Marjorie wrote the letters that evening, her eyes so blinded with tears that she wrote very crookedly.  No one would ever know what she had lost in Morris.  He had been a part of herself that even Linnet had never been.  She was lost without him, and for months wandered in a new world.  She suffered more keenly upon the anniversary of the day of the tidings of his death than she suffered that day.  Then, she could appreciate more fully what God had taken from her.  But the letters were written, and mailed on her way to school in the morning; her recitations were gone through with; and night came, when she could have the rest of sleep.  The days went on outwardly as usual.  Prue was daily becoming more and more a delight to them all.  Mrs. Kemlo’s sad face was sweet and chastened; and Miss Prudence’s days were more full of busy doings, with a certain something of a new life about them that Marjorie did not understand.  She could almost imagine what Miss Prudence had been twenty years ago.  Despite her lightness of foot, her inspiriting voice, and her young interest in every question that pertained to life and work and study, Miss Prudence seemed old to eighteen-years-old Marjorie.  Not as old as her mother; but nearly forty-five was very old.  When she was forty-five, she thought, her life would be almost ended; and here was Miss Prudence always beginning again.

Answers to her letters arrived duly.  They were not long; but they were conventionally sympathetic.

One daughter wrote:  “Morris took you away from us to place you with friends whom he thought would take good care of you; if you are satisfied to stay with them, I think you will be better off than with me.  Business is dull, and Peter thinks he has enough on his hands.”

The other wrote:  “I am glad you are among such kind friends.  If Miss Pomeroy thinks she owes you anything, now is her time to repay it.  But she could pay your board with me as well as with strangers, and you could help me with the children.  I am glad you can be submissive, and that you are in a pleasanter frame of mind.  Henry sends love, and says you never shall want a home while he has a roof over his own head.”

The mother sighed over both letters.  They both left so much unsaid.  They were wrapped up in their husbands and children.

“I hope their children will love them when they are old,” was the only remark she made about the letters.

“I am your child, too,” said Marjorie.  “Won’t you take me instead—­no, not instead of Morris, but with him?”

In April Will came home.  He spent a night in Maple Street, and almost satisfied the mother’s hungry heart with the comfort he gave her.  Marjorie listened with tears.  She went away by herself to open the tiny box that Will placed in her hand.  Kissing the ring with loving and reverent lips, she slipped it on the finger that Morris would have chosen, the finger on which Linnet wore her wedding ring. “Semper