"Now is your study time; now is the time for you to be a perfect little daughter and sister, a perfect friend, a perfect helper in every way that a child may help. And when womanhood comes you will be ready to enjoy it and to do its work. It would be very sad to look back upon a lost or blighted or unsatisfying childhood."

"Yes," a.s.sented Marjorie, gravely.

"Perhaps you and Linnet have been reading story-books that were not written for children."

"We read all the books in the school library."

"Does your mother look over them?"

"No, not always."

"They may harm you only in this way that I see. You are thinking of things before the time. It would be a pity to spoil May by bringing September into it."

"All the girls like the grown-up stories best" excused Marjorie.

"Perhaps they have not read books written purely for children. Think of the histories and travels and biographies and poems piled up for you to read!"

"I wish I had them. I read all I could get."

"I am sure you do. O, Marjorie, I don't want you to lose one of your precious days. I lost so many of mine by growing up too soon. There are years and years to be a woman, but there are so few years to be a child and a girl."

Marjorie scribbled awhile thinking of nothing to say. Had she been "spoiling" Linnet, too? But Linnet was two years older, almost old enough to think about growing up.

"Marjorie, look at me!"

Marjorie raised her eyes and fixed them upon the glowing eyes that were reading her own. Miss Prudence's lips were white and tremulous.

"I have had some very hard things in my life and I fully believe I brought many of them upon myself. I spoiled my childhood and early girlhood by light reading and castle-building; I preferred to live among scenes of my own imagining, than in my own common life, and oh, the things I left up done! The precious girlhood I lost and the hard womanhood I made for myself."

The child's eyes were as full of tears as the woman's.

"Please tell me what to do," Marjorie entreated. "I don't want to lose anything. I suppose it is as good to be a girl as a woman."

"Get all the sweetness out of every day; _live_ in to-day, don't plan or hope about womanhood; G.o.d has all that in his safe hands. Read the kind of books I have spoken of and when you read grown-up stories let some one older and wiser choose them for you. By and by your taste will be so formed and cultivated that you will choose only the best for yourself. I hope the Bible will spoil some other books for you."

"I _devour_ everything I can borrow or find anywhere."

"You don't eat everything you can borrow or find anywhere. If you choose for your body, how much more ought you to choose for your mind."

"I do get discontented sometimes and want things to happen as they do in books; something happens in every chapter in a book," acknowledged Marjorie.

"There's nothing said about the dull, uneventful days that come between; if the author should write only about the dull days no one would read the book."

"It wouldn't be like life, either," said Marjorie, quickly, "for something does happen, sometimes nothing has happened yet to me, though.

But I suppose something will, some day."

"Then if I should write about your thirteen years the charm would have to be all in the telling."

"Like Hector in the Garden," said Marjorie, brightly. "How I do love that. And he was only nine years old."

"But how far we've gotten away from punctuation!"

Next to prayer children were Miss Prudence's most perfect rest. They were so utterly unconscious of what she was going through. It seemed to Miss Prudence as if she were always going through and never getting through.

"Are you fully satisfied that punctuation has its work in the world?"

"Yes, ever so fully. I should never get along in the Bible without it."

"That reminds me; run upstairs and bring me my Bible and I'll show you something.

"And, then, after that will you show me the good of remembering _dates_.

They are so hard to remember. And I can't see the good. Do you suppose you _could_ make it as interesting as punctuation?"

"I might try. The idea of a little girl who finds punctuation so interesting having to resort to castle-building to make life worth living," laughed Miss Prudence.

"Mother said to-day that she was afraid I was growing deaf, for she spoke three times before I answered; I was away off somewhere imagining I had a hundred dollars to spend, so she went down cellar for the b.u.t.ter herself."

Marjorie walked away with a self-rebuked air; she did dread to pa.s.s that open sitting-room door; Uncle James had come in in his shirt sleeves, wiping his bald head with his handkerchief and was telling her grandfather that the hay was poor this year; Aunt Miranda was brushing Nettie's hair and scolding her for having such greasy fingers; and her grandmother had a pile, _such_ a pile of sliced apple all ready to be strung. Her head was turning, yes, she would see her and then she could not know about dates or have a lesson in reading poetry! Tiptoing more softly still and holding the skirt of her starched muslin in both hands to keep it from rustling, she at last pa.s.sed the ordeal and breathed freely as she gained Miss Prudence's chamber. The spirit of handling things seemed to possess her this afternoon, for, after finding the Bible, she went to the mantel and took into her hands every article placed upon it; the bird's nest with the three tiny eggs, the bunch of feathers that she had gathered for Miss Prudence with their many shades of brown, the old pieces of crockery, handling these latter very carefully until she seized the yellow pitcher; Miss Prudence had paid her grandmother quite a sum for the pitcher, having purchased it for a friend; Marjorie turned it around and around in her hands, then, suddenly, being startled by a heavy, slow step on the stairs which she recognized as her grandmother's, and having in fear those apples to be strung, in attempting to lift it to the high mantel, it fell short of the mantel edge and dropped with a crash to the hearth.

For an instant Marjorie was paralyzed with horror; then she stifled a shriek and stood still gazing down through quick tears upon the yellow fragments. Fortunately her grandmother, being very deaf, had pa.s.sed the door and heard no sound. What would have happened to her if her grandmother had looked in!

How disappointed Miss Prudence would be! It belonged to her friend and how could she remedy the loss?

Stooping, with eyes so blinded with tears that she could scarcely see the pieces she took into her hand, she picked up each bit, and then on the spur of the moment hid them among the thick branches of hemlock. Now what was she to do next? Could she earn money to buy another hundred-years-old yellow pitcher? And if she could earn the money, where could she find the pitcher? She would not confess to Miss Prudence until she found some way of doing something for her. Oh, dear! This was not the kind of thing that she had been wishing would happen! And how could she go down with such a face to hear the rest about punctuation?

"Marjorie! Marjorie!" shouted Uncle James from below, "here's Cap'n Rheid at the gate, and if you want to catch a ride you'd better go a ways with him."

The opportunity to run away was better than the ride; hastening down to the hammock she laid the Bible in Miss Prudence's lap.

"I have to go, you see," she exclaimed, hurriedly, averting her face.

"Then our desultory conversation must be finished another time."

"If that's what it means, it means delightful!" said Marjorie. "Thank you, and good-bye."

The blue muslin vanished between the rows of currant bushes. She was hardly a radiant vision as she flew down to the gate; in those few minutes what could have happened to the child?

IV.

A RIDE, A WALK, A TALK, AND A TUMBLE.

"Children always turn toward the light"

"Well, Mousie!"