Marjorie wandered around disconsolate until she discovered Miss Prudence in the garden.

She was perplexed over a new difficulty which vented itself in the question propounded between tasting currants.

“Ought I—­do you think I ought—­talk to people—­about—­like the minister—­about—­”

“No, child!” and Miss Prudence laughed merrily.  “You ought to talk to people like Marjorie West!  Like a child and not like a minister.”

IX.

JOHN HOLMES.

“Courage to endure and to obey.”—­Tennyson.

It was vacation-time and yet John Holmes was at work.  No one knew him to take a vacation, he had attempted to do it more than once and at the end of his stipulated time had found himself at work harder than ever.  The last lazy, luxurious vacation that he remembered was his last college vacation.  What a boyish, good-for-nothing, aimless fellow he was in those days!  How his brother used to snap him up and ask if he had nothing better to do than to dawdle around into Maple Street and swing Prudence under the maples in that old garden, or to write rhymes with her and correct her German exercises!  How he used to tease her about having by and by to color her hair white and put on spectacles, or else she would have to call her husband “papa.”  And she would dart after him and box his ears and laugh her happy laugh and look as proud as a queen over every teasing word.  He had told her that she grew prettier every hour as her day of fate drew nearer, and then had audaciously kissed her as he bade her good-by, for, in one week would she not be his sister, the only sister he had ever had?  He stood at the gate watching her as she tripped up to her father’s arm-chair on the piazza, and saw her bend her head down to his, and then he had gone off whistling and thinking that his brother certainly had a share of all of earth’s good things position, a good name, money, and now this sweet woman for a wife.  Well, the world was all before him where to choose, and he would have money and a position some day and the very happiest home in the land.

The next time he saw Prudence she looked like one just risen out of a grave:  pallid, with purple, speechless lips, and eyes whose anguish rent his soul.  Her father had been suddenly prostrated with hemorrhage and he stayed through the night with her, and afterward he made arrangements for the funeral, and his mother and himself stood at the grave with her.  And then there was a prison, and after that a delirious fever for himself, when for days he had not known his mother’s face or Prudence’s voice.

The other boys had gone back to college, but his spirit was crushed, he could not hold up his head among men.  He had lost his “ambition,” people said.  Since that time he had taught in country schools and written articles for the papers and magazines; he had done one thing beside, he had purchased books and studied them.  In the desk in his chamber there were laid away to-day four returned manuscripts, he was only waiting for leisure to exchange their addressee and send them forth into the world again to seek their fortunes.  A rejection daunted him no more than a poor recitation in the schoolroom; where would be the zest in life if one had not the chance of trying again?