"Does the time when we desire make any difference?" asked Linnet, interestedly.

There were some kind of questions that Linnet liked to ask.

"Does it not make all the difference? Suppose we think of something we want while we are ease-loving, forgetful of duty, selfish, unforgiving, neither loving G.o.d or our neighbor, when we feel far from him, instead of near him, can we believe that we shall have such a heart's desire as that would be? Would your desire be according to his will, his unselfish, loving, forgiving will?"

"No, oh, no," said Linnet, earnestly. "But I do think about father and mother and Marjorie going to school and--when I am praying."

"Then ask for everything you desire while you are praying; don't be afraid."

"_Is_ mother troubled about something?"

"Not troubled, really; only perplexed a little over something we have been planning about; and she is very glad, too."

"I don't like to have her troubled, because her heart hurts her when she worries. Marjorie don't know that, but she told me. That's one reason--my strongest reason--for being sorry about going to Boston."

"But your father is with her and he will watch over her."

"But she depends on _me_," pleaded Linnet.

"Marjorie is growing up," said Miss Prudence, hopefully.

"Marjorie! It doesn't seem to me that she will ever grow up; she is such a little puss, always absent-minded, with a book in her hand. And she can't mend or sew or even make cake or clear up a room neatly. We spoil her, mother and I, as much as she spoils her kitten, Pusheen. Did you know that _pusheen_ is Irish for puss? Mr. Holmes told us. I do believe he knows everything."

"He comes nearer universal knowledge than the rest of us," said Miss Prudence, smiling at the girl's eagerness.

"But he's a book himself, a small volume, in fine print, printed in a language that none of us can read," said Linnet.

"To most people he is," granted Miss Prudence; "but when he was seven I was ten, I was a backward child and he used to read to me, so he is not a dead language to me."

Linnet pulled at the fringe of her white shawl; Will Rheid had brought that shawl from Ireland a year ago.

"Miss Prudence, _do_ we have right desires, desires for things G.o.d likes, while we are praying?"

"If we feel his presence, if we feel as near to him as Mary sitting at the feet of Christ, if we thank him for his unbounded goodness, and ask his forgiveness for our sins with a grateful, purified, and forgiving heart, how can we desire anything selfish--for our own good only and not to honor him, anything unholy, anything that it would hurt him to grant; if our heart is ever one with his heart, our will ever one with his will, is it not when we are nearest to him, nearest in obeying, or nearest in praying? Isn't there some new impulse toward the things he loves to give us every time we go near to him?"

Linnet a.s.sented with a slight movement of her head. She understood many things that she could not translate into words.

"Yesterday I saw in the paper the death of an old friend." They had been silent for several minutes; Miss Prudence spoke in a musing voice. "She was a friend in the sense that I had tried to befriend her. She was unfortunate in her home surroundings, she was something of an invalid and very deaf beside. She had lost money and was partly dependent upon relatives. A few of us, Mr. Holmes was one of them, paid her board. She was not what you girls call 'real bright,' but she was bright enough to have a heartache every day. Reading her name among the deaths made me glad of a kindness I grudged her once."

"I don't believe you grudged it," interrupted Marjorie, who had come in time to lean over the tall back of the chair and rest her hand on Miss Prudence's shoulder while she listened to what promised to be a "story."

"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 gla.s.ses. 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sest _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: