get something else before you knew about it.
Did you miss it?"

"I missed something in the room, I could not decide what it was."

"Will the plate do, do you think? Is it handsome enough?"

"It is old enough, that is all the question. Do you know all about
Holland when that plate first came into existence?"

"No; I only know there was a Holland."

"That plate will be a good point to begin with. You and I will study up
Holland some day. I wonder what you know about it now."

"Is that why your friend wants the plate, because she knows about Holland two hundred years ago?"

"No; I'm afraid not. I don't believe she knows more than you do about it. But she will delight in the plate. Which reminds me, your uncle has promised to put the unfortunate pitcher together for me. And in its mended condition it will appear more ancient than ever. I cannot say that George Washington broke it with his little hatchet; but I can have a legend about you connected with it, and tell it to your grandchildren when I show it to them fifty years hence. Unto them I will discover—not a swan's nest among the reeds, as Mrs. Browning has it, but an old yellow pitcher that their lovely grandmother was in trouble about fifty years ago."

"It will be a hundred and fifty years old then," returned Marjorie, seriously, "and I think," she added rebukingly, "that you were building castles then."

"I had you and the pitcher for the foundation," said Miss Prudence, in a tone of mock humility.

"Don't you think—" Marjorie's face had a world of suggestion in it—"that 'The Swan's Nest' is bad influence for girls? Little Ellie sits alone and builds castles about her lover, even his horse is 'shod in silver, housed in azure' and a thousand serfs do call him master, and he says 'O, Love, I love but thee.'"

"But all she looks forward to is showing him the swan's nest among the reeds! And when she goes home, around a mile, as she did daily, lo, the wild swan had deserted and a rat had gnawed the reeds. That was the end of her fine castle!"

"'If she found the lover, ever,
Sooth, I know not, but I know
She could never show him, never,
That swan's nest among the reeds,'"

quoted Marjorie. "So it did all come to nothing."

"As air-castles almost always do. But we'll hope she found something better."

"Do people?" questioned Marjorie.

"Hasn't God things laid up for us better than we can ask or think or build castles about?"

"I hope so," said Marjorie; "but Hollis Rheid's mother told mother yesterday that her life was one long disappointment."

"What did your mother say?"

"She said 'Oh, Mrs. Rheid, it won't be if you get to Heaven, at last.'"

"I think not."

"But she doesn't expect to go to Heaven, she says. Mother says she's almost in 'despair' and she pities her so!"

"Poor woman! I don't see how she can live through despair. The old proverb 'If it were not for hope, the heart would break,' is most certainly true."

"Why didn't you come before?" asked Marjorie, caressing the hand that still played with the fan.

"Perhaps you never lived on a farm and cannot understand. I could not come in the ox-cart because the oxen were in the field, and every day since I heard of your accident your uncle has had to drive your aunt to Portland on some business. And I did not feel strong enough to walk until this morning."

"How good you are to walk!"

"As good as you are to walk to see me."

"Oh, but I am young and strong, and I wanted to see you so, and ask you questions so."

"I believe the latter," said Miss Prudence smiling.

"Well, I'm happy now," Marjorie sighed, with the burden of her trouble still upon her. "Suppose I had been killed when I fell and had not told you about the pitcher nor made amends for it."

"I don't believe any of us could be taken away without one moment to make ready and not leave many things undone—many tangled threads and rough edges to be taken care of. We are very happy if we have no sin to confess, no wrong to make right."

"I think Hollis would have taken care of the plate for me," said Marjorie, simply; "but I wanted to tell you myself. Mother wants to go home as suddenly as that would have been for me, she says. I shouldn't wonder if she prays about it—she prays about everything. Do people have that kind of a prayer answered?"

"I have known more than one instance—and I read about a gentleman who had desired to be taken suddenly and he was killed by lightning while sitting on his own piazza."

"Oh!" said Marjorie.

"That was all he could have wished. And the mother of my pastor at home, who was over ninety, was found dead on her knees at her bedside, and she had always wished to be summoned suddenly."

"When she was speaking to him, too," murmured Marjorie. "I like old people, don't you? Hollis' grandmother is at his house and Mrs. Rheid wants me to go to see her; she is ninety-three and blind, and she loves to tell stories about herself, and I am to stay all day and listen to her and take up her stitches when she drops them in her knitting work and read the Bible to her. She won't listen to anything but the Bible; she says she's too old to hear other books read."

"What a treat you will have!"

"Isn't it lovely? I never had that day in my air-castles, either. Nor you coming to stay all day with me, nor writing to Hollis. I had a letter from him last night, the funniest letter! I laughed all the time I was reading it. He begins: 'Poor little Mousie,' and ends, 'ours, till next time.' I'll show it to you. He doesn't say much about Helen. I shall tell him if I write about his mother he must write about Helen. I'm sorry to tell him what his mother said yesterday about herself but I promised and I must be faithful."

"I hope you will have happy news to write soon."

"I don't know; she says the minister doesn't do her any good, nor reading the Bible nor praying. Now what can help her?"

"God," was the solemn reply. "She has had to learn that the minister and Bible reading and prayer are not God. When she is sure that God will do all the helping and saving, she will be helped and saved. Perhaps she has gone to the minister and the Bible instead of to God, and she may have thought her prayers could save her instead of God."

"She said she was in despair because they did not help her and she did not know where to turn next," said Marjorie, who had listened with sympathetic eyes and aching heart.

"Don't worry about her, dear, God is teaching her to turn to himself."

"I told her about the plate, but she did not seem to care much. What different things people do care about!" exclaimed Marjorie, her eyes alight with the newness of her thought.

"Mrs. Harrowgate will never be perfectly satisfied until she has a memorial of Pompeii. I've promised when I explore underground I'll find her a treasure. Your Holland plate is something for her small collection; she has but eighty-seven pieces of china, while a friend of hers has gathered together two hundred."

"What do you care for most, Miss Prudence?

"In the way of collections? I haven't shown you my penny buried in the lava of Mt. Vesuvius; I told my friend that savored of Pompeii, the only difference is one is above ground and the other underneath, but I couldn't persuade her to believe it."

"I don't mean collecting coins or things; I mean what do you care for most?"

"If you haven't discovered, I cannot care very much for what I care for most."

Marjorie laughed at this way of putting it, then she answered gravely: "I do know. I think you care most—" she paused, choosing her phrase carefully—"to help people make something out of themselves."

"Thank you. That's fine. I never put it so excellently to myself."

"I haven't found out what I care most for."

"I think I know. You care most to make something out of yourself."

"Do I? Isn't that selfish? But I don't know how to help any one else, not even Linnet."

"Making the best of ourselves is the foundation for making something out of others."

"But I didn't say that" persisted Marjorie. "You help people to do it for themselves."

"I wonder if that is my work in the world," rejoined Miss Prudence, musingly. "I could not choose anything to fit me better—I had no thought that I have ever succeeded; I never put it to myself in that way."

"Perhaps I'll begin some day. Helen Rheid helps Hollis. He isn't the same boy; he studies and buys books and notices things to be admired in people, and when he is full of fun he isn't rough. I don't believe I ever helped anybody."

"You have some work to do upon yourself first. And I am sure you have helped educate your mother and father."

Marjorie pulled to pieces the green leaf that had floated in upon her lap and as she kept her eyes on the leaf she pondered.

Her companion was "talking over her head" purposely to-day; she had a plan for Marjorie and as she admitted to herself she was "trying the child to see what she was made of."

She congratulated herself upon success thus far.

"That children do educate their mothers is the only satisfactory reason I have found when I have questioned why God does give children to some mothers."

"Then what becomes of the children?" asked Marjorie, alarmed.

"The Giver does not forget them; he can be a mother himself, you know."

Marjorie did not know; she had always had her mother. Had she lost something, therefore, in not thus finding out God? Perhaps, in after life she would find his tenderness by losing—or not having—some one else. It was not too bad, for it would be a great pity if there were not such interruptions, but at this instant Linnet's housewifely face was pushed in at the door, and her voice announced: "Dinner in three minutes and a half! Chicken-pie for the first course and some new and delicious thing for dessert."

"Oh, splendid!" cried Marjorie, hopping up. "And we'll finish everything after dinner, Miss Prudence."

"As the lady said to the famous traveller at a dinner party: 'We have five minutes before dinner, please tell me all about your travels,'" said Miss Prudence, rising and laughing.

"You remember you haven't told me what you sent me for the Bible to show me that unhappy—no, happy time—I broke the picture," reminded Marjorie, leading the way to the dining-room.

VII.

UNDER THE APPLE-TREE.

"Never the little seed stops in its growing."—Mrs. Osgood.

Linnet moved hither and thither, after the dinner dishes were done, all through the house, up stairs and down, to see that everything was in perfect order before she might dress and enjoy the afternoon. Linnet was pre-eminently a housekeeper, to her mother's great delight, for her younger daughter was not developing according to her mind in housewifely arts.

"That will come in time," encouraged Marjorie's father when her mother spoke faultfindingly of some delinquency in the kitchen.

"I should like to know what time!" was the sharp reply.

It was queer about Marjorie's mother, she was as sharp as she was good-humored.

"Linnet has no decided tastes about anything but housekeeping and fancy-work, and Marjorie has some other things to be growing in," said her father.

"I wish she would grow to some purpose then," was the energetic reply.

"As the farmer said about his seed before it was time for it to sprout," laughed the children's father.

This father and mother could not talk confidentially together five minutes without bringing the "children" in.

Their own future was every day; but the children had not begun to live in theirs yet; their golden future, which was to be all the more golden because of their parents' experiences.

This mother was so very old-fashioned that she believed that there was no career open to a girl beside marriage; the dreadful alternative was solitary old-maidenhood. She was a good mother, in many respects a wise mother; but she would not have slept that night had she believed that either of her daughters would attain to thirty years unmarried. This may have been owing to a defect of education, or it may have been that she was so happily married to a husband six years her junior—whom she could manage. And she was nearly thirty when she was married herself and had really begun to believe that she should never be married at all. She believed marriage to be so honorable in all, that the absence of it, as in Miss Prudence's case, was nearly dishonorable. She was almost a Jewish mother in her reverence for marriage and joyfulness for the blessing of children. This may have been the result of her absorbed study of the Old Testament Scriptures. Marjorie had wondered why her mother in addressing the Lord had cried, "O, Lord God of Israel," and instead of any other name nearer New Testament Christians, she would speak of him as "The Holy One of Israel." Sometimes I have thought that Marjorie's mother began her religious life as a Jew, and that instead of being a Gentile Christian she was in reality a converted Jew, something like what Elizabeth would have been if she had been more like Marjorie's mother and Graham West's wife. This type of womanhood is rare in this nineteenth century; for aught I know, she is not a representative woman, at all; she is the only one I ever knew, and perhaps you never saw any one like her. She has no heresies, she can prove every assertion from the Bible, her principles are as firm as adamant and her heart as tender as a mother's. Still, marriage and motherhood have been her education; if the Connecticut, school-teacher had not realized her worth, she might have become what she dreaded her own daughters becoming—an old maid with uncheerful views of life. In planning their future she looked into her own heart instead of into theirs.

The children were lovely blossomings of the seed in the hearts of both parents; of seeds, that in them had not borne abundant fruitage.

"How did two such cranky old things ever have such happy children!" she exclaimed one day to her husband.

"Perhaps they will become what we stopped short of being," he replied.

Graham West was something of a philosopher; rather too much of a philosopher for his wife's peace of mind. To her sorrow she had learned that he had no "business tact," he could not even scrape a comfortable living off his scrubby little farm.

But I began with Linnet and fell to discoursing about her mother; it was Linnet, as she appeared in her grayish brown dress with a knot of crimson at her throat, running down the stairway, that suggested her mother's thought to me.

"Linnet is almost growing up," she had said to herself as she removed her cap for her customary afternoon nap. This afternoon nap refreshed her countenance and kept her from looking six years older than her husband. Mrs. West was not a worldly woman, but she did not like to look six years older than her husband.

Linnet searched through parlor and hall, then out on the piazza, then looked through the front yard, and, finally, having explored the garden, found Marjorie and her friend in camp-chairs on the soft green turf under the low hanging boughs of an apple-tree behind the house. There were two or three books in Marjorie's lap, and Miss Prudence was turning the leaves of Marjorie's Bible. She was answering one of Marjorie's questions Linnet supposed and wondered if Marjorie would be satisfied with the answer; she was not always satisfied, as the elder sister knew to her grievance. For instance: Marjorie had said to her yesterday, with that serious look in her eyes: "Linnet, father says when Christ was on earth people didn't have wheat ground into fine flour as we do;—now when it is so much nicer, why do you suppose he didn't tell them about grinding it fine?"

"Perhaps he didn't think of it," she replied, giving the first thought that occurred to her.

"That isn't the reason," returned Marjorie, "for he could think of everything he wanted to."

"Then—for the same reason why didn't he tell them about chloroform and printing and telegraphing and a thousand other inventions?" questioned Linnet in her turn.

"That's what I want to know," said Marjorie.

Linnet settled herself on the turf and drew her work from her pocket; she was making a collar of tatting for her mother's birthday and working at it at every spare moment. It was the clover leaf pattern, that she had learned but a few weeks ago; the thread was very fine and she was doing it exquisitely. She had shown it to Hollis because he was in the lace business, and he had said it was a fine specimen of "real lace." To make real lace was one of Linnet's ambitions. The lace around Marjorie's neck was a piece that their mother had made towards her own wedding outfit. Marjorie's mother sighed and feared that Marjorie would never care to make lace for her wedding outfit.

Linnet frowned over her clover leaf and Marjorie watched Miss Prudence as she turned the leaves. Marjorie did not care for the clover leaf, only as she was interested in everything that Linnet's fingers touched, but Linnet did care for the answer to Marjorie's question. She thought perhaps it was about the wheat.

The Bible leaves were still, after a second Miss Prudence read:

"'For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ.'"

That was not the answer, Linnet thought.

"What does that mean to you, Marjorie?" asked Miss Prudence.

"Why—it can't mean anything different from what it says. Paul was so sorry about the people he was writing about that he wept as he told them—he was so sorry they were enemies of the cross of Christ."

"Yes, he told them even weeping. But I knew an old gentleman who read the Bible unceasingly—I saw one New Testament that he had read through fifteen times—and he told me once that some people were so grieved because they were the enemies of the cross of Christ that they were enemies even weeping. I asked 'Why did they continue enemies, then?' and he said most ingenuously that he supposed they could not help it. Then I remembered this passage, and found it, and read it to him as I read it to you just now. He was simply astounded. He put on his spectacles and read it for himself. And then he said nothing. He had simply put the comma in the wrong place. He had read it in this way: 'For many walk, of whom I have told you often and now tell you, even weeping that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ.'"

"Oh," cried Marjorie, drawing an astonished long breath, "what a difference it does make."

"Now I know, it's punctuation you're talking about," exclaimed Linnet. "Marjorie told me all about the people in the stage-coach. O, Miss Prudence, I don't love to study; I want to go away to school, of course, but I can't see the use of so many studies. Marjorie loves to study and I don't; perhaps I would if I could see some use beside 'being like other people.' Being like other people doesn't seem to me to be a real enough reason."

Linnet had forgotten her clover leaf, she was looking at Miss Prudence with eyes as grave and earnest as Marjorie's ever were. She did not love to study and it was one of the wrong doings that she had confessed in her prayers many a time.

"Well, don't you see the reason now for studying punctuation?"

"Yes, I do," she answered heartily. "But we don't like dates, either of us."

"Did you ever hear about Pompeii, the city buried long ago underground?"

Linnet thought that had nothing to do with her question.

"Oh, yes," said Marjorie, "we have read about it. 'The Last Days of Pompeii' is in the school library. I read it, but Linnet didn't care for it."

"Do you know when it was buried?"

"No," said Linnet, brightening.

"Have you any idea?"

"A thousand years ago?" guessed Marjorie.

"Then you do not know how long after the Crucifixion?"

"No," they replied together.

"You know when the Crucifixion was, of course?"

"Why—yes," admitted Linnet, hesitatingly.

"Christ was thirty-three years old," said Marjorie, "so it must have been in the year 33, or the beginning of 34."

"Of course I know Anno Domini," said Linnet; "but I don't always know what happened before and after."

"Suppose we were walking in one of the excavated streets of Pompeii and I should say, 'O, girls! Look at that wall!' and you should see a rude cross carved on it, what would you think?"

"I should think they knew about Christ," answered Linnet.

The clover leaf tatting had fallen into her lap and the shuttle was on the grass.

"Yes, and is that all?"

"Why, yes," she acknowledged.

"Pompeii wasn't so far, so very far from Jerusalem and—they could hear," said Marjorie.

"And you two would pass on to a grand house with a wonderful mosaic floor and think no more about the cross."

"I suppose we would," said Linnet "Wouldn't you?"

"But I should think about the cross. I should think that the city was destroyed in 79 and be rejoiced that the inhabitants had heard of the Cross and knew its story before swift destruction overtook them. It was destroyed about forty-five years after the Crucifixion."

"I like to know that," said Marjorie. "Perhaps some of the people in it had seen St. Paul and heard him tell about the Cross."

"I see some use in that date," said Linnet, picking up her shuttle.

"Suppose I should tell you that once on a time a laborer would have to work fifteen years to earn enough to buy a Bible and then the Bible must be in Latin, wouldn't you like to know when it was."

"I don't know when the Bible was printed in English," confessed Marjorie.

"If you did know and knew several other things that happened about that time you would be greatly interested. Suppose I should tell you about something that happened in England, you would care very much more if you knew about something that was linked with it in France, and in Germany. If I say 1517 I do not arouse your enthusiasm; you don't know what was happening in Germany then; and 1492 doesn't remind you of anything—"

"Yes, it does," laughed Marjorie, "and so does 1620."

"Down the bay on an island stand the ruins of a church, and an old lady told me it was built in 1604. I did not contradict her, but I laughed all to myself."

"I know enough to laugh at that," said Linnet.

"But I have seen in America the spot where Jamestown stood and that dates almost as far back. Suppose I tell you that Martin Luther read Pilgrims Progress with great delight, do you know whether I am making fun or not? If I say that Queen Elizabeth wrote a letter to Cleopatra, do you know whether I mean it or not? And if I say that Richard the Third was baptized by St. Augustine, can you contradict it? And Hannah More wrote a sympathetic letter to Joan of Arc, and Marie Antoinette danced with Charlemagne, and George Washington was congratulated on becoming President by Mary Queen of Scots."

The girls could laugh at this for they had an idea that the Queen of Scots died some time before the first president of the United States was born; but over the other names and incidents they looked at each other gravely.

"Life is a kind of conglomeration without dates," said Linnet.

"I wonder if you know how long ago the flood was!" suggested Miss Prudence, "or if Mahomet lived before the flood or after," she added, seriously.

Marjorie smiled, but Linnet was serious.

"You confuse me so," said Linnet. "I believe I don't know when anything was. I don't know how long since Adam was made. Do you, Marjorie?"

"No," in the tone of one dreadfully ashamed.

"And now I'll tell you a lovely thought out of the Bible that came through dates. I did not discover it myself, of course."

"I don't see why 'of course,'" Marjorie said in a resentful tone. "You do discover things."

"I discover little girls once in a while," returned Miss Prudence with a rare softening of lips and eyes.

If it had not been for a few such discoveries the lines about Miss
Prudence's lips might have been hard lines.

"Of course you both remember the story of faithful old Abraham, how he longed and longed for a son and hoped against hope, and, after waiting so long, Isaac was born at last. He had the sure promise of God that in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed. Do you know how many nations Abraham knew about? Did he know about France and England and America, the Empire of Russia and populous China?"

Linnet looked puzzled; Marjorie was very grave.

"Did he know that the North American Indians would be blessed in him? Did he know they would learn that the Great Spirit had a Son, Jesus Christ? And that Jesus Christ was descended from him?"

"I—don't—know," said Marjorie, doubtfully. "I get all mixed up."

"It was because all the world would be blessed that he was so anxious to have a son. And, then, after Isaac was born and married for years and years the promise did not seem to come true, for he had no child. Must the faithful, hopeful old father die with his hope deferred? We read that Abraham died in a good old age, an old man, full of years, and Isaac and Ishmael buried him, and farther on in the same chapter we find that the twin boys are born, Jacob and Esau. But their old grandfather was dead. He knew now how true God is to his promises, because he was in Heaven, but we can't help wishing he had seen those two strong boys from one of whom the Saviour of the whole world was to descend. But if we look at Abraham's age when he died, and comparing it with Isaac's when the twins were born, we find that the old man, truly, had to wait twenty years before they were born, but that he really lived to see them seventeen or eighteen years of age. He lived to tell them with his own lips about that wonderful promise of God."

"Oh, I'm so glad!" cried Marjorie, enthusiastically.

"He had another long time to wait, too," said Linnet.

"Yes, he had hard times all along," almost sighed Miss Prudence.

Forty years old did not mean to her that her hard times were all over.

"But he had such a good time with the boys," said Marjorie, who never could see the dark side of anything. "Just to think of dates telling us such a beautiful thing."

"That's all you hate, dates and punctuation," Linnet declared; "but I can't see the use of ever so many other things."

"If God thought it worth while to make the earth and people it and furnish it and govern it with laws, don't you think it worth your poor little while to learn what he has done?" queried Miss Prudence, gently.

"Oh!" exclaimed Linnet, "is that it?"

"Just it," said Miss Prudence, smiling, "and some day I will go over with you each study by itself and show you how it will educate you and help you the better to do something he asks you to do."

"Oh, how splendid!" cried Linnet. "Before I go to school, so the books won't seem hard and dry?"

"Yes, any day that you will come to me. Marjorie may come too, even though she loves to study."

"I wonder if you can find any good in Natural Philosophy," muttered Linnet, "and in doing the examples in it. And in remembering the signs of the Zodiac! Mr. Holmes makes us learn everything; he won't let us skip."

"He is a fine teacher, and you might have had, if you had been so minded, a good preparation for your city school."

"I haven't," said Linnet. "If it were not for seeing the girls and learning how to be like city girls, I would rather stay home."

"Perhaps that knowledge would not improve you. What then?"

"Why, Miss Prudence!" exclaimed Marjorie, "don't you think we country girls are away behind the age?"

"In the matter of dates! But you need not be. With such a teacher as you have you ought to do as well as any city girl of your age. And there's always a course of reading by yourself."