Chapter 7

"Is that why your friend wants the plate, because she knows about Holland two hundred years ago?"

"No; I'm afraid not. I don't believe she knows more than you do about it. But she will delight in the plate. Which reminds me, your uncle has promised to put the unfortunate pitcher together for me. And in its mended condition it will appear more ancient than ever. I cannot say that George Washington broke it with his little hatchet; but I can have a legend about you connected with it, and tell it to your grandchildren when I show it to them fifty years hence. Unto them I will discover--not a swan's nest among the reeds, as Mrs. Browning has it, but an old yellow pitcher that their lovely grandmother was in trouble about fifty years ago."

"It will be a hundred and fifty years old then," returned Marjorie, seriously, "and I think," she added rebukingly, "that _you_ were building castles then."

"I had you and the pitcher for the foundation," said Miss Prudence, in a tone of mock humility.

"Don't you think--" Marjorie's face had a world of suggestion in it--"that 'The Swan's Nest' is bad influence for girls? Little Ellie sits alone and builds castles about her lover, even his horse is 'shod in silver, housed in azure' and a thousand serfs do call him master, and he says 'O, Love, I love but thee.'"

"But all she looks forward to is showing him the swan's nest among the reeds! And when she goes home, around a mile, as she did daily, lo, the wild swan had deserted and a rat had gnawed the reeds. That was the end of her fine castle!"

"'If she found the lover, ever, Sooth, I know not, but I know She could never show him, never, That swan's nest among the reeds,'"

quoted Marjorie. "So it did all come to nothing."

"As air-castles almost always do. But we'll hope she found something better."

"Do people?" questioned Marjorie.

"Hasn't God things laid up for us better than we can ask or think or build castles about?"

"I _hope_ so," said Marjorie; "but Hollis Rheid's mother told mother yesterday that her life was one long disappointment."

"What did your mother say?"

"She said 'Oh, Mrs. Rheid, it won't be if you get to Heaven, at last.'"

"I think not."

"But she doesn't expect to go to Heaven, she says. Mother says she's almost in 'despair' and she pities her so!"

"Poor woman! I don't see how she can live through despair. The old proverb 'If it were not for hope, the heart would break,' is most certainly true."

"Why didn't you come before?" asked Marjorie, caressing the hand that still played with the fan.

"Perhaps you never lived on a farm and cannot understand. I could not come in the ox-cart because the oxen were in the field, and every day since I heard of your accident your uncle has had to drive your aunt to Portland on some business. And I did not feel strong enough to walk until this morning."

"How good you are to walk!"

"As good as you are to walk to see me."

"Oh, but I am young and strong, and I wanted to see you so, and ask you questions so."

"I believe the latter," said Miss Prudence smiling.

"Well, I'm happy now," Marjorie sighed, with the burden of her trouble still upon her. "Suppose I had been killed when I fell and had not told you about the pitcher nor made amends for it."

"I don't believe any of us could be taken away without one moment to make ready and not leave many things undone--many tangled threads and rough edges to be taken care of. We are very happy if we have no sin to confess, no wrong to make right."

"I think Hollis would have taken care of the plate for me," said Marjorie, simply; "but I wanted to tell you myself. Mother wants to go home as suddenly as that would have been for me, she says. I shouldn't wonder if she prays about it--she prays about everything. Do people have _that_ kind of a prayer answered?"

"I have known more than one instance--and I read about a gentleman who had desired to be taken suddenly and he was killed by lightning while sitting on his own piazza."

"Oh!" said Marjorie.

"That was all he could have wished. And the mother of my pastor at home, who was over ninety, was found dead on her knees at her bedside, and she had always wished to be summoned suddenly."

"When she was speaking to him, too," murmured Marjorie. "I like old people, don't you? Hollis' grandmother is at his house and Mrs. Rheid wants me to go to see her; she is ninety-three and blind, and she loves to tell stories about herself, and I am to stay all day and listen to her and take up her stitches when she drops them in her knitting work and read the Bible to her. She won't listen to anything but the Bible; she says she's too old to hear other books read."

"What a treat you will have!"

"Isn't it lovely? I never had _that_ day in my air-castles, either. Nor you coming to stay all day with me, nor writing to Hollis. I had a letter from him last night, the funniest letter! I laughed all the time I was reading it. He begins: 'Poor little Mousie,' and ends, 'ours, till next time.' I'll show it to you. He doesn't say much about Helen. I shall tell him if I write about his mother he must write about Helen. I'm sorry to tell him what his mother said yesterday about herself but I promised and I must be faithful."

"I hope you will have happy news to write soon."

"I don't know; she says the minister doesn't do her any good, nor reading the Bible nor praying. Now what can help her?"

"God," was the solemn reply. "She has had to learn that the minister and Bible reading and prayer are not God. When she is sure that God will do all the helping and saving, she will be helped and saved. Perhaps she has gone to the minister and the Bible instead of to God, and she may have thought her prayers could save her instead of God."

"She said she was in despair because they did not help her and she did not know where to turn next," said Marjorie, who had listened with sympathetic eyes and aching heart.

"Don't worry about her, dear, God is teaching her to turn to himself."

"I told her about the plate, but she did not seem to care much. What different things people _do_ care about!" exclaimed Marjorie, her eyes alight with the newness of her thought.

"Mrs. Harrowgate will never be perfectly satisfied until she has a memorial of Pompeii. I've promised when I explore underground I'll find her a treasure. Your Holland plate is something for her small collection; she has but eighty-seven pieces of china, while a friend of hers has gathered together two hundred."

"What do _you_ care for most, Miss Prudence?

"In the way of collections? I haven't shown you my penny buried in the lava of Mt. Vesuvius; I told my friend that savored of Pompeii, the only difference is one is above ground and the other underneath, but I couldn't persuade her to believe it."

"I don't mean collecting coins or things; I mean what do you care for _most_?"

"If you haven't discovered, I cannot care very much for what I care for most."

Marjorie laughed at this way of putting it, then she answered gravely: "I do know. I think you care most--" she paused, choosing her phrase carefully--"to help people make something out of themselves."

"Thank you. That's fine. I never put it so excellently to myself."

"I haven't found out what I care most for."

"I think I know. You care most to make something out of yourself."

"Do I? Isn't that selfish? But I don't know how to help any one else, not even Linnet."

"Making the best of ourselves is the foundation for making something out of others."

"But I didn't say _that_" persisted Marjorie. "You help people to do it for themselves."

"I wonder if that is my work in the world," rejoined Miss Prudence, musingly. "I could not choose anything to fit me better--I had no thought that I have ever succeeded; I never put it to myself in that way."

"Perhaps I'll begin some day. Helen Rheid helps Hollis. He isn't the same boy; he studies and buys books and notices things to be admired in people, and when he is full of fun he isn't rough. I don't believe I ever helped anybody."

"You have some work to do upon yourself first. And I am sure you have helped educate your mother and father."

Marjorie pulled to pieces the green leaf that had floated in upon her lap and as she kept her eyes on the leaf she pondered.

Her companion was "talking over her head" purposely to-day; she had a plan for Marjorie and as she admitted to herself she was "trying the child to see what she was made of."

She congratulated herself upon success thus far.

"That children do educate their mothers is the only satisfactory reason I have found when I have questioned why God does give children to _some_ mothers."

"Then what becomes of the children?" asked Marjorie, alarmed.

"The Giver does not forget them; he can be a mother himself, you know."

Marjorie did not know; she had always had her mother. Had she lost something, therefore, in not thus finding out God? Perhaps, in after life she would find his tenderness by losing--or not having--some one else. It was not too bad, for it would be a great pity if there were not such interruptions, but at this instant Linnet's housewifely face was pushed in at the door, and her voice announced: "Dinner in three minutes and a half! Chicken-pie for the first course and some new and delicious thing for dessert."

"Oh, splendid!" cried Marjorie, hopping up. "And we'll finish everything after dinner, Miss Prudence."

"As the lady said to the famous traveller at a dinner party: 'We have five minutes before dinner, please tell me all about your travels,'" said Miss Prudence, rising and laughing.

"You remember you haven't told me what you sent me for the Bible to show me that unhappy--no, happy time--I broke the picture," reminded Marjorie, leading the way to the dining-room.

VII.

UNDER THE APPLE-TREE.

"Never the little seed stops in its growing."--_Mrs. Osgood._

Linnet moved hither and thither, after the dinner dishes were done, all through the house, up stairs and down, to see that everything was in perfect order before she might dress and enjoy the afternoon. Linnet was pre-eminently a housekeeper, to her mother's great delight, for her younger daughter was not developing according to her mind in housewifely arts.

"That will come in time," encouraged Marjorie's father when her mother spoke faultfindingly of some delinquency in the kitchen.

"I should like to know _what_ time!" was the sharp reply.

It was queer about Marjorie's mother, she was as sharp as she was good-humored.

"Linnet has no decided tastes about anything but housekeeping and fancy-work, and Marjorie has some other things to be growing in," said her father.

"I wish she would grow to some purpose then," was the energetic reply.

"As the farmer said about his seed before it was time for it to sprout," laughed the children's father.

This father and mother could not talk confidentially together five minutes without bringing the "children" in.

Their own future was every day; but the children had not begun to live in theirs yet; their golden future, which was to be all the more golden because of their parents' experiences.

This mother was so very old-fashioned that she believed that there was no career open to a girl beside marriage; the dreadful alternative was solitary old-maidenhood. She was a good mother, in many respects a wise mother; but she would not have slept that night had she believed that either of her daughters would attain to thirty years unmarried. This may have been owing to a defect of education, or it may have been that she was so happily married to a husband six years her junior--whom she could manage. And she was nearly thirty when she was married herself and had really begun to believe that she should never be married at all. She believed marriage to be so honorable in all, that the absence of it, as in Miss Prudence's case, was nearly dishonorable. She was almost a Jewish mother in her reverence for marriage and joyfulness for the blessing of children. This may have been the result of her absorbed study of the Old Testament Scriptures. Marjorie had wondered why her mother in addressing the Lord had cried, "O, Lord God of Israel," and instead of any other name nearer New Testament Christians, she would speak of him as "The Holy One of Israel." Sometimes I have thought that Marjorie's mother began her religious life as a Jew, and that instead of being a Gentile Christian she was in reality a converted Jew, something like what Elizabeth would have been if she had been more like Marjorie's mother and Graham West's wife. This type of womanhood is rare in this nineteenth century; for aught I know, she is not a representative woman, at all; she is the only one I ever knew, and perhaps you never saw any one like her. She has no heresies, she can prove every assertion from the Bible, her principles are as firm as adamant and her heart as tender as a mother's. Still, marriage and motherhood have been her education; if the Connecticut, school-teacher had not realized her worth, she might have become what she dreaded her own daughters becoming--an old maid with uncheerful views of life. In planning their future she looked into her own heart instead of into theirs.

The children were lovely blossomings of the seed in the hearts of both parents; of seeds, that in them had not borne abundant fruitage.

"How did two such cranky old things ever have such happy children!" she exclaimed one day to her husband.

"Perhaps they will become what we stopped short of being," he replied.

Graham West was something of a philosopher; rather too much of a philosopher for his wife's peace of mind. To her sorrow she had learned that he had no "business tact," he could not even scrape a comfortable living off his scrubby little farm.

But I began with Linnet and fell to discoursing about her mother; it was Linnet, as she appeared in her grayish brown dress with a knot of crimson at her throat, running down the stairway, that suggested her mother's thought to me.

"Linnet is almost growing up," she had said to herself as she removed her cap for her customary afternoon nap. This afternoon nap refreshed her countenance and kept her from looking six years older than her husband. Mrs. West was not a worldly woman, but she did not like to look six years older than her husband.

Linnet searched through parlor and hall, then out on the piazza, then looked through the front yard, and, finally, having explored the garden, found Marjorie and her friend in camp-chairs on the soft green turf under the low hanging boughs of an apple-tree behind the house. There were two or three books in Marjorie's lap, and Miss Prudence was turning the leaves of Marjorie's Bible. She was answering one of Marjorie's questions Linnet supposed and wondered if Marjorie would be satisfied with the answer; she was not always satisfied, as the elder sister knew to her grievance. For instance: Marjorie had said to her yesterday, with that serious look in her eyes: "Linnet, father says when Christ was on earth people didn't have wheat ground into fine flour as we do;--now when it is so much nicer, why do you suppose he didn't tell them about grinding it fine?"

"Perhaps he didn't think of it," she replied, giving the first thought that occurred to her.

"That isn't the reason," returned Marjorie, "for he could think of everything he wanted to."

"Then--for the same reason why didn't he tell them about chloroform and printing and telegraphing and a thousand other inventions?" questioned Linnet in her turn.

"That's what I want to know," said Marjorie.

Linnet settled herself on the turf and drew her work from her pocket; she was making a collar of tatting for her mother's birthday and working at it at every spare moment. It was the clover leaf pattern, that she had learned but a few weeks ago; the thread was very fine and she was doing it exquisitely. She had shown it to Hollis because he was in the lace business, and he had said it was a fine specimen of "real lace." To make real lace was one of Linnet's ambitions. The lace around Marjorie's neck was a piece that their mother had made towards her own wedding outfit. Marjorie's mother sighed and feared that Marjorie would never care to make lace for her wedding outfit.

Linnet frowned over her clover leaf and Marjorie watched Miss Prudence as she turned the leaves. Marjorie did not care for the clover leaf, only as she was interested in everything that Linnet's fingers touched, but Linnet did care for the answer to Marjorie's question. She thought perhaps it was about the wheat.

The Bible leaves were still, after a second Miss Prudence read:

"'For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ.'"

_That_ was not the answer, Linnet thought.

"What does that mean to you, Marjorie?" asked Miss Prudence.

"Why--it can't mean anything different from what it says. Paul was so sorry about the people he was writing about that he wept as he told them--he was so sorry they were enemies of the cross of Christ."

"Yes, he told them even weeping. But I knew an old gentleman who read the Bible unceasingly--I saw one New Testament that he had read through fifteen times--and he told me once that some people were so grieved because they were the enemies of the cross of Christ that they were enemies even weeping. I asked 'Why did they continue enemies, then?' and he said most ingenuously that he supposed they could not help it. Then I remembered this passage, and found it, and read it to him as I read it to you just now. He was simply astounded. He put on his spectacles and read it for himself. And then he said nothing. He had simply put the comma in the wrong place. He had read it in this way: 'For many walk, of whom I have told you often and now tell you, even weeping that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ.'"

"Oh," cried Marjorie, drawing an astonished long breath, "what a difference it does make."

"Now I know, it's punctuation you're talking about," exclaimed Linnet. "Marjorie told me all about the people in the stage-coach. O, Miss Prudence, I don't love to study; I want to go away to school, of course, but I can't see the _use_ of so many studies. Marjorie _loves_ to study and I don't; perhaps I would if I could see some use beside 'being like other people.' Being like other people doesn't seem to me to be a _real_ enough reason."

Linnet had forgotten her clover leaf, she was looking at Miss Prudence with eyes as grave and earnest as Marjorie's ever were. She did not love to study and it was one of the wrong doings that she had confessed in her prayers many a time.

"Well, don't you see the reason now for studying punctuation?"

"Yes, I do," she answered heartily. "But we don't like dates, either of us."

"Did you ever hear about Pompeii, the city buried long ago underground?"

Linnet thought that had nothing to do with her question.

"Oh, yes," said Marjorie, "we have read about it. 'The Last Days of Pompeii' is in the school library. I read it, but Linnet didn't care for it."

"Do you know _when_ it was buried?"

"No," said Linnet, brightening.

"Have you any idea?"

"A thousand years ago?" guessed Marjorie.

"Then you do not know how long after the Crucifixion?"

"No," they replied together.

"You know when the Crucifixion was, of course?"

"Why--yes," admitted Linnet, hesitatingly.

"Christ was thirty-three years old," said Marjorie, "so it must have been in the year 33, or the beginning of 34."

"Of course I know _Anno Domini_," said Linnet; "but I don't always know what happened before and after."

"Suppose we were walking in one of the excavated streets of Pompeii and I should say, 'O, girls! Look at that wall!' and you should see a rude cross carved on it, what would you think?"

"I should think they knew about Christ," answered Linnet.

The clover leaf tatting had fallen into her lap and the shuttle was on the grass.

"Yes, and is that all?"

"Why, yes," she acknowledged.

"Pompeii wasn't so far, so very far from Jerusalem and--they could hear," said Marjorie.

"And you two would pass on to a grand house with a wonderful mosaic floor and think no more about the cross."

"I suppose we would," said Linnet "Wouldn't you?"

"But I should think about the cross. I should think that the city was destroyed in 79 and be rejoiced that the inhabitants had heard of the Cross and knew its story before swift destruction overtook them. It was destroyed about forty-five years after the Crucifixion."

"I _like_ to know that," said Marjorie. "Perhaps some of the people in it had seen St. Paul and heard him tell about the Cross."

"I see some use in that date," said Linnet, picking up her shuttle.

"Suppose I should tell you that once on a time a laborer would have to work fifteen years to earn enough to buy a Bible and then the Bible must be in Latin, wouldn't you like to know when it was."

"I don't know when the Bible was printed in English," confessed Marjorie.

"If you did know and knew several other things that happened about that time you would be greatly interested. Suppose I should tell you about something that happened in England, you would care very much more if you knew about something that was linked with it in France, and in Germany. If I say 1517 I do not arouse your enthusiasm; you don't know what was happening in Germany then; and 1492 doesn't remind you of anything--"

"Yes, it does," laughed Marjorie, "and so does 1620."

"Down the bay on an island stand the ruins of a church, and an old lady told me it was built in 1604. I did not contradict her, but I laughed all to myself."

"I know enough to laugh at that," said Linnet.

"But I have seen in America the spot where Jamestown stood and that dates almost as far back. Suppose I tell you that Martin Luther read _Pilgrims Progress_ with great delight, do you know whether I am making fun or not? If I say that Queen Elizabeth wrote a letter to Cleopatra, do you know whether I mean it or not? And if I say that Richard the Third was baptized by St. Augustine, can you contradict it? And Hannah More wrote a sympathetic letter to Joan of Arc, and Marie Antoinette danced with Charlemagne, and George Washington was congratulated on becoming President by Mary Queen of Scots."

The girls could laugh at this for they had an idea that the Queen of Scots died some time before the first president of the United States was born; but over the other names and incidents they looked at each other gravely.

"Life is a kind of conglomeration without dates," said Linnet.

"I wonder if you know how long ago the flood was!" suggested Miss Prudence, "or if Mahomet lived before the flood or after," she added, seriously.

Marjorie smiled, but Linnet was serious.

"You confuse me so," said Linnet. "I believe I don't know when anything _was_. I don't know how long since Adam was made. Do you, Marjorie?"

"No," in the tone of one dreadfully ashamed.

"And now I'll tell you a lovely thought out of the Bible that came through dates. I did not discover it myself, of course."

"I don't see why 'of course,'" Marjorie said in a resentful tone. "You _do_ discover things."

"I discover little girls once in a while," returned Miss Prudence with a rare softening of lips and eyes.

If it had not been for a few such discoveries the lines about Miss Prudence's lips might have been hard lines.

"Of course you both remember the story of faithful old Abraham, how he longed and longed for a son and hoped against hope, and, after waiting so long, Isaac was born at last. He had the sure promise of God that in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed. Do you know how many nations Abraham knew about? Did he know about France and England and America, the Empire of Russia and populous China?"

Linnet looked puzzled; Marjorie was very grave.