"John, you should have asked Mrs. March, too."

"I forgot the etiquette of it. I forgot she was your pastor's wife. But it's too late now."

"Prue!" Miss Prudence laid her hand on Prue's head to keep her quiet.

"Ask Marjorie and Mrs. Kemlo and Deborah to come into the parlor."

"We are to be married, Prue!" said John Holmes.

"_Who_ is?" asked Prue.

"Aunt Prue and I. Don't you want papa and mamma instead of Uncle John and Aunt Prue?"

"Yes; I do! Wait for us to come. I'll run and tell them," she answered, fleeing away.

"John, this is a very irregular proceeding!"

"It quite befits the occasion, however," he answered gravely. Very slowly they walked toward the house.

All color had left Miss Prudence's cheeks and lips. Deborah was sure she would faint; but Mrs. Kemlo watched her lips, and knew by the firm lines that she would not.

No one thought about the bridegroom, because no one ever does. Prue kept close to Miss Prudence, and said afterward that she was mamma's bridesmaid. Marjorie thought that Morris would be glad if he could know it; he had loved Mr. Holmes.

The few words were solemnly spoken.

Prudence Pomeroy and John Holmes were husband and wife.

"What G.o.d hath joined--"

Oh, how G.o.d had joined them. She had belonged to him so long.

The bridegroom and bride went on their wedding tour by walking up and down the long parlor in the summer twilight. Not many words were spoken.

Deborah went out to the dining-room to change the table cloth for one of the best damasks, saying to herself, "It's just as it ought to be! Just as it ought to be! And things do happen so once in a while in this crooked world."

XXV.

THE WILL OF G.o.d.

"To see in all things good and fair, Thy love attested is my prayer."--_Alice Cary._

"Linnet is happy enough," said their mother; "but there's Marjorie!"

Yes; there was Marjorie! She was not happy enough. She was twenty-one this summer, and not many events had stirred her uneventful life since we left her the night of Miss Prudence's marriage. She came home the next day bringing Mrs. Kemlo with her, and the same day she began to take the old household steps. She had been away but a year, and had not fallen out of the old ways as Linnet had in her three years of study; and she had not come home to be married as Linnet had; she came home to do the next thing, and the next thing had even been something for her father and mother, or Morris' mother.

Annie Grey went immediately, upon the homecoming of the daughter of the house, to Middlefield to learn dressmaking, boarding with Linnet and "working her board." Linnet was lonely at night; she began to feel lonely as dusk came on; and the arrangement of board for one and pleasant companionship for the other, was satisfactory to both. Not that there was very much for Annie to do, beside staying at home Monday mornings to help with the washing, and ironing Monday evening or early Tuesday. Linnet loved her housekeeping too well to let any other fingers intermeddle.

Will decided that she must stay, for company, especially through the winter nights, if he had to pay her board.

Therefore Marjorie took the place that she left vacant in the farmhouse, and more than filled it, but she did not love housekeeping for its own comfortable sake, as Linnet did; she did it as "by G.o.d's law."

Her father's health failed signally this first summer. He was weakened by several hemorrhages, and became nervous and unfitted even to superintend the work of the "hired man." That general superintendence fell to Mrs.

West, and she took no little pride in the flourishing state of the few acres. Now she could farm as she wanted to; Graham had not always listened to her. The next summer he died. That was the summer Marjorie was twenty. The chief business of the nursing fell to Marjorie; her mother was rather too energetic for the comfort of the sickroom, and there was always so much to be attended to outside that quiet chamber.

"Marjorie knows her father's way," Mrs. West apologized to Mrs. Kemlo.

"He never has to tell her what he wants; but I have to make him explain.

There are born nurses, and I'm not one of them. I'll keep things running outside, and that's for his comfort. He is as satisfied as though he were about himself. If one of us must be down, he knows that he'd better be the one."

During their last talk--how many talks Marjorie and her father had!--he made one remark that she had not forgotten, and would never forget:--

"My life has been of little account, as the world goes; but I have sought to do G.o.d's will, and that is success to a man on his death-bed."

Would not her life be a success, then? For what else did she desire but the will of G.o.d.

The minister told Marjorie that there was no man in the church whose life had had such a resistless influence as her father's.

The same hired man was retained; the farm work was done to Mrs. West's satisfaction. The farm was her own as long as she lived; and then it was to belong equally to the daughters. There were no debts.

The gentle, patient life was missed with sore hearts; but there was no outward difference within doors or without. Marjorie took his seat at table; Mrs. Kemlo sat in his armchair at the fireside; his wife read his _Agriculturist_; and his daughter read his special devotional books. His wife admitted to herself that Graham lacked force of character. She herself was a _pusher_. She did not understand his favorite quotation: "He that believeth shall not make haste."

Marjorie had her piano--this piano was a graduating present from Miss Prudence; more books than she could read, from the libraries of Mr. and Mrs. Holmes; her busy work in the household; an occasional visit to the farmhouse on the sea sh.o.r.e, to read to the old people and sing to them, and even to cut and string apples and laugh over her childish abhorrence of the work. She never opened the door of the chamber they still called "Miss Prudence's," without feeling that it held a history. How different her life would have been but for Miss Prudence. And Linnet's. And Morris's! And how many other lives, who knew? There were, beside, her cla.s.s in Sunday school; and her visits to Linnet, and exchanging visits with the school-girls,--not with the girls at Master McCosh's; she had made no intimate friendships among them. And then there were letters from Aunt Prue, and childish, affectionate notes from dear little Prue.

Marjorie's life was not meagre; still she was not "happy enough." She wrote to Aunt Prue that she was not "satisfied."

"That's a girl's old story," Mrs. Holmes said to her husband. "She must _evolve_, John. There's enough in her for something to come out of her."

"What do girls want to _do_?" he asked, looking up from his writing.

"Be satisfied," laughed his wife.

"Did you go through that delusive period?"

"Was I not a girl?"

"And here's Prue growing up, to say some day that she isn't satisfied."

"No; to say some day that she is."

"_When_ were you satisfied?"

"At what age? You will not believe that I was thirty-five, before I was satisfied with my life. And then I was satisfied, because I was willing for G.o.d to have his way with me. If it were not for that willingness, I shouldn't be satisfied yet."

"Then you can tell Marjorie not to wait until she is half of three score and ten before she gives herself up."

"Her will is more yielding than mine; she doesn't seek great things for herself."