“Oh, you!” cried Linnet.

“I see no reason why you, in your happy, refined, Christian home, with all the sweet influences of your healthful, hardy lives, should not be as perfectly the lady as any girl I know.”

Marjorie clapped her hands.  Oh, if Hollis might only hear this!  And Miss Prudence knew.

“I thought I had to go to a city school, else I couldn’t be refined and lady-like,” said Linnet.

“That does not follow.  All city girls are not refined and lady-like; they may have a style that you haven’t, but that style is not always to their advantage.  It is true that I do not find many young ladies in your little village that I wish you to take as models, but the fault is in them, as well as in some of their surroundings.  You have music, you have books, you have perfection of beauty in shore and sea, you have the Holy Spirit, the Educator of mankind.”

The girls were awed and silent.

“I have been shocked at the rudeness of city girls, and I have been charmed with the tact and courtesy of more than one country maiden.  Nowadays education and the truest culture may be had everywhere.”

“Even in Middlefield,” laughed Marjorie her heart brimming over with the thought that, after all, she might be as truly a lady as Helen Rheid.

If Linnet had been as excited as Marjorie was, at that moment, she would have given a bound into the grass and danced all around.  But Marjorie only sat still trembling with a flush in eyes and cheeks.

“I think I’ll keep a list of the books I read,” decided Marjorie after a quiet moment.

“That’s a good plan.  I’ll show you a list I made in my girlhood, some day.  But you mustn’t read as many as an Englishman read,—­Thomas Henry Buckle,—­his library comprised twenty-two thousand.”

“He didn’t read them all,” cried Linnet.

“He read parts of all, and some attentively, I dare say.  He was a rapid reader and had the rare faculty of being able to seize on what he needed to use.  He often read three volumes a day.  But I don’t advise you to copy him.  I want you to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.  He could absorb, but, we’ll take it for granted that you must plod on steadily, step by step.  He read through Johnson’s Dictionary to enlarge his vocabulary.”

“Vocabulary!” repeated Linnet.

“His stock of words,” exclaimed Marjorie.  “Miss Prudence!” with a new energy in her voice, “I’m going to read Webster through.”

“Well,” smiled Miss Prudence.

“Don’t you believe I can?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Then I will.  I’ll be like Buckle in one thing.  I’ll plan to read so many pages a day.  We’ve got a splendid one; mother got it by getting subscriptions to some paper.  Mother will do anything to help us on, Miss Prudence.”

“I have learned that.  I have a plan to propose to her by and by.”