Mrs. Manners was one of those experienced persons who are fully persuaded that youth is a disease that must be borne with patiently.  Time, indeed, will cure it; yet until the cure is complete, elders must bear it as well as they can and not seem to pay too much attention to it.  A rigorous and prudent diet; long hours of sleep, plenty of occupation—­these are the remedies for the fever.  So, while Marjorie first began to read the lad’s letter, and then, breaking down altogether, thrust it into her mother’s hand, Mrs. Manners was searching her memory as to whether any imprudence the day before, in food or behaviour, could be the cause of this crisis.  Love between boys and girls was common enough; she herself twenty years ago had suffered from the sickness when young John had come wooing her; yet a love that could thrust from it that which it loved, was beyond her altogether.  Either Marjorie loved the lad, or she did not, and if she loved him, why did she pray that he might be a priest?  That was foolishness; since priesthood was a bar to marriage.  She began to conclude that Marjorie did not love him; it had been but a romantic fancy; and she was encouraged by the thought.

“Madge,” she began, when she had read through the confused line or two, in the half-boyish, half-clerkly hand of Robin, scribbled and dispatched by the hands of Dick scarcely two hours ago.  “Madge—­”

She was about to say something sensible when the maid interrupted her again.

“And it is I who have brought it all on him!” she wailed.  “If it had not been for me—­”

Her mother laid a firm hand on her daughter’s mouth.  It was not often that she felt the superior of the two; yet here was a time, plain enough, when maturity and experience must take the reins.

“Madge,” she said, “it is plain you do not love him; or you never—­”

The maid started back, her eyes ablaze.

“Not love him!  Why—­”

“That you do not love him truly; or you would never have wished this for him....  Now listen to me!”

She raised an admonitory finger, complacent at last.  But her speech was not to be made at that time; for her daughter swiftly rose to her feet, controlled at last by the shock of astonishment.

“Then I do not think you know what love is,” she said softly.  “To love is to wish the other’s highest good, as I understand it.”

Mrs. Manners compressed her lips, as might a prophetess before a prediction.  But her daughter was beforehand with her again.

“That is the love of a Christian, at least,” she said.  Then she stooped, took the letter from her mother’s knees, and went out.

Mrs. Manners sat for a moment as her daughter left her.  Then she understood that her hour of superiority was gone with Marjorie’s hour of weakness; and she emitted a short laugh as she took her place again behind the child she had borne.

II