Chapter 3

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

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

After a while, Marjorie's mother spoke again:

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

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

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

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

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

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

III.

WHAT "DESULTORY" MEANS.

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

"Miss Prudence! O, Miss Prudence!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes," considered Marjorie, "rather."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Which one of the things, for instance?"

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

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

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

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

Marjorie had been fanning herself with her broad brim, she let it fall in her eagerness and her eyes were two convincing arguments against the truth of her own theory, for they were two emphasized exclamation points; sometimes when she was very eager she doubled herself up and made an interrogation point of herself.

"Up in my room on the table you will find paper and pencil; please bring them to me."

Marjorie flew away and Miss Prudence gave herself up to her interrupted reverie. To-day was one of Miss Prudence's hard-working days; that is, it was followed by the effect of a hard-working day; the days in which she felt too weak to do anything beside pray she counted the successful days of her life. She said they were the only days in her life in which she accomplished anything.

Marjorie was at home in every part of her grandfather's queer old house; Miss Prudence's room was her especial delight. It was a low-studded chamber, with three windows looking out to the sea, the wide fireplace was open, filled with boughs of fragrant hemlock; the smooth yellow floor with its coolness and sweet cleanliness invited you to enter; there were round braided mats spread before the bureau and rude washstand, and more pretentious ones in size and beauty were laid in front of the red, high-posted bedstead and over the brick hearth. There were, beside, in the apartment, two tables, an easy-chair with arms, its cushions covered with red calico, a camp stool, three rush-bottomed chairs, a Saratoga trunk, intruding itself with ugly modernness, also, hanging upon hooks, several articles of clothing, conspicuously among them a gray flannel bathing suit. The windows were draperied in dotted swiss, fastened back with green cord; her grandmother would never have been guilty of those curtains. Marjorie was sure they had intimate connection with the Saratoga trunk. Sunshine, the salt-breath of the sea and the odor of pine woods as well!

There were rollicking voices outside the window, Marjorie looked out and spied her five little cousins playing in the sand. Three of them held in their hands, half-eaten, the inevitable doughnut; morning, noon, and night those children were to be found with doughnuts in their hands.

She laughed and turned again to the contemplation of the room; on the high mantel was a yellow pitcher, that her grandmother knew was a hundred years old, and in the centre of the mantel were arranged a sugar bowl and a vinegar cruet that Miss Prudence had coaxed away from the old lady; her city friends would rave over them, she said. The old lady had laughed, remarking that "city folks" had ways of their own.

"I've given away a whole set of dishes to folks that come in the yachts," she said. "I should think you would rather have new dishes."

Miss Prudence never dusted her old possessions; she told Marjorie that she had not the heart to disturb the dust of ages.

Marjorie was tempted to linger and linger; in winter this room was closed and seemed always bare and cold when she peeped into it; there was no temptation to stay one moment; and now she had to tear herself away. It must be Miss Prudence's spirit that brooded over it and gave it sweetness and sunshine. This was the way Marjorie put the thought to herself. The child was very poetical when she lived alone with herself. Miss Prudence's wicker work-basket with its dainty lining of rose-tinted silk, its shining scissors and gold thimble, with its spools and sea-green silk needlebook was a whole poem to the child; she thought the possession of one could make any kind of sewing, even darning stockings, very delightful work. "Stitch, stitch, stitch," would not seem dreadful, at all.

How mysterious and charming it was to board by the seashore with somebody's grandfather! And then, in winter, to go back to some bewildering sort of a fairyland! To some kind of a world where people did not talk all the time about "getting along" and "saving" and "doing without" and "making both ends meet." How Marjorie's soul rebelled against the constant repetition of those expressions! How she thought she would never _let_ her little girls know what one of them meant! If she and her little girls had to be saving and do without, how brave they would be about it, and laugh over it, and never ding it into anybody's ears! And she would never constantly be asking what things cost! Miss Prudence never asked such questions. But she would like to know if that gold pen cost so very much, and that glass inkstand shaped like a pyramid, and all that cream note-paper with maple tassels and autumn leaves and butterflies and ever so many cunning things painted in its left corners. And there was a pile of foolscap on the table, and some long, yellow envelopes, and some old books and some new books and an ivory paper-cutter; all something apart from the commonplace world she inhabited. Not apart from the world her thoughts and desires revelled in; not her hopes, for she had not gotten so far as to hope to live in a magical world like Miss Prudence. And yet when Miss Prudence did not wear white she was robed in deep mourning; there was sorrow in Miss Prudence's magical world.

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

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

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

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

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

"Read it, please."

Marjorie began to read, then stopped and laughed.

"I can't."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Whose son?"

"Why, Mr. Miller's!"

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

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

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

"Yes," assented Marjorie, watching her.

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

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

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

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

"And to change occupations."

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

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

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

Marjorie uttered an exclamation; it was so funny!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Thank you," said the child, simply.

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

"I don't see how."

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

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

"Well, Marjorie?"

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

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

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

"I have to be very severe with myself."

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

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

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

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

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

"What did your mother say?"

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

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

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

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