“Up in my room on the table you will find paper and pencil; please bring them to me.”

Marjorie flew away and Miss Prudence gave herself up to her interrupted reverie.  To-day was one of Miss Prudence’s hard-working days; that is, it was followed by the effect of a hard-working day; the days in which she felt too weak to do anything beside pray she counted the successful days of her life.  She said they were the only days in her life in which she accomplished anything.

Marjorie was at home in every part of her grandfather’s queer old house; Miss Prudence’s room was her especial delight.  It was a low-studded chamber, with three windows looking out to the sea, the wide fireplace was open, filled with boughs of fragrant hemlock; the smooth yellow floor with its coolness and sweet cleanliness invited you to enter; there were round braided mats spread before the bureau and rude washstand, and more pretentious ones in size and beauty were laid in front of the red, high-posted bedstead and over the brick hearth.  There were, beside, in the apartment, two tables, an easy-chair with arms, its cushions covered with red calico, a camp stool, three rush-bottomed chairs, a Saratoga trunk, intruding itself with ugly modernness, also, hanging upon hooks, several articles of clothing, conspicuously among them a gray flannel bathing suit.  The windows were draperied in dotted swiss, fastened back with green cord; her grandmother would never have been guilty of those curtains.  Marjorie was sure they had intimate connection with the Saratoga trunk.  Sunshine, the salt-breath of the sea and the odor of pine woods as well!

There were rollicking voices outside the window, Marjorie looked out and spied her five little cousins playing in the sand.  Three of them held in their hands, half-eaten, the inevitable doughnut; morning, noon, and night those children were to be found with doughnuts in their hands.

She laughed and turned again to the contemplation of the room; on the high mantel was a yellow pitcher, that her grandmother knew was a hundred years old, and in the centre of the mantel were arranged a sugar bowl and a vinegar cruet that Miss Prudence had coaxed away from the old lady; her city friends would rave over them, she said.  The old lady had laughed, remarking that “city folks” had ways of their own.

“I’ve given away a whole set of dishes to folks that come in the yachts,” she said.  “I should think you would rather have new dishes.”

Miss Prudence never dusted her old possessions; she told Marjorie that she had not the heart to disturb the dust of ages.