A STORY THAT WAS NOT VERY SAD.

"Children have neither past nor future; and, what scarcely ever happens to us, they enjoy the present."--_Bruyere._

Prue was watching at the window with Minnie Harrowgate, and was joyfully ready to go home to see Aunt Prue when Marjorie and Lizzie Harrowgate appeared.

Standing a few moments near the parlor register, while Prue ran to put on her wraps, Marjorie's eye would wander to the Holland plate on the bracket. She walked home under a depression that was not all caused by the dread of meeting Miss Prudence. They found Miss Prudence on the stairs, coming down with a tray of dishes.

"O, Aunt Prue! Aunt Prue!" was Prue's exclamation. "I didn't go to school, I went to Mrs. Harrowgate's instead. Marjorie said I must, because something dreadful happened in school and I never could go until it never happened again. But I've had a splendid time, and I want to go again."

Miss Prudence bent over to kiss her, and gave her the tray to take into the kitchen.

"You may stay with Deborah, dear, till I call you."

Marjorie dropped her shawl-strap of books on the carpet of the hall and stood at the hat-stand hanging up her cloak and hat. Miss Prudence had kissed her, but they had not looked into each other's eyes.

Was it possible that Miss Prudence suspected? Marjorie asked herself as she took off her rubbers. She suffered her to pa.s.s into the front parlor, and waited alone in the hall until she could gather courage to follow her. But the courage did not come, she trembled and choked, and the slow tears rolled over her cheeks.

"Marjorie!"

Miss Prudence was at her side.

"O, Miss Prudence! O, dear Aunt Prue, I don't want to tell you," she burst out; "they said things about her father and about you, and I can't tell you."

Miss Prudence's arm was about her, and she was gently drawn into the parlor; not to sit down, for Miss Prudence began slowly to walk up and down the long length of the room, keeping Marjorie at her side. They paused an instant before the mirror, between the windows in the front parlor, and both glanced in: a slight figure in gray, for she had put off her mourning at last, with a pale, calm face, and a plump little creature in brown, with a flushed face and full eyes--the girl growing up, and the girl grown up.

For fully fifteen minutes they paced slowly and in silence up and down the soft carpet. Miss Prudence knew when they stood upon the very spot where Prue's father--not Prue's father then--had bidden her that lifetime long farewell. G.o.d had blessed her and forgiven him. Was it such a very sad story then?

Miss Prudence dropped into a chair as if her strength were spent, and Marjorie knelt beside her and laid her head on the arm of her chair.

"It is true, Marjorie."

"I know it. Master McCosh heard it and he said it was true."

"It will make a difference, a great difference. I shall take Prue away. I must write to John to-night."

"I'm so glad you have him, Aunt Prue. I'm so glad you and Prue have him."

Miss Prudence knew now, herself: never before had she known how glad she was to have him; how glad she had been to have him all her life. She would tell him that, to-night, also. She was not the woman to withhold a joy that belonged to another.

Marjorie did not raise her head, and therefore did not catch the first flash of the new life that John Holmes would see when he looked into them.

"He is so good, Aunt Prue," Marjorie went on. "_He_ is a Christian when he speaks to a dog."

"Don't you want to go upstairs and see Morris' mother? She was excited a little, and I promised her that she should not come down-stairs to-night."

"But I don't know her," said Marjorie rising.

"I think you do. And she knows you. She has come here to learn how good G.o.d is, and I want you to help me show it to her."

"I don't know how."

"Be your sweet, bright self, and sing all over the house all the comforting hymns you know."

"Will she like that?"

"She likes nothing so well. I sung her to sleep last night."

"I wish mother could talk to her."

"Marjorie! you have said it. Your mother is the one. I will send her to your mother in the spring. Morris and I will pay her board, and she shall keep close to your happy mother as long as they are both willing."

"Will Morris let you help pay her board?"

"Morris cannot help himself. He never resists me. Now go upstairs and kiss her, and tell her you are her boy's twin-sister."

Before the light tap on her door Mrs. Kemlo heard, and her heart was stirred as she heard it, the pleading, hopeful, trusting strains of "Jesus, lover of my soul."

Moving about in her own chamber, with her door open, Marjorie sang it all before she crossed the hall and gave her light tap on Mrs. Kemlo's door.

When Marjorie saw the face--the sorrowful, delicate face, and listened to the refined accent and pretty choice of words, she knew that Morris Kemlo was a gentleman because his mother was a lady.

Prue wandered around the kitchen, looking at things and asking questions.

Deborah was never cross to Prue.

It was a sunny kitchen in the afternoon, the windows faced west and south and Deborah's plants throve. Miss Prudence had taken great pleasure in making Deborah's living room a room for body and spirit to keep strong in. Old Deborah said there was not another room in the house like the kitchen; "and to think that Miss Prudence should put a lounge there for my old bones to rest on."

Prue liked the kitchen because of the plants. It was very funny to see such tiny sweet alyssum, such dwarfs of geranium, such a little bit of heliotrope, and only one calla among those small leaves.

"Just wait till you go to California with us, Deborah," she remarked this afternoon. "I'll show you flowers."

"I'm too old to travel, Miss Prue."

"No, you are not. I shall take you when I go. I can wait on Morris'

mother, can't I? Marjorie said she and I were to help you if she came."

"Miss Marjorie is good help."

"So am I," said Prue, hopping into the dining-room and amusing herself by stepping from one green pattern in the carpet to another green one, and then from one red to another red one, and then, as her summons did not come, from a green to a red and a red to a green, and still Aunt Prue did not call her. Then she went back to Deborah, who was making lemon jelly, at one of the kitchen tables, in a great yellow bowl. She told Prue that some of it was to go to a lady in consumption, and some to a little boy who had a hump on his back. Prue said that she would take it to the little boy, because she had never seen a hump on a boy's back; she had seen it on camels in a picture.

Still Aunt Prue did not come for her, and she counted thirty-five bells on the arbutilon, and four buds on the monthly rose, and pulled off three drooping daisies that Deborah had not attended to, and then listened, and "Prue! Prue!" did not come.

Aunt Prue and Marjorie must be talking "secrets."

"Deborah," standing beside her and looking seriously up into the kindly, wrinkled face, "I wish you knew some secrets."

"La! child, I know too many."

"Will you tell me one. Just one. I never heard a secret in my life.