Chapter 10

"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."