"What does any man want it for? I want it to give me influence, and I want a luxurious old age."
"That doesn"t strike me as being the highest motives."
"Probably not, but perhaps the highest motives, as you call them, do not rule my life."
And she had been praying for him so long.
"Your mother seems to be a happy woman," was her reply, coming out of a thought that she did not speak.
"She is," he said, emphatically. "I wish poor old father were as happy."
"Do you find many happy people?" she asked.
"I find you and my mother," he returned smiling.
"And yourself?"
"Not always. I am happy enough today. Not as jubilant as old Will, though. Will has a prize."
"To be sure he has," said Marjorie.
"What are you going to do next?"
"Go to that pleasant home in Maple Street with Miss Prudence and go to school." She was jubilant, too, today, or she would have been if Morris had not gone away with such a look in his eyes.
"You ought to be graduated by this time, you are old enough. Helen was not as old as you."
"But I haven"t been at school at all, yet," she hastened to say. "And Helen was so bright."
"Aren"t you bright?" he asked, laughing.
"Mr. Holmes doesn"t tell me that I am."
"What will your mother do?"
"Oh, dear," she sighed, "that is what I ask myself every day. But she insists that I shall go, Linnet has had her "chance" she says, and now it is my turn. Miss Prudence is always finding somebody that needs a home, and she has found a girl to help mother, a girl about my age, that hasn"t any friends, so it isn"t the work that will trouble me; it is leaving mother without any daughter at all."
"She is willing to let Linnet go, she ought to be as willing to let you."
"Oh, she is, and father is, too. I know I don"t deserve such good times, but I do want to go. I love Miss Prudence as much as I do mother, I believe, and I am only forty miles from home. Mr. Holmes is about leaving, too. How father will miss _him_! And Morris gone! Mother sighs over the changes and then says changes must needs come if boys and girls will grow up."
"Where is Mr. Holmes going?"
"To California. The doctor says he must go somewhere to cure his cough.
And he says he will rest and write another book. Have you read his book?"
"No, it is too dry for me."
"We don"t think it is dry; Morris and I know it by heart."
"That is because you know the author."
"Perhaps it is. The book is everything but a story book. Miss Prudence has a copy in Turkey morocco. Do you see many people that write books?"
"No," he said, smiling at her simplicity. "New York isn"t full of them."
"Miss Prudence sees them," replied Marjorie with dignity.
"She is a bird of their feather. I do not fly, I walk on the ground--with my eyes on it, perhaps."
"Like the man with the muck rake," said Marjorie, quoting from her old love, _Pilgrims Progress_, "don"t you know there was a crown held above his head, and his eyes were on the ground and he could not see it."
"No, I do not know it, but I perceive that you are talking an allegory at me."
"Not at you, _to_ you," she corrected.
"You write very short letters to me, nowadays."
"Your letters are not suggestive enough," she said, archly.
"Like my conversation. As poor a talker as I am, I am a better talker than writer. And you--you write a dozen times better than you talk."
"I"m sorry I"m so unentertaining to-night. When Linnet writes she says: ""I wish I could _talk_ to you," and when I talk I think: "I wish I could write it all to you.""
"As some one said of some one who could write better than he talked, "He has plenty of bank notes, but he carries no small change, in his pocket.""
"It is so apt to be too small," she answered, somewhat severely.
"I see you are above talking the nonsense that some girls talk. What do you do to get rested from your thoughts?"
How Marjorie laughed!
"Hollis, do talk to me instead of writing. And I"ll write to you instead of talking."
"That is, you wish me near to you and yourself far away from me. That is the only way that we can satisfy each other. Isn"t that Miss Prudence coming?"
"And the master. They did not know I would have an escort home. But do come all the way, father will like to hear you talk about the places you have visited."
"I travel, I don"t visit places. I expect to go to London and Paris by and by. Our buyer has been getting married and that doesn"t please the firm; he wanted to take his wife with him, but they vetoed that. They say a married man will not attend strictly to business; see what a premium is paid to bachelorhood. I shall understand laces well enough soon: I can pick a piece of imitation out of a hundred real pieces now. Did Linnet like the handkerchief and scarf?"
"You should have seen her! Hasn"t she spoken of them?"
"No, she was too full of other things."
"Marriage isn"t all in getting ready, to Linnet," said Marjorie, seriously, "I found her crying one day because she was so happy and didn"t deserve to be."
"Will is a good fellow," said Hollis. "I wish I were half as good. But I am so contradictory, so unsatisfied and so unsatisfying. I understand myself better than I want to, and yet I do not understand myself at all."