“Do you think Mr. Holmes, will ever come home?” he asked.

“Why not?  Of course he will,” she answered in astonishment.

“That depends.  Prue might bring him.  I want to see him finished; there’s a fine finishment for him somewhere and I want to see it.  For all that is worth anything in me I have to thank him.  He made me—­as God lets one man make another.  I would like to live long enough to pass it on; to make some one as he made me.”

It was too cold to walk slowly, their words were spoken in brief, brisk sentences.

There was nothing specially memorable in this walk, but Marjorie thought of it many times; she remembered it because she was longing to ask him what he had brought her and was ashamed to do it.  It might be due to him after her refusal last night; but still she was ashamed.  She would write about it, she decided; it was like her not to speak of it.

“I haven’t told you about our harbor mission work at Genoa; the work is not so great in summer, but the chaplain told me that in October there were over sixty seamen in the Bethel and they were very attentive.  One old captain told me that the average sailor had much improved since he began to go to sea, and I am sure the harbor mission work is one cause of it.  I wish you could hear some of the old sailors talk and pray.  The Linnet will be a praise meeting in itself some day; four sailors have become Christians since I first knew the Linnet.”

“Linnet wrote that it was your work.”

“I worked and prayed and God blessed.  Oh, the blessing! oh, the blessing of good books!  Marjorie, do you know what makes waves?”

“No,” she laughed; “and I’m too cold to remember if I did.  I think the wind must make them.  Now we turn and on the next corner is our entrance.”

The side entrance was not a gate, but a door in a high wall; girls were flocking up the street and down the street, blue veils, brown veils, gray veils, were streaming in all directions, the wind was blowing laughing voices all around them.

Marjorie pushed the door open: 

“Good-bye, Morris,” she said, as he caught her hand and held it last.

“Good-bye, Marjorie,—­dear” he whispered as a tall girl in blue brushed past them and entered the door.

Little Miss Dodd ran up laughing, and Marjorie could say no more; what more could she say than “good-bye”?  But she wanted to say more, she wanted to say—­but Emma Downs was asking her if it were late and Morris had gone.

“What a handsome young fellow!” exclaimed Miss Parks to Marjorie, hanging up her cloak next to Marjorie’s in the dressing room.  “Is he your brother?”

“My twin-brother,” replied Marjorie.

“He doesn’t look like you.  He is handsome and tall.”

“And I am homely and stumpy,” said Marjorie, good-humoredly.  “No, he is not my real brother.”

“I don’t believe in that kind.”