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.
"Did he know that the North American Indians would be blessed in him? Did
he know they would learn that the Great Spirit had a Son, Jesus Christ?
And that Jesus Christ was descended from him?"
"I--don't--know," said Marjorie, doubtfully. "I get all mixed up."
"It was because all the world would be blessed that he was so anxious to
have a son. And, then, after Isaac was born and married for years and
years the promise did not seem to come true, for he had no child. Must
the faithful, hopeful old father die with his hope deferred? We read that
Abraham died in a good old age, an old man, full of years, and Isaac and
Ishmael buried him, and farther on in the same chapter we find that the
twin boys are born, Jacob and Esau. But their old grandfather was dead.
He knew now how true God is to his promises, because he was in Heaven,
but we can't help wishing he had seen those two strong boys from one of
whom the Saviour of the whole world was to descend. But if we look at
Abraham's age when he died, and comparing it with Isaac's when the twins
were born, we find that the old man, truly, had to wait twenty years
before they were born, but that he really lived to see them seventeen or
eighteen years of age. He lived to tell them with his own lips about that
wonderful promise of God."
"Oh, I'm so glad!" cried Marjorie, enthusiastically.
"He had another long time to wait, too," said Linnet.
"Yes, he had hard times all along," almost sighed Miss Prudence.
Forty years old did not mean to her that her hard times were all over.
"But he had such a good time with the boys," said Marjorie, who never
could see the dark side of anything. "Just to think of _dates_ telling us
such a beautiful thing."
"That's all you hate, dates and punctuation," Linnet declared; "but I
can't see the use of ever so many other things."
"If God thought it worth while to make the earth and people it and
furnish it and govern it with laws, don't you think it worth your poor
little while to learn what he has done?" queried Miss Prudence, gently.
"Oh!" exclaimed Linnet, "is _that_ it?"
"Just it," said Miss Prudence, smiling, "and some day I will go over with
you each study by itself and show you how it will educate you and help
you the better to do something he asks you to do."
"Oh, how splendid!" cried Linnet. "Before I go to school, so the books
won't seem hard and dry?"
"Yes, any day that you will come to me. Marjorie may come too, even
though she loves to study."
"I wonder if you can find any good in Natural Philosophy," muttered
Linnet, "and in doing the examples in it. And in remembering the signs
of the Zodiac! Mr. Holmes makes us learn everything; he won't let us
skip."
"He is a fine teacher, and you might have had, if you had been so minded,
a good preparation for your city school."
"I haven't," said Linnet. "If it were not for seeing the girls and
learning how to be like city girls, I would rather stay home."
"Perhaps that knowledge would not improve you. What then?"
"Why, Miss Prudence!" exclaimed Marjorie, "don't you think we country
girls are away behind the age?"
"In the matter of dates! But you need not be. With such a teacher as you
have you ought to do as well as any city girl of your age. And there's
always a course of reading by yourself."
"It isn't always," laughed Linnet, "it is only for the studiously
disposed."
"I was a country girl, and when I went to the city to school I did not
fail in my examination."
"Oh, _you_!" cried Linnet.
"I see no reason why you, in your happy, refined, Christian home, with
all the sweet influences of your healthful, hardy lives, should not be as
perfectly the lady as any girl I know."
Marjorie clapped her hands. Oh, if Hollis might only hear this! And Miss
Prudence _knew_.
"I thought I had to go to a city school, else I couldn't be refined and
lady-like," said Linnet.
"That does not follow. All city girls are not refined and lady-like; they
may have a style that you haven't, but that style is not always to their
advantage. It is true that I do not find many young ladies in your little
village that I wish you to take as models, but the fault is in them, as
well as in some of their surroundings. You have music, you have books,
you have perfection of beauty in shore and sea, you have the Holy Spirit,
the Educator of mankind."
The girls were awed and silent.
"I have been shocked at the rudeness of city girls, and I have been
charmed with the tact and courtesy of more than one country maiden.
Nowadays education and the truest culture may be had everywhere."
"Even in Middlefield," laughed Marjorie her heart brimming over with the
thought that, after all, she might be as truly a lady as Helen Rheid.
If Linnet had been as excited as Marjorie was, at that moment, she would
have given a bound into the grass and danced all around. But Marjorie
only sat still trembling with a flush in eyes and cheeks.
"I think I'll keep a list of the books I read," decided Marjorie after a
quiet moment.
"That's a good plan. I'll show you a list I made in my girlhood, some
day. But you mustn't read as many as an Englishman read,--Thomas Henry
Buckle,--his library comprised twenty-two thousand."
"He didn't read them _all,_" cried Linnet.
"He read parts of all, and some attentively, I dare say. He was a rapid
reader and had the rare faculty of being able to seize on what he needed
to use. He often read three volumes a day. But I don't advise you to copy
him. I want you to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. He could
absorb, but, we'll take it for granted that you must plod on steadily,
step by step. He read through Johnson's Dictionary to enlarge his
vocabulary."
"Vocabulary!" repeated Linnet.