“But that doesn’t repay money.”

“She thinks it does.  And so do we.”

“How much board does the master pay?” inquired grandmother.

“I don’t know; I didn’t ask.  He has brought all his books and the spare chamber is full.  He let me help him pile them up.  But he says I must not read one without asking him.”

“I don’t see what you want to read them for,” said the old lady sharply.  “Can’t your mother find enough for you to do.  In my day—­”

“But your day was a long time ago,” interrupted her daughter-in-law.

“Yes, yes, most a hundred, and girls want everything they can get now.  Perhaps the master hears your lessons to pay his board.”

“Perhaps,” assented Marjorie.

“They say bees pay their board and work for you beside,” said Mrs. Rheid.  “I guess he’s like a bee.  I expect the Widow Devoe can’t help wishing he had stayed to her house.”

“He proposed to come himself,” said Marjorie, with a proud flash of her eyes, “and he proposed to teach me himself.”

“Oh, yes, to be sure, but she and the cat will miss him all the same.”

“It’s all sudden.”

“[missing text] happen sudden, nowadays.  I keep my eyes shut and things keep whirling around.”

Grandmother was seated in an armchair with her feet resting on a home-made foot stool, clad in a dark calico, with a little piece of gray shawl pinned closely around her neck, every lock of hair was concealed beneath a black, borderless silk cap, with narrow black silk strings tied under her trembling chin, her lips were sunken and seamed, her eyelids partly dropped over her sightless eyes, her withered, bony fingers were laboriously pushing the needles in and out through a soft gray wool sock, every few moments Marjorie took the work from her to pick up a dropped stitch or two and to knit once around.  The old eyes never once suspected that the work grew faster than her own fingers moved.  Once she remarked plaintively:  “Seems to me it takes you a long time to pick up one stitch.”

“There were three this time,” returned Marjorie, seriously.

“What does the master learn you about?” asked Mrs. Rheid.

“Oh, the school studies!  And I read the dictionary by myself.”

“I thought you had some new words.”

“I want some good words,” said Marjorie.

“Now don’t you go and get talking like a book,” said grandmother, sharply, “if you do you can’t come and talk to me.”

“But you can talk to me,” returned Marjorie, smiling, “and that is what I want.  Hollis wrote me that I mustn’t say ‘guess’ and I do forget so often.”

“Hollis is getting ideas,” said Hollis’ mother; “well, let him, I want him to learn all he can.”

Marjorie was wondering where her own letter to Hollis would come in; she had stowed away in the storehouse of her memory messages enough from mother and grandmother to fill one sheet, both given with many explanations, and before she went home Captain Rheid would come in and add his word to Hollis.  And if she should write two sheets this time would her mother think it foolish?  It was one of Mrs. West’s old-fashioned ways to ask Marjorie to let her read every letter that she wrote.