Part 5 (1/2)
”Linnet! Linnet!” rebuked her mother, shutting the oven door, ”I thought you were only playing. I wouldn't have let you go on if I had thought you would have taken it in earnest.”
”I don't really,” returned Linnet, with a vexed laugh, ”but I did want to see what letter it would be.”
”It's _O_,” said Marjorie, turning to look over her shoulder.
”Rather a crooked one,” conceded Linnet, ”but it will have to do.”
”Suppose you try a dozen times and they all come different,” suggested practical Marjorie.
”That proves it's all nonsense,” answered her mother.
”And suppose you don't marry anybody,” Marjorie continued, spoiling Linnet's romance, ”some letter, or something _like_ a letter has to come, and then what of it?”
”Oh, it's only fun,” explained Linnet.
”I don't want to know about my _S_” confessed Marjorie. ”I'd rather wait and find out. I want my life to be like a story-book and have surprises in the next chapter.”
”It's sure to have that,” said her mother. ”We mustn't _try_ to find out what is hidden. We mustn't meddle with our lives, either. Hurry providence, as somebody says in a book.”
”And we can't ask anybody but G.o.d,” said Marjorie, ”because n.o.body else knows. He could make any letter come that he wanted to.”
”He will not tell us anything that way,” returned her mother.
”I don't want him to,” said Marjorie.
”Mother, I was in fun and you are making _serious_,” cried Linnet with a distressed face.
”Not making it dreadful, only serious,” smiled her mother.
”I don't see why the letter has to be about your husband,” argued Marjorie, ”lots of things will happen to us first”
”But that is exciting,” said Linnet, ”and it is the most of things in story-books.”
”I don't see why,” continued Marjorie, unconvinced, turning an apple around in her fingers, ”isn't the other part of the story worth anything?”
”Worth anything!” repeated Linnet, puzzled.
”Doesn't G.o.d care for the other part?” questioned the child. ”I've got to have a good deal of the other part.”
”So have all unmarried people,” said her mother, smiling at the quaint gravity of Marjorie's eyes.
”Then I don't see why--” said Marjorie.
”Perhaps you will by and by,” her mother replied, laughing, for Marjorie was looking as wise as an owl; ”and now, please hurry with the apples, for they must bake before tea. Mr. Woodfern says he never ate baked apple sauce anywhere else.”
Marjorie hoped he would not stay a whole week, as he proposed, if she had to cut the apples. And then, with a shock and revulsion at herself, she remembered that her father had read at wors.h.i.+p that morning something about giving even a cup of cold water to a disciple for Christ's sake.
Linnet laughed again as she stooped to pick up the doubtful _O_ and crooked _S_ from the oilcloth.