The subject was intensely interesting to Marjorie, she had but lately read “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and her tears and indignation were ready to burst forth at any suggestion of injustice or cruelty.  But the thing that she was laughing at was a quotation from one of the older versions of the Bible, Roger’s Version Mr. Holmes told them when he quoted the passage:  “And the Lord was with Joseph and he was a luckie felowe.”  She lifted her head from her father’s shoulder and ran out into the little front yard to find her mother and the others that she might tell them about Joseph and ask Miss Prudence what “Roger’s Version” meant.  But her mother was busy in the milkroom and Linnet was coming towards the house walking slowly with her eyes on the ground.  Will Rheid was walking as slowly toward his home as Linnet was toward hers.

Miss Prudence made a picture all by herself in her plain black dress, with no color or ornament save the red rose in her black crape scarf, as she sat upright in the rush-bottomed, straight-backed chair in the entry before the wide-open door.  Her eyes were towards the two who had parted so reluctantly on the bridge over the brook.  Marjorie danced away to find her mother, suddenly remembering to ask if she might share the spare chamber with Miss Prudence, that is—­if Linnet did not want to very much.

Marjorie never wanted to do anything that Linnet wanted to very much.

Opening the gate Linnet came in slowly, with her eyes still on the ground, shut the gate, and stood looking off into space; then becoming aware of the still figure on the piazza hurried toward it.

Linnet’s eyes were stirred with a deeper emotion than had ever moved her before; Miss Prudence did not remember her own face twenty years ago, but she remembered her own heart.

Will Rheid was a good young fellow, honest and true; Miss Prudence stifled her sigh and said, “Well, dear” as the young girl came and stood beside her chair.

“I was wishing—­I was saying to Will, just now, that I wished there was a list of things in the Bible to pray about, and then we might be sure that we were asking right.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said he’d ask anyhow, and if it came, it was all right, and if it didn’t, he supposed that was all right, too.”

“That was faith, certainly.”

“Oh, he has faith,” returned Linnet, earnestly.  “Don’t you know—­oh, you don’t remember—­when the Evangelist—­that always reminds me of Marjorie”—­Linnet was a somewhat fragmentary talker like her mother—­“but when Mr. Woodfern was here four of the Rheid boys joined the Church, all but Hollis, he was in New York, he went about that time.  Mr. Woodfern was so interested in them all; I shall never forget how he used to pray at family worship:  ‘Lord, go through that Rheid family.’  He prayed it every day, I really believe.  And they all joined the Church at the first communion time, and every one of them