It was not Marjorie; but it was the Marjorie who had lost Morris and her father.  Was she so weak that she sank under grief?  In his thought she was always strong.  But it was another Marjorie who met him at the gate the next evening; the cheeks were still thin, but they were tinted and there was not a trace of yesterday’s dullness in face or voice; it was a joyful face, and her voice was as light-hearted as a child’s.  Something had wrought a change since yesterday.

Such a quiet, unobtrusive little figure in a black and white gingham, with a knot of black ribbon at her throat and a cluster of white roses in her belt.  Miss Prudence had done her best with the little country girl, and she was become only a sweet and girlish-looking woman; she had not marked out for herself a “career”; she had done nothing that no other girl might do.  But she was the lady that some other girls had not become, he argued.

The three, Hollis, Linnet, and Marjorie, sat in the moon lighted parlor and talked over old times.  Hollis had begun it by saying that his father had shown him “Flyaway” stowed away in the granary chamber.

He was sitting beside Linnet in a good position to study Marjorie’s face unobserved.  The girl’s face bore the marks of having gone through something; there was a flutter about her lips, and her soft laugh and the joy about the lips was almost contradicted by the mistiness that now and then veiled the eyes.  She had planned to go up to her chamber early, and have this evening alone by herself,—­alone on her knees at the open window, with the stars above her and the rustle of the leaves and the breath of the sea about her.  It had been a long sorrow; all she wanted was to rest, as Mary did, at the feet of the Lord; to look up into his face, and feel his eyes upon her face; to shed sweetest tears over the peace of forgiven sin.

She had written to Aunt Prue all about it that afternoon.  She was tempted to show the letter to her mother, but was restrained by her usual shyness and timidity.

“Marjorie, why don’t you talk?” questioned Linnet.

Marjorie was on the music stool, and had turned from them to play the air of one of the songs they used to sing in school.

“I thought I had been talking a great deal.  I am thinking of so many things and I thought I had spoken of them all.”

“I wish you would,” said Hollis.

“I was thinking of Morris just then.  But he was not in your school days, nor in Linnet’s.  He belongs to mine.”

“What else?  Go on please,” said Hollis.

“And then I was thinking that his life was a success, as father’s was.  They both did the will of the Lord.”

“I’ve been trying all day to submit to that will,” said Linnet, in a thick voice.

“Is that all we have to do with it—­submit to it?” asked Hollis with a grave smile.  “Why do we always groan over ‘Thy will be done,’ as though there never was anything pleasant in it?”