“Don’t fret about it any more,” he said, kindly, with his grown-up air, patting her shoulder with a light, caressing touch.  “I will take it into my hands and you need not think of it again.”

“Oh, thank you! thank you!” she cried, her eyes brimming over.

It was the old Hollis, after all; he could do anything and everything she wanted.

Forgetting her shyness, after that home-like touch upon her shoulder, she chatted all the way home.  And he did not once think that she was a quiet little mouse.

He did not like “quiet” people; perhaps because his own spirit was so quiet that it required some effort for him to be noisy.  Hollis admired most characteristics unlike his own; he did not know, but he felt that Marjorie was very much like himself.  She was more like him than he was like her.  They were two people who would be very apt to be drawn together under all circumstances, but without special and peculiar training could never satisfy each other.  This was true of them even now, and, if possible with the enlarged vision of experience, became truer as they grew older.  If they kept together they might grow together; but, the question is, whether of themselves they would ever have been drawn very close together.  They were close enough together now, as Marjorie chatted and Hollis listened; he had many questions to ask about the boys and girls of the village and Marjorie had many stories to relate.

“So George Harris and Nell True are really married!” he said.  “So young, too!”

“Yes, mother did not like it.  She said they were too young.  He always liked her best at school, you know.  And when she joined the Church she was so anxious for him to join, too, and she wrote him a note about it and he answered it and they kept on writing and then they were married.”

“Did he join the Church?” asked Hollis,

“He hasn’t yet.”

“It is easier for girls to be good than for boys,” rejoined Hollis in an argumentative tone,

“Is it?  I don’t see how.”

“Of course you don’t.  We are in the world where the temptations are; what temptations do you have?”

“I have enough.  But I don’t want to go out in the world where more temptations are.  Don’t you know—­” She colored and stopped,

“Know what?”

“About Christ praying that his disciples might be kept from the evil that was in the world, not that they might be taken out of the world.  They have got to be in the world.”

“Yes.”

“And,” she added sagely, “anybody can be good where no temptations are.”

“Is that why girls are good?”

“I don’t think girls are good.”

“The girls I know are.”

“You know city girls,” she said archly.  “We country girls have the world in our own hearts.”

There was nothing of “the world” in the sweet face that he looked down into, nothing of the world in the frank, true voice.  He had been wronging her; how much there was in her, this wise, old, sweet little Marjorie!