"Never, never, never give him up," echoed Miss Prudence in her heart.

"They thought Will Rheid was lost once, but he came back! Linnet didn't give him up, and his father and mother almost did."

"I'd never give him up," said Linnet again, emphatically.

"Will Rheid," teased Marjorie, "or anybody?"

"Anybody," replied Linnet, but she twitched at her work and broke her thread.

"Now, girls, I'm going in to talk to your mother awhile, and then perhaps Linnet will walk part of the way home with me," said Miss Prudence.

"To talk about that," cried Marjorie.

"I'll tell you by and by."



VIII.

BISCUITS AND OTHER THINGS.

"I am rather made for giving than taking."—Mrs. Browning.

Mrs. West had been awakened from her nap with an uncomfortable feeling that something disagreeable had happened or was about to happen; she felt "impressed" she would have told you. Pushing the light quilt away from her face she arose with a decided vigor, determined to "work it off" if it were merely physical; she brushed her iron gray hair with steady strokes and already began to feel as if her presentiment were groundless; she bathed her cheeks in cool water, she dressed herself carefully in her worn black and white barege, put on her afternoon cap, a bit of black lace with bows of narrow black ribbon, fastened the linen collar Linnet had worked with button-hole stitch with the round gold and black enamelled pin that contained locks of the light hair of her two lost babes, and then felt herself ready for the afternoon, even ready for the minister and his stylish wife, if they should chance to call. But she was not ready without her afternoon work; she would feel fidgety unless she had something to keep her fingers moving; the afternoon work happened to be a long white wool stocking for Linnet's winter wear. Linnet must have new ones, she decided; she would have no time to darn old ones, and Marjorie might make the old ones do another winter; it was high time for Marjorie to learn to mend.

The four shining knitting needles were clicking in the doorway of the broad little entry that opened out to the green front yard when Miss Prudence found her way around to the front of the house. The ample figure and contented face made a picture worth looking at, and Miss Prudence looked at it a moment before she announced her presence by speaking.

"Mrs. West, I want to come to see you a little while—may I?"

Miss Prudence had a pretty, appealing way of speaking, oftentimes, that caused people to feel as if she were not quite grown up. There was something akin to childlikeness in her voice and words and manner, to-day. She had never felt so humble in her life, as to-day when her whole life loomed up before her—one great disappointment.

"I was just thinking that I would go and find you after I had turned the heel; I haven't had a talk with you yet."

"I want it," returned the younger lady, seating herself on the upper step and leaning back against the door post. "I've been wanting to be mothered all day. I have felt as if the sunshine were taking me into its arms, and as if the soft warm grass were my mother's lap."

"Dear child, you have had trouble in your life, haven't you?" replied the motherly voice.

Miss Prudence was not impulsive, at least she believed that she had outgrown yielding to a sudden rush of feeling, but at these words she burst into weeping, and drawing nearer dropped her head in the broad lap.

"There, there, deary! Cry, if it makes you feel any better," hushed the voice that had rocked babies to sleep.

After several moments of self-contained sobbing Miss Prudence raised her head. "I've never told any one, but I feel as if I wanted to tell you. It is so long that it makes me feel old to speak of it. It is twenty years ago since it happened. I had a friend that I love as girls love the man they have chosen to marry; father admired him, and said he was glad to leave me with such a protector. Mother had been dead about a year and father was dying with consumption; they had no one to leave me with excepting this friend; he was older than I, years older, but I admired him all the more for that. Father had perfect trust in him. I think the trouble hastened father's death. He had a position of trust—a great deal of money passed through his hands. Like every girl I liked diamonds and he satisfied me with them; father used to look grave and say: 'Prudie, your mother didn't care for such things.' But I cared for mine. I had more jewels than any of my friends; and he used to promise that I should have everything I asked for. But I did not want anything if I might have him. My wedding dress was made—our wedding tour was all planned: we were to come home to his beautiful house and father was to be with us. Father and I were so contented over our plans; he seemed just like himself that last evening that we laughed and talked. But he—my friend was troubled and left early; when he went away he caught me in his arms and held me. 'God bless you, bless you' he said, and then he said, 'May he forgive me!' I could not sleep that night, the words sounded in my ears. In the morning I unburdened myself to father, I always told him everything, and he was as frightened as I. Before two days we knew all. He had taken—money—that was not his own, thousands of dollars, and he was tried and sentenced. I sent them all my diamonds and everything that would bring money, but that was only a little of the whole. They sent him—to state-prison, to hard labor, for a term of five years. Father died soon after and I had not any one nearer than an aunt or cousin. I thought my heart broke with the shame and dishonor. I have lived in many places since. I have money enough to do as I like—because I do not like to do very much, perhaps. But I can't forget. I can't forget the shame. And I trusted him so! I believed in him. He had buried a young wife years ago, and was old and wise and good! When I see diamonds they burn into me like live coals. I would have given up my property and worked for my living, but father made me bind myself with a solemn promise that I would not do it. But I have sought out many that he wronged, and given them all my interest but the sum I compelled myself to live on. I have educated two or three orphans, and I help every month several widows and one or two helpless people who suffered through him. Father would be glad of that, if he knew how comfortably I can live on a limited income. I have made my will, remembering a number of people, and if they die before I do, I shall keep trace of their children. I do all I can; I would, rather give all my money up, but it is my father's money until I die."

Mrs. West removed a knitting needle from between her lips and knit it into the heel she had "turned."

"Where is he—now?" she asked.

"I never saw him after that night—he never wrote to me; I went to him in prison but he refused to see me. I have heard of him many times through his brother; he fled to Europe as soon as he was released, and has never returned home—to my knowledge. I think his brother has not heard from him for some years. When I said I had not a friend, I did not mention this brother; he was young when it happened, too young to have any pity for his brother; he was very kind to me, they all were. This brother was a half-brother—there were two mothers—and much younger."

"What was his name?"

Mrs. West did not mean to be inquisitive, but she did want to know and not simply for the sake of knowing.

"Excuse me—but I must keep the secret for his brother's sake. He's the only one left."

"I may not know the name of the bank then?"

"If you knew that you would know all. But I know that your husband lost his small patrimony in it—twenty-five hundred dollars—"

"H'm," escaped Mrs. West's closely pressed lips.

"And that is one strong reason why I want to educate your two daughters."

The knitting dropped from the unsteady fingers.

"And I've fretted and fretted about that money, and asked the Lord how my girls ever were to be educated."

"You know now," said Miss Prudence. "I had to tell you, for I feared that you would not listen to my plan. You may guess how I felt when your sister-in-law, Mrs. Easton, told me that she was to take Linnet for a year or two and let her go to school. At first I could not see my way clear, my money is all spent for a year to come—I only thought of taking Marjorie home with me—but, I have arranged it so that I can spare a little; I have been often applied to to take music pupils, and if I do that I can take one of the girls home with me and send her to school; next year I will take all the expense upon myself, wardrobe and all. There is a cheap way of living in large cities as well as an expensive one. If Linnet goes to Boston with her aunt, she will be kept busy out of school hours. Mrs. Easton is very kindhearted but she considers no one where her children are concerned. If I wore diamonds that Linnet's money purchased, aren't you willing she shall eat bread and butter my money purchases?"

"But you gave the diamonds up?"

"I wore them, though."

"That diamond plea has done duty a good many times, I guess," said Mrs. West, smiling down upon the head in her lap.

"No, it hasn't. His brother has done many things for me; people are ready enough to take money from his brother, and the widows are my friends. It has not been difficult. It would have been without him."

"The nights I've laid awake and made plans. My little boys died in babyhood. I imagine their father and I would have mortgaged the farm, and I would have taken in washing, and he would have gone back to his trade to send those boys through college. But the girls don't need a college education. The boys might have been ministers—one of them, at least. But I would like the girls to have a piano, they both play so well on the melodeon! I would like them to be—well, like you, Miss Prudence, and not like their rough, hardworking old mother. I've shed tears enough about their education, and told the Lord about it times enough. If the Boston plan didn't suit, we had another, Graham and I—he always listens and depends upon my judgment. I'm afraid, sometimes, I depend upon my own judgment more than upon the Lord's wisdom. But this plan was—" the knitting needle was being pushed vigorously through her back hair now, "to exchange the farm for a house and lot in town—Middlefield is quite a town, you know—and he was to go back to his trade, and I was to take boarders, and the girls were to take turns in schooling and accomplishments. I am not over young myself, and he isn't over strong, but we had decided on that. I shed some tears over it, and he looked pale and couldn't sleep, for we've counted on this place as the home of our old age which isn't so far off as it was when he put that twenty-five hundred dollars into that bank. But I do breathe freer if I think we may have this place to live and die on, small as it is and the poor living it gives us. Father's place isn't much to speak of, and James will come in for his share of that, so we haven't much to count on anywhere. I don't know, though," the knitting needle was doing duty in the stocking again, "about taking your money. You were not his wife, you hadn't spent it or connived at his knavery."

"I felt myself to be his wife—I am happier in making all the reparation in my power. All I could do for one old lady was to place her in The Old Ladies' Home. I know very few of the instances; I would not harrow my soul with hearing of those I could not help. I have done very little, but that little has been my exceeding comfort."

"I guess so," said Mrs. West, in a husky voice. "I'll tell father what you say, we'll talk it over and see. I know you love my girls—especially Marjorie."

"I love them both," was the quick reply.

"Linnet is older, she ought to have the first chance."

Miss Prudence thought, but did not say, "As Laban said about Leah," she only said, "I do not object to that. We do Marjorie no injustice. This is Linnet's schooltime. There does seem to be a justice in giving the first chance to the firstborn, although God chose Jacob instead of the elder Esau, and Joseph instead of his older brethren, and there was little David anointed when his brothers were refused."

Miss Prudence's tone was most serious, but her eyes were full of fun. She was turning the partial mother's weapons against herself.

"But David and Jacob and Joseph were different from the others," returned the mother, gravely, "and in this case, the elder is as good as the younger."

It almost slipped off Miss Prudence's tongue, "But she will not take the education Marjorie will," but she wisely checked herself and replied that both the girls were as precious as precious could be.

"And now don't you go home to-night, stay all night and I'll talk to father," planned Mrs. West, briskly; "as Marjorie would say, Giant Despair will get Diffidence his wife to bed and they will talk the matter over. She doesn't read Pilgrim's Progress as much as she used to, but she calls you Mercy yet. And you are a mercy to us."

With the tears rolling down her cheeks the mother stooped over and kissed the lover of her girls.

"Mr. Holmes is coming to see Marjorie to-night, he hasn't called since her accident, and to talk to father, he likes to argue with him, and it will be pleasanter to have you here. And Will Rheid is home from a voyage, and he'll be running in. It must be lonesome for you over there on the Point. It used to be for me when I was a girl."

"But I'm not a girl," smiled Miss Prudence.

"You'll pass for one any day. And you can play and make it lively. I am not urging you with disinterested motives."

"I can see through you; and I am anxious to know how Mr. West will receive my proposal."

"He will see through my eyes in the end, but he always likes to argue a while first. I want you to taste Linnet's cream biscuit, too. She made them on purpose for you. There's father, now, coming with African John, and there is Will Rheid coming across lots. Well, I'm glad Linnet did make the biscuits."

Miss Prudence arose with a happy face, she did not go back to the girls at once, there was a nook to be quiet in at the foot of the kitchen garden, and she felt as if she must be alone awhile. Mrs. West, with her heart in a tremor that it had not known since Marjorie was born, tucked away her knitting behind the school-books on the dining-room table, tied on her blue checked apron, and went out to the kitchen to kindle the fire for tea, singing in her mellow voice, "Thus far the Lord hath led me on," suddenly stopping short as she crammed the stove with shavings to exclaim, "His name was Holmes! And that's the school-master's name. And that's why he's in such a fume when the boys cheat at marbles. Well, did I ever!"

Linnet ran in to exchange her afternoon dress for a short, dark calico, and to put on her old shoes before she went into the barnyard to milk Bess and Brindle and Beauty. Will Rheid found her in time to persuade her to let him milk Brindle, for he was really afraid he would get his hand out, and it would never do to let his wife do all the milking when his father bequeathed him a fifth of his acres and two of his hardest-to-be-milked cows. Linnet laughed, gave him one of her pails, and found an other milking stool for him.

Marjorie wandered around disconsolate until she discovered Miss Prudence in the garden.

She was perplexed over a new difficulty which vented itself in the question propounded between tasting currants.

"Ought I—do you think I ought—talk to people—about—like the minister—about—"

"No, child!" and Miss Prudence laughed merrily. "You ought to talk to people like Marjorie West! Like a child and not like a minister."



IX.

JOHN HOLMES.

"Courage to endure and to obey."—Tennyson.

It was vacation-time and yet John Holmes was at work. No one knew him to take a vacation, he had attempted to do it more than once and at the end of his stipulated time had found himself at work harder than ever. The last lazy, luxurious vacation that he remembered was his last college vacation. What a boyish, good-for-nothing, aimless fellow he was in those days! How his brother used to snap him up and ask if he had nothing better to do than to dawdle around into Maple Street and swing Prudence under the maples in that old garden, or to write rhymes with her and correct her German exercises! How he used to tease her about having by and by to color her hair white and put on spectacles, or else she would have to call her husband "papa." And she would dart after him and box his ears and laugh her happy laugh and look as proud as a queen over every teasing word. He had told her that she grew prettier every hour as her day of fate drew nearer, and then had audaciously kissed her as he bade her good-by, for, in one week would she not be his sister, the only sister he had ever had? He stood at the gate watching her as she tripped up to her father's arm-chair on the piazza, and saw her bend her head down to his, and then he had gone off whistling and thinking that his brother certainly had a share of all of earth's good things position, a good name, money, and now this sweet woman for a wife. Well, the world was all before him where to choose, and he would have money and a position some day and the very happiest home in the land.

The next time he saw Prudence she looked like one just risen out of a grave: pallid, with purple, speechless lips, and eyes whose anguish rent his soul. Her father had been suddenly prostrated with hemorrhage and he stayed through the night with her, and afterward he made arrangements for the funeral, and his mother and himself stood at the grave with her. And then there was a prison, and after that a delirious fever for himself, when for days he had not known his mother's face or Prudence's voice.

The other boys had gone back to college, but his spirit was crushed, he could not hold up his head among men. He had lost his "ambition," people said. Since that time he had taught in country schools and written articles for the papers and magazines; he had done one thing beside, he had purchased books and studied them. In the desk in his chamber there were laid away to-day four returned manuscripts, he was only waiting for leisure to exchange their addressee and send them forth into the world again to seek their fortunes. A rejection daunted him no more than a poor recitation in the schoolroom; where would be the zest in life if one had not the chance of trying again?

John Holmes was a hermit, but he was a hermit who loved boys; girls were too much like delicate bits of china, he was afraid of handling for fear of breaking. Girls grown up were not quite so much like bits of china, but he had no friend save one among womankind, his sister that was to have been, Prudence Pomeroy. He had not addressed her with the name his brother had given her since that last day in the garden; she was gravely Prudence to him, in her plain attire, her smooth hair and little unworldly ways, almost a veritable Puritan maiden.

As to her marrying—again (he always thought "again"), he had no more thought of it than she had. He had given to her every letter he had received from his brother, but they always avoided speaking his name; indeed Prudence, in her young reverence for his age and wisdom, had seldom named his Christian name to others or to himself, he was "Mr. Holmes" to her.

John Holmes was her junior by three years, yet he had constituted himself friend, brother, guardian, and sometimes, he told her, she treated him as though he were her father, beside.

"It's good to have all in one," she once replied, "for I can have you all with me at one time."

After being a year at Middlefield he had written to her about the secluded homestead and fine salt bathing at the "Point," urging her to spend her summer there. Marjorie had seen her face at church one day in early spring as she had stopped over the Sabbath at the small hotel in the town on her way on a journey farther north.

This afternoon, while Prudence had been under the apple-tree and in the front entry, he had bent over the desk in his chamber, writing. This chamber was a low, wide room, carpeted with matting, with neither shades nor curtains at the many-paned windows, containing only furniture that served a purpose—a washstand, with a small, gilt-framed glass hanging over it, one rush-bottomed chair beside the chair at the desk, that boasted arms and a leather cushion, a bureau, with two large brass rings to open each drawer, and a narrow cot covered with a white counterpane that his hostess had woven as a part of her wedding outfit before he was born, and books! There were books everywhere—in the long pine chest, on the high mantel, in the bookcase, under the bed, on the bureau, and on the carpet wherever it was not absolutely necessary for him to tread.

Prudence and Marjorie had climbed the narrow stairway once this summer to take a peep at his books, and Prudence had inquired if he intended to take them all out West when he accepted the presidency of the college that was waiting for him out there.

"I should have to come back to my den, I couldn't write anywhere else."

"And when somebody asks me if you are dead, as some king asked about the author of Butler's 'Analogy' once, I'll reply, as somebody replied: 'Not dead, but buried.'"

"That is what I want to be," he had replied. "Don't you want a copy of my little pocket dictionary? It just fits the vest pocket, you see. You don't know how proud I was when I saw a young man on the train take one from his pocket one day!"

He opened his desk and handed her a copy; Marjorie looked at it and at him in open-eyed wonder. And dared she recite to a teacher who had made a book?

"When is your Speller coming out?"

"In the fall. I'm busy on my Reader now."

Prudence stepped to his desk and examined the sheets of upright penmanship; it could be read as easily as print.

"And the Arithmetic?"

"Oh, I haven't tackled that yet. That is for winter evenings, when my fire burns on the hearth and the wind blows and nobody in the world cares for me."

"Then it won't be this winter," said Marjorie, lifting her eyes from the binding of the dictionary.

"Why not?" he questioned.

"Because somebody cares for you," she answered gravely.

He laughed and shoved his manuscript into the desk. He was thinking of her as he raised his head from the desk this afternoon and found the sun gone down; he thought of her and remembered that he had promised to call to see her to-night. Was it to take tea? He dreaded tea-parties, when everybody talked and nobody said anything. A dim remembrance of being summoned to supper a while ago flashed through his mind; but it hardly mattered—Mrs. Devoe would take her cup of tea alone and leave his fruit and bread and milk standing on the tea-table; it was better so, she would not pester him with questions while he was eating, ask him why he did not take more exercise, and if his room were not suffocating this hot day, and if he did not think a cup of good, strong tea would not be better for him than that bowl of milk!

Mrs. Devoe, a widow of sixty-five, and her cat, Dolly, aged nineteen, kept house and boarded the school-master. Her house was two miles nearer the shore than the school-building, but he preferred the walk in all weathers and he liked the view of the water. Mrs. Devoe had never kept a boarder before, her small income being amply sufficient for her small wants, but she liked the master, he split her wood and his own, locked the house up at night, made no trouble, paid his board, two dollars per week, regularly in advance, never went out at night, often read to her in the evening after her own eyes had given out, and would have been perfect if he had allowed her to pile away his books and sweep his chamber every Friday.

"But no man is perfect," she had sighed to Mrs. Rheid, "even my poor husband would keep dinner waiting."

After a long, absent-minded look over the meadows towards the sea, where the waves were darkening in the twilight, he arose in haste, threw off his wrapper, a gray merino affair, trimmed with quilted crimson silk, that Prudence had given him on a birthday three years ago, and went to the wash-stand to bathe his face and brush back that mass of black hair. He did not study his features as Prudence had studied hers that morning; he knew so little about his own face that he could scarcely distinguish a good portrait of himself from a poor one; but Prudence knew it by heart. It was a thin, delicate face, marred with much thought, the features not large, and finely cut, with deep set eyes as black as midnight, and, when they were neither grave nor stern, as soft as a dove's eyes; cheeks and chin were closely shaven; his hair, a heavy black mass, was pushed back from a brow already lined with thought or care, and worn somewhat long behind the ears; there was no hardness in any line of the face, because there was no hardness in the heart, there was sin and sorrow in the world, but he believed that God is good.

The slight figure was not above medium height; he had a stoop in the shoulders that added to his general appearance of delicacy; he was scholarly from the crown of his black head to the very tip of his worn, velvet slipper; his slender hands, with their perfectly kept nails, and even the stain of ink on the forefinger of his right hand, had an air of scholarship about them. His black summer suit was a perfect fit, his boots were shining, the knot of his narrow black neck tie was a little towards one side, but that was the only evidence that he was careless about his personal appearance.

"I want my boys to be neat," he had said once apologetically to Mrs. Devoe, when requesting her to give away his old school suit preparatory to buying another.

All he needed to be perfect was congenial social life, Prudence believed, but that, alas, seemed never to enter his conception. He knew it never had since that long ago day when he had congratulated his brother upon his perfect share of this world's happiness. And, queerly enough, Prudence stood too greatly in awe of him to suggest that his life was too one-sided and solitary.

"Some people wonder if you were ever married," Mrs. Devoe said to him that afternoon when he went down to his late supper. Mrs. Devoe never stood in awe of anybody.

"Yes, I was married twenty years ago—to my work," he replied, gravely; "there isn't any John Holmes, there is only my work."

"There is something that is John Holmes to me," said the widow in her quick voice, "and there's a John Holmes to the boys and girls, and I guess the Lord thinks something of you beside your 'work,' as you call it."

Meditatively he walked along the grassy wayside towards the brown farmhouse:

"Perhaps there is a John Holmes that I forget about," he said to himself.



X.

LINNET.

"Use me to serve and honor thee, And let the rest be as thou wilt"—E.L.E.

Marjorie's laugh was refreshing to the schoolmaster after his hard day's work. She was standing behind her father, leaning over his shoulder, and looking at them both as they talked; some word had reminded Mr. Holmes of the subject of his writing that day and he had given them something of what he had been reading and writing on Egyptian slavery. Mr. Holmes was always "writing up" something, and one of Mr. West's usual questions was: "What have you to tell us about now?"

The subject was intensely interesting to Marjorie, she had but lately read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and her tears and indignation were ready to burst forth at any suggestion of injustice or cruelty. But the thing that she was laughing at was a quotation from one of the older versions of the Bible, Roger's Version Mr. Holmes told them when he quoted the passage: "And the Lord was with Joseph and he was a luckie felowe." She lifted her head from her father's shoulder and ran out into the little front yard to find her mother and the others that she might tell them about Joseph and ask Miss Prudence what "Roger's Version" meant. But her mother was busy in the milkroom and Linnet was coming towards the house walking slowly with her eyes on the ground. Will Rheid was walking as slowly toward his home as Linnet was toward hers.

Miss Prudence made a picture all by herself in her plain black dress, with no color or ornament save the red rose in her black crape scarf, as she sat upright in the rush-bottomed, straight-backed chair in the entry before the wide-open door. Her eyes were towards the two who had parted so reluctantly on the bridge over the brook. Marjorie danced away to find her mother, suddenly remembering to ask if she might share the spare chamber with Miss Prudence, that is—if Linnet did not want to very much.

Marjorie never wanted to do anything that Linnet wanted to very much.

Opening the gate Linnet came in slowly, with her eyes still on the ground, shut the gate, and stood looking off into space; then becoming aware of the still figure on the piazza hurried toward it.

Linnet's eyes were stirred with a deeper emotion than had ever moved her before; Miss Prudence did not remember her own face twenty years ago, but she remembered her own heart.

Will Rheid was a good young fellow, honest and true; Miss Prudence stifled her sigh and said, "Well, dear" as the young girl came and stood beside her chair.

"I was wishing—I was saying to Will, just now, that I wished there was a list of things in the Bible to pray about, and then we might be sure that we were asking right."

"And what did he say?"

"He said he'd ask anyhow, and if it came, it was all right, and if it didn't, he supposed that was all right, too."

"That was faith, certainly."

"Oh, he has faith," returned Linnet, earnestly. "Don't you know—oh, you don't remember—when the Evangelist—that always reminds me of Marjorie"—Linnet was a somewhat fragmentary talker like her mother—"but when Mr. Woodfern was here four of the Rheid boys joined the Church, all but Hollis, he was in New York, he went about that time. Mr. Woodfern was so interested in them all; I shall never forget how he used to pray at family worship: 'Lord, go through that Rheid family.' He prayed it every day, I really believe. And they all joined the Church at the first communion time, and every one of them spoke and prayed in the prayer meetings. They used to speak just as they did about anything, and people enjoyed it so; it was so genuine and hearty. I remember at a prayer meeting here that winter Will arose to speak 'I was talking to a man in town today and he said there was nothing in religion. But, oh, my! I told him there was nothing out of it.' I told him about that to-night and he said he hadn't found anything outside of it yet."

"He's a fine young fellow," said Miss Prudence. "Mr. Holmes says he has the 'right stuff' in him, and he means a great deal by that."

A pleasant thought curved Linnet's lips.

"But, Miss Prudence," sitting down on the step of the piazza, "I do wish for a list of things. I want to know if I may pray that mother may never look grave and anxious as she did at the supper table, and father may not always have a cough in winter time, and Will may never have another long voyage and frighten us all, and that Marjorie may have a chance to go to school, too, and—why, ever so many things!"

A laugh from the disputants in the parlor brought the quick color to Miss Prudence's cheeks. No mere earthly thing quickened her pulses like John Holmes' laugh. And I do not think that was a mere earthly thing; there was so much grace in it.

"Doesn't St. Paul's 'everything' include your 'ever so many things?'" questioned Miss Prudence, as the laugh died away.

"I don't know," hesitatingly. "I thought it meant about people becoming Christians, and faith and patience and such good things."

"Perhaps your requests are good things, too. But I have thought of something that will do for a list of things; it is included in this promise: 'Whatsoever things ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them and ye shall have them.' Desire when ye pray! That's the point."

"Does the time when we desire make any difference?" asked Linnet, interestedly.

There were some kind of questions that Linnet liked to ask.

"Does it not make all the difference? Suppose we think of something we want while we are ease-loving, forgetful of duty, selfish, unforgiving, neither loving God or our neighbor, when we feel far from him, instead of near him, can we believe that we shall have such a heart's desire as that would be? Would your desire be according to his will, his unselfish, loving, forgiving will?"

"No, oh, no," said Linnet, earnestly. "But I do think about father and mother and Marjorie going to school and—when I am praying."

"Then ask for everything you desire while you are praying; don't be afraid."

"Is mother troubled about something?"

"Not troubled, really; only perplexed a little over something we have been planning about; and she is very glad, too."

"I don't like to have her troubled, because her heart hurts her when she worries. Marjorie don't know that, but she told me. That's one reason—my strongest reason—for being sorry about going to Boston."

"But your father is with her and he will watch over her."

"But she depends on me," pleaded Linnet.

"Marjorie is growing up," said Miss Prudence, hopefully.

"Marjorie! It doesn't seem to me that she will ever grow up; she is such a little puss, always absent-minded, with a book in her hand. And she can't mend or sew or even make cake or clear up a room neatly. We spoil her, mother and I, as much as she spoils her kitten, Pusheen. Did you know that pusheen is Irish for puss? Mr. Holmes told us. I do believe he knows everything."

"He comes nearer universal knowledge than the rest of us," said Miss Prudence, smiling at the girl's eagerness.

"But he's a book himself, a small volume, in fine print, printed in a language that none of us can read," said Linnet.

"To most people he is," granted Miss Prudence; "but when he was seven I was ten, I was a backward child and he used to read to me, so he is not a dead language to me."

Linnet pulled at the fringe of her white shawl; Will Rheid had brought that shawl from Ireland a year ago.

"Miss Prudence, do we have right desires, desires for things God likes, while we are praying?"

"If we feel his presence, if we feel as near to him as Mary sitting at the feet of Christ, if we thank him for his unbounded goodness, and ask his forgiveness for our sins with a grateful, purified, and forgiving heart, how can we desire anything selfish—for our own good only and not to honor him, anything unholy, anything that it would hurt him to grant; if our heart is ever one with his heart, our will ever one with his will, is it not when we are nearest to him, nearest in obeying, or nearest in praying? Isn't there some new impulse toward the things he loves to give us every time we go near to him?"

Linnet assented with a slight movement of her head. She understood many things that she could not translate into words.

"Yesterday I saw in the paper the death of an old friend." They had been silent for several minutes; Miss Prudence spoke in a musing voice. "She was a friend in the sense that I had tried to befriend her. She was unfortunate in her home surroundings, she was something of an invalid and very deaf beside. She had lost money and was partly dependent upon relatives. A few of us, Mr. Holmes was one of them, paid her board. She was not what you girls call 'real bright,' but she was bright enough to have a heartache every day. Reading her name among the deaths made me glad of a kindness I grudged her once."

"I don't believe you grudged it," interrupted Marjorie, who had come in time to lean over the tall back of the chair and rest her hand on Miss Prudence's shoulder while she listened to what promised to be a "story."

"I did, notwithstanding. One busy morning I opened one of her long, complaining, badly-written letters; I could scarcely decipher it; she was so near-sighted, too, poor child, and would not put on glasses. Her letters were something of a trial to me. I read, almost to my consternation, 'I have been praying for a letter from you for three weeks.' Slipping the unsightly sheet back into the envelope, hastily, rather too hastily, I'm afraid, I said to myself: 'Well, I don't see how you will get it.' I was busy every hour in those days, I did not have to rest as often as I do now, and how could I spare the hour her prayer was demanding? I could find the time in a week or ten days, but she had prayed for it yesterday and would expect it to-day, would pray for it to-day and expect it to-morrow. 'Why could she not pray about it without telling me?' I argued as I dipped my pen in the ink, not to write to her but to answer a letter that must be answered that morning. I argued about it to myself as I turned from one thing to another, working in nervous haste; for I did more in those days than God required me to do, I served myself instead of serving him. I was about to take up a book to look over a poem that I was to read at our literary circle when words from somewhere arrested me: 'Do you like to have the answer to a prayer of yours put off and off in this way?' and I answered aloud, 'No, I don't.' 'Then answer this as you like to have God answer you.' And I sighed, you will hardly believe it, but I did sigh. The enticing poem went down and two sheets of paper came up and I wrote the letter for which the poor thing a hundred miles away had been praying three weeks. I tried to make it cordial, spirited and sympathetic, for that was the kind she was praying for. And it went to the mail four hours after I had received her letter."

"I'm so glad," said sympathetic Linnet. "How glad she must have been!"

"Not as glad as I was when I saw her death in the paper yesterday."

"You do write to so many people," said Marjorie.

"I counted my list yesterday as I wrote on it the fifty-third name."

"Oh, dear," exclaimed Linnet, who "hated" to write letters. "What do you do it for?"

"Perhaps because they need letters, perhaps because I need to write them. My friends have a way of sending me the names of any friendless child, or girl, or woman, who would be cheered by a letter, and I haven't the heart to refuse, especially as some of them pray for letters and give thanks for them. Instead of giving my time to 'society' I give it to letter writing. And the letters I have in return! Nothing in story books equals the pathos and romance of some of them."

"I like that kind of good works," said Marjorie, "because I'm too bashful to talk to people and I can write anything."

How little the child knew that some day she would write anything and everything because she was "too bashful to talk." How little any of us know what we are being made ready to do. And how we would stop to moan and weep in very self-pity if we did know, and thus hinder the work of preparation from going on.

Linnet played with the fringe of her shawl and looked as if something hard to speak were hovering over her lips.

"Did mother tell you about Will?" she asked, abruptly, interrupting one of Miss Prudence's stories to Marjorie of which she had not heeded one word.

"About Will!" repeated Marjorie. "What has happened to him?"

Linnet looked up with arch, demure eyes. "He told mother and me while we were getting supper; he likes to come out in the kitchen. The first mate died and he was made first mate on the trip home, and the captain wrote a letter to his father about him, and his father is as proud as he can be and says he'll give him the command of the bark that is being built in Portland, and he mustn't go away again until that is done. Captain Rheid is the largest owner, he and African John, so they have the right to appoint the master. Will thinks it grand to be captain at twenty-four."

"But doesn't Harold feel badly not to have a ship, too?" asked Marjorie, who was always thinking of the one left out.

"But he's younger and his chance will come next. He doesn't feel sure enough of himself either. Will has studied navigation more than he has. Will went to school to an old sea-captain to study it, but Harold didn't, he said it would get knocked into him, somehow. He's mate on a ship he likes and has higher wages than Will will get, at first, but Will likes the honor. It's so wonderful for his father to trust him that he can scarcely believe it; he says his father must think he is some one else's son. But that letter from the old shipmaster that Captain Rheid used to know has been the means of it."

"Is the bark named yet?" asked Marjorie. "Captain Rheid told father he was going to let Mrs. Rheid name it."

"Yes," said Linnet, dropping her eyes to hide the smile in them, "she is named LINNET."

"Oh, how nice! How splendid," exclaimed Marjorie, "Won't it look grand in the Argus—'Bark LINNET, William Rheid, Master, ten days from Portland'?"

"Ten days to where?" laughed Linnet.

"Oh, to anywhere. Siberia or the West Indies. I wish he'd ask us to go aboard, Linnet. Don't you think he might?"

"We might go and see her launched! Perhaps we all have an invitation; suppose you run and ask mother," replied Linnet, with the demure smile about her lips.

Marjorie flew away, Linnet arose slowly, gathering her shawl about her, and passed through the entry up to her own chamber.

Miss Prudence did not mean to sigh, she did not mean to be so ungrateful, there was work enough in her life, why should she long for a holiday time? Girls must all have their story and the story must run on into womanhood as hers had, there was no end till it was all lived through.

"When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee."

Miss Prudence dropped her head in her hands; she was going through yet.

Will Rheid was a manly young fellow, just six feet one, with a fine, frank face, a big, explosive voice, and a half-bashful, half-bold manner that savored of land and sea. He was as fresh and frolicsome as a sea breeze itself, as shrewd as his father, and as simple as Linnet.

But—Miss Prudence came back from her dreaming over the past,—would Linnet go home with her and go to school? Perhaps John Holmes would take Marjorie under his special tutelage for awhile, until she might come to her, and—how queer it was for her to be planning about other people's homes—why might he not take up his abode with the Wests, pay good board, and not that meagre two dollars a week, take Linnet's seat at the table, become a pleasant companion for Mr. West through the winter, and, above all, fit Marjorie for college? And did not he need the social life? He was left too much to his own devices at old Mrs. Devoe's. Marjorie, her father with his ready talk, her mother, with a face that held remembrance of all the happy events of her life, would certainly be a pleasant exchange for Mrs. Devoe, and Dolly, her aged cat. She would go home to her own snuggery, with Linnet to share it, with a relieved mind if John Holmes might be taken into a family. And it was Linnet, after all, who was to make the changes and she had only been thinking of Marjorie.

When Linnet came to her to kiss her good night, Miss Prudence looked down into her smiling eyes and quoted:

"'Keep happy, sweetheart, and grow wise.'"

The low murmur of voices reached Miss Prudence in her chamber long after midnight, she smiled as she thought of Giant Despair and his wife Diffidence. And then she prayed for the wanderer over the seas, that he might go to his Father, as the prodigal did, and that, if it were not wrong or selfish to wish it, she might hear from him once more before she died.

And then the voices were quiet and the whole house was still.



XI.

GRANDMOTHER.

"Even trouble may be made a little sweet"—Mrs. Platt.

"Here she is, grandmarm!" called out the Captain. "Run right in, Midget."

His wife was marm and his mother grandmarm.

Marjorie ran in at the kitchen door and greeted the two occupants of the roomy kitchen. Captain Rheid had planned his house and was determined he said that the "women folks" should have room enough to move around in and be comfortable; he believed in having the "galley" as good a place to live in as the "cabin."

It was a handsome kitchen, with several windows, a fine stove, a well-arranged sink, a large cupboard, a long white pine table, three broad shelves displaying rows of shining tinware, a high mantel with three brass candlesticks at one end, and a small stone jar of fall flowers at the other, the yellow floor of narrow boards was glowing with its Saturday afternoon mopping, and the general air of freshness and cleanliness was as refreshing as the breath of the sea, or the odor of the fields.

Marm and grandmarm liked it better.

"Deary me!" ejaculated grandma, "it's an age since you were here."

"A whole week," declared Marjorie, standing on tiptoe to hang up her sack and hat on a hook near the shelves.

"Nobody much comes in and it seems longer," complained the old lady.

"I think she's very good to come once a week," said Hollis' sad-faced mother.

"Oh, I like to come," said Marjorie, pushing one of the wooden-bottomed chairs to grandmother's side.

"It seems to me, things have happened to your house all of a sudden," said Mrs. Rheid, as she gave a final rub to the pump handle and hung up one of the tin washbasins over the sink.

"So it seems to us," replied Marjorie; "mother and I hardly feel at home yet. It seems so queer at the table with Linnet gone and two strangers—well, Mr. Holmes isn't a stranger, but he's a stranger at breakfast time."

"Don't you know how it all came about?" inquired grandmother, who "admired" to get down to the roots of things.

"No, I guess—I think," she hastily corrected, "that nobody does. We all did it together. Linnet wanted to go with Miss Prudence and we all wanted her to go; Mr. Holmes wanted to come and we all wanted him to come; and then Mr. Holmes knew about Morris Kemlo, and father wanted a boy to do the chores for winter and Morris wanted to come, because he's been in a drug store and wasn't real strong, and his mother thought farm work and sea air together would be good for him."

"And you don't go to school?" said Mrs. Rheid, bringing her work, several yards of crash to cut up into kitchen towels and to hem. Her chair was also a hard kitchen chair; Hollis' mother had never "humored" herself, she often said, there was not a rocking chair in her house until all her boys were big boys; she had thumped them all to sleep in a straight-backed, high, wooden chair. But with this her thumping had ceased; she was known to be as lax in her government as the father was strict in his.

She was a little woman, with large, soft black eyes, with a dumb look of endurance about the lips and a drawl in her subdued voice. She had not made herself, her loving, rough boys, and her stern, faultfinding husband, had moulded not only her features, but her character. She was afraid of God because she was afraid of her husband, but she loved God because she knew he must love her, else her boys would not love her.

"Is Linnet homesick?" she questioned as her sharp shears cut through the crash.

"Yes, but not very much. She likes new places. She likes the school, and the girls, so far, and she likes Miss Prudence's piano. Hollis has been to see her, and Helen Rheid has called to see her, and invited her and Miss Prudence to come to tea some time. Miss Prudence wrote me about Helen, and she's lovely, Mrs. Rheid."

"So Hollis said. Have you brought her picture back?"

"Yes'm."

Marjorie slowly drew a large envelope from her pocket, and taking the imperial from it gazed at it long. There was a strange fascination to her in the round face, with its dark eyes and mass of dark hair piled high on the head. It was a vignette and the head seemed to be rising from folds of black lace, the only ornament was a tiny gold chain on which was placed a small gold cross.

To Marjorie this picture was the embodiment of every good and beautiful thing. It was somebody that she might be like when she had read all the master's books, and learned all pretty, gentle ways. She never saw Helen Rheid, notwithstanding Helen Rheid's life was one of the moulds in which some of her influences were formed. Helen Rheid was as much to her as Mrs. Browning was to Miss Prudence. After another long look she slipped the picture back into the envelope and laid it on the table behind her.

"You are going with Miss Prudence when Linnet is through, I suppose?" asked Mrs. Rheid.

"So mother says. It seems a long time to wait, but I am studying at home. Mother cannot spare me to go to school, now, and Mr. Holmes says he would rather hear me recite than not. So I am learning to sew and do housework as well."

"You need that as much as schooling," returned Mrs. Rheid, decidedly. "I wish one of my boys could have gone to college, there's money enough to spare, but their father said he had got his learning knocking around the world and they could get theirs the same way."

"Hollis studies—he's studying French now."

"Did you bring a letter from him?" inquired his mother, eagerly.

"Yes," said Marjorie, disappointedly, "but I wanted to keep it until the last thing. I wanted you to have the best last."

"If I ever do get the best it will be last!" said the subdued, sad voice.

"Then you shall have this first," returned the bright, childish voice.

But her watchful eyes had detected a stitch dropped in grandmother's work and that must be attended to first. The old lady gave up her work willingly and laid her head back to rest while Marjorie knit once around. And then the short letter was twice read aloud and every sentence discussed.

"If I ever wrote to him I suppose he'd write to me oftener," said his mother, "but I can't get my hands into shape for fine sewing or for writing. I'd rather do a week's washing than write a letter."

Marjorie laughed and said she could write letters all day.

"I think Miss Prudence is very kind to you girls," said Mrs. Rheid. "Is she a relation?"

"Not a real one," admitted Marjorie, reluctantly.

"There must be some reason for her taking to you and for your mother letting you go. Your mother has the real New England grit and she's proud enough. Depend upon it, there's a reason."

"Miss Prudence likes us, that's the reason, and we like her."

"But that doesn't repay money."

"She thinks it does. And so do we."

"How much board does the master pay?" inquired grandmother.

"I don't know; I didn't ask. He has brought all his books and the spare chamber is full. He let me help him pile them up. But he says I must not read one without asking him."

"I don't see what you want to read them for," said the old lady sharply. "Can't your mother find enough for you to do. In my day—"

"But your day was a long time ago," interrupted her daughter-in-law.

"Yes, yes, most a hundred, and girls want everything they can get now. Perhaps the master hears your lessons to pay his board."

"Perhaps," assented Marjorie.

"They say bees pay their board and work for you beside," said Mrs. Rheid. "I guess he's like a bee. I expect the Widow Devoe can't help wishing he had stayed to her house."

"He proposed to come himself," said Marjorie, with a proud flash of her eyes, "and he proposed to teach me himself."

"Oh, yes, to be sure, but she and the cat will miss him all the same."

"It's all sudden."

"[missing text] happen sudden, nowadays. I keep my eyes shut and things keep whirling around."

Grandmother was seated in an armchair with her feet resting on a home-made foot stool, clad in a dark calico, with a little piece of gray shawl pinned closely around her neck, every lock of hair was concealed beneath a black, borderless silk cap, with narrow black silk strings tied under her trembling chin, her lips were sunken and seamed, her eyelids partly dropped over her sightless eyes, her withered, bony fingers were laboriously pushing the needles in and out through a soft gray wool sock, every few moments Marjorie took the work from her to pick up a dropped stitch or two and to knit once around. The old eyes never once suspected that the work grew faster than her own fingers moved. Once she remarked plaintively: "Seems to me it takes you a long time to pick up one stitch."

"There were three this time," returned Marjorie, seriously.

"What does the master learn you about?" asked Mrs. Rheid.

"Oh, the school studies! And I read the dictionary by myself."

"I thought you had some new words."

"I want some good words," said Marjorie.

"Now don't you go and get talking like a book," said grandmother, sharply, "if you do you can't come and talk to me."

"But you can talk to me," returned Marjorie, smiling, "and that is what I want. Hollis wrote me that I mustn't say 'guess' and I do forget so often."

"Hollis is getting ideas," said Hollis' mother; "well, let him, I want him to learn all he can."

Marjorie was wondering where her own letter to Hollis would come in; she had stowed away in the storehouse of her memory messages enough from mother and grandmother to fill one sheet, both given with many explanations, and before she went home Captain Rheid would come in and add his word to Hollis. And if she should write two sheets this time would her mother think it foolish? It was one of Mrs. West's old-fashioned ways to ask Marjorie to let her read every letter that she wrote.

With her reserve Marjorie could open her heart more fully to Miss Prudence than she could to one nearer her; it was easier to tell Miss Prudence that she loved her than to tell her mother that she loved her, and there were some things that she could say to Mr. Holmes that she could not say to her father. It may be a strange kind of reserve, but it is like many of us. Therefore, under this surveillance, Marjorie's letters were not what her heart prompted them to be.

If, in her own young days, her mother had ever felt thus she had forgotten it.

But for this Marjorie's letters would have been one unalloyed pleasure. One day it occurred to her to send her letter to the mail before her mother was aware that she had written, but she instantly checked the suggestion as high treason.

Josie Grey declared that Marjorie was "simple" about some things. A taint of deceit would have caused her as deep remorse as her heart was capable of suffering.

"Grandma, please tell me something that happened when you were little," coaxed Marjorie, as she placed the knitting back in the old fingers. How pink and plump the young fingers looked as they touched the old hands.

"You haven't told me about the new boy yet," said the old lady. "How old is he? Where did he come from? and what does he look like?"

"We want another boy," said Mrs. Rheid, "but boys don't like to stay here. Father says I spoil them."

"Our 'boy,'—Morris Kemlo,—don't you think it's a pretty name? It's real funny, but he and I are twins, we were born on the same day, we were both fourteen this summer. He is taller than I am, of course, with light hair, blue eyes, and a perfect gentleman, mother says. He is behind in his studies, but Mr. Holmes says he'll soon catch up, especially if he studies with me evenings. We are to have an Academy at our house. His mother is poor, and has other children, his father lost money in a bank, years ago, and died afterward. It was real dreadful about it—he sold his farm and deposited all his money in this bank, he thought it was so sure! And he was going into business with the money, very soon. But it was lost and he died just after Morris was born. That is, it was before Morris was born that he lost the money, but Morris talks about it as if he knew all about it. Mr. Holmes and Miss Prudence know his mother, and Miss Prudence knew father wanted a boy this winter. He is crazy to go to sea, and says he wants to go in the Linnet. And that's all I know about him, grandma."

"Is he a good boy?" asked Mrs. Rheid.

"Oh, yes," said Marjorie, "he brings his Bible downstairs and reads every night. I like everything but doing his mending, and mother says I must learn to do that. Now, grandma, please go on."

"Well, Marjorie, now I've heard all the news, and Hollis' letter, if you'll stay with grandmarm I'll run over and see Cynthy! I want to see if her pickles are as green as mine, and I don't like to leave grandmarm alone. You must be sure to stay to supper."

"Thank you; I like to stay with grandma."

"But I want hasty pudding to-night, and you won't be home in time to make it, Hepsie," pleaded the old lady in a tone of real distress.

"Oh, yes, I will, Marjorie will have the kettle boiling and she'll stir it while I get supper."

Mrs. Rheid stooped to pick up the threads that had fallen on her clean floor, rolled up her work, took her gingham sun-bonnet from its hook, and stepped out into the sunshine almost as lightly as Marjorie would have done.

"Cynthy" was African John's wife, a woman of deep Christian experience, and Mrs. Rheid's burdened heart was longing to pour itself out to her.

Household matters, the present and future of their children, the news of the homes around them, and Christian experience, were the sole topics that these simply country women touched upon.

"Well, deary, what shall I tell you about? I must keep on knitting, for Hollis must have these stockings at Christmas, so he can tell folks in New York that his old grandmarm most a hundred knit them for him all herself. Nobody helped her, she did it all herself. She did it with her own old fingers and her own blind eyes. I'll drop too many stitches while I talk, so I'll let you hold it for me. It seems as if it never will get done," she sighed, dropping it from her fingers.

"Oh, yes," said Marjorie, cheerily, "it's like your life, you know; that has been long, but it's 'most done.'"

"Yes, I'm most through," sighed the old lady with a long, resigned breath, "and there's nobody to pick up the stitches I've dropped all along."

"Won't God?" suggested Marjorie, timidly.

"I don't know, I don't know about things. I've never been good enough to join the Church. I've been afraid."

"Do you have to be good enough?" asked the little church member in affright. "I thought God was so good he let us join the Church just as he lets us go into Heaven—and he makes us good and we try all we can, too."

"That's an easy way to do, to let him make you good. But when the minister talks to me I tell him I'm afraid."

"I wouldn't be afraid," said Marjorie; "because you want to do as Christ commands, don't you? And he says we must remember him by taking the bread and wine for his sake, to remember that he died for us, don't you know?"

"I never did it, not once, and I'm most a hundred!"

"Aren't you sorry, don't you want to?" pleaded Marjorie, laying her warm fingers on the hard old hand.

"I'm afraid," whispered the trembling voice. "I never was good enough."

"Oh, dear," sighed Marjorie, her eyes brimming over, "I don't know how to tell you about it. But won't you listen to the minister, he talks so plainly, and he'll tell you not to be afraid."

"They don't go to communion, my son nor his wife; they don't ask me to."

"But they want you to; I know they want you to—before you die," persuaded Marjorie. "You are so old now."

"Yes, I'm old. And you shall read to me out of the Testament before you go. Hepsie reads to me, but she gets to crying before she's half through; she can't find 'peace,' she says."

"I wish she could," said Marjorie, almost despairingly.

"Now I'll tell you a story," began the old voice in a livelier tone. "I have to talk about more than fifty years ago—I forget about other things, but I remember when I was young. I'm glad things happened then, for I can remember them."

"Didn't things happen afterward?" asked Marjorie, laughing.

"Not that I remember."

This afternoon was a pleasant change to Marjorie from housework and study, and she remembered more than once that she was doing something to help pay Hollis for the Holland plate.

"Where shall I begin?" began the dreamy, cracked voice, "as far back as I can remember?"

"As far back as you can," said Marjorie, eagerly. "I like old stories best."

"Maybe I'll get things mixed up with my mother and grandmother and not know which is me."

"Rip Van Winkle thought his son was himself," laughed Marjorie, "but you will think you are your grandmother."

"I think over the old times so, sitting here in the dark. Hepsie is no hand to talk much, and Dennis, he's out most of the time, but bedtime comes soon and I can go to sleep. I like to have Dennis come in, he never snaps up his old mother as he does Hepsie and other folks. I don't like to be in the dark and have it so still, a dog yapping is better than no noise, at all. I say, 'Now I lay me' ever so many times a day to keep me company."

"You ought to live at our house, we have noisy times; mother and I sing, and father is always humming about his work. Mr. Holmes is quiet, but Morris is so happy he sings and shouts all day."

"It used to be noisy enough once, too noisy, when the boys were all making a racket together, and Will made noise enough this time he was home. He used to read to me and sing songs. I don't wonder Hepsie is still and mournful, like. It's a changed home to her with the boys away. My father's house had noise enough in it; he had six wives."

"Not all at once," cried Marjorie alarmed, confounding a hundred years ago with the partriarchal age.

But the old story-teller never heeded interruptions.

"And my marm was the last wife but one. My father was a hundred years and one day when he died. I've outlived all the children, I guess, for I never hear from none of them—I most forget who's dead. Some of them was married before I was born. I was the youngest, and I never remember my own mother, but I had a good mother, all the same."

"You had four step-mothers before you were born," said Marjorie seriously, "and one own mother and then another step-mother. Girls don't have so many step-mothers nowadays."

"And our house was one story—a long house, with the eaves most touching the ground and big chimneys at both ends. It was full of folks."

"I should think so," interposed Marjorie.

"And Sunday nights we used to sing 'God of my childhood and my youth.' Can you sing that? I wish you'd sing it to me. I forget what comes next."

"I never heard of it before; I wish you could remember it all, it's so pretty."

"Amzi used to sit next to me and sing—he was my twin brother—as loud and clear as a bell. And when he died they put this on his tombstone:

"'Come see ye place where I do lie As you are now so once was I: As I be now so you will be, Prepare for death and follow me.'"

"Oh," shivered Marjorie, "I don't like it. I like a Bible verse better."

"Isn't that in the Bible?" she asked, angrily.

"I don't believe it is."

"'Prepare to meet thy God' is."

"Yes," said Marjorie, "that was the text last Sunday."

"And on father's tombstone mother put this verse:

'O, my dear wife, do think of me Although we've from each other parted, O, do prepare to follow me Where we shall love forever.'

"I wish I could remember some more."

"I wish you could," said Marjorie. "Didn't you have all the things we have? You didn't have sewing machines."

"Sewing machines!" returned the old lady, indignantly, "we had our fingers and pins and needles. But sometimes we couldn't have pins and had to pin things together with thorns. How would you like that?"

"I'd rather be born now," said Marjorie. "I wouldn't want to have so many step-mothers as you had, and I'd rather be named Marjorie than Experience."

"Experience is a good name, and I'd have earned it by this time if my mother hadn't given it to me," and the sunken lips puckered themselves into a smile. "I could tell you some dreadful things, too, but Hepsie won't like it if I do. I'll tell you one, though. I don't like to think about the dreadful things myself. I used to tell them to my boys and they'd coax me to tell them again, about being murdered and such things. A girl I knew found out after she was married that her husband had killed a peddler, to steal his money to marry her with, and people found it out and he was hanged and she was left a widow!"

"Oh, dear, dear," exclaimed Marjorie, "have dreadful things been always happening? Did she die with a broken heart?"

"No, indeed, she was married afterward and had a good husband. She got through, as people do usually, and then something good happened."

"I'll remember that," said Marjorie, her hazel eyes full of light; "but it was dreadful."

"And there were robbers in those days."

"Were there giants, too?"

"I never saw a giant, but I saw robbers once. The women folks were alone, not even a boy with us, and six robbers came for something to eat and they ransacked the house from garret to cellar; they didn't hurt us at all, but we were scared, no mistake. And after they were gone we found out that the baby was gone, Susannah's little black baby, it had died the day before and mother laid it on a table in the parlor and covered it with a sheet and they had caught it up and ran away with it."

"Oh, dear," ejaculated Marjorie.

"Father got men out and they hunted, but they never found the robbers or the baby. If Susannah didn't cry nobody ever did! She had six other children but this baby was so cunning! We used to feed it and play with it and had cried our eyes sore the day it died. But we never found it."

"It wasn't so bad as if it had been alive," comforted Marjorie, "they couldn't hurt it. And it was in Heaven before they ran away with the body. But I don't wonder the poor mother was half frantic."

"Poor Susannah, she used to talk about it as long as she lived."

"Was she a slave?"

"Of course, but we were good to her and took care of her till she died. My father gave her to me when I was married. That was years and years and years before we came to this state. I was fifteen when I was married—"

"Fifteen," Marjorie almost shouted. That was queerer than having so many step-mothers.

"And my husband had four children, and Lucilla was just my age, the oldest, she was in my class at school. But we got on together and kept house together till she married and went away. Yes, I've had things happen to me. People called it our golden wedding when we'd been married fifty years, and then he died, the next year, and I've lived with my children since. I've had my ups and downs as you'll have if you live to be most a hundred."

"You've had some ups as well as downs," said Marjorie.

"Yes, I've had some good times, but not many, not many."

Marjorie answered indignantly: "I think you have good times now, you have a good home and everybody is kind to you."

"Yes, but I can't see and Hepsie don't talk much."

"This afternoon as I was coming along I saw an old hunch-backed woman raking sticks together to make a bonfire in a field, don't you think she had a hard time?"

"Perhaps she liked to; I don't believe anybody made her, and she could see the bonfire."

Marjorie's eyes were pitiful; it must be hard to be blind.

"Shall I read to you now?" she asked hurriedly.

"How is the fire? Isn't it most time to put the kettle on? I shan't sleep a wink if I don't have hasty pudding to-night and I don't like it raw, either."

"It shan't be raw," laughed Marjorie, springing up. "I'll see to the fire and fill the kettle and then I'll read to you."

The old lady fumbled at her work till Marjorie came back to her with the family Bible in her hands.

She laid the Bible on the table and moved her chair to the table.

"Where shall I read?"

"About Jacob and all his children and all his troubles, I never get tired of that. He said few and evil had been his days and he was more than most a hundred."

"Well," said Marjorie, lingering over the word and slowly turning back to Genesis. She had opened to John, she wanted to read to the grumbling old heart that was "afraid" some of the comforting words of Jesus: "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."

"Begin about Jacob and read right on."

With a voice that could not entirely conceal her disappointment, she "began about Jacob and read right on" until Mrs. Rheid's light step touched the plank at the kitchen door. There was a quiet joyfulness in her face, but she did not say one word; she bent over to kiss Marjorie as she passed her, hung up her gingham sun-bonnet, and as the tea kettle was singing, poured the boiling water into an iron pot, scattered a handful of salt in it and went to the cupboard for the Indian meal.

"I'll stir," said Marjorie, looking around at the old lady and discovering her head dropped towards one side and the knitting aslant in her fingers.

"The pudding stick is on the shelf next to the tin porringer," explained Mrs. Rheid.

Marjorie moved to the stove and stood a moment holding the wooden pudding stick in her hand.

"You may tell Hollis," said Hollis' mother, slowly dropping the meal into the boiling water, "that I have found peace, at last."

Majorie's eyes gave a quick leap.

"Peace in believing—there is no peace anywhere else," she added.



XII.

A BUDGET OF LETTERS.

"The flowers have with the swallows fled, And silent is the cricket; The red leaf rustles overhead, The brown leaves fill the thicket

"With frost and storm comes slowly on The year's long wintry night time."—J. T. Trowbridge

"New York, Nov. 21, 18—.

"MY DARLING MARJORIE:

"You know I hate to write letters, and I do not believe I should have begun this this evening if Miss Prudence had not made me. She looks at me with her eyes and then I am made. I am to be two weeks writing this, so it is a journal. To think I have been at school two years and am beginning a third year. And to think I am really nineteen years old. And you are sixteen, aren't you? Almost as old as I was when I first came. But your turn is coming, poor dear! Miss Prudence says I may go home and be married next summer, if I can't find anything better to do, and Will says I can't. And I shouldn't wonder if we go to Europe on our wedding tour. That sounds grand, doesn't it? But it only means that Captain Will Rheid will take his wife with him if the owners' do not object too strongly, and if they do, the captain says he will let the Linnet find another master; but I don't believe he will, or that anybody will object. That little cabin is just large enough for two of us to turn around in, or we would take you. Just wait till Will has command of a big East Indiaman and you shall go all around the world with us. We are in our snuggery this evening, as usual. I think you must know it as well as I do by this time. The lovely white bed in the alcove, the three windows with lace curtains dropping to the floor, the grate with its soft, bright fire, the round table under the chandelier, with Miss Prudence writing letters and I always writing, studying, or mending. Sometimes we do not speak for an hour. Now my study hours are over and I've eaten three Graham wafers to sustain my sinking spirits while I try to fill this sheet. Somehow I can think of enough to say—how I would talk to you if you were in that little rocker over in the corner. But I think you would move it nearer, and you would want to do some of the talking yourself. I haven't distinguished myself in anything, I have not taken one prize, my composition has never once been marked T. B. R, to be read; to be read aloud, that is; and I have never done anything but to try to be perfect in every recitation and to be ladylike in deportment. I am always asked to sing, but any bird can sing. I was discouraged last night and had a crying time down here on the rug before the grate. Miss Prudence had gone to hear Wendell Phillips, with one of the boarders, so I had a good long time to cry my cry out all by myself. But it was not all out when she came, I was still floating around in my own briny drops, so, of course, she would know the cause of the small rain storm I was drenched in, and I had to stammer out that—I—hadn't—improved—my time and—I knew she was ashamed of me—and sorry she—had tried to—make anything out of me. And then she laughed. You never heard her laugh like that—nor any one else. I began to laugh as hard as I had been crying. And, after that, we talked till midnight. She said lovely things. I wish I knew how to write them, but if you want to hear them just have a crying time and she will say them all to you. Only you can never get discouraged. She began by asking somewhat severely: 'Whose life do you want to live?' And I was frightened and said, 'My own, of course,' that I wouldn't be anybody else for anything, not even Helen Rheid, or you. And she said that my training had been the best thing for my own life, that I had fulfilled all her expectations (not gone beyond them), and she knew just what I could do and could not do when she brought me here. She had educated me to be a good wife to Will, and an influence for good in my little sphere in my down-east home; she knew I would not be anything wonderful, but she had tried to help me make the most of myself and she was satisfied that I had done it. I had education enough to know that I am an ignorant thing (she didn't say thing, however), and I had common sense and a loving heart. I was not to go out into the world as a bread-winner or 'on a mission,' but I was to stay home and make a home for a good man, and to make it such a sweet, lovely home that it was to be like a little heaven. (And then I had to put my head down and cry again.) So it ended, and I felt better and got up early to write it all to Will.—There's a knock at the door and a message for Miss Prudence.

"Later. The message was that Helen Rheid is very sick and wants her to come to sit up with her to-night. Hollis brought the word but would not come upstairs. And now I must read my chapter in the Bible and prepare to retire. Poor Helen! She was here last week one evening with Hollis, as beautiful as a picture and so full of life. She was full of plans. She and Miss Prudence are always doing something together.

"23d. Miss Prudence has not come home yet and I'm as lonesome as can be. Coming home from school to-day I stopped to inquire about Helen and saw nobody but the servant who opened the door; there were three doctors upstairs then, she said, so I came away without hearing any more; that tells the whole story. I wish Hollis would come and tell me. I've learned my lessons and read my chapters in history and biography, and now I am tired and stupid and want to see you all. I do not like it here, in this stiff house, without Miss Prudence. Most of the boarders are gentlemen or young married ladies full of talk among themselves. Miss Prudence says she is going back to her Maple Street home when she takes you, and you and she and her old Deborah are to live alone together. She is tired of boarding and so I am, heartily tired. I am tired of school, to-night, and everything. Your letter did not come to-day, and Will's was a short, hurried one, and I'm homesick and good-for-nothing.

"27th. I've been studying hard to keep up in geometry and astronomy and have not felt a bit like writing. Will has sailed for Liverpool and I shall not see him till next spring or later, for he may cross the Mediterranean, and then back to England, and nobody knows where else, before he comes home. It all depends upon "freights." As if freight were everything. Hollis called an hour ago and stayed awhile. Helen is no better. She scarcely speaks, but lies patient and still. He looked in at her this morning, but she did not lift her eyes. Oh, she is so young to die! And she has so much to do. She has not even begun to do yet. She has so much of herself to do with, she is not an ignoramus like me. Her life has been one strong, pure influence Hollis said to-night. He is sure she will get well. He says her father and mother pray for her night and day. And his Aunt Helen said such a beautiful thing yesterday. She was talking to Hollis, for she knows he loves her so much. She said something like this: (the tears were in his eyes when he told me) 'I was thinking last night, as I stood looking at her, about that blood on the lintel—the blood of the lamb that was to keep the first-born safe among the children of Israel. She is our first-born and the blood of Jesus Christ is in all our thoughts while we plead for her life—for his sake—for the sake of his blood.' Hollis broke down and had to go away without another word. Her life has done him good. I wish she could talk to him before she goes away, because he is not a Christian. But he is so good and thoughtful that he will think now more than he ever did before. Miss Prudence stays all the time. Helen notices when she is not there and Mrs. Rheid says she can rest while Miss Prudence is in the room.

"I am such a poor stick myself, and Helen could do so much in the world; and here I am, as strong and well as can be, and she is almost dying. But I do not want to take her place. I have so much to live for—so many, I ought to say. I thought of writing a long journal letter, but I have not the heart to think of anything but Helen.

"Hollis is to start next week on his first trip as a 'commercial traveller,' and he is in agony at the thought of going and not knowing whether Helen will live or die. I'll finish this in the morning, because I know you are anxious to hear from us.

"In the morning. I am all ready for school, with everything on but my gloves. I don't half know my geometry and I shall have to copy my composition in school. It is as stupid as it can be; it is about the reign of Queen Anne. There isn't any heart in it, because all I care about is the present—and the future. I'll send it to you as soon as it is returned corrected. You will laugh at the mistakes and think, if you are too modest to say so, that you can do better. I pity you if you can't. I shall stop on the way to inquire about Helen, and I am afraid to, too.

"School, Noon Recess. I met Hollis on the walk as I stood in front of Helen's—there was no need to ask. Black and white ribbon was streaming from the bell handle. I have permission to go home. I have cried all the morning. I hope I shall find Miss Prudence there. She must be so tired and worn out. Hollis looked like a ghost and his voice shook so he could scarcely speak.

"With ever so much love to all,

"YOUR SISTER LINNET.

"P. S. Hollis said he would not write this week and wants you to tell his mother all about it."

* * * * *

The next letter is dated in the early part of the following month.

"In my Den, Dec. 10, 18—,

"MY FRIEND PRUDENCE:

"My heart was with you, as you well know, all those days and nights in that sick chamber that proved to be the entrance to Heaven. She smiled and spoke, lay quiet for awhile with her eyes closed, and awoke in the presence of the Lord. May you and I depart as easily, as fearlessly. I cannot grieve as you do; how much she is saved! To-night I have been thinking over your life, and a woman's lot seems hard. To love so much, to suffer so much. You see I am desponding; I am often desponding. You must write to me and cheer me up. I am disappointed in myself. Oh how different this monotonous life from the life I planned! I dig and delve and my joy comes in my work. If it did not, where would it come in, pray? I am a joyless fellow at best. There! I will not write another word until I can give you a word of cheer. Why don't you toss me overboard? Your life is full of cheer and hard work; but I cannot be like you. Marjorie and Morris were busy at the dining-room table when I left them, with their heads together over my old Euclid. We are giving them a lift up into the sunshine and that is something. What do you want to send Marjorie to school for? What can school do for her when I give her up to you? Give yourself to her and keep her out of school. The child is not always happy. Last communion Sunday she sat next to me; she was crying softly all the time. You could have said something, but, manlike, I held my peace. I wonder whether I don't know what to say, or don't know how to say it. I seem to know what to say to you, but, truly Prudence, I don't know how to say it. I have been wanting to tell you something, fourteen, yes, fourteen years, and have not dared and do not dare to night. Sometimes I am sure I have a right, a precious right, a sacred right, and then something bids me forbear, and I forbear. I am forbearing now as I sit up here in my chamber alone, crowded in among my books and the wind is wild upon the water. I am gloomy to-night and discouraged. My book, the book I have lost myself in so long, has been refused the fourth time. Had it not been for your hand upon my arm awhile ago it would be now shrivelled and curling among the ashes on my hearth.

"Who was it that stood on London Bridge and did not throw his manuscript over? Listen! Do you hear that grand child of yours asking who it was that sat by his hearth and did not toss his manuscript into the fire? Didn't somebody in the Bible toss a roll into the fire on the hearth? I want you to come to talk to me. I want some one not wise or learned, except learned and wise in such fashion as you are, to sit here beside me, and look into the fire with me, and listen to the wind with me, and talk to me or be silent with me. If my book had been accepted, and all the world were wagging their tongues about it, I should want that unwise, unlearned somebody. That friend of mine over the water, sitting in his lonely bungalow tonight studying Hindoostanee wants somebody, too. Why did you not go with him, Prudence? Shall you never go with any one; shall you and I, so near to each other, with so much to keep us together, go always uncomforted. But you are comforted. You loved Helen, you love Linnet and Marjorie and a host of others; you do not need me to bid you be brave. You are a brave woman. I am not a brave man. I am not brave to-night, with that four-times-rejected manuscript within reach of my hand. Shall I publish it myself? I want some one to think well enough of it to take the risk.

"Prudence, I have asked God for something, but he gives me an answer that I cannot understand. Write to me and tell me how that is.

"Yours to-day and to-morrow."

"J. H."

* * * * *

"New York, Dec. 20, 18—.

"MY DEAR JOHN:

"I have time but for one word to-night, and even that cannot be at length. Linnet and I are just in from a lecture on Miss Mitford! There were tears running down over my heart all the time that I was listening. You call me brave; she was brave. Think of her pillowed up in bed writing her last book, none to be kind to her except those to whom she paid money. Linnet was delighted and intends to 'write a composition' about her. Just let me keep my hand on your arm (will you?) when evil impulses are about. You do not quite know how to interpret the circumstances that seem to be in answer to your prayer? It is as if you spoke to God in English and the answer comes in Sanscrit. I think I have received such answers myself. And if we were brutes, with no capacity of increasing our understanding, I should think it very queer. Sometimes it is hard work to pray until we get an answer and then it is harder still to find out its meaning. I imagine that Linnet and Marjorie, even Will Rheid, would not understand that; but you and I are not led along in the easiest way. It must be because the answer is worth the hard work: his Word and Spirit can interpret all his involved and mystical answers. Think with a clear head, not with any pre-formed judgment, with a heart emptied of all but a willingness to read his meaning aright, be that meaning to shatter your hopes or to give bountifully your desire—with a sincere and abiding determination to take it, come what may, and you will understand as plainly as you are understanding me. Try it and see. I have tried and I know. There may be a wound for you somewhere, but oh, the joy of the touch of his healing hand. And after that comes obedience. Do you remember one a long time ago who had half an answer, only a glimmer of light on a dark way? He took the answer and went on as far as he understood, not daring to disobey, but he went on—something like you, too—in 'bitterness,' in the heat of his spirit, he says; he went on as far as he could and stayed there. That was obedience. He stayed there 'astonished' seven days. Perhaps you are in his frame of mind. Nothing happened until the end of the seven days, then he had another word. So I would advise you to stay astonished and wait for the end of your seven days. In our bitterness and the heat of our spirit we are apt to think that God is rather slow about our business. Ezekiel could have been busy all that seven days instead of doing nothing at all, but it was the time for him to do nothing and the time for God to be busy within him. You have inquired of the Lord, that was your busy time, now keep still and let God answer as slowly as he will, this is his busy time. Now Linnet and I must eat a cracker and then say good-night to all the world, yourself, dear John, included.