Chapter XIII: Part 13

"You wrote me about the talk, and he has told me about it since. To be frank, Marjorie, he told me about the conversation with your mother, and how startled he was. After that talk with you he was assured that she was mistaken--but, child, there was no harm, no sin--even if it had been true. The only sin I find was your mother's want of faith in making haste. And she sees it now and laments it. She says making haste has been the sin of her lifetime. Her unbelief has taken that form. You were very chilly to Hollis last night."

"I couldn't help it," said Marjorie. "I would not have come if I could have stayed at home."

"Is that proud heart satisfied now?"

"Perhaps it oughtn't to be--if it is proud."

"We will not argue about it now as there's somebody waiting for you down-stairs."

"I don't want to see him--now."

"Suppose he wants to see you."

"Aunt Prue! I wish I could be selfish just a few minutes."

"You may. A whole hour. You may be selfish up here all by yourself until the dinner bell rings."

Marjorie laughed and drew the lounge afghan up about her shoulders. She was so happy that she wanted to go to sleep;--to go to sleep and be thankful. But the dinner bell found her in the parlor talking to Linnet; Prue and Hollis were chattering together in French. Prue corrected his pronunciation and promised to lend him books.

The most inviting corner in the house to Marjorie was a cosey corner in the library; she found her way thither after dinner, and there Hollis found her, after searching parlors, dining-room, and halls for her. The cosey corner itself was an arm-chair near the revolving bookcase; Prue said that papa kept his "pets" in that bookcase.

Marjorie had taken a book into her hand and was gathering a thought here and there when Hollis entered; he pushed a chair to her side, and, seating himself, took the book from her fingers.

"Marjorie, I have come to ask you what to do?"

"About your father's offer?"

"Yes. I should have written to-day. I fancy how he watches the mail. But I am in a great state of indecision. My heart is not in his plan."

"Is your heart in buying and selling laces?"

"I don't see why you need put it that way," he returned, with some irritation. "Don't you like my business?"

"Do you?"

"I like what it gives me to do."

"I should not choose it if I were a man."

"What would you choose?"

"I have not considered sufficiently to choose, I suppose. I should want to be one of the mediums through which good passed to my neighbor."

"What would you choose for me to do?"

"The thing God bids you do."

"That may be to buy and sell laces."

"It may be. I hope it was while you were doing it."

"You mean that through this offer of father's God may be indicating his will."

"He is certainly giving you an opportunity to choose."

"I had not looked upon it in that light. Marjorie, I'm afraid the thought of his will is not always as present with me as with you."

"I used to think I needed money, like Aunt Prue, if I would bless my neighbor; but once it came to me that Christ through his _poverty_ made us rich: the world's workers have not always been the men and the women with most money. You see I am taking it for granted that you do not intend to decide for yourself, or work for yourself."

"No; I am thinking of working for you."

"I am too small a field."

"But you must be included."

"I can be one little corner; there's all Middlefield beside. Isn't there work for you as a citizen and as a Christian in our little town? Suppose you go to Middlefield with the same motives that you would go on a mission to India, Africa, or the Isles of the Sea! You will not be sent by any Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, but by him who has sent you, his disciple, into the world. You have your experience, you have your strength, you have your love to Christ and your neighbor, to give them. They need everything in Middlefield. They need young men, Christian young men. The village needs you, the Church needs you. It seems too bad for all the young men to rush away from their native place to make a name, or to make money. Somebody must work for Middlefield. Our church needs a lecture room and a Sunday school room; the village needs a reading room--the village needs more than I know. It needs Christian _push_. Perhaps it needs Hollis Rheid."

"Marjorie, it will change all my life for me."

"So it would if you should go West, as you spoke last night of doing. If you should study law, as you said you had thought of doing, that would change the course of your life. You can't do a new thing and keep to the old ways."

"If I go I shall settle down for life."

"You mean you will settle down until you are unsettled again."

"What will unsettle me?"

"What unsettled you now?"

"Circumstances."

"Circumstances will keep on being in existence as long as we are in existence. I never forget a motto I chose for my birthday once on a time. 'The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.'"

"He commands us to fight, sometimes."

"And then we must fight. You seem to be undergoing some struggles now. Have you any opening here?"

"I answered an advertisement this morning, but we could not come to terms. Marjorie, what you say about Middlefield is worth thinking of."

"That is why I said it," she said archly.

"Would _you _like that life better?"

"Better for you?"

"No, better for yourself."

"I am there already, you know," with rising color.

"I believe I will write to father and tell him I will take his kindness into serious consideration."

"There is no need of haste."

"He will want to begin to make plans. He is a great planner. Marjorie! I just thought of it. We will rent Linnet's house this summer--or board with her, and superintend the building of our own, Do you agree to that?"

"You haven't taken it into serious consideration yet."

"Will it make any difference to you--my decision? Will you share my life--any way?"

Prue ran in at that instant, Linnet following. Hollis arose and walked around among the books. Prue squeezed herself into Marjorie's broad chair; and Linnet dropped herself on the hassock at Marjorie's feet, and laid her head in Marjorie's lap.

There was no trouble in Linnet's face, only an accepted sorrow.

"Marjorie, will you read to us?" coaxed Prue. "Don't you know how you used to read in Maple Street?"

"What do you feel like listening to?"

"Your voice," said Prue, demurely.

XXXI.

AND WHAT ELSE?

"What is the highest secret of victory and peace? To will what God wills."--_W.R. Alger_.

And now what further remains to be told?

Would you like to see Marjorie in her new home, with Linnet's chimneys across the fields? Would you like to know about Hollis' success as a Christian and a Christian citizen in his native town? Would you like to see the proud, indulgent grandmothers the day baby Will takes his first steps? For Aunt Linnet named him, and the grandfather declares "she loves him better than his mother, if anything!"

One day dear Grandma West came to see the baby, and bring him some scarlet stockings of her own knitting; she looked pale and did not feel well, and Marjorie persuaded her to remain all night.

In the morning Baby went into her chamber to awaken her with a kiss; but her lips were cold, and she would not open her eyes. She had gone home, as she always wanted to go, in her sleep.

That summer Mrs. Kemlo received a letter from her elder daughter; she was ill and helpless; she wanted her mother, and the children wanted her.

"They _need_ me now," she said to Marjorie, with a quiver of the lip, "and nobody else seems to. When one door is shut another door is opened."

And then the question came up, what should Linnet and Marjorie do with their father's home? And then the Holmeses came to Middlefield for the summer in time to solve the problem. Mrs. Holmes would purchase it for their summer home; and, she whispered to Marjorie, "When Prue marries the medical student that papa admires so much, we old folks will settle down here and be grandpa and grandma to you all."

In time Linnet gave up "waiting for Will," and began to think of him as waiting for her. And, in time, they all knew God's will concerning them; as you may know if you do the best you can before you see it clearly.

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg's Miss Prudence, by Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin