Miss Prudence Part 26

"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," a.s.sented 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 st.i.tch 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 st.i.tch."

"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. n.o.body 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 st.i.tches 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 n.o.body to pick up the st.i.tches I've dropped all along."

"Won't G.o.d?" 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 G.o.d 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!"