Chapter V: Part 5

"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: