"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 sh.o.r.e 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 br.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 gra.s.s 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.
"His stock of words," exclaimed Marjorie. "Miss Prudence!" with a new energy in her voice, "I"m going to read Webster through."
"Well," smiled Miss Prudence.
"Don"t you believe I _can?_"
"Oh, yes."
"Then I will. I"ll be like Buckle in one thing. I"ll plan to read so many pages a day. We"ve got a splendid one; mother got it by getting subscriptions to some paper. Mother will do _anything_ to help us on, Miss Prudence."
"I have learned that. I have a plan to propose to her by and by."
"Oh, can"t you tell us?" entreated Linnet, forgetting her work.
"Not yet."
"Does it concern _us?_" asked Marjorie.
"Yes, both of you."
Two hours since it had "concerned" only Marjorie, but in this hour under the apple-tree Miss Prudence had been moved to include Linnet, also.
Linnet was not Marjorie, she had mentally reasoned, but she was Linnet and had her own niche in the world. Was she not also one of her little sisters that were in the world and not of it?
"When may we know?" questioned Linnet
"That depends. Before I leave your grandfather"s, I hope."
"I know it is something good and wonderful, because you thought of it,"
said Marjorie. "Perhaps it is as good as one of our day-dreams coming true."
"It may be something very like one of them, but the time may not be yet.
It will not do you any harm to know there"s something pleasant ahead, if it can be arranged."
"I do like to know things that are going to happen to us," Linnet confessed. "I used to wish I could dream and have the dreams come true."
"Like the wicked ancients who used to wrap themselves in skins of beasts and stay among the graves and monuments to sleep and dream--and in the temples of the idols, thinking the departed or the idols would foretell to them in dreams. Isaiah reproves the Jews for doing this. And Sir Walter Scott, in his notes to "The Lady of the Lake," tells us something about a similar superst.i.tion among the Scotch."
"I like to know about superst.i.tions," said Linnet, "but I"d be afraid to do that."
"Miss Prudence, I haven"t read "The Lady of the Lake"!" exclaimed Marjorie.
"No, imitator of Buckle, you haven"t. But I"ll send it to you when I go home."
"What did Buckle _do_ with all his learning?" inquired Marjorie.
"I haven"t told you about half of his learning. He wrote a work of great learning, that startled the world somewhat, called "The History of Civilization," in which he attempted to prove that the differences between nations and peoples were almost solely to be attributed to physical causes that food had more to do with the character of a nation than faith."
"Didn"t the Israelites live on the same food that the Philistines did?"
asked Marjorie, "and didn"t--"
"Are you getting ready to refute him? The Jews could not eat pork, you remember."
"And because they didn"t eat pork they believed in one true G.o.d!"
exclaimed Marjorie, indignantly. "I don"t like his book, Miss Prudence."