“I made an opportunity for it to be easy for him to tell me.”

“I don’t know how to make opportunities,” returned Mrs. Rheid with some dignity.

“Everybody doesn’t,” was the complacent reply.

Marjorie had had a busy day arranging household matters for her mother while she should be gone, and was dozing with her head nestled in the soft folds of the shawl when her mother’s step aroused her.

“Child, you are asleep and letting the fire go down.”

“Am I?” she asked drowsily, “the room is cold.”

She wrapped the shawl about her more closely and nestled into it again.

“Perhaps Hollis will come home with you,” her mother began, drawing her own especial chair nearer the fire and settling down as if for a long conversation.

“Mother, you will be chilly;” and, with the instinct that her mother must be taken care of, she sprang up with her eyes still half asleep and attended to the fire.

The dry chips soon kindled a blaze, and she was wide awake with the flush of sleep in her cheeks.

“Why do you think he will?” she asked.

“It looks like it.  Mrs. Rheid ran over to-day to tell me that the Captain had offered to give him fifty acres and build him a house, if he would come home for good.”

“I wonder if he will like it.”

“You ought to know,” in a suggestive tone.

“I am not sure.  He does not like farming.”

“A farm of his own may make a difference.  And a house of his own.  I suppose the Captain thinks he is engaged to you.”

Mrs. West was rubbing her thumb nail and not looking at Marjorie.  Marjorie was playing with a chip, thrusting it into the fire and bringing it out lighted as she and Linnet used to like to do.

“Marjorie, is he?”

“No, ma’am,” answered Marjorie, the corners of her lips twitching.

“I’d like to know why he isn’t,” with some asperity.

“Perhaps he knows,” suggested Marjorie, looking at her lighted chip.  It was childish; but she must be doing something, if her mother would insist upon talking about Hollis.

“Do you know?”

Marjorie dropped her chip into the stove and looked up at the broad figure in the wooden rocker—­a figure in a black dress and gingham apron, with a neat white cap covering her gray hair, a round face, from which Marjorie had taken her roundness and dimples, a shrewd face with a determined mouth and the kindliest eyes that ever looked out upon the world.  Marjorie looked at her and loved her.

“Mother, do you want to know?  I haven’t anything to tell you.”

“Seems to me he’s a long time about it.”

Marjorie colored now, and, rising from her seat in front of the fire, wrapped the shawl again around her.

“Mother, dear, I’m not a child now; I am a woman grown.”

“Too old to be advised,” sighed her mother.